Tuesday, June 12, 2007

brillig (another very rough draft of a story)

Every day at four o’clock, Ethan gets up from his desk, walks a block and a half to a coffee shop, considers the posted chalkboard of beverage options for a few moments, and orders a latte. A tall, double, soy latte, although he is not a vegan. If there are any small, ginger-almond cookies left in the jar, he buys a small, ginger-almond cookie. He leaves his change in the tip jar, and walks back to office for another hour and a half of work.

Ethan is not attached to routine, but his job has inclined him more and more to finding the easiest path. His job title is Website Developer, but his job hasn’t involved any actual development in over a year. Policies and procedures prevent any changes to the existing website, other than tasks like routinely updating the company calendar and employee contact information, and checking to make sure links aren’t dead. He used to hope for more to do, perhaps a chance to expand the website, to try out new designs, or anything to use his creativity. Five months have passed since this thought has even entered his head. Instead, daily, he goes through his routine of updates and checks, of mandatory meetings and hallway small talk. He sits in his undecorated cubicle, and, between tasks, he emails a few friends, sometimes makes evening plans, and checks CNN.com to make sure the world hasn’t blown up in the last half hour. Then, finding it easier than deciding each day when to get a latte, Ethan sets a recurring appointment on his calendar marked “latte.” In the final stretch of the day, he gets up from his desk in his windowless cubicle when his computer beeps at four o’clock, and goes outside.

Previously more attentive to traffic, Ethan has lately gotten into trouble a few times crossing the street on his daily latte mission. He has gotten hit by a bicycle he somehow didn’t see, and come close to being run over by a car he did see; the car only registered in his consciousness when its front bumper was inches from his legs. He jumped back. The car paused and then drove on. Its backside displayed a bumper sticker Ethan would love: “There are only 10 kinds of people: Those who understand binary and those who don't.” Ethan didn’t notice.

Today, a Wednesday, Ethan is walking slower than usual. He has finished most of his work for the day, and, he is surprised to discover, the weather is warmer and sunnier than he’d expected. He pauses and breathes in slowly, looking around him at the steep block between First and Second Avenues. A red Honda creeps through the narrow alley past the dumpster, and turns up the hill. The alley divides two buildings: one deep red brick building, with a stone inscription reading 1898 at its base, and a newer grey stone and glass building. Ethan pauses by a low, iron railing next to the brick building and breathes deeply again.

Looking down past the railing, he notices for the first time that this building contains a daylight basement office, a cubicle-filled workplace, visible through a few windows just below street level. Through the closest window, he watches the sea of cubicles. He briefly wonders how many people in the world work in cubicles daily, and whether this kind of work is having any detrimental effect on the human ability to interact. He notices that the cubicles in the daylight basement offices are somewhat less tidy than those he is used to at work. He notices a profusion of plants, and realizes for the first time that all the plants in his workplace are fake. He leans on the railing to get a better look at the few people he can see at their desks. The desk chair closest to the window is empty, left holding a small, carelessly-tossed white cardigan by an inhabitant who, he can’t help imagine, is in a meeting somewhere in an air conditioned conference room, wishing she had her sweater. Beyond this desk he sees a man rummaging through a file drawer, and a woman staring fixedly at her computer screen.

Remembering his latte mission, Ethan lets go of the iron railing and is abut to continue up the hill when he notices something else in the window by the unoccupied desk. There is a yellow sticky note posted in the window. He leans down to get a better look. It bears a single word: brillig.

Brillig. Ethan can’t remember why that word sounds familiar and yet like nonsense. He wishes the woman were at her desk, thinks somehow that he could have asked her about it, although he knows that would not have been feasible. He is aware that a stranger appearing outside one’s window trying to communicate with charades or pantomime a sentence like, “Hi, you don’t know me, but what the heck does ‘brillig’ mean?” might understandably be interpreted as a little creepy. Besides, she isn’t there.

He contents himself with walking slowly the rest of the way to the coffee shop, breathing in the warm air. He watches a bike messenger zip by and wonders whether he’d enjoy doing that kind of work. He waits for the light to change, crosses the street, walks half a block more to the coffee shop, holding the door for a woman whom he thinks looks sad. Today, the coffee shop is out of ginger-almond cookies, but instead of going away with only his latte, Ethan decides to try a pistachio-cherry biscotti. It is delicious.


By Thursday morning, Ethan has forgotten all about brillig. He had intended to Google it, but instead had gone back to his desk, finished a Powerpoint presentation for a meeting later in the week, and left early. Today, he is caught up in a whirlwind of routine activity; there is the meeting at which he must present on the website, to which no significant changes have been made. There is a new co-worker with whom he is to meet. There are six new events to add to the calendar, and a broken website link to fix.

His four o’clock calendar reminder catches him by surprise, the word “latte” appearing on his screen with a ceremonial beep. Feeling sluggish, he is eager to pursue his late-day caffeine. The weather is cooler and cloudy, but he still feels good to be outside. On the way up the hill, he suddenly remembers the previous day’s experience and glances back down at the window to see if the note is still there.

At first it appears to be, but as Ethan leans down he realizes it is a different note. This time, it simply says: and. Ethan is intrigued. Why on earth, he wonders, would someone write “and” on a sticky note and put it in the window? Today, there is still no one at the desk closest to the window, and there is no sweater left behind.

So, remembering that he has work to do, he rushes up the hill to the coffee shop, stares at the beverage menu while the woman ahead of him orders her chai, and orders his latte with one ginger-almond cookie, to go, please. Latte and cookie in hand, he rushes back down the hill, glancing down at the window only long enough to confirm that the note does say and and to notice that the desk chair is now occupied by a woman with short, blonde hair who faces away from the window toward her computer. He continues down the hill, wondering if perhaps her name is Brillig, which sounds like an Irish girl’s name, now that he thinks of it. Perhaps tomorrow, he imagines, the note will say Fred or whatever the name of her beloved might be. Perhaps the day after that it will say 4Ever, or something similarly cloying. He goes back to work.

By Friday morning, Ethan has still not Googled brillig but he hasn’t lost his curiosity either, at least not in the moments walking to and from work. And so, rather than waiting until his latte break, Ethan takes a detour from his usual bus route and walks down the hill to work, pausing by the red brick building. Looking down into the window, he sees the woman at her desk and a new yellow note. It reads: the.

His theory about cloying declarations of love is fairly well squelched, unless the blonde’s beloved goes by “the Beast” or some such fairy tale type name. He looks at the back of her head for clues, but she is typing into spreadsheets and does not turn around. Not wanting to feel like a stalker, he moves on.

At his desk, before checking on any of his day’s work, he opens up Google and types in “brillig.” The first page that comes up displays the National Debt Clock, and he wonders whether her work has to do with economics or some sort of financial field. Still, the page barely uses the word “brillig” and so he clicks back, thinking his theory that Brillig is her name might be right after all. The next entry is for an Australian band, and he wonders if she might be a fan, and whether the band is any good. He clicks the back arrow, looks at the third entry, and feels a little foolish. Of course. Jabberwocky. Twas brillig and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe / All mimsy were the borogoves / And the mome raths outgabe. This is it: brillig… and… the… She is posting the words of Lewis Carrol’s poem “Jabberwocky” from Through the Looking Glass, daily, one by one, on yellow sticky notes, in a daylight basement window at which virtually nobody will ever look.

It is clear that this woman is nuts, or perhaps terrifically bored, but he can’t help liking the project anyway. It’s going to take her a long time, he thinks, and he wonders if she’ll give up.

A literature buff and math geek in high school, he’d even made his way through Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice, enjoying the analytical perspective on these children’s stories. And then, getting lost in a sea of other books, he’d entirely forgotten what he’d read. He remembers now that the words of Jabberwocky are nonsense, but that Lewis Caroll had particular meanings for each of them.

A bit more online browsing reveals that “brillig” means “Four o’clock in the afternoon, or the time when you might begin broiling things for dinner.” He feels a shiver when he realizes that four o’clock is the time that, each day, he takes his latte break. Smiling, he clicks on his Outlook calendar and selects the recurring event scheduled for 4:00 each day. He selects the option to modify all occurrences and changes the event from “latte” to “brillig.” He resolves to visit the window each day, as long as she can keep her project up. It would be wrong, he feels, for someone to go to such trouble and for nobody to stop and notice.


Ethan keeps his pledge. Each weekday, when his computer beeps and displays the reminder “brillig,” he leaves his desk. On his way for his latte, he stops at the iron railing and reads the sticky note invariably affixed to the window. He has figured out that the notes are only posted on weekdays: “slithy… toves… did… gyre… and…” (weekend) “gimble… in… the… wabes. All…” (weekend) “mimsy… were… the.. borogoves…” and so forth.

Even though Ethan knows what the notes will say, the act of witnessing each one excites him. He has begun looking around him whenever he remembers to do so, wondering what other little serendipities he might be missing. He looks up, looks down, looks across. He looks at traffic when he crosses the street. He notices bumper stickers. He notices graffiti, notices names scrawled into tiny crevices on the bus in the morning. He notices trees planted on top of a building near his office. He looks at strangers and wonders what they do when they’re not passing him on the street, where they work, if they work, and whether they remember to notice things. He notices an elderly man in a grey, tweed cap who also always seems to be out for a walk near the coffee shop each day at four o’clock. The man is always smiling and looking around him.

Over four weeks have passed and the woman has never made eye contact with Ethan. She is often away from her desk at four o’clock. When she is there, she is facing her computer rather than the window. He wonders how it is possible that the same woman who, indirectly, has been teaching him to look up and down and around him vigilantly, so as not to miss anything, could, herself, miss his daily pilgrimages to the window. He is not seeking her attention specifically, but still craves a shared acknowledgement of these messages he witnesses daily.

“And… the… mome… mome…” He is worried when the same note appears two days in a row. She is not at her desk and her computer is off. The next day, she is back and there are two notes in the window: raths and outgabe. He decides she was sick and resists leaning over to stick a note to her window, saying, “Hope you’re feeling better.” It seems a bit too far to reach.

He calculates how long it will take her. Thirty weeks, give or take. It is spring now and she won’t even finish until October. Still, daily, the words appear. What will she do if she takes vacation time? Will her workplace get a temp? Will the temp know to replace the words?

Ethan starts carrying a camera. He now takes not only latte breaks at brillig but takes lunch breaks away from his desk too. Each day he walks further from the office, taking pictures of whatever he notices. A waterfall, tucked away in a tiny downtown park. A sandwich, left abandoned in a gutter. A little girl in red shoes, chasing seagulls by the ferry terminal. He never photographs the window with the notes.

Summer comes early. The notes keep coming. “So… rested… he… by… the (weekend) Tumtum… tree… and…” He stands outside the window, thinking to himself. She is not at her desk. He feels this has gone on too long without any interaction, but she is not there today. He turns and heads for the coffee shop.

At the door, he lets a sad-looking blonde woman pass. He goes in to order his drink, wonders for a moment whether the woman was the same woman he has seen in the window, and runs outside to see, but she is already gone. He goes back inside and orders a chai, just to try something new.

The more he thinks about it, the more he feels sure the sad woman at the coffee shop was the same as the woman at the desk, the woman whose face he has never seen, only the crown of her short hair, her neck, her shoulders and arms.

“Stood… awhile… (weekend) in…” He feels like he’s going to burst if this daily ritual of notes is not witnessed and shared. He resists bringing a friend into this world, intuiting that his friends might not think it’s a big deal, or might wonder why on earth he’s been staring at yellow sticky notes in some office window for months. She is the only one he can try to contact about this experience, yet his pursuit is not romantic or sexual or conquering in nature. She is indeed sought, but she is not a manxome foe nor does he desire to hear her to call out, Come to my arms, my beamish boy! But he has to talk to her about brillig, about all the words, about how they are affecting him. If he does not, he fears, the effect will go away.

In his dream that night, he is in a forest. He is trying to find his way to the coffee shop, and is lost and worried he won’t make it back to his desk in time. He wants to stop and notice all the forest’s details, but somehow can’t; each time he tries to concentrate on a rock or a mossy tree, it fades just out of his vision, ungraspable by sight. A voice booms out, “AND, HAST THOU SLAIN THE JABBERWOCK?” He wakes up, sweating.

The next morning, he heads to work nearly two hours early, arriving downtown at 7:15 am. He checks her window before heading to his office. The note still says in, the previous day’s word. He hurries down the block and around the corner, into his office building, upstairs and to his cubicle. He rips open a fresh pad of yellow sticky notes, pulls off one and, with a black permanent marker, writes thought. He writes it on the sticky side. He tosses the marker and notepad back onto his desk and runs back down the stairs and out the door, up to her window. Without hesitation, he leans as far as he can over the railing, and affixes the note to her window, so she will be able to read it from the inside. Thought. His heart is pounding as he hurries back down the hill to work.

He can’t concentrate. When his alarm goes off – brillig – he moves out the door slower then usual, feeling like a student about to find out a grade on a particularly grueling test. He walks up the hill. Before the alley he pauses, breathing in slowly, and noticing the elderly man in the tweed cap watching him. Ethan breathes out and then crosses to the iron railing.

His note is still there, as is hers for the day, also thought. He looks down and sees that she has rearranged her cubicle. She now faces toward the window, although still below it, and she has moved her computer. He crouches down on the edge of the pavement, leaning against a lower iron bar on the railing. He waits.

She is engaged in her work, but eventually seems to notice the time and start to get up. She looks up as she does so, and sits back in her chair, seeing the man crouching at the railing. Ethan feels self-conscious, but stays put. She looks startled, looks back down, and glances back up. He takes a small step back, waves, points at the note he’s left and waves again. She takes this in, looks down, looks back up, and waves. She smiles and shrugs. She is the same woman from the coffee shop.

Acknowledgement becomes part of the daily ritual. He comes by at four o’clock – brillig - and looks at the latest note. He waits until she looks up. He waves. She waves. He goes to the coffee shop. She does not go. He wonders how many other people have noticed, and if she waves to them.

He has memorized the poem by now but is excited each day for the next installment, as though it were a new episode of a favorite TV show. The week the Jabberwock finally appears, “Jabberwock… with… eyes… of…” he is thrilled. Soon the Jabberwock will be slain.

Ethan is still taking photographs. On summer evenings and weekends, he is intentional about getting outside, taking pictures, and spending time with the people around him. Although he keeps the brillig installments secret, he does share his photographs with friends.

He makes a website of his favorite pictures, buying the domain www.livebrillig.com. He does not explain to anyone why the site is called this, but the idea catches on. Livebrillig.com becomes a place to put photographs of whatever he notices, when he is remembering to notice.

Soon his friends and a few strangers are sending him their own pictures of easy-to-overlook glimpses of experience. A condo windowsill, piled high with stuffed armadillos, all looking outside. Tiny, bronze statues of dancing women, just above most people’s sightlines. A stalk of corn growing in an abandoned lot. A sliver of moon. A contented, fat, grey-haired man with a contented fat, grey cat, sitting in a lawn chair at the edge of a rural airport, watching airplanes. A tattoo of tiny piano keys across the nape of a woman’s neck, framed by her dark green blouse and short, messy black hair. Ethan posts these all to his website.

“Burbled… as… it…” He enjoys the photography and building the website, but wants to push himself a creative step further. He buys a sketch pad with thick pages, some charcoal pencils, and a set of watercolors. He has not touched watercolors in years, not since he was a teenager and felt a gnawing fear that watercolors were not something a teenage boy wanted to be caught using. Not by other kids his age, anyway. But now he eagerly takes his new art supplies with him on weekends. He sketches and paints whatever he notices first. A spoon bearing Elvis Presley’s face. A bunch of blue and white delphiniums peeking out of a plastic, green garbage bin. A man at a picnic table, wearing a t-shirt that says: “I’d rather be here, now.”


It is late summer. The Jabberwock has been slain. Ethan endured an agonizing week during which she must have been on vacation, followed by excitement when, on Monday she posted six sticky notes at once including the death of the Jabberwock. That week he is relieved as the notes resume their normal speed: “He… went… galumphing… back.”

It is the weekend. He cannot stop thinking about the Jabberwocky. He is proud of her for making it this far. The task of posting the notes is one he might think of doing, might even keep up for a week, but she has diligently posted each note daily for months. His life has been transformed with these daily word doses and, now that the poem has reached its peak, he wants to thank her.

He takes out his old copy of The Annotated Alice, finding the original illustration by John Tenniel. He is surprised that all this time he has not paused to look at the illustration. The boy bends backwards with the weight of the sword, ready to face the beast with his own vorpal blade. The beast itself is truly, endearingly hideous. The Jabberwock bears four enormous teeth in its oval mouth, and holds aloft claws bigger than its own head, nearly bigger than the boy. Ethan notices that the Jabberwocky is staring ferociously not at the boy, but at the viewer of the illustration.

Ethan takes his watercolors, sketchpad and pencils to the park. He sits on a bench. There, while watching the water and the ducks, the kayakers and the twirling leaves, he paints her the Jabberwocky.


On Monday, Ethan feels more excited to get to work than he has ever felt. He races through his responsibilities, but makes himself wait until brillig.

When the alarm beeps, he hurries from his desk, holding the rolled-up illustration and a small tape dispenser. He races up the hill and, unwilling to stop himself, cries out the lines, “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy!” The elderly man notices Ethan, stops and grins broadly. A young woman looks at Ethan suspiciously and walks a little faster.

Ethan continues, galloping up the block, “Oh frabjous day, callooh…” and stops. He has reached her window and looked down, eager to see the celebratory “And.” There is nothing. Nothing is affixed to the window. Nothing is at her desk. Her cubicle is cleaned out. She is gone.

He stares. He sits down on the sidewalk, searching down at her desk for some sign of occupancy. He glances around to make sure he’s really on the right block. He notices the elderly man glance his way again. Ethan is trying not to cry, and cursing himself for wanting to. He is still holding onto his painting of the Jabberwocky. He unrolls it and looks at it. It’s really not bad. And yet.

Ethan looks back down toward the woman’s desk one more time, but she is really gone. He rolls up the painting and slowly walks back down the street. As he walks by the gentle eyes of the elderly man, Ethan thinks he faintly hears the man murmuring, "…callay! / He chortled in his joy. ‘Twas brillig and…”

He returns to his cubicle. He sits in his chair and breathes in and out a few times, slowly. He is still taking in what has happened. She will never finish the poem, or not in that window anyway. He will never again see the yellow sticky notes in her window. He has no idea what has happened to her, if she quit her job, if she was fired, if some terrible accident happened. Whatever has happened, the ritual is over.

Ethan considers the paper rolled up in his hand, and then stands up and hangs his Jabberwock on the outside of his cubicle. Looking around his desk, he notices the pad of sticky notes and the marker he had tossed to a corner of his desk so many verses ago. He picks up the pad, takes the marker, hesitates, and writes ’Twas on the top note. He affixes this note to the cubicle wall next to the Jabberwock. He sits down in his desk chair and faces his computer. Breathing slowly, he goes back to work.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Homeland Security: Do we need stronger lox?

Homeland security has struck close to home. I don’t mean terrorists have struck in my backyard. I don’t mean that Dick Cheney is wiretapping my phone, listening in on my calls to (800) NY-BAGEL, although that is possible too. Rather, the orange threat level -- orange for salmon, perhaps -- has just crossed into my personal space and caused what politicians are probably referring to when they talk soberly of “making the ultimate sacrifice.”

They took my cream cheese.

Let me back up. I live in the Pacific Northwest. The Pacific Northwest is home to a bounty of ingredients, some edible and some experiential, that make me content and excited to be here. We have mountains. We have water, replete with slow, patient ferry boats and exuberantly elegant sail boats. We have wild mushrooms and peaches and raspberries the size of a planet -- or possibly a dwarf planet (sorry, Pluto). We have expressively creative festivals, some of the best urban parks in the country, and countless ways to impress the hell of our visitors.

We, alas, have no bagels.

It’s true. And in some ways, I don’t mind. Lacking something is just as much a part of being alive as having things. It is the balance of emptiness and fullness that makes life complete and in balance. Just as the bagel is balanced by its circle of doughiness surrounding emptiness in the middle, so are we, too... Okay, never mind. I’d really like better bagels.

So, enter my parents. My parents are visiting me from New York. And, like the caring Jewish New York parents they are, they have demonstrated their love for me with the only form of expression higher than cautioning me on the many ways I could imminently die or encouraging me to go to law school: they brought me bagels. In their carry-on luggage (“Of course! The rates of lost luggage these days are horrendous”), they schlepped me eight New York bagels, two containers of Zabars cream cheese, hand-sliced nova, a chunk of smoked whitefish, and some slices of sturgeon.

So, there they were at Kennedy Airport, ready to get through security when the dreaded question came: “Is this bag yours?” and off the suitcase was whisked to be frisked. I can just imagine my mother, hesitantly but determinedly explaining what the salmon was, and the whitefish, and the sturgeon. She has to comply with FAA regulations of course, but maternal instincts are powerful when a stranger is trying to get between one’s offspring and bagels intended for said offspring.

In the end, it was not the bagels they were after, nor the fish, but the two containers of cream cheese, one scallion and one plain. This cream cheese is like no other: whipped to perfection, with a balance of garlic and salt and scallions that I still can’t quite replicate. Needless to say, it is not the kind of thing one can get on the west coast.

Perhaps cream cheese is a terrorist threat. Could terrorists lure civilians into dangerous traps by leading them with whiffs of a freshly-baked bagel with cream cheese? Could cream cheese be schmeared surreptitiously over the signs in the airport that alert us to the color of today’s threat level? What if cream cheese, tucked into one’s purse, leaked onto one’s credit cards, rendering them inoperable and thus limiting our patriotic duty to spend recklessly? Worst, what if terrorists tried to use good cream cheese to -- I shudder to think -- trick us into eating really bad bagels?

My roommate remarked sadly that the airport inspectors probably took the cream cheese to eat, but I’d rather that than the alternative; the image of two perfect containers of Zabars cream cheese - or Zabars anything for that matter - lying at the bottom of a black-plastic lined garbage can, never having had the opportunity to please a palate, is simply heart-wrenching.

Enough of all this. How long can it go on? What is security worth if it means losing what makes us who we are? They’ve taken our civil liberties. They’ve taken our sense of privacy, and any scraps of respect for government we had left. They’ve taken our justice system. They’ve taken a great deal that we value. And now, friends, they’ve taken our cream cheese.

So, it’s time to take action. I went home tonight and, armed with a countertop mixer, a block of cream cheese, a container of sour cream, and a bit of salt, garlic powder, and thinly sliced scallions, I made my own. It didn’t taste the same, but it’s a first step. Maybe, a step at a time, we can reclaim what has been taken away.

We may have to start some of it over from scratch. We may have to cross communities to talk to one another and build coalitions. We may have to travel and connect from one end of the country to another, crossing the fifty states to strategize about how to retain the freedoms, liberties, and foods that make our country great. And if, on these travels, you come out here from New York, consider bringing some cream cheese to us folks out West. All in the name of civil liberties and free expression, of course. Just don’t forget to check your luggage.