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.
July 28, 2008
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.
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