Mary Phillips-Sandy

When someone you miss is an ocean away, approximately 10,000 kilometres from home, and in the throes of a dissertation defense, and battling a Kafka-esque visa misunderstanding, and  (just for good measure!) suffering from the swine flu, your first thought — upon noticing that Birthday Season has rolled around — will involve a credit card and an airplane.

But the credit card is on lockdown, and airplanes are expensive, and frankly, you don’t want to catch the swine flu. So you do the next best thing:

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It’s hard to see at this size, but one of those signs says “grilled chicken.” I can’t muster the energy to get worked up about “illegals,” but I do think that people who order grilled chicken at a place like this should be deported, maybe from the planet.

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Or, a lesson in context:

Very early this morning I decided to take a walk, so I got dressed and headed up the hill and down the gravel path and past the horse pasture and onto the paved road, in what I might’ve termed good spirits if my mind hadn’t been completely blank. For the first mile and a half I was alone with the music and the squirrels and a couple of these birds I’ve seen lately (Kind of heron-like? Storkish? Except brown, and in a field? Ornithologists?), but then I hove over an incline and spotted two people, one about 1/10th of a mile away, and another about 1/10th of a mile past that.

So the first coherent thought I had today was that if these two people and I were standing at 1/10th mi. intervals in another context, an empty airplane hangar, for example, we would have no choice but to ask each other what we were doing and what caused us to be there. But because we were all on this little-trafficked road in the woods in the morning we didn’t feel the need to say anything, we just gave nods of understanding as we passed.

Overheard yesterday evening at Christy’s Country Store¹, whilst purchasing certain occasional indulgences²:

Gent, to Cashier, in a tone of Confidence: That was my ex-wife, y’know. Just left. With that fella.
Cashier, to Gent: Oh re-ally? That planned?
Gent: Whaddya mean?
Cashier: She here cause you were?
Gent: Naw.
Cashier: She say hi?
Meaningful pause.
Gent: Yep.
Cashier: Well then.
Gent: Oh, I mean- she gimme a ride th’other day, so, you know.
Cashier: Okay.
Gent: But I tell you what, she did see me out with a girl, too.
Cashier: Oh, well. There ya go.

¹“Christy’s coffee! It’s just like coffee, except made with sewage!”
²New magazines.

Speaking of blogs and blogs about things, this evening I learned that my uncle — who is my role model in just about every respect — has been, for some time, contributing to an anonymous group blog. This is may be more interesting if you know that my uncle is an actor whose work you’ve seen, and that some of the other contributors are actors whose work you’ve seen, but none of them are, say, Brangelina-status (yet). Oh, and the point of this blog is (per the uncle) “to mock each other and to mock each other’s careers.” Which is done very cagily, you understand, with secret nicknames and veiled allusions and everything, but the closeups of the royalty checks are not to be missed.

Here you go.

I have already told him that they need to move this business to Tumblr and get a book deal, stat.

Yesterday in the car headed north I flipped the radio to the news talk channel, where a Texan preacher was reciting Patrick Henry’s speech to the Virginia delegates, like really emoting it in a quintessentially Texan-preacher fashion, and when he was done the hennish host clucked “Wow, gosh, I am just SO inspired by that,” and then she cut to a commercial, which was for investing all your savings in gold, because gold is safe, because gold is guaranteed by the United States government, which the hennish host had said previously is overrun with Socialists.

…identify ‘em all and I’ll buy you a hot dog and a box of sparklers.

…more?

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Step 1. Fly to New York City. After dropping your bags in Cobble Hill, take the train to Williamsburg and get off at Bedford Avenue. Meander north to Greenpoint, making your way past the lofty glass condos that replaced your old block, through the once-weedy park that is now home to cultivated trees and popular music events. Experience a small thrill upon seeing the first apteka sign; think back to your arrival in Krakow and the excitement of tasting new words, bar mleczny and przepraszam. Make your way to the Polish liquor store on the corner by the Greenpoint Ave. G stop. Purchase a bottle of Żubrówka, also known as ‘bison grass vodka.’ Wrap it carefully in a pair of jeans, place it in a duffel bag, and check it at the airport when you fly home.

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…or, “My best friend got married in New York City this weekend and the only pictures I took were of street detritus and the subway.”

Q: Why isn’t the train coming? What do I do? What’s going on?
A: Deal with it.

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