I like to think that I’d have learned by now that no amount of resolutions I make at the start of every year will ever change who I really am. Why do we bother? Why do we keep insisting that there’s so much about ourselves we need to change? I suppose it’s because most of the time we’re all ready for something different, recognizing the things we lack in, the things we need to work on and do better at, that somehow along the way throughout those 364 days of our lives we give up on, or forget, or find new things to be upset about or frustrated with and promise ourselves we’ll fix and never do. I suppose there’s nothing like being able to see the actual passing of time the way you do when the clock strikes twelve at the start of a new year where you can almost see the past year of your life fly out the window and become lost, that makes you want to do something.
I wonder what most of us will be thinking as the countdown begins. All the anticipation, the expectations of where we should be in order to say so long to the past and welcome in the future. Does it matter more where we’re standing or who’s standing beside us? Traffic is blocked off in midtown, people have been outside in huddled masses next to strangers in almost single degree temperatures for hours just to watch a ball drop from the sky.
In this crazy world where things that are important can slip away from us so easily, I wonder why we bother celebrating the end of something as much as we do today over champagne and over-priced dinners and over-hyped spectacles in the middle of 42nd street. I suppose it’s the hope of starting over again or starting fresh with a clean slate that has us all in a frenzy, calling friends across the world with well wishes at midnight while enjoying a drink at an overcrowded and overpriced bar we paid too much to get into.
As the seconds slip down 10...9...8...7...6 I like to think I’ll be feeling OK about how this year has come to pass, fully accepting that while there are great many things I’ll resolve to do, almost none of them will get accomplished. 5...4...3...2...another day, another chance, another night without cabs, without inhibitions, without lost hope, without regret. Happy New Year.
December 31, 2008
December 21, 2008
Home for the holidays.
Every family has their Christmas traditions and mine is no different. Growing up my sister and I believed in Santa Claus, we had faith that, despite our sometimes bad attitudes, on the whole we were good kids which meant we should be rewarded with the toys we diligently selected from the Macy’s catalogue.
However what I remember most was every Christmas Eve, my parents, sister and I would sit on the couch in our pajamas after having gone to church, and watch the 1983 performance of the holiday Boston Pops Orchestra that my father taped off of PBS. John Williams was the conductor and led the Pops through the typical holiday favorites, at one point the audience (and us) would join in on a sing-a-long, Lorne Greene would read T’was the Night Before Christmas, and at the end Santa Claus (who my sister and I always insisted was the "real" Santa) would come through the back doors of Symphony Hall, give out candy canes on his way up to the podium, before brandishing Maestro Williams with a miniature E.T. in black tie holding a conductors baton. Every year it was the same, the same performance with audience members whose clothes and hairstyles began to look more and more dated as the years progressed.
As fate would have it, I ended up going to college right down the street from Symphony Hall, and every year my parents would say we would get tickets to the real thing, and every year we didn’t get around to it and said: "we’ll do it next year."
A few years ago, my sister and I feeling too old to be bothered with sitting through yet another performance, muttering things like "this is lame," while texting friends from our cell phones, watched distractedly until my parents gave up and turned it off. The next morning the old 1983 tape was accidently taped over, and the look of loss in my mother’s eyes had been acute. Looking back I know it wasn’t just the pain of losing this old recording that each of us had by that point memorized, rather, she was mourning the loss of our childhoods, of time, of the past parts of our lives that you only recognize you can’t ever get back again until you lose something real.
Of course after I lost my mother and last year being the first Christmas without her, I felt compelled to try to reclaim something my family had lost. I made calls, left countless messages and emails with the main offices of Symphony Hall until finally, just five days before Christmas, a woman in their offices on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston wrote me back. She told me that my story touched the hearts of everyone in their office, that it's the reason they keep doing their holiday concerts, and she would overnight me the tape. So, there we were on Christmas Eve, my Dad, sister and I watching it tearfully in the painful emptiness of the living room that was now showing us the one thing we took for granted the most - time.
The thing is, every year it’s the same and every year we buy presents and spend too much money and lose our minds while losing sight of what really matters. We grow up and grow bitter and let ourselves forget that at the end of the day we’re all packing and traveling and gift-giving because of the people in our lives that we love driven by the hopeful idea that something small, like an old recording of a concert, can bring a family together. We say "as soon as," and "next time," and "next year," when we know we shouldn’t be wasting another minute. We stop believing, in people and the innocence of youth, and become accustomed to coming home to certain things that once are gone leave holes in our hearts no amount of time can repair.
They say you can’t go home again, but we all keep going home every year to a place that constantly changes, a concept that means different things to each of us in different parts of our lives. But it’s important to remember as we go home and start to count down the final days of yet another year, of time continuing to get away from us, the memories of how things used to be, and the realization that in the end not everything has to become lost.
However what I remember most was every Christmas Eve, my parents, sister and I would sit on the couch in our pajamas after having gone to church, and watch the 1983 performance of the holiday Boston Pops Orchestra that my father taped off of PBS. John Williams was the conductor and led the Pops through the typical holiday favorites, at one point the audience (and us) would join in on a sing-a-long, Lorne Greene would read T’was the Night Before Christmas, and at the end Santa Claus (who my sister and I always insisted was the "real" Santa) would come through the back doors of Symphony Hall, give out candy canes on his way up to the podium, before brandishing Maestro Williams with a miniature E.T. in black tie holding a conductors baton. Every year it was the same, the same performance with audience members whose clothes and hairstyles began to look more and more dated as the years progressed.
As fate would have it, I ended up going to college right down the street from Symphony Hall, and every year my parents would say we would get tickets to the real thing, and every year we didn’t get around to it and said: "we’ll do it next year."
A few years ago, my sister and I feeling too old to be bothered with sitting through yet another performance, muttering things like "this is lame," while texting friends from our cell phones, watched distractedly until my parents gave up and turned it off. The next morning the old 1983 tape was accidently taped over, and the look of loss in my mother’s eyes had been acute. Looking back I know it wasn’t just the pain of losing this old recording that each of us had by that point memorized, rather, she was mourning the loss of our childhoods, of time, of the past parts of our lives that you only recognize you can’t ever get back again until you lose something real.
Of course after I lost my mother and last year being the first Christmas without her, I felt compelled to try to reclaim something my family had lost. I made calls, left countless messages and emails with the main offices of Symphony Hall until finally, just five days before Christmas, a woman in their offices on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston wrote me back. She told me that my story touched the hearts of everyone in their office, that it's the reason they keep doing their holiday concerts, and she would overnight me the tape. So, there we were on Christmas Eve, my Dad, sister and I watching it tearfully in the painful emptiness of the living room that was now showing us the one thing we took for granted the most - time.
The thing is, every year it’s the same and every year we buy presents and spend too much money and lose our minds while losing sight of what really matters. We grow up and grow bitter and let ourselves forget that at the end of the day we’re all packing and traveling and gift-giving because of the people in our lives that we love driven by the hopeful idea that something small, like an old recording of a concert, can bring a family together. We say "as soon as," and "next time," and "next year," when we know we shouldn’t be wasting another minute. We stop believing, in people and the innocence of youth, and become accustomed to coming home to certain things that once are gone leave holes in our hearts no amount of time can repair.
They say you can’t go home again, but we all keep going home every year to a place that constantly changes, a concept that means different things to each of us in different parts of our lives. But it’s important to remember as we go home and start to count down the final days of yet another year, of time continuing to get away from us, the memories of how things used to be, and the realization that in the end not everything has to become lost.
December 10, 2008
You can plan all you want to.
You can lie in your bed
and fill whole notebooks
with schemes and intentions.
But,
within a single afternoon,
within hours or minutes,
everything you plan
and everything you have fought to make yourself
can be undone
as a slug is undone
when salt is poured on him.
And right up to the moment
when you find yourself dissolving into foam
you can still believe
you are doing fine.
and fill whole notebooks
with schemes and intentions.
But,
within a single afternoon,
within hours or minutes,
everything you plan
and everything you have fought to make yourself
can be undone
as a slug is undone
when salt is poured on him.
And right up to the moment
when you find yourself dissolving into foam
you can still believe
you are doing fine.
December 7, 2008
21 degrees, and none of us can feel a thing.
"Cold out?" he asked, concerned. Seemed like a rather obvious question to me, what with the tip of my nose bright red and my teeth in the early stages of uncontrollable chattering. "Quite," I said.
I know that in this city we’re constantly surrounded by nameless faces, strangers and unrecognizable shapes in thickly insulated jackets, that on cold nights sometimes all we need to know is that we’re not alone. When the air dips below unable-to-walk-ten-blocks-without-hypothermia, we need reach out to a fellow New Yorker just to make sure that we’re not the only ones who are hurting, not the only ones who can feel the cold that aches like unrequited love on the sidewalks, (if only they could just feel how I feel then they would know how it feels...).
We need to know (tough as we are) that someone else, one of these nameless faces who so intimately share our seats on the subway (legs touching) and stand beside us at crosswalks (shoulders brushing) and in elevators (is that your hand on my...?) every day of our lives, are real too.
"Well I hope you get home ok," he said. See, we’re not as mean here as people think we are. We’re just as lost and scared and confused and lonely and hopeful and concerned and desperate as everyone else is on cold nights where you can’t feel your nose and all you want to do is get home to something or someone (whether you have them or not) whose face doesn’t seem quite so foreign.
Feel that? Yeah, me too.
I know that in this city we’re constantly surrounded by nameless faces, strangers and unrecognizable shapes in thickly insulated jackets, that on cold nights sometimes all we need to know is that we’re not alone. When the air dips below unable-to-walk-ten-blocks-without-hypothermia, we need reach out to a fellow New Yorker just to make sure that we’re not the only ones who are hurting, not the only ones who can feel the cold that aches like unrequited love on the sidewalks, (if only they could just feel how I feel then they would know how it feels...).
We need to know (tough as we are) that someone else, one of these nameless faces who so intimately share our seats on the subway (legs touching) and stand beside us at crosswalks (shoulders brushing) and in elevators (is that your hand on my...?) every day of our lives, are real too.
"Well I hope you get home ok," he said. See, we’re not as mean here as people think we are. We’re just as lost and scared and confused and lonely and hopeful and concerned and desperate as everyone else is on cold nights where you can’t feel your nose and all you want to do is get home to something or someone (whether you have them or not) whose face doesn’t seem quite so foreign.
Feel that? Yeah, me too.
December 1, 2008
December.
It was 55 degrees in Manhattan today and it doesn't feel like Christmas is only 24 days away. The tree sellers are already out on the sidewalks making long lines of green against the grey pavement, and it's nice to inhale deep the scent of pine you walk by. What is it about the smell of pine trees that makes me feel like a kid again? This will be my third Christmas in New York and the first year I won't have a tree. What is it about the lost memories of the past that pulls the holiday spirit of youth away from you? Perhaps it’s inevitable that after all this time the sound of Burl Ives humming from overhead speakers in the grocery store only ends up making me feel depressed.
The Rockefeller Center tree lighting is Wednesday. My first year here I tried to go see it, but like most things in this city the tourists ruined it, packing into the place well before 3PM making it impossible for locals to swing by six hours later – the time of the actual turning of the switch (I only live 20 blocks away!). Inevitably once 48th to 51st streets get lit, the rest of the city goes up in holiday flames as well, and there's no escaping it (and it doesn't help that my friend just got a job working weekends at this place of which I have strict instructions to visit on Saturdays anytime from 12-6).
It's only a matter of time before chestnuts roasting on a open fire will be painfully ingrained on my brain despite the fact that I’ve never actually roasted chestnuts before, on a fire or otherwise. And don't even get me started on The 12 Days of Christmas, the song nobody knows the lyrics to but insists on singing loudly regardless, coming in from other rooms just to shout fiiiiive goooold riiiiings (yeah, that's the only part I know too). The Salvation Army bell will now be ringing on every street corner, making me feel guiltier than ever with every cling-clang cling-clang about not wanting to give up what little Starbucks money I have left after rent. More people than ever will be crowding onto the subway with big shopping bags all getting in my way and reminding me that gifts and bags and boxes with bows aren’t nearly as important as people make them out to be. I'll send out Christmas cards to friends, needing to ask again for the new addresses of those who have sadly left Manhattan since last year, causing me to question why I'm still here...
And then it will snow. Sure, maybe sometimes all anybody needs to feel better about the approaching holiday and the amount of money they're going to have to spend on the people in their lives just to prove they care about them in this financial crisis, is a nice soft blanket of white – but I have a feeling that just won't work for me this year. Because once the snow lands in Manhattan it turns dirty fast, creating brown mountains on the sidewalks alongside the mountains of trash bags that pile up after the blizzard stops the garbage trucks from getting through. Quelle disaster.
No, it's 55 degrees in Manhattan today and the last thing in the world I want to think about is the approaching holiday and the ending of a year I can't help but feel I wasted. Maybe a miracle of George Bailey proportions will happen between now and the end of the month to change the way I feel - but I'm afraid I’m about as confident in that as I am in knowing what comes after a partridge in a pear tree.
The Rockefeller Center tree lighting is Wednesday. My first year here I tried to go see it, but like most things in this city the tourists ruined it, packing into the place well before 3PM making it impossible for locals to swing by six hours later – the time of the actual turning of the switch (I only live 20 blocks away!). Inevitably once 48th to 51st streets get lit, the rest of the city goes up in holiday flames as well, and there's no escaping it (and it doesn't help that my friend just got a job working weekends at this place of which I have strict instructions to visit on Saturdays anytime from 12-6).
It's only a matter of time before chestnuts roasting on a open fire will be painfully ingrained on my brain despite the fact that I’ve never actually roasted chestnuts before, on a fire or otherwise. And don't even get me started on The 12 Days of Christmas, the song nobody knows the lyrics to but insists on singing loudly regardless, coming in from other rooms just to shout fiiiiive goooold riiiiings (yeah, that's the only part I know too). The Salvation Army bell will now be ringing on every street corner, making me feel guiltier than ever with every cling-clang cling-clang about not wanting to give up what little Starbucks money I have left after rent. More people than ever will be crowding onto the subway with big shopping bags all getting in my way and reminding me that gifts and bags and boxes with bows aren’t nearly as important as people make them out to be. I'll send out Christmas cards to friends, needing to ask again for the new addresses of those who have sadly left Manhattan since last year, causing me to question why I'm still here...
And then it will snow. Sure, maybe sometimes all anybody needs to feel better about the approaching holiday and the amount of money they're going to have to spend on the people in their lives just to prove they care about them in this financial crisis, is a nice soft blanket of white – but I have a feeling that just won't work for me this year. Because once the snow lands in Manhattan it turns dirty fast, creating brown mountains on the sidewalks alongside the mountains of trash bags that pile up after the blizzard stops the garbage trucks from getting through. Quelle disaster.
No, it's 55 degrees in Manhattan today and the last thing in the world I want to think about is the approaching holiday and the ending of a year I can't help but feel I wasted. Maybe a miracle of George Bailey proportions will happen between now and the end of the month to change the way I feel - but I'm afraid I’m about as confident in that as I am in knowing what comes after a partridge in a pear tree.
November 26, 2008
tradition.
Wouldn’t it be nice if some things never changed? Thanksgiving is all about traditions, those things that stay with us and mark who we are and what our lives have been like and what keeps bringing us home year after year from all over the world just to sit at a table and do the same thing again and again.
So it’s easy to take for granted how much it means to have some things that never change. Because there’s nothing like sitting around a table among family at Thanksgiving to really see what’s missing. There’s nothing like an empty chair to make you really understand how important those lost years where everything stayed the same really were.
I figure now it’s important to remember as you sit down to an astoundingly large turkey in the middle of your table while getting frustrated with questions from relatives about the overall direction of your future, (questions of money, stability, growth) with that Grandmother (who at one time seemed so sweet), pestering you about when, when for crying out loud, will you just bring home a nice boy for all of us to meet - to be thankful for what you have when you have it. Because there’s only one reason that we book train tickets and sit in gridlock traffic and wait in terminals and board delayed planes - and it never quite means as much as it did before everything begins to change, and you aere forced to start to make new traditions of your own.
So it’s easy to take for granted how much it means to have some things that never change. Because there’s nothing like sitting around a table among family at Thanksgiving to really see what’s missing. There’s nothing like an empty chair to make you really understand how important those lost years where everything stayed the same really were.
I figure now it’s important to remember as you sit down to an astoundingly large turkey in the middle of your table while getting frustrated with questions from relatives about the overall direction of your future, (questions of money, stability, growth) with that Grandmother (who at one time seemed so sweet), pestering you about when, when for crying out loud, will you just bring home a nice boy for all of us to meet - to be thankful for what you have when you have it. Because there’s only one reason that we book train tickets and sit in gridlock traffic and wait in terminals and board delayed planes - and it never quite means as much as it did before everything begins to change, and you aere forced to start to make new traditions of your own.
November 24, 2008
In good times, and in bad.
I was just in the Midwest for a few days where things are slower and people are nicer and lives are lived a little differently than I'm used to. My friend got married, and as Maid of Honor I honored her amazing good luck at having been able to find a perfect match in this less than perfect world for that as-long-as-you-both-shall-live portion of her life.
In the Midwest and at the wedding however, I was a foreigner. At the reception when I told someone I had flown in from Manhattan they said, "Oh, you're one of those," and wrinkled their nose as though they could smell the wide array of unrecognizable scents that hit you on the corner of 42nd street. Yes, I'm one of those, whatever that means. (Funny isn't it, how we can sometimes react to outsiders?) He was so adamant in his judgment that I was tempted to tell him that if he were to come to Manhattan, some of us just might upturn our noses (tourists, le sigh) and suddenly he would become one of those as well.
Maybe we should be more understanding of Geography and recognize that no matter where you're from, in the end, it's all about what you choose to go home to. After being trapped in the airport for five hours last night waiting to get back to New York, I couldn't help but think that maybe marriage and Manhattan aren't so different. Home can just as easily be a person as it can a city or town or house on a street.
When we finally landed (well past midnight) and I had to take an overpriced cab back to my overpriced apartment, I realized how much your life changes after the "Do you take this person?" question presents itself. In New York our vows when standing at the alter of Signing The Lease include (but are not limited to): letting people off the subway first, avoiding Times Square at all costs, standing to the right, capitalizing on anything free, never exceeding our income, promising to leave the moment we let ourselves forget how truly amazing this city really is (because then, what’s the point?).
You can only hate on what you don't know for so long until you realize that we're all after the same thing – something we just can't wait to get back to, and for some of us it just might be a place on a map.
Of course the only thing about New York is that there's certainly no honeymoon period (in this place, everything comes at a cost). But I figure I'm okay with simply leaving that to them.
In the Midwest and at the wedding however, I was a foreigner. At the reception when I told someone I had flown in from Manhattan they said, "Oh, you're one of those," and wrinkled their nose as though they could smell the wide array of unrecognizable scents that hit you on the corner of 42nd street. Yes, I'm one of those, whatever that means. (Funny isn't it, how we can sometimes react to outsiders?) He was so adamant in his judgment that I was tempted to tell him that if he were to come to Manhattan, some of us just might upturn our noses (tourists, le sigh) and suddenly he would become one of those as well.
Maybe we should be more understanding of Geography and recognize that no matter where you're from, in the end, it's all about what you choose to go home to. After being trapped in the airport for five hours last night waiting to get back to New York, I couldn't help but think that maybe marriage and Manhattan aren't so different. Home can just as easily be a person as it can a city or town or house on a street.
When we finally landed (well past midnight) and I had to take an overpriced cab back to my overpriced apartment, I realized how much your life changes after the "Do you take this person?" question presents itself. In New York our vows when standing at the alter of Signing The Lease include (but are not limited to): letting people off the subway first, avoiding Times Square at all costs, standing to the right, capitalizing on anything free, never exceeding our income, promising to leave the moment we let ourselves forget how truly amazing this city really is (because then, what’s the point?).
You can only hate on what you don't know for so long until you realize that we're all after the same thing – something we just can't wait to get back to, and for some of us it just might be a place on a map.
Of course the only thing about New York is that there's certainly no honeymoon period (in this place, everything comes at a cost). But I figure I'm okay with simply leaving that to them.
November 17, 2008
Numb.
It’s cold here in New York and walking down the streets its easy to think a lot more about the bad things in your life when you can’t feel your nose and toes. We know it comes, every year it’s the same and yet it still catches us off guard. Hands digging deep into pockets, collars up-turned we curse it under our cloudy breaths, try to accept all we’ve lost (those long hot days, light ‘til 8PM, shorts and t-shirts) and how much longer we’re going to have to go without (December, January, February...).
Time seems endless when you can’t feel a thing.
Time seems endless when you can’t feel a thing.
November 9, 2008
Pushing my love over the borderline.
It's really nice that I have so many friends who insist on falling in love. I always thought that finding the love of your life was no small feat, a process of pure luck and determination combined with being able to pull off that I-don't-care-when-I-really-care thing which can take years (if ever, if we’re being honest with ourselves) to achieve. And even after all that, it can sometimes leave you feeling a little: this is it?
However thanks to online dating sites and the genuine hard to resist gentlemen from the Midwest, I have close friends who are getting married, committing to the rest of their lives, mapping out their futures in houses with garages with tools in them – all while I'm still budgeting my small amount of dwindling funds around allowing myself to enjoy at least one glass of wine per evening (which may or may not force me to resort to a few spoonfuls of peanut butter for dinner). Regardless, this is all about choices…and priorities, and depending on which side of the fence you're on, one of us may be entirely out of our minds.
But what's also really nice, is that these friends like me enough to ask me to be their Maid of Honor. I mean, sure, I could do without having the word "maid" attached to my name for at least another twenty years (however society would leave you believe that a single woman past a certain age can't be qualified as anything else), and "honor," well, I'm not even really sure what that means (don't sleep with the groom?). All I know is that I'm in charge of helping to make the most important day of their live turn out to be a great success (no pressure).
In the end it's about assisting and supporting their choices and priorities by purchasing gifts and plane tickets and shoes, pulling off (god willing) a dress with a huge bow attached to my bottom, dancing sans a plus one like an idiot (nothing like a wedding to remind oneself of how single they really are), and crafting a sentimental (yet humorous) speech for 200+ people all about the very thing I know next to nothing about – love.
Of course it's also about foregoing the monetary comfort that allows me to imbibe enough on a daily basis to get me from one week to the next in this city that never sleeps – and November is looking like it's going to be a particularly dry month what with one wedding coming up in just under two weeks.
I thought sacrifice when it comes to love only applied to the people in love?
Just goes to show how much I know.
However thanks to online dating sites and the genuine hard to resist gentlemen from the Midwest, I have close friends who are getting married, committing to the rest of their lives, mapping out their futures in houses with garages with tools in them – all while I'm still budgeting my small amount of dwindling funds around allowing myself to enjoy at least one glass of wine per evening (which may or may not force me to resort to a few spoonfuls of peanut butter for dinner). Regardless, this is all about choices…and priorities, and depending on which side of the fence you're on, one of us may be entirely out of our minds.
But what's also really nice, is that these friends like me enough to ask me to be their Maid of Honor. I mean, sure, I could do without having the word "maid" attached to my name for at least another twenty years (however society would leave you believe that a single woman past a certain age can't be qualified as anything else), and "honor," well, I'm not even really sure what that means (don't sleep with the groom?). All I know is that I'm in charge of helping to make the most important day of their live turn out to be a great success (no pressure).
In the end it's about assisting and supporting their choices and priorities by purchasing gifts and plane tickets and shoes, pulling off (god willing) a dress with a huge bow attached to my bottom, dancing sans a plus one like an idiot (nothing like a wedding to remind oneself of how single they really are), and crafting a sentimental (yet humorous) speech for 200+ people all about the very thing I know next to nothing about – love.
Of course it's also about foregoing the monetary comfort that allows me to imbibe enough on a daily basis to get me from one week to the next in this city that never sleeps – and November is looking like it's going to be a particularly dry month what with one wedding coming up in just under two weeks.
I thought sacrifice when it comes to love only applied to the people in love?
Just goes to show how much I know.
November 5, 2008
It's red (again).
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) but we go along with it anyway in a very, "Time to turn back time? Sure thing dear, just let me finish my coffee..." And speaking of coffee, (as I do frequently), my thoughts 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 they were part of their briefcase or an extension of their fingers.
Could it be? Starbucks holiday cups are here...already?
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 place 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 we even get Thanksgiving first?
Apparently not. It's barely the first week of November 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 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 on all sorts of 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 so the only thing I'm looking to bequeath at the moment is a fast hard kick to a stomach.
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 or you lose your job or your lover or the thing you've been working so hard for so long to get, and (poof!) there you are sitting drinking Christmas Blend and you don't feel anything but the hot memories of a simpler time gone by getting caught in your throat.
Could it be? Starbucks holiday cups are here...already?
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 place 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 we even get Thanksgiving first?
Apparently not. It's barely the first week of November 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 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 on all sorts of 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 so the only thing I'm looking to bequeath at the moment is a fast hard kick to a stomach.
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 or you lose your job or your lover or the thing you've been working so hard for so long to get, and (poof!) there you are sitting drinking Christmas Blend and you don't feel anything but the hot memories of a simpler time gone by getting caught in your throat.
November 2, 2008
fall back.
There are more occasions than I can count where I wish I could have turned back time. There’s nothing as painful as looking at all of the mistakes you’ve made and having to ask yourself in the harsh light of hindsight: seriously?
I know we all can’t get it right all of the time, but it would be nice if the odds were a little more stacked in our favor. And every day is a chance to get it right, but life happens so fast here in New York that if you miss one step you might just miss out on the chance of a lifetime. People will always push past you here leaving you to perpetually wonder what could have happened if.
If, if, if, the worst word in the English language. Because if leads to chance, and chance leads to timing, and we all know there’s never a lot of time to take a chance on something great when it finally does come along.
But it was nice, all of us here in New York today, together placing our fingers on the hands of the clock to go back, to try to reclaim things (quickly now that the days are shorter) and telling ourselves that we’re smarter now, that this time (perhaps) things will be different. At least until spring.
I know we all can’t get it right all of the time, but it would be nice if the odds were a little more stacked in our favor. And every day is a chance to get it right, but life happens so fast here in New York that if you miss one step you might just miss out on the chance of a lifetime. People will always push past you here leaving you to perpetually wonder what could have happened if.
If, if, if, the worst word in the English language. Because if leads to chance, and chance leads to timing, and we all know there’s never a lot of time to take a chance on something great when it finally does come along.
But it was nice, all of us here in New York today, together placing our fingers on the hands of the clock to go back, to try to reclaim things (quickly now that the days are shorter) and telling ourselves that we’re smarter now, that this time (perhaps) things will be different. At least until spring.
October 29, 2008
love in the lift.
What’s so great about New York —
is that all the strangers you see everyday,
don’t nearly make your heart beat as fast
(and who can even recall all of those lost subway moments now??)
as when you get a few seconds alone
in the elevator of your building
with the guy on the 18th floor.
is that all the strangers you see everyday,
don’t nearly make your heart beat as fast
(and who can even recall all of those lost subway moments now??)
as when you get a few seconds alone
in the elevator of your building
with the guy on the 18th floor.
October 22, 2008
scissor sister.
Sitting on the crosstown bus on my way home I was tired. The days are long now that the weather has turned cold making the trip back from the west side to the east side happen in the dark. I was hardly concentrating on this week New York Magazine (The Manic Depressive Economy) when I stared to hear the woman behind me talking into her cell phone.
Hello? Yes can you connect me with the Aveda Salon on 72nd and Columbus? Thanks, I’ll hold.
It caught my attention because at that exact moment I noticed that the bus we were on was just passing the Aveda Salon on 72nd and Columbus.
Hi, yes, is this the main number at the salon, because I know you have other numbers but I just wanted to make...oh, it is? Thanks, well I just wanted to call because I just had my hair cut with Celia and she cut it too short, but I just wanted to make sure she knows it’s OK. I mean it’s just way too short, but I mean it’s not a big deal, I don’t want to make her feel bad or anything. It’s just hair, it’ll grow back. So that’s it, I just wanted to call and say it’s not a big deal. Ok. Yes. Thanks.
The woman’s voice was very soft and she sounded like a ten year old apologizing to their mom for having spoiled their appetite for dinner by having too many candy bars. Most all people in small and cramped spaces in New York like to talk on their cell phones blatantly and loudly. We are, it seems, a city full of those who don’t notice or care about anyone around them other than themselves. Yet, as my luck would have it, this one woman’s story which was so intriguing (any good writer will tell you that overhearing great conversations is the best practice) had the decency to talk in a low and quiet voice.
I was struggling to hear, back flush against the seat, using all available willpower to not turn around to catch a glimpse of said disastrous hair cut (too short!) and tell her really, it’s not so bad (we've all been there).
The woman proceeded to call her friend to tell her the events of the day.
Did you get my message? Oh dear it’s awful. It’s just too short and I just called to tell her it’s OK because I felt bad I got so upset in front of her. I said that it’s just hair and that it will grow back...but God Meredith....too short. She took too much off the sides and I was sitting there.....couldn’t tell....I felt bad....how am I ever going to...
It was more difficult to hear everything as we passed more traffic on Central Park West, but I was piecing it all together. She had a big date. Her friend Meredith was being supportive. What good is it to make a big deal out of nothing? Men don’t usually like her anyway. But of all the salons in the city this had never happened to her before. Why does everything have to be so hard? New York isn’t all she thought it was going to be.
All I do is take the bus from one end to the other. I get up in the morning and take the bus from the east side to the west side. After work I take it from the west to the east, crossing through the park is my only real adventure.
When we reached 1st avenue she was still sitting there as I got up. Looking (how could I not?!) at her I could tell that it was short, a chocolate brown mop cut close to the sides of her face and head. She was pale with chubby red cheeks but the only bad thing about her hair was that it made her lonely and sad eyes more distinct.
It’s not bad at all. I told her. Really, you look lovely.
I left before she could say anything, the phone still paused at the side of her face, Meredith still talking on the other end. But as I walked by her I swear I saw a bit of a smile.
Sometimes all you need in this frustrating and lonely city and this frustrating and lonely life, is a little bit of hope.
Hello? Yes can you connect me with the Aveda Salon on 72nd and Columbus? Thanks, I’ll hold.
It caught my attention because at that exact moment I noticed that the bus we were on was just passing the Aveda Salon on 72nd and Columbus.
Hi, yes, is this the main number at the salon, because I know you have other numbers but I just wanted to make...oh, it is? Thanks, well I just wanted to call because I just had my hair cut with Celia and she cut it too short, but I just wanted to make sure she knows it’s OK. I mean it’s just way too short, but I mean it’s not a big deal, I don’t want to make her feel bad or anything. It’s just hair, it’ll grow back. So that’s it, I just wanted to call and say it’s not a big deal. Ok. Yes. Thanks.
The woman’s voice was very soft and she sounded like a ten year old apologizing to their mom for having spoiled their appetite for dinner by having too many candy bars. Most all people in small and cramped spaces in New York like to talk on their cell phones blatantly and loudly. We are, it seems, a city full of those who don’t notice or care about anyone around them other than themselves. Yet, as my luck would have it, this one woman’s story which was so intriguing (any good writer will tell you that overhearing great conversations is the best practice) had the decency to talk in a low and quiet voice.
I was struggling to hear, back flush against the seat, using all available willpower to not turn around to catch a glimpse of said disastrous hair cut (too short!) and tell her really, it’s not so bad (we've all been there).
The woman proceeded to call her friend to tell her the events of the day.
Did you get my message? Oh dear it’s awful. It’s just too short and I just called to tell her it’s OK because I felt bad I got so upset in front of her. I said that it’s just hair and that it will grow back...but God Meredith....too short. She took too much off the sides and I was sitting there.....couldn’t tell....I felt bad....how am I ever going to...
It was more difficult to hear everything as we passed more traffic on Central Park West, but I was piecing it all together. She had a big date. Her friend Meredith was being supportive. What good is it to make a big deal out of nothing? Men don’t usually like her anyway. But of all the salons in the city this had never happened to her before. Why does everything have to be so hard? New York isn’t all she thought it was going to be.
All I do is take the bus from one end to the other. I get up in the morning and take the bus from the east side to the west side. After work I take it from the west to the east, crossing through the park is my only real adventure.
When we reached 1st avenue she was still sitting there as I got up. Looking (how could I not?!) at her I could tell that it was short, a chocolate brown mop cut close to the sides of her face and head. She was pale with chubby red cheeks but the only bad thing about her hair was that it made her lonely and sad eyes more distinct.
It’s not bad at all. I told her. Really, you look lovely.
I left before she could say anything, the phone still paused at the side of her face, Meredith still talking on the other end. But as I walked by her I swear I saw a bit of a smile.
Sometimes all you need in this frustrating and lonely city and this frustrating and lonely life, is a little bit of hope.
October 20, 2008
People don’t change, so it’s a good thing seasons do.
I don’t know why it always amazes me that one day we’re all out on the sidewalks complaining of the heat, sweating on the subways struggling for some amount of leftover non-smelly space as every person feels closer than usual, more suffocating, more crowded...
...and suddenly there we are, all huddled on street corners waiting for the bus with hands digging deep into pockets of coats we forgot we had.
...and suddenly there we are, all huddled on street corners waiting for the bus with hands digging deep into pockets of coats we forgot we had.
October 9, 2008
In the red.
There comes a point in every Manhattan girl’s life when the process of checking ones bank account becomes an altogether horrifying task, inducing gasps, nausea and overall denial. I am not a big spender and never have been, which is a good thing because one can’t afford to be in this city. I have clothes from high school (the classics never go out of style) and eat modestly (it’s amazing how long a jar of peanut butter can last you) and have never cared much in the way of designer handbags or fancy jewelry (how much for that silver bracelet?!?!).
But after nearly three years of living in a city that refuses to pay me what I’m owed and charges me way too much to live in what most places would refer to as a walk-in closet, it was inevitable that I would, one day, look at that dreaded bank account, despite all my efforts to be frugal, and see staring back at me not just any number, but a number in red. With a negative sign in front of it. (The horror!).
It’s a scary feeling realizing that while you are (in most regards) a grown woman capable of holding down a high stress job in a higher stress city, that you can’t always live within your already meager means.
Yes, New York is the greatest place in the world. No, I don’t have any plans to ever leave it. But there comes a point when you can’t help but ask yourself what it means to be in this financially freaked out fragment of time, and recognize that everything you’re working for, everything you have worked for, for forty-five plus hours a week for the past three years of your life, has at the end of the day, not really amounted to much of anything at all.
Oh, and donations are welcome.
But after nearly three years of living in a city that refuses to pay me what I’m owed and charges me way too much to live in what most places would refer to as a walk-in closet, it was inevitable that I would, one day, look at that dreaded bank account, despite all my efforts to be frugal, and see staring back at me not just any number, but a number in red. With a negative sign in front of it. (The horror!).
It’s a scary feeling realizing that while you are (in most regards) a grown woman capable of holding down a high stress job in a higher stress city, that you can’t always live within your already meager means.
Yes, New York is the greatest place in the world. No, I don’t have any plans to ever leave it. But there comes a point when you can’t help but ask yourself what it means to be in this financially freaked out fragment of time, and recognize that everything you’re working for, everything you have worked for, for forty-five plus hours a week for the past three years of your life, has at the end of the day, not really amounted to much of anything at all.
Oh, and donations are welcome.
October 1, 2008
“For best results, squeeze tube from the bottom and flatten as you go up.”
Why is it my best and most ridiculous thoughts upon me when I’m brushing my teeth (vertical strokes, not horizontal) and absently looking back at myself in the mirror?
Tonight was: Relationships are like toothpaste.
Ever notice that when you start off with a new tube you use significantly more than you need to? You’re liberal about it because it’s new and you figure you have a whole tube left that conceivably won’t run out of steam for a good long while (there’s comfort isn’t there, in thinking you have a lot of time left on something?).
But as the days pass you find yourself cutting back, rationing, scared at the thought that it will run out and you’ll be forced to make the effort to go out and get a new one (they’re all the same in the end anyway). The tube gets flatter regardless, causing you to sometimes skimp on your morning brush knowing that you’ll be having coffee in another hour anyway, so what difference will it make?
And then you find yourself in the final days, pushing your index finger along the thin glossy surface from the bottom up, pressing from the T-S-E-R-C all the way to the top, trying to capitalize on every last drop because you have reached what at the beginning you know would inevitably come - the end.
Followed by: I think I might have a cavity.
Tonight was: Relationships are like toothpaste.
Ever notice that when you start off with a new tube you use significantly more than you need to? You’re liberal about it because it’s new and you figure you have a whole tube left that conceivably won’t run out of steam for a good long while (there’s comfort isn’t there, in thinking you have a lot of time left on something?).
But as the days pass you find yourself cutting back, rationing, scared at the thought that it will run out and you’ll be forced to make the effort to go out and get a new one (they’re all the same in the end anyway). The tube gets flatter regardless, causing you to sometimes skimp on your morning brush knowing that you’ll be having coffee in another hour anyway, so what difference will it make?
And then you find yourself in the final days, pushing your index finger along the thin glossy surface from the bottom up, pressing from the T-S-E-R-C all the way to the top, trying to capitalize on every last drop because you have reached what at the beginning you know would inevitably come - the end.
Followed by: I think I might have a cavity.
September 29, 2008
Dining Briefs.
We were sitting at the bar of the hot new spot in alphabet city (so hot and new in fact, that the New York Times was sitting next to us snapping pictures of their signature cocktail for this story) drinking too many Poquito Picante’s talking about how life in New York isn’t worthwhile if you don’t take advantages of all the city has to offer and that it's true: Life. Happens. Here.
We became friendly with the bartender, Douglas, who went on to make us drinks we didn’t order that tasted unlike anything we’d ever had before. Drunk, and alone at the bar when my companion went to the bathroom, I watched as Douglas leaned in and asked me: is that guy your boyfriend?
"That guy has a boyfriend of his own," I said.
Why is it the ones who always ask never do anything about it, and the ones I’m with are already taken?
We became friendly with the bartender, Douglas, who went on to make us drinks we didn’t order that tasted unlike anything we’d ever had before. Drunk, and alone at the bar when my companion went to the bathroom, I watched as Douglas leaned in and asked me: is that guy your boyfriend?
"That guy has a boyfriend of his own," I said.
Why is it the ones who always ask never do anything about it, and the ones I’m with are already taken?
September 21, 2008
Safely walk to school without a sound.
Something about fall makes me want to buy binders and organize all of the messy parts of my life into folders marked things like "finances," and "goals" and "relationships." I’d like to 3-hole punch those documented pages detailing the specifics that might help me going forward to make sense of everything. I’d write notes in the margins in colored pencil, supply a grading system to keep on top of things: finances: C- (needs work), goals: B- (try harder), relationships: F (utterly hopeless).
I’d like to put all of the people I know into designated slots in the front of my backpack and carry them around with me so I’d always know where they were, letting me pull them out at the exact moment I need them. I’d like more gold-star days, I’d like more time for recess. I’d like to go back to the time when going to gym meant so much more than running for an hour on a machine that doesn’t take you anywhere at all, except further down the path of never-satisfied self-hatred.
I want those big pink erasures to rub away all of my past mistakes, leaving nothing behind but little darkened crumbles that I can simply brush away with a flick of my wrist. I’d like to not have to worry about time and finding dates and someone to love me for who I am. I’d like to not feel the pressure to think about settling down and getting married and having a house with a garage with tools in it (wasn’t it nice when just holding someone’s hand was enough? There was something exhilarating about the courage it took to just reach out and take hold of that one person’s hand you brushed your hair for, the one person you always looked for in the crowd, the one person you always hoped you’d get to sit next to in class).
Fall makes me want to go back to when everything was so much easier, and a failing grade didn’t necessarily mean that you were failing at your life. But it will pass soon enough, this urge for me to buy #2 pencils and make sense of everything that ultimately doesn't make any sense at all. With the coming of the winter weather I’ll just look for whatever extra credit I can find to get me through to next year, and hope that by then I'll have been able to bring up my grades.
I’d like to put all of the people I know into designated slots in the front of my backpack and carry them around with me so I’d always know where they were, letting me pull them out at the exact moment I need them. I’d like more gold-star days, I’d like more time for recess. I’d like to go back to the time when going to gym meant so much more than running for an hour on a machine that doesn’t take you anywhere at all, except further down the path of never-satisfied self-hatred.
I want those big pink erasures to rub away all of my past mistakes, leaving nothing behind but little darkened crumbles that I can simply brush away with a flick of my wrist. I’d like to not have to worry about time and finding dates and someone to love me for who I am. I’d like to not feel the pressure to think about settling down and getting married and having a house with a garage with tools in it (wasn’t it nice when just holding someone’s hand was enough? There was something exhilarating about the courage it took to just reach out and take hold of that one person’s hand you brushed your hair for, the one person you always looked for in the crowd, the one person you always hoped you’d get to sit next to in class).
Fall makes me want to go back to when everything was so much easier, and a failing grade didn’t necessarily mean that you were failing at your life. But it will pass soon enough, this urge for me to buy #2 pencils and make sense of everything that ultimately doesn't make any sense at all. With the coming of the winter weather I’ll just look for whatever extra credit I can find to get me through to next year, and hope that by then I'll have been able to bring up my grades.
September 16, 2008
You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em.
You don’t have to go to Vegas for four days like I did in order to know that it’s easy take too many risks and place bets on your happiness. You also don’t have to go to Vegas for four days to realize that it is, in fact, the most depressing place in America.
Without much to gamble (what with rent already late) I was a bystander, an observer to the endless hope and silent desperation in those large smoke-filled rooms of flashing lights, without windows or clocks, (causing you to question not only what time of day it is, but who you are).
I can understand of course, that we like the challenge, that we always think we have more chances to win back what we’ve lost - all we need is just a little...more...time. It’s amazing isn’t it, how fast the things that you work so hard for can disappear so suddenly (money, dreams, love...) before you even have the opportunity to realize you were losing them? Most of the time it seems we try so hard to follow the rules that keep us away from the things that we want because we forget that we don’t get as many chances as we’d like to make of our lives all that we want it to be.
Admittedly I’m not much of a gambler, always preferring to play it safe in the face of rejection, of loss, of regret. But back in the real world where clocks exist to remind me of how much time I’m losing, I figure it’s never too late to take a risk on the things that matter. Time isn’t unlimited (just like money) and the hands of the clock are always there to pick you up behind your back and throw you out into a place where the days continue to pass you by.
You don’t have to go to Vegas for four days like I did to know that sometimes nothing ever changes unless you take the opportunity to place a quarter in the slot machine of your life, and pull the lever —just remember to keep in mind that it's always important to try and quit when you’re ahead.
Without much to gamble (what with rent already late) I was a bystander, an observer to the endless hope and silent desperation in those large smoke-filled rooms of flashing lights, without windows or clocks, (causing you to question not only what time of day it is, but who you are).
I can understand of course, that we like the challenge, that we always think we have more chances to win back what we’ve lost - all we need is just a little...more...time. It’s amazing isn’t it, how fast the things that you work so hard for can disappear so suddenly (money, dreams, love...) before you even have the opportunity to realize you were losing them? Most of the time it seems we try so hard to follow the rules that keep us away from the things that we want because we forget that we don’t get as many chances as we’d like to make of our lives all that we want it to be.
Admittedly I’m not much of a gambler, always preferring to play it safe in the face of rejection, of loss, of regret. But back in the real world where clocks exist to remind me of how much time I’m losing, I figure it’s never too late to take a risk on the things that matter. Time isn’t unlimited (just like money) and the hands of the clock are always there to pick you up behind your back and throw you out into a place where the days continue to pass you by.
You don’t have to go to Vegas for four days like I did to know that sometimes nothing ever changes unless you take the opportunity to place a quarter in the slot machine of your life, and pull the lever —just remember to keep in mind that it's always important to try and quit when you’re ahead.
September 10, 2008
Maybe kids aren't so bad after all.
Standing on the downtown 1 train minding my own business and late to work (I have officially given up on caring about being on time) I was enjoying perusing at the latest fashion magazine of things I can never, in all intents and purposes afford short of selling everything I already own, (lace is in this season, leather is out. Plaid is in, flower print is out…) when I spotted next to me the little girl in a stroller. Her and her mothers entry into the subway car had been time consuming, as these New York City strollers are roughly the size of my apartment and have enough food and water storage space to keep both mother and child fully sustained in the off chance they get stranded underground for the next ten to twelve months.
She was about four with thick goggle glasses, far too many purple plastic barrettes in her pig-tailed hair, striped pink and green stockings with a plaid (so in!) skirt and yellow shoes. She was a fashion disaster and part of me thought seriously about handing my magazine over to her mother for some sort of assistance.
The girl sat quietly and counted down the stops, holding a half-eaten muffin in her lap that was the size of her head. She was picking at it, stuffing the crumbs into her mouth with her little fingers as she talked:
"What stop is this?" and
"Why aren't we getting off now?" and
"What stop is this?"
Her mother said things like:
"This isn't our stop dear," and
"This still isn't our stop dear," and
"Just two more stops dear."
I caught the handsome gentleman in front of us turning back to take a glimpse at where these pestering questions were coming from, and his reaction seemed to have found the little girl to be much more endearing than I did. He smiled at the girl and then at me in a sort of aw-isn't-she-cute sort of way, all while I had a quizzical look of, what has happened to this city? I thought we were all supposed to be mean and annoyed and frustrated at signs of those who don't belong and get in our way and disrupt the silence of our early morning commutes.
Just then the little girl, mouth full of blueberry muffin, sneezed. And, knowing what I know about kids, she didn't bother covering her mouth. Sitting where she was at knee-level to the rest of us, I watched as large saliva covered chunks found themselves on the back legs of the handsome gentleman's pinstriped pants.
He turned around again, and not being in viewing distance to his backside, smiled just in time for the mother to wheel the little girl off the train at "now this one is our stop, dear."
This time, I couldn't help but smile too.
She was about four with thick goggle glasses, far too many purple plastic barrettes in her pig-tailed hair, striped pink and green stockings with a plaid (so in!) skirt and yellow shoes. She was a fashion disaster and part of me thought seriously about handing my magazine over to her mother for some sort of assistance.
The girl sat quietly and counted down the stops, holding a half-eaten muffin in her lap that was the size of her head. She was picking at it, stuffing the crumbs into her mouth with her little fingers as she talked:
"What stop is this?" and
"Why aren't we getting off now?" and
"What stop is this?"
Her mother said things like:
"This isn't our stop dear," and
"This still isn't our stop dear," and
"Just two more stops dear."
I caught the handsome gentleman in front of us turning back to take a glimpse at where these pestering questions were coming from, and his reaction seemed to have found the little girl to be much more endearing than I did. He smiled at the girl and then at me in a sort of aw-isn't-she-cute sort of way, all while I had a quizzical look of, what has happened to this city? I thought we were all supposed to be mean and annoyed and frustrated at signs of those who don't belong and get in our way and disrupt the silence of our early morning commutes.
Just then the little girl, mouth full of blueberry muffin, sneezed. And, knowing what I know about kids, she didn't bother covering her mouth. Sitting where she was at knee-level to the rest of us, I watched as large saliva covered chunks found themselves on the back legs of the handsome gentleman's pinstriped pants.
He turned around again, and not being in viewing distance to his backside, smiled just in time for the mother to wheel the little girl off the train at "now this one is our stop, dear."
This time, I couldn't help but smile too.
September 9, 2008
Mr. Biology.
It feels like it's been a really long time since I've posted. I suppose it feels that way because it has. September is here and summer is on its way out and I don't even recall having the chance to say goodbye.
The thing I've come to find is that as a writer you always want to write, but what stops you at times from showing it to others is the fear that it is in fact, at the end of the day, total and complete crap. That very real possibility compounded by living and working in a place that does nothing less than give me a hard time at every street corner, I’ve been halted from torturing my readers with nonsense posts for nearly a month.
And really, after writing for almost three years about this city I've run out of steam – I work too much, I'm tired, drained, poor, and the little things about this thriving metropolis that used to feel so unique, so post-worthy, are now just the annoying and all-too-regular aspects of my everyday life that I'm starting to hate: Has someone shit on subway again? People still haven't learned how to navigate a sidewalk? The only good men in this city are engaged or on social security?
But a writer's work is never done (and you see here after all this time I'm finally referring to myself as a writer. Another thing I've come to find about this city is that everyone wants to proclaim to the world what they are before they even make the effort of actually becoming it, and I'm tired of sitting around waiting while everyone else takes undue recognition. And anyway, just throw a stick in this city and you’ll hit a writer).
I read a quote somewhere by writer Richard Price that made me nod my head in agreement was I got to the end of it. "The only thing I can compare it to is if you're a woman of a certain age and you haven't had a kid yet, and Mr. Biology is tapping you on the shoulder and you're in a panic. You don't want to raise the kid by yourself, but you wanna be married . . . so you rush it, and you wind up in this horrific divorce with a kid . . . I've written - started books - that I never should have started . . . but I was too freaked out about not writing to stop."
I figure I’ve been married and divorced at least five times by now - but like any naive New Yorker who wants to make something of themselves, I’ll keep at it until I find true love.
The thing I've come to find is that as a writer you always want to write, but what stops you at times from showing it to others is the fear that it is in fact, at the end of the day, total and complete crap. That very real possibility compounded by living and working in a place that does nothing less than give me a hard time at every street corner, I’ve been halted from torturing my readers with nonsense posts for nearly a month.
And really, after writing for almost three years about this city I've run out of steam – I work too much, I'm tired, drained, poor, and the little things about this thriving metropolis that used to feel so unique, so post-worthy, are now just the annoying and all-too-regular aspects of my everyday life that I'm starting to hate: Has someone shit on subway again? People still haven't learned how to navigate a sidewalk? The only good men in this city are engaged or on social security?
But a writer's work is never done (and you see here after all this time I'm finally referring to myself as a writer. Another thing I've come to find about this city is that everyone wants to proclaim to the world what they are before they even make the effort of actually becoming it, and I'm tired of sitting around waiting while everyone else takes undue recognition. And anyway, just throw a stick in this city and you’ll hit a writer).
I read a quote somewhere by writer Richard Price that made me nod my head in agreement was I got to the end of it. "The only thing I can compare it to is if you're a woman of a certain age and you haven't had a kid yet, and Mr. Biology is tapping you on the shoulder and you're in a panic. You don't want to raise the kid by yourself, but you wanna be married . . . so you rush it, and you wind up in this horrific divorce with a kid . . . I've written - started books - that I never should have started . . . but I was too freaked out about not writing to stop."
I figure I’ve been married and divorced at least five times by now - but like any naive New Yorker who wants to make something of themselves, I’ll keep at it until I find true love.
August 18, 2008
Gabardine Sleeve of Hope.
Relationships in New York aren’t in any way necessary. If you ask me (and I guess you didn’t) spending all that time trying to make sure someone else is happy in this city is just a big waste of time. New York is a place where you can really only be bothered with having to look after yourself (and who can afford dates anyway?). I’m lousy at talking on the phone and I hate holding hands and don't understand the pressure to rehash all of the trivial details of my day to someone who will inevitably leave me for someone prettier, more clever and less argumentative in the long run anyway.
That being said, I'll be the first to admit that this city can be a hell of a lonely place when it wants to be, and like most New Yorkers I'm always looking for something better than what I already have - which in this case, happens to be nothing at all.
So when I was standing in the rush hour train at 8:50AM holding on for balance with one hand and propping a 250 page book against my stomach with the other, (overwhelming scents of perfume, shampoo, body odor and aftershave taking up half my concentration) a navy blue blazer arm pushed past my ear and grabbed hold of the bar by the side of my face and suddenly I started to wonder. There it was, awkwardly one inch from my cheek with seemingly no body attached, and as I stood there trying read and picture at the same time what the rest of him looked like, I caught the lingering scent of cigar smoke and coffee and for a moment (this city is full of dreamers) wondered if this could be someone great.
Of course we all know that forced moments on the subway never go anywhere (do they?) but it’s always nice to see that they exist, that there are some men who carry with them the possibility of hearing the mundane details of what I had for breakfast (this city is full of hope).
I can’t say that I’m asking for much, but is it really so much for you to find a tie that matches your shirt? Is it necessary for the first contact I have with your eyes for me to see your own glaring everywhere other than my face? Does the first time you talk to me have to be you drunk on cheap beer at a bar uttering monosyllabic things like "Sup?" Is it really too much to ask that you have read a newspaper or book recently? To call when you say you will? Is it possible for you to not have "Tommy" tattooed on your upper right arm causing me to wonder if you put it there in the off chance that at any given moment you might in fact, actually forget what your name really is?
No, I’m not asking for much. Actually at times it appears as though I’m not asking for anything at all - which is why there’s nothing like a foreign navy blue sleeve in your face at 8:50AM to jolt you out of the reality that is your life and into that always exciting realm of possibility that is nowhere greater in the world than it is on a Manhattan subway. Could this be the sleeve I’ve been waiting for?
One small glance up from my book as the doors opened at 42nd street I could see the navy blue sleeve was in fact attached to a man about twice my age, with a protruding gut, yellowing teeth, and a striped tie just didn’t work.
Damn.
That being said, I'll be the first to admit that this city can be a hell of a lonely place when it wants to be, and like most New Yorkers I'm always looking for something better than what I already have - which in this case, happens to be nothing at all.
So when I was standing in the rush hour train at 8:50AM holding on for balance with one hand and propping a 250 page book against my stomach with the other, (overwhelming scents of perfume, shampoo, body odor and aftershave taking up half my concentration) a navy blue blazer arm pushed past my ear and grabbed hold of the bar by the side of my face and suddenly I started to wonder. There it was, awkwardly one inch from my cheek with seemingly no body attached, and as I stood there trying read and picture at the same time what the rest of him looked like, I caught the lingering scent of cigar smoke and coffee and for a moment (this city is full of dreamers) wondered if this could be someone great.
Of course we all know that forced moments on the subway never go anywhere (do they?) but it’s always nice to see that they exist, that there are some men who carry with them the possibility of hearing the mundane details of what I had for breakfast (this city is full of hope).
I can’t say that I’m asking for much, but is it really so much for you to find a tie that matches your shirt? Is it necessary for the first contact I have with your eyes for me to see your own glaring everywhere other than my face? Does the first time you talk to me have to be you drunk on cheap beer at a bar uttering monosyllabic things like "Sup?" Is it really too much to ask that you have read a newspaper or book recently? To call when you say you will? Is it possible for you to not have "Tommy" tattooed on your upper right arm causing me to wonder if you put it there in the off chance that at any given moment you might in fact, actually forget what your name really is?
No, I’m not asking for much. Actually at times it appears as though I’m not asking for anything at all - which is why there’s nothing like a foreign navy blue sleeve in your face at 8:50AM to jolt you out of the reality that is your life and into that always exciting realm of possibility that is nowhere greater in the world than it is on a Manhattan subway. Could this be the sleeve I’ve been waiting for?
One small glance up from my book as the doors opened at 42nd street I could see the navy blue sleeve was in fact attached to a man about twice my age, with a protruding gut, yellowing teeth, and a striped tie just didn’t work.
Damn.
August 11, 2008
I will tell you what I know to be true.
I know that life is short and that the moment I start to recognize the sad but blatantly real truth about time and how fast it passes (August already?!) the sooner I’ll start living my life the way it’s meant to be lived.
I know that there’s no real point in getting up every day and trekking to work (cross-town bus, downtown 2/3 to 14th street, 1 local to Houston...) in order to do a job to pay the rent for an apartment I can’t afford in a city that often turns its back on me, only to come home and go to the gym and sweat and struggle (all mice on our wheels) trying to become a better version of myself - but I do it anyway because that’s just who I am and there’s nothing like hope to get you out of bed in the morning.
I know that people I care about always end up leaving for one reason or another (sometimes it’s forever), and no matter how much I want to, (boy I hate change) I can’t stop them.
I know that there’s nothing like leaving New York for seven long days, traveling to six different cities in order to make me appreciate what I have right outside my doorstep on a daily basis. What a shockingly strange reminder that in other places across the country restaurants close at 10 (what?) cabs cost exponentially more to get you from one place to the next (being that everything is so far apart) and the chance to meet someone new and interesting on the way to get your morning coffee is nowhere else as palpable as it is in Manhattan.
I know that when I heard the bus driver on the M72 this afternoon on my way home from work (a job I have in order to pay for the apartment I can’t afford...) talking to a friend of his who was perched on the seat by the door about the woman in his life who he let get away ("she doesn’t know how much this is hurting me, how much this is tearing me up inside") - I realized that there’s no point in love unless you can be honest about it, and that there’s no point in life if you’re not.
I know that I don’t know half as much as I should about things in general at this stage in my life, (how is it possible that I’m still making so many mistakes?) but there’s no fun in knowing it all (who ever wanted to be a know-it-all anyway?). I’m a knows-enough-for-now, and I figure that’s good enough to at least get me through tomorrow.
I know that there’s no real point in getting up every day and trekking to work (cross-town bus, downtown 2/3 to 14th street, 1 local to Houston...) in order to do a job to pay the rent for an apartment I can’t afford in a city that often turns its back on me, only to come home and go to the gym and sweat and struggle (all mice on our wheels) trying to become a better version of myself - but I do it anyway because that’s just who I am and there’s nothing like hope to get you out of bed in the morning.
I know that people I care about always end up leaving for one reason or another (sometimes it’s forever), and no matter how much I want to, (boy I hate change) I can’t stop them.
I know that there’s nothing like leaving New York for seven long days, traveling to six different cities in order to make me appreciate what I have right outside my doorstep on a daily basis. What a shockingly strange reminder that in other places across the country restaurants close at 10 (what?) cabs cost exponentially more to get you from one place to the next (being that everything is so far apart) and the chance to meet someone new and interesting on the way to get your morning coffee is nowhere else as palpable as it is in Manhattan.
I know that when I heard the bus driver on the M72 this afternoon on my way home from work (a job I have in order to pay for the apartment I can’t afford...) talking to a friend of his who was perched on the seat by the door about the woman in his life who he let get away ("she doesn’t know how much this is hurting me, how much this is tearing me up inside") - I realized that there’s no point in love unless you can be honest about it, and that there’s no point in life if you’re not.
I know that I don’t know half as much as I should about things in general at this stage in my life, (how is it possible that I’m still making so many mistakes?) but there’s no fun in knowing it all (who ever wanted to be a know-it-all anyway?). I’m a knows-enough-for-now, and I figure that’s good enough to at least get me through tomorrow.
July 28, 2008
People tell me things.
I didn’t do anything this weekend,
and by Sunday night I was more tired than ever before.
Don’t know about you, but I really can’t afford to leave my apartment this weekend.
Last week he told me he couldn’t talk to me anymore
because his girlfriend was getting mad and wouldn’t allow it.
Yesterday they broke up and he sent me an email.
I got bit on the lip by a spider while I slept last night.
It scurried out from under a pillow while I was making the bed today.
Killed it.
I’ll definitely have kids in the next five years.
I have been on the crosstown bus at 23rd street for 15 minutes,
and have gone only two blocks because someone in a wheelchair wanted to go one block.
You are already on wheels. Go.
Since it’s raining does that mean I don’t have to go to Brooklyn?
Please!
Tell me about it. I know. Falling in love in New York
is like hitting the lottery. You have to be in the right place
at the right time, and most of us have horrible luck.
and by Sunday night I was more tired than ever before.
Don’t know about you, but I really can’t afford to leave my apartment this weekend.
Last week he told me he couldn’t talk to me anymore
because his girlfriend was getting mad and wouldn’t allow it.
Yesterday they broke up and he sent me an email.
I got bit on the lip by a spider while I slept last night.
It scurried out from under a pillow while I was making the bed today.
Killed it.
I’ll definitely have kids in the next five years.
I have been on the crosstown bus at 23rd street for 15 minutes,
and have gone only two blocks because someone in a wheelchair wanted to go one block.
You are already on wheels. Go.
Since it’s raining does that mean I don’t have to go to Brooklyn?
Please!
Tell me about it. I know. Falling in love in New York
is like hitting the lottery. You have to be in the right place
at the right time, and most of us have horrible luck.
July 21, 2008
Vertical New York is making it hard to see.
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, better career, better apartment, better boyfriend, better reservation at the better
restaurant...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.
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, better career, better apartment, better boyfriend, better reservation at the better
restaurant...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.
July 14, 2008
I don't feel like I ask for much.
In fact, I think I'm someone who has gotten pretty accustomed to being disappointed when it comes to most of the things in my life mainly due to my altogether too high expectations. This character trait if you will, prompts most of my friends to call me things like "bitter" and "pessimistic," forcing me reply that I'm simply quoting the reality of things, (and trust me, I don't enjoy having to do it). The thing is that in the end I can't help but feel that most of the time there's really no escaping things not turning out the way you want them to.
So, on this dark and rainy Monday, getting up in a lazy weekend-induced stupor, paralyzed at the idea of having to go back into the office, I was struggling to keep focused by the time the clock struck 3:24 PM. 3:24?! The worst thing that can possibly happen to a person on a dark and rainy Monday is when you go to look at the clock feeling more than 100% sure that it's at least a quarter past five, and finding that it's merely 3:24.
Actually, the worst thing that can possibly happen to a person (me) on a dark and rainy Monday is that when the clock strikes 3:24 and you think it's a quarter past five and you go to your local distributor for your much needed fix and come to find when you order that grande Pike Place (all while knowing you can't really afford it but can actually taste it standing in line and listening to Sinanta croon Don't Get Around Much Anymore) - they are out. (the horror!)
Starbucks, I'm really trying here to turn over a new leaf of understanding, patience and overall optimisim - but it's really too much to ask of me to not be bitterly infurated when you, the largest coffee chain in the country, are actually in fact out of the very thing that you proclaim to sell, at the exact moment I need it most.
"Do ya want...decaf?" the barista behind the counter asked with mild trepidation. Decaf? I was about to look behind me for the candid cameras when I closed my eyes, counted to three, took a deep breath (all while thinking of those friends, you readers out there, who keep telling me to try to be more patient, to calm down) and told him no thanks.
"Well...what do you want instead?" Instead. That word. Really the worst word in the English language. Instead. What I wanted to tell him (yell if there hadn't been so many people behind me in line) was that what I wanted was the chance, in this most patience-testing city in the world, (what with people stopping at the top of staircases, infront of subway doors, right infront of you on the street to take a picture or answer a phone or write a blackberry message, all impeding your life from happening at the exact pace and flow that you want it to. What with seemingly every person around you all competing with you for a better job, better seat on the bus, better apartment, better friend or better lover) - was to for once, have someone to be able to give me the exact thing they're supposedly offering, the exact thing I deserve really, without my having to settle for something...less.
Instead.
I am bitter and pessimistic for a reason.
"I guess I'll have a latte," I said. "Not decaf."
So, on this dark and rainy Monday, getting up in a lazy weekend-induced stupor, paralyzed at the idea of having to go back into the office, I was struggling to keep focused by the time the clock struck 3:24 PM. 3:24?! The worst thing that can possibly happen to a person on a dark and rainy Monday is when you go to look at the clock feeling more than 100% sure that it's at least a quarter past five, and finding that it's merely 3:24.
Actually, the worst thing that can possibly happen to a person (me) on a dark and rainy Monday is that when the clock strikes 3:24 and you think it's a quarter past five and you go to your local distributor for your much needed fix and come to find when you order that grande Pike Place (all while knowing you can't really afford it but can actually taste it standing in line and listening to Sinanta croon Don't Get Around Much Anymore) - they are out. (the horror!)
Starbucks, I'm really trying here to turn over a new leaf of understanding, patience and overall optimisim - but it's really too much to ask of me to not be bitterly infurated when you, the largest coffee chain in the country, are actually in fact out of the very thing that you proclaim to sell, at the exact moment I need it most.
"Do ya want...decaf?" the barista behind the counter asked with mild trepidation. Decaf? I was about to look behind me for the candid cameras when I closed my eyes, counted to three, took a deep breath (all while thinking of those friends, you readers out there, who keep telling me to try to be more patient, to calm down) and told him no thanks.
"Well...what do you want instead?" Instead. That word. Really the worst word in the English language. Instead. What I wanted to tell him (yell if there hadn't been so many people behind me in line) was that what I wanted was the chance, in this most patience-testing city in the world, (what with people stopping at the top of staircases, infront of subway doors, right infront of you on the street to take a picture or answer a phone or write a blackberry message, all impeding your life from happening at the exact pace and flow that you want it to. What with seemingly every person around you all competing with you for a better job, better seat on the bus, better apartment, better friend or better lover) - was to for once, have someone to be able to give me the exact thing they're supposedly offering, the exact thing I deserve really, without my having to settle for something...less.
Instead.
I am bitter and pessimistic for a reason.
"I guess I'll have a latte," I said. "Not decaf."
July 8, 2008
How pressed for time are you really when you feel compelled to clip your fingernails on the subway?
Of course the real question here is about luck, bad luck mainly and the law of probability and how after a long day back at the office that nice gentleman had to sit down next to me (how lucky I thought I was to score a seat during rush hour!) and after taking a deep breath he pulled out the clippers and started snap snap snapping away.
Little bits were flying everywhere, and as we all looked on in disbelief I sat for a while contemplating my options:
sore feet (new shoes I can’t afford) and a seat where I can comfortably read my book
or
stand safely outside the nail-fly-zone.
Where else is one forced to make such decisions on their journey home?
It didn’t take me long. I was up and away just before he started to remove his shoes.
Little bits were flying everywhere, and as we all looked on in disbelief I sat for a while contemplating my options:
sore feet (new shoes I can’t afford) and a seat where I can comfortably read my book
or
stand safely outside the nail-fly-zone.
Where else is one forced to make such decisions on their journey home?
It didn’t take me long. I was up and away just before he started to remove his shoes.
July 1, 2008
If you live in New York City...
...it’s only a matter of time before you find yourself
on your hands and knees
wearing yellow plastic dish gloves
scrubbing ever corner of your apartment at 11 o’clock at night
half drunk on a bottle of wine
blasting The Rolling Stones
and cursing under your breath
because you saw a cockroach scurry across your floor earlier in the morning.
You can’t always get what you want, indeed.
on your hands and knees
wearing yellow plastic dish gloves
scrubbing ever corner of your apartment at 11 o’clock at night
half drunk on a bottle of wine
blasting The Rolling Stones
and cursing under your breath
because you saw a cockroach scurry across your floor earlier in the morning.
You can’t always get what you want, indeed.
June 30, 2008
when it rains, it pours.
Its been raining in New York for days now and the streets look the way they do in all the movies with the lights reflecting and the people running with umbrellas over head, and newspapers and coats. The tourists curse it. He/she/they say it’s bad luck, bad timing, bad news. Rain in June? they ask. And their maps get wet and they’re slowed by the rain and so are the cars and the busses and my commute home.
All tourists do when they come here is spend too much money on stupid souvenirs, all that crap from junk-filled stores to try make the memory more real. I take home matchbooks and napkins I’ve written notes on and mental pictures of faces and distinct sounds of laughter, and figure I have legitimate mental souvenirs of every place I’ve ever been.
And you can find yourself sheltered from the storm in a little coffee shop and realize that you don’t need a map to get you to the places in life that you need to see. And you don’t need to spend money on anything more than a café latte to strike up a conversation with a normal person with a normal life to realize that New York in the rain is just as good as New York when it’s not.
All tourists do when they come here is spend too much money on stupid souvenirs, all that crap from junk-filled stores to try make the memory more real. I take home matchbooks and napkins I’ve written notes on and mental pictures of faces and distinct sounds of laughter, and figure I have legitimate mental souvenirs of every place I’ve ever been.
And you can find yourself sheltered from the storm in a little coffee shop and realize that you don’t need a map to get you to the places in life that you need to see. And you don’t need to spend money on anything more than a café latte to strike up a conversation with a normal person with a normal life to realize that New York in the rain is just as good as New York when it’s not.
June 26, 2008
Because you can never have too many chances.
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 always too-late realization that it’s a silly time to learn to swim when you start to drown.
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 always too-late realization that it’s a silly time to learn to swim when you start to drown.
June 19, 2008
To the girl at the corner store.
I know it’s tough, it has to be. Every day it’s the same, the same people asking for coffee, asking for change, asking for your number.
They’ve been coming in with their large coats and pressed suits knowing that every day it will be the same, that they will come in, and you’ll be here. I know it won’t be long, and soon they’ll be coming in with their flip flops and tanned faces from their weekends at the Hamptons and they’ll find you’re gone.
You feel your life is on the other side of the world, that no one here understands you, and you wish you had someone to count on. Count on. Count faces, count names, count Burberry scarves and Dior sunglasses, count missed chances and glances and lost lives.
You think that in time, they’ll remember, once you’re gone, once you’ve taken the chance to start your life somewhere else, out from behind the counter of this city that moves too fast for you.But you don’t count on it. You’re tired of counting, so you smile and say good morning and good afternoon and good bye.
Because you know it is easy to love people in memory, the hard trick, is to love them when they are there, in front of you.
They’ve been coming in with their large coats and pressed suits knowing that every day it will be the same, that they will come in, and you’ll be here. I know it won’t be long, and soon they’ll be coming in with their flip flops and tanned faces from their weekends at the Hamptons and they’ll find you’re gone.
You feel your life is on the other side of the world, that no one here understands you, and you wish you had someone to count on. Count on. Count faces, count names, count Burberry scarves and Dior sunglasses, count missed chances and glances and lost lives.
You think that in time, they’ll remember, once you’re gone, once you’ve taken the chance to start your life somewhere else, out from behind the counter of this city that moves too fast for you.But you don’t count on it. You’re tired of counting, so you smile and say good morning and good afternoon and good bye.
Because you know it is easy to love people in memory, the hard trick, is to love them when they are there, in front of you.
June 17, 2008
Quiet, please, and I'll tell you everything.
Leaving Manhattan is supposed to be an altogether peaceful adventure, parting ways for a few days with the noise and craziness to seek out vast horizons and lush trees (well, as vast and lush as Albany can muster).
So I sat down on the most inefficient, poorly run, overpriced and never-on-time piece of transportation in the country - Amtrak - to leave above mentioned city for the weekend. And already seated, I watched as those who boarded played the game on the sold out train of eyeballing everyone to deem who looked the least offensive to sit next to.
Of course the man who sat next to me was quite possibly the most ridiculous person I’ve ever encountered to date (and I’ve encountered some pretty ridiculous people in my time). He was Dwight Schrute meets Robert Goulet. He was middle-aged with dyed jet black hair. He was lumbering, awkward, cumbersome, and asked me "can I sit here?" while already hefting his bag into the overhead compartment. He sat down with the full force of a fighter jet, causing me to wonder (as I read a book pressed against the window trying not to make eye contact) if he'd ever sat in such a small confined space before in his entire life.
(What is it about people on journeys going somewhere or coming back from someplace else, that compels them to talk? I'm not here to entertain you, or tell you my life story, or answer ridiculous questions. All I want to do is sit and not talk. I think not talking is totally underrated. Sometimes it’s nice, isn’t it, to just be able to sit and not say anything for awhile and just let the world and the people around you marinate).
I thought I was out of the woods until I realized that Dwight Schrute Goulet didn't bring anything with him for the two and a half hour train ride to entertain him but the video he took on his cell phone that he'd filmed that day of Times Square (of course). "Here we are in the famous Times Square..." the speaker-phone blasted his best flight attendant narration. How do these people find me?
It was really only a matter of time before his attention would turn to me with:
"I'm in programming, what do you do?"
I closed my eyes and sighed deeply. Here we go.
I tried to answer as briefly as possible as not to incite any excitement or false hope that this sort of line of questioning was going to continue for the remainder of the trip. He took notice, I think, but him being him he decided to ask questions with his own answers in order to propel things forward.
"Where are you from, are you from Albany?"
"Yeah."
"Where? Glens Falls?"
"Yup." (a lie)
"Where do you live now, the city?"
"Uh huh."
"Where in the city are you, downtown?"
"Yup." (lie)
"Where did you go to school, SUNY Albany?"
"Sure." (lie)
After a while I warmed up to the questions and admittedly liked pretending to be someone else for a while. And there's nothing wrong with telling little lies to strange people you're never doing to see again, is there? They're people who don't really care about the truth anyway. They're just looking for a quick fix, the need to not feel alone, the longing for conversation, for the comfort of...words.
By the end of the trip I was a waitress-cum-television producer from Glens Falls who was engaged to a guy that works in investment banking who I met on a blind date through the internet. (how fun!)
"That's how everyone meets these days, just meet and fall in love, isn't it?"
"Basically."
Sometimes it’s easier to just tell people what they want to hear.
So I sat down on the most inefficient, poorly run, overpriced and never-on-time piece of transportation in the country - Amtrak - to leave above mentioned city for the weekend. And already seated, I watched as those who boarded played the game on the sold out train of eyeballing everyone to deem who looked the least offensive to sit next to.
Of course the man who sat next to me was quite possibly the most ridiculous person I’ve ever encountered to date (and I’ve encountered some pretty ridiculous people in my time). He was Dwight Schrute meets Robert Goulet. He was middle-aged with dyed jet black hair. He was lumbering, awkward, cumbersome, and asked me "can I sit here?" while already hefting his bag into the overhead compartment. He sat down with the full force of a fighter jet, causing me to wonder (as I read a book pressed against the window trying not to make eye contact) if he'd ever sat in such a small confined space before in his entire life.
(What is it about people on journeys going somewhere or coming back from someplace else, that compels them to talk? I'm not here to entertain you, or tell you my life story, or answer ridiculous questions. All I want to do is sit and not talk. I think not talking is totally underrated. Sometimes it’s nice, isn’t it, to just be able to sit and not say anything for awhile and just let the world and the people around you marinate).
I thought I was out of the woods until I realized that Dwight Schrute Goulet didn't bring anything with him for the two and a half hour train ride to entertain him but the video he took on his cell phone that he'd filmed that day of Times Square (of course). "Here we are in the famous Times Square..." the speaker-phone blasted his best flight attendant narration. How do these people find me?
It was really only a matter of time before his attention would turn to me with:
"I'm in programming, what do you do?"
I closed my eyes and sighed deeply. Here we go.
I tried to answer as briefly as possible as not to incite any excitement or false hope that this sort of line of questioning was going to continue for the remainder of the trip. He took notice, I think, but him being him he decided to ask questions with his own answers in order to propel things forward.
"Where are you from, are you from Albany?"
"Yeah."
"Where? Glens Falls?"
"Yup." (a lie)
"Where do you live now, the city?"
"Uh huh."
"Where in the city are you, downtown?"
"Yup." (lie)
"Where did you go to school, SUNY Albany?"
"Sure." (lie)
After a while I warmed up to the questions and admittedly liked pretending to be someone else for a while. And there's nothing wrong with telling little lies to strange people you're never doing to see again, is there? They're people who don't really care about the truth anyway. They're just looking for a quick fix, the need to not feel alone, the longing for conversation, for the comfort of...words.
By the end of the trip I was a waitress-cum-television producer from Glens Falls who was engaged to a guy that works in investment banking who I met on a blind date through the internet. (how fun!)
"That's how everyone meets these days, just meet and fall in love, isn't it?"
"Basically."
Sometimes it’s easier to just tell people what they want to hear.
June 11, 2008
Sh!t Show.
It was only a matter of time before I got onto the wrong subway car (again!) where there was literally shit all over one of the seats. And (the irony!) with The Times Op-ed page having been used and left behind as toilet paper (speaks volumes).
I suppose I should have thought something was up when I noticed everyone in the packed rush-hour train was trying to stay away from one end of the car. "Don’t go over there," they’d say or "I wouldn’t do that if I were you." But this is New York. Underground. During rush-hour. No one ever pays attention to what people are saying to you in such a heated and high-pressured situation.
I’m destined to always learn the hard way. So, this is what we’ve come to then? This is, like, where we are now as a society and we're OK with it? I was thinking these and many other thoughts standing there trying to read my book but unable to concentrate due to the smell. Everyone packed into the car was pushing incrementally en masse away from the scene of the crime. Of all the subway cars in all the city...that nice guy (and I’m taking a guess here as to the sex of the guilty party) had to go and shit in mine.
I suppose you could say it was only a matter of time before I got onto the wrong subway car (seriously, what is with my bad luck?) with shit on the seat when the dreaded "we are stopped momentarily due to train traffic ahead" announcement would come on, keeping me trapped underground (between 59th and 68th! One stop from home! One stop until I can breathe again!) for what could have quite possibly been the longest ten minutes of my life.
New York: just when you think you’ve seen it all - it’s only matter of time before it sets you straight.
I suppose I should have thought something was up when I noticed everyone in the packed rush-hour train was trying to stay away from one end of the car. "Don’t go over there," they’d say or "I wouldn’t do that if I were you." But this is New York. Underground. During rush-hour. No one ever pays attention to what people are saying to you in such a heated and high-pressured situation.
I’m destined to always learn the hard way. So, this is what we’ve come to then? This is, like, where we are now as a society and we're OK with it? I was thinking these and many other thoughts standing there trying to read my book but unable to concentrate due to the smell. Everyone packed into the car was pushing incrementally en masse away from the scene of the crime. Of all the subway cars in all the city...that nice guy (and I’m taking a guess here as to the sex of the guilty party) had to go and shit in mine.
I suppose you could say it was only a matter of time before I got onto the wrong subway car (seriously, what is with my bad luck?) with shit on the seat when the dreaded "we are stopped momentarily due to train traffic ahead" announcement would come on, keeping me trapped underground (between 59th and 68th! One stop from home! One stop until I can breathe again!) for what could have quite possibly been the longest ten minutes of my life.
New York: just when you think you’ve seen it all - it’s only matter of time before it sets you straight.
June 9, 2008
The Heat
Everything in New York is a little less clear when the temperature rises. Something about the suffocating air makes the city itself seem more unbearable than ever and you’re walking down the street feeling the sweat drip down the small of your back and you can’t remember for the life of you why you’ve chosen to be so surrounded by so much pavement when it’s topping out at 100 degrees.
We are never satisfied of course, as people who are always looking for The Next Best Thing, for something more - and the weather is no different. Too cold in winter, too hot in summer - when is it ever just right? Well it never is (though we refuse to accept it), and we are rarely prepared for life’s elements - we never remember to bring that umbrella for the sudden downpour, or a cardigan for when the sun goes down and The Chill creeps up from the ground and surrounds our ankles and starts to swallow us whole.
The Heat is starting to be a little much. All I want to do is lock the door and stay inside where the air (and my thoughts) are more level. Believe it or not I can think of a few things that are more fun than packing myself into a crowded downtown 1 train (really what are the odds that I happened to find the one train car without AC??) early on a Monday morning unready to start a week of heat-induced fuzzy attention to detail.
Could this be the week I lose my job? I couldn’t help but think sitting there almost unable to breathe. No, certainly it’s that guy who just woke up across from me with pit stains seeping out onto his light pink dress shirt who most definitely just missed his stop - and from the looks of it the start of a very important meeting - who’s on his way out. "Out of my way!" he shouts as he pushes himself off the train.
Well if he doesn’t lose his job, he really should.
But I won’t complain too much about The Heat because there will inevitably be something wrong with what’s next (mid-80's but too much rain? A sudden drop to a windy 60's and too cold?). And it’s good to not be able to think so clearly sometimes. It’s good to have a break from the crisp clarity of more reasonable temperatures and give yourself some time to let your mind wander. We forget (don’t we?) what we really want when we have so much time in more comfortable climates to over-think things.
So until this breaks (and it will, it always does) I’ll stop thinking for a while (and be OK feeling overheated and uncomfortable...) and just let the humidity fall where it may.
And I’ll try my best to get off the train in time.
We are never satisfied of course, as people who are always looking for The Next Best Thing, for something more - and the weather is no different. Too cold in winter, too hot in summer - when is it ever just right? Well it never is (though we refuse to accept it), and we are rarely prepared for life’s elements - we never remember to bring that umbrella for the sudden downpour, or a cardigan for when the sun goes down and The Chill creeps up from the ground and surrounds our ankles and starts to swallow us whole.
The Heat is starting to be a little much. All I want to do is lock the door and stay inside where the air (and my thoughts) are more level. Believe it or not I can think of a few things that are more fun than packing myself into a crowded downtown 1 train (really what are the odds that I happened to find the one train car without AC??) early on a Monday morning unready to start a week of heat-induced fuzzy attention to detail.
Could this be the week I lose my job? I couldn’t help but think sitting there almost unable to breathe. No, certainly it’s that guy who just woke up across from me with pit stains seeping out onto his light pink dress shirt who most definitely just missed his stop - and from the looks of it the start of a very important meeting - who’s on his way out. "Out of my way!" he shouts as he pushes himself off the train.
Well if he doesn’t lose his job, he really should.
But I won’t complain too much about The Heat because there will inevitably be something wrong with what’s next (mid-80's but too much rain? A sudden drop to a windy 60's and too cold?). And it’s good to not be able to think so clearly sometimes. It’s good to have a break from the crisp clarity of more reasonable temperatures and give yourself some time to let your mind wander. We forget (don’t we?) what we really want when we have so much time in more comfortable climates to over-think things.
So until this breaks (and it will, it always does) I’ll stop thinking for a while (and be OK feeling overheated and uncomfortable...) and just let the humidity fall where it may.
And I’ll try my best to get off the train in time.
June 5, 2008
Street Affair.
The man running the coffee cart on Hudson and Morton was watching me as I approached, then looked me in the eyes and told me he loved me.
For such a declaration, was it callous of me to just laugh and keep on walking?
When strangers profess love I don’t know the proper etiquette. It’s polite, I would imagine, to at least say "thanks." After all, it’s not a thing one gets to hear every day.
Maybe next time I’ll respond (I don’t need an explanation). Though I could never love a Cart Guy - what’s to stop him from just picking up and leaving at a moments notice (boredom, better traffic, prettier customers)?
(SIGH). Men. Always different street corners, different girls. Always love-me-then-leave-me.
And here I thought it was meant to be.
For such a declaration, was it callous of me to just laugh and keep on walking?
When strangers profess love I don’t know the proper etiquette. It’s polite, I would imagine, to at least say "thanks." After all, it’s not a thing one gets to hear every day.
Maybe next time I’ll respond (I don’t need an explanation). Though I could never love a Cart Guy - what’s to stop him from just picking up and leaving at a moments notice (boredom, better traffic, prettier customers)?
(SIGH). Men. Always different street corners, different girls. Always love-me-then-leave-me.
And here I thought it was meant to be.
June 3, 2008
Home is what you come back to.
I’m pretty sure that New York makes more sense coming than going.
What is it about that skyline that somehow, through the clouds and setting sun reflecting off the Empire State building, screams home? Because you have to leave a place sometimes in order to remember how much you love it (absence really does make the heart grow fonder?).
3,000 miles away across the country for a few days was long enough for me to realize that I am, and always will be, in a New York state of mind. Distant cities always hold the possibility that I’ll find what I’m looking for once I get there, but somehow I’m always let down (so much expectation and disappointment you’d think I’d have learned by now).
Sure, after 5 and a half hours smashed against the window next to a woman who does nothing but snore and kiss her girlfriend and hold her hand during turbulence, and constantly adjust herself and ask you ridiculously personal questions ("No, I don’t think your friend should be pressuring you into having baby just because you’re nearing forty," and "I guess I never really thought about falling in love with someone who already had a kid," and "Yes, you did just elbow me in the arm...again,") - you can be ready to jump out into just about any city in the world.
(What is it about tight enclosed spaces that makes people want to become best friends? I’d much rather spend that time floating at 29,000 feet with my life hanging in the balance, looking out over the passing states - Pennsylvania, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada... - and have some time to myself. think).
And California is too sunny with too many barren hills and too much open sky that it makes me feel uncomfortable. Where are all the tall buildings? Where are all of the angry people with purpose? Why does everyone walk so slow? Why doesn’t anyone honk their horns here when they drive? I could never make it. I’m much too cynical and bitter and realistic to ever be happy in such a place.
All I know about home is that it means a whole manner of things depending on who you are and where you’ve come from. It’s always shifting, roots uprooting and replanting in different cities and houses and apartments and rooms and streets all over the world (though I’m pretty sure that we’re all looking for the same thing to return to at the end of the day). I figure I’m always disappointed because I’ve already found my place.
Grass-is-greener isn’t always a good mentality to have, because you can spend so much time looking for something that might be better, that you lose sight of how great you’ve already got it. Give me the powerful streets of Manhattan, with their endless, streaming chorus of strong voices and passions any day.
Like anything else you choose to come back to in life, Manhattan makes more sense coming than going (what a thing to miss something that's been under your nose the whole time!) - and oh how happy I was to be home.
What is it about that skyline that somehow, through the clouds and setting sun reflecting off the Empire State building, screams home? Because you have to leave a place sometimes in order to remember how much you love it (absence really does make the heart grow fonder?).
3,000 miles away across the country for a few days was long enough for me to realize that I am, and always will be, in a New York state of mind. Distant cities always hold the possibility that I’ll find what I’m looking for once I get there, but somehow I’m always let down (so much expectation and disappointment you’d think I’d have learned by now).
Sure, after 5 and a half hours smashed against the window next to a woman who does nothing but snore and kiss her girlfriend and hold her hand during turbulence, and constantly adjust herself and ask you ridiculously personal questions ("No, I don’t think your friend should be pressuring you into having baby just because you’re nearing forty," and "I guess I never really thought about falling in love with someone who already had a kid," and "Yes, you did just elbow me in the arm...again,") - you can be ready to jump out into just about any city in the world.
(What is it about tight enclosed spaces that makes people want to become best friends? I’d much rather spend that time floating at 29,000 feet with my life hanging in the balance, looking out over the passing states - Pennsylvania, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada... - and have some time to myself. think).
And California is too sunny with too many barren hills and too much open sky that it makes me feel uncomfortable. Where are all the tall buildings? Where are all of the angry people with purpose? Why does everyone walk so slow? Why doesn’t anyone honk their horns here when they drive? I could never make it. I’m much too cynical and bitter and realistic to ever be happy in such a place.
All I know about home is that it means a whole manner of things depending on who you are and where you’ve come from. It’s always shifting, roots uprooting and replanting in different cities and houses and apartments and rooms and streets all over the world (though I’m pretty sure that we’re all looking for the same thing to return to at the end of the day). I figure I’m always disappointed because I’ve already found my place.
Grass-is-greener isn’t always a good mentality to have, because you can spend so much time looking for something that might be better, that you lose sight of how great you’ve already got it. Give me the powerful streets of Manhattan, with their endless, streaming chorus of strong voices and passions any day.
Like anything else you choose to come back to in life, Manhattan makes more sense coming than going (what a thing to miss something that's been under your nose the whole time!) - and oh how happy I was to be home.
May 26, 2008
“Honey, there’s a spider in your bathroom the size of a Buick.”
I can understand that after so many years in New York there suddenly comes a point where you no longer want to wake up to the sound of traffic outside your window anymore, when you prefer birds chirping to car horns. I can understand, that after so many years of living beyond your means, always being pushed up against strangers in subways and elevators, always rushing to the next big thing - that there comes a time when there’s nothing left to do, but leave.
I’m not there yet. Most of the time I don’t think I ever will be, because at this point there’s no other place I’d rather go (despite frequent outbursts to friends that I’m going to move to Tulsa where I’m convinced everything is somehow much easier). There’s no other city in the world where you can experience the amount of culture that’s available to you on a daily basis, which is reason enough to stay. However I understand (the longer I’m here), how important it is to find meaning despite the number of museums and galleries and theatres and French-Brazilian fusion restaurants that are available to you. In the end what’s important to you is what’s important, and if you can’t find it here, you have to find it somewhere else.
That’s why I went to Brooklyn for a going-away party of sorts (downtown 6 to 14th street, 14th street to the L, the L to Lorimer, Lorimer to the G - am I there yet?!) for a friend who is skipping town next week in search of something more. By the time I got to Clinton/Washington Ave I was about ready to leave New York myself (surely it shouldn’t be this difficult just to get somewhere on a Sunday night?), and as I sat there in the small plastic chairs in the pebble-strewn backyard of this bar that touts its own grill (you bring the meat) drinking more than I anticipated (can you ever really anticipate?), I started to think about this city and what makes us stay.
We’re all drawn here for our own reasons, we make the conscious decision that this is the place that’s going to shape the rest of our lives. It will give us the opportunities we need, help us meet the people we want, enable us to become something we hope and dream to be. But thing I was realizing sitting there with the large colored lights strung upon the fence to illuminate my thoughts - was what do you do when you come to the point when this city is no longer enough? And (much more to the point), is that even be possible?
Well of course it is. Like anything else in life things change, and the idea of what you want and who you are and what’s important to you can shift, seemingly behind your back. It’s easier than you think to find yourself in the middle of a foreign street in Brooklyn far from home wondering how you got there. So at the end of the night when people were all heading home, (I was the only soul to venture back to Manhattan) this time (walking four extra blocks to the A, the A to Fulton, Fulton to the uptown 6...) I had a lot of time to assess that tricky and ever-changing question: what do I want?
In the time it took me to get home I'd found my answer, and the answers is really quite simple. It’s like in Annie Hall when she calls Alvy over to her apartment in a panic just to kill the huge spider in her tub. I hate spiders (always have) and have a terrible time working up the courage to dispose of them, but after a few years here I know that I have people I could call in the very instance that there was a spider the size of a Buick in my bathroom.
So yes, life and what we want changes all the time and it’s a good idea to keep asking yourself that question in the middle of such a busy and fast-paced place where it’s easy to lose sight of what’s important. But for me, what I want is just to be here (no matter how long it takes from Brooklyn) with people I can count on. So unless and until I no longer have someone in New York who I can call in the middle of the night to kill a spider in my tub - I figure I’ll stick around.
I’m not there yet. Most of the time I don’t think I ever will be, because at this point there’s no other place I’d rather go (despite frequent outbursts to friends that I’m going to move to Tulsa where I’m convinced everything is somehow much easier). There’s no other city in the world where you can experience the amount of culture that’s available to you on a daily basis, which is reason enough to stay. However I understand (the longer I’m here), how important it is to find meaning despite the number of museums and galleries and theatres and French-Brazilian fusion restaurants that are available to you. In the end what’s important to you is what’s important, and if you can’t find it here, you have to find it somewhere else.
That’s why I went to Brooklyn for a going-away party of sorts (downtown 6 to 14th street, 14th street to the L, the L to Lorimer, Lorimer to the G - am I there yet?!) for a friend who is skipping town next week in search of something more. By the time I got to Clinton/Washington Ave I was about ready to leave New York myself (surely it shouldn’t be this difficult just to get somewhere on a Sunday night?), and as I sat there in the small plastic chairs in the pebble-strewn backyard of this bar that touts its own grill (you bring the meat) drinking more than I anticipated (can you ever really anticipate?), I started to think about this city and what makes us stay.
We’re all drawn here for our own reasons, we make the conscious decision that this is the place that’s going to shape the rest of our lives. It will give us the opportunities we need, help us meet the people we want, enable us to become something we hope and dream to be. But thing I was realizing sitting there with the large colored lights strung upon the fence to illuminate my thoughts - was what do you do when you come to the point when this city is no longer enough? And (much more to the point), is that even be possible?
Well of course it is. Like anything else in life things change, and the idea of what you want and who you are and what’s important to you can shift, seemingly behind your back. It’s easier than you think to find yourself in the middle of a foreign street in Brooklyn far from home wondering how you got there. So at the end of the night when people were all heading home, (I was the only soul to venture back to Manhattan) this time (walking four extra blocks to the A, the A to Fulton, Fulton to the uptown 6...) I had a lot of time to assess that tricky and ever-changing question: what do I want?
In the time it took me to get home I'd found my answer, and the answers is really quite simple. It’s like in Annie Hall when she calls Alvy over to her apartment in a panic just to kill the huge spider in her tub. I hate spiders (always have) and have a terrible time working up the courage to dispose of them, but after a few years here I know that I have people I could call in the very instance that there was a spider the size of a Buick in my bathroom.
So yes, life and what we want changes all the time and it’s a good idea to keep asking yourself that question in the middle of such a busy and fast-paced place where it’s easy to lose sight of what’s important. But for me, what I want is just to be here (no matter how long it takes from Brooklyn) with people I can count on. So unless and until I no longer have someone in New York who I can call in the middle of the night to kill a spider in my tub - I figure I’ll stick around.
May 20, 2008
morning solitaire.
In the morning just before dawn, the streets of Manhattan take on another feel. There’s nothing like it, the calm before the storm of the day, before people are out on sidewalks and cars are out in streets all rushing to get from one place to somewhere else. There’s nothing like New York in the morning, (nothing like life in the morning!) before everything has a chance to get in the way and change it, change the stillness of the air, of your heart, of your mind.
In the morning just before dawn First avenue of Manhattan on 72nd street is quiet, the street lamps seem to flicker and change in a soft slow beat: Green. Orange. Red. Then everyone stops and I open the front door of my apartment and go downstairs (mind still quiet, still half asleep) and push out into the cold morning air. It’s like opening the door to a still and foreign world that is familiar yet altered.
The street is quiet but isn’t usually, however I have long since forgotten what the loud voices of its patrons sound like. They (like the city) have become second nature to me, have incorporated themselves into my life like anything else. They are automatic, constantly in the background of most of my waking evening hours (and sometimes early morning) and I’ve come to take a comfort in them in the same way I have knowing that this city is outside my front door.
Green. Orange. Red. I take off in the direction of the Park because the air this morning is cold and makes me think that the wind on the East River will be unbearable. I try to keep my mind quiet in the early morning hours, in the calm before the storm when I can feel - over Second, Third, Lexington - like this city is meant just for me. When else are the streets so bare that it’s easy to think that this great stretch of concrete is my home and mine alone? As I pass - over Park, Madison, 5th - I look up at the buildings with curtains drawn over windows and picture the people all still asleep, eyes closed in their warm beds still dreaming in their own quiet worlds unwilling to face the day.
I picture big Park Avenue beds with couples far away from each other on opposite sides. I picture small third avenue beds with couples entwined, with feet hanging over the side, arms flung over heads and warm slow breaths hitting someone else’s ear, the side of their face, their hair. What do they dream when they dream? What do they think of their lives when they’re awake?
Inevitably I’ll seen them all later. I’ll sit next to them on the subway and walk with them on the sidewalk, and sit in the office next to them. I’ll be a part of their lives (and they a part of mine) in the next few hours, and here I am out in the cold checking my watch and wanting the day to begin because I can’t help but think that I may never quite be that couple on Park Avenue or Third.
At 5th Avenue I take one last long look down that vast and open stretch of road that takes everyone everywhere, from so many places to so many other places all the time. To things they never expect, to people they never thought they’d meet, to distant future days that hold surprises and difficulties and all sorts of bad luck (I wonder: would we take certain roads if we knew in the end where they’d end up?). But for now everyone is asleep in their beds still unaware of what’s to come, still protected from the unknown.
Green. Orange. Red. I cross over 5th and pass over into Central Park. Picking up my pace I can hear, through the intermittent sounds of cabs whirring by - whoosh! - the faint patters of my feet hitting the pavement more quickly, moving me forward.
In the morning just before dawn, the streets of Manhattan take on another feel. It’s the same thing every day, it’s the same journey with different sets of thoughts through different sets of lights, but at the end of it I’m still the same person I was when I started out. Almost an hour later when I finally reach 5th again I walk back - Madison, Park, Lexington -and pass by windows with curtains now pulled open, (eyes wide awake), until I get closer to home.
In the morning just before dawn First avenue of Manhattan on 72nd street is quiet, the street lamps seem to flicker and change in a soft slow beat: Green. Orange. Red. Then everyone stops and I open the front door of my apartment and go downstairs (mind still quiet, still half asleep) and push out into the cold morning air. It’s like opening the door to a still and foreign world that is familiar yet altered.
The street is quiet but isn’t usually, however I have long since forgotten what the loud voices of its patrons sound like. They (like the city) have become second nature to me, have incorporated themselves into my life like anything else. They are automatic, constantly in the background of most of my waking evening hours (and sometimes early morning) and I’ve come to take a comfort in them in the same way I have knowing that this city is outside my front door.
Green. Orange. Red. I take off in the direction of the Park because the air this morning is cold and makes me think that the wind on the East River will be unbearable. I try to keep my mind quiet in the early morning hours, in the calm before the storm when I can feel - over Second, Third, Lexington - like this city is meant just for me. When else are the streets so bare that it’s easy to think that this great stretch of concrete is my home and mine alone? As I pass - over Park, Madison, 5th - I look up at the buildings with curtains drawn over windows and picture the people all still asleep, eyes closed in their warm beds still dreaming in their own quiet worlds unwilling to face the day.
I picture big Park Avenue beds with couples far away from each other on opposite sides. I picture small third avenue beds with couples entwined, with feet hanging over the side, arms flung over heads and warm slow breaths hitting someone else’s ear, the side of their face, their hair. What do they dream when they dream? What do they think of their lives when they’re awake?
Inevitably I’ll seen them all later. I’ll sit next to them on the subway and walk with them on the sidewalk, and sit in the office next to them. I’ll be a part of their lives (and they a part of mine) in the next few hours, and here I am out in the cold checking my watch and wanting the day to begin because I can’t help but think that I may never quite be that couple on Park Avenue or Third.
At 5th Avenue I take one last long look down that vast and open stretch of road that takes everyone everywhere, from so many places to so many other places all the time. To things they never expect, to people they never thought they’d meet, to distant future days that hold surprises and difficulties and all sorts of bad luck (I wonder: would we take certain roads if we knew in the end where they’d end up?). But for now everyone is asleep in their beds still unaware of what’s to come, still protected from the unknown.
Green. Orange. Red. I cross over 5th and pass over into Central Park. Picking up my pace I can hear, through the intermittent sounds of cabs whirring by - whoosh! - the faint patters of my feet hitting the pavement more quickly, moving me forward.
In the morning just before dawn, the streets of Manhattan take on another feel. It’s the same thing every day, it’s the same journey with different sets of thoughts through different sets of lights, but at the end of it I’m still the same person I was when I started out. Almost an hour later when I finally reach 5th again I walk back - Madison, Park, Lexington -and pass by windows with curtains now pulled open, (eyes wide awake), until I get closer to home.
May 18, 2008
Backyard BBQ
"Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?"
She said as we got off the wrong stop on the L
heading to a friends place I’d already been to before.
I’m the exception to the only-men-never-stop-for-directions rule.
*
It’s inevitable that on a stretch of concrete patio
in Williamsburg, that I will meet someone who lived
down the street from me when I lived in Boston, and
now lives two blocks away from me in New York.
*
Why is it that grown men always stand over the grill
and stare down at the flames in an almost-trance,
each one of them always acting like they know best?
It’s done. Give it 5 more minutes. Someone hand me the spatula!
*
Afternoons always pass much faster than they should
when the sun is out and you’ve had more beers than
you were ever planning when you started.
*
He didn’t say much and didn’t have the slightest clue
as to what I was talking about, so I just kept right on talking.
Most of the time when we go out looking for it,
it finds us and we hardly know the difference.
*
After all this time in New York, nothing surprises me anymore.
I think I could stand for a change.
She said as we got off the wrong stop on the L
heading to a friends place I’d already been to before.
I’m the exception to the only-men-never-stop-for-directions rule.
*
It’s inevitable that on a stretch of concrete patio
in Williamsburg, that I will meet someone who lived
down the street from me when I lived in Boston, and
now lives two blocks away from me in New York.
*
Why is it that grown men always stand over the grill
and stare down at the flames in an almost-trance,
each one of them always acting like they know best?
It’s done. Give it 5 more minutes. Someone hand me the spatula!
*
Afternoons always pass much faster than they should
when the sun is out and you’ve had more beers than
you were ever planning when you started.
*
He didn’t say much and didn’t have the slightest clue
as to what I was talking about, so I just kept right on talking.
Most of the time when we go out looking for it,
it finds us and we hardly know the difference.
*
After all this time in New York, nothing surprises me anymore.
I think I could stand for a change.
May 11, 2008
I've lost, therefore I am.
It’s funny how much you can realize who you aren’t the more you lose things. You know you aren’t someone who is in a relationship when you lose a boyfriend or girlfriend. You know you aren’t someone who is going on vacation when you lose your entire paycheck to rent. You know you aren’t someone who is getting into your apartment when you lose your keys on the bus (pls. see previous post). And you know you aren’t someone who is going to fall in love any time soon when you’ve lost your propensity to trust.
So somehow, the more you lose the more you realize the person are not, (and perhaps even the person you once were and no longer are). We lose things like years and chances and people and love (and keys) all the time, and these loses are constantly defining and re-defining our lives. But I wonder (daily, painfully, eagerly...) how much do we really have to end up losing along the way in order to find out who we are?
It’s amazing sometimes to think of the things you can never get back to. You can, at the end of the day, always take the subway home and get back to the place where you can rest your head and let yourself dream - but sometimes it’s those very dreams that you can’t help but lose over time. They too get lost and fade away along with the ideas you had about who you wanted to become.
So somehow, the more you lose the more you realize the person are not, (and perhaps even the person you once were and no longer are). We lose things like years and chances and people and love (and keys) all the time, and these loses are constantly defining and re-defining our lives. But I wonder (daily, painfully, eagerly...) how much do we really have to end up losing along the way in order to find out who we are?
It’s amazing sometimes to think of the things you can never get back to. You can, at the end of the day, always take the subway home and get back to the place where you can rest your head and let yourself dream - but sometimes it’s those very dreams that you can’t help but lose over time. They too get lost and fade away along with the ideas you had about who you wanted to become.
April 30, 2008
Survival of the Fittest.
I was on the bus and heard the sound before I really knew what was going on. I was reading intently the New Yorker like the good little New Yorker that I am, so absorbed that I hardly realized just how far the bus had traveled (that early in the morning without coffee we could have been in the Pocono's and I’d have had absolutely no idea).
The point being that I feel about it about and I’m the first (or second, or third...) person to admit it when I’m wrong about something. I was wrong when I heard it, the hard abrasive sound of his janitor-like keys fall from the back of his maroon Jansport (faded and marked with inky scribbles) and fall to the ground - and I didn’t say a word.
I didn’t say anything at first because surely with a sound that loud and a weight so large suddenly being alleviated from his backside, he’d have at least noticed something was wrong. I didn’t say anything at first because surely that woman who was literally three feet away from him (and there was me, rows and rows away) would pipe up and do the right thing. I mean her and I were both looking at the same thing, the same pile of metal on the dirty floor, both starting to realize that time was passing faster than it should, and the longer we waited to act, the more lost this opportunity was going to become.
I watched in paralyzed horror as Jansport kept walking, took a sharp right turn at the front of the bus and bounded down the steps. " --------." My mouth was open and nothing came. I was really ready to shout (really), I even cleared my throat in preparation to get the best projection, but by the time I was ready it was too late - he was gone. For an instant, poised on the edge of my seat I had a brief flashing image of myself pouncing on the keys and jumping off the bus, running after him and returning his keys in a very saving-the-day kind of way.
But I didn’t. I didn’t say anything. What is it about doing the Right Thing that has the power of stopping us dead in our tracks? I sat back in my chair and thought about how horrible a person I was for not doing the Right Thing in that clear distinct window of opportunity. I glared at the woman up front who I decided should really take all of the blame. Our eyes met and she saw my look: Yeah you, my eyes said, you totally dropped the ball on that one.
After a few blocks however, back reading my New Yorker in total caffeine withdrawal, I felt a little better about the situation. This is after all, New York City , NEW YORK CITY, a place where you have to have it together, where you have to know where your head’s at, (and your wallet and your bags and your keys and your subway pass and your phone...) at all times, or else you’re simply not cut out to be here.
And perhaps when Jansport got home that night and, unable to get into his apartment where his couch and food and cat and bed were, he decided it was time to go.
The point being that I feel about it about and I’m the first (or second, or third...) person to admit it when I’m wrong about something. I was wrong when I heard it, the hard abrasive sound of his janitor-like keys fall from the back of his maroon Jansport (faded and marked with inky scribbles) and fall to the ground - and I didn’t say a word.
I didn’t say anything at first because surely with a sound that loud and a weight so large suddenly being alleviated from his backside, he’d have at least noticed something was wrong. I didn’t say anything at first because surely that woman who was literally three feet away from him (and there was me, rows and rows away) would pipe up and do the right thing. I mean her and I were both looking at the same thing, the same pile of metal on the dirty floor, both starting to realize that time was passing faster than it should, and the longer we waited to act, the more lost this opportunity was going to become.
I watched in paralyzed horror as Jansport kept walking, took a sharp right turn at the front of the bus and bounded down the steps. " --------." My mouth was open and nothing came. I was really ready to shout (really), I even cleared my throat in preparation to get the best projection, but by the time I was ready it was too late - he was gone. For an instant, poised on the edge of my seat I had a brief flashing image of myself pouncing on the keys and jumping off the bus, running after him and returning his keys in a very saving-the-day kind of way.
But I didn’t. I didn’t say anything. What is it about doing the Right Thing that has the power of stopping us dead in our tracks? I sat back in my chair and thought about how horrible a person I was for not doing the Right Thing in that clear distinct window of opportunity. I glared at the woman up front who I decided should really take all of the blame. Our eyes met and she saw my look: Yeah you, my eyes said, you totally dropped the ball on that one.
After a few blocks however, back reading my New Yorker in total caffeine withdrawal, I felt a little better about the situation. This is after all, New York City , NEW YORK CITY, a place where you have to have it together, where you have to know where your head’s at, (and your wallet and your bags and your keys and your subway pass and your phone...) at all times, or else you’re simply not cut out to be here.
And perhaps when Jansport got home that night and, unable to get into his apartment where his couch and food and cat and bed were, he decided it was time to go.
April 27, 2008
Thing great thing about New York is -
you never know who you’re going to come across
on a random street corner.
You can bump into someone from a distant city of your past
on the corner of 14th and 6th as easily as you do,
a total stranger.
Suddenly, in a sea of crowded people you feel reassured that
(despite all signs to the contrary)
you are on the right path.
The great thing about New York is -
once you here you’re part of the city’s plan (like it or not),
and there’s no going back.
on a random street corner.
You can bump into someone from a distant city of your past
on the corner of 14th and 6th as easily as you do,
a total stranger.
Suddenly, in a sea of crowded people you feel reassured that
(despite all signs to the contrary)
you are on the right path.
The great thing about New York is -
once you here you’re part of the city’s plan (like it or not),
and there’s no going back.
April 21, 2008
Runner.
Every day in this city I meet someone new - every morning, every minute. Because walking the streets of this city you pass the lives of so many people in one moment, so absurdly and closely encounter them brief and blindingly fast like the beams of the headlights that buzz by - and then poof! They’re gone.
They’re all wondering (aren’t they?) the same things as they walk. All worried about bills (too many) and promotions (not enough) and success (too much?) and love (not enough?) and whether or not they turned off the coffee pot or the curling iron in their rush to get on with their days, to get on with their lives.
We rush here because we have to, because we sleep listening to the cars and cabs outside our windows, the echoing voices in the distance of people we hear clearly but will never meet. There is something comfortingly lonely about a place where every day, every moment, every block you experience a little piece of someone else’s life. You look them in the eyes, you smile at them, overhear the piece of a phone call, catch a glimpse of their happiness through their laugh, or see the sadness of their tears.
The more time I spend here the more I feel like we’re all the same. Like the man who I see every morning when I wait for the bus. He’s there waiting too, a familiar but nameless face in the crowd who then sits a few seats away as we speed across town. We pretend not to notice each other when we stand together on the sidewalk waiting to cross at 72nd and Broadway and then both wait for the same downtown 2/3 express train. We pretend not to notice again when we see each other at the gym, or when we find ourselves in the cereal aisle together at the corner market. We look straight ahead as we pass on the street when I’m walking towards Central Park for a jog, and he’s just on his way back.
So strange that we’re all here co-habitants of a place so small that we want so desperately to be our own. We all of us see each other and think: if it was me on that side of that street going in that direction, that could be me. The person crossing that street or hailing a cab or walking the dog or kissing that person on the corner in a passionate embrace - I could be them, we think, and them, and them and them....
But like everything in this city, these moments of clarity of our existence in a place so crazy come and go quickly. They pass with regret, with lost opportunity, with the realization that we only are who we are because that’s who we’ve chosen to be. So we keep passing each other like clockwork (bus and gym and grocery store...) day after day, morning after morning, moment after moment, running away from each other and pretending that we’re the only ones who exist - and then poof! They’re gone.
They’re all wondering (aren’t they?) the same things as they walk. All worried about bills (too many) and promotions (not enough) and success (too much?) and love (not enough?) and whether or not they turned off the coffee pot or the curling iron in their rush to get on with their days, to get on with their lives.
We rush here because we have to, because we sleep listening to the cars and cabs outside our windows, the echoing voices in the distance of people we hear clearly but will never meet. There is something comfortingly lonely about a place where every day, every moment, every block you experience a little piece of someone else’s life. You look them in the eyes, you smile at them, overhear the piece of a phone call, catch a glimpse of their happiness through their laugh, or see the sadness of their tears.
The more time I spend here the more I feel like we’re all the same. Like the man who I see every morning when I wait for the bus. He’s there waiting too, a familiar but nameless face in the crowd who then sits a few seats away as we speed across town. We pretend not to notice each other when we stand together on the sidewalk waiting to cross at 72nd and Broadway and then both wait for the same downtown 2/3 express train. We pretend not to notice again when we see each other at the gym, or when we find ourselves in the cereal aisle together at the corner market. We look straight ahead as we pass on the street when I’m walking towards Central Park for a jog, and he’s just on his way back.
So strange that we’re all here co-habitants of a place so small that we want so desperately to be our own. We all of us see each other and think: if it was me on that side of that street going in that direction, that could be me. The person crossing that street or hailing a cab or walking the dog or kissing that person on the corner in a passionate embrace - I could be them, we think, and them, and them and them....
But like everything in this city, these moments of clarity of our existence in a place so crazy come and go quickly. They pass with regret, with lost opportunity, with the realization that we only are who we are because that’s who we’ve chosen to be. So we keep passing each other like clockwork (bus and gym and grocery store...) day after day, morning after morning, moment after moment, running away from each other and pretending that we’re the only ones who exist - and then poof! They’re gone.
April 3, 2008
Lists.
The man sitting next to me on the uptown 6 train after work was intently making a list in an old beat up spiral notebook. He learned forward with his elbows on this knees and thought carefully before adding to the list in doctor-like scrawl:
McCain
R. Ray
NASCAR
Spitzer
rice pudding
Yankees
Each addition took time and care, deep thought and commitment as though once he wrote them down they would set the wheels in motion to change his life forever. He looked normal with khaki pants and a North Face jacket with a white earphones cord that disappeared into his pocket. I looked over his shoulder (something I try not to do) intrigued. What was the thought process behind this list? What did it mean? I tried to think of a common theme: Things he didn’t like? Favorite things? Pet Peeves? Reasons to keep going on?
For six stops he sat and pondered (as did I) until just before he stood up to leave. I watched as he wrote one last thing three times in a row that completed (perhaps) the list of all the important things that had been on his mind: Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer.
McCain
R. Ray
NASCAR
Spitzer
rice pudding
Yankees
Each addition took time and care, deep thought and commitment as though once he wrote them down they would set the wheels in motion to change his life forever. He looked normal with khaki pants and a North Face jacket with a white earphones cord that disappeared into his pocket. I looked over his shoulder (something I try not to do) intrigued. What was the thought process behind this list? What did it mean? I tried to think of a common theme: Things he didn’t like? Favorite things? Pet Peeves? Reasons to keep going on?
For six stops he sat and pondered (as did I) until just before he stood up to leave. I watched as he wrote one last thing three times in a row that completed (perhaps) the list of all the important things that had been on his mind: Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer.
March 19, 2008
The Hat
I was standing there just waiting for the crosstown bus in the rain. Today was a cold and rainy morning during the rush to get to work, and I understand, I do, how people here only ever, (and usually only can) think of themselves. I have to get to the office. I have to catch that train. I have to get into that restaurant on Friday night. I have to get those shoes. I have to get tickets to see that play. I have to I have to I have to.
That’s one of the things that drives me crazy about New York - so many people with so many different wants and needs all on one little island all intersecting all the time, that it makes it difficult sometimes to feel like you belong, always leaving you to wonder: where do I fit in?
I was standing there just waiting for the crosstown bus in the rain under one of the construction overhangs (that are everywhere in the city) making for a nice break from having to use an umbrella (all of mine are maimed anyway, broken and open with crooked metal veins). Yet there on the Upper East Side was a woman who was determined in her early morning I have to, to push past me with her umbrella wide open regardless, unaware of anyone but seemingly herself. She clipped the edge of her Burberry umbrella against my head as she blew by, the pointy edge catching my knit winter white hat (my favorite white one with the flower on the side that I usually never let myself wear because it’s too nice) taking it with her, right off my head as she passed.
I watched, startled, as she began to walk away with it swinging, almost suspended in the air by her shoulder. I opened my mouth to speak, to yell (I was furious), but nothing came out. Did that really just happen? Truth is I had a feeling it was going to happen. I could sense her walking towards me the way you can sense a winter snowstorm just before it’s about to break. But I didn’t move. I made the conscious decision to stand my ground because surely, right there on that large sidewalk, she had more than enough room to pass leaving me unscathed. Surely in all the city I can still at least stand in one place, I can still have one small piece of sidewalk, one mere bit of pavement to myself, even if just for a few minutes, that’s unobstructedly my own.
The anger of realizing that no space in New York is ever really just your own, made my finally say, "Excuse me!" in a voice much stronger than I was expecting. At the sound the woman then stopped and noticed the unfamiliar small white object that had now dropped to her shoulder and rested there peacefully. The other people all waiting for the bus watched as this whole little tableau began to unfold, and I wondered what they were thinking as she stopped, confused, and turned to me, "But this isn’t mine!" she shouted in disgust. And with one quick sweeping motion she flung the hat from her shoulder with an abrupt flick of her wrist. I watched unmoving as my little white hat with the flower on the side that I never usually let myself wear, flew in slow motion through the air until it fell into a puddle on the side of the road.
My eyes drifted from the hat on the ground to the woman (she still didn’t understand, her cheeks red with confusion now, her eyes still shouting I have to I havetoIhaveto) and for a moment I couldn’t move. The look on my face must have been what made her stop and not simply keep on walking, must have been what made her stand there (along with everyone else), watching and waiting while I suppressed the overwhelming feeling that was pushing its way up around my heart -the feeling that somehow everything, no matter how much you try to protect it, always ends up getting tainted, ruined, taken away from you against your will. "I know," I said, pained as I walked over to the hat, now soaking and dirty, and slowly bent down and picked it up before looking her in the eyes. "It’s mine."
That’s one of the things that drives me crazy about New York - so many people with so many different wants and needs all on one little island all intersecting all the time, that it makes it difficult sometimes to feel like you belong, always leaving you to wonder: where do I fit in?
I was standing there just waiting for the crosstown bus in the rain under one of the construction overhangs (that are everywhere in the city) making for a nice break from having to use an umbrella (all of mine are maimed anyway, broken and open with crooked metal veins). Yet there on the Upper East Side was a woman who was determined in her early morning I have to, to push past me with her umbrella wide open regardless, unaware of anyone but seemingly herself. She clipped the edge of her Burberry umbrella against my head as she blew by, the pointy edge catching my knit winter white hat (my favorite white one with the flower on the side that I usually never let myself wear because it’s too nice) taking it with her, right off my head as she passed.
I watched, startled, as she began to walk away with it swinging, almost suspended in the air by her shoulder. I opened my mouth to speak, to yell (I was furious), but nothing came out. Did that really just happen? Truth is I had a feeling it was going to happen. I could sense her walking towards me the way you can sense a winter snowstorm just before it’s about to break. But I didn’t move. I made the conscious decision to stand my ground because surely, right there on that large sidewalk, she had more than enough room to pass leaving me unscathed. Surely in all the city I can still at least stand in one place, I can still have one small piece of sidewalk, one mere bit of pavement to myself, even if just for a few minutes, that’s unobstructedly my own.
The anger of realizing that no space in New York is ever really just your own, made my finally say, "Excuse me!" in a voice much stronger than I was expecting. At the sound the woman then stopped and noticed the unfamiliar small white object that had now dropped to her shoulder and rested there peacefully. The other people all waiting for the bus watched as this whole little tableau began to unfold, and I wondered what they were thinking as she stopped, confused, and turned to me, "But this isn’t mine!" she shouted in disgust. And with one quick sweeping motion she flung the hat from her shoulder with an abrupt flick of her wrist. I watched unmoving as my little white hat with the flower on the side that I never usually let myself wear, flew in slow motion through the air until it fell into a puddle on the side of the road.
My eyes drifted from the hat on the ground to the woman (she still didn’t understand, her cheeks red with confusion now, her eyes still shouting I have to I havetoIhaveto) and for a moment I couldn’t move. The look on my face must have been what made her stop and not simply keep on walking, must have been what made her stand there (along with everyone else), watching and waiting while I suppressed the overwhelming feeling that was pushing its way up around my heart -the feeling that somehow everything, no matter how much you try to protect it, always ends up getting tainted, ruined, taken away from you against your will. "I know," I said, pained as I walked over to the hat, now soaking and dirty, and slowly bent down and picked it up before looking her in the eyes. "It’s mine."
March 18, 2008
Set Theory.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s a bad thing when you recognize as you’re standing at the corner of a certain place in your life, that at one point in the past you’ve stood there before in a way you never can again.
I was at the corner of 68th and Lexington on the way to work, pushing through the morning crowd all hunkered down in a silent hurried rush, and for a brief moment my eye caught sight of the grey pavement of the sidewalk littered with old gum, the newsstands of The Village Voice (on Wednesdays) The Onion (that I never read) and AM New York, and I saw myself and how I’d stood at that corner near the street sign at past moments in my life that I can never get back again.
The paths of our lives keep stretching out in front of us at different dimensions in so many different places and cities -that at one point, at some point, they have to eventually intersect and catch up with us (even on a Tuesday morning during rush-hour).
Because I’ve stood on 68th and Lexington waiting to cross the street feeling that naive newly-arrived-Manhattan feeling that I can never get back after so many days of dealing with the harshness of its reality. I’ve stood there being heartbroken over a love that’s long since faded. I’ve stood there with people who at one time were a strong presence in my life but no longer are, along with those I still can’t fully accept that I’ll never see again. And yet, the corner remains.
It is perhaps at the fastest moving moments of our lives that we can’t help but reach out to try to make sense of things, to try to find the right angles at which to see the world. Most intersections of life don’t make much sense as it’s in a state of constant flux. Like the woman who was interviewed on NY1 on Saturday having left her apartment on 51st and 2nd just moments before the crane fell and crushed the building, killing many nearby. I was just there, she uttered in shocked disbelief to the reporter, to the camera, to the city. I’ve lived there all my life. I’ve lost everything I have.
There are (aren’t there?) so many corners in life that hold so much of what was, that it’s hard sometimes to make sense when you walk passed them (either just in time, or a moment too late) of what will become of them in the future.
I was at the corner of 68th and Lexington on the way to work, pushing through the morning crowd all hunkered down in a silent hurried rush, and for a brief moment my eye caught sight of the grey pavement of the sidewalk littered with old gum, the newsstands of The Village Voice (on Wednesdays) The Onion (that I never read) and AM New York, and I saw myself and how I’d stood at that corner near the street sign at past moments in my life that I can never get back again.
The paths of our lives keep stretching out in front of us at different dimensions in so many different places and cities -that at one point, at some point, they have to eventually intersect and catch up with us (even on a Tuesday morning during rush-hour).
Because I’ve stood on 68th and Lexington waiting to cross the street feeling that naive newly-arrived-Manhattan feeling that I can never get back after so many days of dealing with the harshness of its reality. I’ve stood there being heartbroken over a love that’s long since faded. I’ve stood there with people who at one time were a strong presence in my life but no longer are, along with those I still can’t fully accept that I’ll never see again. And yet, the corner remains.
It is perhaps at the fastest moving moments of our lives that we can’t help but reach out to try to make sense of things, to try to find the right angles at which to see the world. Most intersections of life don’t make much sense as it’s in a state of constant flux. Like the woman who was interviewed on NY1 on Saturday having left her apartment on 51st and 2nd just moments before the crane fell and crushed the building, killing many nearby. I was just there, she uttered in shocked disbelief to the reporter, to the camera, to the city. I’ve lived there all my life. I’ve lost everything I have.
There are (aren’t there?) so many corners in life that hold so much of what was, that it’s hard sometimes to make sense when you walk passed them (either just in time, or a moment too late) of what will become of them in the future.
March 11, 2008
Let's stay together.
At the end of the day there’s nothing New Yorkers want more than to get home. We work late nights, long hours, and suddenly our days are gone before we even had a chance to notice. So when we’re on the subway half asleep we’re not really focusing on the article we’re reading in the latest issue of The New Yorker (is Michael Chabon right? Are superhero’s costumes overrated?) -we’re dreaming of the feeling that will come when we finally put our heads down on our pillows.
I was on the uptown 6 train on my way home tonight, staring at my reflection in the window because I was too tired to pretend to read as we sped from 42nd to 59th. When you’re not pretending to read on the subway you’ve really got nothing else to do but look at other people. And the more you try not to look at other people the more you think about how you have nowhere else to look. I spent one too many times trying not to look at the pinstripe suit who was standing with his back against the door holding a faded leather briefcase, that I think I ended up looking at him more than I should have. What can I say, he was cute.
Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing else we can really do in New York but force moments with strangers in the hope that perhaps that one of them will reach out and ask for our numbers in that great New-York-romantic-moment you only see in the movies. Sure you realize after a while it’s ridiculous, but what else are you supposed to do when you’re bored on the subway? And let’s admit it, sometimes even the most independently single can become inwardly desperate.
But the whole point is that when the doors opened at 59th street a man got on the train with his guitar hoping for some late dinner money and announced he was going to play a song. When the first lines of Al Green’s "Let’s Stay Together" started to come out of his mouth I burst out laughing. It was automatic because it was so ridiculous, because such an intimate sounding song with all of us half asleep workaholics forcing moments with each other or staring at the floor - who could help but laugh when he, in his fedora and out of tune guitar cooed the opening sultry words "I’m. I’m so in love with you. Whatever you want to do. Is alright with me."
Fortunately I was the next stop and fled because, as always seems to happen at the most inopportune moments, once I started laughing I had a hard time stopping. I smiled on my way out (just missing the last verse) to the suit, who smiled back in a very you’re-ridiculous sort of way and not in the let’s-grab-dinner-on-Friday-night way I’d been secretly hoping for.
Another New York moment gone in a flash, sure, but it’s always nice to know that even when times are good or bad, happy or sad -you can’t help but want to stay together with the only city in the world that refuses to give you anything but an ordinary Tuesday night.
I was on the uptown 6 train on my way home tonight, staring at my reflection in the window because I was too tired to pretend to read as we sped from 42nd to 59th. When you’re not pretending to read on the subway you’ve really got nothing else to do but look at other people. And the more you try not to look at other people the more you think about how you have nowhere else to look. I spent one too many times trying not to look at the pinstripe suit who was standing with his back against the door holding a faded leather briefcase, that I think I ended up looking at him more than I should have. What can I say, he was cute.
Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing else we can really do in New York but force moments with strangers in the hope that perhaps that one of them will reach out and ask for our numbers in that great New-York-romantic-moment you only see in the movies. Sure you realize after a while it’s ridiculous, but what else are you supposed to do when you’re bored on the subway? And let’s admit it, sometimes even the most independently single can become inwardly desperate.
But the whole point is that when the doors opened at 59th street a man got on the train with his guitar hoping for some late dinner money and announced he was going to play a song. When the first lines of Al Green’s "Let’s Stay Together" started to come out of his mouth I burst out laughing. It was automatic because it was so ridiculous, because such an intimate sounding song with all of us half asleep workaholics forcing moments with each other or staring at the floor - who could help but laugh when he, in his fedora and out of tune guitar cooed the opening sultry words "I’m. I’m so in love with you. Whatever you want to do. Is alright with me."
Fortunately I was the next stop and fled because, as always seems to happen at the most inopportune moments, once I started laughing I had a hard time stopping. I smiled on my way out (just missing the last verse) to the suit, who smiled back in a very you’re-ridiculous sort of way and not in the let’s-grab-dinner-on-Friday-night way I’d been secretly hoping for.
Another New York moment gone in a flash, sure, but it’s always nice to know that even when times are good or bad, happy or sad -you can’t help but want to stay together with the only city in the world that refuses to give you anything but an ordinary Tuesday night.
March 7, 2008
Get Home Safe. (and remember to look both ways).
I realize that you can stay in one place long enough that you start to forget that your life is actually happening to you. Tonight I was standing on the street corner in the rain, the one that I cross every day to get home, and as the rain poured down I could barely see through the flood that passed in front of beaming cab headlights and bounced off the pavement. As my coat officially became soaked through (and I cursed myself for not having an umbrella), I actually had to remind myself that I was standing there.
I got lost in the city (it’s easy to), waiting for lights to change and cars to stop passing and for the white walk sign to flash telling me it was okay to proceed. I got lost in the sea of black umbrellas (they’re all black in New York) and the white fog the escaped everyone’s mouths from the cold and seeped up through the sewer drains and took hold of our feet.
That’s the thing: living here becomes automatic, just like breathing, and sometimes we can forget that we’re doing it. On the uptown E train coming home from work (give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...) I stood holding the handle under the yellow-fading lights and I saw the distant faces and recognized myself in them. Here we are, every day all breathing the same air, looking into the same nothingness, waiting, waiting, waiting for something (I still don’t know), and forgetting why we’re doing it.
Because even static things can spin fast beside you, spitting you out as it did me on the corner of 72nd street wondering for a moment how I got there. The familiar can become foreign sometimes, creatures of habit who crave repetition and routine for a sense of comfort in an overwhelmingly off-kilter world, we are sometimes jolted by something (the sound of an early March downpour?) that forces us to open our eyes.
I got lost in the city (it’s easy to), waiting for lights to change and cars to stop passing and for the white walk sign to flash telling me it was okay to proceed. I got lost in the sea of black umbrellas (they’re all black in New York) and the white fog the escaped everyone’s mouths from the cold and seeped up through the sewer drains and took hold of our feet.
That’s the thing: living here becomes automatic, just like breathing, and sometimes we can forget that we’re doing it. On the uptown E train coming home from work (give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...) I stood holding the handle under the yellow-fading lights and I saw the distant faces and recognized myself in them. Here we are, every day all breathing the same air, looking into the same nothingness, waiting, waiting, waiting for something (I still don’t know), and forgetting why we’re doing it.
Because even static things can spin fast beside you, spitting you out as it did me on the corner of 72nd street wondering for a moment how I got there. The familiar can become foreign sometimes, creatures of habit who crave repetition and routine for a sense of comfort in an overwhelmingly off-kilter world, we are sometimes jolted by something (the sound of an early March downpour?) that forces us to open our eyes.
March 5, 2008
New York is bleeding me dry.
I know that we pay a high fee to live here (both monetary and emotionally) but this is getting ridiculous. Is there any other city in the world where people have better jobs and are still struggling just to get by? Every week it’s another twenty some odd dollars disappearing for groceries that aren’t eaten, late bills, superfluous drinks, late-night cabs, bad movies, small dinners and impossible-to-see-it-all-anyway-museums.
After two years of living here I don’t know where all those twenty some odd dollars have disappeared to, all in their small way contributing to my life here, all paying for things to keep reminding me why I stay. Because money buys us memories, (doesn’t it?) it’s just tough when you recognize that you might not be able to afford (especially after rent) to go out and make too many more.
After two years of living here I don’t know where all those twenty some odd dollars have disappeared to, all in their small way contributing to my life here, all paying for things to keep reminding me why I stay. Because money buys us memories, (doesn’t it?) it’s just tough when you recognize that you might not be able to afford (especially after rent) to go out and make too many more.
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