"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more?"

Five days until Christmas and I’ve already caved. I’m buying presents. I’m going to Bloomingdale’s after work tomorrow to push through the crowds (and be pushed) and wait in line while Winter Wonderland (by far the worst of the holiday songs – what does conspiring by the fire mean anyway? Every time I hear that song I picture two people on a couch plotting world domination) plays over the sound system with the sincere hope that I will be spending my hard earned money on something someone will appreciate.

Can someone tell me what to get Dads? They’re probably the hardest people in the world to shop for because they have everything, and if they don’t have everything they don’t tell you that they don’t have everything and you have to, through some form of divine intervention, figure out that what they don’t have is a new container of Titleists and the DVD of Bridge on the River Kwai.

Moms are just as hard to read. You could draw their name on a piece of paper with a red crayon and they’d frame it and put it on the wall in their office and act like it’s the best thing they’ve ever gotten. “For me?!” Gasp! You never know if what you gave them is something really great or totally bogus, they just love that you thought of them. I mean, I guess.

With siblings it’s like some strange competition, because pretty much everything else in your lives from the moment you could speak was about one-upping the other one. So Christmas gifts are no different. Who is more creative, who spent the most money, who had their ears open all year to really get the one thing that the other one wanted. I mean never mind about the gift, the stress alone is enough to make you want to just spend your life savings on a Lexus with that really big bow so that you’ll never have to worry about not being the better gift-giver ever again.

Maybe the Grinch was right. And I’m not saying I have a heart two sizes too small, I’m just saying that the whole capitalistic idea that drives this holiday is pretty ridiculous and it, with it’s not-so-perfect gift giving tradition, is driving families apart all over the world.

Oh, and did I mention that I hate shopping? I can already feel the chest pains and claustrophobia setting in that only comes along with being in tight, high-pressured spaces with women wielding shopping bags. Maybe that’s “the Eskimo way,” though you’d never know it because that song, like the holidays, doesn’t make a lot of sense.

mean something - stat.

Do you ever just get the feeling that your life doesn’t mean anything? I mean of course it means something, you’re living it. It has to have some sort of something that’s keeping you getting up in the morning. But I guess what I’m really talking about is a purpose. Like how when you were little you thought you could do everything (me: doctor, pianist, president) and then you come to find out that it’s very hard to do even one thing moderately well let alone three things very well.


And while I know how to:
apply a Band Aid to a cut,
play Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C Sharp Minor, and
was voted in my high school yearbook as “Most Likely To Be President”-

I still don’t feel like I’ve accomplished half the things I set out to do back when I would put on my father’s white dress shirt that I wore like a lab coat and listened to the sound of people hearts through my yellow plastic stethoscope –
buh-boom, buh-boom, buh-boom.

Why can’t we change our minds now as easily as we did then? Because we’ve set a path, we’ve paid for (and are still paying for) a college degree that doesn’t allow us to cut people open or play with the Boston Symphony. We are paying to simply maintain our lives in cities and towns all over world. But what if?

What if, what if, what if –
you want more than that?

buh-boom, buh-boom, buh-boom
The sound of something meaning.

You can't gift a non-gift.

Every year it’s the same. The anxious feeling in my stomach that no amount of eggnog can correct – the impending knowledge that Christmas is fast approaching. Then of course comes the regret that last year I neglected to send out a memo letting everyone know that I’ll no longer be giving gifts for the holidays, that I have officially decided to start the trend of not giving gifts, that Christmas cards and wishing good cheer should be enough for all of the people in my life to still love me without my having to put down half of my already small pay check to buy their friendship, for at least until next December.

I try, I try really hard to get gifts that mean something to the person. None of this, “oh just a blue sweater for him,” or “a bottle of really nice shampoo for her.” Because my bet is that he already has a sweater, probably in all different shades of blue and doesn’t need (or want) another one. And I bet she washes her hair every day (or at least rinses) and doesn’t need a bottle of shampoo from some specialty store that costs $30 and smells like chocolate chip cookies or brown sugar. You want to wash hair, not eat it.

I’m a firm believer in the idea that gifts should have some sort of impact in a person’s life - or else you shouldn’t be giving a gift at all (frankincense and myrrh? Please).

Because what are gifts supposed to mean anyway? When you’re a kid what something means doesn’t mean anything at all, and it’s probably the greatest thing ever. All you know is that you want a bike with a banana seat (in sea-foam green, please) the latest (and most atomically offensive) Barbie, and the train-set you saw those kids on television using. Little did you know (nor did you care) just how long a thing like that can take to put together. You’re a kid, and that’s the glory of being a kid, you’re not the one who has to do anything.

I had a train set. I had wanted a train set, talked about a train set, subtly pointed out train sets, and then one year, I finally got one. My father took many laborious hours putting that thing together, making sure that the tracks held firm over the make-shift bridge, aligning all of the bending tracks with the straight ones, even setting the little pipe-cleaner looking fake trees in all of the appropriate places. I think I used that thing all day, until I finally realized around 6:00 that I’d spent the last six hours watching something go around in circles. I never used the train set again.

Now that I’m no longer a kid (sadly) the holiday just doesn’t mean what it used to. And by holiday, I mean gifts. I don’t know what to get anyone anymore. But I’ve had a good run. I’ve been giving all of the right things to all of the right people since I no longer believed in flying reindeer, cared about train sets and started getting a paycheck. And like any good thing, my reign as ultimate gift giver has come to an end.

So what does this mean? Well it means I may or may not be without friends in 2007. But that’s fine. The ones who really care will respect my decision and will thank me for not wasting my money on sweaters they don’t need and shampoo they can’t bake. Either that, or between now and December 24th I might get hit with a stroke of divine gift intervention, however I’d say that’s about as likely as my chance at getting another train set.

The real thing scares me.

Its hard work being out there. And everyone is. Everyone is doing the same thing and they don’t know why or they don’t care about how ridiculous the whole thing really is. So the only thing to do is buy a scotch old fashioned, sip is slowly, and watch as everyone around you forces moments with each other and prolongs the whole charade.

They ask me things like:
Can I buy you a drink?
How do you like New York?
What do you do?

I want to answer with things like:
As many as you can afford.
We both know you don’t really care if I do.
Astrophysicist.

Because I’m not stupid or maybe I am so much so that I’ll never know the difference, but after almost a year in New York I have a pretty good idea of how things work. Because when you say things like “Vivian, Veronica, wait, Rachel? Want to come back to my place?” you have to know that you’re not fooling anyone.

Because I’m no fool or maybe I am so much so that things will never change. Men can always talk about things while I’m drinking scotch the way I’d talk about my knowledge of celestial bodies and the interstellar medium – halfheartedly.

What is it about the weather?

This can’t be right. I have my window open and it’s December. I have my window open and I can count down 25 days until Christmas. What it is about the weather that has us always talking about it and thinking about it and wondering how much to put on the morning and how much to take off at night.

Maybe because (like turkey at Thanksgiving) we can use weather as something to remind ourselves, that despite everything else that doesn’t feel like it makes sense, from work to relationships (or lack thereof), to family and friends (even when they’re far away), we know, no, we count on the fact that the weather will always be warm in summer and cold in winter.

The tree lighting at Rockefeller caused gridlock in Manhattan last night. I walked through the crowds to get home and got stuck in them, metal barriers stopping me, holding me back, telling me I wasn’t allowed to go any further. So I stopped on the steps of St. Patrick’s and stood among the crowd and watched their eyes all looking skyward in silence, listening as the people across the street tucked behind the buildings along with the tree none of us could see, counted down. And then the cheers came and I couldn’t see standing right there on 5th avenue what the rest of America could see right in their very own living rooms. Sometimes the way New York looks on television is an easier place than it really is.

That tree lighting every year at the end of November is something we count on. We count on that tree the way we count on people and God and love and getting paid, getting laid, getting drunk, getting out of where we are now to one day get somewhere else. We count on time and our lives and the delusional idea that nothing will ever change.

I have my window open and it’s December and it just feels like one more thing that doesn’t make sense.

The Things You Never Remember.

Tradition. We all want it. It’s something we look forward to, like the tradition of always leaving work at five, of getting brunch on Sunday afternoons, of getting dinner then seeing the movie. These are the things that keep us going, the little things that we need to hold on to in the ever-changing world that surrounds us.

Turkey. Every year it’s the same. A big piece of meat in the oven and you don’t know how it got there. A woman, most likely, somewhere in the house acquired it at a grocery store, perhaps days, even weeks before, and you wake up mid-morning and find that its been sitting in the oven for hours already. You know not to question how or when it got there. All you need to know is, (like it is every year) that it will be ready by 3PM.

Amidst this whole extravagant day that is based solely around eating massive amounts of food, you always do find yourself around family members for a longer period of time than you’ve been in years. Decades, it seems. When you were twelve at least. You find yourself asking the questions: did Mom always drink that many martinis while mashing the potatoes? Did Dad always ask this many questions about the overall direction of my future? Questions of money, stability, growth? Did Grandmother, (who at one time seemed so sweet) always pester you about when, when for crying out loud, will you just bring home a nice boy for all of us to meet? (As though you really are going out of your way not to meet someone just so that she won’t die “a happy woman.”)

And then it’s over. You’re out of your mind and out on the back porch drinking glass of wine number too many to count, cold, wondering why it is that Tradition, as great and stable as it tries to be, is never ever the same as you remember it. You have that one great holiday that one time in your past, the one that makes you still believe in holidays, the one that keeps you participating and loyally eating cranberry in the shape of a can, every year with the hope that one day you’ll get it back again – that and of course, a normal family.

It’s the burnt turkeys, and the fights and arguments, the feeling of being too full, and the overwhelming sense that your life is getting away from you, the years that come and go so fast, that all you can remember after a while are all of the things that make you hate the holidays and tradition and your less than normal family (well what is normal really?).

But it’s the things you never remember, (and we all have them), that have us booking train tickets and packing into airport terminals, and waiting on standby, and getting over our fear of cruising at 50,000 feet. Because we all know, deep down, that no amount of turkey (no matter who makes it) is worth all of that.

Never trust a man in Glen plaid.

Some days it’s pinstripe, grey, with some sort of pastel shirt, lavender, pink, French collar, yellow tie. Something sharp, color schemes I’d never think to put together, there they are, right in front of me at 8AM and looking like the best thing I’ve never thought of but should have. Solid navy wool with pale blue shirts, turquoise ties with flowers, and brown leather wingtips.

He is there every morning as I wait for the bus, never repeats a suit and has a staring problem. A staring problem in that he stares at me (and most other women) every day when I walk over and stand, reading The New Yorker, trying not to notice that he has a staring problem (and a great eye for fashion) even though it’s so obvious that he does.

He pretends to read the Metro en route, and I usually don’t notice when The Staring Man gets off the bus at 66th and Central Park West, because he never speaks. He only stares.

One day, I will speak to The Staring Man/The Suit Man and find out that he’s got this weird disorder in which he can’t control the movements of his eyes. I’ll learn that this handicap has caused him a lot of trouble in his life up until this point: professors always thinking he wasn’t paying attention when his eyes decided to transfix themselves on the open window, the CEO at UBS who interviewed him and was offended when all he could seem to do was stare at the blatant non-real-hair that looked like a small cat sitting atop his otherwise bare head. And with Julie Jennings, the love of The Staring Man’s life, who left him because she couldn’t handle his head always turned as they walked down the street together, staring at every other woman as they passed by.

All of this was against his will, naturally. “Gosh darn eyes!” He curses himself. His bad eyes. His bad luck. Because really, he’s a good person at heart. And now he overcompensates with really nice suits, a suit for every possible occasion in an attempt to keep him not looking as creepy as, say, if he were wearing jeans and a Ramones T-shirt, making him look more “sex offender” than “slightly eccentric businessman.” How can you not trust someone in a Savile Row Henry Poole?

One day I will talk to him, ask him about his disorder and feign sympathy. Because initially he had me looking behind myself searching for the person he must have been looking at, and then realizing, foolishly, embarrassed, that it was me (do’h!). I will get him back for those moments where I had to pretend that I was just stretching my back or that the brick wall of the building behind me was really interesting. Oh yes, bricks, fun.

Staring Man and I are going to war, a war I’m waging on bad etiquette and for anyone who has ever stood on a street corner and felt visually molested. I don’t know how I’m going to do it or when, but I have a feeling, even with his eyes open and transfixed, he’s not going to see it coming.

Autumn leaves

There are yellow leaves all over the sidewalks of New York, that the doormen and store owners try to get rid of with the long hoses that they bring out in the morning to water down the pavement, to make it clean, to make it grow, to make it shine.

The fog was so thick today that walking down 7th Ave the skyline of downtown was invisible, cut off, swallowed up in the thickness of it, as though the city itself had suddenly disappeared over night.

And on 66th street there were men on ladders stringing white lights on the naked trees in the afternoon so that they would be bright at night.

At Lincoln Center there was a line a block long to get tickets to The Nutcracker, and it was so windy out the people were pulling up the collars of their coats.

On 59th street it was officially declared peppermint mocha time of year again, as the Starbucks on the corner was full of red holiday cups, large snowflake cookies, and crowds of people all ready for their first cup of the season.

At Central Park South the ice skating rink is visible through the park and was filled with people all moving in a counter-clockwise motion with The Park Plaza, The Ritz-Carlton and The Essex House all watching over them from above.

By the time I got home the yellow leaves were gone, and with them, fall, and I didn’t even notice.

Aviatophobia

I don’t know if you can acquire a fear of flying, but I have. Something that has never bothered me before suddenly throws me into a heart-thumping fit while I close my eyes and grip the arms of the chair (in its full upright position), and as the wheels slowly lift up from the runway, my stomach floods down to my feet and then rushes back up to my throat. There’s no point in trying to calm myself down, because when you’re afraid of something sometimes the best thing you can do is accept it.

Maybe because the older you get you start to realize things you didn’t when you were a kid, and how quickly things can change (like, say, in the amount of time it takes you to fly from New York to Madison, WI). And you sense better the risks of going too high in life, the repercussions of getting too close to the sun and finding yourself with melting wings over a very large and endless sea.

And then I touched down in the Midwest, into seemingly another world. I don’t know what was making me more nervous, the flight or the quiet night I found myself in when I walked out of the airport, and on the drive to downtown Madison, past the endless open fields and large office buildings and shopping malls equip with enough parking lots to hold the entirety of the city’s population at one time.

At night the silence kept me awake. But it’s all about what you’re used to, isn’t it? Like how in New York you’re used to warmer air and louder streets and people everywhere all in a rush to get somewhere. How you spend no less than $7 on a beer and never get a guy to buy you one, how you never meet someone who can hold a conversation, who can hold a door or eye contact. Is it that as New Yorkers we’re always searching for something better? Even being at the center of the world we’re still looking for a way to get more - more men, more money, more luck, more love, more room in the over-priced closets we call home.

Is the mentality of New York one that will never leave any of us fully satisfied? Leaving us left living among the noise of the lives of the people that surround us, all on their on quests towards having it all.

In Madison, WI. Life. Is. Slower. And as a New Yorker thefasterthebetter is what you’re used to, and the fear of slowing down is much like the fear of flying – it can come upon you when you least expect it and paralyze you. Because what do you find out when you stop rushing through life? Answers to the questions about yourself that you’d rather not know? Hear you thoughts? Hear your conscience? Hear your heart?

But suddenly, there I was, surviving another flight and back in New York where I don’t need to hear my heart because I can feel it pulsing in the pavement I walk on, vibrating beneath my feet. Now that I’m older I realize (and I didn’t when I was younger) that there is something comforting about the never-dark-sky of Manhattan, of seeing a world always moving outside your window - and not having a parking lot in sight.

It's always the ones -

Tall
Dark
(and handsome)
Who are Med students
Who love Miles Davis (especially Birth of Cool)
Who tell you you’re beautiful
That have girlfriends.

Gain an hour, lose a year.

November already? Wasn’t it just yesterday when we were all walking around in shorts and complaining of the heat with all of summer ahead of us. Its green leaves and humid nights where everything made sense and the city seemed more alive, thick with hot air, wavy distant sidewalks and a steaming 39th street.

Wasn’t it just a month ago that I got here, to New York with my BlackBook List: New York 2006, a gift from a friend, listing the best places to go, Tia Pol, Chow Bar, Oznot’s Dish (Brooklyn) Angel Share, with a note on the inside front cover telling me to “kick the shit out of this city.”

November already? It’s so easy, isn’t it, for life to pass you by. There’s a chill in the air on the walk up 5th Ave. to 85th street to the steep, ascending steps of the MET to see the latest addition (Americans in Paris through 1/28). So I dig my hands deep into my pockets and I know that soon more tourists will be on the streets, filling their bags with items on lists, buying love, buying more time.

Wasn’t it just five minutes ago that I got here, to New York with the remnants of my old life packed up in two bags. There was a chill in the air then too, and if you listen closely, (shh), you can hear time passing, being picked up in the air and taken away into tomorrow as you dig your hands deeper, (a gesture being repeated all over this island) and watch your life pass you by.

boxers, bars and a hole in one.

This morning when I opened the door to my apartment, I momentarily froze as I noticed a man in the hallway. He was standing at the apartment next to mine with nothing on but his boxer shorts, knocking. Once I got past the initial shock of this half-naked man standing in my hallway, I noticed that his boxer shorts had little golf clubs on them.

You can tell a lot about a man by his boxer shorts.

One color, typically some shade of blue, means they haven’t got the time to really bother with something as foolish and arbitrary as picking out boxer shorts. He is a minimalist and is typically easy-going. A man who goes for something a little more creative, let’s say gingham check or a stripe, has a little more vanity, is worried about who is going to be in the position of seeing his boxers and wonders what they’ll think when they do. This guy also uses some form product in his hair, and spends more time than he should getting ready.

And golf-club-boxer-guy, well, he likes to be defined. He probably has his initials monogrammed on some of his shirts and maybe towels. He has a tennis racquet key chain, a Notre Dame sweatshirt and a Dave Matthews Band bumper sticker. He likes everyone he meets to know what he likes, where he came from, and who he is.

So golf club boxer guy smiles at me, embarrassed (aren't we both) as he continues knocking on the door that he appears to be locked out of. I smile politely, go about the business of locking my own door and walking to the elevator try to hold back the laughter bubbling up in my chest.

I know he’s not locked outside of his own apartment because there are only three other apartments on my floor, all of whom I know, and all of which he doesn’t live in.

There is the old woman across the hall with the mounting pile of delivered issues of the Times outside her door, making me wonder whether or not she’s actually still alive. There’s the other woman at the other end of the hallway who is probably in her mid-to-late-forties with jet black hair and pale skin, and whose wardrobe was bought in the early 80’s and hasn’t been updated since.

And the other apartment, the one next to mine is the one that is occupied by two young girls. They are college-aged and blast their Kelly Clarkson so loud that I can hear through the walls as I’m trying to fall asleep, and they pre-game with friends in the hallway on Saturday nights with cheap bottles of pinot noir.

This is the door Boxer Man is standing outside of. I wonder how he got into this predicament, how long he’s been standing out here knocking, and what he’s going to do if no one lets him in. I also wonder what happened last night.

All I know is that it somehow included bars, booze and women, and that he probably had better times in mind at the time he started out last night, than the time he’s having right now.

Oh, and I also know that he likes golf.

Everyone's An Expert

I like Starbucks for a number of reasons. One being that ultimately, I have a problem. I'm addicted to coffee and no one, in my opinion, serves up a stronger cup than what you find in that of a grande bold. And yes, people around me hate it because of its commercialized catering-to-the-masses-of-over-consumers, thinking that I should be over myself enough to frequent the mom and pop coffee shop on almost every corner of this great city, and stop handing over my hard-earned money to this over-priced chain. (and each time these people tell me how wrong I am the price gets higher: “how can you spend $3 on a cup of coffee?” “I don’t get how you spend $5 on just one cup of coffee.” “$6?! on coffee?!”).

But the reason I'm now almost entirely over Starbucks is because of this. Is it possible? Has this "herd mover" finally gotten a little too out of control, even for my addiction?

I've put up with a lot so far. I mean, are they “the experts” on coffee? No. They buy it and sell it just like everyone else, just in fancier cups. Are they “the experts” on movies? No. They have opinions and backers and can promote what they want, when they want. Are they “the experts” on music? No. They buy and sell Miles Davis whose music has been around, (in case you're not aware), for quite awhile and for a lot less.

And I'm the first to admit that “The Way I See It” isn't really the way anyone sees anything at all (#175 “The world would be a boring place if everyone wore a size 2. I love being a size 22, just like I love a giant cup of hot chocolate with extra whipped cream. F.A.T. ‘Fabulous and Thick’ folks know that it's the extras in life - like pounds, cash and love - that give us character. Embrace the extras, baby.” - Mo'Nique). Right.

Are they now going to be “the experts” on literature too? Most definitely not (Mitch Albom?), but keeping in the Starbucks tradition, they're going to think they are.

Because we all think we know better, and we never really do.

Because we tell ourselves we’re experts, and feel it’s our duty to enlighten the un-knowing others.

Because getting coffee is just that, and we don't need anyone trying to make us better readers in the process.

Because I’ll still go to Starbucks (for a while anyway, old habits die hard), and I’ll be the first to admit it.

Because no matter what people say, change isn’t always a good thing, and in this world of endless options, wouldn’t it be nice if we were allowed some time to not have to think about what movie, music, mantra and book we should be watchinglisteningtolivingbyreading - especially that early in the morning, when all we’re looking for is a less than profound way (at a $1.89) to just make it through the day.

Life by the Cube

Living in New York is like one big constant reminder that you’re human.

Maybe it’s because in no other place can you be constantly (and I mean constantly) surrounded by people and not even know who they are. And people here like to talk to you as you’re waiting in line at the corner bodega, waiting for the bus, waiting in an elevator, waiting for the subway doors to open at the appropriate subway stop. Because that’s what we’re all doing here in this fast-paced-metropolis – we’re waiting.

We’re waiting to get a table at the hot new restaurant, waiting in line at a bar, waiting for a cab, waiting for a chance, a big break, waiting for love to walk through the door so that we can stop telling everyone the obvious but sad truth that though we are constantly surrounded by people (and I mean constantly), it’s easier to master a Rubik’s cube than it is to meet someone in Manhattan.

And that’s what life is - one long never-ending quest for all the sides of our lives to match up.
blue
white
red
green
and it’s difficult, almost impossible, and at times you have one color of each in single scattered boxes on each side and you don’t think you’ll ever be able to make anything work. So you tackle the rows one by one and keep trying to remind yourself that making things work takes time and patience and the aching ability to not give up after you’ve turned and twisted and thought and over-thought how best to make it all come together.

I was never any good at the Rubik’s cube. I always spent too much time trying to make it work, trying, trying, to make it work, and never feeling like I was getting anywhere.

Like the cube New York isn’t an easy thing to master, and all the people buzzing around its sidewalks know it. That’s why they’re all waiting. Because they know that one day, (and no one knows when) everything will come together, because the subway keeps bringing you to your future no matter long you wait for it, and one day the elevator doors will open and the person who walks in will change your life and you won’t even know it.

Living in New York, is like one big constant reminder, that you’re human.

People keep telling me things.

He started off, (as I was waiting to catch the bartender’s attention to order a vodka soda and proceed to drown my week in grain alcohol with a side of lime) with, “why do you look so tough?”

That’s what it sounded like anyway, because he was one too many pints in the bag to be taking the time to properly annunciate things, but when I looked at him quizzically (read: squinted my eyes) he repeated himself and this time it was clear – I look tough, and he wanted to know why.

I didn’t have an answer for him, and truth is I didn’t have an answer for myself. After slurring more to me about why I shouldn’t look so tough (“do you always?”), I started to think about why we all have our own walls that we put up around ourselves, walls that we’ve had for so long that we don’t even see them anymore, leaving it so someone else, a stranger with drunken blurry vision to see it clearer than you do.

It’s like when you lapse into a panic attack (see “matter of the heart”) and you suddenly begin to feel everything you couldn’t before. And you weigh your options. You can go to the emergency room, but given Murphy’s Law you’ll get over it while you’re waiting in the ER. You can try to never let yourself be alone, because you think that if you’re going to collapse again, at least you’ll have someone there to catch you.

Or, the next time your heart wants to explode you can just tell yourself that you’re fine, that you’ll be okay, because while your relationship of heart and sleeve may be in need of immediate separation, you know you’re tough. And it’s okay if you look it.

Remedy: steer clear of mumbling drunk men (who may or may not be able to see more than they should), drink more vodka sodas (at $8 a glass, but don’t stress!) and hope for the best.

At the end of the day, you sit down quietly and think to yourself: who am I?

If you’re lucky, you have an answer.

Tonight I sit and it’s far from quiet - especially with 72nd street outside of my window. A plane crashing into a building just down the street this afternoon, doesn’t leave one much room for quiet thoughts.

When I found out at work someone said “how does this happen again?” I have no idea. But I do know that death and disaster are in our midst all of the time, and we never even notice. A lot of miles on the highway without failing brakes, a lot late nights walking home from a bar alone without an altercation, a lot of planes than land safely on their respective runways.

After weaving past the cops and police cars and news crews and onlookers that were congregated just outside of my apartment when I came home, I thought about chance and how I don’t really know what it means. How some people get into planes that crash into buildings and some don’t. How planes crash into some buildings and not others.

Sitting here now with the loud and soon-to-be-forgotten sounds of the day’s events coming through my window along with the pulsating sound of the down-pouring rain, I ask myself a question and can’t hear the answer - because the rain is so loud it’s almost like it’s raining right here in this room, hitting then bouncing up off of the floor as the water spreads, rises, and eventually, engulfs.

My specialty is living.

I sometimes feel like my life isn’t real. Like my life isn’t really happening to me. It takes something sort of drastic or out of the ordinary to make me realize, but when it happens it hits me and there I am, looking around the sides and over tops of buildings to the sky and feeling like I’m living someone else’s life.

I’m walking the streets holding a box of books and packages of press kits for work, searching for a cab at 6:30 PM on Friday, the Friday before a long weekend, and all the cabs are full. The streets are jam packed - what gridlock really means - rush hour and everyone is rushing and no one is moving anywhere.

So here I am, covering blocks, my arms getting heavy, trying to, on street corners, position the box and packages against my hip so as to have one free hand to hail down the already full cabs. I know I must look ridiculous, but I don’t care. I’ve found that a good rule of thumb (whatever that means) in New York is, that at the exact moment you’re starting to feel embarrassed or ridiculous (which for me is quite often) say to yourself “This is New York. I can do whatever I want.” It’s amazing the power two words can have.

Drivers shake their heads at me as they wait at red lights, passengers stare at me mockingly as they inch by. I’m suddenly talking to myself, suddenly becoming John McEnroe and saying things like “You cannot be serious,” shaking my head and thinking, “This is New York. I have to be able to get a cab.” Because I’m on a mission to deliver above mentioned items to The Palace Hotel and I already know I don't get paid enough to be doing this.

I finally hail a cab and the driver is tired and has just unleashed his last passenger and is ready to turn off his light. He sees the state I’m in and makes an exception, almost rolling his eyes when I tell him I have to go to the East Side in rush hour traffic on the Friday before a long weekend.

Along the way he talks to himself and eats a burrito and I stare out of the window, my arms tired (is it time to start lifting weights?) and watch the people on the sidewalks, the warmly lit restaurants with the Friday night crowd just arriving for drinks and dinner and a night out on the town. The bars full of suits and skirts, all people wanting to drown away the last five days and the last five hours and maybe even the last five minutes.

I make it to 50th, give the Talking (and somewhat crazy) Driver $15 ($3 tip), slide across the back seat and try heft the load out of the cab without falling over. A man in a navy blue suit and a power tie holds the door open for me and barely waits for me to make my less than graceful exit before pushing his way into the backseat, the smell of single malt scotch thick on his breath.

The Palace is what the name suggests, and when I stumble into this grand hotel, lost and overwhelmed, in my Casual Friday jeans (and black turtle neck sweater) I know I must look ridiculous, but I don’t care. This is New York. In line at the concierge, the man in front of me is complaining about a lost reservation and his wife looks at me with an apologetic smile. She’s decked out in vintage Chanel and cradling her Hermes bag in the crook of her elbow. I want to tell her she can get carpal tunnel for holding her bag that way, but then again, that might just be the pain talking that’s shooting from my own forearms down to the tips of my fingers, the weight of the 20lb box getting heavier the longer I stand here listening to this man carry on with “Roger” about his “very seriously made this two months ago” reservation. Roger finally gets around to taking what I’ve come to give him, just when I feel the sweat start to drip down my back, even though he calls someone in “Mail Box Services” to make sure it’s okay. This is The Palace I want to tell him. This is New York.

Outside on the street my arms feel like they’re still holding the weight of the boxes - but maybe that’s just the left over weight of this past week leaving its lasting impression. I start the walk up to seventy-second because I have $1 left after my cab ride and generous tip and can’t afford anything more. As I make my way up Madison, passing all of the warmly lit restaurants with all of the people sitting down to dinner, I feel for the first time today, the chill in the air, the chill telling me that fall is here and that I missed summer saying "see you next year," on it's way out the squeaky screen door.

There. That’s when it hits me. In this moment walking on Madison Ave, couples holding hands passing me on the street, twenty-five blocks from home, I feel like my life isn’t real, like my life isn’t really happening to me. Like someone in some distant city in some distant town is living a life that makes more sense. But soon the feeling starts to rush back to my limbs, and as I get closer to home I look around the sides and over the tops of buildings to the sky and realize - this is New York.

A Grown Woman Talking to Her Computer

You’ve seen it all. You’ve seen (and have accepted me for) all of my insanity. Me talking to myself, talking at you knowing you can’t respond because you’re what? A screen? A lovely screen of course, but a screen nonetheless reflecting back at me how bad my writer’s block really is, how bad of a writer I really can be. ("Besides, don't most brilliant writers go through lots of versions?!").

Well you've seen them all, all of the pages over the years and the hours and days and weeks spent pouring my soul and heart and thoughts out to you every day, the sole witness to the inner-workings of my brain.

I curse at you, scream at you, on occasion shake you for some inspiration to come out, for a good name for that character from Connecticut (I'm bad with names): Sara? Lindsey? Val?

You watch as I pull at my hair and take lots of deep breaths and drink endless cups of coffee and talk to myself and stare at the wall and stay locked up in my room with you for hours listening to the world happening outside of my window wondering why I’m in here living the lives of people who live inside you instead of those yelling and talking and honking their horns out on the street.

But I keep hitting the keys and you’re always there, something I can count on (no matter how much I scream at you), to appreciate and reflect and accept every little thought and every little sentence and every little chapter that zips from my heart to my brain to the reflexes in my hands.

You're stupid (a fool!) for sticking by me, but I thank you anyway because maybe someday your loyalty will mean something to someone somewhere and it will all be worth it.

But for now I’m sorry, I don’t know of anyone from Connecticut with a name like Val.

The Matter of the Heart

After talking to a friend of mine who is confused about their job and relationship, I started thinking about life, about how none of us really knows what we’re doing. We’re in jobs that work us too hard, in cities without our real friends, in shoes we’ve walked too far in, in relationships we don’t care enough about. So we’re all waiting for something -
an answer
a clue
an idea as to:

why we spent four years in college
why we’ll be paying for it until 2015
why things are never the way we think they’re going to be
why we care
why we’re never satisfied
why some things never change
why are we (and how did we get) here
why the handyman never showed up to cover that empty hole love has left behind.

I felt it this weekend, it crept up quick and unsuspecting, like a ghost or a rainstorm or a deadline, gripping my chest making my heart beating at a rapid fire rate. And after I asked myself the impossible question: am I having a heart attack? I realized that my heart was being attacked by panic.

Life and its unanswered questions pile on so quickly we don’t even realize it, and suddenly there you are, feeling the anxiety of all that is your life pumping through your chest faster than you can count it (my heart!), making it difficult for you to breathe, forcing you to realize that you’re alone, and that there are no answers, and that if something really horrible happened right now no one would be there to help you.

And your heart picks up speed the more your brain thinks about it. You count the beats, over a hundred per minute, you lose count, your eyes on the clock, trying to breathe deep, thinking you should have spent more time taking care of your own heart.

And I thought between passing seconds (one Mississippi, two Mississippi…): are our hearts more delicate than we let ourselves believe? Is one really the loneliest number (Three Dog Night, 1969)? Can we internalize too much, keep life away for so long that after a while there is only so much it can take before it gives up keeping a steady beat, falsely reminding you that everything is fine, and picking up pace and pounding so hard that you have no choice but to feel it?

Because when faced with no choice but to feel (your heart is not a democracy), that’s exactly what you end up doing - and simply wait for the pain to subside.

obvious truth:

People come to the city to live their own lives, but the truth is, living in a city this big you’re constantly living everyone else’s. The people pushing past you on the street, the girl talking too loudly on her cell phone on the bus to her friend about how Robert might be “the one,” the group of men discussing their stock options and how they don’t understand why Perry gave the position to her, “what was he thinking?” And the man who I gave my seat to on the subway who was lost on the crowd, unseeing, his white stick out front tapping, tapping and leading the way. “Thank you,” he said and then laughed. “Just when you didn’t think there was anyone nice left in New York.”

I didn’t say anything back, only smiled, and he couldn’t see it.

And it’s not that they’re unkind, it’s that they’re busy living their lives and everyone else’s, that sometimes it becomes too difficult to step outside of that fast moving spinning whirlwind to really see. Because we don’t see. We don’t see clearly the way we might if we knew of an end, an impending doom, a deadline, something that would really push us to make decisions, to make choices, to take action, to own up to our real feelings and passions and thoughts.

We are hovering in a fog of complacency, because each day the alarm rings and the stinging beep beep beep shakes us awake, and each night we set it again and it all repeats, our lives on autopilot. And the girl on the phone will marry Robert, or she’ll walk in on him in bed with her friend and it will all fall apart. And the woman in the office who just got that job will become known as the youngest woman in that office’s history to get such a position, or she’ll be so intimidated by the men and their rising stock (up two point since yesterday) that she’ll give it all up and walk away.

Whole days and weeks and hours pass by and we don’t see a thing.

And the man on the subway, lost and reaching, our Tiresias, the blind soothsayer, seeing all that we cannot, seeing all that we won’t allow ourselves or take the time to, will remain as a reminder.

Because living in this city you’re constantly living everyone else’s lives, and the truth is, before you know it you find that you’ve been bouncing around inside other people’s conversations for so long, that you’ve lost sight of who you really are. So I guess if you're looking for happiness (and I think we all are), it's just beyong the fog.

How one chain is runing my life.

Okay and it's not Starbucks, for those of you who I've heard whispering behind my back that I have a real “problem” and “slight obsession.” And don't think I don't see through that look, that boy-does-that-girl-really-need-to-get-some-help look. You don’t have to say it. I can see it.

No, my real problem came via television screen circa last week when I heard a certain commercial come on and I thought: is this for real?

And then I saw it. Audrey. In Funny Face. In a GAP commercial. Dancing to AC/DC.
Ce qui?

She fell into the GAP wearing black skinny pants and a black turtleneck sweater, moving about the screen looking out of place, transposed onto a white backdrop. And then I gasped – she was wearing The Office Uniform. For at least two years now I’ve been wearing what has come to be called, The Uniform. Jeans and a black turtleneck sweater, and for work (The Office Uniform), jeans become black pants.

Watching Audrey sashay all over the set, I realized with horror (trés horrible!) that I will now be accused of being enamored by mass media marketing of the most magniloquent kind. THE GAP!

Have people in this generation even seen Funny Face? I remember my first time, long ago, when I think The Uniform first seeped into my subconscious. I also remember being a little nauseous at the end of the 1957 classic, when Fred Astaire follows Audrey to the Chateau de la Reine Blanche in a very knight-in-shining-armor sort of way. Ugh.

Regardless, is this new obsession with Audrey going to spin out of control? Are we all supposed to now re-name our cats Cat, start using the term “powder room” (sans $50)? Will the GAP be telling us come winter that we should be wearing little black dresses to brunch?

I'm slightly offended that they have stolen The Uniform, and am still somewhat tetchy about the whole affair. It’s like what Jo says: “I’m not mad. I’m hurt and disappointed.” Because everyone needs a signature piece in their wardrobe, (like Jackie O and her sunglasses), and mine just happens to be the black turtleneck.

The GAP is ruining my life. It’s ruining classic movies, icons, and my life.
And by life, I mean my style.

Stormy Weather

I think if I could listen to Billie Holiday all day long, I’d be a happier person. It’s easy to get caught up in New York, caught up in the rush, in the vertical, in the endless pavement. It's easy to get caught up in the rush to work, to get home, the rush to get on and off the subway the rush to make your life happen. Truth is, in New York, your life is moving fast, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s moving somewhere.

I try not to think too long on the past and the things I can’t change and I wish time was like that pink silly putty that used to come in those small plastic eggs. Then I could stretch it and mold it and make the answers stick like black newspaper ink.

That’s why we all need Billie. She’s a romantic but a realist at heart. She knows when to say, It Had To Be You and when to say, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.

There are no guarantees in life.

And people always ask “where were you when?” you know. You’ll always know.

Everything that happens in our lives moves us forward, pushing, pushing us into things we can’t predict. And so everything that has happened to me before, has carried me to where I am now.

At St. Patrick’s Cathedral today I stopped, with all of the people around me, to look at its crowded steps, a sea of blue and badges and American flags, all paying homage, all paying credence to no guarantees.

Stuck on the 1/9 uptown on Friday for thirty long minutes, I was standing next to a man who was crying. Sobbing. Everyone around him in the crowded car noticed, looked away, pretended not to see. Because that’s what we do. We don’t have time to stop pretending.

I thought as I stood there, my eyes looking into a book that I was no longer reading, about what had happened to him. Perhaps his entire life changed mere moments before he boarded the train - a fleeting sight of someone from his past, a harsh word, the lingering scent of a perfume that had long ago broken his heart, a phone call.

And then I realized standing there, looking quickly at his red, hurt, tear-stained face; that I was guilty of pretending, too.

Life can change in an instant, in passing seconds that we can’t control. And as I walked today, against the large crowd of people on 5th struggling slowly towards home, I thought about change and time and all that it can do to the heart of a person, a people, of a place.

Because there are no guarantees in life. And people will always ask, “where were you when?” and we know. We’ll always know.

What is it about fall that makes me want to buy #2 pencils?

Maybe it’s because then, when people still felt #2 pencils were of the utmost importance (caution: please use only a #2 pencil for this exam!) - life was simpler.

Filling out bubble sheets was easier than filling out time sheets.

But so much then (with important #2 pencils), I couldn’t wait for now. Oh how silly and stupid I was, wanting to rush rush rush through the ridiculous (remarkable) routine of childhood. From the future (now) I would go back and talk to my little self and say (along with re-think those penny loafers) “Slow down, please. Because where you are now is better than where you’re going.”

Now, it’s 9-5 or 9-… and time is short and life is up, work, sleep, repeat.
Then, time was infinite, and I read Where the Red Fern Grows maybe a hundred times.

If I could, from the future go back and talk to me, I would tell myself a few things:

Slow down, read Where the Red Fern Grows 101 times, eat chocolate cake for breakfast, stand up to/then stay away from Alex Webber, who always tormented everyone during recess, slow down, and most importantly, never be caught without a #2 pencil.

The Flower

I was eight and it was the Fair and even then I didn’t like the feeling of all those people just walking around with nothing real to do. Even then I felt weirdly out of place because I didn’t like screaming children or farm animals and it wasn’t until later did I master how to eat an ice cream cone. At eight I always ate too slowly and it would melt and then fall down the front of my shirt and onto the ground and my mom would look at me and say “not again,” in a way that was more a frightened, will she ever learn?

I would look at her and squint my eyes and in my head I would say yes, I will, I will go on to do great things.

And then my older sister was screaming about getting a flower, a giant, as-tall-as-I-was flower made out of tissue paper, folded neatly into one massive petal. And so she pleaded and begged and my dad said no but then she pleaded and begged some more and he gave in, probably because she liked screaming children and farm animals and didn’t spill her ice cream on her shirt.

“Purple!” she shouted. My dad asked me which color I wanted and I said I didn’t want a flower. I simply pointed to the balloon tied to the flower stand and asked if I could have that instead. Putting away his wallet he asked the man behind the flower cart if I could have it, and without any problem and perhaps a little confusion, he awarded me the plain simple white balloon. I held it tightly in my hand and it hovered just above my head, and it made me happy.

Of course walking back to the car, my sister and I started fighting about something kids fight about, and in an instant the little string slipped through my little hand, and as I tried frantically to grip it all I got were handfuls of air. I can still remember the feeling, how my heart momentarily stopped, how I knew as it was happening that there was nothing I could do to stop it. I can still see it, floating up into the air as my neck craned back and I followed it with my eyes as it got smaller and smaller in the distance. I watched until it disappeared from view and the disappointment it left behind was acute.

It’s always in the moments when it’s too late, that you realize you’ve made a mistake. When you’re watching something slip away, only then comes the clarity you feel you’ve been searching for. I of course made the wrong choice. I should have picked something that I knew would last. But then again, it’s the balloon that had I wanted, and in life I guess, there are people who go for what they want no matter the consequences.

I think about that and the choices I make every time I go home and still see, all these years later, that big purple flower still sitting in the corner of my sisters room.

whether the weather

Its been raining in New York for days now, and the streets look the way they do in all the movies with the lights reflecting up and the people running with umbrellas over head, and newspapers and coats. The tourists curse it. He/she/they say it’s bad luck, bad timing, bad news. Rain in August? they ask like it's never rained in any August before that they've ever lived through. And their maps get wet and they’re slowed by the rain and so are the cars and the busses and my commute...home.

All tourists do when they come here is spend too much money on stupid souvenirs, all that crap from junk-filled stores to try make the memory more real. I take home matchbooks and napkins I’ve written notes on, and mental pictures of faces, and distinct sounds of laughter, and figure I have legitimate mental souvenirs of every place I’ve ever been.

And you can find yourself (as I did), sheltered from the storm in a little coffee shop and realize that you don’t need a map to get you to the places in life that you need to see. And you don’t need to spend money on anything more than a café latte to strike up a conversation with a normal person with a normal life to realize that New York in the rain is just as good as New York when it’s not.

Guys: Word of Advice

I’m apparently going to grow old. I’m going to grow old, alone, and maybe with lots of cats because I’m…smart? Wait, that can’t be right. I mean okay, I guess I can say I’ve always wondered why it is that there are all these girls walking around with men on their arms who they don’t know Louis Vuitton from Louis the VIII, but in all honesty, Michael Noer is out of his mind (and I’m assuming married to someone who can’t read or tie her shoes without his assistance).

He is saying (and please, you have to read this article for the full effect) that women who have jobs aren’t women you men out there should be marrying. We are, apparently, more likely to cheat, less likely to love you, unwilling to bear your children, and more likely to divorce you, as opposed to say, someone who doesn’t work or care about the fact that they can’t support themselves, and are fine with you being the sole breadwinner.

“…successful men are attracted to women with similar goals and aspirations. And why not? After all, your typical career girl is well educated, ambitious, informed and engaged. All seemingly good things, right? Sure … at least until you get married. Then, to put it bluntly, the more successful she is, the more likely she is to grow dissatisfied with you. Sound familiar?”

Yes men, don’t you all just have it so tough.

Word of advice: men need to get over themselves (and read Elizabeth Corcoran’s response). Last I checked marriage is about two people making the decision (albeit somewhat insane) to spend their entire lives together recognizing that life gets in the way and marriage isn’t one smoothly paved road to the Promised Land. There are going to be problems, and in the changing economy where inflation is going to make maintaining our quality of life harder than ever, how can a marriage survive without both parties holding down solid jobs?

If the reality-based truth that marriage is hard work and warrants compromise and understanding isn’t present in your mind when you’re walking down the aisle (or in this case watching your future walking down the aisle towards you) – abort.

“If a host of studies are to be believed, marrying these women is asking for trouble. If they quit their jobs and stay home with the kids, they will be unhappy” (Has he given birth?) “They will be unhappy if they make more money than you do” (Since when does making a lot of money make anyone unhappy?) “You will be unhappy if they make more money than you do” (Get over it). “You will be more likely to fall ill” (Successful woman =death?). “Even your house will be dirtier” (Learn to wash your own dishes).

And in case we haven’t gotten to the most offensive part of this man’s column yet, here’s my all time favorite statement:

“The other reason a career can hurt a marriage will be obvious to anyone who has seen his or her mate run off with a co-worker: When your spouse works outside the home, chances increase that he or she will meet someone more likable than you.”

Does no one really actually love the person they marry anymore? Does no one have restraint or morals or trust? If all of this is true and the person you ‘til-death-do-you-part with just frolics off with the first person who plans the office holiday party with them, then there are greater issues involved here. As in: perhaps you never should have married that person to begin with, 401k and benefits or not.

And let’s not forget some famous couples in history here: Charles cheating on Diana, Bill on Hillary, Donald on Ivana, Frank on Kathie Lee, and the one I think was the worst betrayal in the history of adultery, Woody on Mia with her own daughter.

And we’re the ones being branded with scarlet letters?

This is all really too much. And just in case I wasn’t already on the fence about the whole, with this ring I thee wed business, Michael Noer and his male point of view (and I’m not making a blanket statement here) doesn’t do much to improve my overall opinion.

Because no matter what, I’ll always be the kind of girl who steers clear of $1000 plus priced hand bags.

I guess that like a good job, a good man really is hard to find.

"Get me off this bus"

I don’t remember much of the nearly five hour bus ride form New York Boston aside from the fact that the guy next to me was literally sleeping on top of me. Boarding the bus without anything, no book, no magazine, not even an ipod, I knew I was in for a long trip. The worst possible thing would be that he might want to talk with in order to pass the time. Probably talk about where I’m from and where I’m going and why I’m on this smelly bus looking like I don’t want to talk to anyone. Like I’ve mentioned in other posts about traveling, I don’t like to be troubled with other people.

So I sat and diligently read The New Yorker and tried not to encourage him. An hour into the trip he was out like a light, sleeping like he might were he home in his living room, sprawled out on his worn-in recliner. At one point his head was on my shoulder, his leg almost draped entirely over mine and the irony didn’t escape me that it was there, on a reckless, speeding, smelly (did I mention that before?) bus that a guy is all over me.

If I got any closer to the window I would have been outside.

When he woke up, finally, he looked up at me with sleepy eyes and asked in half-amazement: “We’re here?”

Yes. And the symphonic range of your snoring made the journey all the more delightful. Can I have your number?

But in this day and age (meaning living in New York City and being 23) I can’t argue with spending $15 on anything, and in this case I guess that meant some unwanted bus-time canoodling.

New York Is...

When I first came here I didn’t know what I was doing. Eight months later and who’s to say I’m any further along that path to figuring it all out. Who says I’ll ever get there. I spend too much money on coffee, throwing in cash to keep awake in this life I’m still creating, each day as the sun rises and sets, as I make my way to work and to home, Lower West side to Upper East. And it’s always alone, the daily grind, the coming to terms with change and how this city is constantly moving.

And then one day you wake up and realize things are changing. It’s been happening so gradually you hardly notice it, but then you come home from work and your new roommate, your old friend is marking another birthday and you find yourself surrounded by friends, new friends, people you’ve just met but whose lives you’re suddenly a part of, even if only in the smallest of ways, and you feel you’re making something of yourself. You’re finding a life you never knew existed. You’re starting to make ties to people who will eventually tie you to others, and who knows where that will take you.

In a city where you’re constantly surrounded by people it’s almost impossible for the direction of your life not to be influenced in some way.

And then tomorrow, or today really as it’s rounding one o’clock and people are still filtering out of the apartment, dizzy on Dirty Waters and beer, I’m leaving for Boston to visit my old life for a few days. A night at the Pig, sleeping in my old home in the Back Bay realizing maybe (maybe) that life is where your stuff is, where your new friends are, where your future (no matter how uncertain) rests, waiting for you to come back.

Because there are always certainties, like the life you know and have left behind. But New York Is…the life you’ve yet to experience, where certainties come and go as fast as subways and it’s the idea of the day to day that keeps you moving forward (with coffee).

So tomorrow is Boston (still sad and recovering I’m sure from the five-game sweep), and after that back to the city. Because New York Is…home.

Salsa Wednesdays

Only in New York can you be at one place, mention to someone how much you'd love to go salsa dancing, and, ten minutes later be in a cab en-route to the best Afro Cuban salsa club in the city.

We're All Afraid

I think about it every time I see someone whose home is the corner of 72nd and Lex and I think I have no idea what I’m doing in this place that houses the person in the penthouse and the one who sleeps beside it. And when I pass them by I think that the story books never told them about this.

Because one day it hits you. Like a truck or a speeding biker on 5th Ave or the deep pangs of regret that happen upon you when you lay awake and night, staring at the ceiling thinking about all the things you should have done, or shouldn’t have, wishing you could go back and change it, rewind, fast forward, delete, become someone else…

…someone on the corner of 72nd and Lex, hand outstretched. It hits that what you were taught about life isn’t the way things are at all.

We have been raised on measures of fear, of reality, of self-hatred. Instructions: use sparingly.

But the thing we’ve been made certain of is the restriction of one thing – our time.

Time in itself, offers very little.

So I think about it, every time I see someone whose home is the corner of something 2nd and anything ave. that maybe we don’t know much, but we know one thing. Because one day life could hit you, bam, like a truck or a speeding bike and there you’ll be, hand outstretched wondering where the hands of the clock have run off to.

And yet, still we’re all of us, all afraid.

you know times have changed
when you see a plump boy george
picking trash downtown

different cities, different lives

And there I was, me, playing tour guide in a city I barely know. How can someone know a city so large in only eight months? How can someone ever really know a city at all? It’s always changing and with that comes the inability to really get comfortable. Because as soon as you do it’s another favorite bar that goes out of business or restaurant that relocates, leaving you lost and alone, making your way out again into the fray to forge ahead in an attempt to recreate your life.

And there I was, me, playing tour guide in a city I’m learning to love, to my friends. They’ve been left behind in different cities, in different lives, and when they came to visit I wondered how it is that I’ve been managing all this time on my own.

And there I was, me, playing tour guide in a city that has become my home, realizing that the street corners grow on you and change (as does a city) from daylight to dusk, from walking past at 2AM drunk to 2PM sober. They incorporate themselves into your life like the mundane chores of breathing and eating and this is how you come to know them. This is how 72nd street becomes your life and how you find the man who works at the 24 store on the corner (Kevin) giving you life advice at 3AM.

It changes, life (and the city) like the array of smells that hits you from one block to the next. And then suddenly it’s 48 hours later and your friends have to leave, back to their different cities and different lives and you take comfort in the fact that you’re building something here, in the ever-changing city that surrounds you.

And to think in February we couldn’t wait for summer.

At the end of the day the office was buzzing with who had power and who didn’t.

Lower East Side, Park Slope, the Bronx.

People were making plans on where they were going to stay and making phone calls to the electrical company demanding (as New Yorkers do) to know when it is expected to come back on.

“We’re not sure,” wasn’t good enough. It rarely is.

On the way home it started to rain. I got off the bus early at Park Ave and walked home to 2nd and people around me were running, newspapers on heads, large umbrellas taking up sidewalks impeding vision and all I could think was: is no one ever satisfied?

(real) city people

1) There’s a girl I saw Friday and then again today when I was, both mornings, tired and hot from the oppressive heat that was seeping up from the sidewalks and consuming me from my feet up to the tips of my hair. This girl I saw, both days, on my way back from buying a grande bold at Starbucks that I can’t hardly afford, but because that’s just the kind of mornings they were, and there she was, walking towards me in the same light blue dress, both days, with long blonde hair and knees up to her neck and it made me suddenly feel 5'1" and like I might as well have just melted right into the sidewalk and disappeared forever.

2) Do you ever see people and wish you could just know their entire life story by just making eye contact? Sometimes when I’m riding on the subway or walking down the street I see people and I wonder what their lives are like. I want to know when was the last time (yesterday? this morning?) they got their heart broken and by whom. I want to know what their first car was (neon blue WRX?) and how they came to the city and what holiday’s were like at home growing up as a kid. But then I pass them by and never know and figure that perhaps if I’d just said hello, that maybe one day I might have found out.

3)There’s a woman who gets on my bus everyday and gets off at 72nd street. She walks the same route as I do to the subway and bizarrely on the way home there she is, waiting by the bus stop on Broadway for the bus back home. Everyday it’s the same and everyday there she is, talking to herself, saying God knows what, but most of the time I can’t help but listen. I wonder how it is, with all of the people there are in this city that her path always crosses mine. Why is it that with all of the people there are in this city I’m destined to be near someone so lonely all they can do is talk nonsense to perhaps the only person who will listen.

the past.

I just got a call from my friends in Boston. Another Thursday night and they were at The Pig, my old haunt on The Hill. Through the loud sounds of the crowd I could hear that my favorite guitarist was playing my song (it’s only my song because my name rhymes with the songs title, and since I started frequenting The Pig, I was written into a verse). As my friend held up her phone I could hear the song being played, and my favorite guitarist was singing for me to come back to Boston.

He then took the phone, held it up to the crowd and after telling them that I was on the other end, on the count of three, they all screamed my name.

It’s sad really, the things and people we have to leave behind.

Flies

You know it’s going to fly out of your life as quickly as it came in. Like the minutes and hours of your day. You wake up and brush your teeth and go to work and come home and make dinner and then suddenly, bam! it’s 11:56 pm and you don’t know where the time went, where the day went, where your life went.

It flies on the wings of the passing years and suddenly there you are, looking back on all of it, looking back on that hazy cluster of forgotten time wondering where it’s all gone. Through the fog of reality you see your life as a series of forgotten conversations, of missed chances and passionate kisses, of flashes of familiar faces without voices without feelings without pain.

And then you realize that all of the significant things, all of the significant moments and people are going to fly out of your life as quickly as they came in. You’ll see it one day when summer is on its way out and the changing colors of fall are not far behind.

Have you ever watched those temporary little things? And the dent they can make on the front windshield of a person’s mind.

manhattan solitaire

When a friend of mine asked me what I did this weekend, I told them, and then they asked me if I was okay. Yes I’m okay. Why shouldn’t I be okay? I didn’t get mugged or assaulted or get hit by a bus, I didn’t get food poisoning, or lose a lot of money in the stock market (like I even have enough money to begin with). No, what prompted the question of “are you okay?” was that everything I told my friend I did this weekend, I did alone.

In a city where there is never a lack of things to do, why should it be surprising that a single gal spent the weekend doing things by herself? Coffee and writing at the Starbucks around the corner on Friday night (I know, very cliché) where dinner was a venti soy latte that lasted me through a few chapters. I watched couples stroll in and out, on the way back from or to dinner, maybe at Due or the posh new Brazilian restaurant Buzina Pop on 73rd and Lex. I listened as the two girls (smart) next to me debate over whether or not Donnie Darko and Donnie Brasco are indeed, the same movie. They left the discussion agreeing to disagree, deciding that they would both ask their friends Mark and Robbie that they were meeting later to make the final decision, and the loser would have to buy the other one a bud light at Doc Watson’s.

I strolled down 5th Ave on Saturday night, the Upper East Side looking barren and quiet, to The Paris Theatre, tucked nicely next to The Plaza to catch the latest French import “Changing Times.” I bought my ticket “one please,” walked in and bought a box of Milk Duds, “one please,” and made it through the next two hours of subtitles and Gerard Depardieu. It was no Green Card, but it had its charms (namely Catherine Deneuve). French films have an uncanny ability of making a basically interesting story into something a lot more bizarre. Gerard’s character has come to Tangier to track down the love of his life, whom he hasn’t seen/found in 31 years (actually 31 years, 8 months and 20 days). While I’m already rolling my eyes at the overall absurdity of this love plot (like any man can still love someone after 31 years of not having seen them), we move from a love story to a closeted gay son story, to a sheep slaughtering, to a coma. Les temps qui changent indeed.

As I left the theatre, the New York night humid and hot, I trailed closely behind some of the other couples to hear their opinions of the film. As most of them were over fifty, they didn’t seem to understand it, and those that did, were speaking in rapid fire French.

Sunday was a day walking around Manhattan as the bad weather finally broke and I spent almost three hours in the MET checking out the new installments and revisiting my old favorites (the Impressionist wing, especially Monet’s Haystacks, The American Wing, and the circular panoramic view of Versailles that makes you feel like you’re actually there). I stopped by the Telegraph Café for a cappuccino and a pain au chocolat and another weekend passed just like all the rest.

Why is it people always seem unable to understand the concept of living life on your own? This is Manhattan, you’re never alone. And besides, I like the things I do alone, like as soon as I get The New Yorker in the mail I stand at the counter eating pistachios, drinking a diet coke and I circle in the calendar section (after checking out the cartoon contest in the back) all of the wonderful things I’m going to do next weekend.

seasonal depression

“It’s so hot out, I just can’t stand it.” It’s the girl in the office who talks loudly and often and never has anything of any real significance to say.

It’s July, I want to say to her, softly and just once. It’s summer and the heat, as long as I’ve been alive, has always corresponded with this season, unless you’ve recently spent a lot of time in Alaska and are still adjusting to the light.

Nothing has changed. Nothing will change. It will always snow in January and be hot in July.

When I think of things I can’t stand (lies, local news, country music, people who talk loudly and often when they don’t have anything of any real significance to say, math, limp handshakes, all of the Times columnists, people who don’t know the difference between their and they’re), I don’t think of heat.

Then it rained last night (does it rain in Alaska?) and the heat is now considerably less. It's standable. More able to stand.

So now I’m just wondering, waiting to hear about what she can’t stand next. And I know I’ll hear it. Often.

work(ing). it's not easy.

1) Spent my Friday night in, writing (working). What does this mean? I read somewhere that if you have a passion you have to weigh it against the other elements of your life and make a choice. So I chose. I choose. What am I missing out on in the process? (time spent not working, vodka sodas, pick-up lines, hangovers).

2) I love The Moose. I think he’s a solid pitcher and I also think he’s pretty dreamy. Got to see him start on Saturday when my dad came into the city and we went to Yankee Stadium to catch the White Sox, with perfect seats behind home plate. What I love most about the Stadium (despite the overwhelming lack of Red Sox fans), is that first glimpse of the field as you walk through the corridor to your section and the entire park opens up before you. Also, A-Rod doesn’t bring anything to the game. But then again, what difference does it make to him at $156,000 a game. What incentive does he have to really care (work)?

3) Speaking of ridiculous, I wasn’t entirely able to experience much of this beautiful day as I was locked inside my apartment for most of it. That’s right, locked inside my apartment. Something perhaps very implausible became something very real and irritating as the door to my apartment is so old one of the screws came loose in the door-jamb, and despite the door actually being unlocked, it was caught by the protruding piece of metal. I was of course confused initially, questioning immediately my own intelligence and my overall ability to simply open a door. Am I losing my mind? Have I just had a stroke? Lots of pushing (work) and hours later the doorman (Tony) literally knocked the door down, letting me out.

4) It’s not easy being held hostage on the 9th floor.

Just call me Hana.

What struck me most in this New York Magazine article about why New Yorkers can’t be (or don’t want to be) happy is the writer’s reference to the closing lines of The English Patient.

“In the last paragraph of The English Patient, Hana, the protagonist, stands alone in her house and, because her hair flies in her eyes, accidentally knocks a glass from the cupboard. Meanwhile, halfway around the world, Kip, the man she loves, catches a fork an inch off the ground, similarly brushed off the dinner table by his daughter. Some of us are Hanas. Some of us are Kips.”

I know some people who are Kips and one in particular whose name I won’t mention here. He has an uncanny ability of living his life with as little worry and consequence to the world the around him as possible. Me, I’m a Hana. Call it luck or fate or chance or whatever it is you believe and ask yourself why is it that certain people catch their falling glasses and some people can’t seem to ever stop them from breaking.

And it’s not that I don’t want to be happy, but I don’t know the components to my own S+C+V= H equation. Is happiness really formulaic? Or is it as Milan Kundera writes, that happiness is the longing for repetition? Who knows, but this is coming from a man who wrote a book about two people whose entire romance is based on a string of chance events and coincidences.
Maybe this city really is too big of a place to be happy in. You come here and feel at first like you’re part of the city’s plan. That is until you realize that getting to where you want to be is going to be harder than you thought, and walking down 6th Ave. you pass at least two dozen people who all embody little parts of the person you’re trying to be. Everyone comes here to get somewhere else, to get a better job or a better apartment, a better boyfriend, a better life. But is the constant quest for something better leaving us unable to appreciate the things we already have thus leaving us all (gasp!) unhappy?

Who knows. But New York draws a certain kind of person and those people aren’t settlers. You don’t come to New York with no money in your pocket just to find yourself a nice little 9-5er with coffee breaks and a cushy vacation package. You don’t come to New York to keep being the person you were before you came here. You don’t come to New York with your high school girlfriend to settle down. You come to New York to find your own happiness and hope every day as you walk to the subway that perhaps this is the day it’s going to find you - no matter how many glasses you break.

Vacation Part II

I spent $5 on a pen. I literally paid five whole dollars (plus tax) in an airport gift shop surrounded by trash magazines and #1 bestselling paperbacks for a feeble green click-on click-off pen that had Florida in italics on the side, just so that I would write. A writer without a pen. I guess I deserved to pay such a price for such an infringement (note: as in my life everything is measured by Starbucks, do you know that $5 is like two grande bolds?! or a venti soy latte?! or a grande iced coffee!?) But the pen was necessary as I had 5 hours to wait in the West Palm Beach Airport for my flight back to New York. I read all of my reading material and called all the appropriate people and balanced my checkbook and braided and unbraided my hair and then needed to write, as there was nothing left to do. I don’t typically write with a pen and paper (hence, no pen) and struggled to get my hand working up to the same speed as my brain. After the carpal tunnel set in I gave up and simply sat and watched people as the passed. Families with screaming children (note to all parents everywhere: please get your kids under control), couples crying goodbye or kissing hello and I sat and watched and counted down the hours, for there were several.

I thought about how I insulted a member of 80’s hair band White Snake at a bar when the roughly 55 year old man (Michael?) with bleached hair looking somewhat cracked out asked for my phone number and I didn’t know who he was. Who born in the 1980’s knows who White Snake is? I was what, 5 when they were supposedly big? Please. Even then I was listening to Prokofiev at 6 and Coltrane at 10. I wasn’t the best girl for him to pick and when he looked at me slyly and asked “have you ever met a rock star before?” I thought to tell him the story about when I was running down Newbury Street early one morning two years ago and literally ran into Steven Tyler, almost knocking him over. That’s basically meeting, right? Instead I gave him a fair rendition of a withering look and simply said “no, and I’m still waiting.”

Can one really be a groupie to a band one has never heard of?

I also thought about how earlier that morning, midway through my cup of French Roast at brunch, the waiter, young, tall and somewhat oafish was holding my half-eaten plate of egg-white omelet when he looked at me and said “Can I just tell you that you’re really very beautiful.” I sat and blinked, the cup poised in my hands ready for consumption and felt my cheeks go red. What is with this place? People here are just incredibly open and honest. Maybe there’s something in the water. Embarrassed and flattered I mumbled a thank you. He nodded and walked away and his declaration had caused the rest of the diners to look over, I suppose to gauge for themselves how accurate his statement really was.

I don’t know what the consensus was, but I know I liked it there.

Anyway, I’m back in New York now and back to reality where there are no beaches or friendly cab drivers, where Just Wants To Get Laid Man is everywhere and Sensitive Man is a lot harder to find. Where perhaps has-been band members still lurk in dark bars and I still won’t know who they are. As great as getting away is, there’s no better sight than Manhattan at night from 10,000 feet, and as you look down on the colossal city with its lights shining below you, you think to yourself that vacations are great, but it sure is good to be home.

Vacation Part I

I haven’t written because I haven’t been around because I’ve been sitting on a beach getting tan and not wanting to come back to work again…ever. I sat on a beach with good weather, the open ocean in front of me surrounded by West-Palm-Beachians. Granted, I had wanted my beach vacation to take place somewhere in the vicinity of Greece and not where old people go to die, however I’m on a budget, a Manhattan-lifestyle-budget and beggars can’t be choosers (note: will be living off of peanut butter from the jar for a while as all of my money is now currently gone). People in Florida are friendly (well, the people who aren’t over sixty-five that is, as I’ve found that old people can be mean). I’m not used to friendly cab drivers or people having an overall interest in the well-being of the people around them, and I’m entirely not used to men offering to buy me drinks at bars. Granted two girls drinking in a crowded bar (note: vacation was for classy girl and longtime gal pal from jr. high) is typically a draw for most men. However, I’ve never really experienced much of it in Boston and New York (note: New York men are of a whole other breed and I’m still trying to figure them out. That’s a whole other post).

Regardless, I don’t think there was one night where I bought myself more than one vodka soda, which turned out to be a blessing as money is tight. Perhaps it’s a Southern thing, but men there are outgoing, talkative, unpretentious and, what to me is the most important trait of all – unafraid. Yes, they all seem to get a somewhat frightened look on their faces when I tell them I live in Manhattan, but when they got over that they made surprisingly interesting and intelligent conversation. (note: isn’t it sad that this is a rarity?). I of course met the one guy who wanted to suddenly be in a relationship with me after only a few drinks. Sensitive Man. There aren’t a lot of these walking around, but when you come across one it’s an interesting thing to see. He told me I completely changed his opinion of what New York women are like. I took it as a compliment and was too afraid to ask what he thought about New York women before (are we all bitchy, stupid and blonde?) Nevertheless, he was wearing a pink Lacoste shirt and, Sensitive Man or not, I could never be with a man wears pink Lacoste.

But Sensitive Man is better than Just Wants To Get Laid Man. At least Sensitive Man will remember your name and take an active interest in the things you’re saying. At least Sensitive Man won’t grab your ass and laugh when you turn around and forcefully tell him to knock it off. Just Wants To Get Laid Man doesn’t care about you. Just Wants To Get Laid Man has been ruined by the girls who aren’t Classy Girls. What is acceptable to these other girls (i.e. ass grabbing) has confused Just Wants To Get Laid Man into thinking that it’s an okay thing to do thing with every girl he meets. Just Wants To Get Laid Man is everywhere and thinks Classy Girls are a waste of his time, and it’s sad to think that Sensitive Man might turn into him one day. That is if he hasn’t already.

Anyway, I spent the Fourth of July watching fireworks on the beach, and as they went off over the ocean I noted somewhat sadly, how it was the first Fourth in a while that I haven’t seen the fireworks over the Charles River. And then it began to rain and we sat on the beach with towels over our heads as the crowd all rushed to leave. We didn’t care. All we did was sit on the beach, get wet, and not want to come back to work again…ever.

Short Cuts

In DC this past weekend we were moving from bar to bar, from Cue Bar to Local 16 to Saint-Ex. Too much vodka later I started thinking, and everyone knows that after too much vodka you’re not really thinking much at all.

I started thinking about timing and how when it comes to relationships timing is everything. People can be brought together or torn apart because of this one single word and it’s difficult to know when the timing is right. Most of the time it can come around and hit you in the face and you won’t even recognize it. We spend so much time trying to chase it down that sometimes it’s almost impossible to deal with when we finally catch up with it.

In DC and too much vodka later I got upset with timing and tried to grab hold of it and do something about it. Too much vodka later you can start to actually think there’s something you can do about it, something you can say to make it slow down the way you want it to. But, if you’re lucky as I was, in this futile but courageous attempt to reach out into the spinning vortex of passing seconds you’ll find that the person you were trying to reach has changed their phone number, leaving you wondering when this happened and how is it that you didn’t know. Has it been that long? you ask, as timing again is working for or against you and you’ll never know which.

And someone asked the question, “so what’s better – being in an easy relationship or not being in one at all?” I guess when something is easy it’s a lot more comfortable to stick around than go chasing after timing, especially when there might not be anyone on the other end. Because I get it, that loving is a fix, like a drug to an addict and it’s easy to take a hit and make it automatic. But still I answered the latter, thinking that in the end lost phone calls and quick fixes are never enough. We all take drugs of some kind to help ease the pain – and that was me sitting there just drinking too much vodka, alone.

Honestly, men.

I couldn’t help myself. My eyes started to look around me, on the floor, under the seats as a small strange subconscious panic overtook me as I was standing on the subway reading the latest TIME magazine book excerpt from Ron Suskind about Al-Qaeda’s plot to attack the New York City subway.

Great. As I read the article (and other people tilted their heads to read it too) I think all of us started to wonder when the morning might come when something could go terribly wrong. When I finished the article just before I made my exit at Houston, I took a deep breath, shoved the magazine back into my bag thinking there’s nothing I can do. No one knows what might happen tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, and living in fear is no way of living at all.

However this article from the New York Times gives me yet another reason to try to suppress fear on the subway. It happened on the T in Boston, but with all the more people on the subway here in New York it happens more often. While I’ve yet to be “groped” on mass transit, I have been verbally harassed, and have, on more than on occasion given withering looks to men standing next to me who have more than enough room that they don’t have to be pushed up against me and their eyes have more than enough other angles to look than the general proximity of my chest.

While I am someone who has yet to really understand the overall thought process of the opposite sex, this subway exposure thing really takes the cake. Men grabbing women as they pass and dropping their pants in front of them on the 4/5/6 really doesn’t make any sense to me at all. But then again, neither do men. In Tokyo they have already started the movement towards all-female subways. That’s just what I need – a morning stuck in a perfume packed car full of women ranting about the latest sale at Bloomingdales all while struggling to find room for their huge sunglasses and Louis Vuitton bags.

It’s getting more hazardous living in this city than ever, and it’s not because of what’s happening between the high-rises and cab filled streets – it’s what is taking place underground that has people living in fear. Whatever happened to the days when people could commute to work without worrying about whether or not they’re actually going to make it to the office? Whatever happened to the days when men respected women? Perhaps those days never really existed at all and what is happening now is the slow destruction of a society as it seeps down beneath its surface, infecting the core.

So when I finished reading the Times article I took a deep breath, shoved the newspaper back into my bag and thought there’s nothing I can do. Because this is New York and the city plays by it's own rules and because some men just never grow up.

Another weekend away

I'm going to The District tomorrow for the weekend and will be staying at the Brokedown Palace (Love Shack formerly known as the Urban Family's Secret Lair) in U Street.

Should be interesting if I make it back unscathed and still with my wallet. I will spend more money traveling via cab from my office to LaGuardia than I will for the entire flight to Reagan. I hate that I can barely afford to travel. I hate that I can barely afford much of anything.

Last time I was at the Brokedown Palace was in December for a Christmas party with Kinsey. I got incredibly drunk on vodka and cheap champagne which was spilled on my tulle skirt and ended up singing to (shouting to) Journey with everyone else who was there. I will of course be drunk for the better part of this weekend, and am looking forward to going back to New Vegas Lounge. Will report more upon my return.

Don’t stop believing indeed.

People Tell Me Things

The girl on the train had just about every gossip magazine you could imagine tucked into the seat in front of her. I sat down next to the window and opened up the manuscript I was supposed to be diligently reading for work, with my head down, absorbed, like any good New Yorker would be, not acknowledging anyone else around them.

Truth is I didn’t want to sit next to anyone. I didn’t want to get stuck next to the guy who ate the whole time, or the girl who talked on her phone, or, god forbid the person who wanted to talk to me. I didn’t want someone to ask me questions about myself and go through the typical travel bonding that people go through, thinking that just because they’re going to be sitting next to someone on a train for the next 2.5 hours going to the same destination, that suddenly we’re comrades in battle, old acquaintances, or come to it, friends.

In the end call it cynical or whatever you want, but I simply want to be left alone. And I could see out of the corner of my eye the late-comer travelers doing what all late-comer travelers do – scoping out who is the least terrible person to sit next to. With all window seats taken they look, assess who is the least offensive person, the least attractive, the least likely to smell, and they make their choice.

Kathleen chose me. She sat down reading with a box of Good ‘n Plenty, a candy which I have never thought to be neither good nor plentiful and about twenty minutes into the ride upstate decided she’d gotten enough information about the status of Nick Lachey and his new girlfriends, enough about the Dateline interview with Matt Lauer and Britney Spears and how she’s now white trash and should seriously reconsider the length of her skirts, and the latest about Brad and Angelina and that old looking dude from American Idol. Twenty minutes into the ride she decided she wanted to be my friend.

Kathleen, or Kathy if you will, is a sophomore at Pratt who is obsessed with Sex and the City, going to clubs, Midori sours, Spring Break in Miami and great literature like “Oh my god have you even read Bergdorf Blondes? Its only like the BEST BOOK ever written! I mean I don’t like to read but that book like made me want to read again. You have to read it!”

She can’t wait to graduate and come to New York and be like Carrie Bradshaw. When I told her how I came to New York from Boston she said, “Oh my god that must have been so hard. How did you do it? I mean I want to do that but I don’t know if I can, it’s like, so scary. I mean, alone?” she asked. She thought it was “fabulous” that I live in the Upper East Side, she thought it was “amazing” that I occasionally work with celebrity authors. She liked my sunglasses and my shoes and my outfit and asked me that if she ever gets to New York would I’d take her out to the hottest clubs and the hottest bars and introduce her to the hottest guys.

As callous as people may think I am, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my life isn’t as fabulous as she thinks. I didn’t tell her that her perception of great literature was making me slightly nauseous. I couldn’t tell her the truth about life and money and shitty New York (or anywhere) men. And then I realized that sometimes we can go through life not really seeing our lives the way other people see them. Some people, such as myself, are our own severest critics, and it is the Kathy’s of the world that can help us see we don’t have it so bad after all. Some people (gasp) even aspire to be like us. Now while that might make Kathy certifiably insane, and if she really got to know me she might entirely retract that thought - but for those 2.5 hours she thought I was pretty great and I couldn’t help but love her for it.

On the way back to the city this morning, reading the still unfinished manuscript half asleep with sunglasses on, a man sat down next to me, said hello, read half of Newsweek and fell asleep – just the way I like it.

Because some things never change

Woman on the subway today, painting her nails. Pink, I think. I can hardly begin to understand how she did it. I’m nowhere close to being that coordinated or, come to it, that desperate for time that rattling uptown on the express is the only chance I have to give myself a quick manicure.

I was talking to Sweet Girl tonight (pls. refer to Dirty Water) and we were both recognizing how tonight is Thursday and on Thursday’s in Boston we would always go to the Pig on the Hill and we would always have a great time and I would always be hung over at work on Friday. Not hung over on Friday anymore (sadly), as this job requires a lot more focus and concentration.

Speaking of a job that requires focus and attention – I’m heading out of the city tomorrow to visit home for the weekend. Since I’ve been here I don’t feel like I can function normally outside of the city limits but this weekend I’m giving it a try. Once you get into the New York groove it’s difficult to get out. Different cities have different feels, and while I’ve got Boston under my skin, New York (for now anyway) runs my life.

I smiled at the woman painting her nails with her groceries balanced on her lap on the subway, and thought that perhaps I’m headed down the path to becoming that kind of New Yorker. That kind of New Yorker is everywhere. But me? I would never wear pink.