Now and Again

"Now and again it seems worse than it is, but mostly the view is accurate," sings Bright Eyes. We were listening to that, on another one of those drug-infused nights, and I've been feeling quite sorry for myself since. My foot turned all shades of purple and has been hurting a bit more. I can only blame myself - it was foolish to go running around after only a day or two of ice-packs and cructches.

Now I feel ashamed for indulging myself in self-pity. I got home this morning because I had organized for Maria, the illegal Ecuadorian cleaning lady from the basement, to come up and clean the apartment properly (as I had noticed, while cleaning my own room, this had probably not been done in years). Maria and I chat in Spanish. She complimented me on my language ability, which is nice considering that I make grammatical errors all the time. I could not reciprocate the compliment though: Maria has been in the U.S. for ten years but does not speak a word of English. She lives with her husband, and his brother in small room in the basement; her children - now in their twenties - are back home, in Quito. She has not seen them in ten years. She cleans and helps out our landlord - a well-to-do Chilean who invites his "people" to Halloween parties and generally takes care of them - with various chores. She feels bad about not speaking English, but she never meets anyone with whom she could practice. She is not complaining though - she considers herself one of the lucky ones. Lucky for making it to this country (unlike many, who, I'm told, are now paying $13,000 to be smuggled to L.A. through Mexico, she made it here relatively easily); lucky to be having a life (unlike many, she is not sharing her room with 15 other people, mostly strangers, or slaving away at some sweat-shop 16 hours a day only to be robbed of any meagre salary as "interest payments" to the smugglers). She says that the situation is much worse back home and she hopes for her son to be able to make it out some day.

Maria - I'm guessing - is around 45. She is about 5"3, energetic and seems pretty cheerful. She thought Aron was my husband (although he had told her several times before I got back that I was the sister) and she has no idea where Hungary is. It is perhaps pathetic, cruel and self-involved, but talking to her cheered me up; I cannot even begin to comprehend misery and defenselessness: being dumped by a nice boy or a sprained ankle certainly do not qualify. Get over yourself (- said I to myself all day). But now and again...you know, a little self-pity is allowed perhaps.

Humans

(It has been pointed out to me that my blog needs proofreading. That is true. The reason it was so screwed up is that I knocked down a glass of wine onto the keyboard with one of my crutches and my keyboard was acting weird...thankfully, it is healed now.)

Depite my slight disability, I went to the big annual fundraising dinner of the organization I am working at last night. It was a fancy affair at Chelsea Piers; some three hundred people came and paid a lot of money to be there: mostly law firms and other rich New Yorkers (including George Soros), some human rights activists and media people (Tom Brokaw was there as part of the show and Nicolas Kristof, the New York Times columnist), and other random, human-rights conscious celebrities like Suzanne Vega. Ludmilla Alekseeva, a sweet old lady, hero of the Russian dissident movement, and Dr. Ibrahim Mudawi, a Sudenese human rights defender, received awards from Human Rights First. It all went smoothly; the do was professional and well-organized. There were cocktails and wine, decent, healthy food, seamless wait staff, glossy, yet moving brochures, and just the right amount of talking about meaningful stuff to hold people's attention without boring them. They even made sure that the Americans don't tire their untrained ears, while listening to the heavily-accented speeches by the honorees -- these were "subtitled." (One of the speakers though, a young Russian human rights activist who presented the award to Ludmilla, did not escape sarcastic comments and laughs directed at her affected Russian accent...).

I did pretty well for myself as far as networking goes. I literally bumped into Soros and got his attention for about two minutes (the guy is like a rock star, while he was speaking with me people kept coming up to him from all sides in the hope of getting a sideways glance from him). After he looked at my name tag he knew right away that I must be "the daughter," and after telling him what I was doing here and that I was looking for a job he introduced me to "his good friend, Bill Zabel," who is the head of the board of Human Rights First and senior partner of a pretty big law firm here in New York. And off he went, to be accosted by more perfectly made-up (and face-lifted?) rich New York women and their men. The other interesting encounter I had was with the documentary filmmaker sitting next to me who kept explainig to me why animal rights are much more worthy of protection than human rights; his argument essentially was that animals are innocent and defenseless, whereas humans are fundamentally mean-spirited and reckless, and there is no redemption in saving them from mistreatment because they will just go on and abuse others if they get a chance to. So he was involved in saving pets after the hurricane because they were the truly abandoned ones. I remember seeing these animal rescuers on TV and being puzzled by why people would choose to focus their energy on pets when people are dying...now I got to meet one. I am still not convinced.

Crutches

I went to the emergency room to have my ankle checked out. It now looks like it was worth being responsible and get a good, expensive English insurance policy. In this country they are not joking about insurance or the lack thereof. This is the third time I've experienced U.S. ER; there was the Boston visit for swollen foot on account of a long plane ride, then the Cambridge visit on account of hysterical passing out. I have done the Brits twice, for swallowing pills and the second time for almost severing a finger while dishwashing on a stormy Sunday night about two weeks after my ex-husband moved back to Hungary. (There was one visit to the Hungarians - a mere panick attack; technically there were two visits: one to a small village doctor's office where they had no sympathy for my alleged heart-attack, and then to a hospital later, just to make sure.) So I am pretty experienced, but I have yet to encounter anything that remotely resembles my one-time favorite series set in Chicago.

It was calm and relatively painless, although I caused a little consternation when the Indian-looking triage nurse asked me about my religion and I informed her that I had none. She asked me three more times, just to make sure. Now, for the first time in my life, I am walking - or rather moping around the house - with the help of my brand new, wooden crutches (incidentally, we already had a pair of crutches in the house, but those were designed for a 5-foot person) and my brother prefers to serve me food and drinks just so he doesn't have to put up with my pathetic hopping blocking his way. It is not that bad, after all.

Pain

is now physical. On my way to dinner with my friend Alison and her friends I tripped and fell and twisted my ankle. It hurt, but a couple of guys came and helped me up and I thought it was ok. During dinner -- with Alison, a friend of hers, Stacey and her male friend, whose name I forget even though he was holding a bucket of ice over my foot for part of the night -- was nice. After a couple of drinks at the bar we decided to go to Balthazar to join another friend, but when the others saw my swollen foot they decided that I should absolutely not walk with my high heels to the next place and so I came home. Now I am sitting here, staring at my hugely swollen foot, trying to soothe the pain with ice (and wine) and I am feeling sorry for myself again...hope it's not broken or fractured, last thing I need is a cast. Brother is out on date, Gyurka is gone; I am supposed to go and buy cleaning stuff tomorrow morning for Patricia, the illegal Mexican lady from the basement whom I hired to clean our flat, and I really wanted to go to the gym. AND I got dumped. Did I mention that?

The Italians

Romy is a really good friend. I cried and felt sorry for myself (and him) until she showed up at work. Quickly, she made sure that I was alright. She gave me drugs and rock & roll (no sex, I'm afraid, but who knows what's to come) and took me to dinner at her father and stepmother's house. His hot, 23-year-old brother was also there and her Italian-American father (who happens to be writing a book in which some of the heroes are descendants of Orthodox Jews from Debrecen, Hungary (don't ask, I tried)) is a sharp, interesting man. Her stepmother, an actress and an ageing beauty, is friendly and worldly, if a little too theatrical and overwrought. The apartment they live in is fabulous; a 3-million-dollar Tribeca top-floor duplex with a roof-terrace three times the size of Natalie's. They bought it 25 years ago it for $80,000, when the place was still a dump. It was so civilized, yet fun; homemade Cosmos to start, melon with Parma ham and luscious ricotta-filled ravioli, followed by Haagen Dazs, varied and interesting conversation, and pure, unadultered enjoyment of Ali G on video. It did me good to be around these people it (mostly successfully) took my mind of what boggles it right now. Romy is really growing on me; despite her straightforward, honest (sometimes harsh) manner she is sensitive and empathetic.

As for the rest - I've listened to all the depressing music on my I-Pod, thought and wrote for a while, but essentially more positive than before. The loss of the opportunity makes me sad though.

Oh, and I discovered something today. Tears stain not only paper but cotton as well. At least, my tears left stains all over my shirt this morning. There really is something new to learn from everything. I'll cherish this.

There is a first

for everything I guess. This wedding that I did not attend this weekend made me think of another one. I was the one doing the marrying there. I had a beautiful pink dress; my fake sister Elisabeth told me and my future husband that a bride is not supposed to spend the night before the wedding with her futue one, so I stayed in my parents' flat that night. The stripe of the dress broke and I was upset, but in the end we managed to go and get married. By most accounts -- that is Elisabeth's and my friend Marta's -- I looked sad. The way I felt was not sad. Just unreal. I kept watching myself, as an outsider, walking up to the mayor, saying those words that needed to be said. I walked out with my father on my side (apparently an acquaintance of his who saw us that day thought that I was his new bride, only two years after my mother's death) and went home for the lunch. I felt awkward but I thought that was natural. I also felt an intense need to go to the bathroom all the time, which was strage but I did not make much of it: all brides are anxious, I thought. By the time we did our party at night I was fine. Happy and cheerful, looking forward to the honeymoon in the Maldives, even having the energy and time to get jealous about some little girl jumping all over my my ex-husband, whom I knew he had had an affair with while he was with his previous girlfriend. And that was that. All my friends thought I looked amazing. Happy. Liberated. And I was. Loving him was pure bliss in a way and yet the marriage was a disaster. First chance I got I went looking for something else; something better maybe. Once we started living together it became clear that it was not "meant to be," much less meant to last longer than the year we actually spent together in heartache and drama. I don't regret any of it, however. It showed me that I was able to feel. That I was able to be honest and loving, if only for a minute.

Tonight, five years later, I am in a different situation. For the first time, someone told me he did not want me. The explanations are almost irrelevant, except that they had to do mostly with his inability to see a blissful future, embodied by the "ultimate goal" that is marriage. I am hurt and upset and, of course, had to confide in the first person that came my way (after the bouncer at the bar called KARMA (ain't that funny?), where I went to have a drink on my own) - the taxi driver. He was Pakistani and had an arranged marriage two years ago. He had never met his wife before they got married and he has not been living with her since. But - he told me - he was sure that it was going to work out when she was going to come here to join him because it had to. There were no other options, he said. It didn't matter if she was smart or beautiful or interesting; that was that and that's all there is to it. I am -- apparently -- beautiful and smart and interesting, but it just wasn't going to work out. So it had to be ended, he said. I am, as said, hurt and upset. Is it because it is the first time I was rejected like that? Is it an ego thing? Is it because - for the first time - I felt like I was willing to give it a chance and be open and loving and it backfired? Is it because I think that "what goes around comes around," as the cab driver said and even though I was expecting it to happen all these years, I could not contemplate it actually happening? Or is it because I thought, for a minute, that the reason is that I was too much into schtooping (yiddish for f*cking)? I could not tell in this drunken haze that I am in. But then I thought about another thing that the cab driver told me: the story of the man who is told that he has to pick the most beautiful flower in the garden and he keeps picking one after another because he cannot decide; only to end up with no flowers at all for the rest of his life. Maybe that is what happened. And though I don't think of myself as the most beautiful flower ever, I think that I am a pretty freakin' attractive bunch. One that's worth nurturing.

Cats & Kids

I have seen this before on "Animal Hospital" on BBC. I was not a regular viewer of that show, but the idea that cats and dogs could be put on Prozac was fascinating enough for me to spend a few minutes focusing on the screen. But I never thought that I would actually have a whole conversation with a real person that I know (and like) about how her cat, who has been pissing all over her apartment in the past six months, was put on anti-depressants after the $500 tests did not reveal any physiological deficiencies...will update on whether it's working.

C, whose kids I am babysitting, also has cats. I try to ignore them when I am there, so after having successfully bribed the children into going to bed, I looked for a book that I could flip through while I was waiting for their mom to come home. And there it was, between "Cutting Loose - Why women who end their marriages do so well," and "Relocating to New Jersey," the book that caputured my imagination: "Every Goy's Guide to Common Jewish Expressions," by Arthur Naiman. Under the - apparently much studied - entry "goyish"I found this: "converting to Judaism [is] in fact such a goyish thing [that] no Jew has ever done it." This humorous statement pretty much says all there is to be said on the topic.

Today I went to see Natalie and her new baby, Amalia, for the second time. After a drug-infused night at Romy's place, it was nice to spend a good half hour at a bookstore in Park Slope browsing the children's books section. I picked out "Babar Goes to School," a couple of the Curious George books, and then I could not resist buying "The Little Match-Seller," by Hans Christian Andersen, described by the Chinese bookseller lady as the "most saddest" story of all. I loved this sentimental story when I was a kid. I would read it over and over again, hoping that the ending would be different every time I started it, which of course it never was. She had the same wonderful hallucinations each time and, inevitably, she would die with the soothing vision of her grandmother each time. On the subway, I re-read the story, possibly still nursing a faint hope of redemption for the poor girl, but by the Second Avenue stop on the F-train, I found myself weeping for her like I used to back when I was closer in age to the little girl.