(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.