I don't practice Santeria

An update on the leaky ceiling: it's done leaking. We did spend Tuesday night on the floor of the living room, but only because we couldn't be arsed to move the mattress back into the bedroom after the super stopped the leak. Also, the heat has been on for the last few days and it is glorious. I like to sit on the radiator in the living room and get my bottom all toasty.

Speaking of leaks, my work building needed an emergency water shutdown on Wednesday night, which meant I got an unexpected day off on Thursday. It was like a snow day, but with good weather! I loaded up my iPod with some spooooooky podcasts and spent the day leaf-peeping in Prospect Park.

Prospect Park is a wonderful place. Central Park gets all the press, but I think this is really the crown jewel of the city park system. It's much less crowded and more thickly wooded than Central Park, so there's always a private place to sit and think and worship the gods of the Old World.

I don't claim to know that much about it outside of Sublime songs and flashbacks on "Orange is the New Black," but apparently Prospect Park is the site of neighborhood Santeria rituals. (Not MY neighborhood, I don't think Park Slope can handle anything headier than an Episcopalian egg hunt on Easter Sunday, but the park is big and bordered by many more people than these kale-eating Labradoodle-walkers.) A couple of weeks ago, the BF and I were down by the Boat House and we saw a group of people in a gazebo by a waterfall, singing Hallelujah and waving white flags around. And while they might have just been having a very enthusiastic picnic with REALLY good sandwiches, this Thursday I found an offering of coconuts and limes hidden in a tree hollow on one of the nature trails.

It's either Santeria or the squirrels are getting ambitious.

I'm just glad it was fruit and not ritualistic goat heads, because we live in a mildly upsetting world where goat heads in Prospect Park are a thing. (There are no pictures of them in that link, but the links in the article will lead you to pictures of the Prospect Park goat heads, so you've been warned.)

What a fun end to the month of October! All that's left is my annual Catwoman Halloween costume. I went for a 60s Mod look this year. For 2015, I'm thinking Punk Rock Catwoman--with jeans, and possibly tights under the jeans.

I was so cold.

Witches

In the build up to Halloween, I like to get into the mood of the season with changes to my wardrobe and my media consumption. Being a New Yorker, I already have plenty of black in my closet.

Did I mention I went to the New Yorker Festival last week?

But the other stuff gets a little trickier the older that I get. I'm easily scared and susceptible to nightmares, so "scary" movies and television outside of children's specials have to be carefully screened. Slasher flicks simultaneously bore and aggravate me with their flat characters and backwards sexual politics. (I don't feel catharsis seeing women in peril, I just feel frustrated.) Vampires have come and gone through my life--many middle school wages wasted on the diminishing returns of Anne Rice novels. And while zombies are having a moment in pop culture that doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon, I hate them and everything they stand for.

Modern fears of overpopulation and scarcity of resources.

While this would usually be the point in the conversation where I say something pretentious like, "I enjoy more high-brow meditations on death and mortality," the truth is, I don't like that stuff either. The BF has been re-watching old episodes of "The Twilight Zone" to enrich his Halloween experience, and it's one of the finest television shows ever made, but he likes it with only one light on instead of ALL the light on, so I make him put on headphones and turn the laptop away from me.

*panicked sobbing*

My friend R had this same problem when she was looking for books for a community story time event she leads on Sundays. She wanted at least half of the books she presented during October to have female protagonists, and she wanted the books to be genuinely creepy while still being appropriate for children as young as nine. It was a nearly impossible task. All the texts she found were either about boys--there's LOTS of spooky tween-ish stuff out there for boys--or were too sexually explicit because of some romance triangle between the girl and a ghost pirate and a zombie.

Young adult literature is getting out of hand.

It's frustrating because I LOVE Halloween. I dress up every year (usually as Catwoman). I've been in the Village Halloween Parade twice. I used to do a Ghost Walk in Honolulu Chinatown every October for my college's creative writing club. I'm into all this weird shit, not because I wanted to be scared by it but because I'm enchanted with it. It doesn't repel me--it attracts me.

In a fit of pique, with the knowledge that October was almost half over and all I'd done was watch a mediocre Roman Polanski movie called "The Ninth Gate," I found myself online, asking the Internet to recommend stuff that was scary, but not too scary, maybe feminist, and wasn't about zombies or vampires or werewolves or romance (I hate romance books, but that's a post for another time). And you know what you get with those search criteria?

My other middle school obsession!

Witches! It's one of the few horror genres where the female characters are empowered, not in peril. Perfect Halloween subject matter for a feminist who's also kind of a weenie. I'm currently reading a non-fiction book called "Caliban and the Witch," which discusses the historical phenom of witch-burning as it related to the rise of capitalism and the subjugation of the New World (BF says, "Of course you are."), and a fiction book called "The Night Circus," about dueling magicians and the magic circus they use as their battleground. I'm reading as fast as I can, because as I said, fit of pique, and I've got seventeen books reserved in my hold queue at the Brooklyn Public Library. Plus I still need to do stuff like go to work and shower.

"I only wish I had more time to seek out the Dark Forces and join their hellish crusade."

But it's not just books about witches and satirical re-watchings of Nicolas Cage in "The Wicker Man." I'm doing Halloweeny stuff outside my apartment, too. I attended an event last week called "All Them Witches," which was a series of short lectures on witches in television and movies: "Bewitched," "Excalibur," "Haxan," "The Devil Rides Out," "The Craft" (naturally),"Lords of Salem," and others. I even won the raffle! Here is my winning ticket, a drawing of a stick figure witch with skulls on her broom, riding triumphantly over a burning church and terrified peasants weeping for their puny god.

Thank goodness it was a random lottery and not based on something like skill or talent.

There's a kitty on the broom, too, but I don't think you can see it in this picture. I won perfume samples from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and a poster from the event signed by all the performers.

Last Friday, I was a different kind of witch altogether. My school held a Harry Potter-themed fall festival for the students, and I got to dress up to work one of the tables. Or rather, the BF dressed me. I don't know how to tie a Windsor knot, though I may have to learn, because I got a lot of compliments on my outfit at work that day.

My beard was also especially luxurious.

What do the next two weeks of October hold? Pumpkin carving? Apple picking? Visits to cat sanctuaries?

Probably just lots and lots of reading. Seventeen books, what was I thinking? "The Craft" is on Netflix Instant, for heaven's sake!

The Storm

I stuffed plastic bags and duct tape into the cracks of my window frames, turned the fridge down as cold as it would go, packed my little blue suitcase, and left my apartment on Sunday afternoon at the same time as my upstairs neighbor S and her cat. It all felt very familiar. Didn't we just evacuate for a hurricane last year? S said that she was taking her cat to her sister's place in Brooklyn Heights, but that she might come back herself and weather the storm in our building because Irene hadn't been that bad. On the one hand, that is specious reasoning and I did not agree with her with her logic--on the other hand, I left my laptop computer and all my jewelry in my own apartment, so I guess the specious was going around. 

I stood at the bus stop and watched the restaurant put tarps and sandbags down over their cellar doors. Two bulldozers were parked on top of the giant pile of salt across the street. The East River is right on the other side of that pile. Clearly the dock workers thought that shit was about to get real.

Won't the salt just dissolve in a flood?

A guy with a thick beard and horn-rimmed glasses came up next to me evacuating with nothing except a Scrabble box under his arm. He didn't even bother to pack a change of underoos. Hipsters and hurricanes, I thought. He's either the smartest or the dumbest person at this bus stop right now, but there's no way to tell until the storm actually hits. The bus pulled up and away we all went, leaving Flood Zone A and heading for the hills.

In hurricane preparedness, you learn that the most important aspect of surviving a hurricane (after you get to high ground, of course) is to keep yourself occupied. Panic is your biggest enemy. So for all of Sunday and Monday, while the BF and I were crammed into his little uptown studio, I read my books, did yoga, took baths, and groomed like a nervous cat until I'd shed my long hair in every corner of the apartment. And then it was time for a walk.

This was before the storm had made landfall. No one really knew what was coming, so attitudes ranged from the blase to the barely-sane. Vans full of police officers cruised the streets, looking very official and prepared. A crowd of them (what do you call a group of police officers? A pod? A pack? A pride?) came into a pizza place and the BF looked at me with his I-didn't-do-nuttin' face, but they were just getting their lunches. As if they'd be coming for him. They're coming for me if they're coming for anybody. I come from interesting stock. Parents have been warning their children not to play with my family for generations.

After lunch, we went to a grocery store thinking we might pick up a sack of clementines, but the lines were crazy-long and the shelves were almost cleaned out. Almost. Apparently when the end is nigh and civilization totters to the brink, people look at turnips, pineapples and cranberries and say, "Fuck that noise, leave it for the looters."

We got our first hint that this whole storm thing was serious business when the crane blew over backwards in midtown and the BF's family had to evacuate their building.

Witchcraft!

That was Monday afternoon. On Monday night, the tide came in, the hurricane hit, and our troubles began. We didn't know it at the time, though. The BF closed the curtains, turned on the white noise machine, and we had a quiet evening at home ignoring each other while we read our respective books. The lights flickered once or twice and he filled up the bathtub just in case, but we woke the next morning to heat, power, and Internet as if nothing had happened. Our biggest concern was if we'd get the day off or not.

Then we turned on the television.

Breezy Point, Queens. Anyone who makes a Call of Duty or a Mad Max joke is going to hell.

And checked the New York Times online.

Subway station in the Financial District.

 And Googled images of my area of Brooklyn.

Red Hook, the neighborhood just south of my own.

I tried to adhere to my Girl Scout training. We turned off the news and read our books some more. We watched Golden Girls and a re-run of Beetlejuice on television. We even went outside for a walk. Damage was minimal on the Upper West Side, a few downed trees and a lot of untidy leaves in the gutters. But the air pressure was still all weird from the storm and it felt like someone was jamming chopsticks into my eardrums. We went back inside and tried to stay busy, but I was starting to worry about what had happened to my building.

I live in a funny little neighborhood that no one really knows about. Google searches for my street just kept pulling up images of flooded Red Hook, the neighborhood immediately south of my own, and with all public transit shut down and all the bridges and tunnels closed, there was no way for me to get home and check my apartment. Important lessons were learned that day about getting my neighbor's phone numbers and not being so anti-social.

Wednesday was worse. My office was open, but there was no way I could get off the island of Manhattan. The BF got to go back to his normal life because he can walk to his school, but I was stuck in his apartment watching re-runs of X-Files and another round of Beetlejuice when I wasn't watching the news. It was Halloween and I had my costume with me, but I knew there was no way I was going to celebrate. My heart wasn't in it. I couldn't read, do yoga, or even groom. I just sat on the bed and wailed to no one in particular that I wanted to go home.

Fortunately, that was when R called me. "Are you coming over?" Fuck and yes, I was coming over. She lives across the park from the BF, and buses were running again, so I peeled myself off the mattress and hit the road. Traffic was Independence Day gridlock. I hopped a crosstown to the east side, but around Frederick Douglass Blvd my patience ran out and I just decided to walk. I got as far as 96th and 5th Ave. before my patience for walking ran out and I decided to get back on a bus. And it was the exact same bus I'd gotten off of half an hour before. (I recognized the driver and the Halloween costumes.)

When R heard my wailing about not knowing what was happening at my building, she stuffed me full of cookies and tea and we played Scrabble for a few hours. I think that hipster at the bus stop was on to something, because I felt a lot better afterwards. The BF joined us, we ordered take-out, and watched Spirited Away with her neighbor's cats, which is almost like Halloween.

He's dressed as Charlie Chaplin!

Thursday. My fourth day of evacuation. I was determined to make it my last. The night before I'd called the restaurant in my building and asked them what had happened on my street, and the hostess said they were dry, powered, and open for business. That was as much information as I was going to get without being there in person, and public transit was slowly coming back to life, so I put my books and teddy bear back in my little blue suitcase, kissed my BF good-bye, and started off across Manhattan.

I figured I could take the subway south, take a cross-town bus east, another bus south again, and catch one of the shuttle buses that was taking people between Brooklyn and the blacked-out parts of Manhattan. Even in daylight, it was eerie to go below 34th Street and see block after block of dark traffic lights and shuttered stores. It felt like a movie set before the director yells "Action!"

A city divided.

The bus spit me out at Jay Street and I began my walk home because I have never been able to find the start of my bus route in Downtown Brooklyn and the aftermath of a hurricane was a bad time to fight that battle again. Atlantic Avenue looked all right, streets clear, no windows broken or awnings down. I decided to be optimistic and stopped at the grocery store, and then I got pessimistic and stopped at the liquor store.

The bulldozers were still parked on the giant pile of salt, just where I'd left them on Sunday. The bookstore and the restaurant were both open for business, and the super of my building had put away the sandbags. The front door pushed away drifts of leaves when I opened it, but I didn't smell any sewage or mold and there was no mud on the floor. Apparently--impossibly, miraculously--my neighborhood hadn't flooded at all.

My own apartment was toasty as a hippie at Burning Man and everything in my fridge was frozen solid. The bonsai had shed some leaves but was otherwise fine. Every light turned on and the Internet fired right up when I plugged my router back in. I can't be certain, but I think that the heat and power and water was on the whole time I was gone. Would you believe I had more clean-up to do after Irene than I did after Sandy? I had nothing worse to deal with on Thursday than a carton of half-and-half that froze while I was gone and got all grainy when it thawed.

Considering the devastation in other parts of the city--and the lack of power, water, and heat to tens of thousands of people across the state--and the billions of dollars of damage we'll need to repair the damage--and considering that I live a block away from the East River and less than a mile away from a neighborhood that was under 6 feet of water on Monday night--I am one absurdly lucky Big Island Rachel. 

I made my triumphant return to work on Friday and immediately got in a fight with a customer over the phone. It felt good to be back to normal.

Letters to the past

Dear Past Rachel:
Yes, you're seven years old and you are Catwoman. I know you're feeling awesome about it, even though the costume is a little off-model and you're vamping in a parking lot in front of the pizza parlor in broad daylight. Good for you.

Things are a little tough for you right now. You're cross-eyed and have a terrible haircut. Being Catwoman helps, but unfortunately, it's not going to get better just yet. You'll be cross-eyed for a while longer, you'll have to wear braces, and when you start getting tits, one will clearly be bigger than the other. By and large, it will suck.

But guess what? One day you grow up and you get to look like this.Now you're Catwoman and you're on your way to a party in the East Village in New York City. Hair all grown out, eyes straight, teeth straight, well-titted, got your own blog--life is pretty sweet for you. You even still have those original leather gloves from your first Catwoman outfit, but you left them at home because they have some holes between the fingers now.

Just remember, you may clean up good and know your way around a ball gown, but while you may sashay into parties thinking that you look like this----the vast majority of the time you're still sort of goofy-looking, especially when you're having a lot of fun and haven't practiced your drunk-face in front of the mirror. Observe.In fact, that maniacal grin and scrunched up nose is pretty much your default setting. You don't really need to be drinking. Observe again.
Oy. That's harsh. But your loved ones assure you it's part of your charm. Besides, you're Catwoman! And look, you won a book at the Halloween party! So all in all, we made good, little kitten. Real good.