A Something Random Guide to..

The illuminated sign had caught our attention from the other side of Broadway as we exited the subway and walked south.  My internal digital clock had just recovered from a loss of power and blinked “Lunch Hour” repeatedly.  Jen pulled the door to Ollies Diner open, and we walked in.

Like most diners we’ve patronized the past week and a half, it was buzzing with wait staff carrying trays filled with pickles and overflowing plates of french fries.  And diner coffee.  Diner coffee is usually pretty bad, but its so bad that its good.  I’ve only had one negative experience with diner coffee, and that was many miles away at Crystal.  Mold.  Straight up mold floating in my coffee, vacationing on the surface like the unattractive person who always seems to find their way to float up close to me on a raft in every hotel I’ve ever been in.  I wouldn’t drink pool water near said person, and I wasn’t about to drink the tainted coffee.

But this diner was different, or so it appeared from the outside.  Crystal has always embodied a homeliness to all drunken Rider students, with its plain appearance and 50 cent table jukeboxes that I regularly like to play “Dancing in the Dark” on.  Ollies was fancy, with fancy people.  No old men with a mouth full of black and green teeth.  No sons sitting across from these old men, wishing they were somewhere else.  And certainly Ollies didn’t have the vacancy Crystal had when we’d regular it at 3am and children where at home in bed.

It was then I realized we had died and gone to hell.

Standing to wait for a table, I conversed with Jen and made the fatal mistake of glancing to my left.  Lined up haphazardly were strollers.  Dozens of em.  And they were empty.  I pulled out my camera as the hostess came over to tell us our table was ready.  Hold on just a sec, Jen said to her.  She’s taking a picture.

As we walked to the table, I switched my camera to play mode.  Neatly captured and displayed in the 2 inch box was the picture to be later captioned on facebook as “My idea of Hell.”  You’re ridiculous, Jen said as we sat down.  But it didn’t end there.

Fear struck me in the way turkeys must feel on Thanksgiving day.  Some would argue that birds have no cognition to understand their day of death is upon them, but I’m confident that they know the day is a giant game of chance.  Play against the odds.  Be the turkey not picked for the feast.

I was today’s turkey.  Rather then having feathers plucked out by a farmer, I was almost willing to rip out my own hair when we were seated next to a round table of children.  Maybe it wasn’t really Hell, maybe it was one of those dreams that seems so real you don’t know you’re dreaming.  I pinched myself under the table.  I splashed the ice water on my face.  I wasn’t waking up.

Making the most of the situation, I sipped on my non-moldy non-Crystal coffee, and concentrated on the conversation at hand.  Jen discussed a gratefulness for our day off, and I nodded in agreement while swallowing.  We celebrated our nation’s independence by being thankful for our personal independence for the day.  No classes, protests, or 24 hour companionship with the other 15 young adults here at training.

It isn’t that I don’t enjoy our group.  We pretty much rock.  But today’s Learn Vocabulary word was appropriately independence.  I ripped the sheet off my mental daily calendar and enjoyed a turkey reuben.  Lunch was our pit stop on the way to the Museum of Natural History.  Jen said there would be dinosaurs there.  I didn’t know dinosaurs lived in New York?  Yeah, they do.

If by do, you mean their remaining fossils are put together and tempting all those who enter the museum’s lobby to a giant game of Jenga that is.  I’m pretty sure I could have pulled out the T-Rex’s 4th tail bone vertebrae without causing anything to tumble.  Reaching towards the massive tail with a “go-go gadget arm” exclamation like I’ve seen on Inspector Gadget, the tail began to shake.  The magic words were necessary to prevent complete disaster.  Jenga.  Jengaaa. Je–

I quickly stopped zoning out when the lady behind the admissions ticket counter made an announcement.  This line is for members only, if you are buying a general admission you need to be in that line over there.  Her finger pointed to the line across the lobby, double the size of the one we had just worked our way to the front in.  Figures.

After eventually purchasing our tickets, and examining the map to this four story labyrinth of knowledge, we decided to enter through Asia.  Immediately we were greeted by two stuffed tigers behind a giant glass pane, one of which had a dead peacock in its mouth.  Everything in the diorama was long deceased, but still on display for anyone willing to pay 11.50.  The display was far more impressive than any shoebox visual aid I have ever made growing up, but while the contents awed the other groups of people that passed by, I stood in solitude for a few minutes.  An eerie feeling churned in my stomach as I slowly realized this first display reminded me of the fishbowl theory.

Of all the things that worry me about the next two years, one of my largest concerns is simply that.  The fishbowl.  Knowing every action I commit will not only be watched by all, but also analyzed.  The 17 of us young adults will be on display as representatives of the UMC for the next two to three years; it almost makes me feel like a freshly manicured peacock that is supposed to parade down the streets of towns filled with injustice, bringing change.

I want to bring change, don’t get me wrong.  But I don’t know how I feel about being scrutinized in all of my life’s activities, both at work and in my personal downtime.  Sometimes I just want to go out with friends, be silly, get into relatively normal amounts of trouble, and sleep off the hangover.  The peacock in the display was dead.  The tiger ate him, probably after analyzing the bird’s steps.  Waiting for one slip up.  I don’t want to be dead in a display in a tiger’s mouth for the world to see with an 11.50 admission price because I’ve made a slip up.  And I didn’t want to be in the Asia animals exhibit anymore.

If you haven’t been to the Museum of Natural History, I would recommend checking it out.  Next to the Asia animals corridor there is a display called “People Of Asia.”  Jen pointed out a urine pot from Siberia, and wondered what possessed the museum to put that first on the list of recovered objects.  I explored another display, and found my way back to her.  What was over there, she asked.  Oh just some artifacts or something.  She said we were in a museum and of course there would be artifacts.  Touche.

The MNH has a weird sense of humor.  We rounded the next corner to find a giant wall with the title “The Jews of Asia.”  But the wall was black and empty.  There was nothing about Judaism or its relationship with Asia.  For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why this was a display.  Probably something to do with Buddha?  He’s a prankster, I could see him pulling a stunt like that.

Jen said it was because the light in the display burned out.  Her answer made more sense than mine.  We moved on.

Wandering down to the first floor, we found ourselves in the middle of the undersea exhibit.  I was particularly drawn to the polar bear diorama in the back corner.  The scene was almost entirely monochromatic- the whiteness of the polar bear, snow, and snow covered mountains was balanced with shades of gray from the sea lion that nervously looked up at the bear, and the blackness of the shadows each of the figures casted.  At first, the only color I saw in the scene was the explosive sunset in the background, painting blues, purples, pinks, and yellows across the sky.  And orange.  And then I was drawn to the trail of red blood that connected the carcass of a dead sea lion to the bear’s mouth.  The only color capable of being introduced to this picture by the animal’s means was that of blood.

The bear couldn’t control the wondrous sunset that shone on him from the Heavens.  And he couldn’t control the colorlessness of his fur.  But he could bring blood to the picture.  He could bring color through change.  Through action.  And as I stood there, I realized I was never meant to be a peacock.  I’m not going to Denver to be eaten by Tigers, but going to Colorado to create change in an otherwise black and white world.  It seemed appropriate that the only color not made by God was the result of conflict.

Nothing about the next two years will come without conflict.  And while I won’t be on a hunt for blood, I will be attempting to stain our colorless world through an awareness that the black and white way in which injustices persist can no longer be the only thing on display in our recorded history.  Not fighting would look even ::shittier:: than the urine bowl that we saw upstairs.  I don’t want a museum to look back on us in a few hundreds of years and compare our life styles to a prehistoric chamber pot.  We all have much more than that to offer to our fellow man.

After leaving the MNF, Jen and I met up with her friend Laura for dinner.  We celebrated the nation’s independence again over Thai food and Sake.  Unfortunately after dinner, Laura wasn’t interested in riding the subway to the South Ferry Station with us.  I felt obligated as an American, being that this could be the first and last time I’ve ever in New York on the 4th of July.  In Battery Park we could see fireworks in the distance, over all parts of the water. 

Ellis Island, or a barge near it, began its fireworks show at 9:15.  Next to the statue of liberty, the sky lit up.  Shortly after, to our left, fireworks were also being set off somewhere down the avenue.  It’s like they’re battling for a greater independence, I said to Jen as we stood on a park bench to protect our toes from the rats scurrying around the park.  Over Ellis island were the fireworks of the past, commemorating an Independence for what made the country into what it used to be.  Over the buildings of Manhattan were fireworks competing for recognition of what our country has become.

The independence of old values, the hopes and the dreams, and the reality of those willing to risk everything for the chance of a better life were competing against a city that has become the mecca of corrupted values, broken ideals, and lost hope for a new generation of immigrants who are denied equality.  The fireworks of the city were bigger, brighter, and closer in proximity than those of Ellis Island, but I turned my attention back to the water.

I didn’t want to watch the new independence.

After wandering the streets for a bit, with hopes of returning to an empty platform for the 1, Jen and I made our way back to the South Ferry Station.  We were packed in anyway.  Even with all of its trash and signs warning of rat infestation, the Columbia University stop never looked so beautiful.

Classes will start again tomorrow, and our day off didn’t give me much rest.  Yet it didn’t lack in rejuvination.  I realized that I’m not a peacock, celebrating July 4th is just as fun with Thai food and friends as it is with burgers, and we’re picking our battles for independence everyday.  Jen wants to go back, to actually visit Ellis Island rather than just looking at it from a far.  I want the same, but not in the physical sense.

However for now, my bed will do.

Happy 4th of July everyone, I miss you all more than you could even imagine.

Always~

A wayward guy might be more appropriate after the unfolding of Friday night’s events, but then I wouldn’t be referring to myself or my apparent negligence of this blog.  Generally I tend to shy away from writing when nothing eventful has happened; I don’t enjoy pulling apart stories like expired string cheese.  There isn’t much hope of magnifying the ordinary into something worth reading in each dairy strand I could offer you.  And I’m lactose intolerant.  It is this combination of you being nauseated by a banal story and me getting sick from dairy in general that has caused silence in the past.

This weekend, however, was anything but 72 hours to stay silent about.  After all, New York had its first experience with this group of missionaries celebrating our first substantial amount of free time.

I can’t recall a time that I’ve ever really been excited about the club scene.  When a couple girls in the group mentioned they were hitting up a salsa club Friday night, instinct told me to put my finger to my nose in the “not-it” game of who wanted to join them.  There has always been something about sweat, both my own and other random people’s, that I don’t particularly appreciate.  At all.

But it was Friday, and this is the city that never sleeps.  Heck, it doesn’t even stop to shower off the sweat of all the aforementioned people.  If New York doesn’t sleep, being an insomniac is alright with me.  And what better way to be an insomniac than at a gay piano bar in West Village?

Now I had never been to a piano bar before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect as we rode 100 blocks downtown.  St. Christopher’s stop put us directly in front of “The Duplex,” and all of its glory.  We walked into a mostly empty bar.  Too early to be packed into the little bar, too late for the early evening drink specials.  Pushing together a few round tables, the nine of us found ourselves lining the entire left wall.  I sat on the booth seat, next to the piano player himself.

Hey guy, I kept trying to yell to get his attention.  David, Liz, and Jen said Beth call him by his name.  It’s Jerry.  Oh ok, hey guy can you play me some Don’t Stop Believing?

Jerry responded, despite the warning from our group that yelling guy probably wasn’t the best idea.  He said it was a song our waitress had to sing because it was too high for him, but he’d make sure that she would do it for me.  And then Jerry soon learned the disaster that is me sitting anywhere near him to request songs.

The songs came pouring out like a mixed tape of forgotten 80’s power ballads.  I’m sure Jerry wished some of the songs had stayed forgotten.  We sang the words to every song and drank beer that strangely reminded me of communism.  I started the night with a Jack and Coke; after noticing the sign next to Jerry’s piano that read “Two drink minimum per set” I knew the pricey yet delicious cola wasn’t such a good idea for my newly founded frugal lifestyle.  The beer’s tap was red and white; and although that doesn’t scream CCCP, if it didn’t I would probably still have been ok with it.

As we drank our commie beer and David said Beth Rumbel is my probably my new favorite person to go anywhere with, my real moment of stardom came.  Maria, our waitress, stopped serving drinks to pick up the microphone and belt out a few songs.  She agreed to do Don’t Stop Believing, as long as I sang with her.

My heart pounded.  It was the first time I had ever attempted to sing the O-Unit’s anthem without the support of 8 of my most favorite people in the world.  But because it is our anthem, I knew all the words.  This came in handy when Maria didn’t sing at all, and put the microphone to my face.

Journey took over every ounce of my soul.

I wasn’t just Steve Perry taking a midnight train going anywhere, I was also the lead air guitarist and in the long musical break the “girls in the music video who do their rock dance.”  This is where you have to dance, Maria said as Jerry played the all too familiar piano solo.  I hadn’t gone to the salsa club so I could avoid dancing, but it was a time where I had to think fast.  Without hesitation, I busted out some moves even m.c. hammer would be jealous of: The Michelle Tanner dance.

With fingers pointed and body twisting like a 3 year old, the crowd roared.  Although appropriate for the Duplex, it was not exactly a dance fit for any kind of music video.  Including kids bop.  I saw native New Yorkers in their glamorous clothing peering in through the window, and I didn’t care.  There danced a girl in a t shirt and jeans, never more happy to be alive.  The bar joined in as the song ended, Maria held my hand up in the air, and said lets give it up for Beth.  I’d give anything to roll the dice just one more time.

I sat back down at the table, reached for my beer and cheers to the group for an amazing end to the first week of training.  My rendition of Journey sparked karaoke enthusiasm amongst many others in the bar, including some who didn’t quite know the words to their chosen songs.

Gary, a random guy who decided to sing “Let it Be” was one of these karaokers.  He started out strong, but Mother Mary didn’t come in his times of troubles.  The second verse was forgotten, and because I had been singing along in the first he turned to me with the microphone.  “La la la.. la la la.. let it be?”  Sorry Gary, the verses all blended together into an unintelligible mush.  Meanwhile, I had been texting the O*Unit with news of my previous karaoke, and Jeff called.  The bar was impossible to hear anything, so I stepped outside.

Don’t take this personally he said as I smiled at those walking by.  But I feel like nobody appreciates my awesomeness that is flip cup.  I haven’t missed a cup yet, Godmother.  If this was survivor flip cup, they would have all been cheering for me.  But its not, and they just say its a team win.  What is that about?  Ahhh I love New York, how the hell is it up there?

We had a conversation just as unintelligible as mine and Gary’s rendition of the popular Beatles song, and I walked back into the Duplex to find out that while I was gone Michael was breaking hearts.  Another man came up and asked someone in our group if Michael was gay, but his heterosexual orientation prevented what was the closest to anyone of of us getting picked up that night.

1230 rolled around, and Jerry the piano player had to go home to his wife and kids.  A new player came in, but it didn’t feel right calling him guy.  I just couldn’t do it.  The memories Jerry and I shared (although few, and mainly me requesting every other song played that night) were too valuable to go assigned the name guy to somebody else who we hadn’t even heard play yet.

Plus, drinks were getting expensive, we were pretty tired, and to our dismay we had a 5 hour Saturday morning class to wake up for.  As Maria brought us our check, we sang “Can’t take my eyes off of you” to Abby- we love you ABBY, and if its quite alright we need you ABBY through all our lonely nights..

Consistent to all other nights of going out to bars, we returned back to Columbia and raided the fridge.  Is there anything more delicious than cold pizza at 130 in the morning I thought to myself.  I sat in the window sill, more than excited that this leftover pizza had not been eaten yet and just as curious about the card game we decided to play called Peanut.

Peanut turned into a super competitive hybrid of solitare/spider solitare.  At this point, I would like to point out that I wouldn’t call myself a cheater.  Cheaters are dishonest, deceptive, and in slang also a pair of eye glasses.  None of these things seem to be qualities I would like to describe myself with, particulary the spectacle part.  So you could understand my frustration when the group accused Abby and I of winning only through some sort of cheating.  Can you believe it?

Yeah I cheated big time.  I’ll still deny it outloud, but spoken word doesn’t ever seem as official as anything written.  Sealing it in this blog, I admit that Abby and I blatently cheated.  We had a very efficient system of ”grace” going on.  We’ll need a lot of grace in this round Abby, I would say as I gave her a nudge and quick demonstration of our soon to be elaborate cardshark system.  The other groups said they would have grace too, for grace is abudent, but their grace simply wasn’t as amazing as ours.  Roomkate caught on to it and called me out in one round, partially because I tipped her off when she was only observing the game.  Probably partially too because I became careless as the minutes ticked by.  Belting out all the verses to every song played at a piano bar lowers your guard when playing with people who watched you make a singing machine out of yourself.  With a cautious mindset, Abby and I decided it would be best for us to retire for the night after breaking a score of 100, and I have yet to play again.  Undefeated since June 29th baby.

We physically woke up the next morning for another session.  So much for Saturdays off.  I let my mind stay asleep for a good two hours though.  Resting up, trying to apply some sort of osmosis to the conversations surrounding me.  If 7 science courses in 4 years of highschool taught me anything, it was that important facts and guidelines could be absorbed into my brain, like a sponge cleaning up the mess of wine I would later come to spill on Michael’s bed.

Eventually the afternoon came bringing glorious sunshine and free time.  Liz, Abby, Michael and I went to Central Park to lay in the grass, read a book, and enjoy the weather.  And fall asleep.  The last wasn’t really planned.  10 pages into ‘Tis (Angela’s Ashes sequel, courtisy of Barnes and Nobles bargain books table) and I was book marking my spot and using my purse as a pillow.  The lumpiness of a digital camera didn’t stop this kid from snoozing shortly after.  Little snores poured out into the sky above the reseviour.  I was conscience enough to hear myself creating externalities, specifically noise pollution to those within the park’s entirety, but complacient enough to not care.  The lumpiness of the hill conformed to my body, and if it wasn’t for another small group hunting us down like a three legged deer, I would have been quite content sleeping in the park all night.

And possibly, still there now. 

Holding true to our typical fashion, we took over Broadway as we started walking back towards Columbia.  It’s not that I’m ashamed of my Philadelphia pride, but I always get anxiety about traveling as a large group.  Its one thing to have 17 of us on a subway blending in with the “common folk” (using that term loosely because nothing is ordinary here), but another for us take over like a pesticide resistent kudzu.  Even if we are a bunch of creepers.