So I’m a single coffeeholic and I’m okay with that. I’ve yet to find someone who appreciates me for who I am – an addicted, eccentric, twenty-something New Yorker who won’t settle for a man the same way she won’t settle for her coffee. However during this rather long (almost lifetime long, really) bout of singledom, I’ve found a companion in my provider.
Starbucks has been good to me lately – and this newly featured Guatemala Casi Cielo is like the dark brooding man you try to force a moment with (read: stare at) on the subway but would never actually talk to. It’s described as “elegant and intriguing,” and is more approachable (however perhaps a little less formally attired) than the dark brooding man.
Starbucks has an uncanny ability of making their coffees sound just like the kinds of people you might be interested in going on a date with. I mean, who wouldn’t want elegant and intriguing? Or “intense and earthy” (Sumatra)? “light and lively” (house blend)? or even “mellow and well-rounded” (Yukon)?
And while I’d like to find myself a good Gold Coast blend (“rich and sophisticated”), you can never really be too sure what blend is best for you. People are as complex as the beans, and just as there are fundamentals to finding relationship happiness, there are guidelines for finding the perfect cup.
The four fundamentals of coffee are as follows: proportion, grind, water and freshness. Without these you find yourself not only not enjoying your coffee, but feeling let down, disappointed because you’ve unknowingly (or knowingly for reasons of availability, convenience, etc.) settled for “dull and bland.”
Ostensibly, the amount of time the coffee and water spend together affects the flavor elements that end up in your cup, and unless and until you find a blend that is at the right place at the right time, I’m afraid it just might not be in the cards. But filter machines brew for much longer and with more water, making a weaker (albeit good) coffee. It’s the kind of coffee that’s been in your pantry for months. Diluted you say, “it’s fine,” because you just don’t want to bother going out and getting something new. On the other hand, a French press, for example, where the water and grinds have had less time in overall direct contact, however the outcome is a lot stronger and more intense.
In the end, of course, it’s the blending that matters most. What is ultimately needed is the right combination of various qualities found in different regions to form one harmonious, balanced whole. No wonder I’m still single.
Whatever the case, each Starbucks blend offers a cup of coffee that no single-origin coffee can duplicate. Because really, who wants ordinary anyway? Why settle when there’s just so much out there to choose from? When you’ve yet to really find your perfect cut? OK, so maybe I’m getting a little carried away seeing as how a good coffee is a little easier to find in this city than a good man (sadly). And at, what is it now? Like $10 a cup? Some of you average-cuppa-Joe’s out there may think I’m out of my mind to be dedicating so much time to my morning, afternoon, and sometimes nightly indulgence in roasted beans.
I figure that while it may take more effort and time to reach such a seemingly perfect outcome in anything in life, to me, a coffeeholic of the second largest city in the world next to Tokyo (right?), it’s just like what The Way I See It #157 says: “Some of the best inventive moments were born out of ‘wrong thinking.’ Most people start with the right way so they all follow the same path. The wrong way will lead to mistakes from which you can learn and create new discoveries – the kind of original ideas that come to life when we dare to be different, keep an open mind and have no fear of failure.”
James Dyson said that. And all he did was design a better way to pick up dirt.
March 29, 2007
March 21, 2007
Location, location, location.
According to this Times article, I live in the most famous and most desired ZIP code in Manhattan and come to it, in all of America. Who would have thought that when I came here a year ago, poor (and mind you, I am still poor) that I was going to find an apartment in the most desired area of the city, able to get bills (that I have a hard time paying) addressed to the 10021 zip code above which my very own name is displayed. With this new zip code-restructuring only eight streets will be able to remain a part of this coveted five-number-identity, and I’m part of the lucky few.
Not that being in an elite zip code fulfills me (though it doesn’t hurt) but it’s nice to feel like you’ve done something right - even if it was only by chance. Everything about New York is about getting what’s better than what the other guy has – the better apartment, the better boyfriend, the better job, the better reservation at the better restaurant, the better friend with the better connections – and I have to admit I’ve been so far outside the competitive loop since I’ve been here (okay job, okay friends, okay and cheap restaurants, no boyfriend) I’ve been starting to feel like an outsider, like a fraud, like a (gasp!) fake. However now (sigh) all is right with the world as I know that I’m currently sitting, sleeping, and spending in the not even better, but best block radius in the country.
However, like any true New Yorker the irony of this little “swish” moment isn’t entirely lost on me. Just like in New York, the 69th to 76th street range of income varies not only from street to street, building to building, but literally apartment door to apartment door. Dolores, across the hall from me, lives in lush conditions. I happened to knock on her door a few weeks ago to borrow some cinnamon for my apple spice cake (I know, how un-glamorous, do people in 10021 even bake? I’m sure they pay people do to that…) and caught a glimpse of her big screen television (she is old, perhaps she can’t see well), her two couches, (I barely have one) and the realization that she has the whole apartment to herself and her cat. I share my apartment with a roommate and barely have enough money left over after rent to buy traditional spices. So while she fumbled around in the kitchen I did the quick math, multiply by two, carry the one…Dolores is rich!
After her “here you go, dear,” I went back to my half-her-size home and felt a pang of sadness. Not only is the person across the hall from me making lots more money than me, (she could afford to give me the entire cinnamon container, insisting that I keep it), she doesn’t even have a job. Can I really live in 10021 under the guise of such affluence? Can everyone else in this zip code detect my lack of prosperity, possessions and cooking powders in my pied-á-terre?
Thirty minutes at 350 degrees later I decided that yes, I can live here, as I have been for a year and regardless of wealth its been working out OK for me. No one has to know I bake my own cakes, or borrow cinnamon from Dolores, or live on a shockingly low amount of money per month post rent (and taxes), or share my place with someone else.
It’s OK that in New York, and 10021, so many people are nouveau riche, and I am nouveau poor. Because any true New Yorker will tell you that no matter what zip code you happen to reside in, perception (over reality), is nine-tenths of the game anyway.
Not that being in an elite zip code fulfills me (though it doesn’t hurt) but it’s nice to feel like you’ve done something right - even if it was only by chance. Everything about New York is about getting what’s better than what the other guy has – the better apartment, the better boyfriend, the better job, the better reservation at the better restaurant, the better friend with the better connections – and I have to admit I’ve been so far outside the competitive loop since I’ve been here (okay job, okay friends, okay and cheap restaurants, no boyfriend) I’ve been starting to feel like an outsider, like a fraud, like a (gasp!) fake. However now (sigh) all is right with the world as I know that I’m currently sitting, sleeping, and spending in the not even better, but best block radius in the country.
However, like any true New Yorker the irony of this little “swish” moment isn’t entirely lost on me. Just like in New York, the 69th to 76th street range of income varies not only from street to street, building to building, but literally apartment door to apartment door. Dolores, across the hall from me, lives in lush conditions. I happened to knock on her door a few weeks ago to borrow some cinnamon for my apple spice cake (I know, how un-glamorous, do people in 10021 even bake? I’m sure they pay people do to that…) and caught a glimpse of her big screen television (she is old, perhaps she can’t see well), her two couches, (I barely have one) and the realization that she has the whole apartment to herself and her cat. I share my apartment with a roommate and barely have enough money left over after rent to buy traditional spices. So while she fumbled around in the kitchen I did the quick math, multiply by two, carry the one…Dolores is rich!
After her “here you go, dear,” I went back to my half-her-size home and felt a pang of sadness. Not only is the person across the hall from me making lots more money than me, (she could afford to give me the entire cinnamon container, insisting that I keep it), she doesn’t even have a job. Can I really live in 10021 under the guise of such affluence? Can everyone else in this zip code detect my lack of prosperity, possessions and cooking powders in my pied-á-terre?
Thirty minutes at 350 degrees later I decided that yes, I can live here, as I have been for a year and regardless of wealth its been working out OK for me. No one has to know I bake my own cakes, or borrow cinnamon from Dolores, or live on a shockingly low amount of money per month post rent (and taxes), or share my place with someone else.
It’s OK that in New York, and 10021, so many people are nouveau riche, and I am nouveau poor. Because any true New Yorker will tell you that no matter what zip code you happen to reside in, perception (over reality), is nine-tenths of the game anyway.
March 18, 2007
Times they are a-changin'
I think the last of the snow has fallen on Manhattan. The season is ending and people will stop talking now about the snow and the cold and start talking about how the temperature is rising more and more, how soon summer will be here and we’ll all be feeling a lot better to be outside, to be walking around this city and not trapped indoors, in our tall and small apartment buildings piled one on top of one wishing we could open our windows and make the city our back porches.
It happens quickly and the pulse of the place changes, and maybe then when the weather gets warmer I won’t feel so much like all I want to do is simply disappear. Because it’s like the more you dig your hands into your pockets the more everything catches up to you. It’s easy, with your hands reaching for warmth to look at your life and think you’ve got it all wrong, like you should be in some beach house on the water because life’s just too short not to.
Because from street to street you just think - if only I could just go somewhere else and meet new people, things would be better. If only I could just skip town and go somewhere warm, somewhere new, somewhere where nobody knows my name or my past or my face, I could be happy.
Being in a city surrounded by so many people sometimes all you want to do is just disappear, go somewhere where you don’t have to fight to push past them on the sidewalk, those people who always stand in the middle talking, the women with strollers, the tourists with cameras. If only you could just go somewhere where you felt like you could breathe more, and start over and create a new past in those moments when all you want to do is forget the one you already have.
You think that if only you could go somewhere where you wouldn’t be so afraid of what you wanted, where you’d have the space and time to figure it out, you’d get through the rough patches where nothing makes sense, where your life just feels like these endless passing weeks of sameness, of people on sidewalks and in subways and in elevators all trying to get somewhere else all the time, and you – you feeling like you’re stuck in the middle of this moving mass without a clear destination at all.
But you keep on, you keep on hopping over snow banks on street corners, and digging your hands deeper into your pockets to find warmth as you walk from block to block, giving up on pushing past people and letting your own pace sink in, letting yourself take the time to live more deliberately, because you know it won’t be lasting much longer.
And you realize that your past isn’t yours anymore anyway because everything has changed, and no matter how much you may want to you can’t get it back, and as unclear as the future is, as monotonous and unsure as it may look from here, from your vantage point of hopping over snow banks on street corners, you have no choice but to venture into it. Because If Only is always just If Only if you want to live more deliberately.
The city, like life, waits for no one. So you have to believe in it, even when you want to give up, because if you keep living your life on If Onlys you may never be able to catch up with it.
It happens quickly and the pulse of the place changes, and maybe then when the weather gets warmer I won’t feel so much like all I want to do is simply disappear. Because it’s like the more you dig your hands into your pockets the more everything catches up to you. It’s easy, with your hands reaching for warmth to look at your life and think you’ve got it all wrong, like you should be in some beach house on the water because life’s just too short not to.
Because from street to street you just think - if only I could just go somewhere else and meet new people, things would be better. If only I could just skip town and go somewhere warm, somewhere new, somewhere where nobody knows my name or my past or my face, I could be happy.
Being in a city surrounded by so many people sometimes all you want to do is just disappear, go somewhere where you don’t have to fight to push past them on the sidewalk, those people who always stand in the middle talking, the women with strollers, the tourists with cameras. If only you could just go somewhere where you felt like you could breathe more, and start over and create a new past in those moments when all you want to do is forget the one you already have.
You think that if only you could go somewhere where you wouldn’t be so afraid of what you wanted, where you’d have the space and time to figure it out, you’d get through the rough patches where nothing makes sense, where your life just feels like these endless passing weeks of sameness, of people on sidewalks and in subways and in elevators all trying to get somewhere else all the time, and you – you feeling like you’re stuck in the middle of this moving mass without a clear destination at all.
But you keep on, you keep on hopping over snow banks on street corners, and digging your hands deeper into your pockets to find warmth as you walk from block to block, giving up on pushing past people and letting your own pace sink in, letting yourself take the time to live more deliberately, because you know it won’t be lasting much longer.
And you realize that your past isn’t yours anymore anyway because everything has changed, and no matter how much you may want to you can’t get it back, and as unclear as the future is, as monotonous and unsure as it may look from here, from your vantage point of hopping over snow banks on street corners, you have no choice but to venture into it. Because If Only is always just If Only if you want to live more deliberately.
The city, like life, waits for no one. So you have to believe in it, even when you want to give up, because if you keep living your life on If Onlys you may never be able to catch up with it.
March 11, 2007
preferred amnesia
I have the uncanny ability of holding onto certain things for far longer than I should. Like the napkin from a bar in which I wrote the note: learn better how to let go.
I still have pictures and clothes and books that I’ve already seen and over-worn and more than three-times-read taking up space in my new life, things that are directly associated with parts of my past that I’m not ready to let go of just yet.
They’re like the stupid souvenirs that the tourists buy, the t-shirts that say NEW YORK on them as though the tourists are going to forget they came here without those letters on their chest there to remind them.
Because you remember NEW YORK like you remember your first love. You remember how it felt, what it meant to you, and how difficult it was to leave it behind. In the city you’ll remember how it felt to be there, to stand among its people, amidst its buildings, in the throes of other peoples lives - and it’s not like you’re going to forget all that when the t-shirt, like love, becomes worn and torn, becomes a rag and eventually has to be thrown away. You’ll still remember even then, with the shirt long gone, how it felt.
NEW YORK and love and the things you can’t leave behind are like the monkey bars. I never liked the monkey bars as a kid - legs swinging, hands holding on trying to propel myself forward just to get to the other end. For wouldn’t it have been easier, faster, less painful just to walk? But we come to know, (and sometimes too late) that anything that’s worth anything never comes easy.
And like the monkey bars - NEW YORK and love and the things you can’t leave behind - the tighter you let yourself grip them, the longer it takes for those red marks, those almost-blisters, to fade away.
I still have pictures and clothes and books that I’ve already seen and over-worn and more than three-times-read taking up space in my new life, things that are directly associated with parts of my past that I’m not ready to let go of just yet.
They’re like the stupid souvenirs that the tourists buy, the t-shirts that say NEW YORK on them as though the tourists are going to forget they came here without those letters on their chest there to remind them.
Because you remember NEW YORK like you remember your first love. You remember how it felt, what it meant to you, and how difficult it was to leave it behind. In the city you’ll remember how it felt to be there, to stand among its people, amidst its buildings, in the throes of other peoples lives - and it’s not like you’re going to forget all that when the t-shirt, like love, becomes worn and torn, becomes a rag and eventually has to be thrown away. You’ll still remember even then, with the shirt long gone, how it felt.
NEW YORK and love and the things you can’t leave behind are like the monkey bars. I never liked the monkey bars as a kid - legs swinging, hands holding on trying to propel myself forward just to get to the other end. For wouldn’t it have been easier, faster, less painful just to walk? But we come to know, (and sometimes too late) that anything that’s worth anything never comes easy.
And like the monkey bars - NEW YORK and love and the things you can’t leave behind - the tighter you let yourself grip them, the longer it takes for those red marks, those almost-blisters, to fade away.
March 2, 2007
There are certain New York days that can make or break you.
And being stuck underground on the subway between 50th street and 42nd street for a half hour can certainly finish the task of making you never want to spend one more minute in a place that can’t handle a little water in it’s underground transportation system.
I had a feeling this morning, with the rain coming down as it was, that it wasn’t going to be an easy commute. Getting on the bus with the windows all fogged and that pungent smell of sweat and soaked wool, I thought to myself: it’s just one day.
Flash forward to 50th street when the 1 train stopped, doors open, so that the train conductor could ask over the loudspeaker for anyone who was a doctor, as there was a “sick person on the platform.” Everyone turned, strained their necks in one succinct motion towards the open doors to try to see the injured civilian. People all tell themselves they don’t want to look at the exact moment they do. Some began to leave the train, (hopefully to assist), and soon we were creeping out of 50th street, when about ten seconds later, we were at a stand-still.
Being underground like that and looking from dark window to dark window, I realized that my supposed fear of small confined spaces was, in fact, real. Everyone around me just seemed exasperated, rolling their eyes as that loudspeaker voice you can never really understand went about repeating the same thing every two minutes:“Mrrrrrwerearrrrestop…momen…rily. Mrrrrrrthank…for…atience.”
Of course of all the people on all the trains in all the world I was stuck standing next to a guy who couldn’t handle himself. He couldn’t handle the fact that this was really happening to him and choose to talk to me (or to himself, I’m not sure) about how he felt about it: “I mean you’ve got to be kidding me! C’mon, say it again man, just tell me one more time that we’re stopped, like I can’t already see that, like I’m some sort of gosh darn idiot, like I was just born yesterday. And thank me again for my gosh darn patience, just do it man, c’mon, just one more gosh darn time.”
I tried to give him a withering smile of camaraderie, to silently tell him that I too was fighting the battle of living in Manhattan.
He didn’t seem to care. And he didn’t say gosh darn, either.
30 minutes and an almost panic-attack later, I got off the 1 at 42nd street after it officially stopping running. The express wasn’t working either and I flew up the stairs into the pouring rain to try to catch a cab. But any New Yorker knows that trying to find a cab in the middle of Times Square in the rain is about as easy as finishing a Rubick’s cube in under 5 seconds. First the red, then the green…
I walked for blocks, soaked, hauling my duffle bag because of course, this is the weekend I’ve chosen to go out of town. As fire trucks scream past me, crowds of people with umbrellas push around me, I thought: this is a nightmare.
A few blocks later, soaked through and not an empty cab in sight, I found myself back at the subway, finally realizing that I could take the A/C/E to Spring street and walk to work from there. On the E, I’m stuck standing next to two guys who’ve chosen to sleep on the seats next to me, by far creating the most unpleasant smell I’d had to deal with so far that morning. Right before I get off at Spring, one of them wakes up, grabs a huge jar of Jiffy peanut butter out from one of his many trash-filled bags at his feet, and starts eating large finger-fulls. Soon, all of his fingers are covered in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, and just before the doors open he looks up at me, gives me a smile consisting of about three teeth altogether, points his sticky fingers at me and says, “ya like some butta, hun?”
On the walk to the office I pass a Starbucks and naturally go in to buy a venti house blend because I feel like I deserve it after the morning I’ve just had. I am now officially an hour late for work, and try to walk into the office unnoticed. Of course, soaking wet with running mascara and a venti Starbucks cup( with The Way I See It #184), is anything but discreet. I make it to my desk fearing the wrath of my superiors, while reading #184, “…only an idiot sets out to find the poorhouse, not to mention devote himself to something he doesn’t love. Instead, I discovered an interesting back road to the unknown, and deliberately without a safety net.”
While getting over my anger at the MTA I think that this city is like one huge back road about 100 feet in the air with nothing but empty space under you, and some days it’s easier to let yourself fall than others. But you just always have to remember, that, like today, just two hours later, it stops raining, and the sun comes out again.
I (still) heart NY.
I had a feeling this morning, with the rain coming down as it was, that it wasn’t going to be an easy commute. Getting on the bus with the windows all fogged and that pungent smell of sweat and soaked wool, I thought to myself: it’s just one day.
Flash forward to 50th street when the 1 train stopped, doors open, so that the train conductor could ask over the loudspeaker for anyone who was a doctor, as there was a “sick person on the platform.” Everyone turned, strained their necks in one succinct motion towards the open doors to try to see the injured civilian. People all tell themselves they don’t want to look at the exact moment they do. Some began to leave the train, (hopefully to assist), and soon we were creeping out of 50th street, when about ten seconds later, we were at a stand-still.
Being underground like that and looking from dark window to dark window, I realized that my supposed fear of small confined spaces was, in fact, real. Everyone around me just seemed exasperated, rolling their eyes as that loudspeaker voice you can never really understand went about repeating the same thing every two minutes:“Mrrrrrwerearrrrestop…momen…rily. Mrrrrrrthank…for…atience.”
Of course of all the people on all the trains in all the world I was stuck standing next to a guy who couldn’t handle himself. He couldn’t handle the fact that this was really happening to him and choose to talk to me (or to himself, I’m not sure) about how he felt about it: “I mean you’ve got to be kidding me! C’mon, say it again man, just tell me one more time that we’re stopped, like I can’t already see that, like I’m some sort of gosh darn idiot, like I was just born yesterday. And thank me again for my gosh darn patience, just do it man, c’mon, just one more gosh darn time.”
I tried to give him a withering smile of camaraderie, to silently tell him that I too was fighting the battle of living in Manhattan.
He didn’t seem to care. And he didn’t say gosh darn, either.
30 minutes and an almost panic-attack later, I got off the 1 at 42nd street after it officially stopping running. The express wasn’t working either and I flew up the stairs into the pouring rain to try to catch a cab. But any New Yorker knows that trying to find a cab in the middle of Times Square in the rain is about as easy as finishing a Rubick’s cube in under 5 seconds. First the red, then the green…
I walked for blocks, soaked, hauling my duffle bag because of course, this is the weekend I’ve chosen to go out of town. As fire trucks scream past me, crowds of people with umbrellas push around me, I thought: this is a nightmare.
A few blocks later, soaked through and not an empty cab in sight, I found myself back at the subway, finally realizing that I could take the A/C/E to Spring street and walk to work from there. On the E, I’m stuck standing next to two guys who’ve chosen to sleep on the seats next to me, by far creating the most unpleasant smell I’d had to deal with so far that morning. Right before I get off at Spring, one of them wakes up, grabs a huge jar of Jiffy peanut butter out from one of his many trash-filled bags at his feet, and starts eating large finger-fulls. Soon, all of his fingers are covered in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, and just before the doors open he looks up at me, gives me a smile consisting of about three teeth altogether, points his sticky fingers at me and says, “ya like some butta, hun?”
On the walk to the office I pass a Starbucks and naturally go in to buy a venti house blend because I feel like I deserve it after the morning I’ve just had. I am now officially an hour late for work, and try to walk into the office unnoticed. Of course, soaking wet with running mascara and a venti Starbucks cup( with The Way I See It #184), is anything but discreet. I make it to my desk fearing the wrath of my superiors, while reading #184, “…only an idiot sets out to find the poorhouse, not to mention devote himself to something he doesn’t love. Instead, I discovered an interesting back road to the unknown, and deliberately without a safety net.”
While getting over my anger at the MTA I think that this city is like one huge back road about 100 feet in the air with nothing but empty space under you, and some days it’s easier to let yourself fall than others. But you just always have to remember, that, like today, just two hours later, it stops raining, and the sun comes out again.
I (still) heart NY.
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