New Year(s).

What is it about New Years that always leaves me feeling as though things simply aren’t as they should be? I guess when you place too much expectation on anything you’re bound to be disappointed - but I think with New Years it’s just that we’re all so ready for something new, for a fresh start where we can erase all the mistakes gone by (for there are several) and escape the regrets (for there are many) and the things that slipped through our fingers (too many to count) that we’re now so hopeful we’ll grasp them and get it right this time around.

We are eager, I think, to start over, to wipe the slate clean, because there is no other time in the year that has a change so large (we think), so significant as New Years, one year rolling into the next, to make us realize the things we’ve yet to realize, to look at the passage of time as something that doesn’t slow down for anyone. And in the time it takes for 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 to flash past you, you think you’ve been given back your chance to change the things that aren’t as they should be.

It is hope, I think, that we’re eager for, swilling champagne at over-priced bars with people we don’t know, or in a sea of thousands in Times Square, (cold and with a full bladder), just because we think we should, all to watch a ball drop from the top of a pole to the bottom.

And in the time it takes for 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...I’d like to think that all that matters is who is standing next to you when one year rolls into the next. Because you never do know, (do you?) what will happen between that exact moment after you count out 1 this year and before you start over again with 10 the next.

New years aren’t always so happy as we’d like them to be, but it’s hope after we count down that makes us yell it, scream it from the top of our lungs, happy, happy, happy (!) because we’re longing for it, crossing our fingers for it, praying for it under our breath. Please, please, please.

So Auld Lang Syne and raise your glass to hope and the eight-thousand-and-a-half hours between now, and when the countdown will inevitably (hopefully) begin again.

All that I want.

It is raining, turning the snow into melting piles of slush. There is white covering the ground all around and as the fog thickens and the rain falls harder it slowly begins to fade away.

The untainted purity of it is slowly becoming tainted the way the harsh realities of life can cloud up the sweet memories of yesteryear. It’s funny what you miss - simple smiles and the sound of a voice that suddenly become so distant that you struggle to reach out into the void of all they’ve left behind to get even just a small piece of it back.

Growing up you want to ask for all the impossible things for Christmas – all that you want is what you know you cannot get - like more time. All I would have wanted was more time before the snow (and everything) all melted away too soon.

Christmas in New York.

There is something about this city at this time of year that makes me feel hopeful. It’s the subways and sidewalks packed with people of all walks of life trying to budget the best ways to make the people in their lives happy.

I have bags packed with gifts and I’ll be bringing them away from the city and its hopeful lights to recognize that love can’t be bought, wrapped or returned.

Because time goes to show you that no matter how much things change (and they always do), life keeps moving forward as though nothing has changed at all.

Christmas with its cards and trees and packages is predictable, along with the New Year marking all that’s happened (how much!) and so quickly (how fast!).

When everything changes, I suppose that means we have no choice but to change with it, and maybe recognize that the hopeful lights of Manhattan (if you’re lucky) can follow you home.

Tangled up in blue, indeed.

On the bus this morning a woman, middle-aged yelled at the driver calling him an "insensitive man," because he failed to let her in at the stop light a block earlier, therefore making her run to the next stop. "You’re an insensitive man!" she yelled as she boarded, breathing hard from the one block run. As another passenger "Shhh’d" her the driver simply responded, "Well, you crazy, lady."

On the other side of town a cell phone that had started ringing somewhere in the bus behind me still wasn’t stopping. Finally someone said "Is that yours?" another said, "No." Then someone else asked, "Well is it yours?" to someone else. They said no. By Central Park West the entire bus came to the realization that someone had left it behind. The woman sitting across from me took it upon herself to pick it up when it rang again. "Well I don’t know who your boyfriend Rob is but he seems to have left his phone on our bus." The woman told Rob’s girlfriend that she lived at 77th and 2nd and would leave the phone with her doorman within the hour. "You tell Rob he’s lucky I’m so nice."

On the downtown 1 train the little girl sitting next to me lost her earring. She asked her mother where it went, repeatedly. "Do you see it?" she asked her. "Do you know where it is?" The girl was devastated. She was about nine and she said it was a Minnie Mouse earring. I tried my hardest not to get involved, seriously concentrating on my book until the girl literally got down on the floor of the train and started looking under my legs. "Excuse me?" I asked. "But my Minnie earring," she said looking up at me desperately. Her eyes were pleading and her mother, who seemed only willing to keep asking things like, "Well are you even sure you put them on this morning?" obviously wasn’t going to help. I’ve lost so many things that the sadness in her face over this one little thing made my feel obligated to help. So there we were, me in my skirt and her in her jeans, kneeling down on the floor of the downtown 1 train looking under people’s legs.

We finally found it right before she got off the train at 28th street. "Thank you so so so so so much," she said, and I just smiled and thought that it was nice to know that sometimes not everything get lost forever.

On the way home I got off the 6 train (how many trains in one day!) at 68th street and the guy behind me was singing. I had already been wedged into the train, pushed in really, at 51st street next to a man in a dark blue pin striped suit who overtly placed his entire right hand over half of my backside with a feeble excuse of, "Oh, sorry," as though it was a mutual understanding that in crowded situations something like that was bound to happen by accident. I gave him an oh-sure-save-it-for-your-wife eye roll before we parted ways.

But as soon as I hit the stairs on the way up towards the fresh cold air of Lexington Avenue, I heard it begin. It was a little screechy and totally out of key, She was workin' in a topless place, and I stopped in for a beer. I just kept lookin' at the side of her face in the spotlight so clear...

And so he sang Bob Dylan, poorly, and was of course going my way. Everyone who passed us couldn’t help but laugh at his horrible voice, obnoxiously loud and blatantly butchering a classic as he trailed behind me.

And later on as the crowd thinned out, it's just about to do the same. She was standing there in back of my chair said to me, "Don't I know your name?"

I turned around, exasperated, wanting to gauge exactly how much longer this was going to go on for. At which point he smiled, stopping singing and said, "Muttered somethin' underneath my breath, she studied the lines on my face. I must admit I felt a little uneasy when she bent down to tie the laces of my shoe..."

After a yelling woman and ringing cell phone and lost earrings, I wasn’t at all in the mood to be tangled up in blue.

"Maybe some other time," I said (and he laughed) because commuting today had been enough.

“I never thought it was such a bad little tree. Maybe it just needs a little love.”

It seems almost ridiculous now, buying a tree just to put it in your living room. Those things that are rooted to the ground are supposed to stay that way, surely.

Each year the tree in Rockefeller Center still seems too large to be real (much like the city itself), but there it stands regardless, and when I make a quick stop to 49th street and 5th to pick something up after work I can see all the people standing and looking up in awe, and I can’t help but turn my head as I pass too, letting its light reflect back on me.

Every street corner in Manhattan is adorned with tree stands, tall and green leaning against buildings, and as I walk by and breathe in deep the scent of pine I note that the uprooted trees have taken up a new and foreign home on the pavement of New York, (much like the people who pay far too much for them).

What must it be like to grow so much and for such a short time (too short, really) only to be cut down in the prime of life? (We all have our purposes in life, I suppose). And it means so much every year to pass the apartment windows of Manhattan and see the lights emanating from within. What would 49th street in December be without them? Each tree (little or big) serves its duty (and means different things to different people) until in the new year the streets are filled with the fond and dying memories of a job well done.

So we chop them down and put them up in our living rooms because the world and us in it are getting older every day, and all that we ever really want for Christmas, all that we ever really need, are roots of our own.

Check, please.

They're just not right when:
you’re sitting across from them at dinner,
packed in like sardines
and they're talking talking talking and you can’t,
(for the life of you),
stop paying attention to the conversation
that’s happening at the table next to you.

Surely love is more (interesting) than, say,
two twenty-five-year-old-boys talking
about booze, baseball and babes
over spicy coconut chicken.

Snow.

New York is cold. Getting out of the subway at nearly seven the sky is still almost light (as it’s never entirely dark here) because of the city’s life and the fog that has crept in making it a soft grey, the kind that encompasses you right before a snowfall. Walking down Lexington towards home it’s easy to still feel like this place isn’t really home at all.

There are of course the same buildings and the same street corners and the same kinds of people that I pass just to make it through those blocks, all those long stretches of pavement so I can climb the stairs and open the door to the place that’s supposed to make me feel safe. The place that has all of my books and clothes and shoes I can’t really afford. It has my computer and photographs and records. But what does that even mean? Can home really just be the place where the tangible objects of your life are? Can it just mean to be walls and a roof and a place to rest your head?

Certainly, (I thought as I walked closer to the place that had been mine for nearly two years now), certainly it must mean more.

For the beginning of December the air is chill and the snow is falling softly. I dig my hands deeper into my pockets as I walk, (a gesture being recreated all over this city) passing people together holding hands or walking dogs or pushing strollers. They have all come from somewhere and are going towards somewhere else. Eventually, as the hour inches later, (past dinner time coffee and cocktails), they’ll all be wanting the same thing - they’ll all be wanting home.

Seasons are strange, aren’t they? In summer it’s never hot enough until is, and then it’s unbearable. In winter it’s always just too cold, a chill that seeps deep into your bones and doesn’t leave ‘til spring. But not now. Now as I walk towards nowhere in particular it feels like the change of the seasons and their inevitable inability to never be what you want them to be at the exact moment you think do - reminds me of home.

Home is the most important place in the world, but its an ever-changing place on unstable ground, and its meaning shifts with the passing of time. (Could it be?) every second of every minute of every day what happens and what decisions are made, (the verdict of luck that is drawn with or without our approval), all take part in taking the definition of the one place that is supposed to make the most sense in our lives, and forces it to take on an entirely new and unrecognizable shape.

I’m not ready for snow. As a kid you always were and knew when it was going to strike, an ability of detection that was inherent. It was a sixth sense of internal excitement because snow meant then so much more than it could ever mean now. Then, it was snow without jobs without stress without bills without rent. It was snow without heartache without loss without loneliness without pain.

Now its whiteness falls on to our tainted grown-up world and rests there as a mere memory of all that we can’t get back, of all that we’ve lost. If only, snow makes us think now. If only, if only, if only.

Snow now, I suppose (no matter where you end up at the end of the day), is hope.

It is unseasonably warm here in New York.

If nothing else there is (and will always be) the common bond of weather. It’s always there in the background, the topic of so many conversations, the easy ice-breaker. All comments always echoing the same thoughts: it’s so warm, can you believe all this rain? And the wind, my god the wind...

But whether the weather New York stays the same, and sometimes all you want is to get the feel of it the way the tourists do - this being a city of nothing but lights and excitement and possibility. Because once you’ve lived here a while all that can start to fade. It becomes just a place where you live, where you commute to work and come home and make dinner and go out for drinks with friends. So that’s why sometimes I like to walk down 5th avenue because it reminds me of how New York looks through outsiders eyes.

I walked down 5th avenue and sat on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral among the hoards of people and watched as they passed and I hugged my knees against my chest, (not from the cold) but from the rest of the world.

A middle-aged Italian couple sat down next to me, he had a map and she, donning a tan fedora, jeans and knee-high boots sat beside me and started smoking a cigarette. They were trying to find somewhere that I couldn’t understand, and while I cursed the fact that I took Russian in high school, (and that the wind took her smoke directly into my face), I wanted to go where they were going, I wanted to venture off with them, strangers who couldn’t understand.

She finally finished her cigarette with one last heavy drag and left it on the steps in her place. They must have figured it out finally, a destination, because they bounded right towards an empty cab and hopped in. The smoke still lingered in her absence and I thought about them as people and where they’ve come from and what their lives must be like. I’m sure they’ve had some tough times, (we all have) but there they were still, figuring out places to go and bounding towards taxis. That’s what I wanted to do at that moment, I wanted someone to come up to me with a map of where to go and take me with them, lead me by the arm into a yellow cab that would take us somewhere I wouldn’t have to think at all.

The wind picked up and the smoke from the fading orange ashes burnt out. That’s it. Sometimes it takes just being next to someone you don’t even know to make you realize the things you need to figure out in your life. I realized there on 5th avenue (and what other avenue in the world could afford such clarity!?) that I needed a map or a plan or a speeding cab or all three. I watched more people pass, cameras, necks tilting back so they could see the tops of the buildings, perhaps even the clear sky, all thinking: it’s so unseasonably warm, isn’t it?

The bells of a distant Cathedral started chiming Amazing Grace. I felt myself start to drift and the people passing now were just feet, just shoes, boots and sneakers and high heels. I watched them pace by, left right, left right, all with a plan or a map or a destination. They had it all figured out and I needed that too (don’t we all in a city so big and life so confusing?). Yet I remained motionless on the stairs, arms wrapping tighter, because I realized (the way you realize things on 5th avenue) that I am not a tourist. I am not passing through. I am here and so is New York, and the lights and the excitement and the possibility all just simply shift the longer you remain.

The weather here doesn’t make any sense, but then again nothing makes sense anymore. I sit directionless (and what is direction anyway?) as the bells ring in the air louder and echo over and over again how sweet, how sweet the sound.

Thanks for being so difficult.

Everyone talks about this time of year as a calendar opportunity to give thanks, and I don’t quite get it. What I figure, year after year of people talking about all the traveling they have to do, the traffic, the annoying family members, and the fact that The Today Show has both hosts reporting from traveling hotspots: Meredith in Atlanta Airport and Matt downtown at Grand Central Station, only proves that all that really comes with this holiday, is stress.

And here I am having panic attacks about cooking a five-course meal. Are there even any turkeys left in Manhattan grocery stores? I wouldn’t know, because I haven’t even started shopping yet. And that’s the thing - throughout all of this, sold out trains and delayed planes and a turkey at 350 degrees for three hours – it is seemingly only after overcoming these obstacles that we’re supposed then come to a spiritual clarity of thankfulness.

Whatever happened to being thankful that things were easy? Perhaps this kind of bitter clarity can only come from living in a city where everything is, all of the time, difficult - difficult with money, with living, with commuting, with meeting a decent man. So why should I spend the day slaving under the false pretense of thanks? Well I’m not this year. This year I’ll eat my turkey not thinking about thanks and pilgrims and those cut-out cardboard turkeys in the shape of a hand – no, I’ll just enjoy it and this city and how I've made it this far.

By all means New Yorkers should do this more often. The smart ones have figured it out and won’t be leaving the city tomorrow. They’ll stay up late, like me, and walk over to the west side and watch them rehearse the parade and blow up the floats. They’ll look at the day once removed knowing in their hearts what everyone has yet to catch on to - that giving thanks just once a year, and going through hell to get it, is highly overrated.

The secret is not in the potatoes.

The word tradition comes from the Latin word traditio which means "to hand down" or "to hand over."

Most of our lives, it would seem, are deeply imbedded in tradition. Things have been handed down and given over to us even if we didn’t want them, and now they’ve stuck and have become like so many things we didn’t choose as part of our identities.

Example: I don’t know how many people have had the chance to choose what may be the largest part of one’s identity – their name. No, you didn’t. You’re Marcia or Roger or Nick or Cathy because tradition dictated that your parents would name you. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia, when you longed to be a Heather or Kimberly.

How we celebrate the holidays is another thing we ourselves didn’t choose, but someone somewhere along the way specifically designated things like turkey and stuffing and Santa and cutting down trees to be the traditional ways to spend these times of year.

But what I want to know is - what do you do when these traditio become the traditio of yesteryear? I didn’t choose my name and people always get it wrong, (the equivalent of calling a Laura, Lucy or Leslie or Lucretia just because it starts with an "L,") and I didn’t want to have to choose to be the one to cook the Thanksgiving dinner this year. However things change and at the exact moment I was ready to throw it (tradition) out the window (9 floors up), the thought of a stuffing-less second to last Thursday of November made me start to feel all sorts of panicked.

Of course, in the end traditio persevered (as it always does) and I have to carry on whatever way I can along with it. So, now, I’ve been left in charge of the great undertaking of fitting a 12lb bird into a New York City apartment oven within the confines of a New York City apartment kitchen. "Oh, tradition," I’ve been muttering under my breath with no small amount of gravy-soaked bitterness.

So while it may be too late to change you name (all those monogrammed sweaters...) you can change some traditions enough to make them work for you - despite perhaps, the overwhelming feeling you might be getting at the very thought of having to stick your hand (the horror!) up a turkey’s bottom.

Oh, tradition. I don't think that was the "hand down" they were referring to.

It's red, again.

So it's here. Apparently. We've already gained that hour which doesn't feel much like a gain at all (can someone give me a few more, please?) and its dark around 3PM and by 6 it feels as though surely all stores and restaurants in all the city should all be closed and you should be getting ready for bed, poised to start brushing your teeth.

Needless, getting off of the subway today and walking towards the office I was half asleep thinking about daylight and savings and time and how it's all just a stupid tradition that happens every year (and we don’t know why) that we’re just OK with for no particular reason and have incorporated into our lives like the mundane chores of breathing and eating (“Time to turn back time? Oh, right right, just let me finish my coffee dear...”) And speaking of coffee, (as I do frequently), my thoughts of turning back time a la Cher (no one in New York ever seems to notice or care when you sing to yourself in public) were interrupted by bright flashes of red that caught my eye. What? And then flashes of green. People were carrying these colors in their hands as though there were a part of their briefcase or purse or and extension of their hand itself.

Could it be? No certainly it could not be. But then, upon closer inspection of a woman who blew past me, it was The Truth - Starbucks holiday cups are here.

And that's only the cup we're talking about. Around the corner I entered the store in need of my morning fix and I saw (who could help not to?) that the whole store was an explosion of red, with shelves upon shelves of holiday flasks, mugs and other festive paraphernalia. I looked around at all the happy red-cup-holding-New-Yorkers in desperate concern - can't we even get to Thanksgiving first?

Apparently not. It's November 8th and I'm already drinking Christmas Blend (smooth and spicy) out of a grandiosely decorated grande cup! "Pass the cheer," it implores me in white loopy writing. "Bequeath a wreath" it goes on to say, the words peeking out from under the bright green sleeve marked 60% post-consumer fiber. CAUTION: VERY HOT! How about a CAUTION: HOLIDAYS MUCH FURTHER AWAY THAN THEY APPEAR.

And that's the problem. Because holidays aren't always holidays. When you're a kid or when life is just swell, sure, you feel more than happy to "pass the cheer," while drinking from your snowflake adorned coffee cup. But once you get older and things in your life start to fall to shit, you can't help but feel annoyed at the early pressure to be happy. Bequeath a wreath? Are they out of their minds? I just had a man elbow me out of the way while getting on a downtown 1 train leaving me with that look of are-you-serious-we're-all-trying-to-get-to-work-here-too-you-know, so the only thing I'm looking to bequeath at the moment is a fast hard kick to a stomach.

But the truth is I'm not ready to be happy or excited about anything. I just can’t do it. Because the truth is you just can’t be when your life gets turned upside down and inside out and you have no idea which way you're heading. You lose someone you love (like I did), or you lose your job or your boyfriend or the thing you've been working so hard for so long to get, (poof!) and then sitting there drinking Christmas Blend you don't feel anything but the hot memories of a simpler time gone by getting caught in your throat.

Dammit.

Because we're all in this together.

I don't understand what brings us together in place so huge. It's like when you see that friend you've been trying to edge out of your life due to her sporadic bouts of insanity on the train and you try to ignore her but she inevitably sees you have you have no choice by to say "Jennifer! Hey!" when all you can really think about is that in a city with 8 million people were you really bound to run into each other at some point? (What luck!)

And as fate would have it, it’s always the people you don't want to see that you do, and the people you'd absolutely fall over to meet (dear gawker stalker, thanks for teasing me with those John Krasinski posts) you never ever do.

So when I was downtown at a bar with friends on Saturday night and noticed upon our exiting a belligerent guy in the street being held back by the bouncers, that while certainly being a bad night for him, I recognized him immediately as someone I didn't want to see.

Apparently, "dude grabbed me by the neck, man!" is what happened inside, and now this mussed up guy with his shirt half-tucked in is out on the street for merely "defending" himself. "Bro," he said pleading to one of the two tall body guards who wanted nothing more than to continue on with their mellow night of checking i.d's, so they told him they were sorry, but he really did need to leave. The drunken guy fell back on the sidewalk and I noticed it because like everyone else who happened to be out there at that exact moment, we all couldn't turn away. "C'mon man!" he said, floundering.

Walking away I was hoping I wouldn’t see one more thing I didn’t want to see, until we turned the corner and found someone's blackberry in a leaf-covered puddle. "Just leave it," someone said. However, being a true believer in karma, I took it with me determined to contact someone in this blackberry to perhaps finally reverse my never-see-anyone-I-want-to curse for good (John?!).

The key pad was water-logged, and after reading some recent emails I was able to determine that a Sam was the owner and it was, in fact, his birthday. (What bad luck!)

His friends were of course all too drunk to pick up their phones and so I took the blackberry home with me (determined!) and made a call to a friend the next morning. Sam ended up coming to my building to pick up his lost device which contained all sorts of well-wishing messages about his just having turned 28.

When Sam approached I realized that perhaps there is no such thing as karma, because dude-grabbed-me-by-the-neck,-man was indeed Sam. I don't know how he ended up losing his phone around the corner in a puddle while in the throes of being kicked out of a bar on his birthday in front of all his friends, but he did.

I know he didn't know what I knew, which was that I’d seen how much of a mess he really was. However now, in the light of day (and slightly more sober) he could have fooled me. Sam said, "thank you so much," and then handed me a $25 Starbucks card as my reward - and anyone who knows me, knows that there really is no better gift.

So in the end maybe karma isn't worth all that much, but $25 of free coffee, surely is.

Because everything gets lost.

We go out and
go to bars and
drink too much (sometimes) because we don’t know what we want or
who we are or
what we’re looking for.

But he was tall and
handsome and
he saw me sitting there and
asked me why I looked so sad.

"I’m not all sad," I said, sitting there
drinking a vodka soda in the middle of all those crowded people
waiting for a friend.

"You look it," he said, which might have been true but he didn’t know me or
who I was or
what I’ve been through (as
no one in New York ever does) - but
he felt strongly about me all the same.

"Well I’ve lost a lot, I guess," I said. "And sometimes it’s hard not to be."
He smiled and
shrugged and
said "Well I’ve just lost a girlfriend who has lost her mind," (calling him three times a day now!) and asked if I wanted to talk about it.

"Sure," I said, so we did, and
truth is Ashley really was a little bit crazy and
then he gave me his number on the back of a Come See Our Band Tomorrow Night pink flyer that was on the table, and
I folded it up and
put it in my pocket and
two days later when I did laundry I opened the dryer door only to see little pieces of pink paper scattered all about my towels.

Sometimes you lose things, (I guess), that you were never meant to have to begin with.
And
maybe for some of us,
(I guess) that goes for luck,
too.

New Yorkers we'll be.

It’s surprising how quickly you’re forced to grow up. Even on the eve of my 60th birthday (if I’m fortunate enough to make it), I’m sure there will be something that will surprise me, something that will make me feel what I even then won’t want to accept - that there’s no going back, and then wishing, (perhaps), as I blow out the candles, that wasn’t the case.

Because you can think a lot of things, I think, about who you want to choose to become. As a kid you think you can choose, let yourself think you have infinite possibilities and non-expendable dreams. You even sat at home, like I did, in your little room in your little town thinking about a world outside of your own backyard, and aspiring to one day be a part of it.

Then one day, far from that when everything in your life is falling away from you faster than you can reach out and take hold of it, you’re sitting on the subway, barely awake, unable to read, thinking about your life and what’s becoming of it as you speed and stop, speed and stop 72nd, 66th, 59th...feeling like nothing makes sense, when a flash of light shakes you out of your stupor.
You look up only to notice that the foreign couple across from you in socks and sandals, just took your picture. Your gut reaction is to think that you got it all wrong, that the camera perhaps went off by accident. However upon further inspection you see them looking at you still and you feel oddly exposed. Through their thick accents they try to explain away your confused look: "We just wanted to take a picture of a real New Yorker," the man says, innocently.

It is then, I think, at that exact moment that you recognize who you are in the world. That before long the place you live can define your life. That your identity lies now in the pavement that surrounds you. However what’s the most interesting, is that until that stranger across from you said it, you’d seemingly forgotten through all the mess of life, about that thought you had all those years ago about leaving your small room and your small town to become something more, to become...a New Yorker?

You grow up and meanings change and things can happen from one point to the next that take you away from those divine thoughts of infinite possibility and non-expendable dreams. You regard the strangers now with silent smile of thanks simply for reminding you that not everything gets lost along the way.

I am a New Yorker you think to yourself that morning and that day and maybe even the rest of your life. Maybe that’s what will surprise me when I’m 60 - that I still am. What’s surprising now? That no matter how far away from home I go, how many pictures of me be in other people’s photo albums, or how fast I grow up - it’s easy (even if I sometimes forget) to remember that what I’ve chosen counts for something, even if most of the time it may not feel much like anything at all.

The fundamental structure of the Universe. (Also known, as Time).

It’s October and I don’t know how any of us are supposed to be getting anything done now knowing how fast time is moving. I can’t even think about starting something knowing now how quickly the hours and days are turning into weeks and months.

October. There’s nothing in this month that’s worthwhile except maybe Columbus Day (Which is Monday. See? Time really does fly) because some people get the day off of work, but most of us don’t and it’s really just there as a reminder that a long time ago some guy showed up here so that today you can be going to work to an office where you sit at a desk and look at a computer and answer calls and questions and requests and don’t nearly make enough money per year to really make you happy in a city that’s all together too difficult to live in most of the time - simply because he showed up with a flag and staked the ground for your future.

And your future is your right now which is, as you read this, quickly getting away from you. I would think that if Columbus pulled into New York Harbor today with his Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, he’d turn his boats around right quick, not even stopping for oranges to help prevent the other half of his crew from getting scurvy on the journey home. That’s how bad I think life in New York can be sometimes because of its always-moving-never-stopping-pushing-you-forward-even-if-you-don’t-want-to-ness.

If I could venture a guess I’d say that Chris was an overall mellow guy who was OK spending three months getting from one place to another. Because that was before cars and jet planes and subways and trains. Things took time then - transportation and the postal service, and courtship and the building of cities. And I figure the longer something takes to happen, the more time you feel like you actually have.

So New York in all its fastness where you can get a job and lose it all in one day, along with your apartment, your subway pass, your boyfriend, your mind, and the building of your future, it can force you to look at the coming of October like the end of the (new) world, and have you searching the yellow pages as to where you can get a personal navigator all your own just to help direct you through the crooked passages of your life you have yet to get to (namely, November). Because if time is any indicator - it will be here (your life, your future and November) before you know it, so you might as well be prepared.

Tours

I’m not much for guided tours, though
obviously some people are.

They’re taken through the city
on tops of busses or in horse-drawn carriages.
And through the MET from the Impressionist Wing (now closed for renovations)
to the American Wing with head sets and
forward moving gestures giving them reassurance that
"This way please, folks, " will get them to where they want to go.

I figure I learn more just going out on my own -
and hoping for the best.

And don’t you usually, though?
Just think about all those hours in the classroom
or minutes in front of that overhead projector...

Don’t you learn the most when you get home
and get your head straight
and some peace and quiet
and
a chance to look at everything
the way you
want to look at it?

I figure I’ve learned the most important things
(and sometimes the hard way) of my life
just out there on my own.

Because maybe when it comes to learning
the most important lessons in life -
no guide in the world would, could, or can ever be great enough,
to get you through.

And your heart's still beating

When you lose something you can’t get back, it’s easy to feel like you’re lost yourself. And I don’t mean just misplacing things, I mean really losing them. You can re-trace your steps all you want, count through your entire day from the moment you pulled back the covers hating through every movement how much you have to face another day, suppressing the urge to throw that beep beep beeping alarm clock against the wall.

I’m not talking about misplacing. We can misplace all we want because with misplacing there’s a very distinct chance that whatever we’ve lost, we will inevitably get back. And that’s all we need isn’t it? That logical answer of: well it couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air?! Your keys, a book, your ipod, subway pass, glasses, cell phone, that coupon or letter or picture. I just had it, you think to yourself. I just had it.

When something is misplaced for too long you can tend to lose It. You start to open doors and drawers you haven’t opened in years. Suddenly you’re Uncle Billy in It’s A Wonderful Life when Mr. Potter takes George Bailey’s $5000 for the Building and Loan. Crazy Uncle Billy. But that’s just the thing. In the end there always is that logical answer when it comes to misplacing.. There is a Mr. Potter or a sneaky magazine just barely covering what you’ve been digging for. There are my keys! (d’oh!) Right there on the counter!

But there are some things in life that you can’t get back. They are missed, not just mis-placed. And your logical will struggle with your non-logical and most of the time you don’t even feel like you’re functioning on the same plane as everyone else. Because when you lose certain things for good, like a person or a love or a chance of a lifetime, you find yourself not only not believing that it’s a wonderful life - you find yourself not believing in much of anything at all. Because when you lose certain things for good, sometimes you can’t help but lose yourself.

I just had it. Just, just, just. You can just have a lot of things before they slip through your fingers. Just-had-it becomes never-will-again. So what do you do then? You keep a closer eye out (watch, wallet, keys, check! check! check!), file things away, classify and organize and try to take part - all while reminding yourself that your heart's still beating, and justs are just justs, and there’s nothing you can do about it, and you will find what you’re looking for eventually.

I-knew-it-all-along

I always leave New York thinking things will make more sense somewhere else. Away from the hustle of the packed streets, the people and the noise, somehow everything in my life that doesn’t make sense (and right now that seems like most everything) will become more clear,(surely it’s all this smog that’s been making things so hazy?).

Going to a different city is like booking a ticket to your own hindsight. The ability to take yourself out of your daily life gives you the ability to look at your life once removed. In a foreign place surrounded by unknown people you can look at yourself in a different light (and a different time zone). And while looking back is dangerous (oh, the mistakes I’ve made), it (like bleach) helps to clarify things.

Looking down on the patchwork quilt of the Midwest you can begin to wonder about those stretching miles of grass and trees with long and winding roads and find the answers to some of the questions you’ve been asking yourself back in the city (out out damn spot). Life isn’t just street corners and traffic jams and high-rise apartments. There is a world of open space and fresh air and quiet and reasonably priced real estate that’s easy to forget exists after too much time in Gotham.

But you can learn just as much about things flying back to a place as flying away from it. No matter where you travel to, hindsight (like life) stays the same, and some stains can never be removed. But you can at least take comfort in the perspective that comes at 30,00 feet, and recognize when the topography gets less flat and is suddenly full with lights, that it sure is good to be home.

Everything...leaves.

I think it’s strange how I’m always surprised at the end of every season how quickly it leaves. It’s like a trick that time plays on me, a magician in charge of their passing, and in one quick movement of a handkerchief - they’re gone. Poof.

Walking through Central Park tonight (as it’s getting darker earlier) I think I saw summer leave. There were the same people about, running or walking, seeing the sights in horse-drawn carriages taking in, perhaps, their last night in Manhattan, ready to fly off tomorrow morning back to where they came from, back to...home.

Walking down 5th avenue alongside the park, I could see in the distance the rows of lining trees, from 86th to 58th, their leaves spreading thin - burnt orange and tan, dry falling fall leaves already collecting on the ground. Summer left, you see, and I hardly noticed. Another summer, another year. I could see the city then at the height of summer, all bright and green, full of warm breezes and sweltering sun.

We never notice, do we? what’s there when it’s there. Like the seasons, these things we take for granted that slowly incorporate themselves into our lives that soon we come to depend on them (our sunny Saturdays and sweet Sundays) - leave fast.

Because like all good things you can’t always see (these too shall pass), one afternoon when the sun is setting far sooner than it should, you’ll find yourself walking through Central Park and see that The Chill has set in yet again -as quickly as light now turns to night, before you even had a chance to say goodbye.

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-thinking 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, awake, bed time? and I read Where the Red Fern Grows maybe a hundred times.

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

Slow down, read Where the Red Fern Grows 101 times, appreciate grass stains and no deadlines and not having to count calories. Stand up to/then stay away from Alex Webber, who always tormented everyone (me) during recess, and most importantly, never ever be caught without a #2 pencil.

What New York is your New York?

I wonder about women in New York and why we're here. It's a difficult city to inhabit if you want to have respect in your job, live in a nice apartment, afford the occasional new outfit and meet a decent man. Yet we're here en masse, and everywhere I look there's all trying to make it happen, all attempting to piece together their lives in a city of 8 million people.

There is the woman who gets on the bus and sits down next to me with her three handbags because one has documents for work, one has her after-work gym clothes and one has the lunch she makes at home the night before and brings to the office every day because she's trying to stretch that paycheck as much as possible. She finds a seat and quickly opens her book, (probably Eugenides because Oprah told her to), and doesn't look up or speak to anyone until she signals it's her time to deboard.

New York is not only her home, New York is her part-time job.

Of course there's always that other woman, who for some reason or other, always finds a spot right near me on public transportation as though I (intently reading and always determined to talk to no one that I don't absolutely have to) have a sign over my head with a bright flashing invitation that says: Sit here please! Annoy me!

This is all much like the woman from yesterday whose elbow was thrust into the back of my neck while I was reading, because apparently when she talks on the phone she has to gesticulate wildly. I was then forced to turn around to give her my best passive-aggressive, are you kidding me? look, however she was too busy on the phone (or I was too insignificant) for her to notice.

Now, leaning forward slightly, I listened (who could help but hear?) as she hung up and began to talk to the woman next to her about New York. About her New York. Not so much a part-time job as a paid vacation.

She also mentioned how time in her New York doesn't really start until people are up on the west coast. "I mean right?" she said, her voice sounding so girl-like for her age that it made my teeth itch. "New York is dead until people in LA are near their phones."

I couldn't hear a response from the woman next to her who she apparently decided to just start spouting off her opinions to. I can only imagine she nodded in passive-aggressive agreement.

"But I mean, I love New York. And really, it’s just like I’m Carrie from Sex and the City."

What is it with women all over the country who can't let go of that ridiculous show? No one writes a column and lives in a rent-controlled $700 a month apartment and can afford $300 shoes. No one should even acknowledge someone who has the ability to do that. And what's funny about it, is that any true New Yorker will tell you that the women depicted on that show really are irritating and live in a Manhattan that doesn't really exist, and it's always the non-New Yorkers who can't help but insist on trying to compare their lives to it.

"I really am. I mean, I'm a writer, I live in New York, I absolutely love shoes, and I actually have the same birthday as Sarah Jessica Parker! So I mean, it's totally me."

I laughed because I couldn't help it. I laughed because her voice was so serious and proud of those similarities that she made appear as though took her months to put together. I laughed because she was so utterly unaware of how pathetic and sad and how non-New York she really was.

It was all I could do to stop myself from turning around and seriously asking her, you're a writer?

She didn't hear me laugh of course, and even if she did this late-twenty-something clad in a too-short dress clutching her Treo and Louis Vuitton handbag (just one) would have been too caught up in her own world to notice.

As I watched her leave the bus loudly and with great drama, and then watched the woman next to me reading heft her three bags out so fast and so silently that I almost didn’t even see her leave - I thought about both and what New York must mean to each of them.

Sure, the SATC wannabe probably has a better apartment, more new outfits and a different man every month - but who appreciates it more? Who really understands it?

I guess it's difficult to say and I’ll never really know for sure, but I do know who I was rooting for. I know who would probably be here longer and who would learn more and who, living around these 8 million people, would be more likely to piece their life together. And who, upon deboarding, was at a great risk of being eaten alive.

You could be happy.

I know there are a ton of movies out there that talk about chance, about taking a chance on love, a chance on a friend or a family member or a job or a new city - all of which will ultimately lead to the happiness you’d been searching for during the past 65 minutes (or your whole life up until this point). But what I want to understand, (and what I’m guilty of myself), is how much we manage to leave to it and why.

I just let things hang out, collect dust, eventually to be forgotten all because I was fairly certain chance would come along for pick-up and take care of everything I wasn’t willing, (or was too scared) to do something about myself.

Granted, of course, there are a lot of things I don’t leave to this one word and idea that no one has any control over or real understanding of outside of the overall concept that it is, in fact, a savior if you’re lucky enough to have it fall in your lap when you really need it. Because there is a line we each know we have to walk up to eventually (but dare not cross) when it comes to our own happiness.
But of all the things to give up on, of all the things to leave the important things in your life to, aren’t we too generous to chance? We give it too much, surely, so much so that one day we might be able to actually recognize all the things we lost because we believed in it so much.

And like any religion, a blind faith in a higher power that is somehow creating meaning for all of the arbitrary things that fall upon us while we’re waking (and are waiting for us while we sleep) - it’s so much easier isn’t it, safe, to believe that even if we’re too scared to do something chance will always be there looking over us, somehow watching out as it secretly and silently weaves the pieces of our lives together, until one day, (maybe), we might be able to actually recognize that chances only really happen, (perhaps), if you make the choice to take them.

A hippie according to Starbucks.

Its been a while. Not since I’ve gone to Starbucks (obviously) but since I’ve written about it. Mainly it’s because our relationship has been a little strained ever since they decided to raise the prices behind my back by 9 cents. (The horror!)

It was a blatant betrayal of my trust and a total attack on my unwavering commitment to them (for the most part) as my sole provider for my morning coffee du jour.

Was it callous of them? Yes. Was insensitive? Obviously. Have I forgiven them even though I have trust issues and a self-realized tendency to like things/people who are bad for me? Of course.

We live in a society, as this article states, where "…you either define yourself as part of the Starbucks community or as someone ‘who doesn't do Starbucks.’" I think the answer is fairly clear about which side of the line I’m on, and I have to admit there something overwhelmingly snobbish and irritating about these people who are all "I don’t do Starbucks."

What does that even mean? Are you saying that if the only coffee you could ever get again for the rest of your life was indeed, Starbucks Breakfast Blend, you would give up coffee forever simply because you "don’t do" coffee from the corporate coffee king? I mean, that’s a little more ridiculous than $3 a cup, don’t you think?

And where does such anger come from? Why the hostility? I’m turning the tables on where the snobbery lies in the Starbucks equation and it isn’t the Starbucks-goer with the elitist attitude, it’s the Starbucks-nongoer, (under caffeinated), who chooses to go out of their way simply to criticize and belittle previously mentioned coffee drinker for their provider of choice.

I don’t go around telling them that I "don’t do" PBR, or that I "don’t do" you know…dread locks and skinny jeans. So, I mean, why all the hate? It’s not your money I’m spending on my grande soy latte on only odd-numbered days in only the two weeks immediately following the arrival of a paycheck. Is it?

I didn’t think so. And to anger them even more I’ll continue to do so despite the fact the Starbucks Oracle as defined me as (when entering soy latte as my drink of choice):

Personality type: Hippie

In addition to being a hippie, you are a hypochondriac health nut. You secretly think that your insistence on only consuming all-natural products is because you're so intelligent and well-informed; it's actually because you're a sucker. You've dabbled in Wicca or other pseudo-religions that attract morons and have changed your sexual orientation a few times this year. You probably live in California. Everyone who drinks grande soy latte should be forced to eat a McDonald's bacon cheeseburger.

Also drinks: Beverages with lots of marketing that says they're herbal and organic
Can also be found at: Whole Foods, indoor rock climbing facilities

Well, I’ve never been to California...but I definitely don’t do McDonald’s.

A quiet night in the Bronx.

I was at the stadium tonight for the most un-thrilling, un-fantastic game I've seen in a long time (is this batting practice I'm watching?!). Basically I was there just in time to watch the Yanks throw away their winning streak and lose to Baltimore 12-0.

It was a rough night in the Bronx and starter Jeff Karstens couldn’t seem to make it happen (though pitching for the Yankees at age 25 made me wonder what I’m doing with my life) and nary a run was scored for the pinstripes and with Boston beating Tampa Bay 2-1 we're now officially losing the momentum we'd gained since Kansas City, and slipping behind our committed adversary, the Sox.

I'm sure they're gloating in Boston, as that's what Boston is good at - being bitter, moody, temperamental - and then gloating. And they never do give up, either. Walking out to the 4 train after the 7th inning (no need to stick around to witness the end of that kind of massacre) there was That Guy, that typical Boston Guy who is seemingly at every sporting event you'll ever go to in your entire life, screaming repetitively and loudly from the Upper Deck "Lets go Red Sox."

I mean, I get it. It’s a dual to the death at this point (and always has been in the eyes of the tried and true Fenway Faithful), and it doesn’t matter if the Yanks win as long as the Sox lose. However, had I seen his face I would have given him a fair rendition of a withering look and said: We’re playing Baltimore. The Sox are in Florida. Get it together man.

Because baseball game, hockey game, basketball game - it doesn't matter where you are or who is playing, whether the game has innings, periods or quarters, that guy will be there shouting at the top of his lungs simply to solidify the opinion of everyone everywhere that sports fans from Boston really just need to get over themselves.

And now, just 5 games out, there’s still hope (and isn’t it hope that Boston has thrived on for decades?) that the Yanks will cinch the AL East title and shut The Boston Guy up for good…or at least until April.

Wednesday!

Obviously I'm not writing about this until today because the day-of I was too offended, tired and did I mention offended? By what had happened to actually re-live it by writing about it. And I'm not even going to write about it that much because that's all anyone in New York has been talking about for the past 48 hours - "How the Rain Ruined My Wednesday."

And yes it was rain, just a lot of it, that forced me to have to walk 40+ blocks to work this week. And I won't even go into the heat, the crowds (your poor, your tired, your huddled masses...), my overall confusion that didn't clear until I walked from 68th to almost 34th (which didn't include my cross-town excursion) that we weren't in fact, being attacked by terrorists, and the sad, painful state of my feet (poor little toes!) by the time I reached the office - two and a half hours after I left my apartment.

Around 34th street I had been looking for a place in which to buy some cheap flip flops for the rest of my journey, when I spotted two people ready to grab the one seemingly free cab in the entire city, and chased them down and demanded we spilt it. Had I not done so, I'm not entirely sure I would even actually still have feet right now.

I digress. The point here isn't to write angrily about the MTA and how they, the largest mass transit system in the world, totally dropped the ball yet again and ruined the Wednesday (and a perfectly good one at that!) of millions of honest working New Yorkers.

The point is, is that we’re all just trying to make it happen in what sometimes truly becomes the most difficult and frustrating of places to live in of all time. And yet we know this, and we still think it’s okay. We accept it like you do the snoring habits of a significant other.

Yeah, it’s annoying, and yeah, you can’t remember when you last had an uninterrupted nights sleep and sometimes you think about leaving them in order to find someone without that deviated septum. But in the end I guess you realize that it’s worth it, to overlook such things because in the end they really are, despite their faults one of a kind.

Who needs sleep?

Well August is here and August in New York means that suddenly the summer is coming to a rapid end, and everything you told yourself you were going to do way back in the spring, ("as soon as summer is here I can’t wait to...") you realize that you haven’t even attempted.

All those movies in Bryant Park, restaurants known for their patio tables, hotels and their roof decks, Shakespeare in the Park (p.s. the most difficult thing to make happen in New York)....and that grand plan to befriend someone with a house in the Hamptons.

I know, a lofty expectation, however I’d like to note that it’s The Gay who came up with the whole friend-with-house-in-Hamptons scheme. He’s only just gotten a dresser (pls. refer to The Dresser) so I think obtaining a friend with a nice by-the-beach pad is a little grandiose at the moment.

Regardless,the point is, is that it’s so much easier to talk about doing things than actually doing them. I think in New York we do so much all the time that if we were to actually go through with everything we talked about, if we actually took advantage of everything that is available to us at every moment of every day - we’d never sleep. Ok, ok, I realize now that yes, New York is known as The City That Never Sleeps - but let me tell you, it does. And we do. We have to.

And maybe it’s not enough for all we do, the long commutes, the constant barrage of people all pushing you to get somewhere, the heat the seeps up from the pavement and closes in around your ankles every morning and makes the air heavy to breathe. The late nights at the office, the pressure that you’re not staying late enough, the pressure that you’re not in the right office or the right apartment or the right place at the right time (New York should be known as The City That Never Has Time).

In fact, things get so bad that sometimes you don’t even realize you’re awake. Sitting on the subway the other day, I was jammed in against a woman who was taking up more than her fair share of the seat, doing a crossword puzzle over the top of her glasses, mouth open as she moved her pencil back and forth over all of the Up and Down clues. On the other side was a guy with the typical male uniform of a blue dress shirt and khaki pants reading The Post. I myself was reading a book, wedged in between.

I like to say I was engrossed in the inner witticisms of Evelyn Waugh - however the truth is - I think that whole pages elapsed where I didn’t have a clue what was going on, where I entirely spaced out - because in a moment I looked up and there was no one on the bench to the left of me. The woman and her crossword puzzle was gone, and all that was left in our car was a few people across from me, and the guy in the blue dress shirt reading the Post who I now realized I was leaning up against.

After the initial embarrassment settled in I allowed the next lurch and stop of the train to slyly propel me away from him, though I’m pretty sure he was inwardly wondering what was wrong with me, because at that moment he leaned forward, made a grand gesture of putting his elbows on his knees and spread The Post out in font of him as if to say, "umm, that was weird." (Whoops).

So we aren’t exactly the city that never sleeps, but we like to keep that overall glowing opinion of ourselves, so we try to hide it well. And August is here (already!) and we still have three weeks to make some of those spring promises happen before the chill of fall settles in (before we know it).

So I guess I’ll just have to be sure to make a note to get to bed early.

Bridge Over Troubled Water.

What are we really supposed to do with ourselves when we finally realize that we have absolutely no control over anything?

I started to feel that realization sink in when I was stuck underground today on the way home from work on the 1 train for twenty minutes. I was standing and trying to read while the announcement kept saying things like "smoke" and "at 95th street," and my brain couldn’t stop from turning to the same questions of: why aren’t we moving? How long am I going to be trapped under here? and, When did this become my life?

Give anyone some time trapped underground in a subway full of sweaty, tired, angry New Yorkers and you’re bound to question the deeper things in your life - namely all the things that seem to be going wrong that you can’t control.

The thing about realizing a thing like that, is that you don’t really realize it until it happens to you. Sure, you can walk about thinking you’ve had quite a few miles on the highway without a front wheel blowout. You’ve had perhaps one too many close calls where you weren’t entirely paying attention when you crossed the street. You can be like Gregory Wernick Sr. of Rockford, Illinois who drove over the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis shortly before it collapsed.

He stopped to get a drink nearby and heard commotion, so he went back. "I figure I crossed about 10 minutes before it happened," he said. "That’s just too close to call."

Because that’s what life is anyway, isn’t it? A bunch of close calls. And when we think about those miles on the highway, or those times in the middle of busy 42nd street, or Gregory - we can recognize that its never actually happened to us.

What I want to know is: what are you really supposed to do with yourself when you’re one of those people who is just sitting there, sitting in rush hour traffic, stuck, bumper to bumper after a long day at the office, waiting to get home for an even longer night of making dinner and talking about your day and having sex and going to sleep - just listening to the radio or talking on the phone, or thinking to yourself that you still don’t know how it is that you ended up here, and the bridge you’re idling on just collapses beneath you.

What I want to know is: what is anyone supposed to do when they’re falling through the air and into the waters of the Mississippi, their cell phone dropping from their hand, their thoughts changing quicky to: What’s happening? What if this is it? How did it get here? Why have I not done more?

The only way, I’ve found, is to find a bright side. Not too bright of course, but bright enough so that you’ll have a way to get through the next day knowing that you’re just out there, every day, just out there in the open and anything could happen at any time.

The bright side, I figure, is that once the call finally isn’t close, once the call is actually for you and you alone - living through it will have reminded you that now, all those times you find yourself stuck underground on the 1, or idling in our car on a bridge and asking the questions of how you got here and what it is that you’re really doing - you should at least be able to realize that it’s quick, life, that’s what it is, and it’s all chances and calls (close or far away) and you shouldn’t waste any more time trying to figure it all out.

Because the water is always there, waiting.

The Dresser

OK. So for those of you who don’t know, getting furniture in New York is difficult. I’ve been trying to help a friend who has been living off of their floor and out of a suitcase for about seven months now, a dresser to hold the various items that I inevitably have to step over when I come to visit. "Are you just like, going to pick those pants up off the floor tomorrow and wear them to work?" I ask. He looks at me for a moment wondering, perhaps, what is wrong with doing such a thing, and says, "Well yeah. I mean, they’re clean."

Young twenty-something’s in Manhattan who don’t have a job in investment banking, are most likely living paycheck to paycheck. After rent, what little we have left over is saved for important things like: clothes, brunch, vodka sodas, shoes, beers, and dinners. We have no extra income for the fairly inconsequential things like superfluous costly furniture – namely, dressers.

We are a group of people who would rather store our clothes in a nice pile (clean) on the floor, than risk missing brunch for two months just to save up for a dresser. We do, after all, have our priorities.

However, the other thing about Manhattan is that you can, if you look hard enough, furnish the necessary things (like some plates, say, or a mattress even) without spending an arm and a leg. Craigslist is there for those of us who have arrived (not me) and are willing to sell their old stuff for cheap (Ikea) and actually invest in something new (like, not a futon). Their trash is our treasure (yes please!), and I made it my mission to find my above mentioned friend the least trashiest trash dresser on the island.

(Note: The Dresser is also a 1983 movie (and play) starring Albert Finney (and no one who was born after 1920), that premiered with the tagline, "What happens backstage is always true drama. And often pure comedy").

In the end, it was in fact an investment banker younger than me (ugh!) getting rid of her fairly nice trash dresser with a chestnut finish, and moving across town to Riverside Drive with her boyfriend. Really? So she's able to leave behind perfectly good furniture and her rather large studio apartment to officially grow up and invest in not only a new dresser, but a relationship as well? Surely her trash-to-not-trash changeover happened too soon?

My friend and I scoffed inwardly, bitterly wishing someone nice with furniture from CB2 loved us on the West Side too, just before we proceeded to carry a dresser 12 blocks uptown.

By 68th street the sound of the wheels from the make-shift moving-cart I borrowed from my doorman was loud enough to drown out a passing fleet of fire engines, however didn’t succeed in suppressing my overall hatred of a place that does everything in its power to test you in order for you to prove that you’re worthy just to live there.

Everyone who passed us looked at us with faces of confusion or sheer entertainment. What?! My face shot back. Have you never seen a dresser before?! Sorry we all can’t be rich and successful enough to actually buy one from somewhere real and have it delivered by actual men whose job it is to deliver things!

I was at a low point. I was no longer fabulous New Yorker on the Upper East Side. I was sad poser New Yorker who resided in 10021 but was dragging a large wooden box up 2nd avenue.

After we ruined the ear drums of a few more diners alfresco, we arrived at my friends apartment and then proceeded to carry the large wooden box up five flights of stairs.

When it was finally inside, standing in all its glory, a lone piece of furniture on an otherwise barren wall, I felt a sense of satisfaction (maybe it was the fatigue) flood over me.

My friend would no longer be sifting through piles in the morning to figure out what to wear to the office, which would inevitably save him time and frustration. We had, through hard work and determination, successfully moved one more step towards the American dream – to live in a home full of…furniture.

Yes, we may not have a lot, and no, we may not be investment bankers making six figures living on the West Side in a successful relationship heading towards what might be marriage in an apartment with plush new couches and tall sturdy dressers - but by God, I thought, we’re certainly New Yorkers, where what happens backstage is always true drama - and certainly pure comedy.

You've been here before.

It happens to me on occasion, where I’ve walked past the exact same apartment building that something was chasing me out of in my dream the night before. I look up for a minute at that front bay window and the greying black of the bricks and that same tree. Yes, that same exact tree was in my way last night, right there in the middle of my getaway as I ran in slow motion away from something that made so much more sense before I woke up with a start and thought with a panic "huh?" before I thought "oh," when I realized that nice thing you get to realize when bad things happen to you at night - it was just a dream.

The bad moments are when bad things happen and you’re stuck with that "huh?" moment for far longer than you’d like. You’ve been here before and it stinks worse than that pile of laundry in the corner you keep telling yourself you’ll bring to the Laundromat tomorrow.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, you lie to yourself, you’ll have more time.

And then if you’re like me and you’ve come to a state in your mind where you’re starting to forget in the fog of your life what’s real and what’s not, you’ll find yourself staring at a person on the subway the way you do when you think you know them but aren’t confident enough to speak up - and you think yourself: how do I know you?

There’s something about living in a city with so many people that if you find one person you know, if you happen to be in the same section of the same 1 train with this person, you have an obligation as a fellow lonely insignificant New Yorker to speak up, to study their face, to make the connection of: "Oh yeah, you’re Mark, right? I met you at that bar on Rivington like a month ago. You’re friends with my friend Jessica?" And then it’s "oh’s" and "ahh’s" all around as you show everyone around you and prove to yourself that you’re making something of yourself in this huge hole of a place - you know people.

But if you’re like me, you know people, sure, but not a lot of people, and chances are that this random person you’re staring at in the same section of the same 1 train isn’t anyone you’ve ever met before. Plus, you’re thinking to yourself, you’d probably really remember someone who is that cute. You just want to think that you know this person so that you have a reason to talk to them, because everyone knows that no one in New York ever talks to anyone when they don’t have to.

And he’s cute, yes, and you haven’t been on a date since....and it’s more impossible to meet someone here than...and you think to yourself that if this guy just got to know you he’d never want to leave you. He’d realize how lucky he was, how much of a catch you really are. It’s because we all know how great we are, how much potential we have - but in a city full of so many people who don’t talk to each other it’s very easy for no one to ever really get to know anyone at all.

(That, and, it is also a little known fact among all New Yorkers that men of a certain age who are relatively attractive, put together and are wearing a tie that matches his dress shirt (tucked in), and is carrying some form of briefcase (ie: no backpack), and doesn’t have a ring on his finger - is gay).

So he gets off the train at 28th street and you laugh at yourself because you realize how ridiculous you’re becoming - you know very well you didn’t know him at all. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, you lie to yourself, you’ll get it together. Is it desperation? (some would think so). Is it loneliness? (some would understand), or is it just this city taking it’s toll when all you need is to connect with someone else who doesn’t want your seat on the subway, doesn’t want to get past you on the sidewalk, doesn’t want to get in line before you at Starbucks?

Who knows. Some things don’t make sense whether you’re asleep or awake, and no one knows if their reality will ever catch up with their dreams.

And the subway carries on slow and steady, and so you do because, (huh!?), you think to yourself, you’ve been here before. Oh.

Vertical New York is blocking out our sight.

I don’t know when things changed and everyone started to lose sight of themselves in the haze of other people’s lives.

All the time is the constant humming of other people’s lives in our ears, sometimes loud, sometimes drowned out by our own questions that have been testing us. Because we deep-down know, (don’t we?) that we’re just another face on just another subway, holding just another railing, hand over hand, the railing that helps us up and helps us along, helps us out of the haze.

Lost, (aren’t we?) even after so much happens, that at times we can’t help but look back and wonder how we ever made it through, how we’re still here, right now putting foot in front of foot, walking forward, walking home.

But we can’t really forget, (can we?) who we really are in the midst of all the confusion. Being in New York it’s easy to feel like you’re not measuring up, like you’re not as good as the next person, not as pretty, not as successful, not as important, not as smart, (and) without the better bag, the better apartment, betterboyfriendbetterreservationatthebetterrestaurant...
How are we, in a city full of so many people who know exactly what they want, supposed to fit in and find a place of our own? Seems like things pass so fast here that if you spend too much time thinking about what you really want you’re going to miss out on it to the one’s that already do, (and they do, don’t they?)

They know and you don’t know why, or how, or what led them into the arms of such extreme clarity that they’re able to go through each day with it all seemingly figured out. Wish we had our own personal copy of TONY delivered secretly to our apartment door every week that would tell us exactly where to go to get everything we want: Time Out New York would suddenly become Time Out [insert your name here].

Maybe that’s the thing about this city that makes you start to lose sight of yourself in the haze of other people’s lives, makes you want to skip town altogether and find a place that isn’t so threatening to your dreams - too many people all wanting the same things always means that someone is destined to end up blind...and empty-handed.

Recipe for New York.

There comes a time in every New Yorkers life when they think to themselves: am I really going to be able to do this forever?

Case in point last weekend having to go to Port Authority to get on a bus just to go to someone’s house in New Jersey for a barbeque. It was a friends office summer party, and I came with them because in this day and age he and I are both younger-than-usual people trapped in a late-twenties-early-thirties world. These sort of office functions we go to, as not only singles, but (gasp!) unmarried, makes us feel like we’re from some alternate universe upon arrival.

I decided that in order to make a great first impression on this married and older co-workers of his who all work at an admired magazine, that I would charm this backyard gathering with a homemade blueberry pie. So I spent my Saturday afternoon baking, from scratch, a lattice pie. (Fact: most of my ideas sound really great upon their initial burst into my brain, and not until I’m deep in it do I realize how far from great the idea really is).

Running late we decided to hop in a cab to Port Authority. The pie, still warm, was placed in a paper bag and set on the seat between us. We didn’t want to miss the only bus that we knew would bring us safely to this little town somewhere across the Hudson. Close to 42nd street I lifted the pie off the seat, and saw, much to my chagrin, a pool of thick blueberry syrup had pooled within the entire bottom of the bag and was currently falling over my hands and consequently, over the entire aluminum covered pie. Shit.

My friend and I looked at each other with shock, and as I held the pie in my hands, fingers burning, I realized something else was wrong the way you know when a big storm is about to break, and began looking frantically around the cab in a very blood-covered-Jack Woltz-pulling-the-covers-back-in-his-bed sort of way. Pools of blueberry syrup were all over the back seat, and the largest of them was alongside my leg, covering the entire left leg of my madras plaid pants. Shit. Shit. Shit.

All I remember at that point was running from the cab into Port Authority holding a pie like it was on fire with blue syrup streaking down my arms as people watched in confusion and horror. Sure, it was no horse, but it was still pretty shocking. And any New Yorker who has any foul play cab experiences knows that the only thing to do in a situation like that is to simply throw money at the driver and run before they can realize what you’ve done.

There was then the line of women in the bathroom who watched as I tried to wash the blue from my arms, and I hate whoever came up with the idea of getting rid of paper towels in public restrooms and opted for those hot air dryers. There were people watching as I ran back and forth from the bathroom to the gift shop grabbing a new bag, napkins, all just in time to board the bus and show up at this party and be introduced (and sure to leave a lasting impression for all the wrong reasons), with blueberry all over my pants with a large spattering over the chest of my white shirt for good measure.

On the bus, my friend looked at me and through laughter and disbelief over how sometimes it seems like I just can’t catch a break, asked: will there come a time when we just can’t do this thing anymore?

This thing that he was referring to, of course, was New York. There are a lot of times in this city when you wonder why you go through so much just to bring a pie to a party. Perhaps there will come a time when I won’t have the energy left, and fleeing Manhattan will be the only option.

Until that time, however, I’ll tough it out, I think, for a while anyway. Or at least until I run out of unstained clothes.

In Medias Res

One of these days I'm going to finish something (and I don't mean drinks or boring phone calls or bad movies). I mean one of these days I'm going to follow through with all the things I think about doing and talk about doing and feel in the pit of my stomach that I should.

But I keeping losing time. It flies, doesn't it? Like flies that float and land on burning lamp bulbs and disintegrate or get squashed and disappear.

For too long I have thought I have an infinite amount. And that's so easy, isn't it? With clocks everywhere counting down your every moment, quantifying and qualifying every part of your day, your everyday that never seems to change. And there will always be more vodka sodas and boring phone calls and bad movies - but not chances. You can never have too many chances.

Because one night you can go to sleep and wake up in the morning and find that time has caught up with you. And clocks stop and you don't want them to (you never do), then there you are in the middle of a sea of crowded minutes, hours, days, all struggling against the drowning chances that you know you've missed, swimming in the regret, suffocating in the realization that it’s a silly time to learn to swim when you start to drown.

One of these days I'm going to finish something so all these things that I've missed out on won't have been for nothing. We all have to find the time to learn to swim eventually.

Promenade (n): a stroll or walk, especially in a public place.

This morning walking east on 72nd street towards the bus stop for my morning routine of waiting-for-the-bus-for-the-fifty-minute-commute-across-town, a man passed me and asked me point blank how the prom was.

"How was the prom?" he asked with a big smile on his face. The prom?

I guess you always have to be prepared in New York because you just don’t know what it's going to throw at you – especially that early in the morning. The inflection of his voice at first threw me, because walking down the street on any given day I tend to hear men say the most ridiculous (and mostly crude) things to me.

But how was the prom? I was wondering how this was supposed to equal some form of pick-up line, or whatever it is these men are trying to accomplish when saying random things to random women on the street. It seemed like the verbal equivalent of a honked horn (which happens more than one would think) always leaving me to wonder: what are you really getting out of doing that except solidifying my opinion that men have not, in fact, evolved.

Prom guy was skinny with white pants and a grey t-shirt and was, I then realized, naturally, flamboyantly gay (I say naturally because I don’t think you’d find too many straight men so inquisitive about prom). He knew me. At least he thought he knew me. He thought I’d just returned from what was supposed to be the greatest experience in my teenage life up until that point, compete with hair, make-up, a limo, a cheesy pastel dress and matching vest for my too-much-hair-gelled date.

I had my big sunglasses on because it was early and I hadn’t had coffee yet and it’s been a long time since I’ve personally been to the prom, an event that, looking back, I altogether could have done without

"Ummm," I said bringing a hand tentatively up to my sunglasses thinking, should I just take them off and let him see his gaffe? But then I felt bad. I'd let our awkward moment go on for too long and his face was so genuine, his tone so concerned about the outcome of this particular girls’ night at the prom, that I couldn’t help myself but stop, pay tribute, and lie. "Ok?" I said feeling ridiculous.

Because New York is nothing if not a place where you can be whoever you want on any give day and I figured I might as well go with it. He noticed however, that I seemed confused.

"Ohhh!" he said, a hint of recognition in his voice. This is it! He realizes I am not who he thinks! "I thought you were your sister! You two look so much alike I can never tell!"

I nodded and smiled in agreement. What is wrong with this guy? The sister? Not only did he think I was someone else, he then thought I was someone else on top of being someone else! "Oh well!" I said and opened my hands in front of my like I was offering him something and shrugged my shoulders in a very it-happens-all-the-time sort of way.

I do happen to have a sister that people think I look just like and upon first meeting confuse us. She always gets upset, giving a look like, ew, I don’t look that much like her, do I? that I try not to get offended by.

Prom guy and I parted ways and I took my place in the crowd of waiting bus-goers. I could feel all their eyes on me, all silently wondering why I didn’t offer this apparent-friend more information about my twin sister’s night at the prom, not even giving so much as an "I’ll call you later," upon our departure.

But what else can you do in a city full of so many people that no one knows you enough to even know that you’re not someone else.

I've never been the gambling type.

"Do you ever play the lotto down in Manhattan?" Dad asks as we drive to the train station. It is a hot night in the suburbs which means it’s going to be an event hotter night in the city.

I never buy the lotto.

"You should really do it one day. Just a lucky number, birthday, anniversary..."

I suppose I should do it, one day. One day when I think that luck is on my side. One day just to pass the time. But I’ve always thought that you have to really believe in something in order to reap the benefits of it. Once you stop believing in the tooth fairy you stop getting a dollar under your pillow. If you don’t believe in true love you never seem to quite find it, and if you don’t believe in luck you’ll never strike it big.

"Just try it sometime. You never can tell."

People down on their luck are always believing in it more than they deep-down-know they should. Against all odds they put all their chips out on the table because they believe in that last almost tangible sliver of a chance that might turn their luck around. But luck is just what is caught up in the spinning axis of the universe that you can’t reach out and take control of. Luck is (unlike the lotto ticket) out of your hands. Numbers are just numbers. Birthday are just birthdays. Anniversaries are just anniversaries - and they mean something to you but they don’t mean anything to the automated machine that selects them at random.

We can’t control much, (tomorrow, you just don’t know), so we scratch those little boxes on those little pink tickets thinking we’re taking control of our lives. What would we do with all that money? What would we do first? We dream. We hope. We deep-down-know better.

Keep your luck to yourself, I say, your numbers, your birthdays, your anniversaries, and go about your daily chores in life - the hard living and working and loving (where teeth aren’t worth a thing) and pretend to yourself that every day is like your own personal lotto ticket. It may change how you think about luck. Just try it sometime. You never can tell.

You've been here before.

It happens to me on occasion, where I’ve walked past the exact same apartment building that something was chasing me out of in my dream the night before. I look up for a minute at that front bay window and the greying black of the bricks and that same tree. Yes, that same exact tree was in my way last night, right there in the middle of my getaway as I ran in slow motion away from something that made so much more sense before I woke up with a start and thought "huh?" before I thought "ohhh," when I realized that nice thing you get to realize when bad things happen to you at night - it was just a dream.

The bad moments are when bad things happen and you’re stuck with that "huh?" moment for far longer than you’d like. You’ve been here before and it stinks worse than that pile of laundry in the corner you keep telling yourself you’ll bring to the laundromat tomorrow.

And then if you’re like me and you’ve come to a state in your mind where you’re starting to forget in the fog of your life what’s real and what’s not, you’ll find yourself staring at a person on the subway the way you do when you think you know them but aren’t confident enough to speak up, (forcing them to do what any normal person on the subway would do when someone is awkwardly staring at them - which is roll your eyes and turn away), and you think yourself: how do I know them?

There’s something about living in a city with so many people that if you find one person you know, if you happen to be in the same section of the same 1 train with this person, you have an obligation as a fellow lonely insignificant New Yorker to speak up, to make the connection of: "Oh yeah, you’re Mark, right? I met you at that bar on Rivington like a month ago. You’re friends with my friend Jessica?" And then it’s ohh’s and ahh’s all around as you can show everyone around you and prove to yourself that you’re making something of yourself in this place - you know people.

But if you’re like me, you know people, sure, but not a lot, and chances are that this person you’re staring at in the same section of the same 1 train isn’t anyone you’ve ever met before. Plus, you’re thinking to yourself, you’d probably really remember someone who is that cute. You just want to think that you know this person so that you have a reason to talk to them because everyone knows that no one in New York talks to anyone when they don’t have to.

And he’s cute, yes, and you haven’t been on a date since....and you think to yourself that if this guy just got to know you he’d never want to leave you. He’d realize how lucky he was, how much of a catch you really are. It’s because we all know how great we are, how much potential we have - but in a city full of so many people who don’t talk to each other, it’s very easy for no one to ever really get to know you at all.

That an it is also a little known fact among all New Yorkers that men of a certain age who are relatively attractive, put together and are wearing a tie that matches his dress shirt (tucked in), and is carrying some form of briefcase (ie: no backpack), and doesn’t have a ring on his finger - is gay.

So he gets off the train at 28th street and you laugh at yourself because you realize how ridiculous you’re becoming - you know very well you didn’t know him at all. Does it smell of desperation? Does it ooze loneliness? Or is it just this city taking it’s toll where all you need is to connect with someone else? Who knows. No one knows if their reality will ever catch up with their dreams.

And the subway carries on slow and steady and so you do because, (huh?), you think to yourself, you’ve been here before.

(Oh).

You just never know.

The thing about knowing is that we always think we do. We always think we know more, know better, know enough to get ahead or get what we want, or just get by.

But as much as you know:

how frequently the subway comes
the number beer for you is one-too-many
what you look for in a boyfriend/girlfriend
why you came to new york
your favorite color

Just as easily, one day you:

find it derail and it never shows up.
drink more than you should
find someone who surprises you
realize that all your reasons have changed.
find that maybe green is the new black.

Because you can never know, and that's the scary part. You can never know from one day to the next what's going to happen to change everything in your life and make you walk to work, throw up on the sidewalk, or kiss someone you never thought would.

We like to think we're all smarter than we are, that we've been through so much we must have learned our lessons by now - but what can you know in a city with so many people about who you really are?

You just...Never. Know. when...what you know is always changing.

And in a city with so many people it's impossible to catch up - and you know more than you think (I think), if you let yourself know at least that.

gait analysis.

I've taken to walking. Not that I don't walk a lot in this city, because long blocks are everywhere and endless avenues are far, and you have no choice but to hit the pavement to get from point anywhere to point somewhere. But I've taken to walking on an intentional level as a means to clear my head.

Too many nights that I get back from work, late, when the approaching summer heat is still lingering on the more but never entirely empty streets, and I feel trapped. It's easy, isn't it, how quicky you can drown in your own life?

The more tired I get, (ain't it always the way?) the less I can sleep. That's when the restlessness settles in and the walls shrink and I think that if I become just one more nameless face to one more person in this giant metropolis of people all wanting so much to mean something, I'm going to implode.

So that's why I've taken to walking, because being out on the streets is the only way to feel like you're a part of something you can never fully grasp - your existence in a place where everything is up, the buildings, the rent, the price of a beer, and financial plans, plans for the future and everything is up, up, up.

Not me. I like my feet settled firmly on the ground. Not up, but straight, on an even keel, balanced, planted step in front of planted step. That's why I've taken to walking, late at night when people are locked away in their expensive high-rise cages all waiting to go to sleep to dream about getting through tomorrow.

The less I can sleep the more tired I get, and so the further I walk. And long blocks and endless avenues go by like the past, and I think that if I become just one more nameless face to one more person in this giant metropolis of people all wanting so much to just mean something, I'll walk forever. I'll walk on forever with my feet settled firmly on the ground. No more lofty expectations, no more pipe dreams, no more unrealistic ideas or hopes or goals - no more...up. Just planted step in front of planted step, walking me straight and fast out a life that, (easy, isn't it?) can so quickly make me feel trapped.