First New York. In 24 hours…the world.

I’ve never really been into superheroes. I know that typically they are stereotyped to be the kinds of things that girls don’t really care about anyway, and it’s boys who have the Superman action-figure and the girls who have Barbies (which, might I add, in their own right are superheroes. Who can keep up a mansion and maintain that figure?). I guess my sister was an exception. She grew up semi-obsessed with He-Man and his female counterpart She-Ra: Princess of Power. My sister had both of their castles and all of their partners-in-crime, including the evil nemeses (for they had several). All birthdays would mean her getting something else related to these superheroes of yesteryear, including birthday cakes with their faces silk-screened on top. I was a silent observer of this trend that she eventually (thankfully) grew out of. Though I have I feeling that even today she misses their significance.

Everyone around me has been talking about this new TV show, Heroes, that in all honesty, I haven’t seen even ten seconds of (something about a cheerleader?). This is mainly due to the fact that I don’t have time to watch a lot of television, and when I do, it’s difficult enough keeping track of the usually ultra-ridiculous and extra-intensive storylines of LOST and 24. Miss one episode and you suddenly feel like you’re the one trapped on a deserted island with that ticking noise pulsing in your ear. Friends make you an outsider when you can’t contribute to the morning coffee pot conversation of: “Oh my god, did you even seen what happened last night!?” (Spoiler alert) “Jack totally killed Curtis!”

We are a television-set culture these days, with more things to see at the press of a button than we know what to do with. Nights, afternoons, weekends are planned around our religious viewing schedules (dear TiVo, thanks for nothing. love, the outdoors). But what I don’t necessarily understand is why these shows (Heroes) need to be based in New York. After I got past the whole concept that these Heroes characters actually acquire their abilities through I’m assuming some form of divine intervention, I learned (as this is all people are talking about) that the whole show is currently pivoting around the heroes attempt to avert a nuclear explosion in, you guessed it, New York City.

At least LOST happens on an island, or in purgatory, or really, wherever you want it to be happening, and 24 (equip with its own nuclear explosions) happens in Los Angeles, which is on the down and out anyway. Can’t this show Heroes pick another location too? How about Detroit? Or Billings, Montana? It’s scary enough living in this city with the threat of running into one of these people on any given day, let alone having to worry about some super kids’ attempt to stop nuclear war.

I liked heroes better when all they had to worry about was defending Eternia and the forces of castle Greyskull from the evil forces of Skeletor. Not WMD’s in the Big Apple. But like I said before, I’ve never really been into superheroes. Jack Bauer’s resilience is about all I can take, always leaving me at the end of every hour asking no one in particular: “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

But I guess we need heroes in our lives, in some form or another, because in reality – they’re hard to come by.

Grammar 101

You know how there are things that you do in your life that are so ridiculous, that even years later you find yourself sitting at your desk typing some sort of memo on official-looking letterhead and bam! it hits you, the sudden flash of memory of the very wrong thing you did. You find yourself blushing, shaking your head, even muttering to yourself things like: “boy, was that stupid,” alone in your office. You can’t, for the life of you, remember what possessed you to do such a thing, to say such a thing at such a moment, and then the worst times - the times you never said anything at all.

This mental-muscle-memory reflex happens to me a lot. Maybe more than most people, (unlike, say, Ted Kennedy’s flashes of Chappaquiddick), because the list of overall ridiculous things I’ve done in my life is long, very long (disclaimer: I am not responsible for any deaths).

It starts probably further back than I like to admit, but the exact moment I can see in my head is the time I incorrectly pronounced “aging” while reading aloud in the first grade. It came out something like “agony” or “gagging” (surely this must be a typo, I thought) because at that time I still didn’t fully understand how a word, age, could suddenly drop a letter and still be the same word but in a different context, aging. My little logical six-year-old brain asked: certainly it should be ageing, no?

But aside from my initial difficulties with the English language (I later went on to major in it in college…scary), I’ve behaved in altogether ridiculous ways: acting before thinking, speaking before waiting, misinterpreting social etiquettes, falling down in the middle of crowds the way I have on several occasions – say in movie theatre lobbies (by far the most famous among my friends), and on the sidewalk outside of my pre-school in those thick white stockings and a pleated skirt, caught on video tape by my father as my black patent-leather shoes that I loved so much got caught up on each other, my right crossing directly over my left as I walked, then landed, then cried.

However I try, as we all have to, to make the best of my handicap and learn from the past. But it’s not so easy when you’re suddenly faced with a situation you’re not sure how to handle, the grown-up equivalent of stumbling across a confusing word while reading aloud. Maybe the answer is that if you want to live you can’t take too seriously the syntax of things. In time, we will undoubtedly make it through our own compound sentences and flailing sentence structure and grammatical errors, (I end up speaking in run-ons). Because while these patterned relations may govern what we do, set the guidelines of who we’re supposed to be, they can’t control the mistakes and regrets and lost truths of growing up.

There’s a lot about this city that keeps you out in the cold.

Like this morning, looking right out my window across 72nd street to the wall of buildings in front of me (the living room with the lime green walls on the 12th floor, the man who plays the cello every night on the 7th), and it looked just like any other day. Because if you don’t look down to see that snow has settled on the awnings that stretch out to the road, or on the cars that line up and down the streets – then you wouldn’t know.

Snow in the city isn’t the same as it is everywhere else. There’s something you miss because you never seem to have the time to look down, to catch it before it melts away into pools of dirty water that collect in sewers and on street corners and inevitably in front of bus stops, forcing you to stand back when approaching speeding traffic passes.

And then the bus made it to the end of the street, took its usual left onto 5th Ave and there it was, the first time this year I saw Central Park in the snow. Yeah, sure, it snowed here last week for about fifteen minutes around 10AM, at which point all of my friends bombarded me with emails, (knowing how much I love the snow) telling me, “it’s finally here!” and yesterday afternoon, but of course I work in a huge building, and I’m not important enough yet to have an office with windows, and like most things in my life that are plagued by bad timing - I missed it.

But this morning there it was, the way snow is supposed to be, covering the grass, allowing you to look into the distance and see nothing but white resting on branches, making the park its own little place of quiet peace in the middle of an otherwise turbulent and crazy world.

So I can’t wait for tomorrow, when I’ll have the whole day to walk around the park and go back in time to when snow actually meant something – a day off of school, building snowmen without corncob pipes because no one really knows what those are anyway, and feeling like a kid again.

But knowing my luck, by tomorrow, it will all have melted.

The Chill

I put on a sweater this morning and then a scarf (grey) and a coat (black) and a hat (maroon) and I still couldn’t feel anything when I got off the subway.

A few years ago I swore to myself that I would move to The South. There things are warm and pleasant. People don’t need scarves or hats or coats and drink out of glasses with umbrellas and listen to music that floats up into the hot humid air and dissipates, then disappears into the sun.

Just a few weeks ago I was running through Central Park in 70 degree heat thinking that I made the right choice.
Now.
Now there’s nothing but frozen air and hot cups of coffee with no umbrellas and the only music is the screeching of breaks and the honking of horns from people all trying to get to the next best thing. The next warm place.

I know there are people in other places, all,
Going to work and
Going to bars
And driving their cars and
checking their watches hoping,
hoping for the hands of time to speed them fast into spring,
away from The Chill.

Perhaps someday I’ll take a job anywhere doing anything just to get away from the cold.

It’s amazing the things you take for granted – like – breathing through your nose.

I have had a tissue box permanently attached to my hip for the past 72 hours. My nose has, over these past few days, turned to a bright shade of red, has become sensitive to the touch, and I can’t help but wonder how there can really be that much stuff up somewhere up in my head that is causing me to constantly be blowing my nose.

I don’t believe in the flu shot. I don’t believe in shots in general, or pills, or take this for that or that to prevent this or tablets or things that fizzle in water and promise to deliver me from a sick-free-season, which I guess, is why I got this, regardless of how much I like to boast that I never get sick (I mean, don’t we all?)

In and out of the haze of fever that struck me nearly three days ago, I’ve given up on being on the wagon and have been consuming large amounts of Nyquil, a drug that I have come to know and love. I think I liked being sick much better when I was a kid, when I had someone to take care of me, instead of walking down 72nd street feeling somewhere in the general body temperature vicinity of 102 degrees just to stock up on all sorts of over-the-counter medication.

But I guess that’s growing up, having to learn how to take care of yourself. I mean the overall idea can be pretty overwhelming at times, and some of us learn better than others. Some of us still don’t know how to cook a meal or do laundry (lights, darks, what difference does it make?). Of course I could probably answer the question of whether or not I’ve been doing a good job fairly easily. I’m sure my mother would have objected to me going out for drinks on Saturday night just when this illness was starting to settle in and walking home in the rain. I’m sure that nice guy at the bar, (Jason), would have liked me more had I not been tuning in and out of him telling me how he’s a student at Columbia and a Mets fan (I mean, I guess) because I was starting to feel light-headed from the vodka/Tylenol combination.

Sometimes we’re not as smart as we like to think we are (cough). Because we’re trying to do so much living in what feels like such a short amount of time (youth), sometimes the only choice we have is to throw “doing the right thing” out the window in order to capitalize on our lives (Jason).

And while I’ll probably never see Jason again, and I still wash both lights and darks together on cold (it saves money and time), I might not be learning how to take care of myself as well as I’d like. But I do consider myself a little bit of a grown up – most of the time. I know that once I make it through this flu I’ll once again be stubborn and not take any shots or pills or tablets that fizz and I’ll boast how I never get sick, until, again, I inevitably do. And whatever that says about how smart a grown-up I am, is anyone’s guess.

All I know now for sure, is that I have to go, because I’m out of tissues.

New York: home of the world’s largest muffins

Like you thought I wouldn’t be on top of this. Seeing as how the Starbucks Coffee Company in Seattle is an avid reader of mighty, (which is sort of creepy, yes), I figure I should be the one to tell them that this new oven initiative, while great, is slowing things down. And by “things” I mean “me.”

I know people apparently need their egg and cheese on “some sort of bread carrier” in the morning, but I just need coffee. And when your employees are too busying trying to figure out how to use above mentioned oven that their three large canisters of bold, mild and decaf all run out while I’m waiting in line – well then you’ve got yourself a bit of a problem.

The man in line in front me muttered something using the words “figures,” “capitalistic,” and “pigs,” before huffing and walking out, presumably to the Dunkin Donuts on the corner (sacrilege). I was then left wide-eyed and scared, a whole line of angering not-yet-had-their-morning-cuppa clients behind me asking each other with surprise “is it really…gone?” I had no choice but to wait patiently for a new batch to brew – because love is only blind in one eye from a freak accident a few years ago involving a decaf mix-up and a toaster oven. The other one, addicted, always sees clearly.

Feels like home.

Tomorrow marks my one year anniversary of being in New York. The funny thing about time is that you never realize how much of it is passing. Time ultimately changes how you see things and how initially a thing can look so different from the way it is when you come back to it. The New York I came to a year ago (foreign, mainly) is much different than the New York I’m in now (home, mostly).

And New York is a place that is always changing - new restaurants, bars, plays, exhibits opening every day that if you don’t act fast enough you’ll miss it. So you have to grab on to the little things that make you feel like you’re some small part of the colossus that is this city, that you have some significance in a place that does all it can to make you feel as insignificant as possible.

Saturday in New York felt like Saturday in Florida or Southern California or some place that is typically 72 degrees in early January. All people are talking about is the weather and how strange it is, how bizarre that we didn’t need our coats yesterday, that we didn’t need our sweaters or hats or gloves. It felt like, for a day, you could travel back in time to late summer, and that if you just closed your eyes you wouldn’t think that the leaves weren’t on the trees, that New Years had just passed, that there are days and days and months ahead of us until we really will see green again to help bring the pavement alive.

And then you open your eyes and see that there is another restaurant, bar, play, exhibit closing, and that the funny thing about time is that sometimes the more there is the less there seems to be.

It may not always be so.

There was this guy I loved for a long time. Of course I didn’t really love him because when you meet someone when you’re young you don’t know anything about anything, especially not anything about love. And he was a typical college guy. The problem with that is that like most typical college guys (or just typical guys) he didn’t know what he wanted, so he decided he wanted everything. He wanted everything and nothing and didn’t know how to go about getting either without hurting or lying or cheating on someone else. It’s like he was two people: one, duplicitous, the other decent.

Sometimes I don’t know if guys ever really know what they want aside from a steady influx of burritos, baseball and beer; but at one point this guy made it very clear that he wanted more than that, he wanted me. But we always ran into problems because everything always seemed to happen on his terms. Not because that’s the way I like things or because I didn’t have any terms of my own, simply, it’s how he ran his life - without much regard to anyone but himself. The bad side of his two-facedness always seemed to be winning out - and the irony is (and there always is irony) that that was one of the things I liked most about him.

And then you’re in it. You find yourself in something you can’t get out of, liking someone you almost can’t stand, feeling as though you’re suddenly submerged in water and don’t know how to break through to the surface for air. You find yourself trapped. I was trapped. Trapped on my side while everything had to happen on his - when he wanted to talk, when he wanted to hang out, when he wanted to call back, when he wanted us to be together. And he was always upset at me for one reason or another – either for not loving him enough, or loving him too much.

But it’s difficult to love under someone else’s conditions, on someone else’s terms. Sometimes, all you want to do, all you need, is to simply let love be. And I figure that if it can’t (and even if you figure too late) then it’s not really love at all.

There was this guy I loved for a long time.

Nobody puts Starbucks in a corner.

In this week’s Advertising Age annual, which is essentially a book of stats and facts from the already-over year of 2006 (remember her?), they have the figures of the top consumed coffees in the country. Of course in my mind (and for those of you who read mighty on a regular basis already know the answer) the buck stops at one place and one place only. Call me a coffee elitist (or addict), but Starbucks will always be close to my heart. So where does it come in, you ask? With its holiday cups, its “The way I see it,” and multi-faceted blends? Third. (Gasp!) I know, I’m just as shocked as you are.

Second is none other than Maxwell House, whose television commercials use of the annoying song “Our House” by a British ska/pop band Madness has apparently garnered more drinkers. So who is number one? That’s right, none other than Folgers. With all of the great coffee choices out there today I wonder why it is that people are still drinking from that large blue metal tub of poorly roasted beans. But I mean I guess people will believe anything - and who could really pass up what literally might be the best part of waking up.

A chance to start over...again.

Shouldn’t it be “Happy Old Year?” Isn’t that what we’re really celebrating, the fact that we’ve made it through yet another year of work and life and flailing relationships and fluctuating weight and long since lost resolutions of years past? Truth is, we don’t know anything about the “new” year, so what’s so happy about it. For all we know it’s going to be the worst year ever. There’s nothing “happy” about venturing off into the unknown - if anything it’s entirely unhappy, not to mention scary, overwhelming, and just a little bit depressing (am I really the only one looking ahead thinking: “what am I doing with my life?” and “where am I going to be in another year?”)

But it's happened. Another year has come and gone and the '06/'07 changeover is looking a lot more bleak than I had originally anticipated. It's not that I don't understand the exhilarating quality that comes in those ten seconds that mark significant change, rather, everything building up to that brief window of time (like most things that I place a lot of expectation on) always ends up a disappointment.

This year I was in the middle of Times Square as I said goodbye to 2006. And no, not out in the cold with all of the millions of slightly insane people (the largest crowd in TS New Year history) but at a party in an office building on the 22nd floor that overlooked the millions of slightly insane people and the largest crowd in TS New Year history. From where I was they looked like little orange ants, and as the night progressed they started to look even smaller as I took more advantage of the open bar. When people started to count down and that big stupid ball on the roof of the building next to us started to light up and fall from the sky, a lot of things began to flash through my head all at once, like, how many vodka sodas has this been? Four?

When the ten seconds that marked significant change were over, people all around me were kissing and singing Auld Lang Syne, (which means "old long since" and I've never really understood the meaning of), and everything I'd done in the last 365 days suddenly lifted from my shoulders and I breathed a sigh of relief the way you do after you make it through the rocky landing of a plane on the tarmac – I realized I’d made a narrow escape from the perils of living my first year in New York.

Then the girl next to me dropped one of the two glasses she was drinking rum and coke out of and it shattered on the floor next to me, seeping sticky liquid under my shoes and I thought - should old acquaintances be forgot indeed.

I have a feeling that 2007 will be much the same as 2006, and that most of the things myself and everyone else have resolved to change in our lives will stay the same after the high of those ten seconds of fleeting clarity of perspective have worn away (that is, if they haven’t already). And that's okay, because we'll have another chance make more false promises and over-analyze the state of our lives as soon as this year becomes a distant memory and a new one inevitably starts all over again.