5°C (40°F)

There are things in life that we just don't want to address. There are truths that we know we have to come to terms with eventually, but tell ourselves we'll wait until later, wait until tomorrow, wait until we have more time.

Until, until, until.

It's like those mysterious tupperware containers in the back of my refrigerator. They've been there for a while, sitting and waiting in the back for me to reach in and take a chance on them. And I've been thinking about them, too, every time I open that refrigerator door and see their silhouettes slanted against the carton of milk, and the orange juice and the loaf of bread.

Each time I open the door the smell gets a little bit stronger, gets a little bit worse - but I tell myself that they're still good, that I shouldn't throw them away just yet.

So I wait. And day in and day out the door opens and shuts, the light goes on and off and there they are - just waiting for me to take a chance on them. I don't know why I keep waiting for later or tomorrow or until I have more time just to clean out the fridge. And now, because I didn't want to face the problem head on, it only got worse. I foolishly didn't deal with it right then and there when I knew the truth about how those mysterious containters of greening pasta and greying vegetables were never going to amount to much.

I could have easily just thrown it all away and started fresh. That's what I should have done. But we're accustomed to holding on to the smallest and most ordinary of things and making them feel like they're worth so much more. And it's all just a waste. All of it. Keeping things thermally insulated doesn't always protect them, making them numb doesn't always make them go away.

And it's not until, until, until you can barely breathe when you open the door do you realize that there are some truths in life you can only avoid for so long.

Listen to the tap.

You're tapping your foot. Do you like this song?

Pardon?

Tapping. You're (gestures to my foot) tapping your foot. That usually means you like the song.

Oh (I look at my foot and make it stop). Yes.

So you like jazz?

(What is it about jazz that makes men think things they normally wouldn't?)

Yeah, I do.

That's interesting.

Right.

Do you even know what song is this?

(What is it about a girl liking jazz that always makes men want to quiz you?)

It's Dave Brubeck (easy one) Pick Up Sticks.

Nice.

(I could have said Miles Davis or Coltrane, or Ricky Martin and he wouldn't have known the difference).

Yes, it is.

(then):

What's your name/where are you from/how long have you been in the city/what do you do/do you have a boyfriend?

(I answer all questions honestly and there's only one answer he pays attention to).

How do you not have a boyfriend?

Because (I say), I've yet to meet anyone who actually listens.

You know things are bad when...

You walk 12 blocks to Best Buy twice in one day to bring your computer that has been plagued by Blue Screen Of Death for the past few weeks (first trip to assess, second to drop off with appropriate CDs you’re surprised you even had). You spend $100 on System Recovery (whatever that is). You spend $130 on a new hard drive (you don’t even know what those really do). You spend $100 on installation (because how can you install something you don’t understand)?

You wait two days, happily thinking you’ve done what you always do, which is throw money at the problem and get good results. After spending $330 you walk 12 blocks back to the store and get that look that people who know things about technology always give you when they know you don’t know as much as you probably should. You feel bad about yourself. You feel even worse when you mentally factor how you’re going to pay next month’s rent with this huge financial blow. But you smile anyway because at least, you think to yourself, you’ll have your computer back.

You walk 12 blocks home, rub your hands together after you turn on your computer the way you do when you’re really excited about something. You wait. You are excited. Then after mere moments, you see none other than the infamous Blue Screen that you’ve come to hate (while still not really understanding it).

While waiting for your eyes to remember how to blink you consider your options: throw computer out the window. Give up on technology entirely. Buy pens with whatever money you have left (about $5) and learn better how to write more legibly by hand.

Instead, you call your friend to complain to him about your problem, knowing full well that complaining has never fixed anything, but it sure does make you feel better. Then you listen as he laughs in disbelief and tells you that maybe, just maybe, some peoples lives (yours) are simply just meant to always be Blue Screens.

Note: You can buy a 10-pack of Bic’s for $4.75. Donations are welcome. Preferably in black.

because you can't plan the weather.

Sometimes when you lose something you never thought you’d ever really lose, you begin to realize you’re losing more than just that – you begin to realize you’re losing things like: time, your mind, the reason why you get up in the morning and breathe in and breathe out.

And people in Manhattan with their maps on bright and sunny Saturdays lose themselves and start to feel that panic too, that loss of time and their minds Haven’t we already been on this corner? Have we just gone around in a circle? Because we like things out in the open where we can see them. We don’t like things to be lost: keys, chances, loves, afternoons, favorite t-shirts. We spend our days trying to find things, recapture them or claim them. Get, not lose. Acquire, not let go.

But bright and sunny Saturdays can just as quickly turn to dark and stormy ones. And then lost tourists have no choice but to ditch their maps and run, accept the loss, the socks that won’t dry for another few hours, and their inability now to have enough time to make it all the way uptown to see the Guggenheim.

Now they do only what the rest of us do who feel like we’re losing things like time and our minds and the reason why we get up in the morning – simply take shelter and wait for the storm to subside.

dysfunctional.

Someone sent this to me today.

I don’t know if I should be offended, or just take comfort in the fact that all of my friends have simply come to terms with the fact that I may never be in (or find) a successful relationship.

And it’s not me. It’s only me when it’s you. And it’s always you.

lend a hand?

I never pay any attention to what’s going on. People who come to New York to visit always complain that New Yorkers don’t care about other people. They say that New Yorkers are mean spirited, they avoid you and just shake their heads impolitely when their group of tourists with maps and fanny packs, all standing in the middle of the sidewalk like no one else in the world exists, extend their arms an open their mouths with that we know is going to be a question of “Where am I?”

In our minds we say: You are already here. Just walk.

And it’s not that we’re rude or impolite, it’s just that in a city with so many people we covet those sacred moments when we get to be alone. When we can walk free and unobstructed (mostly) and clear our heads, out of the elevators and subways and busy offices that we’re crammed into all day long. And yes, of course we know how to get to Rockefeller Center from 70th and Park, but we’re not going to tell you how because you have a map(s), and even without a map(s), to us this city is the easiest place to navigate in the world, and you should, by all means, be able to just walk, and figure it out.

Sometimes, however, we have no choice but to stop and recognize the fact that no matter what we do we’re not alone here (or anywhere, really). On the 1 express train this morning I wasn’t paying attention, seriously reading The New Yorker, (funnily enough American Chronicles with Janet Lepore’s The Meaning of Life), when the woman standing next to me started yelling into the little speaker on the wall near the door which is marked in black and red: EMERGENCY BUTTON.

“HELLO? THIS IS…This is car number 6061 and we’ve got….we’ve got a MAN down near the doors laying on the ground….and people are trying to MOVE him and he’s NOT MOVING. Car 6061. There’s A MAN ON THE FLOOR and he’s NOT MOVING. WE NEED HELP.”

I have to admit, regrettably, that I first looked at her with a look of hateful irritation. Here we go, I thought. Another crazy person on my train, going to start yelling random things that don’t make sense. And it’s always my car. Why does it always have to be the car that I’m in that gets the crazy people? Of all the subway cars on all the lines in all the city…

Of course then I looked away from her, peered to my right, and saw it. What I saw at first as the crowd parted and people began muttering to themselves, was simply, a hand. Just a hand. There it was limp on the floor, palm face-up. Someone was attached to that hand but I couldn’t see them. They were on the floor tucked under the seat, blocked by people standing with spring coats and big shopping bags (at 8:30 AM?).

No one seemed to care. No one seemed phased. The one big thing we all seemed to manage was simply to look. We all just looked. The train stopped at 14th street and the subway conductor called for a doctor. As I left the train (to switch to the local) I saw the body attached to the hand on the ground - eyes closed, blue fleece jacket, light brown hair. He was someone.

To us we’re all just anybody. Could be anybody, we all thought. What can we really do about just anybody? People all around him were still. And my heart sank. I watched as they all just went back to their newspapers, silently upset that their few morning moments of peace and quiet on the subway were lost just because of somebody else’s someone.

All ignorance toboggans into know.

What is funny is that you can be afraid of things no matter how old you get. You think you’d grow out of it, out of something as silly as being afraid. Because being scared of something seems to be directly associated in our brains to our childhoods – being afraid of the dark, of the next door neighbor’s German Shepard who at the time was relatively the same size as you, of clowns, of being alone, of getting yelled at for spilled ice cream on shirts, for getting a bad grade on a spelling test, or breaking that glass vase that’s been in the family for generations.

What’s funny is that when you get older it’s not that you’re no longer scared, you’re just scared of different things – scared of how you’ll look in the morning when it’s no longer dark, of the next door neighbor’s wrath after you accidentally ran over their German Shepard with your car, of clowns (still), of being alone (forever), of getting yelled at for doing your job wrong, getting fired, then not having enough money to pay the rent.

I left Manhattan for a few days on a plane and I remembered the first time I flew when I was in the first grade. I remembered that I loved to fly. I loved everything about it. How fast the wheels turned before take-off, the ascent into the clouds, the rumble of turbulence, the screeching jolt of the landing. I sat on my knees in the window seat and peered out in what now resonates only as embarrassingly naïve fascination.

Now, trapped between a portly fellow asleep and taking over more than his fair share of arm space, and a girl about eighteen with her quilted Chanel handbag ($1,995), crying before take-off through her pink phone to presumably a friend about how “totally not upset Sean was” about her leaving, and how he “is trying to act all like, mature like, you know, blah blah, like ‘call me when you land,’ or whatever. And I just want to be like, God! Just like be a teenager ya know? We’re not married”) – I started to feel the fear.

What if this is it? What if something happens and the wheels don’t turn fast enough before take-off and the ascent into the clouds is rocky and the rumble of the turbulence takes us out of the air before we can even think about the loud screeching jolt of the landing? And how could I not be afraid when my last image would be of Chanel Handbag applying a full (and might I add, excessive) makeup routine mid-flight lasting over a half hour after waxing sentimental about her future with Sean?

But everything, of course, was fine. My fear faded and we landed. Portly Man woke up and moved his arm so that I could actually sit back in my seat, and Chanel Handbag thanked me (though who am I really to be giving relationship advice?) and complimented me on my own bag, which I neglected to tell her cost me $10 on Broadway and Spring.

Planes and life up you, and up the stakes, and the older you get the more realize that you don’t outgrow being afraid like you did that favorite pair of pajamas with feet (in yellow). We are afraid of flying, of regrets, of missing out on the important things in life, like designer handbags and loving Sean and it just becomes a part of who we are, and we learn (hopefully) to deal with it, (mostly), because aisle, window seat or center, sometimes you just don’t have a choice.

Might can could, possibly will.

We are all looking for something. The search is what keeps us going. We keep waking up every morning because how can we not? We think: this is it. This could be the day when we find It. This could be the day when all of our searching ends. It is this hopeful disillusion that subconsciously makes us smile as we drink our morning coffee, push through the crowds to work and then through the crowds on the way home.

True, sometimes we can’t help but look out at that person walking their dog or sitting on a bench along the park reading the Times as we pass them, frazzled and late to the office, and wonder, bitterly: don’t they have a job? Don’t they have somewhere to be? That must be nice, we huff, to have all that free time. But then we realize – they must have already found It.

Lucky them.

So we smile subconsciously, at the thought of our own personal searches, as the bus speeds us unsteadily across town, entirely unaware of two facts. One: that we may never really find what it is that we’re looking for. And two, (and this one is much more worrying than the first), we very well already have found it, but we’re just too stupid, too foolishly looking forward to what could be, to recognize what already is.

Luck will break your heart.