I’ve been stressed since I got back from Italy. I’m not a high-stress guy, though yes, maybe a little grumpy. But I’ve taken on maybe more that I should’ve, and between that and a NY summer I feel like a spinning and sweaty top.
I am on record here of my hatred of social media, but it’s partially because those meta ads have really got my number, and I was coerced into buying a parallel pen the other day because I carry the guilt of 30+ years of being too much of a coward to stick with an ink nib. One of my very first teachers taught me to hold one, but being hamfisted is a load-bearing element of my construction. I have big dumb sweaty hands and I’m latin so I move them around when I talk like I’m trying to land a plane. My ex used to just subtly move everything out of my reach when I’d tell a story. One time I spilled an entire new beer on a beautiful girl who was so soaked she had no choice but to turn around and go home. Head to toe in a perfect bullseye. It haunts me still.
So a nib full of ink in my big dumb hands just feels like a weapon. Someone’s gonna get hurt. At best it’s my pants.
But it’s such a classy old-school art tool, all but abandoned, and I blame myself.
So I bought a pilot parallel pen. It’s a calligraphy pen, and it sorta handles like a brush, which is what the nib was good for in the rare exemption when I got it right. There’s something about drawing freehand in ink that feels better than just about anything. It’s as close to painting as I ever got. If the robots ever take over, and rather than terminate us they just tell us we’re not needed anymore, I think I’d go and paint with oil somewhere where nobody could see.
I’ve been thinking a lot about leaving NY. Well, not NY specifically. Going somewhere where no one knows me, buying enough vegetables for the day from some old lady in a tiny shop. This place is too much sometimes.
On the 4th of July sometimes my friend Jerome does a BBQ, but this year he was jetlagged and his family was out of town so I dragged him out to a deli that was charging way too much for hot dogs, but it was close enough. Brooklyn was a ghost town. We walked into a random empty bar and talked about old nostalgic things, what it was like to be somewhere during a world series. Wandering around in the 80s and 90s without a phone to stare into, just trying to find something happening on the street that would keep your attention and wouldn’t end in a knife wound.
We got word from our friend Paul that some indescribable party was happening back in our part of the neighborhood. When we got there there must have been a hundred people, watching a band play in the living room, jumping up and down like slow motion. A guy I didn’t know said: you picked the right day to wander into this house.
It was maybe the nicest brownstone I’ve ever seen. Perfectly preserved, wood filigreed on every surface. bookshelves build into the wall before my parents were born. Sometimes I’m asked what all the fuss is when I’m traveling. I struggle to put NY into words. You gotta be there on that kinda night, in a room full of strangers, watching a drummer’s relentless focus on his song. This kinda moment that almost never happens. But it could.
I can REALLY relate to the "talking with your hands" thing! I am not Latin, but I do talk with my hands in a MAJOR way, and my wife will often swerve out of the way, as I flail around while telling a story, then glare at me!