Dissociation Days

April 15, 2025

My writing is testimony, I'm a witness. Others trying to make that funny or exaggerated rub me the wrong way with a raspy sandpaper.

Maybe it's a way of removing putrefaction, of the wound. Maybe it's a way of cleaning it, to heal.

But I didn't know that I survived all my life with dissociation. I didn't know. They tell me that it can drag if you are traumatized, it can be forever that you stay disconnected with yourself. I wasn't aware, but it was brought up to me.

Things happened to me, Amelie, this last week that I didn't know how to sort out. In my theater improvisation circle, we do a practice and we do a teaching session, different people. In the practice session the teacher was asking us to be committed with our feelings to emotionally committed, invested in the scene. He said that my roommate, we've been roommates for 20 years. We've been good friends for 20 years, but now I am moving to Chicago to follow my dreams. It's painful to leave a lifelong friend behind. I was in the scene telling him that my new job handling the Obama Center Presidential Library, is a dream come true. To deal with Obama every day it will be amazing. I must go, but will you be all right? Then the second scene was to have same high stake of leaving somebody behind but lower status, like I'm going to the corner bodega.

Some actors can access their emotions fast. I know how to do it authentically. You remember sad memories if you want to cry, or you remember happy, hilarious times if you want to laugh.

You feed on your reservoir, not just the verbal memories, but the feeling of how your body felt in that moment. I had bodily sensation of high anxiety. I said that, look, I'm hyperventilating leaving you alone to run to the bodega buy milk.

It was visible to the teacher too, he said, breathe in, breathe out. It hit me hard. For so long I didn't want to be in touch with feelings. There was no time for feelings.

I had to do whatever was expected of me during the fire, let alone along the years. I had a small child, and I had to push through. Or I had my dreams and I must push through, get out of the little community, trapped in a small town in Romania. Do what's ahead of you, bureaucratic chores, whatever it is, you must do it.

That sadness over me, that anxiety of leaving someone behind. It was out of proportion

It was strange. I don't like drama. I don't like drama queening. I don't like to show off that I can cry or laugh easily. It must resonate within me and it has to make sense. It was jarring to me.

Was it cathartic? Was there release in feeling that way? No, it was worrisome. It was worrisome and it carried on the next day.

The next day in the class I felt sad. We were supposed to practice a documentary style opening, in which two actors from the improv team sit next to each other and pretend to be interviewed by the audience on a random topic. In our case it was 'thermal'. Actors come out in pairs and pretend to be experts on thermal whatevers. When it was my turn, I was confused. To take your turn you tap the actors seating in the chair on the shoulder, they go to the backline, and you sit down. When we finish five or six of these docu opening sets, you do a sweep editing, which is running across the stage.

Somehow, I ran across the stage instead of tapping on the shoulder. What do I do now? I asked the teacher. I just swept. Can I come back and have a scene? She says, Do you want to have a scene? I said, yes.

I was sad and in pain, like I was ignored, like she was doing me a favor to have what was rightly mine, to have a scene. So, I sat in the chair and instead of pretending to be an authority on thermal, whatever, I switched into talking about my insulated coat that Fountain House bought for me after the fire when I had no coat.

But in the scene, it turned out that my coat was bought by my son who was dead. This was the only thing that was left of him. I was wondering if I looked tattered and my scene partner, she wouldn't contribute with much, but she was supportive of me, said, yeah, you look kind of tattered. I said, well, this is the only thing that I have from him. Finally our scene was edited.

I didn't do the assignment of bullshitting that I'm a thermal, whatever, expert. I was bringing in sadness on stage. I felt I didn’t belong. They felt hostile to me. I felt that I'm not a good improviser and on and on.

It felt sad that sadness is not allowed. It's not allowed.

I failed. There's no place for me. They're going to ban me, I'm not funny.

So that was it. Then followed two more first beat scenes. There are supposed to be three. But after two scenes, I came on stage thinking I'm doing the third first beat scene. But I wasn't doing the third scene because what I did was not the opening, but the first first beat scene.

But I wasn't aware of it. So here I am dragging my imaginary comfort blanket and saying, Mommy, I know I'm a middle-school girl, but I can't, I can't, I need to have this duvet, this blanket with me to school. My scene partner showed up again! That's a rule: you keep on showing up with the same scene partner. I was a bit surprised I thought this was the first scene that I'm in. I was like, why is she showing up again? That was the opening. This is the scene. Why is she? We are not glued to hip together. We didn't have a good scene. Why is she showing up again here? It's going to be lousy again. Then everybody came in!

The format is opening, the first beat three scenes, a group game, then the second beat scenes, then another group game. So we were in the first group game. But in my mind, I was in my scene, the third scene in the first beat.

Everybody was coming on stage with their comfort blankets and nursery toys. I said oh, my God, that's a lot of back line support. But how rude of them, this is my scene. What are they doing? I just went along with it, we finished it somehow.

In the second beat, I didn't contribute to the scene. I did some backline support. Then we had a second group game, I was totally alienated.

I sat down. When she gives us notes, she says that, Vermillion, I wish that you'd let the opening scenes, the intro-docu scenes, she calls them, go a bit longer. It came out that I did sweep editing, so I wrecked their structure!

I felt so lonesome I wanted to talk to the teacher, but they were bubbly about their whatever with the teacher. She said wait a minute, I said I'm going to write you.

I wrote her to help me understand, from what she was observing, why the air whooshed out of the room at times when I'm on stage. She said they come from different experiences, she said to pay more attention to your scene partner, to really listen.

She was prompt, she was responsive, but she didn't say much. Yeah, she doesn't seem to like emotions. Oh, man, I chose this teacher! I liked her understated performance on stage. But it's not a good match.

Yeah, she's not emotionally involving herself with students. She has a lot of classes, she gives her best professionally, but she doesn't react. It's discouraging.

She's just, this is all we're going to do, docu-style, fake interviews. My strength is monologues, stories, she doesn't let me feed on mine.

But how unfair I was to my playmates, they were supportive of me, meanwhile I thought that they were sabotaging me. Yeah, well. How many times have I had these horse blinders?! I made a big thing out of it. I discombobulated.

I latched onto that fake memory, my son is not dead, he didn't buy me the coat. Fountain House bought me the coat, I was thinking, what am I doing now? But I believed in the moment.

The sadness was there. It was like a metaphor, I remember that in 201, the previous level, I told them a story about boots. I didn't care if it would be funny, but in that class, it was all right. He appreciated the colorful verbal paintings that I could whip out, he said. I had a boyfriend when I came here to America, he was in Philadelphia, I was in Louisiana, we spent the summer at his place, but things didn't work out.

But we reconnected when I came to the East Coast, just in time for him to die of lung cancer. the doctor said he's going to have six months, in two months he was gone, let alone that he had another girlfriend in Louisiana, so he went there to die, but he died in his car, went psychotic about the air being polluted. He looked like Frankenstein with the gashes after they operated, metastasized in the brain. On one hand I was upset with him, that look what a mess he did with his romances. On the other hand, I missed him, so I wore his shoes. He was not a big man, so his shoes were size 10, but men's size. That's big for me.

I'm eight and a half women. But I walked in those shoes until they broke apart, even now, some winters, I go to the thrift store, if I like the shoes, if they are just a bit bigger, I buy them and I wear them. They are comfortable.

So that was the story I told in 201. So that was longing, it didn't turn out to last, but it was a sadness, also grotesque and absurd, mixture.

I guess I had a good experience in that workshop, I kind of replicated the story idea in a nutshell. I was also scared. Am I now fabricating fake memories? You've become quite the actor now. You can pull out fake memories. Yeah, but it was not my intent. It was unsettling.

I was telling the psychologist today, as much as I could since I was supervising the health aide, the maintenance guy was trying to unclog the sink, but he made a mess, he was saying that these feelings that you don't deal with, they just come sideways. If you don't make space for them, they rear their head. It topples everything over.

But how not to wallow in... not to fear that I wallow in them when time comes to deal with them. To me, dealing with them means wallowing in them, means self-pity, means disgracefulness, means lack of elegance...

But two things came out of it. I told him that this sideways feeling, it feels like when I put a pair of pants that are too tight on myself, I have the muffin top. He said, yeah, that's exactly like that.

Then another thing was that I read that improvisation, originally, was to help children be more playful, but also to help people with anxiety, at Second City they have a class for that, they have a class for people who have memory loss, Alzheimer's, creativity doesn't stop even if memory disappears.

But UCB just carved out all those useful, wonderful things, they just kept the playfulness and the laughter. But even that, they don't use it as a tool, as a social tool. With this teacher, it seems I can't talk. I talked a bit with my son, I'm sure every comedian has bad days, but he must be funny, I understand why they take cocaine or take some stimulant to be on top of the world.

But why is it not talked about? Why do I feel like I'm going to be removed if I want to talk about days that I'm not funny? What can I do? Not come to class, or why can't that be acknowledged? No-no. You cannot discuss it.

But then a bigger question: how do I prepare myself for when I feel these deep feelings that make things out of control for me? Am I onto something bigger than just comedic improvisation? Why was that moment on stage not valid? Yes. Why does it feel embarrassing? Shy? She’s always buried in her notebook.

She's not even watching us.

Sometimes it feels like sandpaper.

Yeah. My stories are personal to me. important to me, the way I tell them matters. So then when I must change it, it irks me.

But I try to do what they say.

But I know they don't respect even their own rules. I may find it's not for me, but I might evolve.

Or what makes it valuable is this pain.

The space offered you something that made you feel that way. It brought you to a place where you felt that pain and discomfort and maybe that's valuable. Or maybe it's a dichotomy. Even oxymoron. Maybe there's not good laughter without pain.

No, I don't think there is. Cheap comedy is the worst comedy. Yeah, so maybe that's the most valuable thing that I can offer. Maybe this attempt of making fun of myself is understood as an act of love. Maybe it's not. Maybe they are just chopping me into a cliché. They can't think of somebody who's older and be a likable character. I will lean into uncertainty and see what happens.

Dead Neighbor Angel

March 25, 2025

I feel, Amelie, that I have an angel. I don't know how the fuck this angel is my dead neighbor?! She never liked me.

I didn't like her either, I didn't understand why she's so mean to me. She was jealous of everybody. I don't know what numbers her husband ran on her.

But she died, Amelie, in her apartment out of the NYCHA's, public housing, negligence. We told the office that it's likely that she's there dying of hunger when her husband was in the emergency room and he never came back home. He died after a year in the hospital. Only then did the police come, they broke the door and oh, the stench and all that. Ever since I have lived with facing their door that was busted. The police put on a green sticker. They didn't even turn the light off. They didn't do any cleaning. So yesterday, I went to pick up my mail.

I have temporary housing that's a block from my real home, so I pick up my mail from the old address. I don't want to derail my existence by turning the mail to the new address.

There were two envelopes from NYCHA. I thought, probably they sent me some weird communications. When I got home, I opened them.

One of them says that I owe $31,000, let's say $32,000, to NYCHA. I said, what the fuck is this? then I looked at the name, it was my neighbor's name, Xiomara Medina. The postman, by accident, put it in my mailbox.

These people have died a long time ago, yet the office keeps on billing them. These bureaucrats are people who want me dead too.

That's my conclusion.

It's bizarre, it's bizarre, the whole thing is bizarre that their mailbox is even empty, that these papers still come after two and a half years. I calculated, I broke it down into how much the rent is, a thousand a month, it comes now to two years and a half, 30 months, since they didn't pay their rent. Now, this is significant to what is happening to me.

What is happening to me is that my apartment has two bedrooms. We came to live in NYCHA because of domestic violence with my son, but they put me now in a temporary place in one bedroom. So, their rigmarole is that I need to empty, absolutely take everything out of the apartment so that they can fix the damage.

I asked them, Why do you have to empty my apartment? First, I'm a disabled person. The only help I can rely on is my health home aide. What do you want me to do? We want you to put all your belongings in the temporary place that we gave you.

How do you propose to squeeze two bedrooms, my lifelong belongings, I lived there for 20 years, my artwork, how do you propose squeezing into one bedroom, first of all? Second, I'm disabled. It was your fault that that damn refrigerator exploded. You don't say I'm sorry, you don't say anything.

On top of it, you want me to drag my belongings away. Are you willing to pay for storage? No, NYCHA doesn't pay storage. Then why do you want me to take them out then drag them back in? Well, other tenants, when their stuff was left in the apartment and the repairmen came, other tenants sued us that we stole their stuff. I say, I'm going to be on the premises with my health home aide. This is not a realistic scenario. I'll be there, I'm not accusing anybody of anything. I'm even glad if they like some stuff and I give it to them.

The only damage is done in the kitchen for God's sake and the windows from the apartment. I cleared all the debris with the health home aide and my son, we cleared everything. Though it was not my fault.

It's safe for them to come in. There's nothing, you can drive a car from the entrance to the bedroom to everywhere. I pushed my belongings to the wall.

Why don’t you start the repairs? No, NYCHA's procedure is this, empty the apartment. All right then, I got exhausted.

At the beginning, okay, they put me into a, I was still grateful but confused. I didn't know what I'm grateful for, I didn't know what I'm scared of. When you get out of a fire is confusing. Then you find yourself in hotels and then finally in temporary space. I needed to rest a bit, but then they called me, did I get my stuff? I should go and take my necessity stuff! I had been waiting for a week for that call. They give me a key to the flimsy lock, saying take care of this key, there's just one key.

How the fuck is just one key? It was a hardware store lock, $7, they always come with three keys. You should have one key if you want, I have one key, maintenance has one key.

Of course, I went straight to the hardware store and made three keys for myself. But after that I got sick, so it took a while to even get my necessities from there. Then it took a while to clean the disgusting space. It was with mildew and from the water the firemen hosed down the space.

It was hard, but we did it. It was not the whole island of Hawaii, no, of Haiti. It was just an apartment, so we did it, but it took a while.

All right, I go to the office to give them the key. They want me to sign a paper saying that all my belongings can be thrown into the trash. I said, no, you asked for the key. I'm not going to sign this. It's my belongings, it's my livelihood, my art supplies, my artwork, everything. Oh, then we don't do the repairs until you empty it.

They have what they call the hospitality, the relocation bureau. I called the guy, he was the one who arranged that I should stay in the hotel. That is their policy. They are, they are obligated by law. If they find lead in the paint, or they find asbestos, stuff like that, they relocate you and they clean the apartment.

I tell the guy, look, this is what is going on with me. They fuck with me. Can you help me in any way? Can you pay for storage, and can you have the men to carry the stuff to the storage? Manhattan Storage is just three blocks down the avenue, but it's three blocks. No, we don't do that.

But when I was at their office on January 24th to put me in a temporary apartment or in a hotel, like the Red Cross agent told me they must do, there was a tenant there. We got talking. He didn't know my situation.

He said that exactly a year ago, on January 24th, his fridge exploded. They put him in temporary housing. He never saw his house afterwards, never saw his stuff, never. Now he's here to sign paper that they put him in secondary temporary place because they found lead in the paint. They don't put him back into his original apartment. It's amazing what they can do.

So, okay, if you don't sign the paper, no help. I banked on the fact that the carpenter put a ticket on the 24th when I was there with these ladies from the manager's office who had no clue about my dead neighbor.

She was just a babe in the woods. She was flirting with the carpenter. Miss Easy, or Easy, she called herself. My case manager is Miss Effie. They are both from Africa, Africa.

We come from different parts of the world. I grew up under dictatorship. Some people need training in democracy, they are petty tyrants and they go for jobs where they can do power tripping. It's bizarre that in one office, they are both straight from Africa. They hire each other. It's nepotism, incompetence.

So the guy put a ticket saying that I need a carpenter to fix the door lock and I need windows repaired. I had to call Manhattan Neighborhood Planning local office to nail down when is the exact day that these people come. The door is going to be fixed on November 28th. Until then, they want me to stay with the flimsy lock. How I'm supposed to sleep there?! I sleep in the temporary place. But let's assume that everything is repaired and the door is finally repaired on November 28th.

That means that's when I move back. They don't let you bring your own craftsmen, union and stuff. Then, all right. The glazier, they said, is going to be on March 23rd.

So, there I am. The glacier, Friday it was. I come at 8 o'clock.

They will give you a window, it's going to be between 8 and 12. I stay there in the dark, there's no light.

It's musty from mildew, the windows are covered. I'm a mole. I stayed in that space waiting for him. Then I went downstairs thinking that he might not know that you can open the building door easily and the intercom is busted. While I was talking to a guy who was doing painting repairs to somebody else, a guy passed by. I'm thinking maybe it's the glazier. I ran after him and we go upstairs. Then he's asking me, terrified, what's happened here.

I tell him what's happened here, that the compressor exploded. He starts taking pictures around the apartment. He says he needs to go downstairs he can't see the window being covered in plywood. He went downstairs and he came back. There is no window frame.

Because they were destroyed. It's just the window hole, like the door. But there is nothing to put glass in. He cannot put glass. He said, I'm going to write a ticket that they buy new windows. Then I'm going to come back and put the glass in them.

He advised me to call on Monday to find out the ticket number for buying the windows. All right. I was grateful. I burst into tears. I said you are so kind compared with what they do to me in the office. They are assholes there, he said. But he kept on looking left and right so nobody listened to him. You do this: tell them you are not paying the rent. You put the money in the bank. You are not paying the rent until they repair. If they fuck with you anymore, you're going to take them to court. They don't like to be taken to court. I thanked him.

I slept on it. He said I should inquire about this ticket on Monday, after the weekend. But I didn't have patience.

In the evening, I called. Because I kept on checking the tickets online and there was no ticket of what he said. And, lo and behold, after he left around 1 o'clock, so Friday around 3 o'clock, Ire, my assistant, sees a paper coming from under the door. She gives the paper to me.

What do you think it was? The nutjob woman dated the paper the day before. She was saying that they were considering evicting me because I was breaking the contract of breach of whatever, of contract, since I didn't want to return the key. Are you fucking with me? I returned the key.

I tried to return the key, but you wanted me to sign papers that I cannot sign. So I went straight there with my apron and with my house slippers. I went there, they gave me the runaround.

Finally, I get to speak to my worker. She says, Let me see the paper. She says, nut job, you cannot live in two places.

You cannot live in two apartments. I said, are you shitting me? Are you shitting me? Do I live in my permanent space? Why don't you help me with the repairs to move back there? Is this my choice? Your fridge combusted. You put me into this temporary space that I had to carry buckets of water when they were flooding from upstairs, you guys didn't come to fix it since 11 in the morning. The emergency service, you waited, you waited, only at 6:30 the emergency service from outside the settlement, the borough teams, came with a vacuum and fixed the situation upstairs and stopped the flood. Are you kidding me? You stuck me into this place, you expect me to live here? Are you shitting me? What is this? Why are you lying in my face? Oh, I must go back to work! This is not work? What are we doing here? Sipping tea? Oh, it's not me who put the letter. It's the boss. Well, go and tell the boss. I want to speak to the boss then.

Oh, let me go first. She goes to another office, comes back and then she gets me back into the waiting room, then she comes and talks through the cracked door. They're bonkers, they're stupid, not trained, inefficient, cruel.

She says that, oh, she's busy. She's in a meeting now. I said, well, you must do the repairs. You must do the repairs. You're not going to mess with me like you messed with my neighbor, that my neighbor was dead a year, you don't move on the apartment. Oh, she says, oh, no, you cannot stay in two apartments. We need to give the apartment to other people. Well, if you are so concerned about giving empty apartments to other people, how about the neighbor? You stay on it for a year. She was dead inside for a year, you didn't move on it.

How about the neighbor on the second floor? She died a year ago, nothing is moving there also. You get worried about that, or you want to bury me first? You want to bury me? This is how you do it with this cruelty? I'm not allowed to schlep all this crap around. I'm not allowed to be stressed in these kinds of discussions with you.

You couldn't care less. Bring the key, bring the key, bring the key. I left.

In the evening, I got on the phone. I put tickets for the fridge. I put tickets for the stove, for the floor, for the plaster and paint, for the electricity.

I put seven tickets for repair. The operator was telling me, this is going to come then, this, then. In the morning, when I looked at it, the tickets were there, but they were all for March 24th, though I stacked them first comes electricity, then comes this and that, so I give them time. But I go. Monday morning at 8 o'clock, I'm there in the apartment, I sort through my library, and I cut down on stuff. Of course I want to cut down, but it must come from me. It cannot be just thrown away

I went through my books, I tell you, a third of my books, I was able to say, okay, this goes to the Queen's Library, they have requirements that books have to be clean, no markings. This can go to Queen's Library. This can go to the little library in the neighborhood, these ones I keep, this goes to Fountain House. So, I had the good feeling that my friends, the books, they are my friends. I'm not going to throw them out. They were my companions.

I have interesting conversations with dead writers. So, it was a good feeling that this is me it's not hoarding. This is me. It's part of my development. I'm not dead. I have 20 good years ahead of me. I might do wonderful things Just give me peace of mind. Don't fuck with me. I have the right to exist.

Well, 12 passes, nobody comes, the appointment is from 8 to 12. I make phone calls. I have Manhattan Borough, the relocation office.

Manhattan relocation office doesn't want to talk to me anymore. Though I was told by another person who is dealing with the relocation of elderly people, which I am, that this guy, Hector, is supposed to help to carry stuff from one place to another. I talked to him when they first messed up with me but he was never back with me. So, I talked to this Manhattan Borough lady.

I wrote down her name. Well, at 2:30 a guy showed up. I was lucky that Alex was still in town, my son, he brought me food, I didn't think that I'd be there stuck all day. So, this guy comes. He's also from Africa. I don't know Africa, but I'm assuming that people bring good and evil from the place they come. But this guy was gentle.

He started to stick his electricity pen into all kinds of places. He started to fiddle with the panel. Oh, the light came on!

Not in the kitchen. In the kitchen it just kept on popping. Pop, pop, pop. the bulb in the air.

He asked me to move some boxes with my archive in front of an outlet in the living room. I moved them.

He checked it. It was working. Then he wrote further tickets, what is necessary to be done next for the craftsmen, the electrician to come to rewire the kitchen. He wrote tickets that I need fridge and stove. I said, well, thank you. You don't know how grateful I am. In my country, I would have been burned alive. He says, what country? I say, Romania. He said, What are your main crops there? Conversation.

I say, wheat. He says, does that wheat look like grass? Yeah, it moves like grass when the wind blows, but what we produce a lot is meat, also snails for Frenchmen. He says, snails, they go on the trees, those snails? Not really. Maybe he thinks they are squirrels. Whatever it was, he had intellectual development problems. But he was gentle at least.

I said, okay, where are the other tickets that I put for plastering, for painting, for the floor? He says, they gave me just three tickets for electricity and fridge and stove. The other tickets, somebody else probably is going to come with them.

I was stuck there until 5 o'clock.

They say until 4, but I stayed until 5:15, waiting and dealing with my books. Nobody came. But I said, hey, at least I made some progress.

Well, in the morning, at 9, 10, the lady from the borough calls that they wrote me an email, and they say that you are not doing your part. That you must give them the keys, sign some documents, then they're going to repair.

I said, ma'am, they're not going to repair. I live here and I've seen and I talk to people. These people are people who like to sit in an office, like to talk, like to stall things. They don't do what's proper, people are suing them. They spend their time in the courthouse not interacting with the tenants. They are putting out their own fires that they create. These people have no sense of reality and it's a cruel, cruel experience to be around them. They scream.

It gives me the creeps. My vitality is sucked away by them through the stress they submit me to and the lack of humanity. She said, Well, I don't know if they're going to repair.

Ma'am, they're not going to repair. What rubs them wrong is they don't want tenant involvement. These are our apartments. This is how NYCHA operates. NYCHA is not the presidential White House! You are lucky. You are lucky that I'm afraid Trump wants the land in Manhattan for developers.

You are lucky that I don't make a fuss. But how will it look? Will this be a good look on NYCHA if I go and I talk about Xiomara Medina to the press, that she died a year ago and you are still billing her $30,000? How will that look? Do you want this in the news? I'm not a person who likes litigation, but if this is how you go about it, this disconnect between our reality and your management, probably I need to preserve myself and do go to court. That's what I'm going to do, ma'am.

She says, you go and talk to them. I said, no. I tell you, you did a good thing. You moved things ahead somehow. Somehow the electrician came. The glazier came. The guys want to help me. But these women are just cockblocking.

In the morning, I went to my apartment.

I was so happy to see light. I tell you, yesterday, after I came from that darkness, being a whole day in the darkness, it rained outside. But when I got into my bathroom with my objects, I heard, when people who can afford it, when they move from one place to another, their things travel ahead of them. When they arrive there, their assistants have already reconstructed their environment. I reconstructed my bathroom environment. It was so colorful.

My pupil was so dilated all day straining in the dark with the feeble light from battery-operated lamps that my bathroom translated, my God, this is magnificent, the colors so vivid!

I had a moment in the old kitchen. It’s all charred, I had a moment of intense, intense love. This mangled-up apartment in this pitiful, horrible situation, it's a NYCHA apartment, I don't own it, but somehow, I love it.

Before I would be conflicted, it's NYCHA, it's humiliating I can't afford to have my own home. But suddenly, when it was all mangled up and destroyed, I had love.

This is my little corner of the universe. Fuck you, I don't care if you think that it's a two-bedroom and it's a crisis of homes and I don't belong in this. This is my achievement.

I'm not going to let this go. I'm not. This is my apartment, I'm going to fix it, I'm going to have a new life. This is my little apartment. I love it, look at it, it's all charred. It's not a corpse, it's alive.

The water is running, the light is turned on. It's going to be cleaned. Still why this intense feeling of love? It's ridiculous, I've always rescued things.

I always rescued things from the street or from thrift stores, I would scrub them and show their potential, their beauty. I always picked from the street and scrubbed and inserted. Is the destroyed, is the destroyed me? I can take care and I can restore it to itself, it's as if I restore myself, somehow shitty things that were denied to me in Romania and coming here... how the heck can you have a feeling of love for a kitchen that's destroyed? to life that didn't die. Because that's my kitchen, it's life that didn't die. It's shards, yes, but she's there.

The same happened with the plants. I just love them, but the love gushing out of me was what the fuck? What the fuck?

My angel neighbor is protecting me. Don't let happen to me what happened to her.

She had her eyebrows, Dominican Republic women or Latino women, they shave or pull them out with laser and then they tattoo them in. I never understood why she did that to her face. She was an itsy-bitsy mean woman and she died.

So, what kind of protective angel is this?! I Googled her. There is a phone number I called and the phone is disconnected. But even as a citizen, am I allowed to find out if somebody is dead or not? Where do I go? It says at the Office of Vitals? Can I find out if this woman is dead or she, of course she's dead. But how the fuck they don't know that she's dead? How do they pretend that she's not dead? I'd like to have a certificate of deces.

Missing missing whatever minutes after 30 minutes it stops transcribing

Public Humiliation

April 23rd, 2025

I'm thinking, Amelie, about this dichotomy of wanting to be in the public eye and not wanting to be in the public eye. You've seen yesterday, I feel comfortable being in front of people with a theater light, it transfigures me and I do my best to perfect my message.

There is a message, there is responsibility towards my inheritance, of history. I set the score right with the Transylvanian vampire thing. I do social critique in my stories, there is ambition. I came out of illness with this show, and I want to have a second show and then I want to make my books concise.

There is a plan for developing this. When the review came in, I was not sure if it was good or bad.

I sent it to people to ask if this is a good review or not. They said, yeah, it's a good review, but you understand, I'm not stupid. I waited for so long for a step forward and the review is a step forward, then when it happened, I got dizzy and confused.

I said to myself, it feels like when I wrote an essay for Romanian Press, it was before Me Too, I wrote an essay and suddenly, I don't get much traffic but suddenly I had in one day, 4,000 people seeing my website. At least 40,000 people saw it. But when that happened, seeing the graphs skyrocketing, whoops, I was dizzy.

I was pacing in the kitchen. I didn't know what to do with myself, I conversed a little bit with my son, look, this is happening. It's a great joy that is happening, but as if the body is not prepared, or the brain. It's good stress, but the body and the mind are not used with good stress.

At the same time, if I underperform, I'm not well. I like to be in front of an audience, my energy gets focused. Life is more intense.

I want to juxtapose this with the experience of the fire. In the night of the fire, I was at the theater, you must watch at least two theater shows if you attend improvisation class, at least two improvisation shows with UCB. If it's a sketch class, at least two sketch shows.

I wasn't behind with the requirement, but I said, well, I've seen two shows tonight. They are one hour each. I'm here. It takes me almost an hour to travel one way, I'm going to watch one more show.

The show was not good. It started at 10 or 10:30, probably I was out at 11 or 11:30. It took me 40 minutes to get home. When I arrived there, it was a spectacle.

It was not clocking in. The front lawn that corresponds to my bedroom window was strewn with colorful things. There were a lot of firemen.

They were in their garb, they were everywhere. It was like a fireman party. They were loud, they were cheerful, burly, big. I found myself in the lobby.

I asked them, I always ask if the police comes, I ask. I don't just mosey on. I always ask, what's going on? The fireman tells me, well, there was a fire on seventh floor in this apartment that were a lot of things.

I said, what apartment? I live in 7D. He says yeah, that's in 7D. Then I realized, I saw the dog in the pet stroller there, but it's a beige pet stroller, it didn't register that it's mine.

Pandelutza was zipped up in it she broke her back the week before, so I had to confine her each time I left her alone. If she jumps about, she's not healing. She was on medication, heavily medicated. It sinks in that this is my dog there.

I didn't embrace the dog. I was, where's the cat? He says, what cat? There's no cat there. I said, yes, there is a cat. My Rosamunda is in the apartment. so luckily, he let me go upstairs. He came with me. They were all boisterous.

He came with me on the seventh floor, the staircase, the elevator, everything was with water. We went to the seventh floor, on the landing, again, lots of guys milling about, it was wreckage, water everywhere, darkness. He had a torch light, must have had a torch light, but not strong. I knew where's my Rosamunda. She always hides under the bed in the corner. I went under the bed, there she was with her green eyes, perfectly calm. But she was unwilling to get out of there. I had to fight both the debris, and under my bed I had two flat large boxes for art. They are U-shaped, on one side they don't have a lip so to speak, my posters and whatever were there under. I couldn't reach her gently. I started to explain to her, this is life and death, that she's going to die if she stays there alone, I have to grab her. cats are flexible.

They can squeeze through little amount of space. I had to manhandle her. I had to grab one arm, one leg, the shoulder, I had to pull her.

She never scratches me. She gets annoyed with me when I brush her on certain spots and she doesn't like it. When she doesn't like something, if the food is not up to her standards she vocalizes, but she would say nothing now. She said nothing. I was crying, I was wretched, my voice was painful.

I said, you must get out of here, come on, sweetheart I was pulling her, then she emerged. She has these lovely, lovely hugs. She puts her paws around my neck and she clings to me. I hold all of her. We went towards the exit.

The fireman abandoned me after a while, I was with my ass up reaching under the bed. He removed himself from there, or he thought the whole thing was bizarre. Whatever. He wasn't there. I emerged with the cat, there was the NYCHA staff there, they were hammering whatever they were doing. They were all so joyous. One of the NYCHA staff tells me, oh, you found your baby. I said, this is not my baby, this is my cat. My baby is 35 years old. I didn't want this sappy, whatever it was. I didn't. It was insulting to me. He said, well, I have three of them, they are all my babies. Well, fuck you. It was misplaced. My house was destroyed, you are doing chitchat with me.

The mass of people, the trampling of the premises, the views they had about my stuff. My stuff was organized on shelves. We spent quite a lot of time sorting. During COVID, I took it upon myself to go around the settlement. I would rescue the copper and some bits out of household appliances. They were throwing TVs and microwaves and fridges and I would harvest them. So, there was an accumulation, but I was lucky to have Ire newly in my life.

Three times a week we sorted and labeled and donated. This arduous progress was thrown out of the window, literally. They decided that they needed to have ventilation. In the bedroom I had a shelf that was like a canopy with my jewelry supplies. They decided that that might ignite, or I don't know why they decided. I understand that the kitchen, it was a priority to empty whatever was made of wood and whatever could ignite. I don't understand why the bedroom, which was far away, why it was a priority to throw out of the window. I don't understand.

But it's a mélange of anger that they were trespassing, how joyous they were, that nobody can touch them when they rampage, hey, you are alive. They are heroes. They risk their lives.

I was also not understanding. My dog, the stroller, I put her in the hallway, right by the door, literally four feet from the kitchen that burned. She survived, unscathed, the stroller unscathed, clothing that I had in the hallway, except for one leather jacket that was scrunched up, intact.

They contained the fire. It was a huge confusion in my head, it was humiliating, but it was also cold. I was ice cold.

I was not crying. I was just listening to what I'm supposed to do next. They took us to safety.

I put Rosamunda and Pandele in the same stroller, they didn't fight. Usually, she beats Pandele up with her paws, no claws. We were taken by a van, we went wherever they told us to go, whatever they told us to do next day, I did.

I remember I came to the housing office, from the office we went with the property manager, my housing worker, whatever. I have never met these people before. They keep on changing the management, it seems it's getting worse. We went to survey the damage. I was pushing the stroller. The lawn was full of my colorful necklaces. I had a series made of popsicles, colorful popsicles, pencils, colorful pencils, they are big. They are neck shrines. I had ones made of textile, everything was thrown on the grass.

On the kitchen side, whatever they threw from the kitchen, my silver-plated trays were in a bin the workers sorted them out for scrap metal that they wanted to sell.

I was keeping them in a dowry chest for when we get better lodgings. To see that, it felt, it's a harsh word to say, violation. It's bandied about too much nowadays to my taste. An intrusion, I'm powerless, it's humiliating. Like somebody is touching my belongings. It felt like they were touching me.

But I was so cold and it felt like the Romanian Revolution somehow. A massive public intrusion in private space, it was private space on display for public consumption, privacy was gone.

The next day, they put me in a hotel that day in the afternoon, the next day I came with Ire, my aide and personal assistant.

I don't know clearly what she is for me. She's also my alter ego when I was younger and I came here. She's bright and underemployed, so we came and we rescued a bit, we rescued little things, colorful buttons.

There were so many silver and metallic painted wood beads, just the day before I asked her to sort them by size, to cut some necklaces that I bought, four for a dollar, to make them into different designs. After she put all that work in, the fireman destroyed, they were rolling everywhere. again, being trampled upon on many levels.

Also, it felt like, why am I so touchy about this? How ridiculous I am that I'm touchy about some beads when I'm alive and the animals are alive and we are sheltered. At that point NYCHA was nice to us. Yes, they created this problem, but I didn't know. I didn't know how the fire started. Only later the fire marshal told me that it was a fridge that had malfunctioned, so it was their responsibility.

I thought maybe it was my fault. I have stuff, but I never burn candles or incense unsupervised. I'm not an idiot But I didn't know.

Two weeks before the microwave was not functioning, so I threw it away and we bought a new microwave and we plugged it and three days later, this is what's happening. It had no connection, but I wasn't aware. I was trying to sort out what was going on. Then things started to go strange.

We were in the hotel, and we were happy that we were in the hotel. The animals gradually calmed down. The cat was disturbed. Constantly, when she ate, she would look left and right and take a bite and again looked left and right.

She couldn't focus on the food. Never saw her doing this before. The dog would bark out of nothing at people. We were glad to be just there on the bed.

But then the hassles started with the waiting to get back into the space, getting this, this, this.

How that chicken, when finally, we got to the tumbled down fridge, the chicken was about to explode in the freezer. I bought chicken from Costco right before the fire. It was raw chicken breast, in sturdy wrappings, each breast separately sealed in plastic. It was godly luck that we came in before it exploded, rotten as it was, and cleaned, threw it into the garbage before it exploded out of the plastic encasement. It would have been disgusting...

Anyway, it was interesting to see what survived and what didn't survive. Most of the heirloom stem glasses were destroyed, thick hand cut glass, not flimsy beer bottles.

Some survived. It was so random.

It made me think of earthquakes. We had an earthquake in Romania in '77 and some people survived if they stayed under the arch of a door, all around them destruction but they survived. It made me think about that, about chance...

I cleaned and then I experienced intense feelings of love towards this destroyed home as if I loved it more or as if I realized that I love this home and I want to repair it and I want to make it my home. I never took steps to paint it in my preferred colors, left it beige.

I used it as a kind of storage space for my supplies, but not as a welcoming space for other people, out of safety. But now I turned a leaf on that, and I want people in my house.

It was 10 days into this, I went to an office at Fountain House that is for homeless people. I told them I don't have clothing, so it must have been while I was still in the hotel. I don't have clothing and if they could give me something. One of the workers there, when he heard that I had a fire, he said, I've seen it on Instagram, your fire.

I said, could you send it to me? I was surprised, I wanted badly to see it, I wasn't there when it happened. I needed to see, I needed to see it from the outside somehow. He couldn't find it.

A few weeks later, we were coming out of the studio with Tanya and Roger, and we were going to the subway and Tanya asked me what settlement I lived in. I said, Thomas Jefferson. She said my father lived there when he was young. My friend sent me this video, and it was your house burning, now I realize, she says. She could scramble it out on Instagram.

We were in the street, and I see the video clip, and I see the burly men coming, dragging hoses. One was up in the air, breaking the window from the outside. I've seen my stuff flying out of the window. I cried. It was the first time that I cried, uncontrollably, in the street. Then I felt ashamed that I cried.

I felt like I was too dramatic and that I'm scaring my fellow artists. I closed back the window of my heart. She sent me the link. That happened on a Friday. I couldn't watch it. until next day.

The shock of watching it and the horror of reading the comments. It was prefaced as at a heavily cluttered home in East Harlem, on this and this street, between this and this avenues, the heroes are rescuing and the comments, oh, this is another, I forgot the guys who had pianos and cars in their house and died in some mansion, Collier Mansion, they are famous for that. One was blind, and his brother took care of him.

They had pianos on top of pianos, and they had just goat paths. The caregiver died, something fell on him. The other one, the brother died of starvation. He couldn't get out of the house. So, Colliery Mansion in the projects, that was what they were saying, what is that flying out of the window? Is it an animal cage? The guy who put the stuff on the web was calling himself a journalist.

He was presenting himself like he was documenting the firemen's heroism. He had a website set up on which you could buy pictures of the heroes in action. he had a disclaimer that I don't know how much of this goes straight to the firemen.

He was filming my distress. He was putting hearts on the evil comments. One of them was saying that that's what happens to you if you put your shit up to the ceiling and your crap, that's what happens to you. This journalist was putting hearts there. The guy who said the cage was flying out the window when it was my shelf, which I had my food on in the kitchen. He was saying, it's not a cage, it's a shopping cart. Why would somebody have a shopping cart in the kitchen? You fold it and put it in the closet. Everything was seen through the lens of this is a disgusting, disgusting person.

I wrote to him, I wrote in the comments there, thank you for documenting this, I said. At that time the fire marshal report came out. This was a malfunctioning fridge, the fault of a malfunctioning fridge out of many NYCHA malfunctioning fridges and I don’t take it kindly that you let these negative comments populate your posting and that on top of it you are putting hearts to it!

And what was flying out of the window was not a cage or a shopping cart. It was my kitchen shelf on which I kept my victuals and what you saw flying out of the window the majority were my art supplies. I also endeavored to write him a message. He was prompt on replying and he said he got it from the blotter or something, firemen have an internal communication system, he was saying that he is not affiliated with the firemen, he doesn't work for the firemen, he’s a journalist and this is what they said, that this is a heavily cluttered home! I said it’s neither here nor there that it’s cluttered or not cluttered, but to be called a hoarder! Have you been to my house? Have you seen my house, any of you Instagram guys? What kind of journalist are you putting hearts to these nasty comments? You’re supposed to be impartial. You don’t know how hurtful this can be! He said no, I didn’t put any hearts! I went back to the Instagram feed and he took off the hearts! But he forgot some in the nested comments, so I endeavored to take pictures and sent them to him, thank you for taking them off but you forgot some. Thank you for documenting it. I am an artist and I'd like to have this footage. Oh, I'm not sharing my content. I said how about your website, you set up shop, you sell photos of these tragic fire situations, you make money out of my tragedy. If you don’t want to share your video since I’d like it for documentation, also to include in my own art installation, can I buy it from you? He said nothing else. I dropped it.

But it was something that I felt before, when I published an essay in the Romanian press, I published it after what happened in India, in 2008 or 2018, it was right before the MeToo movement, in India a woman was gang raped on a bus and she died while the bus was going around and around the city. The men of India were outraged, and they protested it and they change the law. It made me cry so hard, it sounds ridiculous now, but it shook me. When I was 18, I was gang raped and it happened partly because of an actor. I went to the big city, I didn’t know about safety, my mother would say be cautious, but I would not listen to my mother, she lived her life in fear. So this actor that I admired said in a magazine come to me, young ones! And so I said, okay, I'm gonna get in touch with him at his theater and I'm gonna ask him if he can be my teacher. I failed one exam so obviously you had to have a tutor to become an actor. I went there and he said that, okay, we can see about that, but for sure I'd like to fuck you.

So, here's somebody whom you deeply respect for his artistry, he just tells you bluntly that he, yeah. I didn't know how to sort it out. No matter what, I put an announcement that I want to rent a room, I was in the hotel, and this guy appeared, a working class guy and we talked and somehow he came along when I had another meeting arranged with the actor.

I came and I dressed Amelie what nowadays would be nothing. But at that point in Romania, when people saw me on the street, they spit on me, they cursed me like I'm the devil. That was the level of our communist public discourse.

I was, soccer players, they have knee high socks, they have stripes. I sewed two leggings, I made one long stocking, it was yellow and black, like a bee, like a wasp. I had yellow crocs.

I had a yellow tunic up to mid-thigh. My hair was big bushy. They decided that I'm, yeah.

So, when I showed up at the theater, the actor just went blank and he said, never come here again. What would the theater people say?! This was an artist who I thought he'd appreciate my creativity, but he talked like my mother, always worried what the neighbors would say. Then the working-class guy helped me take my luggage from the hotel, we went to his lodgings and in the night they gang raped me. They pretended that they were the police and that I should open. I didn't have a Bucharest ID so I was illegal. They broke the door, there was a bottle there and I broke it and I fought them and they beat me up, but at least they didn't kill me. After an ordeal of several hours, I ran away.

They let me go. I called my mother at dawn and she said, come home. But the train was going home only in the evening.

All day long I sat on a tram car, and nobody asked me what happened to you, though I was beaten, my face bruised. I went to a theater I had an appointment with a celebrated actress and when she saw me, she said this is not how you do things?! Instead of asking me what happened to you or you need medical attention, no. Only a peasant woman, when finally I went in the waiting room at the train station, she asked me dismayed, what happened to you.

I couldn't say what happened to me, I couldn't. My parents hid me in the house until I healed. They never took me to a gynecologist, they never took me to a psychologist, nothing.

They found a job for me after my bruises got healed at the post office. Then I found myself a job as a nanny in Bucharest and I went back and I found myself a real acting tutor and I kept on studying. But after revolution, the bullshit actor was on the examination committee at the Institute for Theater.

When I saw him, I froze. My tutor knew somebody on the committee and he told him that I behaved as if I didn't want to be there. Yes, I didn't want to be there with this guy on the committee

Maybe I'm just melodramatic, but my body felt that amount of violation.

After the article got published and my website traffic spiked, the comments were, some of them were denying that this can happen under communism, others were sympathetic and it touched me and I reached out to them, but a lot of the comments were like the discourse of people who are gawking into rape and they probably would... It felt like they were rapists and they would accuse me and it went on and on and on.

So, some residue of that popped up while I was reading the fire video comments, and I was sick and ashamed. I told a friend about it. She was sympathetic, but she said that I'm not like that myself. I'm not like that myself. There are people who just gawk when something bad happens, and I'm not like that. Why would she say that? I couldn't sort it out, I didn't tell her. It was strange. I chalked it up.

I felt ashamed that now I was a public spectacle. I like to be a public spectacle on stage, but I don't like to be a public spectacle, like here is a hoarder... It's not on my terms? Yeah, if you start to be a public person, you have to be prepared. I didn't know how to protect myself. I didn't ask him to pull down the video. I didn't complain about it, it's freedom of speech. I said my piece there, but I also, I didn't know how Instagram functions and when you look at the video, you see some of your friends or whomever you follow or followers, they have their profile and hearts floating.

I saw my son's and I saw Becky's and I saw other people who are precious to me, and they had hearts. So I was thinking, my son saw this video, and he put a heart to it?! Oh, my God, they were like 12,000 people who saw the video when it happened, 12,000. This guy has 12,000 hits and me on a good month, I have 1,000.

I should have piggybacked on it.

Becky explained to me that that doesn't mean they hearted my video, but it's just to entice me to click on, to see what they liked, other videos. I was horrified that my son can read that his mother is stigmatized, a lynched hoarder. I couldn't talk about it for quite a while, and I felt quite ashamed for quite a while to be called a hoarder

Meanwhile I'm decluttering, I initiated a decluttering workshop for other people, and all that effort went out of the window. I was even fantasizing that I'm going to organize my apartment so prettily, in one room I'm going to put my artwork and I'm going to have space and I'm going to have a housewarming party and I'm going to invite the fireman. I was also appreciative all through it about the fireman who didn't say this woman who is a hoarder. He said, this woman who has many things. I appreciated that. Right before I saw this video, I was ready to take two bottles of wine to the firemen place to thank them that they rescued the pets and they contained the fire. But I was afraid I'm going to scream at them and why, why you allow this civilian? Is this even legal? If he's not a fireman, what is he doing on your communications? look the impact that it can have and if you perceive me as a heavy clutterer, you are not even yet in my house at that point when you announce it and if you perceive it as such, I'm sure you see a lot of this in this city, as we age and our spaces are small, I'm sure you see lots and lots of stuff.

Is there anything done for us? If we are hoarders and clutterers and whatnot, I'm sure you guys might have some hoarders and clutterers in your own lives and instead of looking at it with sympathy and looking at some solution or at least public discussion, you are vilifying your own family and you are vilifying whomever you encounter during your job. It feels personal. And the gleefulness with which you threw out my stuff was like your grandmother's stuff that you can't suffer.

It felt personal, the whole thing about the Collier Mansion in the projects, so cuckoo, the whole thing. Well, I couldn't talk about it, Amelie, for so long. I was so ashamed. It's no easy feat to talk about something like that.

To be put to shame publicly, it felt like Monica Lewinsky, a bit.

What makes it feel personal is that it's so impersonal that they didn't care who I was. They didn't care to know how the fire started. They didn't care. No. Those were my personal items. It was a violation.

They don't care if a museum is on fire. They want to throw out Leonardo da Vinci or Van Gogh. They're going to just throw it out.

Also how marvelous is that so much artwork survived the centuries. But when I was coming to the studio, I was always feeling ashamed.

Is Tanya gossiping behind my back that I'm a hoarder? What are they thinking? I just felt so ashamed. I'm a hoarder.

I have so many objects I've collected throughout my life that are personally significant. I'm a museum. I'm creating art environments

I'm not a hoarder. I kept on saying this is not like you have dead animals and feces. I'm someone who lives in limited space. If I had a three-story home, no one would say a single thing. But on top of that it didn't ignite because of me.

Then also the disregard of the firemen to go into my bedroom and throw things out of there, boisterously. As if they wanted to tear the house apart. They were going to the gym, they were happy about getting some action, they have so many false alarms probably.

I'm going to invite this fake journalist to the opening. I'm going to invite the firemen.

Because this is not OK. It's not OK. I was talking about this with my friend. Being apathetic is just as bad as being evil.

Just gliding through is evil. It's just as bad as being intentionally malicious.

Oh, my goodness. Time goes by so quickly when you tell stories.

Taxi Accident

July 30, 2025

Amelie you asked me gracefully about my day.

Did we even talk about me being hit by a taxi? Well, two weeks later or three weeks later now and my arm is still deformed. You see the bump? It's going down and the coloring is not an abstract painting anymore. Now it's impressionistic. The hand is weak and painful. I tried to draw on Sunday, but I couldn't.

I'm pissed off. I'm pissed off.

At the beginning I was not sure if I wanted to sue and ask for retribution for my accident. I found the lawyer sleazy when I went to their office for the first time. Before signing up with them, I told them I wanted to read the papers first at home. Oh, the mood change instantly. They refused to Uber me back home like they had promised when they called me to come all the way to Brighton Beach to their office. Anyway, I consulted left and right. Everybody said sue, sue, sue. BooLyn, who is prone to bicycle accidents, told me I'm aging, it feels good to have $50,000 in the bank. I never had money in the bank, she said.

I said, BooLyn, besides my arm injury, the accident impacted my mind. I fear being in the car with my son. This car is a monster, this car can kill and you must be a responsible driver. Then riding the bus, I don't like it rattles me about.

Then is my improvisation practice. I stopped initiating, I don't get first out of the back line on stage. I just sit in the back. It's not how I used to be.

And when they turned the spotlights on, as if I was in the car headlights. It threw me off. I'm pissed off at this irresponsible driver who is just driving around town unharmed. He drives around town. It upsets me.

I went to my doctor, they X-rayed my arm, no fracture. But they weren't willing to send me to an MRI, though it's not all right what's going on with my arm. Lawsuit or no lawsuit doctors are not hearing me.

It's more important to them what the insurance allows them or not allows them, pays them or not pays them. It's upsetting. Eventually I said, okay, I'm going to sue, I’m going to the lawyer’s office tomorrow. I take my dog, I'm going to go to Brighton Beach or Coney Island. The Q train takes me from my neighborhood straight there.

But my day got mangled up, and we arrived there around five o'clock, too late.

I bought myself swimsuits. I haven't had a new swimsuit in four or five years. I always buy them at thrift stores. You can imagine when somebody's donating a bathing suit, it's already falling apart.

So, here we are on the Q train. We are waiting and waiting. The D train. No, Q train, but it went on the D line. Somebody had a problem on Prospect Park. So, we couldn't go on our route. It's 10 o'clock. Now, Pandele, as we get off the train, she senses the ocean air, she's bouncy. She wants to run to the waves, but she's afraid of water. She runs around me. Usually, she's all doom and gloom when she sees the waves coming towards her. But she was running around and nipping at my ankles.

I was happy that she was happy. As we go closer to the water, she's reluctant. But still, she’s not frightened shitless like she used to be 2-3 years ago. I took one leash and clipped it on another leash, so she had a long berth. I can walk in the foamy waves, and she can walk on the dry sand. We went up and down the beach. I had nothing in my stomach. I read about the wheat belly. I'm going to try not to touch wheat. But, of course, I have to be social. So, I'm going to touch wheat. But I'm weaning myself off wheat. Pandele ate half a chicken breast. She's not hungry. So, we went to the beach.

When my son took me to Jersey Shore I loved it. It was clean, Amelie, sanitized. No algae. No shells. No nothing. No pebbles. Calm. But here you see marine life. I loved it. No boom boxes. It was as quiet as on the Jersey Shore. Why should I even bother to go to Jersey Shore? I can take the train early in the morning. I get to Rockaway or Brighton Beach. I stay in the sun for two hours. I buy fresh fruit, much cheaper than in the city. I come back to the studio at 11 when you open.

Yeah, but I can't bring the dog...

I could do this three times a week. How lovely it would be this summer as opposed to last summer when I didn't go at all to the shore, usually my son would take me. We used to go with his girlfriend. She moved to Washington D.C. He went to Pennsylvania.

I can take my destiny into my hands.

After the beach we arrived two stops from Coney Island on the D train at the Tarasov and Volnichkov office, two Russian lawyers.

Their awning says we deal with work accidents, construction accidents, dog bites, car accidents, this kind of accident, that kind of accident. I'm going in.

Here comes Rima, an intake person.

Rima is botoxed and shiny. She's young but she looks ridiculous. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with her. Is she afraid of growing old?! Too much suing, too much inflating of injuries. Alan, a lawyer friend, was telling me that in France there is what they call La Cour des Miracles, which is the Court of Miracles, is like a squatter neighborhood. All Parisian beggars on crutches and other appurtenances come at nightfall, and suddenly they don’t need crutches, they are miraculously healed. So, these shady legal and healthcare enterprises push you to exaggerate your injuries, then you go home and you are not sick anymore.

Their shady transactions have the same stinky flavor like La Cour des Miracles. I guess inflating suffering and preying on it, Rima feels a tinge of guilt. One-third of the claims goes to them, but maybe my suffering works on them. They turn into ghouls, scarecrows, botox themselves.

Anyway, we signed and we signed and we signed. I didn't even read again. I read it before with Alan and said, okay, that's standard, just sign it. Pandele needed water, so Rima went to bring bottles of water.

I flinched asking myself how much is she charging for bottles? For that Uber trip that never happened, I looked in the documents, they don't send you in Uber from their office home or vice versa because they are kind. No, they charge the ride, and $25 for their service of ordering the Uber, and they take it out from your part of the settlement on top of their one-third.

We went to the Petco across the street. I ran out of wet cat food.

It was so hot. It was so hot. There was a one-block wide tent full of Chinese seniors. They were having a blast, sitting on chairs, fanning themselves, drinking refreshments. Maybe it was a holiday or a street community center. They don't have a brick and mortar one yet, so they used a tent.

Then back we were on the train, Pandele on the floor, tired. I gave her to eat from the cat food can, she ate it all. She can't lick it from the can, so I had to break it and make mounds so that she can access it with her tongue.

Now, I'm saying nothing deep about human condition, like I usually do, but the minutia of my life with her. On the chair next to us there was a puddle of water, nobody sat there, so we had space for ourselves. First, she was on the floor, but then I put her on the chair on my chemise.

We went back to our neighborhood on the Q train. We walked in the tree shade. I don't know how her little paws navigate the hot pavement, but she didn't complain.

I was carrying the canned food, I couldn't take her in my arms. We walked in the shade, then we sat under the tree shade in the M15 local bus stop, nothing was coming, then we saw the M15 Select bus, we crossed the street.

When I cross the street, I wait for other people. I don't dare. Before I would jaywalk, I would look left and right, but I would jaywalk. Now I don't jaywalk.

One evening it was raining, about a week ago. I was waiting at a busy intersection. Drivers were paying no mind to us though it was green light for pedestrians. It was raining. I started screaming at them, Motherfuckers stop! We need to cross! They were turning into FDR, they paid no mind. There was another woman, we navigated. But what the fuck?!

At home, I made a huge salad for myself. I mixed Tuscany bean salad from Costco with chicken breast and kale and pickles. I enriched it with olives and pickles. It was huge. I devoured it as I was putting the cans away, what not. Then I talked to Alberto, who's my new therapist.

Now I have too many therapists, Amelie. I don't understand how I arrived at two therapists. Maybe the insurance will say stop it, you can't have so many therapists. But I'm just trying to see which is a good fit.

So, Alberto wanted to confirm the next day's appointment. He kept on talking to me in Spanish. I kept on telling him, I don't speak Spanish. I'm so sorry. Then, again, he switches to Spanish. It's not going to work. We'll see. Tomorrow is tomorrow.

So, then I went to the corner where the accident happened. I noticed that there is a traffic video camera.

But it's low that it might not cover the whole street. There is a Citi Bank on that corner. I went inside. There was no lobby helper. I asked a banker who could help me with some footage from their security camera.

It took a while for the manager who oversaw answering such questions, she was emptying the ATM. If you want to rob a bank, you should know that around 4 o'clock, when they empty the ATM, maybe you should rob them before four.

She said you cannot get their video footage yourself as a mere citizen. You must have a police report, the police have to ask CitiSecurity. They might have it or they might not have it.

Now, have I told you about my doings with the policewoman? When I was in the ambulance I was interviewed by a policeman whose face I didn't see, he was standing behind me and I couldn't turn around, I was in a neck brace.

He asked me if I banged my head. I said, I don't remember if I banged my head. I saw the car coming, I froze in my tracks. I could not believe that the car kept on coming.

The car hit me. Then as I fell it was a horrible pain. Then people started screaming. Everybody was screaming that I should not get up. Then the driver came, I kept on saying, what were you thinking, what were you thinking? I was not cursing him. I was stupefied, shocked.

Maybe this was not a normal reaction to ask what he was thinking. On site there was a fellow Hungarian who had a previous car accident. He was on a unicycle, he knew what to do. He called the ambulance. He gave me this legal office information they represent him. The police didn't come for an hour. He took the driver’s information.

Mina, the legal person tells me that at least the police came, usually they don't want to come. There was a shooting next to their office, the police didn't show up. That's just great.

After a few days I went to pick up my police report. The police report, written by Ashley Herrera Reyes, says that I said that I don't know what happened, that I absolutely don't know what happened, that I was hit on my right side, but she doesn't mention my arm.

The police officer who gave me the report was looking at it, this is a bad report. This police person, she's new on the force. He could tell by the badge number. He advised me to go talk to her in person. It's customary to ask for corrections, and she must amend it. Then I read it myself. Even the word pedestrian was spelled cuckoo. It took a while until I got hold of Officer Herrera at Precinct 25. She was off for two days, then I couldn't come, then when I came again, she was assigned to a different place, so it took five days to get hold of her.

Officer Herrera, she was not an officer probably. She was a private, whatever, not a sergeant. I don't know how to address them.

Here she is with guns in her belt, in her stocky magnificence, no female solidarity whatsoever. I say, look, the report doesn't reflect what I said at all, and I would like you to correct that.

She says I don't have to.

I say I'm sorry, but this is not what I said in the report. I talked to your partner, I'm assuming that you wrote in your report what you read in his notes, but I never said that I didn't know what happened. I said I didn't know if I hit my head or not. Then, look at my arm, why is the arm injury not mentioned in the report? She ask, how did it happen? Well, I was crossing the street going south, this car came turning to the left from the avenue. It was green for me, I had priority, he didn't yield, he hit me.

Oh, she said, but there were witnesses that he did not hit you. What?!

How did he hit you? Well, he rammed into me. She says, no, witnesses say that he backed off into you. I said, no way. I know what happened. Please don't deny my experience. What witnesses did you talk to after an hour? People dispersed by the time you guys showed up. Maybe the driver bribed some low lives to testify falsely…

I said, please, I was told that it is customary to have reports amended. I'll need to talk to your superior. She says, you are threatening me. I said, how am I threatening you?! You have guns. You are at home here. All I want is my real words in the report. Then she says, give me your number.

I gave her my phone number. She says, in three, four days, come and pick it up again. I was like, what the fuck was this? What the fuck?

It felt like she was on the driver’s side. That he didn't hit me! No, no, no. Have I fallen into a corruption trap? The driver was denying though it's on video. He kept on saying, I did not hit her. I did not hit her.

The Hungarian guy who was videotaping, told him, Bro, I saw you. We all saw you, how you hit her. You can't, you can't, you can't get out of this!

At least he didn't run away. He stayed. It felt like I fell into a movie. I watch too much Colombo now. This cop is corrupt. Probably the driver bribed her. It was bizarre.

When I went two days ago, on Friday, I picked up my new report, and it was improved. But still, it says that she felt that the car hit her. At least it was not still that she doesn't know what happened.

She felt that the car hit her. She felt that the car hit her? What kind of bullshit is that? She felt it. She had a feeling. She had an inkling.

I was disgusted. I talked again with this Hungarian witness, what the fuck is this? He said that in his case, too, the police were trying to deny it. I wonder why.

But he said to leave it to the lawyers. They're going to straighten it out. Leave it to the lawyers. So, when I got the second fucked up report that we go by feelings when I was certainly hit, I said, okay, I'd like to speak to the sergeant. I don't want to speak with this policewoman anymore. I'm not getting anywhere. Comes out sergeant Pena is off until August 2nd but I'm gonna write my story for him.

But before that I’m gonna go back to CitiBank and Dunkin Doughnuts.

Then I went to the clinic that this law office works with. The bored receptionist told me it’s too late for intake so please come tomorrow. Here is a sheath of papers. I asked when tomorrow, she said three o'clock, I said I have a zoom meeting at 3:30, she said I’ll be out by then, it will be just 10 minutes. Then why can’t you squeeze me in now, I'm here?! No. So, tomorrow I’m going there.

Amelie, I came out of there and I said I'm gonna come to the studio and I walked four blocks and I went in the subway stop and there were so many people there, so many people inside the train, we were crammed. I plopped myself on a seat, the guy to my left didn’t like it much but he pulled away. At 59 Street stop, I waited again two Rs passed by, finally a W came and this tall guy who was conversing with another guy I was lucky he broke through the crowd and I followed him and I plopped myself on a chair again and I came down 36 Ave and it felt more normal. At the greengrocer I bought a big orange papaya for 50 cents a pound, not the freshest but…

Then I trotted here and Alex was smoking outside in this heat, and I did not tell him that I was hit by a taxi, I did not tell him. Usually I go to their studio, all drama, tell them the latest news and that’s the end of this!

The Building Keys

March 22, 2025

Since you know when we come into the studio we are allowed to have a few minutes at the table to settle in, I say I should put to good use those minutes and I should create this material about me and the building keys. So I live in this temporary apartment which is two blocks from my permanent apartment and of course I'm grateful that I'm not in the street though it was not through any of my doing that their fridge exploded and so they put me into this temporary building and they didn't give me the entrance key and I asked when am I gonna get the entrance key on the phone. The lady who is, I don't know what she's, housing assistant, housing worker, she tells me that she's busy, she can't, people are waiting for her, so we're gonna talk about it.

So, I come, we don't talk about it, we talk about other stuff which was intense, I don't want to get into it, but then I keep on coming twice a week at the reception desk, when will you give me a key? They say the vendor who's manufacturing the keys is not producing keys and so there's no key, but the way this is told to me it's grinning like it's amusing, like look this vendor is just a terrible mess but we love him, it felt like that. Meanwhile, this was, so I'm there since January, the end of January 30th, 29th that they gave me that place, so it was pretty cold a few days and I would be like, I would come, stay, sit there in front of the door in the evening for even half an hour until somebody comes in from the building or goes into the building with a key. So, I got sick and then I healed myself and then it came back again I was standing in the cold outside.

Now there was this lady who I knew from the old building, she voluntarily moved into this building before she told me she was living on the 11th floor and here she lives on the 3rd floor and she prefers this arrangement. So, she recognized me when I came there and so we chatted a bit, I told her that I'm here of the fire and that was it. Then it dawned on me, I should have asked her to come with me to the hardware store, I pay her so I make a copy of her entrance key I have a neighbor next to me, twice a day that neighbor, she has a bunch of kids, I love hearing them shouting inside her apartment, she smokes with her mother pot, twice a day even my assistant, she can't suffer people who smoke, she's always rolling up her eyes and also my dog protests to this, I believe it's it was a fire, it was a lot of smoke and whatever it is, but after a while the woman is, the mother is lovely, like one day we were again in front of the door and here she comes and there were two guys there, so I came first, then she came and then these two guys, unrelated, unrelated, she called her daughter upstairs and her granddaughter came to open the door, the moment the door opened, these two guys just went by straight in the elevator without a thank you, without here you go, you've been here before of us, thank you of letting us in in the first place, nothing, I was stunned, I was stunned and how she didn't say, she had half a smile in the elevator and I asked her, this is incredible, this is incredible, how can they treat people like this, what kind of families are they coming from and I said, you are so gracious it outrages me, we didn't continue discussion I was frozen, she was but then the next day or the next time I saw her smoking there, I asked her, how will teach me, how you even now I'm stewing on it, my son would never do such a horrible thing, how is it possible, what kind of men are these and how do you sort this out and she says ever since I was a small child, I took a liking to Mother Teresa and always she would say, if the world hates you, love the world anyway and she had this smile on her face and in my mind I said, I complimented her that I complimented her in front of her daughter, in my mind I said, I don't think this is the right approach, I don't think, Mother Teresa was an Albanian who went to India, so she was an adventurer, if this is in the project, if it's applicable, I don't dare we are talking, she's African-American, the guys were African-American, I don't dare say a thing, but she is a mother figure, she could have said something listen, this is not all right, whoever raised you did a poor job and you are calling misery upon yourself with going on like this through the life, through all, anyway, so there was no elevator one other day and I'm there with my shopping cart and my dog and she's so lovely that she says that, let me help you, she took her grandchildren to the school nearby and I was frozen is this too much to accept this help and this other neighbor who lived in my building, this time I came and I said, oh, I was thinking is it possible to go to the hardware store and I'll pay you and I'll pay for the key, but this neighbor, I told her, so the lovely neighbor, she told me that they lost their key and they went to the office to get a copy and they asked for 50 dollars for a key, for 50 dollars, I thought she says 1-5, no, she was saying 5-0, she corrected me and so we were there and I tell the neighbor, is it possible and she says, yeah, when, are you a free Friday, I said, no, I am, but then the calculator said that, okay, Thursday, when she doesn't do her practice, yoga, whatever, that she's gonna come knock on my door, I was thinking maybe I should give her my phone number, but she felt, it felt like she's reluctant to know where I live, so I told her where I live, so comes Thursday, we were supposed to come at noon, around 10-30, she knocks on my door to tell me that this is not safe to multiply the key, that I live in this building, I have the right to get, to get key from the office and I should go to the office, I don't have to pay for, to get the key, as if I didn't know all this and as if I wasn't exhausted by doing, right, just this and so I, at least she came, she was telling me that she didn't go to yoga, that her nephew, that voila, I said, well, thank you my son thought when I told him this, that I was sarcastic but actually I was not sarcastic, I thanked her, at least that she was decent enough to come and say she's not coming, she's not following through, she didn't just let me there wait so I appreciated that, well, thank you for nothing, I see them in front of the building that there is a particular woman there who's on the ground floor and probably she's tired of people knocking on her window to let them in and so she's not, but I see, I, in order for me to get in and out, I would take an S-hook and I would put it on the hinge so it's invisible usually it is with magnets and people would put all kinds of bottle caps or whatever pebbles so that to keep the door open and for a while we could even just yank the door and enter, but this fuddy-duddy, busybody always, I've seen her I was not, usually I watch myself, but she was there having coffee in the lobby, why would you have coffee when your apartment is here, just to watch, to serve the servant, so I'm taking my dog out and I'm not thinking and I put the hook on the hinge, otherwise it's not visible, you can't locate why the door is not closing.

When I come back with the dog, my S-hook was thrown away, she saw it so I took it upon me the next time that I saw it, I saw her, I said, look, I'm sorry, but look, I'm here not I want to be here, they put me here a fire, a fire broke, I'm sorry if I inconvenience you that I need at times the door to be open, but they don't give me the key. They just nodded and looked at me and it was such a bizarre feeling and then there is this other guy who has a dog, small like mine, I don't put leash, the rule is to put the leash on your dog, rightly so, they have huge, humongous dogs there, but my dog is itty-bitty and so she also has a lump here and so I let her free, she listens to me, I'm her leash she listens to me, so she runs after this dog she likes the dog, to this the guy gets neurotic and yanks his dog and shoes my dog, almost hit my dog and starts screaming at me, why don't I leash my dog? I say what is the problem? She's a small dog, he says, besides this, now you moved in my building, and, he was just so unpleasant that he's gonna go and report it to the housing management, I said it would behoove you if you take your meds oh my God, I hit a raw spot, he started screaming, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch and off he went in the elevator, I've seen that afterwards he's avoiding me, also if I see him with a yappy dog, I grab my dog under my arm, so this is what happened one day I come, he was looking ugly at me, all the neighbors were looking ugly at me fatty daddy's retirees sit on the bench, nothing to do, they gossip, on top of it, the neighbor right across from me, she introduced herself to me in the elevator once, she's 95 year old, I'm told by the neighbor, she goes often to the rec center, to the elderly group there and she was saying that she loves my dog, that she talks always to my dog through the door when the dog barks and she was smiling upon me, no, she was sitting on the bench, I said, I smiled to her, I said hello, she was looking ugly too, my mind, fuck you all, fuck you all, you are so entitled you've been here before me whatever is going on, this is not acceptable, so all this it was just four days ago, when it was that rainy, rainy day, no, before that, a day before, so the rainy day, before it was the rainy day, there was an announcement on the door, please don't, don't close the door, it's, you can't open it with the key anymore, people would not listen, would close the door, unless they, often they put a broom handle in the door there to keep it open, they took the broom, they threw it about, so this particular day, when it's raining, I come home, I was wet on top of it, I forgot my umbrella here, I was waiting, I tell you, once I came, after I went to the theater, I stayed there for 40 minutes, I was shivering, I was, I was praying, please somebody come and go and fetch a beer, or do something, please open this door for 45 minutes it was just, it was beastly, it was torture, so here we are sitting, it's, it's raining, it's not cold here comes the blonde neighbor with the keys she says, the devils, the devils, this person, can you believe it, they put gorilla glue, no, crazy glue in the, in the lock, now nobody can use the keys, now, on top of it, I forgot my phone home, I can't call my granddaughter, who's in the apartment, look, we are sitting here, isn't that horrible, horrible, it's a, what a devil, that person is a devil, I tell to her I don't think it's fair, I don't think it's fair, that many people, including my neighbor, who has small children, don't have a key. You are concerned about safety here, why don't you talk to the tenant committee to do something about it, instead, you boycott us, who don't have the key, so now, you'll get the medicine, I don't think it's the devil, it's karma, what goes around comes around, now you get a taste of your medicine, it will not sink in, nothing, she kept on saying about the devil, now she forgot the phone, now she went to the corner store, she didn't think, well, here you are, another person comes, two more come, you're like seven around there, it does, there is an intercom, I don't have intercom in my, in my house, I put a ticket to have it fixed in my temporary, nobody's coming, we don't know, it's an outsider person, company, so I say, well, is your intercom in your house work, we saw, I see the intercom, it's obvious, nobody comes out, so she says, yeah, but my daughter, no, is not gonna, I say, well, just try, so there was another guy there, who was tall enough to read the number that corresponds to her thing, to her apartment, she dialed, she kept on screaming in the, in the thing, that come downstairs, I don't have the phone, come downstairs, let us in, so she screamed like this, three sessions, the granddaughter came, we got in, I just love it now, the door is totally ajar, nonstop, is open now, nobody's locking it, I can go to the theater, I can come, my son, when he comes to town, like this weekend, he can go, he can come, I don't need to go downstairs, open it, so the devil, the devil, the devil, the devil, the devil, the devil I just love it, that they put, I asked my neighbor, I thought, maybe my neighbor did this, maybe, I hope that my neighbor, she's so clever, but it didn't sound like, I told them what happened and she said, yeah, karma to this blonde lady, she says a year ago, this happened, that somebody was not pleased with the outcome of the housing court, they went to housing court with the management, they put crazy glue in it, for a year, they were without, with the door open but so now, now, they have to change the lock, they have to give new keys to everybody for free, good, so, but they don't care, so, but at least now, I can go in and out, the weather is good, so it doesn't matter that much anymore, but you know, it triggers you, like you are homeless you can't get access into your sanctuary and it's an ordeal, but this is a part of a bigger scheme of things, they don't care, I don't know why they are allowed not to care to such degree, I don't know how it's justified, what they do, it's inhuman, what they do. It is inhuman.

Yeah. Bureaucracy is evil. Right.

That process of having to go to someone who goes to someone else, who goes to someone else, who goes to someone else. Just to tell you that, yeah, but you think, the other thing is I grew up under communism, I thought that bureaucracy, corruption, evil, power tripping, I thought that's typical communistic, it's human nature. It's human nature. It's horrible. It's awful.