I'd Like to Go to Turkey

I ate Thanksgiving dinner at a Peruvian restaurant in my neighborhood this year. It was so refreshing to taste fresh lime, hot pepper and other herbs, even mixed into a vile seafood potpourri. That's right, I ate seafood! I wanted to break out of my dietary limitations, and I did, though I could only manage few bites and my companion gallantly ate the rest of the weird, rubbery shards of shrimp and squid (whoever would have thought a human would ingest that stuff?)

The turkey came with rice and an orange and garlic sauce that resembled gravy not at all, but was delicious. I didn't miss the stuffing, the well-meaning but unpleasant requisite vegetables like broccoli and squash, the cranberry sauce or any of it. It felt liberating to eat the food of a South American maratime community (if the mural on the side of the restaurant could be believed). Everything about the experience was fun. The only thing I missed was pie, since the prix fixe dessert wasn't remotely pie-like, and I had to ask for flan instead. But flan was fine.

I do wish I could go to Turkey. Lately I feel trapped in a few narrow settings. It seems strange but I'm finding New York devoid of stimulation. It's probably a result of my weird lifestyle, which involves loads of indecisive dithering and then many uninspiring trips to coffee shops. I keep hoping the next cup of coffee will unlock my creativity, but it doesn't.

I sent a piece on the lack of women in the current comedy scene to Slate and the New Yorker. They both rejected it summarily. Oh, maybe not summarily. But evidently no one wants a scathingly sarcastic response to the New York Times magazine's humor issue, which featured only one woman, and that one a complete non-starter in the world of comedy.

No, see, that's the kind of thinking that exacerbates the difficulty of being a freelance writer. "No one wants my writing" is an easy mood to slip into and it hardly makes new ideas come marching in with freshness and clarity. Clarity! Why is it so hard? But I think if I could go to Turkey, I could achieve clarity. The coffee is stronger there, for one thing.

Peace out.

Lord, It's Hard to Be Type A

When I worked in midtown, one of my pet peeves (that’s too mild – sources of rage) was the way the traffic lights are timed to halt you at every block. Only by assiduous rushing, lucky pedestrian-dodging and eventually flat-out running can you catch a Walk just before it turns into Don’t Walk. Then don’t imagine you’re rewarded for your athletic efforts. You’ll get stopped at the next light, sure as shooting, unless you repeat your rushing, dodging and sprinting. Often you simply can’t make it because of the crowds on the sidewalk and you end up trapped in one, waiting for the eternity of a New York traffic light to change.

This scenario was unbearable to me. When I walk, I like to walk without stopping. I don’t even like to stop for street performers or sidewalk art. I used to tell my mother she should wear blinders, like a horse, so I could walk with her because otherwise she would drive me mad with her frequent stops to take an interest in some art thing going on nearby.

Art, shmart. When I walk, I want to keep moving. I’m a fast walker and that’s why I don’t understand why the traffic lights are against me in New York. Shouldn’t they reward the Type A walker? Instead they seemed specifically designed to frustrate her, in particular. “Don’t think you can get up a head of steam,” they seem to say. “Slow down, look at the advertising, think about buying something.” That just occurred to me. What other reason could they have for frustrating and angering the fast walker so persistently? I used to get so angry walking south from 38th St. to 33rd on 6th or Broadway that I wished I hadn’t even exited my dismal office building (hi, old friends!)

I just don’t get it. I feel angry sitting here just remembering it. I thought I’d mention, though, that I’ve recently noticed the same phenomenon in my Brooklyn neighborhood. A swift pace of walking is rewarded by a Don’t Walk sign hitting you in the face at every corner. The blocks are longer, so the irritability is less. A modicom. A hair.