Boston 2004 - On People

With windows that begin at eye level,
people pass by me each day with no bodies- no faces, no expressions, no feet or animated hands.

There are no children or adults, no grandparents or uncles.

There are no white women or black women. There are no clothes, purses, strollers, or cars.

There is light, though- morning beams that collide with the window frames, their clean whiteness beaming back out at the world. This crisp early light brings footsteps, clicking quickly until a car door opens somewhere across the small parking lot.

The morning brings music, an answer to the question of what people listen to in Boston at 8 AM while driving. Laughter floats through the window, often above the voice that precedes it. Angry silence never reaches my window.

Glaring couples in the throes of a noiseless argument do not walk by my apartment. Of course people who are angry sometimes shout, and then, to me, they exist. Usually they are hurrying someone else along, by the sound of it, impatient to get going somewhere, as so many people are in this city.

I suppose not everyone is hidden to me, though. Not everyone glides unseen and eavesdropped upon, beneath my view, coming so near the inhabitants of a room they’ve never seen. Some people, I’m sure, have seen me. Changing my clothes before bed, probably, from their windows across the driveway. The apartments surrounding the little parkway between Naples Road and Comm Ave. are in tall buildings. They’re the overflow of urban height from Boston, right before the street turns into the less threatening, more neighborly Brookline. Split by a ribbon of pavement, my neighbors and I silently watch one another, and are greeted by the early risers, the mid-day flood of construction workers, the evening glow of sunset, and young men (or women) cruising slowly by, playing reggae at three in the morning. The woman I particularly think of when picturing the apartments across the way lives in the top left corner of the left building, closest to the dumpster side of the parkway. She is not one I have ever seen folding laundry, pacing on a cell phone, or turning on the television. I do no know her name or in fact, if she owns the building. She could be my landlady, for all I know (because I am only a sublettee), but she has made her mark by being the only one person who seems to know or care when we, unauthorized of course, throw trash into the dumpster.

“I’m gonna have you evicted!” she growls from above, claiming she has already gathered photo documentation of our crimes. She is an angry shadow to me, one that I pity for having nothing to do but watch a dumpster. I feared her the first time, urgently thinking I should go up and make a peace offering…something better than my garbage of course. Maybe muffins, or some jam. But the impulse passed, and so far, with continued usage of the dumpster, we have yet to be kicked out. I suppose she is not my landlady after all. Her shouting has not been the only thing that keeps me from the giant bin, a contained wasteland, sitting squatly on its concrete beach. Some days, in the kitchen, what sounds like pirates hollering reaches my ears as I stir vegetables in the frying pan. In a language I can’t quite place, several men seem to argue about nothing in particular, taking turns throwing themselves into the side of the dumpster for dramatic effect in punctuating their sentences. I always wonder whether they’re just bickering over an old kitchen chair left behind or if there is true hate in their voices, shouting about things of significance in a tongue that will never reveal itself to me. Maybe someday, I’ll go outside and get a good look at them. For now, I’m sitting in my room, listening to water…what I’m sure is a hose, but I pretend is a city stream, cutting through the T tracks and the sidewalks and the gravel, passing unseen under my lofty windows.

The inclination to talk to strangers on the subway is unnerving. Because there is little you can know about a single stranger aside from the way she looks, what she is holding, and how she carries herself, it is easy to find yourself attracted to someone, but the urge to actually speak is rare. Pity is the most common motive, coming in second would be attraction and then usually the desire to quiet someone down; a drunk or disorderly crazy person. I’ve definitely been that person. I hope I’ve never been pitied, but knowing how I can leave the house sometimes, I wouldn’t put it past the kind bourgeois of Boston. When I am faced with an odd attraction, so out of character and so alarming as to disallow my concentration on my latest novel…well, I start to think fate is involved somehow. Today, I rode the E line out to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, to fill out three hours worth of paperwork for a sleep study I may get into (please, oh, please?). I rarely ride the E line. Quite a project in getting there itself, it involves an inbound ride of at least 20 minutes, followed by another outbound ride of 10. I was reading, seated upon a brightly painted green wooden trunk, locking away some sort of MBTA gear that I know nothing about. She approached gracefully; catching my eye was her long dark coral skirt, being teased around her jean-clad legs by the July breeze. An odd combination of clothes to begin with, I slowly gazed up the side of her as she settled against the fence, waiting with her giant portfolio folder in her arms. A tank top, snugly pulled over a tie dyed T shirt that could have been washed inside a blender, hugged her frame. It was her arms that drew me in, staring at her for what seemed like several minutes. They were, along with her face and neck…and feet, come to think of it…were covered in grayish smudges, like she’d been working on charcoal drawings all day. That must be what was in the portfolio, or in the giant rolled up stack of paper at her side. She was intriguing, not quite pretty, definitely not clean, but with such a strong sense of self, I was overwhelmed and intimidated without her speaking a word, without her being wealthy or arrogant. Well, that I knew of, then again. Her hair was thick, a deep honey blond that Bob would’ve loved to cut (and wash and wash and wash), and wound around itself and a beaded headband that was slipping down onto her forehead. Hair like this belonged on farm girls, I thought, not eccentric artists. It gave her brilliance I had never seen. I didn’t speak to her. I decided only to admire her grace for the moment, then forget her. Admiration was easy. Forgetting, obviously, has not been.

I guess I just wonder about people too much. It’s not my concern or my judgment; it’s curiosity. I wonder if anyone’s wondered about me…I will never know.

But I’ll always wonder.

How sick is too sick?

I have a cold. It's the pestering coughing and sniffly kind that you see cure commercials for all winter long. I've actually purchased several of these OTC remedies in the past day. So far...not cured. Sorry, Mucinex and Zicam.

My question posed today is this- as I sit in the office, slowly accomplishing things and coughing little bits of myself into the air- When is sick too sick for the office? And when does coming in despite all odds triumph? I have a double standard in my head, I believe, from many days stayed home from school in my younger days. You should stay home and rest if you are sick. But if you don't come in (to school, to work, etc.) you are weak. Weak and lame and unlikely a child of a school teacher or nurse. I got it in my head that staying home means that yes, you're sick, but you're also just plain lazy. Unless you are at deathbed status (which, thankfully, I'm pretty far from), you should truck it on in. And it's this quest to be tough and to ride it out that brought me onto the train and into work this morning.

I got to the train just fine today. But as I sat, riding into Center City, the quiet desperate coughing began. The kind where you try not to cough until your throat feels like there are spikes being shoved in from all angles. And then...the cough arrives. Looking around with just my eyes, I was taking stock almost immediately of who seemed germophobic, who was recoiling from my very existence and who seemed not to care. It was then that, despite the Halls train ads beckoning me to "Stay strong," I began to feel guilty for exposing the public and my coworkers to whatever it is that has decided to inhabit my system as of this past weekend. Guilty, but of course, still very strong.

Arriving at the office, I took on the start of the day with gusto. I made coffee, I made conversation, I wrote some very important emails. And then, the long, slow fade begun. I stepped out around 10 to acquire the supposed miracle cure for my cough (aforementioned Zicam), but am still, as of 1:25, on the "quite awful" side of bad-sounding.

I guess I just think there should be guidelines somewhere. Guidelines that we can all adhere to. Because I know there is part of me that, if I have a meeting, will want to come in at all costs. And another part of me that will know that if I look enough like crap, I will not be taken seriously and should just pack it all in. Is it a fever? Visible sickness? Audible sickness? Where is the line drawn between sick and pushing through and just rampant germ exposure to the world?

I need answers. But for now, I just need to stop this ridiculous coughing.

Last published - October 29th!?

I guess there's no way around that. Unless I surreptitiously posted 12 posts in the middle of the night, spanning the days between November and February. But I'm an honest guy- I wouldn't do that.

So much has been happened- it would be a long one if I tried to go into all of it. Went to another close friend's wedding (Congrats Steph and Jimmy!), attended my dad's 61st birthday dinner (and my brother's 21st had just happened), went off to Ireland with my friend and roommate Jess for a whole week, had my second-ever Thanksgiving away from my parents here in Bryn Mawr, had many holiday happy hours, a fantastic office holiday party and cocktail party, one wonderous snowy weekend with what seemed like 109 dogs, a journey back to upstate NY to see friends (but not nearly enough of them), family, and make merry for the holidays. The new year has brought some challenges- in body, in mind, in love and in work.

Reading back over old posts, I can laugh a little bit at how confident I was in my existence over the summer. But the ebb and flow of that confidence is what makes me me I suppose. I don't think I'm going to try and catalog the events of the past three months, but rather pick up right where we left off, chugging right along.

Today, I am chasing a cold away with hot whiskey, getting some work done for the upcoming week and eating vegetarian chili with Jessica. It's Superbowl Sunday! Rejoice America! And we know that in the past, that's meant wings and pizza and beer. Not today, my friends, not today.

Cheers to a new year (a month and a week in) and new adventures :)