OE is a word
Being unemployed and now out of the media spotlight, I have sod all to do. I woke up this morning to find Brooklyn transformed into a haze of dappled sunlight and summer glory. It instantly depressed me, and I was forced to return to my bed and wait until a more suitably negative climate could compel me to move. After two hours, it was still sunny, and I had to get out of the apartment before I could be consumed by Catto, our friendly feline, who is starving because he refuses to eat the choice crispy cat fare set out for him every day and keeps holding out for some prime rib. That cat is in the wrong damned neighbourhood. I'm considering dropping him off in the meatpacking in the hopes that Mary-Kate or Ashley will take pity on him and give him all the juicy morsels they can't eat in the fear of gaining unsightly flesh.
I did some work for David the travel writer for a few hours, and then wandered around the West Side aimlessly, and found myself in Washington Square. The weather has re-animated New York. When I arrived six weeks ago the wind sliced through you, the snow froze your eyelids together, your feet clunked around uselessly in flimsy shoes like carrying bricks at the end of your legs. I remember jogging around Washington Square and sliding along sheet ice. And now everyone is happy and carefree, bathing in the sunlight in sheer gypsy skirts and bejewelled flip-flops, guys with guitars singing bad versions of 'Hotel California', kids with skateboards, businessmen grabbing lunch out of their office cubicles. New York is a pleasant place to be again. Yet it's one of those observations I note with complete detachment, because I feel like I'm carrying a huge weight around, worried about money, my visa, jobs, careers, friends, men - I can't get attached to anything or anyone, because one foot is tenuously here, the other somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. Isolated I guess. I sat with my head in a sheath of immigration laws until some bum shuffled up next to me.
"Hey lady. You know how to play scrabble lady?"
He sniffed and wiped his nose with a dirty paw, and held out a scrabble board. I looked at it. I suddenly realised it had been 24 hours since I'd spoke to anyone else. Geez, that's kind of sad.
He shuffled onto the bench and taking my silence for an answer, set up the board.
"OE? That's a word?"
The bum gazed at me coolly beneath dirt encrusted brows.
"OE is a north-easterly wind which blows around the Faroe islands during Spring."
Oh.
The bum beat me 320 to 210. I asked him what he did for a living.
"Nothin'. I'm unemployed."
Does he claim unemployment benefits?
"Nah, I don't need 'em."
Where does he live?
"The Meatpacking District."
He gathered his scrabble letters gently and carefully together, placed them in a stinking old sock, fished a high-tech ultra-modern camera-cellphone from his tattered jeans, waved goodbye, and shuffled off. See ya lady.
I went to a film screening tonight at NYU, a documentary looking at three foreign-born muslim kids in the US affected by the 9/11 Special Registration. Special Registration basically required males over a certain age from predominantly Muslim countries to go and register at 26 Federal Plaza after 9/11. 83,000 males went to register, and faced the indignity of such questions as "Are you friends with Osama Bin Laden?", "What are your feelings about US politics?". 14,000 were later deported. The aim of Special Registration was ostensibly to 'discover' terrorists. Unsurprisingly, the proceedings yielded zero. Another example of the frenzy of the government after the tragedy to find a scapegoat, to appease anti-islamic feeling, to feed the American fear of difference, of race. I felt good listening to NYU lawyers rattle through laws, proceedings, particular cases. There was a zing in the air, a sense of determination, something other than the world-weariness, the hard-faced look of the terminally disillusioned, which when you're nothing but a waitress, you encounter night after night after night. It inspired me. I met Amy there, and a guy called Kamal, whose story I'm using in a new article I'm trying to pressure the Voice into printing to coincide with the reintroduction of the DREAM bill to Congress next week.
And then after being lost in the stories of other people, I suddenly had to slide back into the making of my own. I started walking the streets of New York, resumés in hand, searching for a job, searching for a new income, the ever present knowledge in the back of my head that I have only fifty dollars left until I can find something new. I bumped into one guy, Abdel, who I'd met six weeks earlier while doing exactly the same as I was doing now - job hunting. He gave me a big hug, pulled up a chair, and poured me a glass of red wine. I asked him whether he went for Special Registration after 9/11. Abdel is from Morocco. He looked at me and laughed.
"Honey, I was in fuckin' Hawaii screwin' some bitches. I wasn't goin' near no fucking INS with the feelin's against muslims runnin' high in Noo York."
I drank my wine and watched some black dude on the sidewalk try and pour a can of Bud down his throat, unfortunately mistiming the proximity of both can and mouth. The beer dripped down his holey jersey. He cussed through broken teeth. Gawdamm.
Life is like that sometimes. You're thirsty, you have the can, but no matter how hard you try, you just can't get that damned thing anywhere near your mouth.
I did some work for David the travel writer for a few hours, and then wandered around the West Side aimlessly, and found myself in Washington Square. The weather has re-animated New York. When I arrived six weeks ago the wind sliced through you, the snow froze your eyelids together, your feet clunked around uselessly in flimsy shoes like carrying bricks at the end of your legs. I remember jogging around Washington Square and sliding along sheet ice. And now everyone is happy and carefree, bathing in the sunlight in sheer gypsy skirts and bejewelled flip-flops, guys with guitars singing bad versions of 'Hotel California', kids with skateboards, businessmen grabbing lunch out of their office cubicles. New York is a pleasant place to be again. Yet it's one of those observations I note with complete detachment, because I feel like I'm carrying a huge weight around, worried about money, my visa, jobs, careers, friends, men - I can't get attached to anything or anyone, because one foot is tenuously here, the other somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. Isolated I guess. I sat with my head in a sheath of immigration laws until some bum shuffled up next to me.
"Hey lady. You know how to play scrabble lady?"
He sniffed and wiped his nose with a dirty paw, and held out a scrabble board. I looked at it. I suddenly realised it had been 24 hours since I'd spoke to anyone else. Geez, that's kind of sad.
He shuffled onto the bench and taking my silence for an answer, set up the board.
"OE? That's a word?"
The bum gazed at me coolly beneath dirt encrusted brows.
"OE is a north-easterly wind which blows around the Faroe islands during Spring."
Oh.
The bum beat me 320 to 210. I asked him what he did for a living.
"Nothin'. I'm unemployed."
Does he claim unemployment benefits?
"Nah, I don't need 'em."
Where does he live?
"The Meatpacking District."
He gathered his scrabble letters gently and carefully together, placed them in a stinking old sock, fished a high-tech ultra-modern camera-cellphone from his tattered jeans, waved goodbye, and shuffled off. See ya lady.
I went to a film screening tonight at NYU, a documentary looking at three foreign-born muslim kids in the US affected by the 9/11 Special Registration. Special Registration basically required males over a certain age from predominantly Muslim countries to go and register at 26 Federal Plaza after 9/11. 83,000 males went to register, and faced the indignity of such questions as "Are you friends with Osama Bin Laden?", "What are your feelings about US politics?". 14,000 were later deported. The aim of Special Registration was ostensibly to 'discover' terrorists. Unsurprisingly, the proceedings yielded zero. Another example of the frenzy of the government after the tragedy to find a scapegoat, to appease anti-islamic feeling, to feed the American fear of difference, of race. I felt good listening to NYU lawyers rattle through laws, proceedings, particular cases. There was a zing in the air, a sense of determination, something other than the world-weariness, the hard-faced look of the terminally disillusioned, which when you're nothing but a waitress, you encounter night after night after night. It inspired me. I met Amy there, and a guy called Kamal, whose story I'm using in a new article I'm trying to pressure the Voice into printing to coincide with the reintroduction of the DREAM bill to Congress next week.
And then after being lost in the stories of other people, I suddenly had to slide back into the making of my own. I started walking the streets of New York, resumés in hand, searching for a job, searching for a new income, the ever present knowledge in the back of my head that I have only fifty dollars left until I can find something new. I bumped into one guy, Abdel, who I'd met six weeks earlier while doing exactly the same as I was doing now - job hunting. He gave me a big hug, pulled up a chair, and poured me a glass of red wine. I asked him whether he went for Special Registration after 9/11. Abdel is from Morocco. He looked at me and laughed.
"Honey, I was in fuckin' Hawaii screwin' some bitches. I wasn't goin' near no fucking INS with the feelin's against muslims runnin' high in Noo York."
I drank my wine and watched some black dude on the sidewalk try and pour a can of Bud down his throat, unfortunately mistiming the proximity of both can and mouth. The beer dripped down his holey jersey. He cussed through broken teeth. Gawdamm.
Life is like that sometimes. You're thirsty, you have the can, but no matter how hard you try, you just can't get that damned thing anywhere near your mouth.
MIMI IN NY | 11:37 PM |
