The local film house is playing sci-fi movies on the first Saturday of each month, and I was thrilled to see that the first movie of our residence was Plan 9 from Outer Space. Omid and I dragged ourselves and our newly-purchased lawn chairs down to the parking lot of the film house, where the movie was being projected against the exterior wall of the theater.
And proceeded to snooze. Plan 9 was not as hilarious as my 15-year-old self had believed. And the people-watching had been ky-bashed by our own early arrival. Fresh from the New York Bryant Park Monday night movie sardine-fest, we got to the feeble Hillsboro Village parking lot at least 2 hours before nightfall, the scheduled start time. Chuckling at our fellow Nashvillians' lack of foresight, we positioned our chairs front and center and spent the next couple of hours reading magazines. During which time maybe 100 unconcerned people slowly gathered. Behind us.
As we considered the possible Buddhist practice of non-being our old cutthroat, New York selves, we were thrilled for a bonus showing of an episode of Nashville 99: a 70's-era cop show set in Nashville and featuring various country-music stars in advisory roles. Our episode featured Tammy Wynette giving solemn counsel from a heavily-carpeted night club in Printers' Alley, while the cop she was helping gulped coffee.
Next month... Ghidra the 3-Headed Monster (VS. Godzilla, Rodin and Mothra). Is it just me, or is Godzilla the feyest monster ever?
Sunday, August 19, 2007
The Settling Down
In which the author spends the final few weeks before the Return to Work painting the interior of her house, ruminating on Buddhism and poverty, and employed in the Discovery of a Soothing and Politically-Motivated Hobby.
We have painted the living room pink. Yes, bubble-gum, fairy-princess pink, with Omid's complete knowlegede and consent. It really is lovely: cheerful and bright and a nice contrast to the heavy club chairs and dark mantel. The color is called "Hopeful." How optimistic! and appropriate: Omid's name means "hope" in Farsi. We are still working on furnishing and decorating the living room, but we love the happiness of this color.
Getting the house painted before school started was a goal I had set before we even left NYC: I thought having a project would lessen my move anxiety, and I suppose it did. But there was another reason for the timing, and her name is Birdie. My cat, so named for her chirp-like vocal styings, had taken a year-long hiatus at my mother's, where she lived in the basement, happily killing mice and garter snakes and completely indifferent to the imminent Nashville arrival of her real mother. Well, with the last stroke of pink announcing that we were Mostly Settled In, with the Large Parts of the Move Officially Behind Us, it was time for Birdie's return to the fold, and a joyous reunion was had by all. Well... by me anyway. Birdie and Omid were fairly unaroused.
Moving on, a second Back Lot Beaut was located in the form of a 1996 Toyota Paseo, maroon, missing a driver's side door handle but in possession of a tenaciously persistent and ever-vigilant Check Engine light. Purchased from one Dano Walker, arrangements were made for the car to pass its emissions test (with considerable coaxing of the Check Engine light, which will cause any car to fail Nashville's emission's testing. It blinked back on 5 minutes after passing the test, and remains on to this day.) and the replacement of the door handle.
It was a cool and sanguine summer morning. Omid had started work already; I was feeling purposeful after completing without major malfunction my home-improvement painting project. Using my index finger and thumb, I eased open the Paseo's door with the crumb of the handle, and took off for my appointment to have it replaced. Stopping at the Dickerson Pike dealership for directions, I encountered my first whiff of forboding when the man behind the desk, a square-shaped and intellingent-looking Black man, informed me that he himself did not tarry in the neighborhood where I was to have my car worked on. I unhappily recalled a conversation I had overheard the day before at the laundomat, between the attendant and her mother, about the relative number of crackheads and hookers in the neighborhoods of Dickerson Pike. None of the numbers had sounded good. Shaking his head, he called ahead, thereby waking the man who was to perform upon my vehicle and informing him of the appointment, of which he was not previously aware. To embolden myself, I got a gumball out of the machine.
Upon arrival at the house on Linda Street (an ironic name, to be sure), I found that Gregor, my ersatz mechanic, was apparently in the beginning stages of recovery (or withdrawal) from an all-night George Dickel-drinking marathon, the indicators of the early stages of recovery being a virtual sloughing off of cigarette and alcohol fumes from Gregor's pores, a droopy right eyelid, a lack of fresh clothing despite the hour, and slight tremors in the hands (DTs?). As I sat in an old steel lawn chair in the garage pretending to read The Magus (poor choice) and Gregor removed the interior door panel, a child emerged from the back door of the folded-looking home and began desultorily chasing a soccer ball around the concrete backyard in his underwear. I smiled and waved good morning, but he was apparently inured to gestures of good will. The boy was followed by two other men, obviously Gregor's colleagues in the Dickel marathon and none too pleased with the arrival of either myself or the morning sun, feelings they made clear by brightening their eyes my way and muttering quietly to Gregor in a manner I found decidedly menacing. (They were also unresponsive to gestures of greeting.)
As is my usual procedure in these situations, I began simultaneously to create an emergency escape plan (down the driveway, into the alley and out onto Dickerson) and recite the 8 Wordly Dharmas (pleasure/pain, gain/loss, fame/disgrace, and praise/blame). Clearly, these men fell squarely in the pain/loss/disgrace/blame side of the fence, and I empathized with them. My resolve to not buy into the Dharmas was strengthened, and I wanted to go. Luckily Dano was right, and the replacement of the door handle was a simple matter, one we could have done ourselves. I shook Gregor's hand and drove away down Linda Street, wondering why poor people in Nashville seemed somehow more desparate than poor people in New York.
In the month I had in Nashville before the school year started (excruciatingly early in August), I began whiling away the hot afternoons in thrift stores, absorbed in long-forgotten (and often Jesus-related) knick-knacks, furniture, and unwanted clothing. I was charmed when I went to the cashier in a Salvation Army with a copy of Edith Hamiltion's Mythology and the Bible - only to be told that my price was only $0.75: the Lord's Word was free! And I liked the idea of buying second hand: not only is it thrifty, I don't have to worry about supporting sweat-shops or contributing to sickening levels of American consumerism. The stuff, in the way of so many American "consumables," has already been bought and cast aside.
Thrift stores in New York are terribly picked-over and over-priced. Even if you find something decent, it likely will cost you 10 - 20 bucks, and what's the fun of that? You can get clean, new, more fashionable clothes at H&M for cheaper! (Though, as far as I know, those clothes are produced in sweat shops. Which is not to say I haven't done considerable shopping there.) At $1.50 - $4.00 per average item in Nashville, you can afford to take a chance on fushia and sapphire rose-patterned muumuu. That is, if you're lucky enough, like I was, to find such a thing.
We have painted the living room pink. Yes, bubble-gum, fairy-princess pink, with Omid's complete knowlegede and consent. It really is lovely: cheerful and bright and a nice contrast to the heavy club chairs and dark mantel. The color is called "Hopeful." How optimistic! and appropriate: Omid's name means "hope" in Farsi. We are still working on furnishing and decorating the living room, but we love the happiness of this color.
Getting the house painted before school started was a goal I had set before we even left NYC: I thought having a project would lessen my move anxiety, and I suppose it did. But there was another reason for the timing, and her name is Birdie. My cat, so named for her chirp-like vocal styings, had taken a year-long hiatus at my mother's, where she lived in the basement, happily killing mice and garter snakes and completely indifferent to the imminent Nashville arrival of her real mother. Well, with the last stroke of pink announcing that we were Mostly Settled In, with the Large Parts of the Move Officially Behind Us, it was time for Birdie's return to the fold, and a joyous reunion was had by all. Well... by me anyway. Birdie and Omid were fairly unaroused.
Moving on, a second Back Lot Beaut was located in the form of a 1996 Toyota Paseo, maroon, missing a driver's side door handle but in possession of a tenaciously persistent and ever-vigilant Check Engine light. Purchased from one Dano Walker, arrangements were made for the car to pass its emissions test (with considerable coaxing of the Check Engine light, which will cause any car to fail Nashville's emission's testing. It blinked back on 5 minutes after passing the test, and remains on to this day.) and the replacement of the door handle.
It was a cool and sanguine summer morning. Omid had started work already; I was feeling purposeful after completing without major malfunction my home-improvement painting project. Using my index finger and thumb, I eased open the Paseo's door with the crumb of the handle, and took off for my appointment to have it replaced. Stopping at the Dickerson Pike dealership for directions, I encountered my first whiff of forboding when the man behind the desk, a square-shaped and intellingent-looking Black man, informed me that he himself did not tarry in the neighborhood where I was to have my car worked on. I unhappily recalled a conversation I had overheard the day before at the laundomat, between the attendant and her mother, about the relative number of crackheads and hookers in the neighborhoods of Dickerson Pike. None of the numbers had sounded good. Shaking his head, he called ahead, thereby waking the man who was to perform upon my vehicle and informing him of the appointment, of which he was not previously aware. To embolden myself, I got a gumball out of the machine.
Upon arrival at the house on Linda Street (an ironic name, to be sure), I found that Gregor, my ersatz mechanic, was apparently in the beginning stages of recovery (or withdrawal) from an all-night George Dickel-drinking marathon, the indicators of the early stages of recovery being a virtual sloughing off of cigarette and alcohol fumes from Gregor's pores, a droopy right eyelid, a lack of fresh clothing despite the hour, and slight tremors in the hands (DTs?). As I sat in an old steel lawn chair in the garage pretending to read The Magus (poor choice) and Gregor removed the interior door panel, a child emerged from the back door of the folded-looking home and began desultorily chasing a soccer ball around the concrete backyard in his underwear. I smiled and waved good morning, but he was apparently inured to gestures of good will. The boy was followed by two other men, obviously Gregor's colleagues in the Dickel marathon and none too pleased with the arrival of either myself or the morning sun, feelings they made clear by brightening their eyes my way and muttering quietly to Gregor in a manner I found decidedly menacing. (They were also unresponsive to gestures of greeting.)
As is my usual procedure in these situations, I began simultaneously to create an emergency escape plan (down the driveway, into the alley and out onto Dickerson) and recite the 8 Wordly Dharmas (pleasure/pain, gain/loss, fame/disgrace, and praise/blame). Clearly, these men fell squarely in the pain/loss/disgrace/blame side of the fence, and I empathized with them. My resolve to not buy into the Dharmas was strengthened, and I wanted to go. Luckily Dano was right, and the replacement of the door handle was a simple matter, one we could have done ourselves. I shook Gregor's hand and drove away down Linda Street, wondering why poor people in Nashville seemed somehow more desparate than poor people in New York.
In the month I had in Nashville before the school year started (excruciatingly early in August), I began whiling away the hot afternoons in thrift stores, absorbed in long-forgotten (and often Jesus-related) knick-knacks, furniture, and unwanted clothing. I was charmed when I went to the cashier in a Salvation Army with a copy of Edith Hamiltion's Mythology and the Bible - only to be told that my price was only $0.75: the Lord's Word was free! And I liked the idea of buying second hand: not only is it thrifty, I don't have to worry about supporting sweat-shops or contributing to sickening levels of American consumerism. The stuff, in the way of so many American "consumables," has already been bought and cast aside.
Thrift stores in New York are terribly picked-over and over-priced. Even if you find something decent, it likely will cost you 10 - 20 bucks, and what's the fun of that? You can get clean, new, more fashionable clothes at H&M for cheaper! (Though, as far as I know, those clothes are produced in sweat shops. Which is not to say I haven't done considerable shopping there.) At $1.50 - $4.00 per average item in Nashville, you can afford to take a chance on fushia and sapphire rose-patterned muumuu. That is, if you're lucky enough, like I was, to find such a thing.
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