My friend Sara is coming to town tomorrow. I am very excited. I haven't seen her in three years, and every time we get together we eat sushi and talk for hours. This should be good.

Today I almost sold to the used clothing store the shirt I was wearing the night I met Sara. They wouldn't take it because it had sweat stains in the armpits. I was feeling too placid to argue that I had bought the shirt from another used clothing store, with the sweat stains already in the armpits, and therefore they should be confident that someone else would buy it from their used clothing store. Then I realized I was trying to make a profit on a shirt I bought for $7.00 eight years ago and while I'm currently going through my annual August broke period, no one is hard up enough to pressure anyone into buying a shirt stained with the sweat of a stranger.

Lately I've been impulsively selling all my clothing to the used clothing store. My goals in this venture are twofold: first, I have this feeling that if I dress at least a little better when appearing at people's homes to tutor their children, they will be soothed into parting with even more obscene amounts of money. Secondly, I am really tired of being called a hippie.

I protest that I am no hippie, I just have a knack for making everything I put on look tattered and ambiguously ethnic. I much prefer my style of dress to be characterized as "rock star camp director," as my friend Steve once put it, or "member of Castro's revolutionary army," as a likeminded Nicaraguan described my fatigues--t-shirt-and-aviators travel uniform. (I used to travel in a 37-pocket fishing vest, but this embarrassed my friend Steve in the Peruvian National Museum while he was applying for an acheaological permit and Holly (a.k.a. Steve's girlfriend) and I were in the outer office amusing ourselves by counting the pockets on the vest.)

Getting rid of all my clothes has been so liberating. If an article of clothing puts me in a bad mood, I remove it, stuff it into my satchel and bring it to the used clothing store. If they refuse to buy it, I put it on the shelf to be donated to battered women. I assuage my feelings of guilt about giving clothing with bad vibes in it to battered women by telling myself that the bad vibe is between me and the article of clothing, and does not reside in the article of clothing itself.

It's using words like "bad vibe" that also leads people to call me a hippie, isn't it?

Today was a very auspcious day for my sweat-stained silk tank top from the night I met Sara to almost become the property of a battered woman who is also willing to ignore sweat stains. Instead, I brought it home and hung it back up in the closet. Suddenly, it wasn't giving me a bad vibe anymore. It was reminding me of when I first bought it, reminding me of the time very early in our friendship when Sara cautiously asked me why if I was so left wing I was so angry at the Japanese people in my hometown.

"The Japanese people? There are hardly any Japanese people where I grew up. And if there were, why would I be angry at them?"

"You keep talking about the Japs. You hate the Japs, you're so glad to be away from the Japs, there's some Japs here, but not as many as at home, so, I'm just wondering, you know, what have you got against Japanese people?"

It took me a minute to realize that Sara had taken the word "Jap" to mean the epithet for Japanese people, when I was in fact using the acronym J.A.P., as an epithet for Jewish people, of which I am one. (The "Of Which I Am One" theory allows you to judge, pontificate on and otherwise denigrate social or ethnic groups of which you are one, or cultural practices and behaviors of which you are a practitioner, without fear of reproach or accusations of hypocrisy. Example: "Women who wax their bikini areas, of which I am one have internalized our culture's sick obsession with infantilizing the female genetalia to make the sexuality and sexual maturity of women less threatening!" It, along with the sweat-stained silk tank top, is one of the many things that came of my Incredibly Expensive Education.)

J.A.P. is a very contreversial term. Many Jews feel that it demeans all Jews to use it, even if you are a Jew. Others feel that the word can be reclaimed, much like epithets in the gay or black communites that have been reinvented as familiar affectionate terms when used by members of those communities.

Personally, I'm fine with the word J.A.P. and I'm fine with my Jappiness. But then again, where I grew up, it felt like Jews comprised 50% of the global population, instead of 0.5%. It was many years before I realized that the rest of the world, unlike New York and its outlying suburbs, was not populated entirely by Jews and our Italian, Irish, Polish, Carribean, African, Puerto Rican, Domincan, Cuban, Chinese and Korean friends and neighbors. I believe it was in the midst of a swap meet at a science competition in 1993 that I looked up from my collection of Kentucky Bluegrass seeds and vials of Mississippi River water and noticed that a whole lot of the other people in America were strangely mispronoucning the last name I had printed on my "Hello! My Name Is" tag. It was like they had never heard a name that ended in "stein" before!

In some ways, I am a J.A.P. I grew up in Long Island. I kissed my first boy at Jewish summer camp. My Daddy has bought me every single electrical appliance I own. The toaster (which I unfortunately set on fire and destroyed), the blender, the T.V., the stereo, the air conditioner that cools me as I write this, the computer I type this on, the iPod that sits charging next to it--even the aromatherapy diffuser. (For the last time, I am not a hippie! I just find the gentle aroma of essential oils soothing when I am sick or frightened!)

For a long time, because my family openly abhors organized religion and I personally think it is both the opiate of the people and at the root of a great deal of the violence in the world, not to mention a misogynist bunch of bullshit that has more to do with fear and hate than love and humanity, Jappiness was really all I had to connect me to my frowned-upon cultural Judaism. But since I left Long Island I have met many amazing secular Jews, of the hippie, kibbutznik, pacifist, Israeli, artistic variety. I have realized that Jewishness, even of the Long Island variety, does not have to mean Jappiness.

Today, I got curious about the word J.A.P. and did what I always do when I'm curious: I looked it up on Wikipedia. At first, I was excited in that way we are excited to see evidence of ourselves in a public forum. The entry on Wikipedia described a J.A.P. as being from Long Island. "I'm famous!" I thought happily. But as the article went on the describe J.A.P.s in a clinical, accurate and yet unflattering and insulting light, I found myself confounded by the simoultaneous accuracy and narrowness of the stereotype.

It's a very cosmic full-circle that today would begin with me trying to sell the sweat-stained silk shirt to the used clothing store and end with me discovering the meaning of the word J.A.P.

It's using words like "cosmic" that also leads people to call me a hippie, isn't it?

I suppose it could also be the yoga, the marijuana, the love of classic rock and the South American travel.

I forgot to mention that Sara's stopping into town on her way to a three-month meditation retreat and the last time we hung out was in Berkeley. We got stoned and shared an orange with her friend Sen, who she once tripped acid with Central Park.

So I'm a J.A.P. and a hippie. So be it.

August 1, 2005

Weird dreams of planes landing in the East River, about to explode, running up hillsides to escape danger too slowly, the usual blockbuster nightmares.

Sometimes I think I'm valorizing people in foreign countries for being less materialistic, less superficial, less insipid, less obnoxious than Americans. I wonder if I'm misdirecting all my misanthropy at Americans when it should be distributed equally throughout humanity.

Maybe I just give foriegners credit because I can't understand what they're saying when I eavesdrop on them on the bus. On the other hand, I can say with confidence from my limited but growing travels that no one can be as rich or as loud as an American. Only in America if a dumb guy is hitting on a dumb girl and asks her what she likes to do will the girl say, "Whatever. Shop."

August 5, 2005

A century after my ancestors emigrated to this country, every single one of them garmet workers, I'm still looking for a decent tailor in Brooklyn or the the Lower East side. All my relatives in the trade are long dead, and all their descendents mental health professionals, lawyers, architects, financiers.

Newport, RI, August 6, 2005

What is it about hostesses and waitresses in upscale restaurants that is simoultaneously evocative of high-priced hookers and sacrificial virgins?

Bonanza Bus, Interstate-95, August 8, 2005

The woman in the window seat of the first row is laughing much too loudly at the Ice Cube "family" movie provided for our interstate entertainment today. Having travelled the New York-Providence express round trip for three consecutive weekends, I've seen this movie four times, without sound. Its humor relies heavily on bodily fluids and testicular injury.

The woman is chortling, giggling and whooping delightedly and without pause. It's hard to tell if she's mentally compromised in some way or she just really enjoys the Ice Cube "family" movie. In any case, the entire front third of the bus is turning against her with a palpable, mounting hatred. At first, her noises ellicted the odd exaggerated sigh or turned head. By now, there is a chorus of groans and theatrical eye-rolling in the wake of her loudest shrieks. Of course, sitting in the front row with headphones on, she neither hears nor sees this.

My own seatmate, who has already complained to me about the quality of Dunkin' Donuts bagels and the vagaries of her twenty-year kindergarten teaching career ("Let me tell you, the parents in the population I work with just aren't that involved in their children's education") keeps glancing my way, inviting me to join in this and other gross dissatisfcations of her middle-aged life, but I press my lips together in a tight line, smirking at her huffing at the other woman's cackling, counting off the ninety-three godforsaken exits of Connecticut.

August 9, 2005

The nine-year-old I'm tutoring, when asked how the reading and writing assignments we agreed upon last week went, gestured airily at her notebook. "Oh, I didn't really get a chance to explore any of that this week."

On the way to New Jersey, August 10, 2005

What is it I detest about commuter trains? Especially New Jersey Transit. Maybe it's because the only other time I rode it was a gray, slushy day I went to New Brunswick to see my grandmother the night before she died. Now the shape and height of the seats, the specific way they differ from the more familiar ones of the LIRR or Metro-North, reminds me of grief and death.

I also hate the resigned surge with which the crowd gathers itself and waddles to the track when it's announced. I hate the hot spots in the cars where the air conditioning has broken. I hate the pathetic vestiges of personality on the rare commuter, like the Doc Martens (tied with yellow and brown boat-shoe laces) on the businessman with the kahkis, blue blazer and monogrammed tote bag.

The woman next to me is leafing through sketches of the Izod children's line for Fall and Holiday 2005, which appears to offer many expensive options for dressing your child like a sailor. Why do Republicans like sailing so much? Rich Democrats, too. It must be the lust to colonize.

I never thought this day would come, but I've finally done it. I've managed to purchase a set of enamel darkroom trays on eBay. Now all of our toiletries, condiments, spices and other household objects are kept in enamel darkroom trays.

My two previous attempts to purchase enamel darkroom trays on eBay ended with me being outbid at the last minute by what I'm told is a "sniper," a friend of the seller who lets your low bid stand for days and days until you believe yourself to all but posess the random piece of junk you are buying on eBay. Then in the last hour, the sniper jumps in and outbids you by $0.50. I keep imagining this sniper, sitting in a tree, picking off people's dreams of owning rare, unopened action figures one by one.

I was cautiously optomistic about these darkroom trays, though I tried not to get too excited until I received my congratulatory email from eBay. The trays cost me $1.50. The shipping and handling cost $20.00. The box cutter I bought to open all the boxes of things I order on the internet cost $6.99. But the feeling of owning something I coveted in a digital photograph on eBay was priceless.

Since I returned to the United States I've had no interest in almost anything but buying things, selling things and drinking champagne. It's as if some part of me has decided that if I have to live in this country, I'm going to take it to its natural extreme. Or at least party like it's almost Black Tuesday.

The other day I was saying to Rebecca, "I've got a million things to write and do, but all I want out of life right now is to shop for housewares on the internet."

"Go with it!" she said.

I'm going with it.

It sounds like a vacation. Camping in the White Mountains, drinking champagne and making s'mores, waiting an hour to eat a meatball sub, hiking in the pristine forest, munching granola bars in the middle of a stream, swimming in a cold, clear lake, stargazing by the dying fire and browsing local wilderness stores for forgotten necessities like FireRibbon(TM), a highly flammable substance that "squeezes out like toothpaste" and is guaranteed to send even damp wood wooshing up in flames, a claim that was, sadly, an exaggeration.

However, as I was quick and emphatic to point out, it wasn't a vacation. Vacations are what the poor slobs who work for the man take, spending a paltry two, maybe four percent of their lives in forced relaxation in a little box of a hotel room, before they return to the box of their office to spend ninety-six, maybe niney-eight percent of their lives in forced labor. Vacations are so rare that the most common desire most people seem to have while on them is to "do nothing." Vacations are loops outside time, isolated moments of imposed joy in lives otherwise lived under flourescent lighting or in highway traffic or under flourescent lighting after driving through highway traffic, shopping at franchise box stores. (Full disclosure: number of franchise box stores we visited on the way to our non-vacation: 4.) Vacations are insanely expensive and require miserly saving to pay large amounts of money to "do nothing" or worse, experience made-up pageants of various locales--New York City! (midtown, bus tour, Statue of Liberty, Cricle Line), wilderness! (trained bear show, "scenic overlook," maple syrup shack), tropical paradise! (deadly UV rays, strategically placed hedges to hide unseemly poverty, stupid jewelry and/or hair accessories). We, I maintained, were not on vacation. We were just living our actual lives, which this weekend happened to entail camping in the White Mountains. Besides, how could we be on vacation when we were here observing all the ways everyone else was on vacation? We were not on vacation. We had just "gone somplace else." The only way you can be on vacation is if you've made the mistake of not gearing your life around the goal of being on vacation all the time.

The previous weekend I took my boyfriend on a long-promised pilgrammage to Coney Island. Upon arrival, we immediately rode the Cyclone. The Cyclone for me has gone the way of many things I found initially thrilling and subsequently addictive--I have ridden it so much that it no longer holds quite the same thrill.

A fat guy with a headset was halfheartedly trying to entince passerby to Shoot the Freak. "Hey, come on," he rasped. "You're at Coney Island. Ya here to have fun. So have some fun. Go ahead, swim in that filthy water. Wait in line for a half an hour for a hot dog. And then come over here and shoot a guy in the freakin' head."