I rode the Q train with Mary Queen of Scots

The subway was running especially slow that Saturday, and the weather was hellish-- one of those wonderful mini-monsoons that tells you God does indeed exist and he is unleashing his wrath and fury upon New York. If I'd had to wait for the train too long I would have begun to question my quest into Brooklyn for a friend's birthday, but I was lucky. Five minutes hadn't yet passed when the Q train lumbered onto the 14th street platform. It looked like one of those dilapidated cars from Thomas the Tank Engine, one that's there to teach the kids some kind of lesson: not to judge by appearances, not to be afraid of old people.

I walked towards the middle of the car, clearing the way for other passengers, trying not to let the delays and the traffic poison my attitude. I knew that if I got on the subway in Manhattan as Larry David, I would get off in Brooklyn as Ted Kaczynski.

Then, I saw her. She was just sitting there just like everybody else. I had to do a double take. At first I wasn't sure this woman was real. For a long time she didn't move, and her sheer size was otherworldly. I felt as if I'd accidentally stumbled into Narnia and rung the bell. I had awoken this queen from her tranquil slumber and had somehow managed to bring her back with me. She wore an oversized black coat and kept her eyes firmly planted on the floor. She didn't carry herself like a queen, but her face was unmistakable. I recognized the expression I'd seen in so many portraits. There before me sat Mary Queen of Scots, the cousin of Queen Elizabeth I. I looked around at my fellow passengers, but no one else seemed to notice. I desperately wanted to ask, "Did you really do it? Did you kill your husband?" I wanted to thank her for golf. I wondered if she ever went to Chelsea Piers to hit a bucket of balls with the guys. Did she go out to the Hamptons on the weekends? I almost burst, "My parents named me after you!" I thought it would be a strange but effective catalyst for conversation, even though it wasn't true

The train stopped at DeKalb. There would be interrupted service after Prospect Park: a tree had fallen on the tracks. Mary exited the train, and I continued to Atlantic Ave.

A note on character

If you meet a man wearing a mint green shirt with a green tie and a charcoal vest at the Thompson on a Thursday night, he will tell you that his favorite author is Fitzgerald.

Never Blog About the Weather

You will get grounded.

London Calling (Kate, Katie?)

When I left Oxford last spring, I didn't expect to be back in England anytime soon. I left on a bad note, after a bad break up. I finished all my work, ducked out of term two weeks early, and headed home to Chicago to recover and to forget.
"It was a learning experience," I told myself. In the end, I was glad I'd done it. Still, I wouldn't go back--not for a while, if ever. Oxford was nice. London was great. But in the end, neither city could hold a candle to New York. And more than that, I had no desire to revisit the site of the only real heartbreak I'd ever experienced.
That's why I'm a little surprised to find myself sitting here in front of Gate 56 at Newark Liberty Airport at 8pm in the middle of the worst snow--or should I call it "wintery mix"--storm of the year. I'm hopping across the pond for the weekend to see my new boe. It is
possible, likely even, that this wild adventure may end in heartbreak. I may be destroyed once again, but the British Isles are beckoning, and I can't find it in myself to back away.

Dear Heart (Katie)

I feel that I am in a perpetual state of rereading War and Peace. I paint my nails “Boris and Natasha” mauve and “An Affair in Red Square” scarlet. I try to drink Russian Caravan tea, but it tastes like a campfire. I call acquaintances "Dear Heart" and they do not understand.

I put on a white nightgown and hang out my window. I want someone in the room with me so I can tell her that I cannot go to bed because the moon is just too beautiful! Because maybe, just maybe, my would-be lover is in the room below me waiting for my words to bring him back to life. I want to speak; I want to dance; I want to sing; I want to shriek.

People I know accuse me of wanting to be Natasha Rostov. I tell them that they are wrong. To want to be her, to try to be her, is an insult to her character. I return to War and Peace because the characters are so very much alive. My Natasha cannot finish a sentence because she is too immersed in the immediacy of experience. To try to live like the Rostovs is to experience a life that is one degree removed.

No, I do not want to become Natasha. Natasha makes me want to be. I want to savour my existence, and so I savour the words. With every breath, I am filled with their vitality. I shut the book, and I live better—at least for a little while.

Chekov (Kate)

It was at a party on a Tuesday night where we met T----, a charming Frenchman born in Africa, now living in London.* With a grey jacket, vest, and a button-down shirt (and of course the obligatory square gasses), he looked like someone I’d have been more likely to meet in Oxford than in New York. He had stopped in the city for a week on his way back from New Zealand. His intent, he told us, was to visit with friends and look at apartments. On this, his last night, he had to admit that he’d done much of the former but very little of the latter.

“I like it,” he says of the Upper West Side. “I have a friend who lives at 96^th and Broadway.” Right in my neck of the woods—only she lives in one of the pristine condominiums and I live in a building that was once a convent.

“It’s nice,” he says, “but too many prams. Not for me.”

“I know,” I concede, “but the dogs have such wonderful, pretentious names. You walk down the street and hear ‘Chekov! Chekov! No, Chekov!’”

He is amused by this, and it is decided that I should start a blog, even though I don’t have the internet.

*But then, I don’t suppose an un-charming Frenchman has ever existed.

Chapter the First

In the past year, I’ve happened upon a kind of identity crisis. It is not a question of character, but rather a question of name. What shall I call myself? In the fall, I began the transition from the childhood “Katie,” to my given name, “Mary Kate.” There have been the occasional hiccups of “Kate” along the way, and I seem to be perpetually plagued by the looming presence of “Mary.” As such, my life has become a fractured existence. These names have assumed their own identities—the shift between them supported by my inherent propensity for multiple personalities. This, in part, is what has motivated this blog.

Really, it was inspired by my desire to move into the Museum of Natural History and live out the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I’ve decided to make that my long-term goal. We’ll see if it ever happens, and if it does, whether it’s Katie, Kate, Mary Kate, or—Heaven help us—Mary who succeeds.