TIL guthub.com redirects to github.com. I'm sad it isn't a recipe site.
Come back, Astoria
The wind whipped my hair, slathering it around my skull. I was standing alone outside my family's church, looking up the hill to the grotto where the Mother Mary statue stood. We went to a Protestant community church, even though my parents were raised Catholic, and they raised me hair-shirt New Age. My pants rippled against the wind.
The "church" was a rec hall the congregation rented from a convent. We hired a visiting priest every week to give the sermon, and took turns bringing wine and bread for the sacrament. The convent was perched on the New Jersey cliffs overlooking New York City. For a while, Gwyneth Paltrow's aunt went there.
It was after Service as I stared up the hill. Maybe I was eleven. Wind, dark clouds, the manicured humble grandeur of the grotto and its winding approach; it dripped dramatics.
I lived in my head, a verified space cadet, as my aunt put it. I'd wander around, head down, too scared to look the world in the eye, lost in stories I told myself of saving the day from incursions of Saturday morning cartoon villains invading the real world. I didn't identify with kids who saw fantasy as an escape. It was fun! Just an interesting place. Why imagine what you already see when you could imagine anything? Why then, did I always imagine a fight?
I was a good boy. Very dutiful. Unwavering dogma at home; things would have to work out if I did everything I was told. "This is my son, of whom I am well pleased," my mother would coo, reciting the Bible, God speaking of Jesus. Escape was for lesser minds. I was too mature, too knowing, too far down the rabbit hole.
Everything I did and thought and felt needed a definitive ending. A purpose. An answer. Leaving questions open felt like a cop out. No, a betrayal. I had divine expectations to live up to. It was my destiny, an inalienable fact. And yet, I could still fail at it. I was failing. The gap from what I was, to what I must be, was immense. Of course it was. How can that gap ever be closed?
Yet that day, it all fell into place. I had claimed my birthright. There was no one else around to tell me otherwise. I lifted my head, eyes raised, invigorated, a hero. I saw my path—mine! It was snaking up the hill, to the grotto. I knew every curve. I knew it. I would meet The Devil at the top. There would be a fight, of course, and I would win.
I've known Byrd and Valentina for over a decade. Byrd and I met doing improv in New York, before we both burnt out. I ended up returning several years later, but Byrd decided he'd had enough of that shit, and became a school teacher. Byrd was always an encyclopedia, and emotionally intelligent, so I can only imagine he's an excellent teacher. He loves Long Island pop punk, goofy, well crafted jokes, The Knicks, and golf.
Valentina and I met when she and Byrd got together. She's warm and bubbly, with strong opinions and a stronger belly laugh. She has a background in illustration, and now works trying to make people's lives better as a UX designer. She loves cute things, tea, books, and silliness.
Byrd and Valentina are lovely people. They converted their second bedroom to an office and exercise room, where they also have a guest bed. I was got to take advantage of that bed several times.
They live in Astoria, the same neighborhood where my ex-wife and I used to live. We were there for seven years, before my ex's art school ambitions and COVID moved us out. We would see them a lot, and I needed to see them again in this new reality, to keep seeing them, to develop a new relationship with the place.
I'd wander the streets, seeing familiar shops, restaurants, street corners, parks, all soaked with my past life, someone else's life. Putting into context all the memories. So much time. Was it always good? Always bad? Always both? Why didn't I leave, even as the whole thing crashed. Just trying, trying, trying to pull the vengeance out of the ghosts around town.
There are three cats—Peter, Bernie, and Chantelle.
Peter is the oldest, a grumpy tabby. He is a dick. He howls and tries to fight the other cats, and slops around because, as Valentina sarcastically whines in his pretend voice, "my life is so haaaaaard". He likes to be pet with wet hands.
Bernie is a large, sweet, shy black cat, who mostly spends his time hiding. He's very affectionate when he feels safe, which, in my experience, ends up being about six minutes a day.
Chantelle is the youngest, the only girl, lithe, with an orange coat, and a born hunter. She has her own time zone, mostly ignoring the boys, and is not very bright. She has a blithe swagger that demands attention without seeking it. She'll often be in the closet, not so much hiding, but lying in wait.
There's a big cat puzzle in the middle of the living room. It's this big, plastic spiral, with clear tubes wrapping around it. Treats are put in the top, and the cats have to bat them around the twisting tubes through periodic slots to get them down to the bottom and out through a dispenser.
Chantelle was very good at this game. Peter was okay. Bernie would watch from under something.
While Byrd and Valentina were on vacation, I played the first few dungeons of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening for the Nintendo Switch. The game's art direction is gorgeous, recalling shiny plastic toys come to life, but with a human, lived-in warmth. The whole time I played, I felt a blanketing sense of childhood, in small part from the narrative tinged with innocence, longing, and impermanence, but mostly because it's a remake of a game that came out when I was a child. Guiding the hero Link through the dungeons felt safe, and I relished the indulgence of the escape.
How long could I allow myself to stay in the fantasy, the enforced hallucination, the tunnel vision of solving imaginary problems, secure in the non-reality, yet aware of the indulgence, aware of the pushing away of the hard table in front of me, the unread emails? I craved the escape, and allowed it—we all need a break, right?—but not for long. It couldn't be the last thing I did before bed. I couldn't play in the morning before work, or during a lunch break. There had to be rules. I couldn't afford to get lost.
I set out with purpose. I could see Satan's face in the clouds, really see it, just about! I could hear his laugh, right there at the edge of my hearing. The wind grew as I crested the hill, painting my clothes against my body. Destiny, doom, extravagance, purpose. Fear scattered like insects brought to light. I glowered, coiled. My inevitability laid before me. The grotto, the statue of Mother Mary, the view of New York City. Giddy, I slashed the air with my fists. Again. Again. Again.
I was breathing hard. Satan stayed in my mind.
Coward.
The days were short, the nights were long.
I'd wrap myself in the thick comforter of the guest bed, pulling the covers up over my head to block out the first rays of the morning sun. While I slept, Chantelle chewed off one of my watch straps. Turns out, the watch didn't need it, so I guess I didn't either.
The strap is looser, but here I am, still in time.
I wrote my second essay on not having a home last year, following my divorce. I think it turned out pretty good. Come back, Astoria.
I configured my Neovim LSP error symbol to a skull and cross bones, so now whenever I write bad code I feel like a pirate. 🏴☠️
How am I doing? Well today I’m slamming assorted rice crackers 🍘
Attack Of The Rabinutcions
Hello gentle readers. Have you ever had dream that felt so real, you thought you were awake? Suppose you just had two extremely vivid nightmares: one where a giant T-Rex is chasing you through your house, and the other where Hofstra put ugly blue signs in front of every building. You wake up and wander around campus, and suddenly you don’t know what to believe.
If you think about it, there are plenty of things at Hofstra that are so bizarre they seem like they’re straight out of some whacked out dream, and mind you, I’ve had some pretty strange dreams. Recently I had one where I was flying after a train full of poisonous jellyfish on a cutting board. Hofstra consistently operates on that same level of absurdity.
Think about all the Twilight Zone stuff that goes on here. You know how it goes. You get to class in the morning two minutes late, and already the classroom is full. Your professor is one of two kinds of people; either they completely ignore you, or they cough loudly, stamp their foot, and tells everyone but you that three lates equal an absence. Your professor goes on to talk about their overall satisfaction with the class, their overall satisfaction with the University, and maybe even their overall satisfaction their personal life.
Ultimately this lapse in attention will cost you on the test. You’ll be sitting there, pencil in hand, frantically thinking back on everything your professor said in a desperate attempt to remember something that will help on the brutal multiple choice question you’re faced with. Yet try as you might, you just can’t remember who your professor’s last lover was, and why they broke up.
In your next class you are unfortunate enough to get stuck sitting right next to That Kid. You all know who I’m talking about, and if you don’t, you are That Kid. He always has a completely unrelated comment about everything that utterly misses the point of the topic. For instance, if your professor asks what Plato’s allegory of the cave means, a typical That Kid response would be, “Well, maybe the people didn’t want to leave the cave because they hit their head on a stalactite. I mean, I was in a cave once, and I hit my head; maybe that happened to Plato.” If that wasn’t annoying enough, his voice sounds like he has a kazoo stuck up his nose, kind of like a cross between Rick Moranis and a foghorn. Plus the bastard always has a cold.
After what seems like three snot filled hours (But was really only two snot filled hours), you’re finally done with class. However it’s midterm season, so you head to the library to study. Unfortunately, the library has been replaced with the bridge of a 1950s rocket ship. Now, there are only two logical explanations for this. One, that there was a sale on old Star Trek sets and Rabinowitz couldn’t resist, or two, that not only do aliens exist, but they’re also Hofstra’s architects. Suspecting the latter, you quietly draw your laser gun. Senses tingling, you creep deeper into the bridge, clinging to the shadows. This stealthy infiltration is flawless, except that actually finding shadows to hide in on the bridge proves highly difficult. All of them seem to have been exterminated by the large florescent lights giving you a tan. Well, and alien tan.
So you decide to play it cool. Walking with a healthy Han Solo swagger, you approach the main desk and suavely ask the librarian for a book’s location. She smiles warmly, giving you clear and detailed instructions, mentioning that if you need any more help to feel free to ask. Realizing that she must be an alien, you quickly shoot her. Any human librarian employed at Hofstra would still be working on the concept that they were being spoken to.
After the shot, hostilities break out immediately. You run staggering from the bridge, hot laser beams streaking through the billowing smoke; you hadn’t bargained on so many Hofstra employees being aliens. You head for safety across the Unispan only to find that the student center has transformed into a xenophile launch pad! Also, for some reason there is a tarp covered station with big green surfboards tacked to it. Maybe the aliens have a sense of humor? Or maybe Hofstra finally got wise about global warming and the surfboards are their emergency Tsunami escape system. Whatever the case may be, you are now surrounded by pissed off aliens with lasers and spiky things. As your doom slowly closes around you, you think back on the good times. There is a searing hot pain, and you wake up.
It was all a dream: just a terrible, terrible dream. You eat breakfast, take a shower, and pick up the Chronicle: another ordinary day. You scan the front page, and your eyes go wide. Your hand shakes, your lip trembles. The headline reads, “President Rabinowitz A Big Alien And Proud Of It!”
“Noooo!” You scream into the sky as Axin and The NAB blast into space.
Is this how it ends? Do the credits roll on a sad note? Is this a story of one helpless person in a sea of horror, doubt, and aliens?
No, I say! The human race will not go quietly into the night, nay, we will fight back with everything we have! Extraterrestrials will not run this University!
That is why I hereby challenge President Stuart Rabinowitz to a duel of honor in the quad on Monday October 22nd at 1:00pm sharp. The rules will be simple: no lasers, no cheating, and no wimping out. If Rabinowitz wins, I will expose my identity to the world and I’ll allow him to call me a stink pants. However, if I win he will be forced to withdraw his alien forces immediately from Hofstra, or at the very least, remove that rampaging T-Rex that always makes me late for class. I think the terms are fair.
I’ll see you on the 22nd Rabinowitz, and may the best species win!
Want to ask me a question, tell me I suck, or warn me that Rabinowitz has a gun? Email your letters to Silence Doless (Duel This) to bronzehedwick@gmail.com
The columns are getting weirder, and leaning more heavily into my then obsession with fantasy versus reality. I was also very angry in college, and that shows here. I lightly edited this one to remove some unnecessary and I think problematic language that I now regret, and will probably do that from now on when applicable. That challenge really was printed in the paper.
Got a futon today. This upgrades my bed from a seven month old foam camping mat to a futon. 🛌