Poking holes in hecticness

Flashback: May 2014

Bagel. I wake up craving one. Desperately.

I rarely feel such a strong urge, generally possessing the decision-making prowess of an ant on an unattended picnic blanket.

So when a moment of culinary clarity hits me in the face with the authority of a vicious right hook, I don’t wait around.

I’ve spent the night in a tiny – and exceptionally cute – studio apartment on the Upper East Side, treating myself to a flash 24-hour stopover in New York on my way to see family.

The window is massive, given the petite floor space into which it blinks the morning sun through the foil venetians like a giant eye.

The soft light, the quietness and the vibrant leafy spring greenery in the courtyard beyond the glass are a surprising combination of calmness in what’s surely peak hour on the street.

It’s a coexistence I’ve come to enjoy about New York.

But right now I want a bagel.

I’m quickly out the door, and soon find myself standing in line at a nearby corner breakfast spot. It’s a stark contrast to the windowed serenity in which I awoke.

It’s a chaotic scene: 40-odd desperately hurried, hungry and humourless people queue in a long tail that circumnavigates the shop, weaving between mottled beige Formica table tops and crimson vinyl seats that are crowded with only slightly less hurried, hungry and humourless faces.

It feels like nearly the same number of staff oppose my line of covetous comrades, separated by a stainless steel countertop. An image of riot police flickers through my mind and I stifle a giggle.

The staff jostle for space in front of two dozen varieties of cream cheeses, pallet knives waving at the ready to schmear the schmear atop the matching two dozen varieties of bagels.

Ah yes, bagels: whether love ‘em or hate ‘em, having a hole in your argument is a good thing.

I contemplate the loopy lumps, precariously nesting in wire baskets mounted to the walls behind the counter as metal tongs circle above like vultures.

My decisiveness evaporates.

Crap. Too many choices. Bagels. Schmears. Toasted or not? You can’t say this isn’t a country of choice. At least the coffee comes just one way – burnt, thrice-brewed since sunup. It could be strained through a sports sock, for all I care; long gone is my conditioning to Melbourne espresso coffee. It’s one less decision to make.

I settle on pumpernickel, toasted, scallion schmear, rehearse my order, mentally approve my doughy decision, and refocus on the surroundings.

The staff look stressed, barking at each other, at customers, joviality long since cooked off like the flavour of the morning’s coffee.

The line slinks forward. It’s the slowest thing in this stressful place.

I approach the furthest table from the door; two more 90-degree turns and I’ll be within ordering distance.

A mismatched couple are at the table.

A slightly dishevelled, middle-aged man huddles inside a tweed jacket. His legs cross at the knees and extend into the narrow aisle between the tables. He’s utterly still, except for one forearm and hand, which, from an elbow mounted to the Formica, pivot wildly like time-lapse footage of a crane on a construction site.

Facing him, a motionless 20-something woman who looks like she’s on route to a class at college. Framed by matching curls of steam from cups of coffee, they’re talking. Well, he’s talking – lecturing? – and she’s listening.

“Pot? Sure, who didn’t? It’s college. It’s about experimentation,” he tells her.

“But I never messed around with the hard stuff. None of that heroin or crack, they never interested me.”

I make a 90-degree left turn. One more to go.

“Booze was my thing though. If I can tell you one thing, it’s this: don’t do drugs. Do high quality beers and martini.”

I make another left turn, slip out of earshot of auditing the freshman ‘intro to life lessons’ class and into range of the bagel police line. I hurl my order at my harried combatant across the bench top and wait for the counterattack.

Ninety seconds later a present, hastily gift-wrapped in crinkled foil and brown paper, is mortared back at me. Comfortingly warm to hold, accompanied by a steaming – burning? – paper cup of coffee.

“Thanks man,” my opponent acquiesces, before I’m shunted down the line like a boxcar in a freight siding.

The register looms. Cash only. Crap, I’m a quarter short. Distracted by the frenzy around me, I imagine I’ve bottlenecked the efficient line. Images of catastrophe tear through my head: sweat beads, angry regulars wailing at me like the taxi horns outside, an explosion of dough, schmear, tar-like coffee…

I start to dig into my bag. I know there’s a pile of loose change swimming at the bottom like a wishing well.

But before I bury deep enough, the woman in front of me smiles sympathetically and says “I’ve got you.” She covers my shortfall by handing a quarter to the register worker and smoothly pre-empts my protest with a confident “It’s nothing. Enjoy your morning!”

And I do.

I hightail it to nearby Central Park to eat my brown-bagged collection before the warmth dissipates into the morning haze.

I turn my back on the frenzied fanfare of Fifth Avenue, perch picnic-style atop a secluded boulder, surrounded by budding greenery and the pinkish-purple of mid-spring cherry blossoms. It’s stunningly quiet again, and I once more marvel at how this can be: such calm abutting such urban chaos.

I bite another hole in my delicious argument and reach only one tangential conclusion: that aside from perhaps replacing the burnt ‘coffee’ with a martini, I’m pretty happy with my choice.

Railing on the rails

Flashback: May 2014

I’m on an Amtrak train snaking its way north from New Haven, Connecticut to my old Boston stomping grounds, alongside a mix of business suits and casual travellers.

Train travel can carry a certain elegance lacking in other transport.

I’ve ridden this route often, the view familiar out the dusty glass: silver carriages reflecting on broken windows of destitute brick factories – charming and depressing in decaying grandeur – that mark the coastline, linked by train tracks.

I’m drawn to the banter of a couple of 60-somethings behind me, friends I think, who boarded further south. New York, I hazard a guess. I can’t help but become a silent participant.

Man: “How duz that make him nawt Kosher?”

Woman: “Becawz his mutha wasn’t Jewish at the time.”

Forgive my phonetic spelling: the moment at once engrossing for its topic, its sound, its locale. Trapped in a tin tube, we rhythmically ricochet against the rails, right-rightleft-right-rightleft. Their voices follow suit.

The conductor interrupts our collective attention – their conversation, my auditory anonymity – at precisely 11:06am. So says my laptop, upon which I’ve slightly sheepishly been transcribing their words.

Conductor: “The cafe car is serving breakfast sandwiches, cawfee… maybe a Bloody Mary sounds good right now. Oh and there’s one banana left.”

The couple – Kosher certification resolved, for the time being – share a raucous giggle then turn their focus to apartment foibles and winter’s lingering tendrils. The woman is recounting a mini-drama.

Woman: “Debbie said to me ‘it’s winter time, I’m gonna tawn the hawt wardah service on’.

“I said ‘Debbie, do NOT tawn the wardah on’.

“Debbie said ‘it’s cold, I need to tawn it on’.

“I said ‘Debbie, do you remember what hair-pinned last time you tawned the wardah on? We blew the pipe’.

“She said ‘yeah but that was last time, it won’t hair-pin this time’.

“And sure enough, what hair-pinned? We burst the pipe. Debbie shoulda listened. It wasn’t even that cold.”

It’s as if Woody Allen has begun reading aloud one of his wild scripts; my own meandering imagination couldn’t craft better banter.

Train travel reveals landscape not seen from a plane or car window, attention otherwise split between entertainment, road safety and maps to diffuse the slow creep of time. It’s also a chance to listen, absorb, study.

And so, as the factories race past, I take delight in voyeuristically eavesdropping on two people who’ll never know how they enriched an otherwise familiar trip up the tracks.

I’m grateful I didn’t board the ‘quiet carriage’.

Starting the trip

There’s an unavoidable romanticism about travel.

Travel at once calms me into a nearly instantaneous comfort of ‘in-the-now’ and drives my curiosity crazy.

It heightens sights, sounds and smells that undoubtedly exist as richly in the busy noise of home but are never given the same weight or attention.

A great pleasure of travel is uncovering personal moments within often well-known destinations: random walks that unearth random discoveries upon random streets. I love to listen, observe and reflect.

Writing about these unexpected experiences, and the potential to share them with others, is something I crave. So, sometimes months – or years! – after they’ve happened, I’ve decided to start popping them on here.

We’ll see what sticks.

Why ‘hyphenate’?

Hyphenate:

It’s a verb that can describe an act of punctuation, joining or connecting two words with a neat little symbol.

But I think it’s about more than just that simple act of grammar.

Writing is about connecting. Connecting with diverse audiences, learning about them and sharing stories.

I’ve been writing for much of my life – on topics from sports to travel to food to agriculture and more.

At the core of my writing is my love for words, wit, warmth and, ultimately, these connections.

But I’ve never brought it all into one place where it can be shared.

If nothing else it’s a chance to reconnect with my own enjoyment of writing. And if it brings about a laugh, insight, inspiration or even some debate, then that’s a very pleasant bonus. Stay tuned.

Jesse Gerner