Once upon a time, when I was a young sprout, a friend of mine sent me a pair of Roz Chast cartoons which he said reminded him of me. One was "The Sensitive Child," which showed a child taunting the bullies advancing on him with "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will live on and on in my head, turning them over until I lose all sense of proportion." He had a point with that one, but I still think he was wrong to say I reminded him of "Pollyanna in Hell." ("Wow! No more down jackets *ever*!"
Or at least I did until yesterday. Yesterday morning, on a day off from the box factory, I woke from my midmorning nap, prettied myself up, and stepped outside for an adventure in Manhattan. It hit me as soon as I opened the front door. I am no stranger to humidity, and I accept it as part of the package deal of living in a major metropolitan East Coast city, but oy, that's a lot of humidity. The sky was bright white, as if it were unsure whether or not to start raining. The air was thick and hazy, a sure sign of a pollution advisory day. Hot town, summer in the city, sigh.
Then I got off the subway at 57th Street, caught an uptown bus and rode up the Upper West Side to 72nd Street. I am not about to argue that pollutants make a place more beautiful, but I could not deny that there was something otherworldly about the soft white light seeping through Verdi Square, making everything look soft and peaceful. Verdi Square, also known by its more notorious moniker of bygone times, Needle Park, yesterday looked as soft and still as a newborn baby. The entire city did, actually, even with the usual contingent of crowds and noises. I could have stood on Broadway between 72nd and 73rd, just looking at the park, for a week. It was the same feeling I had nearly two hours later, having returned home, looking at the weird white light bouncing off the Triborough, the Hell Gate, the railroad overpass, the whitewashed building on the corner of 31st Street and 23rd Avenue. I walked to the Freeze Peach, I sat down and had my tea, and I noticed that Astoria was in the swing of high summer, the kind that covers the neighborhood in grape leaves. As long as I live, I will never tire of seeing them, never.
Warning: This is another brain dump of a post. Feel free to bypass it if navelgazing gets on your nerves. It won't last forever, I promise.
Dear friends,
Today's post comes to you from the big snuggly couch at Freeze Peach, where the wireless is cheap and the teas are magnificent. Yes, I live right down the street, and could just be writing from home for free, but sometimes it's good to broaden your horizons, even if only by 500 feet or less. Besides, this is a nice little space, and the owner is Good People.
I had known from the day I agreed to participate in this year's Blogathon that I could not bounce back from a night of not sleeping the way that I could in my twenties, so I was careful to check that I would be able to take the day off work before saying yes to Blogathon. Of course, if I were really honest with myself, I would own up to the fact that I have never been good at allnighters, not even in college. I know people who talk fondly about the allnighters they pulled in their college days, the papers written hurriedly at the last minute, the coffee boiled, the No-Doz consumed like Pez, all rendered in a tone of voice meant to suggest the vigor and rashheadedness of youth, just slightly less fun than the next day's celebratory kegger. Maybe their allnighters really *were* that much fun. Mine, on the other hand, I remember as a combination of Strindberg-esque self-loathing psychodrama and humiliating comic missteps a la Fawlty Towers or Curb Your Enthusiasm. This is supposed to be a seven-page paper, but I only have 5 1/2 pages worth of material here! Stuff, stuff, stuff! Need more coffee! No, more than that! Oh, look, I typed the whole paper with my fingers moved over one position to the right! Retype, retype, retype! Okay, the paper's done and it's only 6:30. I can get two hours of sleep before class -- (crunch) why look, I've just accidentally leaned on my glasses and cracked the frame right in half! Duct tape, duct tape, duct tape! Okay, now I can get ninety minutes of sleep. Lying down now. Blink, blink, blink.
Once I graduated from college and went out into the world, I wasn't much better. It wasn't that I minded the clubhopping, or the trips to see our buddies' bands play at CBGB (here's some CBGB trivia: the success of a gig is measured by how many drinks are sold, so if your starving-artist friends have landed a CB's gig, one of the nicest things you can do for them is to just stiffen that upper lip and pay $4 [in 1991 dollars] for a bottle of Rolling Rock), or the breakfasts at Leshko's that followed all of these adventures. But I knew that I was incurring a debt, and as Stephen King once wrote, the debt may hurt you but it's the interest that breaks your back. (Of course, this allnighter trouble did not extend to those nights spent in the company of lovely boyfriends. I can't explain it, but somehow the act of shagging like crazed weasels for hours at a time would leave me brimming with pep and cheer that would last until at least 4 o'clock the following afternoon, or until one of my long-suffering coworkers would ask me to get that goddamn loopy grin off my face, because nobody likes a gloater.) My friends could stay in bed until early afternoon and wake up feeling fresh as a daisy, but I knew that even if my head hit the pillow at 5:30, my eyes would still snap open at 7 a.m., 9 at the very, very latest. "Just go back to bed!" my friend C would cry, and I would look at her as if she had suddenly turned into a giant crawdad.
I don't know if you've noticed, but I seem to have a little problem with recapturing lost sleep.
The good news is that there's something about Blogathon that has made my attitude better this time around. I'm probably still as scattershot and headshakingly neurotic as ever I was, but today, on my day off, T + 1 past an insane but successful and just plain fun endeavor, a computer on my lap and a blackcurrant iced tea by my right hand, I am filled with the urge to kiss the foreheads of the next 100 people I see. Fortunately, the only person I will see tonight is Lloyd, and he is more than willing to pick up the kisses for 99 people. 
Dear friends,
Even though I knew, when I agreed to participate in Blogathon, that I would not be in any shape to write my regular meandering prose, I had figured I would at least have a few words in my pocket, all about the bonding and the hilarity and the 3 a.m. existentialism coupled with a creeping sense of panic that the next 1/2 hour deadline was coming up.
Well, here we are at the end of Blogathon 2005, and all I can say is this: We did it. More than 200 of us stayed up all night and raised almost $55,500 in pledges.
Here are the last PTMYB stat counts for this year's Blogathon:
I have raised $505.00 for Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund.
Bunni has raised $230.00 for the American Heart Association.
Eric has raised $1,660.00 for Midlands Fair Haven.
The John Spencer Estrogen Brigade has raised $605.00 for AIDS Walk Los Angeles's Team Spencer
Congratulations to my fellow insomniacs. Thank you to our wonderful and generous sponsors. What a brilliant day and night we had.
Just in case you were keen to see just what an allnighter can do a body...you know, as a cautionary tale. Kids, don't be like the Bakerina.
(Don't worry; it's much cleaner than the previous quote, and it was just what I needed at the end of my fourth cold shower in a 10-hour period.
Remember, we dancing girls are honor-bound to keep on dancing.
(tilts cap in general direction to the lovely Bunni, who did an absolutely, positively brilliant job on her posts, and an even better job, if such a thing were possible, at keeping me awake and cheerful)
