My cinema paradiso

            I've been feeling a little out of sorts these past few days. It happens now and then to the best of us. Usually, when the gloom of life clouds over my head it wants to stick around for a few days before flickering rays of sun start to peek through the cracks again. When these days come along, one thing I like to do to get myself back on track is to go to the movie theater. It doesn't matter what I watch, or whom I go with, if anyone at all, it's just being there that makes everything seem better. The second I open the doors and get a blast of that buttery popcorn smell, which will probably be a permanent scent within its walls long after it becomes the home of something else, someday in the future, I'm carried away as if in a dream, to another world, another existence, a place that is secret only to me. I can't help but feel a bond with this world, as if I was born into it. Having my first movie theater experience at the age of three, with the film E.T., may have given me this impression. But I know it comes from something much more deeply rooted.

            When I was about seven years old, my father took a part-time job at the local movie theater to make a little extra money for his growing family. He spent so much time working one job or the other, we hardly had a chance to sit down and spend time as a family before he was whisked away by obligations, yet always with loving smile and a hug when he went. On the weekends, however, he would often take my brother Paul and I to work with him and we would spend his entire shift watching one movie after another for the four to six hours he had to be there. Paul never liked to sit with me if we saw the same movie. In fact, it was hardly usual that we were ever in the same theater together. Our tastes differed slightly, even to this day. So I often sat quietly in the back of the theater, trying to stay out of the way and in an area where my father could easily spot me when he came in to check up on me. Half the time the theater would be empty and the room would feel like it was my own personal space. In the middle of watching a film, my father would often slide into the seat next to me, usually when he was on his break, and we would just sit there, the two of us, like Siskel and Ebert. He would turn to me and ask what I thought about the movie at the end, as if I had the intellect of an adult his age, and I would contemplate his question like it was a political matter. I'd express my opinion openly and in as much cinematic detail as my seven year-old mind could conjure. If there was ever a continuity issue, he was always the first one to spot it like we were playing a game of Where's Waldo. Throwing his pointed finger out, "Did you see that?"

"What?"

"The door was open, now it's closed!"

"Wow. They messed up."

I thought he was the most amazing man in the whole world, I still do. So smart my father was to figure out the plot before the end of the movie. He saw all the signs and put all the clues together like a trained detective. Before long I was looking at movies through new eyes, his eyes. It was at seven years old that I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker someday. However, as an adult, I now realize that it wasn't quite the film making that I fell in love with, but the story telling that drew me in. The adventures I saw, the characters I wanted to be and the clear meaning and purpose everyone walked away with at the end of a good story, clutched at my very soul. Film was life, told with a dramatic curve, wrapped up in a neat little bow. Unlike reality, difficult situations came back around full circle and everything ended on a happy note (most of the time). No matter how flawed or wrong you were in the beginning, in the end, everything was fixed and you were a better person than when you started. I wanted to bring epic stories to life like Spielberg did after watching Jurassic Park for the third time, make my father laugh like Danny Devito did when we watched Twins or Throw Mamma From The Train, feel the sting of tears when we thought our little robot friend died in Batteries Not Included, and understand how Superman really flew. We bonded more over watching action flicks than anything else though. My mother would often walk in on us in the living room, watching a Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone movie, and she would just shake her head at me and say in her broken English, "What kind of girl are you? How come you never watch nice romantic movies like normal girls? You're just like your father with all of those guns and explosions you watch." Then she'd walk away and my father and I would look at each other, smile and he would throw a protective arm around me and continue to watch the rest of the movie. I'm sure the last thing he wanted was his little girl yearning for romance at eleven or twelve anyway. No thank you, boys are mean and stupid anyway. Bring on the car chases and secret identities.

            My father probably doesn't realize how much of an influence he was on me as a child, which I didn't realize myself until many years later. But I wanted to bring him the happiness and entertainment he clearly adored from watching a movie on the big screen. Growing up with little money, on an island that had only one movie-theater in town, which played just a handful of films each year, over and over again, going to a movie theater was a luxury for him. It only made sense that as an adult, it still seemed like a magical event for him and his enthusiasm surely rubbed off on me. Whether is was coming up with the story or being a part of the process of bringing it to the actual screen, that was all I wanted to do with my life. Not only was it an escape from reality, hard work, and the dullness of most days, it was also a place where we could imagine something more for ourselves. Everything was going to be all right in the movie world. It was our sanctuary when we needed one. And when the film industry starts to feel like a let down behind the scenes, going to the theater reminds me of what I fell in love with in the first place. There in the darkness it is only the buttery scent of freshly popped corn, a big bright screen dancing with the images of my favorite stars, and me. Nothing else matters for two to three hours.

            Some ten or eleven years ago, that little movie theater my father used to work at closed down and sat empty for nearly a year. In that time I seriously contemplated buying the space to reinvent the possibility of the success of its former years. I couldn't bear the idea of it becoming something other than a movie theater. What I envisioned was something of a complex built around the original theaters. It would play new releases seven days a week and in the space behind the theater, which was acres of woods at the time, I wanted to turn that into a drive in movie theater that played classics on Sunday and Monday nights. With a 50's style snack bar attached to the back of the building, people would have access to all their favorite treats and never have to go very far. The theater would have been slightly expanded to have a movie themed cafe in one wing, for people to sit and relax over a coffee or light dinner while waiting for their film to start, or sit and snack after a late movie if they didn't want the night to end so soon. The other wing would have a entertainment store that sold DVD's, CD soundtracks and movie memorabilia for anyone wanting to take the film world home with them. I would have been a movie lover's dream come true. Sadly, before I actually put any of my ideas into motion, the space was bought and turned into a Bargain Outlet. It broke my heart when I drove by one day and saw the Cinemas sign replaced with the bright white letters adorning the outlet's name.

            Going to the theater is a whole other beast, compared to sitting at home with the distractions of home life spinning around you. At a movie theater, it's an event. A reason to get out of your pajamas or sweats and sit beside other people, strangers or friends, as you all laugh out loud together, sob tears of sadness or clap for joy in the time it took you to fall in love with the characters in the story. I fear the day that movie theaters might not exist anymore. I don't think it could happen in my lifetime, but if it did, it would be a sad time for us all and a major drawback to the American way of life. Until then, I'm going to enjoy sitting in my sanctuary while I can, soak up the love and dedication it took to create this film I'm about to watch, and eat my fresh bag of buttery popcorn spilling over my lap. 

Blood sport

            The last time I decided to donate blood was in my senior year of high school. There was a blood drive at the school and two of my good friends thought it would be a nice thing to do...and a great way to cut out of classes for the rest of the day. So we signed up, laid back and slapped our arms out for the taking. This happened almost fifteen years ago, therefore my memory of the event is a little hazy now, but I do remember that it was a pretty unpleasant experience. For that reason, it has taken me this long to decide to do it again. About two months ago I happened to notice a sign asking for blood donations with the American Red Cross pinned to the wall at a subway stop, and it had me thinking about it on my way home. While trying to push aside the bad memories of the first and last time I had donated blood, I contemplated the idea of doing it again. After spending some time with Google researching the blood drive, I found that anyone who donated at the next drive, being held at the Mets City Field, receives two tickets to a game next month. Woe Nelly! Sold! I'm not exactly a Mets fan but I've been dying to see a game at the new stadium all season and the tickets have been slowly starting to climb in price as time goes by. I had been putting it off for a while, hoping to get tickets for when they play my beloved Red Sox. Although they're doing atrocious this season, I still love them. It's a Boston thing. You just don't turn your back on the team when they're down, because you'll end up eating your words, or your teeth, if you dare say anything that could even remotely sound like another curse they don't need. Anyway, it didn't matter who the Mets played, I just really wanted to see a game there and secretly hoped they at least played the Yankees, so that I could really root for the Mets. However, by September, I wasn't going to be able to experience this baseball civil war, but why not go for the cause and the fun of the sport?

            All week I've been taking in the extra H2O, that I normally just get from drinking lots of coffee or tea, and stocking up on the iron fortified foods that I'm sure I'm low on because I don't eat red meat. I feel like I'm training for a marathon and prepping my diet for a long haul. I've been a nervous wreck all week about donating this blood of mine and not because of the needle, per se, but because I'm afraid of fainting. In my lifetime I've dropped like a sack of potatoes a minimum of seven times and stopped at least three instances from happening, just in time. I'm as ridiculous as the fair maiden's that Shakespeare and Charles Dickens often wrote about in their stories. Any little thing and I'm swooning. Some of those instances happened when I was younger but I'm certain most of the falls were due to dehydration, because I'm known for never drinking with my food and going hours without so much as a sip of any kind of liquid. I just never feel thirsty so I forget to replenish essential fluids. Luckily, in most of those instances, I was always around a friend or relative to catch my fall, but there were times that I found myself splayed across a floor or a sidewalk and had no one to make sure I didn't crack my head open or keep me safe until I could recover. It's scary. I can always tell when it's about to happen but sometimes it happens so fast I can't find a place to sit or lie down before the lights go out. The first warning is the feeling of lightness, like your head has suddenly morphed into a balloon and wants to take flight from your body. Then just as quickly, your vision begins to take on a brighter shade of yellow as if you're looking at the world as an old picture from the vintage days, faded from over exposure of the sun. Then it's blindness. The black matted edges of the old picture swallow up the light like a shutter and everything goes black, but you know your eyes are still open and you can hear everything that is going on around you. Next thing you know, you can't move your body but you feel hands touching you, grabbing hold of you, pulling you up but you don't know what's happening because you can't see anything. Slowly, vision starts to seep back in with that same yellow hue and the searing pain usually follows it. The pain caused from the fall after landing on something before someone had a chance to catch you. Even if your head never touches the ground some part of the body is going down before someone notices you're about to keel over completely. Whenever this happens to me, I imagine it to be like death or what it must be like for coma patients, and I get freaked out for the rest of the day. I imagine those poor people who are considered brain dead or lying in a hospital somewhere in the coma, helplessly, hearing and feeling everything but are unable to move their bodies or see the people around them. Everyone standing around them believing they have no idea what's going on. I think they do. And it's scary.

            When I drove up to the gate at City Field yesterday, a sweet older man walked out of his closet sized booth and approached my window. When I rolled the glass down to tell him I was there for the blood drive, he looked at me with such a benevolent smile and uttered, "God bless you kids for doing this, it's really nice to see so many people care about others." I returned a smile to the kind man and felt a little better about the situation I got myself into. However, I couldn't help but feel a tinge of guilt about it too. Even though my first intention for donating blood was solely for the cause, getting the free tickets became the reason I didn't back out. I was mixed with pride for my good deed and shame for being a freeloader too. Argh.

            The feeling of nervousness wouldn't leave me when I got inside the beautiful new stadium. I had to remember to take deep breaths without looking like I was in a Lamaze class, so that I could focus on my surroundings while getting the proper amount of oxygen to my brain. When I walked in there were two other women waiting for the elevator that would take us to the donation center on the second level. One was a large middle-aged woman who looked ready to watch a game that very minute. Dressed head to toe in Mets colors and sporting an Ike Davis jersey, she barged into the elevator followed closely by a talkative Chinese woman who acted like she was going to a dress fitting instead of a blood donation. Their cavalier demeanor soothed my anxiety a little because they seemed like veterans of the trade. After checking in at the grand Caesar's Club upstairs and reading the necessary guidelines and restrictions, I was led through the large space that was divided into sections. Walking under long strands of exposed bulbs decorating the ceiling above and the plastic lines carpets below my feet, it felt like I was on my way to meet Dexter Morgan with a cleaver at the other end of this destination. I could just see him there, waiting to drain the blood from my body then cut my limbs in neat little sections to wrap in plastic and toss in the Hudson later. Breathe Marcy, in and out, in and out. What I found at the other end was about a dozen men and women in white smocks and gloved hands standing in a line with manic smiles plastered on their faces to greet me. I didn't know who to look at first. Which one didn't look as bloodthirsty? Amanda, she looked...normal. A stout, brunette, girl next door type. She was the first one to take a step forward, so Amanda it was. With a shaky hand I passed her my file with a forced smile and she led me through a maze of make shift cubbies to her little office. There she questioned my sexuality and gender, a few too many times, and the spelling of my name, even though my driver's license was four inches from her face the whole time. I wondered if brilliant Amanda was going to lay the claim of sucking the blood out of my body too. After the questions where logged onto my file, Amanda proceeded to pull out her tools for testing my blood for its count, iron levels and any sexually transmitted diseases. I'm sure the color was beginning to drain from my face at this point because once she started to wipe my finger I was beginning to see my surroundings in a brighter hue than normal. Good thing I was already sitting down. I can handle a lot of pain, I just don't like knowing it's coming. I'd rather just have it done with so I can get over it. My blood was good; iron levels just hit the mark. Wonderful. Can I have my tickets now before I change my mind?

            After the test, my fearless leader, Amanda, guided me back out of the maze of cubbies towards the bedding area. However, before we got more than two feet away from the maze, a man who looked me over like I was a filet minion, stopped us in our tracks and asked me to show him my arms. Very confused and nervous about his intentions, I showed him my arms like I was a recovering junkie with her parole officer, baring my arms so that he could take a look to see if I was shooting up the night before. "Nah, you can keep her." He said then walked away. Oh, geez. Thanks buddy. Sorry to disappoint you. Amanda was kind enough to explain what he was looking for when she saw my confused face turn into a mixture of hurt and anger. Apparently, the disgruntled plasma-sucker was looking for double red donors but my veins were too small for him. He would have had to probably stab me a few times before he found a decent vein. Good God! Keep that man away from me. I didn't quite know what double red donations were so I asked Amanda what it was and she explained that it was similar to a whole blood donation, except a special machine is used to allow you to donate two units of red blood cells during one donation while returning your plasma and platelets back to you. When she told me this I was a little woozy and disgusted by the whole idea of having that much blood sucked out of my veins then returned back to my body in a degenerated form of itself. Because I have the universally accepted blood Type O, the plasma-sucking vampire was excited by my blood but turned off by its slender form of transportation, so he passed. I was beginning to feel like Sookie from True Blood. It's a good thing he passed too, because I would have been peeved to find out what I was in for after the fact. Apparently, my bad experience back in high school was actually doing a double red donation and I didn't even know it. I realized this when Amanda told me the donation I signed up for would only take about ten minutes to do and I was baffled. As my memory, although a little hazy, serves me correctly, I remembered the last experience lasting nearly an hour. In fact I very clearly remember sitting upright in a chair, being poked twice with a needle then squeezing a ball for about forty minutes. The unpleasant part wasn't so much the insertion of that needle but it was the way in which it was put in. Every time I had to squeeze that ball in my hand the needle was forced to dig into the vein by my arm muscle. Although the pain was almost unbearable, I had to continue to keep squeezing so the vein wouldn't close or slow its flow of blood. A few days later I was walking around with massive bruises and puncture wounds on the inside of my arms that I had people wondering if I was heroine addict or a victim of child abuse. After that, I vowed I would never do it again. Here I am, a decade and a half later, and I assumed that all blood donations were that long and painful and it took me this long to do it again. You live, you learn.

            Once Amanda had me strapped and finally found a vein, in went the sting of the needle and that dang ball I had to squeeze in hand. I couldn't even glance at the needle, even though I could feel its presence beside me like a hungry bee buzzing around my ear. I was afraid if I did, I would be a goner the second I were to sit up from that bed just thinking about it. As I lay there, massaging that ball in my hand every few seconds, I tried to distract myself by watched a bad infomercial on the TV facing away from Amanda and that needle. In my peripheral vision I could still see her hovering by my side, swaying back and forth on her feet as she kept watch of the flow of blood draining from my arm. She reminded me of a painter surveying her work. Every time she checked the bag with a little squeeze of her right hand she would then step back on her left leg, lean herself away from the bed and tilt her head from side to side as if she were double checking the dimensions of her work with the light from the window behind her. Then she would step forward again and give the bag another little squeeze. Less than ten minutes later, a man suddenly came out of nowhere, slid the needle out of my arm and pushed some gauze over the small hole in my vein. As Amanda proceeded to detached the needle from the bag I noticed some slight confusion that registered on her face with the arrival of this man. It had me wondering if something was wrong at first, then if he was supposed to even be there. Was he bored? Is pulling needles out of donor's arms his sole purpose for being there? Amanda had done all of the work on her own, up to this point, what was this guy doing here, sliding in like he was tagging into first base at a game? He seemed satisfied with his work though. Glad I could give him the pleasure he seeked. I was just grateful the whole thing was over.   

            After I was bandaged up Amanda lead to the recovery area where various sweets, juices and water were lined in a buffet on a table like something you would find at a child's birthday party. I couldn't look at anything but a glass of OJ before sitting down. Nothing seemed appetizing even though sugar is a weakness of mine. A few minutes later the Chinese woman I rode up on the elevator with sat in the chair next to me. We began a conversation that started with our recent experience then it turned into a discussion about our families over the pictures she pulled out of her purse. She even had a picture of her wedding from twenty-two years ago. Talk about carrying your life in a bag. Apparently, donating blood has been more like an obsession for her than anything else. This forty-two year old woman first started donating blood a few years ago, for a fleece blanket the New York blood bank was giving away to its donors. She wanted a blanket, so she gave them a pint of her blood in exchange for one. Then she started coming to the Red Cross with her husband to get Mets tickets for the both of them and their two daughters. Along with tickets, for every donation you also get a little pin in the shape of a blood drop donning the iconic Red Cross in its center. This woman made sure to get her latest pin from the nurse going around the recovery area checking in on us, to add to her growing collection of souvenirs. When she told me about all of the donations she's done over the past few years, I was mixed with awe at her wonderful sense of giving and also worried about her health. This little obsession couldn't be good for the body when you do it as much as she does. As nice as it is to do this, I worried her intentions now became more about what she could collect on a material basis. I imagined her home looking like an episode of Hoarders and I was tempted to tell her that maybe she should take a break for a few months and consider donating some of the goods she's horded from the Red Cross and New York blood bank and give them to the poor instead of her blood for a while. Suddenly I wasn't so worried about the measly pint of blood I had just lost when this woman has lacked nearly a pint of blood for the last half dozen years.

            After jabbering about our lives for nearly an hour, it was time to go about our lives and continue our recuperation for the day. We both went to collect our prizes together before leaving Citi Field at the front entrance. There we each received two tickets sitting next to each other for September 17th's game against the Phillies, so we knew we would see each other again soon and bid each other farewell until then. I wonder if the Mets know about the real blood, sweat and metaphorical tears we actually shed for these tickets?

            When I got home all I wanted to do was sleep. Nothing else sounded even remotely exciting on a Saturday off, but bed. I slept for three hours then when I woke up I ordered some pizza. With a small pineapple and onion pie resting on my lap I sat lazily on the couch for the rest of the evening watching back-to-back episodes of The Sopranos. As they sprayed each other with bullets and beat each other into bloody pulps on the screen, I eventually lost my appetite half way through my pizza thinking out all the blood floating around this afternoon. I eventually fell back asleep just as the sun set and didn't wake up until this morning. I'm such a wuss. What a waste of a perfectly good Saturday night. Oh, well. I think I deserved a day to be lazy anyway. 

Dinner impossible

            This month, book club was my turn to host with the most. The last time our little circle met for a meeting of the minds was back in May, so this one was a long time coming. Between out of town summer vacations and cross-country business travel, half of the group hasn't been able to come together until now. But after a two-month hiatus we were all ready for a new read, meeting or not. Following a back and forth with dates a final decision was settled on for this Sunday and the hosting rotation had made its full circle back to being at my place this time. Because I'm the newest member of the club, this was going to be only the second time I've ever hosted since my membership nearly a year ago. And, because I live a bit of a hike from most of my friends who live in the same neighborhood, I normally don't get very many visitors at my place. Typically, when someone in the city lives about a mile or two from you, walking is really the only sensible mode of travel, since cars are not very feasible here. With that being said, it's about a fifteen to twenty minute walk, and in the heat of the summer you don't arrive to your destination in the same state you left the apartment. However, when I do get those resolute souls who laugh in the face of the elements, I pull out all the stops, if I have the time to plan.

            For the past two days I've been running around the city grabbing all kinds of ingredients for the buffet I had planned for Sunday. Some I could find at a local grocery store, others I had to search like a needle in a haystack. This month's book, The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield, is set in Peru and, typically, the host themes the food around the book. For instance, if the characters in the story are written into a scene having a dinner of country fried chicken or pancakes and sausages then that will most likely be the main coarse for our meeting that month. My diet for the last six years has consisted mostly of whole grains, nuts, fruits and vegetables. The only things that I noticed the characters eating were fresh fruits and vegetables. I was in luck. I know fruits and veggies. However, I don't know Peruvian fruit and veggie recipes. After doing some research with Google, I found a few recipes that I could work with and spruce up a bit to cater to the club members' diets and taste preferences. The finale menu: roasted vegetable pot pie, fried plantains, quinoa stuffed bell peppers, roasted corn on the cob, a layered strawberry lemon pudding, white summer sangrias and lime margaritas. I had some work cut out for me.

            On Saturday, after I ushered my last table out the door at work, I jumped on the Q train rocketing towards Union Square to ransack Trader Joes for the bulk of my supplies. Going to a Trader Joes on a Saturday afternoon is a bad decision. I knew better than that but I didn't have much choice in the matter, not having a chance to go during the week. Also, fruits and vegetables have to be bought as close to the time you think you can consume them because they seem to go bad after just two days here. I don't know if they get transported from such long distances that by the time they reach the city they're ripe and ready to eat, or, the fruit and vegetables themselves take on the persona of the rest of the organic matter that reside here, that—take me home or lose me forever—mindset they have going here. Whatever it is, it had to be done then and I had to brave Joe's or give up and just order take-out.

            Before I even stepped into the store I already felt tense for battle. The thing about Joe's is that the prices are rock bottom for the food that would normally cost nearly twice as much at a typical grocery store, because nearly everything they sell is their own brand. Therefore, anyone who can reach a Trader Joe's...goes, and it usually seems to be on a Saturday when the nine to fivers have a day off to go. There have been Saturdays when I've gone and had to wait in line just to enter the building because the narrowly packed store was at full occupancy. Luckily, I didn't have that issue this time, but, as always, I had to move with the crowd, standing shoulder to shoulder, and think fast about what I was doing while I went about my shopping. Everyone who enters with you, you will most likely find by your side the entire time, in line and as you walk out, because there is no space to wander around and read labels unless you're a speed reader. It's just grab and go because you'll get pushed right along to the next shelf or the next isle, ready or not, like a conveyor belt, then get spit out at the end of your shopping experience. You're better off already knowing what items you want and have your mental GPS set to their locations before you even enter the store. Although, this time, I had such a long grocery list in front of me, consisting of a few items I wasn't too familiar with, that I had no choice but to commit the Trader Joe's crime—aimlessly wander the isles in search of these foreign items and read labels. Trying to be proactive, I thought using my cell phone to keep a running list of the items that I needed then deleting them as I picked them up, would be a helpful plan of action. However, as it turned out, it was just another bad idea. I've never once misplaced my cell phone before, but somehow, as my hands had become so full of groceries, it must have slipped from my grasp or I put it down without realizing it. Halfway through my shopping I heard over the intercom: "...Marcy DaRocha in the store please come to the customer service counter." I didn't pay attention to the beginning of the message, but my ears perked up when I heard my name and stopped dead in my tracks. Was that MY name? That can't be ME. I don't know anyone here...at lease I don't think I do. Could it be the raffle I entered the last time I was here? No, they do that daily, not weekly and that would be too coincidental. Maybe I'm just hearing things. It could've just been someone with a name that sounded like mine. Shaking the possibility that the announcement had anything to do with me, I jumped back into the flow of people snaking through the isles like playing double-dutch and continued where I left off. Suddenly, as I reached for my phone, which was at one time in my left hand, it hit me, that WAS my name! I lost my phone! Oh my God! My lifeline! To the customer service counter! Clutching my overstuffed basket, I literally jumped over a person crouched on the ground reaching for an item tucked under the bottom shelf and jet streamed to the customer service counter. Huffing and puffing, eyes wild with distress, the clerk at the counter had already sensed why I was there. "Marcy?"

"Yes! That's me!"

"We called your mom to let her know you lost your phone. That's usually the safest bet that you would get word about your phone."

"Oh, thanks. Good thinking." Crap, my mother is pulling her hair out as we speak, her finger hovering over the 9 to call emergency personnel at a moments notice. After the man handed me my phone I checked my messages and sure enough, two erratic e-mails from my mother. Oy vey.

            If the person who happened to find my phone felt even slightly guilty about keeping it, I think it might have been due to the wallpaper picture of my five year-old nephew, Aiden, looking sweet as pie waving an American flag. It may have been the deciding factor that swayed them towards a more honest and patriotic choice to return it. Thanks Aiden. I should consider changing it to Gandhi or Jesus though. That way I up the chances of getting the phone back if it were to happen again.

            I was able to find most of my items on Saturday but it appeared that Trader Joes was not the end all be all of my crusades. Sunday, I spent the better part of the morning jumping from one store to another purchasing the remaining items on my list. One in particular was the bane of my existence. It wasn't a key ingredient or a necessary commodity, but I thought it would be nice to have corn holders to offer anyone who didn't want to eat like a barbarian. I searched high and low in four different stores for the things when I've seen them a dozen times before. However, no one seemed to be carrying them now that I wanted some. I nearly called it quits after the third store, but decided to just ask the Arab clerk at the counter to save me some precious time. He reminded me of the street vendor that narrated the introduction in Disney's Aladdin, so I immediately liked him. The conversation went something like this:

"Hello pretty woman. Can I help you find something?"

"Hi, yes, I was just wondering if you had any corn holders?"

"Holders?"

"Yes, holders. They're usually yellow with little pins on the ends."

"Pens?"

"No, not pens, pins. Pins with handles to hold corn on the cob."

"Oh, candles?"

"No, not candles, HAN-dles...with pins."

"Pins?"

"Pins."

"Wood?"

"No, not wood. I saw the wood skewers. (Inward sigh) That's alright, thank you anyway."

In my frustration I continued back to my apartment to get started when I spotted a store I had never noticed before, which was less than four blocks away from my place. I walked in and lo and behold...corn holders in all their glory. Figures.

            Back in the homestead, I cranked up the AC and blazed every burner on the stove as it simmered the contents of my tweaked version of Peru's fine cuisine. I peeled, diced and sliced more fruits and vegetables than I can ever remember doing at one time. It was a one woman assembly line of stirring this, chopping that, washing here, wiping there, following this recipe, modifying that recipe all while timing one dish with another. As the AC and the stove battled the war of hot and cold, I battled time and stress as the clock ticked away like the countdown of a bomb. I cooked enough food for at least six hungry adults, knowing only four out of seven members of the club were going to be able to make it. Then ten minutes before show time, one of my guests, who had just flown into JFK on a delayed flight, contacted me to let me know she wasn't going to make it in time for our meeting. And then there were three.

            Though I had enough food to feed a small squad. It appeared that I was going to have plenty of leftovers to last me the next few days. God knows I can't bring myself to throw away perfectly good food unless there was no saving it. Hearing all those stories my grandmother used to tell me growing up, about eating soup consisting of soggy bread and the vegetables they grew in their back yard every night for weeks at a time because they couldn't afford anything else, made a deep impression on me as a child. Even though I've never faced the kind of famish my parents and grandparents faced living in Portugal in those days, my grandmother's face, kissing the stale bread she couldn't eat in time before she threw it away, will always be with me. Either my friends were going to take those leftovers home with them or I was going to put on five pounds in the next few days trying to save it. Luckily, our little trio had ourselves a feast, putting a nice little dent in the pile, and I didn't have to cook for the rest of the week. 

The gap between

            There's something about a classroom setting that makes me revert to a childlike enthusiasm that nothing else can generate. Especially, when it's the first day of class or, in this case, a one-day workshop. I can't help but shift in my seat with excitement, with a fresh new notebook turned to the first blank page and black ballpoint pen poised firmly in position above the page, just waiting for the teacher, standing before the class, to utter something so mind blowing I have to race to scribble it down before it slips my mind forever. Every word of information bouncing from the teacher's tongue is like music to the undereducated ear. I always enjoyed being in school, even if it didn't come easy for me when I was growing up. English slowly became my first language and reading wasn't necessarily instilled outside of school. I did try as hard as I could, mind you, it was just that things didn't seem to click then and I was, unintentionally, more fascinated with studying the other students in their social settings, as though they were monkeys in a zoo, than I cared for what was being taught by my teachers. Since then, I've seen more than my share of monkeys in a zoo, living in New York City, to last me a lifetime. It's the education I'm now trying to recapture and ingrain in my ever-ageing brain.

            Sunday evening I attended a character development workshop on the Lower East Side held by Gotham Writers. A private creative writing program I'm beginning to love more and more. Every now and then they hold a free writing workshop on a first come first serve basis in various locations around the city and Erin and I were all over this one. With our stomach's bulging from the enormous Chinese dinner we ate just moments before we arrived, we made our way down the stairs of the two level bookstore, I didn't know existed until today, and sat in the back row of the make shift classroom. From what I could tell, it seemed as though we were the youngest ones there. The couple next to us might have fit our age group, but that was about it. There was one particular woman who walked in late that looked as if she might have started collecting her social security two decades ago. But, she was not lost. She knew exactly where she was and why she was there, and I couldn't help but wonder what her story was. She could barely hold a pen in her hand, but apparently, she had something to tell the world and I wanted, so desperately, to pull up a chair and listen to her unfolding wisdom, drawn from the long life she has lived. It's very rare that I see elderly people in this city. It's either that they move away after retirement, or people just die young from the stress of city life. Could be that they live hidden in their children's basements somewhere in the Upper East Side too, practicing of some weird ritual, like senicide, that we're not aware of. Like the Eskimos, who were known to put their elderly on floating icebergs and pushed them out to sea when they got too old to be of any use. Maybe if I look hard enough I might see some poor old woman tied to a canoe floating down the Hudson River. Who knows? I just don't see them very often. It's times like these that I wish I had the ability to read minds though. I'll probably never see that woman again and she may never have the chance to tell all her stories, but they're in there somewhere, sitting in the deep side streets and alleyways of her mind, screaming to get out and be told to whoever wants to listen. I sure hope she has the chance to get them down someday soon. Everyone has a story and it should be told. How else are we to understand one another?

            The person leading the class was a burly man, with a presence about him that matched his frame perfectly. He had an air about him that seemed larger than life and he wasted no time jumping right to the point. I found myself scratching away on my nice clean notebook before my brain was able to process what he was saying. I had to look down at my messy scribbles between his breaks in thought a few times, just to wrap my head around the information he was splattering at us. It seems I've become a little rusty since college. The man had a great sense of humor, which seemed so effortless to him, but every now and then it looked as though even he was amazed by his own wit. In the seat in front of us sat a man who wasn't much younger than the elderly woman sitting at the front of the class. However, this man took the honor of being the class nerd. He was at least twice our age and had the advantage of time and experience on his side so he was always the first one to shoot his hand up in the air and quip an answer before he was even called on. I don't think he understood the point behind hand raising. To him, the gesture was more like a flagging to get everyone's attention while he blurted the evidence of his high IQ. Every answer he uttered sounded like he had just finished looking it up in Webster's Dictionary and was reading it to the class verbatim.

            Towards the end of the class the teacher had us spend about ten minutes taking a character he had us make up earlier and put them in a setting where there was a "gap" left in the story. A gap, in creative writing, is when the writer purposefully leaves out a tid bit of information that is touched upon in a story to spark the reader's interest, but also leaves the reader hanging. The point is so the reader is left to wonder about the missing information and want to continue reading on to fill in the blanks. It's a little Jedi mind trick we like to do. It keeps things interesting. However, when the metaphorical timer went off, I spent so much time writing all of the little details describing the setting and appearance of character I had created, that by the end of the ten minutes the only action I had written my character into was that she sat at a table in a cafe. I think I should have been a set designer instead. From what I could tell from looking around the class, Einstein in front of us, had his story ready and waiting to boast, but the guy sitting on Erin's right side beat him to the punch. In ten minutes he had his setting, protagonist, two supporting characters and dialogue brandishing an excellent gap to boot. I was so enthralled by his half page, two minute story that I had surly fallen into his gap and wanted to know what the missing information was so that I could understand why his protagonist reacted the way that he did. Fill in the gap dang it! Actually, the guy had me at "He walked into the diner and sat in a booth..."

            Instead of walking out of that workshop with the pride of having another wrinkle in my brain, I left feeling a little discouraged at the huge gaping hole I had with my story. I knew it was just a little exercise and I wasn't planning on writing a novella about this girl who sat in a cafe, but I was feeling a bit like maybe I didn't have it in me to write compelling fiction. It didn't help that after Erin told me her ten-minute story, which she was too shy to share with the rest of the class, I wanted to toss my notebook in the trash and just give up now. It was excellent. Later that evening, I went home, tail between my legs, and sat in front of my laptop a little resentful of the machine, as though it was my own personal nemesis laughing in my face. After ten minutes of self-loathing, I decided to turn it on and look through my virtual folder of half written stories. And there I saw...I have gaps! I was writing them into my stories long before I knew what they were. I've listened to and read enough stories in my lifetime to know, intrinsically, what the ingredients were to bake the cake. I haven't actually finished most of these stories, but at least I knew I was heading in the right direction with them. I suppose I can't be like Stephen King and just come up with a nine-hundred-page novel in two months, but I have the ability to write in me somewhere, it just takes me longer to set the mood. My mind was a little more at ease after that realization. However, my fiction writing is a bit rusty, so I think it's time I consider a proper refresher course. Let's see if I can get into longer workshop and keep the juices flowing. Maybe I can figure out what that silly girl was doing in the cafe to begin with or just have her fall into an abysmal gapping hole so I don't have to think about the stupid story any more.