Rich Girl Finds Solace - in Video Games

I went to a funeral service this morning; the mother of an office assistant died at much too young an age, leaving her daughter - much too young to lose a mother - distraught and lost. I was going to stay for a few minutes, but I actually lasted an hour. The funeral home was on Bleecker Street in an old Italian quarter. There were the requisite photographs of weddings, proms, first steps, a cremation urn and enough flowers to snuff out the smell of mourning. Death can make you think of all sorts of things, not the least of which is how good it is to be alive. I hugged the office assistant before leaving until I almost smothered her, as though I was trying to infuse her with something she could live for, perhaps one could call it hope.

On my walk home, I realized it was I who needed the hope. I lost a listing this week and 10 million in business. The first was a relief - the poetess I spoke of in an earlier blog had become too crazy to handle; the second was due to a high up Wall Streeter's distrust of the future of all market(s), something I could not argue against with the present value of anything. I also realized that my self esteem is inextricably connected to what I am doing and how successful I am. Right now, with my apartment up in the air, bills to pay, no health insurance and no real lifelines, well, my self esteem has disappeared somewhere into the molten core of the earth where it is being summarily incinerated.

Late at night, I have tried to remedy this in a way I would call ridiculous if anyone else told me they were doing it. I play video games. Not just ANY video games, but two in particular: Bejeweled 2, where you line up 3 or more of the same brightly colored gem and get points for each line and Farm Town, where you are actually building a virtual world. While I have actually won money with Bejeweled 2 (a whole five dollars), it's Farm Town that obssesses me. In it, you build your own farm universe. You plant crops, harvest them, earn coins with which you can buy a zillion things in the farm stores, from upgrading your plot of land to hedges, fences, silos and wells. Every 500 coins you reach a new level and the right to purchase or send as gifts new things. You can go to the marketplace and hire other avatars (you as a farmer are an avatar, complete with chosen name and physical characteristics) to harvest your crops, earning 25% more than if you did it yourself. Right now I'm at Level 14, which is called Specialist. I am ahead of my two nieces, who also play, and my friend A., who is a top real estate broker in a neighboring state. I am saving up to buy a bigger farm; I am very very close to being able to do so. Every time I plow a seed lot or buy a new fruit bearing tree, I feel I'm getting richer and richer. Here, in Farm Town, I am a winner.

Sometimes it is hard to turn Farm Town off and get back to real moneymaking ventures. The placement of the crops, their harvesting, moving the sheep and cows around, building fences, starts to haunt your dreams. I wake up in the middle of the night: are all the chickens in their pen? Did Avatar Joe finish harvesting the strawberries? Why doesn't anyone like to harvest trees? My Avatar's name is, astonishingly, Deborah. Other people have names like Old McDonald, Fifi, Princess Manurea, Farmer Apple, etc. My avatar Deborah has light blue hair and exotic green eyes. If she goes to find work in the marketplace, she is almost always picked. I tried a number of different looks until I found which worked best. In terms of cost, changing my avatar's appearance sure beats plastic surgery hands down.

So when you are sitting around late at night sipping your wine or something stronger, I am in front of a computer creating a parallel universe where I feel good, if only for a while, and if only in my head. I watch the crops grow tall and green, I harvest and re-plant, and I have crates and carts and a citrus grove and several pigs, chickens and cows, and have almost saved enough coins for a small farm house. Of course, I have my eye on the gigantic farm MANSION, many harvests away. And in this fecund virtual world of soil and sweat, I can be positive that, sooner or later, I'll certainly get there.

Rich Girl Gets Courted - in Housing Court

Tonight, I am tired. I am listening to Charlie Rose interview architects Frank Gehry and Renzo Piano. They are talking about important buildings (theirs) in faraway places. I remember meeting Gehry years ago in Venice, and thinking he looked exactly like my father's uncle Lou. Lou, the bootlegger who ran bathtub gin from Philly to Baltimore and was turned into the authorities by his wife. Gehry was building the Guggenheim in Bilbao; he explained his drawings, his hands running across the lines as if they were alive. Now, I am sitting alone and my dog is snoring. The computer keyboard is hot. I had a panic attack yesterday which I lived through. Work is moving, if slowly. And, hopefully, when I surface from this odd torpor, I'll still have a place to live. Speaking of buildings.....

Last week, it arrived: a knock at my door, a young black man who said "from the landlord" as he shoved a paper into my hand. I am being sued for back rent in civil court. I told the young man I was happy he was gainfully employed. However, while I'm a big fan of watching all the Law & Order franchises, I would rather not live them. But down to housing court I had to go, to "answer" the suit.

Frankly, I have no answers. At any moment I could have all the money I need to pay off every single debt; or I could be on the street tomorrow with many months to wait until I am paid. I worry every day where I might go, what will happen to Rocco, what will I do with all the stuff I've accumulated over 19 years in one place. Sometimes I think I should just throw everything I own out the window, like someone in a 1960s film might have done to "simplify" their lives. And it would really irritate my landlord. But holding even one coffee cup over the edge of the sill, remembering where it was bought, who I was with, where its specific space is on a kitchen shelf, I just do not have it in me to let (it) go.

So -- 111 Centre Street is the home of Manhattan's civil court. You walk in and they put all your junk on a conveyor belt through a metal detector, just like in an airport. I've always wondered who would be stupid enough to bring knives or guns to a courthouse, but I'm told there have been incidents. I do not want these people to think for one minute I will be creating one of THOSE, so I smile and practically give a volleyball push to my handbag, right into the chest of the woman working the belt, leaving it wide open so she can see there is no glint of metal, no trace of firearm. I smile; The woman gives me a blank look. I get past the machine and a happily chubby guy tells me what floor housing court is on. I go to the elevator; I am on my way up.

Through two nondescript doors on the 4th floor is Housing Court. There are lines marked with the Latin phrase "pro se," which is where I have to go as I am doing this on my own, which is what "pro se" means. There is a row of people at windows talking to those in line - one such "teller" who looks like Jerry Garcia is sipping a diet Pepsi and assuring a woman she will not be kicked out. Behind these tellers are symptoms of city disorganization, what looks to me like mile after mile of stacked files, each one probably detailing some awful moment in someone's home situation here in the Big Apple.Then a cute guy in a nice suit and a magenta tie comes up to me, looks at my papers and says "you don't have to stand in line, come with me," which I do like a puppy who has been offered a snack or a long walk in the park.

He disappears; comes back. "I tried to get you a free lawyer,' he says, "but your debt is too high." Something tells me this is a phrase I will hear often and again while I am dealing with all aspects of my debt. The truth is I have not made a dime in 2009, although I have 12 million in real estate for sale. But there is a clubby atmophere here, a humanness to which one succumbs, a sense of camaraderie, however scared we all are. Ellen, sitting next to me, lost her paralegal job six months ago after asking for a raise, something she had not had in three years: I have to translate for Juan from Washington Heights when he doesn't understand the question "is this rent really due?" but hears something like "doe" or "does". Ellen likes to bake - she has taken to baking her own bread so she doesn't have to spend 4 dollars a loaf. She has lived in her apartment for 16 years. We are comrades in the about-to-be-homeless front lines, sisters bound by bricks and mortar, soldiers in the fight for fairness over a landlord's lust for filthy lucre.

The guy with the magenta tie comes back; he has our court dates. I have to come in again next week to get an adjournment; I am thinking of hiring an attorney, no matter the cost, as long as he can give me another three months here which I think is what I will need. Pro Se isn't all it's cracked up to be. I think about getting married which, i admit, I ONLY think about when I'm in financial trouble. That is, indeed, another blog entry.

I say goodbye to all, wish them good luck and swish through the department's double doors like Loretta Young on her TV show. On my way downstairs, everyone headed for the street is cheery, even buoyant; the weather has finally turned and it is spring. I walk out into the warm air, still with a bit of briskness in it. I am oddly comfortable that moment in my own skin. Perhaps that is, after all, what home is. Isn't it?

Once Upon A Long Time Ago

In the 70s, I had a hero (really a heroine) in the writing world. Let's call her G, for Good. G was wild, blond, ferociously opinionated, had a zing of an intellect, was passionate about helping the underrepresented, wrote beautiful poems and taught writing to inmates at a certain famous city prison. A few years older than I, she looked like the person I wanted to become. We visited Attica; we watched WATERMELON MAN with Godfrey Cambridge on TV; we taught jailed women with secret political activist lovers on the outside; we made fun of her ex boyfriend who happened to be running my writing program uptown; we ate Chinese food on the floor of her apartment. This was heaven; I was in deep like.

Fast forward 30 years. G. has been living in California with her actor husband who, only in his mid-50s, drops dead unceremoniously on a movie set. I have stayed in New York, with a brief period in Italy, and gone through numerous careers, most of which involved the written word, but have now landed in real estate. G's husband leaves her lots of money. She decides to recapture her youth in New York. Somehow, she finds me. We look for and discover the perfect apartment, a West Village beauty that the aforementioned ex tells her is a good address. But G is not the G I remember; she has switched places with another letter in the alphabet and has become S, for sad or perhaps M for (downright) mean. She has a daughter (children change everything) over whom she obsesses, and she has trouble concentrating and making decisions. The least little thing throws her off center. Since she buys a co-op, there is a board package and she actively attacks and curses at me through the whole process even if I ask for nothing more than a signature. I decide I must swallow it - her husband has died, she is recreating her life, she is angry that she was left like that, etc. etc. yadda yadda yadda. We get through it and she moves in. All seems well in the world of S.; there are welcome back parties in NYC, lots of old friends. She may even be moving back towards G.

A couple of years go by and G decides to sell the beloved downtown apartment. In the meantime, the adored daughter has developed her own heart problem and is having seizures and blacking out. I know what this is doing to G. It is making her feel like the planet is against her, that the people most important to her have delicate hearts, not strong enough for this world. I think I am being compassionate, and I am doing my best to sell her apartment in a market that has now fallen far from where she bought it. I do ask her for a loan since I am having the worst year ever financially. She comes up with the money, I am thankful. But somewhere along the line there are rumblings that all is not as it should be. If I say a prospective buyer feels renovations would be too expensive, she takes it personally as an attack on her taste. I cancel one appointment for family reasons, she stops trusting me. I ask if I can have a wine tasting in her apartment to draw brokers in, I am violating her inner sanctum. It goes on and on, reaching a fever pitch. Until one day, neither of us can take it anymore, right at the moment where I am getting to "critical mass" with her apartment, which means showings every day. I suggest we part ways; she concurs in an email that suggests we were never friends, I had only assumed it. Yes, I had been assuming this for 30 plus years. The next time she needs to be picked up at the plastic surgeon's office, taken home and stayed with until she feels better, I wonder who she will call.

Maybe G. was never the G I thought she was, which is something she actually said to me. Perhaps that brave young woman with the sizzling intellect was not her, but some version of myself, and I was not ready to claim who I really was. I have a temper, but I have to be pushed fairly hard for it to show, and I have managed to come through most crises (including my current financial crisis) with flying colors. I have bad moments but I do not back down. I even contacted Debtors Anonymous this week because I must have taken a wrong turn in not saving for this current monsoon of a day. I don't blame others for where I am; my life is my choices. After G and I had a horrendously clear flurry of emails where I also said my piece, I slept for almost a whole afternoon. I woke up feeling unimpeded.

And so, this afternoon, two people walked into my office, a lovely mom and daughter from La Jolla, California. What brought them in was G's listing, still glowing up in the window as we have not had time to take it down. They are looking for a one-bedroom on the same street as G's apartment to use as a pied a terre; a second daughter is coming here next year. The mother grew up in Philadelphia; the daughter is in cinema studies; we talked for an hour. I think I have some new buyers. Truly qualified ones, with a clear, uncomplicated agenda. So tonight I am now H, which stands for (of course) Happy. Life, however difficult, also forces you to go on, just at the right moment.

I'm Not Waving, I'm Drowning

The poet Stevie Smith wrote a wonderful piece with a line about a figure far out in the ocean, who seems to be waving at friends on the beach but is, in fact, drowning.

That seems to be me.

I get up every day, get dressed, take Rocco (my dog) outside, go to work, do more work, and then do more work, then I come home, do more work, watch some tv, work during commercials, and collapse sometime around midnight on my bed. Oh yes, in there somewhere I take Rocco out one or two more times. And in my dreams, I work.

I usually smile and wave at people I see down the hall, across the street, in the buildings where I am selling property, at my office. But a distance is opening up, and something is creeping into my lungs like water, slowly stealing my ability to breathe......oh yes, it's the bank account draining! An all too familiar sound these days. A friend of mine calls this separation from life - this distance or asphyxia - like living under water. I am oiling my wetsuit as we speak.

Today, I lost my health insurance. I expected it - my fabulous company has been carrying me for many months. Now I am not sick, and I can replace my current mood meds with LOTS of activity and, hopefully, more sunlight than rain, but it's always a gamble. My home looks like a warehouse as I am running an ebay business out of it; my desk is chaotic; my dog has almost become un-housetrained as he feels my pain and anxiety so I usually come home to a welcome back dog mess. I have been served with a rent demand, but no lawsuit yet - my attorney says it's imminent. And none of my listings are selling or renting. But lots of people are smiling at me. Or waving.

What's a girl to do?

Tomorrow I am taking a mental health day. No work, no real estate, a lot of dog (Rocco is wonderful), some art, some fun conversation, one great meal, and long long walks. I am going to take myself out of the medium that is drowning me and try to find new ways to breathe. So when you see me in the street, I may look a bit haggard, but it is me, and I assure you, the smile on my face is real. And I will NOT be drowning, but waving.

Bells from the Past: Old Boyfriends Chime In

By my age, everyone has something of a past. And parts of that past always stand out more than others.

For me, one remarkable moment was my last year of graduate school at Columbia, where my aspirations to become a famous poet were humming along. Let's say it's the late 70s, a kind of TAXI DRIVER ambiance pervades the city, bar after bar on the Upper West Side blinks its name and wares in aqua or pink neon lights, and one block from Dodge Hall was considered the ghetto, or Harlem as we now know it. I was studying with Nobel laureates, editing the school literary magazine, and thinking about my first book. For years I had lived with a very kind and sweet guy, then a law student - let's call him Jeremy. And all of a sudden my heart got taken hostage by another, very quickly one day at one of those bars, I looked at this man and knew my life was about to change forever. Let's call him Miles, like "miles to go before I sleep." He was, after all, a writer in my program and a good one at that. I fell in love, left Jeremy, stayed with Miles until we burned out, and eventually ended up with neither of them.

When my finances began their downward spiral this winter, it was these two men I thought of. Jeremy first, of course, because I thought he would easily be able to help me with a loan and would also be compassionate about my situation and likes to help people. Miles, well, because I still think about Miles a lot. Not every day, but at least once a week because it was with him that I had the best sex of my life. He was not as nice as Jeremy, he did not understand things as astutely as Jeremy, but he got right down into the muckiness and mess of our mutual chemical dependence on each other's physical selves. The dark side, the shadow, as Jung might call it, got full throttle with Miles. And I felt like I was slipping into a truly dark place that he would understand. With Jeremy, the sun was always shining and, if not, a replacement for it had to be found immediately. No shadows allowed.

So I emailed Jeremy and asked him to call me on my cell, I had a favor to ask. He did call me,more quickly than I anticipated, and we traded small talk and biographical details for about 15 minutes when I finally just said "if I do not ask you this right now, I never will." I told him I needed a $5,000 loan for six month.s The silence on the other end of the line was so thick I thought he had hung up. "Wow," he said when he collected himself, "wow." I felt the first tickle of impatience in my stomach. Then I am hearing about the children still in college, how people are not paying their bills (Jeremy is a defense attorney), and how he would have to ask his wife. Now the wife and I have a checquered history which is whole other story; but I knew the moment he said those words I was dead in the water, and waves of sadness rushed over me. "OK, sure," is what came out. And at that point, he pulled into his office parking lot and had to hang up the phone.

Miles, on the other hand, despite a less tactful and calculated approach to life, chose this moment to prove he really could be empathetic. "You will always have family as long as I am alive," he wrote, "and if I had the money, I'd give you thrice what you need." Of course, he has no money. Miles is a part-time professor and full time dad to a lately conceived 11 year old who has him busy deciphering the body language of parents at little league games, which mystifies him. The real world was never Miles' best suit; he had been able to write brilliantly subdued fiction and now his life did not allow him that, or so he perceived. We wrote back and forth via email, and the result is we truly are friends again and probably always were. He married the woman he originally dumped for me, and so he is kind of consistent. The one thing I saw about Miles that I had not seen when we could not keep our hands off each other was how tightly he was now holding onto his family. I used to think he was the opposite of Jeremy - one wild, one tame - but in this, they were equal and the same.

The only difference in this moment was that Jeremy -- having studied Jungian psychology in Switzerland, ever the referee and problem-solver among his friends and family -- couldn't really deal with my fortunes being on the skids. He didn't call me back for a week, and then instead wrote me an email saying he could not afford to loan me money for all the reasons he had stated previously but to keep in touch with him. I was and am not sure if he felt horror, anger, fear or any of the above. Let me just say one thing about Jeremy's wife - she is, was, and always has been very wealthy. The fact that she 'dated' him for two years in the car that took them back and forth between Manhattan and their Long Island law school (my car, in fact) doesn't even enter her head, and certainly not his, nor all the things Jeremy never disclosed at the time, wanting to play it safe until he watched me get enveloped by Miles, at which point all bets were off.

So where I thought I would be thanking Jeremy and forgiving Miles for some ridiculous response, it is the opposite. I thank Miles for the time he is taking to talk to me, to remind me of who I am, to tell me (not in so many words) that I will be OK. Jeremy, well, I lived with the guy for five years and I never for one moment felt taken for granted or simply ignored and now I do. For all the times I stepped on his soft spots, I am sorry; and I forgive him his inability to either tell me what he really thinks of all this or find a way to help me when I know if he wanted to, he could. Without Jeremy, I would never have grown up and accomplished all that I have done; he gave me language and tools to work through problems. Without Miles, I would never have grown into myself as a woman. And although I am poverty-stricken, I have riches aplenty from moving through interesting life cycles, two of which, these guys, have made it all the more worthwhile, all the light and shadow, for better and for worse.

Good as Gold

I bet you don't know about the Provident Loan Society in New York City; not many people do. It sits obscurely at the corner of 25th Street and Central Park South in a very small very old-time bank-like building, in a part of Manhattan that has little or no identity. And I think Provident likes it that way -- to be as anonymous as possible.



Provident is a non-profit lender that makes small loans based on collateral of gold and jewelry - mostly gold. The loans are six months in length and if you cannot pay them off at that time, you get by with just paying interest. You go into a small, neutral-colored room with four bank teller windows covered with bullet proof glass and four chairs to sit in, and wait for an associate to help you fill out the almost negligible forms. Family legend has it that my father, who died 20 years ago, would take his more worthless gold coins and fragments there and get money to feed his gambling habit. My brother tells stories of having to wait in the car at rush hour in Manhattan while my father waited in line to get dough for his gold. It made him (my father) gleeful that he could trade what he saw as junk for greenbacks. And it made for many hours over the blackjack tables in Atlantic City.



I took my first Provident loan out sometime in the late 90s. I do not remember much, except it was for 4-500 dollars and I paid it back almost immediately. Over the years, I have been known to take out small loans here and there. But with this latest downturn, I suddenly owed Provident 2,100 dollars that I just didn't have. I had the due date circled in red on my calendar.



I called up the office and got a guy with a sense of humor; I told him my problem. "Why are you sweating it," he asked, "just let us put the material at auction, your loan will be paid, and you might even get some extra money from it which we would pay to you. Gold IS at an all time high." He asked if there was anything in my collateral of sentimental value; I said no, but hoped the gold nugget dug from my grandfather's short-lived gold mine in Fresno, California in 1928 was not in the group (it wasn't). I pursed my lips; I shivered. I hated not being able to pay something off. No matter that it could work out better for everyone; my nails were bitten, by the time of the auction, almost to the quick. And then I forgot about it.



So here we are at the end of April, a month after my gold has gone the way of all goods at a New York auction gallery. I go to my mailbox and there is a note from Provident. The envelope was very thin and I felt like I did when I had been rejected from Sarah Lawrence College. So I very slowly opened it. "Your valuables," it informed me, "have been sold as required by law and there is an overage." Good, I thought, maybe couple of hundred dollars, and then I thought I was reading it wrong. "The overage," it stated, "is 2,775 dollars and you need to come in and file paperwork so we can give you a check."



I was there the next day; the money is now in my bank account. Rocco, my Yorkie, can have his rabies shot and yearly health scan; I can pay my accountant for my 2006 returns (I am catching up). I can even pay the attorney working on my possible eviction. And now I am looking everywhere for gold and I've found more brooches, a chain or two, all of which mean nothing to me unless they generate some greenbacks. And how does all this strike me? I have only one thing to say: it's divinely Providential.

Private School Vs. Private Parts.....

I went to private school in one of the oldest cities in America, a school to which George Washington sent his stepchildren and where a large bell from that era still heralds the start of the school day.

We wore uniforms that consisted of pleated plaid skirts, navy blazers piped with the same plaid under which we had short-sleeved white shirts with Peter Pan collars (the collar closed with a circle pin), navy blue knee socks and dark loafers (Weejuns were the thing in those days. The ones with the leather fringe that you'd bend back to make the shoes look worn).

Our rebellion consisted - among the girls - of seeing how high we could hike up our skirts until the dreaded headmistress dragged us down to her office or we were sent there by a new algebra teacher with a mission. The headmistress, let's call her Miss McCray, was a tall, slightly mannish woman with unruly black curls and, usually, a smile on her face. Except when she was called to skirt duty - then she was all business. We would go into her office where first she would make us kneel and then she would take out her old wooden ruler.

I know you are expecting some horrific story of child abuse, but all Miss McCray wanted was to measure the length of our skirts and make sure they were NO MORE than 4 inches above the knee while kneeling. It was the absolute law - even written in a terse letter to our parents, guardians of our virtue. I was in that office at least twice a week, while (let's call her) Poppy Mast was in there more but got detention less. Poppy's dad was on the board of trustees until indicted for tax issues years later. I once sat in Poppy's living room and listened to her father kick a suitcase around in the room over us, upset that I was there on a school night or perhaps for other reasons not relevant here.

Anyway, I digress. I usually got detention along with a thorough scolding that my underwear was not meant for public view. Detention consisted of being sent to a boys' home room (we had separate classes). Where anyone got the idea that this was punishment for girls, I'll never know. It was a chance to try and pull down Mark Maresco's socks with my toes, or to smile at Mr. Miracolo, the yummy teacher of French who ran the home room and who, 8 years later, actually asked me for a date. I was usually exiled to the boys' side with Susie Sperber, a buxom blonde with a big laugh and lots of jangly gold bracelets. You could hear us laughing and jangling, I think, in the next county.

So here I am, poverty stricken and suddenly, once again, creating a uniform that I can vary slightly day to day so i do not have to buy new clothes. I have my private school to thank for the idea - it's extremely liberating. Black pants, black top, red top, black pants, colorful scarf, long coat, short trench, earrings or no earrings. Gone are the days when I am thrilled to show off my Hanes cotton bikinis, but I do like a little cleavage now and then. Sometimes I wonder if I go too far and what Miss McCray might think the appropriate decollete would be. 5 inches from the base of the throat while looking straight ahead? I think Miss McCray would find that acceptable.

Taxis vs. Public Transport

Today, Easter, I took a bus uptown to work. This is a new vista for me, public transport. The bus was late, crowded, and since it looked like the Crips and the Bloods had set up house there, I stood for most of the trip to 57th Street. Taking the bus is so, well, real. I looked up to read all that billboard drivel that lines the walls above the windows. There was a quote from Shakespeare, from THE TEMPEST: "o brave new world/that has people such as these in it" or something to that effect. I looked around. Yes, it is a brave new world. Indeed.

I'm trying to make the best of my own new world order. As I waited for the bus today (for example) and it didn't appear for 15 minutes, I decided that this waiting was teaching me patience. When the bus stopped, and the lady in the wheelchair showed up from nowhere and held us up another 7 minutes as she boarded, I knew that patience was joining hands with tolerance. Kum-by-yah.

When I hail a cab, I thought,I place myself alone in the universe, above and disconnected from humanity except for the driver. I'm a person with nothing on her mind but getting to the next place and nothing to do but think about getting there until she gets there, an exercise in abject narcissism. Taking buses and subways is like playing bumper cars with humanity; wherever you turn, walk, run or sit, humanity cannot be avoided. At any moment you can be threatened, approached, asked to move, offered music (for a price). The process of getting someplace cannot be disconnected from the triumph of arrival. In fact, it makes getting there -- alive and in one piece - that much sweeter, and often punctuated with a triumphant sigh of relief. You have really achieved something.

I do not miss my taxis. Taxi TV was repetitive and dull and featured Regis Philbin; the credit card system never worked, or drivers lied about it not working in order to get cash. One in five taxi drivers has not bathed in recent memory and one in two insists on talking on his Bluetooth so you are five times more likely to get into an accident. I have been in at least one taxi accident per year since I've been in NYC. On one particularly hot summer day, a bike messenger, reacting to my driver cutting him off, actually ripped a window out of my side of the cab, leaving me covered with glass, and obliging me to wait for the cop who was invariably summoned. I have been hit on, yelled at, lectured and opined in cabs until I couldn' t hear myself think.

There is a delicious anonymity in taking public transport. The bodies are there, but no one really wants to talk. We're as random and singular as atoms in a laboratory, except we have a certain degree of choice. You can move away from the person who stinks (usually) and everyone is on his way somewhere other than where you are going, so they tend not to bug you. If they do bug you, cops get off and on the trains and buses with some regularity and they let everyone stare at their guns. And now I only have to count my quarters to make sure I have the right fare, rather than having to dig out a 20 dollar bill, which is what my bank machine gives me, to cover a 5 dollar ride And how often do the drivers have change? You know already.

So, onward and upward. I am now as familiar with the M11 and the M23 as I am with the floorboards in my hallway. I eagerly await the advent of the Second Avenue subway. More horizons to conquer!





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ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SUPERMARKET

Let's talk about comparative shopping.

I am one of those baby boomer holdouts when it comes to canned food. I eat canned tuna, I eat canned salmon, I will even eat peas, stringbeans and asparagus from cans. Maybe not as nutritious as the real thing straight from the ground, but certainly better than popcorn for dinner and you don't have to wash it.

My monetary situation is now so grave it is hard to look at 2.09 for certain canned foods packed by Green Giant or Del Monte, so I have taken to searching the store for alternatives. Enter: Goya Foods! My friends and I always avoided the Spanish food sections of the supermarket, racist prigs that we were (and I emphasize "were"). There was always some unconscious view that those foods were for the people in the "projects" on either side of our fancy shmancy red brick neighborhood, or for the few Domina-Ricans who still managed an apartment in Manhattan. We'd turn our noses up for the opportunity to pay MORE.

Well, GUESS WHAT -- Goya sells fabulous cut beets in a can for 1.19. ONE DOLLAR AND 19 CENTS as opposed to spending almost a dollar more for Del Monte's fancier can (is it really fancier? maybe I am just reacting to the familiar logo). And they have an enormous variety of canned beans, from butter beans to pintos, limas to garbanzos, all at around 1.19 or so per can. Hey, Progresso: you aren't even that cheap ON SALE! They also sell boxes full of cookable rice and beans (the perfect protein, so they say) in many variations. I am getting addicted to the random bowl of red beans and rice - and a box is good for several meals at a mere 2.39. I don't even think Hamburger Helper is that cheap.

So let's think of this recession as a time when we are called upon to broaden our horizons. I now walk to work one way in order to burn off the extra rice - and it's working. Do not worry about Goya -- seems my nephew went to boarding school in New Jersey with the heir to the fortune, so the company certainly doesn't need us as much as we need them right now.