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.
More people live alone here than anywhere else, but new research suggests that New York may be among the least lonely places on Earth...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.