a list of lists

new york city pedestrians cross the street when the adjacent light has a couple seconds left. this is, obviously, jaywalking. i do it too. but i always stop jaywalking around 3pm because that's when the children get out of school. it takes a village, i tell myself. i cannot in good faith cross the street as a child looks on and identifies me as a rule-breaker (even if i look both ways crossing a one-way street like a good software engineer would), or, worse, asks their mother why i get to jaywalk and why they don't, to which their mother, who, beyond inquisitive watch might do it too, would come up with no good answers. 

and besides, nowhere i need to rush to warrants trying to outrun a child's gaze that will follow me home and tomorrow.

this is how i found out that mothers can have bleached eyebrows and a septum piercing. the only mother i know wears a carnelian bracelet and doodles interlocking flowers when she is on the phone. she never crosses the road prematurely.

custom book binder
neighborhood toy designer
cow stripes painter (bugs bite cows less if they have stripes)
vintage glassware sourcer for an extremely slow breakfast cafe
silk spinner(?)/maker(?)/silkworm tender(?)/(?)
beginner-friendly tea house managerpiano teacher (but i only teach adults/the elderly and i also am their friend)
piano tuner (but i only take clients who don’t live in a gated community)
children’s book illustrator for children who came up with only the words for their book
children’s book writer (but my editors are grandparents)
diptych curator*
fortune cookie messages writer
bamboo shoots harvester
illustrator of salvaged doors labels
something to do with a planetarium or a science museum. narrate the displays, or make miniature models, or explain things to schoolchildren, or something small like that
[this list is being updated]

*an extensive operation: a foundation of sorts would distribute point-and-shoot cameras to children and the elderly; i receive the photo scans and make diptychs from them. i do keep in mind notes from the photographers. 

my mother. my friend, roasting vegetables in an upstate cabin. algorithmically divined recipe bloggers. the memory of an estranged roommate spooning mushroom soup into our matching cocottes.
the family who sells skewers from their foyer across the street, terracotta coal crumbling into black dirt, into the asphalt outside; i take deep breaths. my father, resurrecting my wintermelon soup after i mistook a tablespoon for a ladle of fish sauce. my grandma, identifying for me the ingredients to bún thang in a bowl, assembled, before silky broth submerge them all.
the brochures that come with airfryers.
and remy from ratatouille – mostly his resilience.