Forget About Horses, We Ride Elephants In These Here Yankee Parts

In the past few days, I've met the three most exentrique characters I've yet to encounter in New York City: a gay Asian cowboy, an "invisible elephant" researcher, and a obese hobo lady who thought I was going to kill her with an ax. I think the subtitle of this post would thus be "A Few Musings on Crazy People." Let me explain:

-1-

I made the decision a few weeks ago to purchase cowboy boots with my birthday money, probably something to do with my affinity for alt-country or whatever. I Googled, did some research, found a place with a wicked cool name - Whiskeydust - only to call and find out it had closed for business the day before. However, the nice lady on the phone recommened a place called Stylish Shoe near Washington Sqaure Park, so with my Sunday off I made it a mission to complete some serious boot shopping. The store, though you could never know by its title, was boot heaven, straight out of Back to the Future 3, and when I found myself overwhelmed with too many options, I asked for help, thinking some retired good ol' boy from a ranch would come out from behind those old timey swinging bar doors and ask, "Whataya need, partner?"

Instead, I was met with a gay Asian man listening to Rage Against The Machine. Working in a Country & Western attire store. Something was not right.

Sure, maybe you can go all Brokeback and conenct gays and cowboys, but Asians don't exactly work into that equation quite as much. And cowboys they definitely don't listen to anarchist mainstream metal. Nonetheless, the "cowboy" asked for my shoe size, price range, and color preference, gave me a quick look up and down, and returned with a box and a promise - "These will be the boots you're going to fall in love with." He pulled out, of course, the perfect boot, and after he taught me how to get them in my jeans, he went off to let me "be with the shoe." He changed the Rage Against the Machine to some satellite radio world pop station, and by that time I really had no idea what the fuck was going on with this man anymore. But as I walked around the store, it was obvious that this crazy, strange, telepathic wizard of a cowboy was doing what he needed to be doing in life, and I was in love with the boots on my feet. I tried on a few pairs just for the hell of it, but my heart was already taken, and as I gave the man my money, I knew I was where I needed to be in life myself - in the most diverse, wonderous place around where every notion of expectations can be shattered with a bit of talent and determination. It should be noted, however, that the cowboy's wall of autographed pictures of 1980s hip-hop stars really solified such an idea in my head.

-2-

On my way to get the aforementioned cowboy boots, I walked by a table full of elephant paintings. Elephants are my favorite animal, and oddly enough, I had already bought another piece of elephant artwork, of sorts, a few days earlier, so I stopped to look around. The following conversation recounts the 15 minutes I spent with the elephant artist, an unnamed man who clearly enjoys smoking meth:

Meth Man: "Sunday special, white boy! Half off! I make this shit, I price it, half-off, anything you want. $10!"

Me: "Ok, thanks."

Meth Man: "You like elephants?"

Me: "Yeah, they're my favorite animal, actually."

Meth Man: "What you know about elephants, white boy?!"

Me" Um, well, lots of things I guess. What do you know?"

Meth Man: "I know about the invisible elephant."

Me: "Oh. That's nice."

Meth Man: "You don't believe me, white boy. But you know what, I'm gonna prove it to you. You got a piece of paper?"

Me: "Um, yeah, actually." (Reaches into bag and pulls out a scrap sheet of paper.)

Meth Man: "Here's a pen, boy. You better right this down. I'm going to tell you the name of the invisible elephant. And then you gonna go home, Google this shit, and then you gonna believe me. Ok? Ready? Ok. Here you go. Loxodanta. That's L-O-X-O-D-O-N-T-A. Loxodonta. Three words. Africana. Now I know you can spell that, white boy. And the last one. Cyclopsis. C-Y-C-L-O-T-S-I-S. Cyclopsis."

Me: "Um, do you mean Cyclotsis?"

Meth Man: "No! Cyclopsis. C-Y-C-L-O-T-S-I-S. Loxodonta Africana Cyclopsis."

Me: "Ok, I'll have to check that out. So, have you, um, seen the invisible elephant?"

Meth Man: "Hell no! That shit materializes and then dissapears right before your eyes. How could I see that? But I researched 'em. In Kenya."

Me: "Well then, that's pretty neat."

Meth Man: "Half-off, white boy! $10. I charge what I want."

Me: "Well, just let me look for a bit."

Meth Man: "Ok, but don't you tell me that you ain't got no money. All you white people say you ain't got no money. Now I know better. We the ones that don't have money. So when all you white people don't have money, I know the world's going to shit. So if you don't want something, just let me know. I made these. I know they are pretty. I know they're masterpieces. This one, see, special edition. Everybody wanna know how I do it. But I ain't going to tell ya, even if you buy it, but I'm just saying, I know it's good. They damn good. So don't tell me you ain't got no money. I know better. You ain't going to hurt my feelings, cause I know these masterpieces. So you just buy or don't, don't give me no bull crap."

So I didn't give him any crap, and now I have this artwork hanging in the bathroom:


And as you can tell from the provided link, the Loxodonta Africana Cyclopsis is just the scientific name for your common fucking African elephant. So hey, the guy at least knows his elephants, but I still feel a bit cheated.

-3-

After said boot shopping, I headed to the subway. Earlier in the day I had stopped by a costume store and bought an ax for our Halloween interpretation of the 3 little pigs and the big bad wolf - I was going to be the pig who built his house out of sticks, so naturally, I was dressing up like a lumberjack. So here I was in the subway, all shopped out with comic books and boots and an ax and all this good stuff, tired of carrying all this crap, so I just sat down on the bench in the subway station and started cramming it all in one bag. And then this woman behind me screams and starts yelling, "Boy, what you doing with that ax?" I turn around to find a large woman sprawled out on the bench behind me, a box of chicken fingers on her stomach, pointing at me as she licks honey mustard off her other hand. And so I laugh kind of apologetically and say, "Oh, it's just for Halloween, plastic, you know, not real at all. No need to worry."

That was not the right thing to say, apparently.

The chicken finger lady starts yelling at me, "Boy don't you laugh at me! I don't know what you is going to do with that ax. I don't care if it's plastic. How am I supposed to know? Don't you be laughing at me. You shouldn't be saying all this shit. You should be saying - because what you should not be saying is, 'Oh, sorry, it's Halloween, candy all this crap.' Cause what you should be saying is, cause you better not laugh at me, you should say, 'Oh, sorry ma'am, are you ok? Can I do anything for you? Cause I'm sure you have no money to buy yourself some cigarettes or a cup of coffee or food. Can I buy you a cup of coffee, cause I am so sorry I laughed at you.' Cause boy, I ain't got no money to eat. You better get me something now, boy. Get me something to eat."

And she continued this speech, even as I wandered onto the A train and she sat there munching on the giant box of chicken fingers that she kept on top of her engorged belly, calling me boy and asking me to buy her more fucking food.

-FIN-

Is This Best Buy Kosher?

My internship demands I run a lot of errands. Pick up blue prints in Union Square. Check. Buy wood glue from the corner hardware store. Check. Cart over 18 boxes of clothes from Target to the rehearsal hall and try not to run over one of those annoying little dog that are fucking everywhere. Check. Carry a tuba 10 blocks to a brass instrument consignment seller. A pain in the ass, and I felt more like street performer than an intern, but astoundingly, somehow, yes, check.

But today, today topped it all. I was left alone to set up our new $10,000 board room projector, and to my surprise, $10,000 does not buy any of the necessary cables to run said $10,000 projector, it just buys a big fat ugly $10,000 projector. So after an unsuccessful stop at RadioShack for a VGA component, I was off, per my supervisor’s recommendation, to B&H. “If they don’t have it, no one will.” I hopped down to 34^th and 10^th, only to find a McDonald’s, wait for my boss to return my “I’m lost” message, buy a Snapple, and then have my boss call and apologize for giving me the wrong directions. However, once in the doors of B&H, I knew my journey was well worth the hassle.

Once inside the establishment, I was surrounded by lots of Jews and lots of electronics. Somehow these things do not go hand in hand, but I digress. The store was big and bigger, packed with TVs and computers and cameras and lots and lots and lots of people. I was immediately reminded of Asheville's local Super Wal-Mart on tax free weekend. Seriously. Only Wal-Marts are much easier to navigate. Here, I couldn't anything, just a bunch of Jewish employees and digital junk, so when I finally asked one of the B&Hers where I could find a VGA cable, he typed something in his computer, told me to wait 3 minutes, and gave me a receipt to take the front. After I found the "front," which was actually just the middle, I paid for my receipt and was given another receipt, where I went to the actual front and waited. Here I realized there was a giant conveyor belt over my head, over everyone's head, over the whole store, and there in the back corner far, far away was a little man throwing things in bins and whisking them all around the store, like he was some crazy wizard running a Coca-Cola bottling factory. I turned in my receipt and a silent Jewish man found a bag on the wall and handed it to me and pointed to the door to leave.

B&H, quite simply put, is a crowded, disorienting Willy Wonka-esque Northern Wal-Mart run by Hasidic Jews, and I'm not sure my shopping experiences can ever be the same again.

Batman and the Big 2-0

"The lion of self-discovery is meant to kill that dragon whose every scale reads 'Thou Shalt.'"

-Joseph Campbell, American mythology professor

I'm 20. Finally. And surprisingly, I'm ok with that, even a few days in. I never thought I would be. Ever. Really. I was horrified, like there was this big double-digit beast looming over my head like an unavoidable plague, a final affirmation that I am, in the eye's of society, an adult without the drinking privileges, a number whose inherent diction vanquishes the very notion of teenagedom with a big fat "T." Being the baby all my life, I've grown accustomed to being last for everything. The last to vote, the last to get a license, the last in the alphabet if we're playing that game. So like a ticking time bomb, I've watched my friends become adults. Over and over and over, again and again and again. And I was horrified, like a ticking time bomb, my youth was just clicking away, and - BOOM! - there it was, gone. Or so I thought. Watching your friends turn 20 is actually a lot worse than turning 20 yourself. Instead of feeling, well, like I thought I would feel, I feel quite at peace with it, quite calm, quite proud to be an official 20-something.

However, a lot like creativity, a lot like New York, a lot like creative life in New York, a lot like life in general, being 20 is still a mystery to me. A beautiful, thrilling, inspiring mystery that is more a expedition into the unknown than a search for the key to it all. After a month of getting my feet on the ground, and after a rather epic 3 day jaunt of sitting on the edge of a panic attack and avoiding subways and calling in sick to work to listen to Kid A and journal and figure my shit all out, I finally feel like I live here. It's not home by any means, but it's homey, homey as in when I was sick and it was raining I could grab my umbrella and walk down to the corner CVS and love the feeling that I'm here and nowhere else. But I'm still very much figuring out this place, figuring out my place in this place, figuring out my place in this world, in this art, in my own skin. But what I've gained here so far is this new sense of being ok with that. Of not knowing what the future holds, of not knowing everything, and just letting that go and hitting the ground running with what I have. I've always held firmly that art is the process of self-discovery, which, in reality, is to know that you'll never really know yourself, but to just soak in all you can about your being and your experience and somehow placing that in the world and constantly let that evolve into something beautiful and honest for that world you live in to see and learn from. And now, suddenly, my thoughts of everything I hold in artistic value are being thrown for a loop, and that is fucking exhilarating. Because not only do I hold the notion of self-discovery, I feel it, I live it, I am it. So as I search for my creative voice, I feel like I know me, know my strengths, know my weaknesses, and I can say, "This is me." It's like I'm Batman, and I have this whole great big utility belt ready to go, and now I just get to jump around Gotham City looking for how best to use it. So I'm more open to imagination than ever before, learning about all these great things like Anne Bogart's Viewpoints and writing scenes and reading Dylan Thomas plays - things are falling into place from that.

And nicely enough, all this started happening the week of my birthday. I was in the rain in New York City and I said to myself, "I'm glad I'm here and nowhere else." I got into Advanced Fiction Writing. I learned I was going to assistant direct a show. I finished up a grant on storytelling. People are telling me I'm really good at what I do. So all in all, I feel affirmed in why I'm here. NYC is fueling me, encouraging me, inspiring me, telling me that I can and should be doing what I want to do. So being 20, for me, is throwing caution to the wind, entering a new world of self-discovery with the maturity of a young adult who is still searching for what that title actually means. And I kind of like that.

Democracy at Its Best

9/17/07:

Me, wanting to know the answer to this question.

9/18/07:

Me, on assignment from my intern supervisor to buy new trash bins, learning that recycling is required by law in NYC and punishable if not practiced.

9/19/07:

Me, sending out e-mails to St. George leaders, notifying those in charge of the law.

9/20/07 - 10-11/07:

Me, waiting for recycling bins, continuing to contact residence building officials, threatening to notify police about said law breaking for $500+ fines, waiting more.

10/12/07:

Me, claiming victory as an early birthday present.