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.