hannah

I got a fistbump from Tom Cruise yesterday.

No big deal.

For context, I went to the Mission Impossible red carpet event opening yesterday. The New York Adventure Club had gotten 20 red carpet passes issued to them, and because I get their newsletter, I was able to sign up and get in - a case of the right place, the right time, and knowing exactly where to look. There was waiting in line, there was standing in line, there was making sure I had the right information readily available, there was getting up as close to the front of the line as possible and then getting right up as close to the wall to the red carpet as possible. There was more waiting. There was a trivia question giveaway of sweatshirts and backpacks - to many, many people dressed in cocktail attire, no less - to keep energy going, and then the entertainment professionals getting people cheering.

During the waiting, I kept watching the crowds around me and on the other side of the fence. The way people were arranging cameras, getting microphones set up. I saw cast and crew walking around, glimpsing recognizable faces on the other side of the partition. The waiting around before and after intense, brief moments of activity seemed fitting, for what I know about making movies. Lights, camera, hang on, hold on, give me a moment, camera again, and then it's action. I watched pigeons fly around, and I joked about the largest animal that could be knocked unconscious by the sound system. I looked at the architecture of Lincoln Center and appreciated how Robert Moses might've liked this use of the space for a whole lot of reasons.

I got two passes and brought a friend with me, who kept checking her phone, as did many people around us. I took a few photos of Cruise at a distance, half a selfie with him, and not much else. I didn't want much else. I wanted to be right there in the moment. I wanted to take the three seconds I'd have to say something of momentary value to someone who meets more people in a day than I've probably met in the last two years.

He was announced, he was cheered for, he came out with fireworks and blaring music. He stood and smiled and waved as people looked at him, watched him, tried to capture a piece of him. There was gasping and there was cheering and I wasn't above looking at him standing there, a small army's worth of cameras from TV to handheld to drones all pointed at him. I thought about how the night before, people had waited to catch a glimpse of him walking from a car to his hotel door, and how video footage of that was uploaded to the internet, so yet more people would know where to go that night and where to wait. The architecture of Lincoln Center meant people could come out on balconies to look down at him, and people across the street could walk to the roofs of their buildings and stare down through binoculars like he was some kind of rare bird.

I knew he'd never be my friend.

Not in a negative way. I like to think we'd be friends, if the heavens parted and angels sang and we had genuine reason to speak to one another for more than a handful of seconds. It's a thought I'm happy to entertain. It's something I know won't happen unless the heavens part and angels sing. Meeting him on the red carpet was wonderful, and it wasn't celestial. I met a man. A handsome, charming man who's been meeting people for over forty years now. He's gotten quite good at it. He never learned my name and I already knew his. Everyone knew his name. Everyone there, and everyone who was watching him from far away.

We'd all been given small posters for cast and crew to sign, and I knew he'd stop for as long as it took him to deliver his signature. I'd known it was coming for some days, so I'd had time to prepare a few words to get them out as quickly and cleanly as possible.

I told him, "Minority Report was the first movie of yours I saw in a theater and I've been a fan ever since." He said he'd had a lot of fun making that, I said I'd had a lot of fun seeing it. I said, "I got these passes through the New York Adventure Club, and I'm sure the movie's going to be an adventure."

He gave me an adorable scrunched-up smile. And he offered me a fistbump.

Naturally, I took it.

There were other people who came by. I recognized the bird pin on Simon Pegg's jacket and told him, "A swift bird for a swift man!" and he liked that. I commented on people's clothing, occasionally asked for a handshake, and kept looking around at all the people coming by - the huge camera rigs, the tiny iPhone mounts, the drones buzzing by. The other actors, the sailors coming off an aircraft carrier, generally famous people I didn't recognize. Everything spinning around the gravitational pull of the star.

I got a pass to an early screening, and had a good time - anything more specific can wait a few days. But I'll still say it was a delightful movie to look at, and I couldn't understand why the person next to me kept regularly checking her phone. Later, I could barely understand why people were clustering around the service entrance's door in the hopes of glimpsing Cruise - barely, because I'd have liked a glimpse myself, and as much as I'd wanted one, I knew it was late and he'd probably like to get some sleep even more than I did, and if he was using the service entrance like I'd thought he might, that spoke to a level of necessary caution I shudder to think about. The only way he'd have been safe from people looking at him is if he'd gotten into a vehicle and then left the building, and even that would require several decoy vehicles.

I was there, and I felt the pull, and I still don't quite grasp it. I'm hoping I can hold onto that.

Yesterday I got a fistbump from the biggest movie star on the planet.

No big deal.

In line for milk, the people standing just ahead of me was a father, a child old enough to carry a bag, and an infant. The father kept admonishing the child to not play around with the bag of three glass bottles because they might break - holding and carrying was fine, but shifting them over and around too much was straight out.

I told them that they did need to be careful because yesterday I'd dropped a glass bottle and could show off the bandage. It wasn't a bad cut, just a pair of small, shallow ones on the side of my wrist, but the placement meant a larger bandage that was easy to see by, for example, a father and child standing right in front of me.

And in fact, the child stopped messing around with the bag and making their father uneasy.

It wasn't planned. It wasn't coordinated. There was no way for anyone involved to have known beforehand. I simply happened to be in the right place at the right time.

I have a new best time for donating a pint of blood: 5 minutes 9 seconds. That's it! That's all it took. 28 seconds better than my last record. I'm still proud of that. My hematocrit was 13.9, too, which is satisfying, but not as satisfying as 5 minutes 9 seconds. Let's hear it for taking the stairs.

They also happened to be giving out boxes of Girl Scout cookies, one per donation volunteer. I grabbed Thin Mints.

It took me some effort to gather my energy to cook up lunches for the coming week, and I managed after I put on headphones and started some music. Now there's an asparagus-bean soup in the fridge, and I won't have to worry about that for a few more days. So that's two items crossed off the week's to-do list.

Good news: after a stressful 14 hours, the car was found this morning. It'd been towed down the street from where it'd last been spotted. The working theory is that as construction progressed up the block, cars that got towed were moved according to the most recently cleared space from previous construction work.

Right down the block.

It's a major let-down in the best possible way.

Between one thing and another, from browser hiccups and subway delays, it took me until about ten to get the usual thousand words. Few of them are good; half of them were from another scene in an older draft. And they're still there. I wouldn't know how to make them better if I didn't have them to begin with. I can take some satisfaction in that.

Also satisfying was going into Brooklyn today, even with subway frustrations and having to deal with a computer with limited search engine safety measures in place. The trees were astonishingly green, the lilacs still in fragrant bloom. Even just a few moments was a balm after a few tiring days.

It was Killer of Sheep yesterday, and Sinners today. One hard to find movie in a small four-screen independent theater, one playing just about everywhere - even taking special screening formats into account - in a multiplex on IMAX. One very quiet, one with a lot of sound. One trying to show you something so ordinary it becomes extraordinary, one trying to tell you a roaring story that takes you all the way out of yourself.

Two movies about being Black in America. Two movies that articulate the directors' intended visions as perfectly, forcefully, and gracefully as you could ask for. Two movies about the sublime power of music and its ability to transfix and transform and take you someplace else, wherever you happen to be. Two movies that each have a scene of people dancing that communicates the central thesis of the whole movie for the length of the song. Two movies with killing and death, and blood flowing freely. Two movies where there's barely the idea of a way out of a suffocating life, much less a means to achieve it. Two movies that capture a specific time and place, looking carefully at the community being portrayed, whether it's in the Mississippi Delta or Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood - it's the same struggle all over, no matter the time or place, to find a little bit of freedom and feel a little bit of joy.

It made for a wonderful double bill, just as I'd hoped they would.

I've commented before on how there's a better quality to cast-offs in New York City - classy trash, basically. Many people have, constantly and all over the place. Some people make careers off it. Personally, I just take it as it comes, like another very nice hoodie sweatshirt that's making its way into regular rotation.

Of note, today I talked to someone about the difficulties I've been having with submitting job applications or pitches to literary agents and how the difference with that is it's energy directed outward, while writing is energy directed inward and helps keep me going that way. I'm not sure what I'd need to do to get enough energy for both, but it feels good to put a set of specific words to it.

An incredibly moment happened to me today. Very Hollywood, very old Europe. I'd just met up with an old work contact and we were sitting outside, catching up, when out of the blue, someone addressed the contact by name: a friend of hers she rarely sees. But this friend happened to see my contact because I'd suggested we sit outside. They spoke, they made plans, the friend left, and we were pleased it happened.

Then, not long before we had to leave, someone walked by and addressed me by name. One of my parents' friends who's become a friend of mine, who I don't see much but always enjoy speaking with. We exchanged a few pleasant words, I joked we were microdosing Paris, she laughed and then left to continue on with her day. The contact and I talked a bit more, then we went our separate ways.

Her and me, start and end. Too tidy to be scripted, and almost too New York for words.

Chuck Taylor's changed their shoes, and nobody told me. I didn't think this was something I'd need to worry about, given how established their products are, but change has come to Converse high tops. I'm trying not to spiral about it and get deep into worry. Maybe if I'd gone into a store to buy them - but then, I thought a standardized, establish item wouldn't need me to go to a store to get a known quantity.

I figure I'll wear this pair for a while, given that they're already here in my apartment, and start finding alternate sources to get my hands on some shoes I can predict and deal with.

Between one thing and another, consolidating cards and papers and finding better places to keep certain objects, I've now got my nonfiction section onto bookshelves without any spilling off onto the floor. It's not that many linear feet of books, and as much better as it feels, it'll take a few days to get used to the sight. Most of what's on the shelves isn't where it used to be, so glancing over at the shelves has me feeling strange. I'll adjust because I like this more. But it'll still be an adjustment. And this isn't even getting into the books on the other side of the room. Or the additional papers I know I can uncover without much effort.

There's also a feeling of wanting to make space by using things up, which has me trying to get over myself and actually use the scented candles I've collected over the last few years. I need to appreciate the fact that I can't get more of them as the ephemeral experience they're meant to create.