Marble Hill - 225 Street Station

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The Marble Hill Station is in Manhattan even though it is not geographically attached to Manhattan island, even though at one time it was. The path of the river changed. The Harlem river used to be further north, and like a slinking undertow, it descended further south where it rests now; I can see the river below me and feel its strength (although technically it is not really a river at all, but that's another story).

The streets here swirl around an invisible center like a Medieval town circles the church in the main square. The streets here, except Broadway (of course), avoid breaking through to the Bronx. The streets are circular, going back and forth into each other like a snake eating its tail. Buildings are placed in concentric circles. The Harlem River serves as a reminder that one is standing at the furthest northern terminus of Manhattan - and by virtue of this gerrymandered divide, the denizens here are Manhattanites.

From Van Cortlandt Park to here, chalet after chalet, the el seems to repeat itself, never getting anywhere, itself its own circle. Here in Marble Hill, the geography seems to beckon to Manhattan. Things are more compacted. The bodegas scrunch up against the bridge entrance as if to yearn for any stragglers who may have forgotten a sub or cola somewhere along the way. The Harlem swirl is close enough to smell. The heat is intense today. I'm craving a cherry limeade from Sonic. I settle for a cool beverage at Guzman Food Center, served in a brown paper bag with a straw. Several kids race across Broadway to the cool interior of the Target across the street. The air smells tepid. A transit employee stands near the 225th street northeast entrance; perhaps he is a station manager. He looks calm and collected. The rhythm of the train a quotidian sense of order.

I am excited to walk across the Broadway Bridge into Inwood. Bridges loom ominous for me. It is said a bridge is a symbol of transition. I'm fearful if a bridge should collapse, I have somehow missed out on a unique opportunity. A bridge that is collapsing as I'm walking away? What does that mean? I am in the process of decoding a dream as if I have been here before; this bridge reminds me eerily of the bridge over the Industrial Canal in New Orleans on Claiborne Avenue, which is also a vertical lift bridge.

I decide to walk across the bridge to get the sense of vertigo I feel from standing close to the railing edge. The ships traverse the canal below pregnant with their wares. An elderly white couple walk ahead of me, in deep conversation. Bicyclists, as is the norm here in NYC, careen past. They always seem to be in much more of a hurry than I ever am. I prefer to walk. Peering down from the navy blue ironworks, I see Marble Hill Metro North Station. The Metro North system takes off in long sinuous strides to where the subways cannot go: to Riverdale, and the far reaches of the Connecticut burbs. The Harlem River seems contagious, brewing with rocks and tumult. I wonder aloud, talking as if I am attached to a Bluetooth headset, but am not, to how Marble Hill became a satellite neighborhood to Manhattan.


The monotony of the elevated trains is intense. I try to conjure up in my mind how Manhattan may have been like with the old els that traversed the avenues in the last half of the twentieth century. This city erases its memory effortlessly. But, here, in the rocky regions of Manhattan, the past somehow lingers more. Maybe it is the els. Or maybe it is the hint of geography. The Second Avenue El is long gone and hardly a vestige of it still exists, but the els here will probably remain for a long time; a super-city rather than a supra-city like the rest of the MTA system. It feels like Purgatory a bit. The circling madness of Marble Hills itself makes me a little nuts; I chuckle as if I am Dante escorted by Virgil, escaping the hell of the underground to find respite in Manhattan's only vestibule of souls. The el terminates at Fort George, though, and we are back in the bath of hell again. I like to think it is more like what Michael W. Brooks said about the subway system, neither hell or heaven exclusively, but both "sordid and transcendent" (207).

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Luis Buñuel on Film and the Subconscious

To commemorate Luis Buñuel's death in 1983, here is an evocative piece he wrote about film and the subconscious:

In the hands of a free spirit the film is a magnificent and dangerous weapon. It is the superlative medium through which to express the world of thought, feeling, and instinct. The creative handling of film images is such that, among all means of human expression, its way of functioning is most reminiscent of the work of the mind during sleep. A film is like an involuntary imitation of a dream. Brunius points out how the darkness that slowly settles over a movie theater is equivalent to the act of closing the eyes. Then, on the screen, as within the human being, the nocturnal voyage into the unconscious begins. The device of fading allows images to appear and disappear as in a dream; time and space become more flexible, shrinking and expanding at will; chronological order and the relative values of time duration no longer correspond to reality; cyclical action can last a few minutes or several centuries; shifts from slow motion to accelerated motion heighten the impact of each.

The  cinema seems to have been invented to express the life of the subconscious, the roots of which penetrate poetry so deeply.

From Elements of Film by Lee R. Bobker, HBJ 1974. 

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Movie Review: The Most Dream-like Film Has to Be Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror (1975)

The Mirror by by Andrei Tarkovsky has to be the most dream-like movie ever made.

Mirror (1975) Dir. by Andrei Tarkvosky

The Mirror

Andrei Tarkovsky's evocative homage to his mother, the Mirror, is not unwatchable because of gratuitous violence, but rather, the film itself has a sophorific lilt to it that will make you fall asleep, unable to watch the entire feature. But, I am thinking, perhaps Tarkovsky planned the film to be like a dream. I watched it coming in and out of consciousness.

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Movie Jot: A Vincent Gallo Film You Most Likely Won't Finish

The Brown Bunny (2003) 

A paean to the road trip, bad fellatio, and gross men is enough to make you stop watching this brilliant, albeit disturbing, film directed by Vincent Gallo and starring Vincent Gallo, with Chloë Sevigny.

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New York City Subway Stories: 231 Street Station

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A Stopover in Kingsbridge
The Broadway local stations in the northern Bronx between Westchester County and Manhattan are elevated, reminiscent of the old els that populated most of the city before the inception of the subways at the turn of the century. Here in Kingsbridge, I can sort of get the feel of how the city used to be — sort of — I can imagine none of these buildings around me exist and instead there are rolling fields and hills that punctuate the countryside when this line was originally built. For my subway car reading, I've been diving into New York City Subway history. In one book, The City Beneath Us: Building the New York Subway, I recently checked out from the Mid-Manhattan Branch library, depicts the 238 and 231 street stations. The pictures are eerie snapshots from the past. The difference in setting is striking. But the elevated train remains the same. I am on a time machine. The structure of the stations are unchanged. The same Swiss Chalet façade adorns the front (here it is inviting white!) and the steel infrastructure is unchanged in appearance. The difference is the emptiness that surrounds the Broadway local train. I can close my eyes and return to this spot a hundred years ago. Perhaps I am a Manhattan father with two children and a wife. We move north to escape the chaos of downtown and the typhoid and tuberulosis of lower Manhattan tenement living. Here, it must have felt like a spacious Western dream. "Don't fence me in!" The first train passengers more than a hundred years ago probably did not imagine the extent of urbanization New York would undergo. Or maybe they did. Because it did not take long for this area to rapidly acquire buildings and concrete. At one time, though, a cow could have taken a dump right here on the extent of concrete below me. A horse could have been crushed by a drunken driver in a Ford — right here. I take a swig from my Orangina and a tiny Dominican woman offers me a smile.

Northern Manhattan and north of the Harlem river still retain vestiges of the old that most of lower Manhattan has buried. The trains are still elevated, not below the ground; and the streets beckon an old-world feel. Even the name of this neighborhood, Kingsbridge, is antiquated, not Dutch obviously, but a New England name that fits comfortably alongside New York. Kingsbridge, New York. The name is lyrical. The space begs people to notice its own origins. Banners affixed to poles in the street cry out, visit Kingsbridge, "It's all under the bridge!" Instead of cows and horses, the sound of ladies softly alighting their feet on grass, I hear the rush of cars emanating from the Major Deegan Expressway, not far from where I stand, which snakes through the Bronx north-south. I am not really sure what Kingsbridge refers to, perhaps a bridge that once existed here but no longer stands. A quick Wikipedia search concludes that a bridge did stand here but it was covered up and replaced by the Duivet-Spuivel canal. For some reason I think of Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere, of an alternate universe in the London Underground and imagine if Gaiman had written the novel here, Kingsbridge would have to serve as some magical portal to New York’s own Neverwhere. Maybe Van Cortlandt Park to the north would be a faun's playground. I think for a second how fun it would be to write a novel about the subways of New York as a fantasy. Gaiman might sue though. I put my idea on a cupboard in my brain. I can figure out my own creative slant. I'm sure of it.

Interacting with Locals and an Encounter with the Police
After asking her a few questions, which at first startles her, a middle-aged black woman carrying a leather satchel and an umbrella tells me Kingsbridge is a nice place. She points in the direction of Broadway and says something to me about the canal that was dug that replaced the original Kingsbridge. I tell her thank you and walk along Broadway. The heat creeps through the streets. The pizza I ate at Mario's still feels heavy in my stomach. I climb the stairs of the elevated platform and find a quite place to jot down notes in my moleskine.

A policeman from the 50th district stops me and asks me not to loiter. Either get on a train or keep moving. He’s polite enough, but there is an unnecessary heightened sense of authority in his voice so I board the Manhattan-bound Broaway local as quickly as possible. Seated on the train again, I remember just yesterday a New York Public Library security guard had asked me in not so kind words to not sit in the stacks to read a book. “Tables are for reading. Get up.”

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New York City Subway Stories: 238 Street Station

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5:37 PM
In this post, I contribute to my series on the New York City Subway — "238 Street Station" edition.

A lost child's mottled gray marble rolls across the car floor like a cliché. A Dominican woman I've seen before on the train remarks to me with rapt concentration, her eyes on the stray marble, not on me. "Someone's lost their marbles," she says and laughs at her own joke, rapping her head with the brunt edge of her umbrella.

The heat in the train is suffocating. Two girls in summer dresses apply makeup and talk about a party on 168th street. It's the Monday after the Fourth of July and the town is still on holiday. The evening has done nothing to slake the heat. Shirt sticks to skin. The dry heat sits stale. The air conditioning is barely enough to keep us alive. A female conductor's voice reminds us all that it's hot and if we see anyone passed out, let a MTA employee know. Isn't there a subway car that serves beer? I thought I had read about such a train in the newspaper. The train offers a poem by Robert Frost printed on an advertisement called "Train of Thought".

“Dust of Snow”

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

The subway is a cacophony of bodies in motion. Every station is a change of mood. Most people look angry. But it is a quiet anger. A guy about my age, reading War in Peace, totes a cat carrier, but I don't see a cat. He looks up from his book and glares out the window. He seems to say, to no one in particular, "It's fucking hot in this car." It is. I agree. But heat is nothing exciting to write about. The marble rolls by again, hitting against a boy's skateboard. No one else seems to watch its trajectory quite like the familiar Dominican woman. Every time it rolls by she laughs and points to her head, then at me.

An announcement blares from the conductor, "We're being held in a state of supervision." The guy with the cat and Tolstoy rolls his eyes as he reads. I think I heard the conductor correctly. A state of supervision? I knew New York was a nanny state, but come on, this is ridiculous. I situate myself in the seat and prepare for what can only be a state of supervision. Nothing happens. The train sits in its own heat for thirty seconds and then lurches forward again, Bronx bound. Seasoned New Yorkers remain upright. The marble rolls again. If this were the Marble Hills Station, I'd add another joke to the already stale punch line.

I disembark at the 238th Street Station, the next stop on my writing tour. A Manhattan-bound train enters the station seconds after the Bronx train leaves. The train's shadow sparkles light on the exterior wall of a Rite Aid. The structure of the track allows light to flicker through the duvets to create a modest spectacle of sound, light and movement. A policeman guards the platform. I am reluctant to linger, for fear he may ask questions. I carry a black Moleskine to take notes on my subway rides. I am a bit paranoid that he may ask me what I'm writing, so I take the stairs to the street level. This station is similar to every elevated platform station on the 1 line in the Bronx. The façade of the station is the same train station-depot-look that parades the station at Van Cortlandt Park and Kingsbridge.

This station does not sport the same scenic look as Van Cortlandt Park did on the Fourth of July. In fact, I immediately get the sense this station may perhaps be the least populated station on the one line, if not, the entire MTA system. The buses are packed, though, and people seem to navigate mainly in cars.

I  am not an investigative journalist type. I do not intend to riddle people with questions about their neighborhood. My subway writing project is simple: I am not so much interested in description, as I am in impression.

My stomach growls. I am on a budget so a pizza looks good at Mario’s. Two Italian adolescents chat on a bench in front of the restaurant. The pizzeria is empty. The beeline bus to Riverdale careens by filled with passengers. When the boys see me they jump up and walk briskly inside to the check out counter. “Hi,” the younger guy says, obviously revealing to me that not only does he relax on the bench outside like a customer, he also works at the place. His accent is most probably Bronx. I can't tell the difference between the Bronx and Brooklyn, New Jersey or Queens. It all sounds similar to me. The guy talks really fast with a cheerful lilt. A quiet Chinese guy sits on a bench in the kitchen. A weathered woman with bleach blonde hair, perhaps pretty in 1981, sits at a booth with two girls. I order the Meat Lovers. I’m hungry. And a meringue soda. I love glass bottles. Bottled in Brookly, the label reads.

“I got to cook up the bacon and sausage for your Meat Lovers, OK?” the boy says. I nod in acquiescence and take a seat to jot down some notes. The boys and the Chinese man (who never emits a word) make my pizza pie. The place is empty, as I said; it is not the typical New York scene. Few pedestrians, if any, walk by. I eat the pizza with menace. Drown the meringue soda. Get up to pay, and the weathered woman gets up with me. I think she’s going to ask me for money. She doesn’t. She goes behind the counter. Her kids sit in the booth and play with each other’s hair. The boys are on the bench laughing and playing with their cell phones. “That’ll be $3.50.” After I pay the weathered woman, figuring what the hell, whom I assume also works here, the Bronx boys come back in the store, grin, and tell me, “Stay cool buddy, cuz it’s hot.”  I imagine this joint is their summer job. They’re happy to have a customer. Maybe they just graduated from high school? The woman stands proud at the cash register. A silver sedan pulls up to the curb with several of the boys' friends. I wonder if I am the only customer they’ll have tonight? Feels like I just ate a pizza pie in a Bronx house on 238th street instead of a restaurant. Despite the heat, I am in good spirits. The shadows of a moving train appear again on the Rite Aid façade. I dance a bit in the street, the Merengue flavor still hot in my mouth. Sitting down again in the subway card, the air conditioning has never felt this good.

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Read more stories just like this one in my book of essays "Things I Probably Shouldn't Have Said (And Other Faux Pas)"

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New York City Subway Stories: 242 Street Station

In this post, I contribute to my series on the New York City Subway — "242 Street Station" edition.

4:57 PM
The elevated Van Cortlandt station at 242nd and Broadway in the Bronx is the origin of the red 1 local line that terminates at South Ferry in Lower Manhattan. The station sits high up and overlooks the vast green of Van Cortlandt Park to the east and Manhattan City College to the West. Standing on Broadway, I can look up to see the red wooden facade of the station made to mimic a train depot. The front is painted a faded maroon. A transit employee empties a garbage can. Near the bronze-green staircase, a young girl plays with an abandoned payphone while her mother, on a cell phone, beckons her to move it. "Are you grown? You sure acting like you is." The girl brushes past me to join her mother. A hefty man in a wife-beater and long pants opens a door with a do not enter sign affixed to it so he can take a short cut to the other track to board the Manhattan-bound train that is entering the station. The neighborhood is alive with a festive spirit.
Today is Fourth of July, and a swath of locals BBQ chicken and sausage along the station entrance and into the park. The stretch of green accommodates a healthy band of families. Children swim in the nearby city pool. A girl, dripping wet, chooses a gooey skewer of chicken kabobs. A trail meanders through the sea of people, mainly Latin and African Americans. I walk to a quiet edge of the park. A marshland is set up with a boardwalk trail of sagebrush. I walk through the marsh and find a bench near a lake. It is here that I write.

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Nazdrave: A Tale of One Guy's Moving to New York City

Ersatz Warhol prints adorn the wall.
     The house is cluttered with cookbooks and vinyl records. The sparest space is my room. The boxes I had mailed on Wednesday from the Uptown Station sit atop the bureau. “Yer gonna have to give Tony a bottle of Vodka for him hauling your stuff up here. Joking. Joking.” I am given the grand tour, given my keys, sign my rental contract, and within minutes we’re eating olives, goat cheese and downing shots of Johnnie Walker. Tony pours me a whiskey with one cube of ice. He stares into my eyes for a few seconds revealing a boyish character that I know I will come to love. “Nazdrave,” he says, and I repeat, “Nazdrave,” quickly learning the Bulgarian toast. I had said the German prost, but he politely informs me that in Bulgarian prost is derogatory. He clinks my glass a little bit too roughly. “You’re going to break the damn glass, Tony,” Becca says. “It’s good. Becca. It’s good.” Lonnie stands against the refrigerator. We’re changing places. I’m the new roomie. He looks me up and down, sizing me up, to make sure I am a decent enough replacement for the 8 X 11 I’ll be inhabiting.
     “So, you’re a teacher, huh?” I nod and mention something about English. Absorption mode is what I call my mental state at this point. Chrissy and her sister had just left. We ate a Reuben on the steps of the branch of the Queens library. They saw my room. “Good luck, Greig.” “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll need it.” I am comforted my name is printed in stencil beneath the doorbell. "Roselli." Words gather like dust. I memorize what I think I’ll need later. “Brave. He’s brave.” “Buy a month Metro card and don’t lose it.” “This is his first day. July first. 2010.” “Don’t let ‘em knock you down.” “You’re family.” “If you lose your keys, you’re locked out.” “Whatcha gonna do?” “Find out for yourself.” “Maybe you can water the plants when we’re gone.” “You live in Queens but you’re a New Yorker.” “Nazdrave.” We sit around the kitchen table and talk about why the W line has been discontinued. Lonnie says goodbye. I stand up to shake his hand. “I gotta go see my sister in Brooklyn,” he says, his accent a deep Long Island tone. Tony offers another toast. The two men hug. Becca hugs Lonnie. We shake hands again. He gulps the last of his Johnnie Walker, grabs a mouthful of cashews. “Lonnie, we’ll keep your stuff here. No problem. Keep in touch.” Becca straightens her hair. Tony pours me another drink. “If you don’t want any, Greig, just tell him. He’s like a little kid.” I feel like I am living in my head even though I am surrounded by people. I am not used to this at all. I ask to be excused. In the bathroom, I look at my section of the medicine cabinet. A subway map bathroom curtain attracts my attention. I find our stop. I look in the mirror. “Is this real?” I ask my reflection. My reflection laughs. I smile. I am a New Yorker now. 
     I tuck in my shirt and join the fray. Donovan walks in, the other roommate, donning what appears to be a seersucker suit. After introductions, Tony pours him a drink too. “Nazdrave.” Glasses clink. “Goddammit, Tony, don’t break the fucking glass.”

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Repost: A Claim Obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union

From one of the statements published in the June issue of Harper's of claims made by families of civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2005 and 2007: 

My husband went out to our orchard after he saw lights and noise. Coalition forces shot and killed him and gave me some rice and other gifts saying they were sorry. I am asking for compensation. -Kharagul, Iraq
source: Harper's Magazine

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Why Clichés Are So Horrifying (with apologies to Paul Coker, Jr.)

In this post, I write about the use of clichés and how Mad Magazine illustrator Paul Poker pokes fun at them in back issues of the magazine.

What is a cliché?
A cliché is an overwrought phrase, like "it's raining cats and dogs" or "scared to death." At one time those phrases were unique and original but over time, well, they lost their original luster, and people just kinda keep using 'em. Clichés are the spam of language. Spam. Spam. Spam.
 
Why do we use clichés?
I could be cute and populate this post with overwrought clichés, but I am not. We use clichés, or stock phrases because we don't know what else to say. Instead of thinking through how we want to say something, we pull from the storehouse of ready-made phrases.

Clichés are like Hallmark cards for languages. Instead of coming up with a clever way to say good morning, we use a hallmark cliché, "What's up?"

Two decent examples
When was the last time you used the expression, "it's raining cats and dogs"? Did you notice when you said it you probably had no idea to why or how the expression "cats and dogs" has anything to do with rain? If you don't know the logic behind an expression then it's a sure sign it's cliché. She flew out of the office like a "bat out of hell" would be a nice simile if it hadn't been used ad infinitum since the first bat actually did fly out of hell - whenever that was.

Why Are Clichés So Horrifying?
Because clichés enervate language. That's why.

Cliché as Euphemism
At a funeral, we might use a form of cliché called euphemism (worn-out phrases used to mollify a situation or thought) say, "She's in heaven now," or "I'm sorry for your loss" instead of saying something poignantly creative, we use stock phrases so we don't have to think or feel. "Euphemism" is from the Greek for "good word" but I'd say, the best word is the one you articulate yourself, no matter how hokey.

Mad Magazine and Cliché
Growing up, I learned about clichés not from a grammar teacher, but from Mad Magazine. Paul Coker occasionally did a column for MAD called "Horrifying Clichés."

He would take a couple of stock phrases and draw what they would look like as monsters.

It was one of those MAD columns that were funny but educated in some weird MAD way. I'm sure the Usual Gang of Idiots approved because I think the column became popular. There are several anthologies of his work, like this one, The Mad Monster Book of Horrifying Clichés. 

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image credit: "Trying to get rid of the sniffles" by Paul Coker, Jr.

June Streetcar Ride on Carrollton

Folks here call the Carrollton neighborhood of New Orleans, Kar•ul•ton, a tract of land that extends from a bend in the river where Saint Charles avenue and S. Carrollton avenue meet.

For me, it has been home for the past two years.
I got on the car at Willow today, near the Nix branch of the New Orleans Public Library, God I love that small municipal library with few books but tons of character. I'd work here.

There were only three riders today on the Saint Charles Streetcar, so I sat at the back. The conductor's seat is located in both the front and the back of the car.
That way, the conductor can easily switch places without turning the car around when he gets to the end of the line.

Summertime is New Orleans's downtime. Everyone's at the corner pub downing a bitter IPA or a soft Magnolia lager known to be pretty damn tasty.

Feeling Strangely Rental: A Memoir of a Last Month Lease

Dorothea Lange, "Migrant Mother"

In the 1930 Census, there is a ton of data about how Americans lived during the Great Depression.
     Few people had radios in their homes and most middle-class citizens rented. My maternal grandmother grew up in a house on Ursulines in New Orleans and her family paid sixteen dollars a month for the rent.
       Today, renting is not so run-of-the-mill, at least, from my perspective. Two of my friends bought in the last several months, one a thirty-something with a professional job and the other, a couple, who bought a house after renting for thirty-five years. Wow.
       I used to joke that I would never own. Who wants to cut grass? I am not really keen on mortgage notes. If I can't pay the bill I rather be evicted than post foreclosure.

Renting is the only vestige link I have to my ancestors.
Is that the real reason I rent?
Nah.
I decided to rent long before I knew Grandma lived in a rental and didn't have a radio.
     Renting is the only Bohemian side to my pretty complacent, post-MA existence. Renting says, "Hey! I am free, sort of. I may have tons of student loans to pay off but at least you're not going to take my house (because I don't have one!).
     There are obvious downsides to renting. The landlord is number one. Most complaints by renters can be traced back to the landlord. She doesn't fix the leak. He never installed that new water heater. Ya da ya da ya da.

There's more.
     Like, have you ever had your landlord walk in on you naked (yep, that's me)? What about when you are leaving an apartment, have you ever had embarrassing moments with what I like to call the prospective-tenant-old-tenant-landlord triangle?

It goes like this.
     Your lease is up. You got a raise. So you decide to take a bite out of the icing and do a "moving on up" gig. You get a better crib.
     Your last paying month is rather raunchy. You know you have thirty days. So you pack up slowly. You think you have all the time in the world.
     The landlord leaves a message that he's showing the apartment. Cool. You haven't stepped outside all day, so you take a walk to the local coffee shop. That day goes by fine. You are a little creeped out that the prospective tenant may be sizing up YOU rather than the PLACE, but you never met them, so who cares.
     It's a little worse, though, when the prospective tenant, you, and the landlord meet up despite your best attempts at preventative medicine.
     The door knocks. It's your landlord with a twenty-something wanting to look at the place. "Hey, can I show her around?"

"Sure," you say. 
     All of a sudden you feel naked and you wonder if everything is put away. Neat. In order, as if this is a blind date or something.

     "So, how do you like living here?" she nonchalantly asks?
     "Oh. Yeah. It's great." The landlord eyes you to shut-up but you keep going. "I love it. Here. It's great." And just when you think you're home free, you say something like, "Except for the showers. It's like running a marathon in there." Dammit. SNAFU.
     "Well, I'm just going to show her the laundry room."
     "Bye." The landlord gives you an even worse evil eye than before. You put your head down in shame and go back to whatever renters do in their rented apartments.

Have you experienced any odd triangulations with your landlord? Feel free to post and share! (See that comment button down there? Use it. Don't be a lurker).

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