it's always the last thing you see.

it’s always the last thing you see -
after he's been sitting across from you in a suit for almost eight stops on the subway
and he’s smiling at you and you’re too scared to smile back.

it’s always the last thing you see -
after he asks you where you’re headed
and if anyone has ever told you that you have the most extraordinary eyes.

it’s always the last thing you see -
after you, for a split second actually think this could be the beginning of a great New York love story you’ve been hoping for,
the wedding ring.

December 1.

We’ve made it through Thanksgiving. The turkey has been cooked for over four hours and we’ve eaten it in under four minutes. Now Christmas, the other big holiday that they’ve so cruelly dropped in between now and New Years, is now upon us.

I’ve tried to look the other way for weeks now, since Halloween when stores were already promoting their holiday merchandise in windows all over the city. I’ve tried to look the other way, but I’m poised again to now send out cards and buy gifts I can’t afford for people I care about but certainly haven’t seen enough of since last Christmas.

Why is that? Busy I guess. Lost in our own lives, which is easy enough to do. This morning watching the Today Show, my coffee was getting cold as they told me that the tree lighting is in two days (I nearly dropped the cup). Two days. And in 31 days this year will officially be over. I now know what Charlie Brown was talking about when he said Christmas just ended up making him feel depressed. And no amount of gifts, glasses of highly-caloric egg nog (note: now available in grocery stores) and tidings of good cheer can do much to change that (back off, Linus).

Last night as I was walking up Broadway in 65 degree heat (global warming?), I saw on almost every block, wooden stands holding up trees. Like clockwork they appear every year right after Thanksgiving, and as I passed one near 87th a signing voice imploring me to dream of a white Christmas drifted through the tinny speakers of an old radio. A family of four picked out the perfect Fraser Fir ($90?!) and the Dad hefted it over his shoulder to walk it back to their apartment.

Ok, so I guess I can’t look the other way any longer. December and Christmas in New York are staring me right in the face. And while I can hardly believe it, (and can’t afford a tree) they’ll light the tree in Rockefeller in two days and I’ll eventually go over to see it. I’ll get used to the smell of pine walking to the subway just in time for it to be replaced by dried old trees thrown out and left behind on the sidewalk.

It’s the holiday cycle, and as much as I try to resist it every year, it’s unavoidable. But I figure I’ve made it through Thanksgiving, and if I just keep my head down long enough I’ll make it through to January soon enough, too.

taxi cab confessions.

At one o’clock in the morning after a long night at Smith and Mills, half-drunk on Jameson’s in the back of a cab speeding up the West Side Highway, one of the last things I expected to have to deal with was a meaningful conversation with someone…especially not the driver of my cab.

"Gray’s Papaya," he said.

I think we were out of Tribeca at this point and nearing the 20’s, but I was barely paying attention. I was looking out the window at the city flying by, already trying to figure out how I was going to make it to the office in the morning.

"I’m sorry?" I asked.
"Gray’s Papaya, you know, the hotdog place on 6th?"
"Yeah I know it. What about it?"
"I got a ticket there today. Picked up a passenger while stopped in the crosswalk and the cop gave me a ticket, can you believe that?"

He sounded baffled.

"Is that illegal?" I asked.
"Well…yeah," he said. "But that’s not the point. You know those coppers got nothing better to do on a Wednesday night than write me up picking up someone by the curb."
"Yeah. Really ridiculous," I said. It didn’t sound like much of an outrage to me, but he seemed terribly upset.
"Of course it is!" he shouted.
"Well it’s near the end of the month, you know how those cops are…" I said cringing.

What was I even saying? I don’t how those cops "are," but it felt like the right thing to say.

"Oh I know it," he said. "And I should have known that woman was going to be trouble when I saw her standing there. Should never have picked her up."

We were quiet for a while and I wondered if maybe I was supposed to say something else, like about how women are trouble and that I was sorry he’d had had such a bad night.

"You know what I really want to do?" he asked, and I had a feeling he was going to tell me regardless.
"What’s that?"
"Be a doorman."

I nodded in the backseat but I don’t think he could see me.

"And not just any doorman, not an apartment building doorman, a hotel doorman. That’s where the good money is. Good money."
"That sounds like a great idea," I said thinking it over. "Why haven’t you done it?"
He was quiet for a moment before he spoke.
"I don’t know, actually," he said and it sounded like he surprised himself.
"That doesn’t really sound like a good enough reason to me," I said.
"I know," he said shaking his head. "I don’t know what I’m doing, why I keep putting it off…"
"Listen," I said, taking my A-1 professional tone. "What you need to do is make a list of the top ten hotels in the city you think you’d like to work for, and then call them. Get your resume ready and just show up, talk to their HR departments, whatever it takes."
"I know," he said, and he sounded like he really knew. "I know you’re right. I mean there’s the Sheraton, The Marriott, the Hilton…"
"All good places," I said channeling my best Dr. Phil. "But you need to actually do it, talking about it won’t actually get you the job."
"But…what if I’m not qualified?"
"You’re qualified. Of course you’re qualified. Look, you must be pretty prompt, I mean you’ve got to get in this car every day don’t you? And you’re a people person, right? I mean you’re in here all day talking to customers. What more could a doorman need to do?"
"You’re right," he said, nodding his head now. "I know you’re right. I don’t know what I’m so scared about."
"I don’t know either. This is New York," I said. "You can be anything you want as long as you try hard enough."

When we reached my corner I felt in that moment a great love for this city surge up in my chest.
Why in the world would anyone ever want to live anywhere else?

"You’re right. I’m really going to do it. I am. Thanks so much for your advice," he said and then turned back and smiled at me through the hole in the partition. "You owe me nineteen bucks."

It's unseasonably warm in New York.

I know now that I have no idea where summer went. In fact, as I walk down the streets of Manhattan, leaves turning yellow and falling making the ground slippery in the rain beneath my feet, I wonder where the last year of my life has gone to.

I always hate people who lament the passing of time as though they weren’t awake for it, as though they’d gone out of town or fell into a coma and can’t at all be held responsible for what’s happened while they weren’t paying attention. Where has the time gone?! they plead to each other. Its been flying! Time just packing its bags and settling in first class on a trip far away while their backs were turned.

But this time, (I hate to admit it) I agree with them. I agree with every word they’re saying because the more I try to recall what I’ve done since this year began, the more I don’t feel like I’ve done much of anything at all. And instead of having the cold air of fall to numb my brain so I don’t have to think too long about all the time I’ve wasted (what was I thinking?), all the opportunities I’ve let pass me by (so many and I still can’t understand why...), I’ve got the warm humid air of spring coming through just a week before Thanksgiving to ensure that I feel it all. Each little pang of regret. Each fuzzy memory of an entire year gone - poof - just like that.

I want this warm weather to leave like the leaves on the trees will soon, entirely, so that I can try to pretend that next year things will be different. I’ll take the cold and snow now please, so that I can try to pretend that with another change of the weather (and trust me, it will happen fast) maybe I’ll be different, too.

Here's looking at you, kid.

“Are you here with someone?” he asked. He was stuttering and a bit drunk and in a bar crowded with so many people I really had to wonder how it was that he’d spotted me.

“Yes,” I lied. I know it’s a callous thing to do, but sometimes you just have to pick your battles when you’re found alone at a bar while your friend has abandoned you for the bathroom and a stranger approaches.

“Are you here with someone great?” he swayed slightly has he spoke.

“Uh yeah he’s pretty great,” I said. Why not? I mean, if I were going to be anywhere with someone wouldn’t they’d have to be pretty great?

“Is he as great a guy as you deserve, or,” he said and paused for effect. “Do you think I might be better?” He smiled slowly and blinked slowly and I had to give him credit for making his case as well as he was considering he looked to be about ready to topple over.

I checked my watch.

“I’d say he’s about as great as I deserve, yes,” I said suddenly wishing this person we were talking about actually existed.

“Okay,” he nodded, slowly, looking satisfied. “As long as you say so then I guess there’s nothing more I can do.”

“Afraid so,” I said.

He shrugged and stuck out his hand through the fog of his alcoholic overload to shake my own. It was as though we’d just had a sort of interview for a job he tried his hardest for, but had to now accept that he wasn’t the right man for the position.

“Really really great to meet you,” he said. “Let me buy you a drink.”

“Sure,” I said knowing what was inevitably going to happen next.

He never came back.

Of all the men in all the bars in all the city…

parade.

If I’m on the subway in the morning with sunglasses on trying to read the paper my head still fuzzy because I haven’t had coffee yet, please don’t enter the train at Penn Station with a bunch of your friends where you’re all obviously arriving, (already drunk at 9AM), from New Jersey being loud and in Yankees attire carrying open Bud Light cans in plastic bags talking in front of me about bad movies and pretzels and declaring you hate “The city,” and “Could never live here” (we know that) and “What stop is this? Is this our stop?” every two seconds because you have no idea where you are, while proving how amazingly unable you are to stand up in the train as it’s moving and ultimately stepping on my foot more times than I can count.

Because if you’re going to do that, “sorry” just isn’t going to cut it.

'tis the season.

Fifth avenue window displays.
Red Starbucks holiday cups.
Rockefeller Christmas tree.
Endless ads for animated movie retellings of old holiday classics.

I'm not ready yet.

Maintenance.

All the subways were shut down in the city this weekend. A/C/E/1/2/3 every train that we rely on to get us to where we need to go, stopped running on a regular schedule causing us to seek alternate routes. They said that they wanted to get to the major problems they’d been needing to fix all at once before the colder weather officially set in.

Waiting for over thirty minute for the only downtown local train (and note the cold weather is officially here) I started to think that maybe the MTA was on to something. We do always wait to the last minute don’t we, to address what’s wrong? It’s easy not to take the time to oil the squeaky parts of our lives, to replace the things that just aren’t working as well as they used to. In the end it’s easy to just convince ourselves that somehow, some way, magically our problems will just fix themselves.

J/M/Z/4/5/6 we never learn, do we? In a city that moves so fast who has the time to see the gaping holes in the frame that is holding us up, the parts that are starting to rot and wither and get worse the longer they’re left. Our trouble spots are there hanging in front of us and yet we hope and pray under our breath that not everything will fall to pieces all at once. Please, just not now, we plead. But somehow, some way, they always do.

Walking forty blocks on a cold Saturday night to get home with the city getting operated on beneath my feet, it was hard not to realize that perhaps it’s time to start addressing all the things in my life that need fixing. Maybe then, in the end, I’d decrease my chances of getting hurt.

conversations.

"If you think you’re old then I’m not too far behind. And at least you’ve been doing something that means something to you."

"You not doing something that means something to you?"
He seemed genuinely concerned.

"I don’t think so."

"How’s it you don’t know?"

"Well I guess because I came here for this job and that meant something at the time. But now, I don’t know, things have changed. I don’t how it’s supposed to feel."

"I don’t think anyone does."

"I figure once I find it I’ll know."

"You’ve got time," he said. "That’s the problem with this city anyway. People all coming here thinking that they’re lives will change just by packing up and moving into an apartment in the village. But they don’t get what it is about this place that really changes you."

good city/bad city

There’s a lot of bad things about New York, and after a while like most things in life, all you start to remember, all you start to see, are the pock marks on the landscape of an otherwise wonderful thing.

It’s there every morning outside the door waiting for you, with it’s packed streets and people so close to you on the subway that you can’t remember the last time someone you hardly knew sat beside you (for over twenty blocks) with their arm so intimately touching yours. There are murders and muggings and people without homes, without jobs, without hope in front of you every day (and you pass them and pray that there will never be a day when it will be you). With so many people and opportunities and lost chances at love and happiness and success, at the end of the day it’s hard not to see the bad things about this place.

But then there you are near the end of a long week, (at the end of an even longer day), getting off the local 1 at 14th street and switching to the packed express 2 heading uptown at the last minute (and then find yourself stuck underground wondering why you always get on all the wrong trains at all the wrong times) and you curse New York for never giving you a break.

Finally at 72nd street you get off to switch back to the local in a crowd of people so big you barely make it in before the doors shut. And it’s the hand on your wrist that makes you look up, and you’re ready to say something to someone who is predictably going to bother you with some question about trains or directions on how to get to Times Square.

But then you notice the way you do when you’re really just ready to give up on something, how much just the littlest of things can change the way you feel about something. The face of an old friend you’d hadn’t seen in ages that you’d been meaning to call (but with everything else who can remember?) looking right back at you. Hi.

There’s a lot of bad things about New York, but there’s something to be said about the way it comes through just when you need it. Of all the streets we choose to take every day, of all the trains we happen to be on when we happen to be on them, I like to think that just by being here you’re part of the city’s larger plan (whether you like it or not). And perhaps the only thing we can do (the only thing left to do) is simply stop and accept it for what it really is - always surprising us.

There’s a lot of bad things about New York, but when great, seemingly impossible things happen (odds here are always against you), you remember just how meaningful it really is, and why every day when you get up you continue to make the conscious decision to stay.

Seasons of Love.

Fall, thanks for showing up. This summer was a total wash what with all the rain, and to be honest with you, I don’t miss sweating in front of the fan in my little apartment at all.

That being said, I hope you’re going to be kinder to me than you’ve been in the past. Remember those wind storms you make that always seem to blow up my skirt in the middle crossing Broadway exposing me cruelly to cab drivers and leaving me red faced? Yeah. I’m talking to you. And those wet leaves I’m continually slipping on in my black patent leather flats, and never once (not once!) has a passerby stopped to help me up. Repeatedly I’m spilling my caramel apple cider from Starbucks (a must in fall!) all over my hand on the way to the subway while juggling the Times and my cell phone (I think I still have some scars).

But the biggest complaint perhaps, is that you always leave me alone. When you show up and the air turns chilly it seems like all my single friends who were happy enough to be single when the summer was hot and humid, all suddenly feel the need to couple up because of you. Is it the idea of sitting in front of the fire with someone (ie: heat from the radiator. Who has a fireplace in Manhattan?) that is so appealing? No, it’s you and your brisk air and romantic-looking colored leaves that makes people want to stay in bed with someone else all day long until summer shows up again.

Sigh.

So maybe this time you can help me out? As much as I love those long walks through Central Park admiring your ability to change the leaves of the trees that nice burnt orange, it’d be nice if I could possibly walk along side someone. Too much to ask? I know, what with me spilling things all over myself and falling down so much it’s almost surely an impossibility. Even for you.

But face it, you owe me. In November I already have to lose a whole hour of my day, and upon leaving the office at 6PM it feels more like 10PM and that’s basically all your fault. And let us not forget that terrible holiday Halloween that you insist on bringing along with you every year. God what a nightmare. And I’m still not over that time when I was ten and had to spend the whole night walking around in your frigid air (20 degrees in October?! I mean really?) dressed as a bumble bee and getting nothing but a stint in the dentist's chair and four cavities in return.

Moving on though, I really am happy you’re here. Life just wouldn’t be the same without apple picking, kids dressed as insects asking for ridiculous amounts of sugar-laden treats and cable knit sweaters. Autumn, you’re the best and my favorite of all the seasons. All I’m asking is let’s just try a little harder this time before winter gets here, for my sake, to blow in (along with that embarrassing breeze in the street), a nice guy for me to share you with.

Because let’s face it, I need all the help I can get.

women v. men = nobody's happy.

I’m not sure what Maureen is really talking about here, but I think we can all take the basic point of women being less happy than men as interesting, even if not entirely true. Can there really be such a way to test the masses and come to some sort of conclusion based on all of these millions and millions of different lives all with their millions and millions of different heartaches and confusions and problems and anxieties and regrets, and gauge who is happier?

An interesting point that she does make (and by point I mean observation) is that women feel more than men. She might (gasp) be on to something here. The more men I meet of my generation, the more I’m convinced that they don’t want to be bothered with caring about anything outside of themselves. Okay, so this might be a blanket statement (and I just might be meeting all the wrong men - of course!) and there are a lot of women out there who don’t give a damn a la Rhett Butler, but from what I can see there’s a lot more of them in the Scarlet O’Hara roll standing at the open door of men’s lives waiting for them to get a clue and invite them in.

When did feeling become so taboo? I figure that in a place as crazy as the world we live in today (even crazier, New York), there wouldn’t be much point if we didn’t let ourselves be affected by any of it. Maybe it’s easy for some to wake up in the morning and shave their face (slow and steady) and not think or feel much about their life when they’re looking back at themselves in the mirror.

If Maureen is right (hang on while I go and check the temperature in the general vicinity of hell...) and us females are fated to a life of being over-worked and burdened by all that we’ve got to accomplish (and put up with), I’d rather have that and embrace all the difficulties and hardships of life (nothing worthwhile ever comes easy) and at least feel unhappy when I get up in the morning and look at back at myself in the mirror when I’m brushing my teeth, than not feel anything at all.

RT Romance is dead.

I’ve made 51 tweets since joining the land of Tweeters a few weeks ago, and I have to admit it’s left me feeling somewhat empty. I think it’s quite possible that we’ve become a generation so wrapped up in our own selves, that in many ways we’ve forgotten to experience what we’re seeing as it happens and feel all there is to be felt.

The more I see of Twitter and our push toward putting all of our lives on the internet, I wonder if fun moments at bars with friends really matter if they’re not captured on a digital camera and then immediately posted as a Twitpic. Can we really taste how great that pork sandwich is from Ko if we’re so worried about typing in to the hundreds of strangers following us, just how much the line was worth the wait?

It all goes back to the tree falling in the woods riddle. Does it make a sound? Does it (or anything) matter if no one is around to hear?

I can’t help but think that we’re no longer capable of feeling in real-time. Rather, we are so caught up in our own self-importance that we don’t even know how to function without hiding behind our screens. Case in point: what can you really say when you meet someone at a bar who doesn’t take the opportunity to talk to you beyond a casual hello, but then later, (some way, somehow without a name or number), tracks you down on Match.com based on your picture alone and sends the message – “Was that you at the bar on Sunday night? Want to go out sometime?”

Seriously? (*Note this wasn’t me).

What are we doing running so scared from what is right in front of us? Maybe we’re too wrapped up in having a good time, thinking that anything new is ultimately better without stopping to recognize just how much it’s changing our lives - new ways to watch our favorite shows or listen to music or read our books or interact with friends or even, come to it, how we love.

I’m not sure where I fit in, in this forest of ever-growing technology forever distancing us from anything real. But I have to think that the uneasy feeling that comes along with how much everything is changing only proves that none of us can see the forest for the trees, as it were. Whatever that means.

All I want, I guess, is for people to open their eyes and recognize that no matter where we’re standing it’s not the absence of sound that should be considered, but rather the absence of awareness of the sound that makes all the difference.

school supplies.

Classes started everywhere in Manhattan today. The small school across the street from my apartment had a crowd of kids and parents in front of it by 8:30 as I was gulping down the last of my coffee.

All bright pink backpacks and fresh white sneakers and the faint scent of number two pencils hung in the air.

As I walked out the front door and passed them, digging for my subway card and reminding myself to drop my credit card payment off in the mail - I felt very envious.

If only you really knew how great it is to be just your age, I wanted to tell them.

If only you knew what a major disappointment life is after recess and art class and after-school snacks end, you’d all be running into that building arms flailing in delight, instead of desperately holding on to your parent’s legs.

I know pronounce you...oh wait, can I get back to you on this?

I had a lot of time to think on the bus ride back into the city from Boston on Labor Day. Honestly there’s not much else to do when you don’t have computer and are running on about two hours of sleep and therefore simply don’t have the strength to focus on the book you brought along. After a long wedding weekend of watching another high school friend get married, I wondered why it was that I didn’t feel like either of us were really old enough to be doing a thing as grown up as get married.

When you’re 18 and in high school and look at people who are 26, you think hell, they’re so old, they should be married and buying houses and thinking of having children. You think that by the time you’re 26 you’ll have everything a lot more figure out. Or at least, I did. But times flies (woosh!) when you’re not paying attention and those years in between just disappear and there you are suddenly sitting in a banquet room of a hotel in the city you went to college in (wasn’t that just yesterday, too?) watching this person you’ve known since the ninth grade make a promise to God and the world and everyone in the room that they will never leave the person standing in front of them for the entire duration of their lives.

Oh. I can’t make a commitment as to where I’m going to get lunch.

So that’s when, speeding at eighty miles per hour towards the real world that awaited me, I started to feel the early onset of The Fear. Not only can barely I afford the rent on my (albeit overpriced) studio apartment let alone a wedding, I was also the only one of my high school friends at this wedding not either already married or in a committed relationship. Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course. But, as alone-happy as I readily claim to be, even the most rigid of single people can’t help but wonder if there’s something maybe really wrong with them at a wedding surrounded by happy couples. Do I need to get a part time job? Leave New York and start saving money for my future? Sign up for online dating?!

The Fear was rising up quickly in my throat as I began to wonder if perhaps all the choices I’m making in an attempt to figure out what I want are what are ultimately leaving me to feel like I’ve yet to really grow up. Do you take Manhattan to be your home, for richer or for poorer, in rent hikes and transit strikes, in job loss and salary cuts, with perpetual un-dateable men for as long as you both shall live?

My thoughts were interrupted as I watched the woman sitting in front of me stand up abruptly and walk to the front of the bus and try to get the attention of the bus driver. I wondered what she was gesturing wildly about, and thought for a split second that maybe she’d been thinking some things over this entire bus ride too, and unlike me had come to some major revelations as to how she was going to live the rest of her life and wanted to immediately exit the bus and begin again. Let me out! I thought she might say. I know what I want! I’ve figured out what I’ve been doing wrong!

Instead, I sat unmoving as the man in the front seat saw what I couldn’t, and with lightening speed he procured a black plastic shopping bag to the woman just in time for her to violently throw up.

Okay, so maybe I was wrong. But I took comfort that perhaps it was The Fear rising in her throat too, and I’m not the only one who doesn’t have it all figured out just yet. We have more time, I wanted to tell her, but instead closed my eyes just as the Manhattan skyline came into view. What’s another eight years anyway?

donnez-moi ma chance.

“Do you read Anne Rice?” he asked.

In the morning on the subway before coffee I hardly know my name let alone what the random person next to me is talking about.

“I’m sorry?”

“Anne Rice,” he said again and my brain clicked open just enough to remember that Ms. Rice is the author of several gothic and religious themed books. I looked at the cover of the book I was currently reading to make sure I hadn’t entirely lost my mind. But White Noise by Don DeLillo is no Vampire Chronicles.

“No, I’ve never read her,” I said. “Why?”

“The black nail polish,” he said gesturing toward my hands. “All of those Goth readers seem to always have black nail polish.”

“Oh,” I said and for the first time noticed how green his eyes were and how striking his smile was. “Yeah, no, I just like the color.”

“That’s cool,” he said and smiled again and I wondered if all of the quiet people packed into the train could see me trying not to blush. “It’s like those Twilight readers too, right? Although I’ve never read it and probably never will.”

“I haven’t either, I’m sort of against them.”

“Me too. They’re ridiculous.”

Could it be!? Someone who has the same opinions on literature as I do? Sitting here smiling at me on this horrible Monday morning in a place where no one ever talks to anyone? All these years on the subway and finally some cute, interesting guy is talking to me? I looked back to my book and forgot momentarily how to read. Was I supposed to say something else?

“This place is so much different than LA,” I heard him say. I looked back over to him, his arm brushing against mine and suddenly I felt that same feeling I’ve become so accustomed to when it comes to men – disappointment.

“Oh, you live in LA?” I asked.

“Yeah just got in this morning at 4AM and I’m reeling.”

Of course (rule #1 on my list: don't fall for people who live in another state).

“Have you never been here before?”

“Nope, first time and I’m a little overwhelmed.”

“It’s an easy place to navigate, you'll be fine. And we’re having great weather this week if you have a lot of walking around to do…”

Weather? I hated myself.

“I have family in the Bronx I’m sort of scared to visit. They’re one of those crazy Italian families that I know once I get up there they won’t let me leave.”

AND he's Italian.

“How long are you here for?”

“Just seven days. Are you a native New Yorker?”

“No, but I’ve been here a while.”

“So then you are. To me you are.”

People talk all the time about fate and destiny, but I think when it comes to finding love it really just comes down to sheer dumb luck. Chance. The ability to be at the right place at the right time. And when it comes to timing in love, I’ve found that I've got the worst luck of all.

“Well this is my stop,” he said. “It was really great meeting you. I hope I run into you again.”

Before I could say anything, he flashed that smile and was gone. And I think we both knew enough about hope and chance and timing and luck to know that was never going to happen.

@Times They Are a-Changin’

When it comes to living in a city like this there are things that you inevitably have to concede in order to continue living a fairly normal lifestyle. On top of how expensive everything is (thanks Starbucks for upping your prices. Even ten cents per grande bold is making an impact on my wallet) and after you’ve decided to spend more money on rent than you’d ever imagined, you recognize in your heat-induced coma (while clamoring for what little bit of cool air is coming from your window fan no larger than a basketball), that you just can’t have it all.

Shit.

So what concessions have I made? I joke to friends about having travelled back in time, but in all honesty I really have felt more removed from the outside world since I’ve had to give up what everyone lives on/talks about/thrives upon – cable, internet and the sanity that comes with air conditioning in ninety degree heat.

Admittedly the irony isn’t lost on me. Growing up I had parents who were strong believers in the difference between want and need and the importance of having their children realize said difference at an early age. No cable, no AC, no sugary cereal of any kind. I like to think it helped make me a better and more grounded adult, but in the case of Want v. Need it didn’t make me complain any less when I couldn’t join in the locker conversations about the latest episode of the Real World. Was no one watching Nova in junior high?

I’m pretty sure there aren’t many people living in New York City really thinking too much about need over want, either. This is after all the city that defines itself as a place that lets you have it all. How can I be expected to make such sacrifices in the city that never sleeps? (Note: I’ve come to find that the large population of the city not doing any sleeping are those of us sweating without window units).

Truth is I’m tired, hot and out of the conversational loop over after work drinks for not having been able to see the Mad Men premiere or the finale of Nurse Jackie. I’m looked at like an alien from another planet because I don’t know what albums are new on iTunes and have instead been listening to records (gasp!) from long ago bands. And I’m not posting things on Facebook or returning emails right away, either. Where have you been?! Friends ask. What have you been doing?

When did we become so attached to instantaneous responses? Call me, I say. It’s my only connection to the outside world. But no one calls anymore. People text and email and post messages on people’s walls about the intentions of calling, but in the end they never do. It all takes up too much time and energy because an actual conversation is like, so 2001. This is the age of technology, the age of the blackberry and emoticon and telling people how we feel in 160 words or less.

In the end I joined Twitter, one last ditch effort not to lose all of my friends entirely. Sure, I can’t really check it and don’t know what to post (after all, what new shows have I been watching? What news websites have I been able to check?), and I still don’t know what any of it really is supposed to mean. But it’s all about trying to roll with the changing of the times, even if you don’t really understand or like where they’re taking you.

At least that’s what some guy on one of my records sings about.

Right now, I just want fall to be here.

And if you have any questions, you know how to reach me.

Your Daily Forecast:

Rain in New York has become almost as common as the tourists who insist on stopping at the top of the subway steps to look at their maps. While I hate talking about the weather (and people who insist on talking about the weather), I guess it really is the one thing we all have in common (aside from frustration in our jobs, frequent bouts of depression and flat-lining relationships) that we’re okay to talk about with complete and total strangers.

I can’t begin to count the amount of people who have told me things about the weather, everywhere from standing sweating next to them on the subway platform, waiting in line behind them at Duane Reade, sitting beside them at Film Forum. We all can’t seem to stop ourselves from talking about this damn heat/humidity/rain/sun-that-turns-to-hurricane-and-back-to-sun-in-under-thirty-minutes. Did you see that tornado in Jersey? No. Did your power go out? No. Oh, well mine did. Did you see that the UV index is at a whopping nine!? Umm…

What are they doing? Watching the weather channel twenty-four hours a day? Is it on in the background when they’re cooking dinner and in the bathroom or making love? Just move to the left a little honey, I want to see what the average high is going to be for tomorrow…

I think that maybe we’re all so isolated during the winter months (that are right around the corner!) that we’ll do anything to reach out and talk to someone when we’ve all got our windows open and our flip-flops on and frizzy hair that no one cares about.

Personally I never really participate and find myself more just nodding or say things like “I know,” or “Yeah, it’s really bad,” before trying to move away from them without it looking obvious. Because truth be told I guess I’m that kind of New Yorker who doesn’t mind much not being bothered by anyone during the cold or warmer months of the year.

With a few weeks of summer left however, I guess maybe I’ll try to take part in this meteorological frenzy. New York is after all about the people you meet, a thing that’s becoming increasingly more difficult in this world where we carry through with most all of our interactions with other people via a screen or a profile or in amessage of 140 words or less.

So here goes nothing.

Tomorrow will be a high of 83 degrees (feels like 78), wind Northwest at 11 miles-per-hour with an overnight low of 64. Humidity 59 percent.

Would you look at that. No rain.

the way i see it.

I think the Starbucks near my office is cursed. And I say the Starbucks, because if it's not the place then it's just got to be me personally, because every time I go there (and it's not often anymore) something strange happens. I have, yes, out of my current financial problems and need for the extra ten minutes of sleep in the morning rendering it impossible to make it from the subway to the Starbucks and then to my office on time, stopped frequenting my old haunt. I'm now friends with Ralph, the guy at the coffee stand on the sidewalk right outside of my office where I can, every morning, have my coffee ready for me for just one dollar. He asks me about my weekends and tells me to have a good day and his coffee is hot, which is about as picky as I can be these days when it comes to getting anything in this city I can get for a buck.

An entire two weeks ago when I went to Starbucks in a free ten minutes I had during the day on Friday, my grande non-fat latte setting me back a whopping $4.25 which is like, enough to almost buy me dinner for an entire week (read: a box of cereal). They forgot my order and after re-ordering it on the fly I got a half full cup of whole milk that was barely steaming (whatever happened to, careful: the beverage you’re about to enjoy is extremely hot?) and suddenly my world was falling apart. Holding the white and green cup with The Way I See It # 71 on the side by the inarticulate man-hating Maureen Dowd, I realized that maybe our relationship (Starbucks and mine) is hitting a rough patch. Perhaps it’s time to sever the cord of this love/hate (usually mostly love) union and look for someone who treats me with more respect and understands my feelings and can really appreciate the kind of girl I am.

This morning (back again, some of us never learn) I was harassed by the man standing in front of me in line. He wouldn’t stop asking me if I had a quarter. No, I said (which was true) I don’t, but he just wouldn’t let it go. He asked about five other people, all of whom didn’t even bother to acknowledge his existence (that’s New York for you). The man (Irwin) then proceeded to ask me about my weekend plans, what I was going to get, if I had ever tried the bagels, and if I was going to be late for work. Yes, I wanted to say, but he didn’t even let me respond. He apparently, loves their muffins and isn’t, “God damn it,” going to get a paycheck this week. Now I understood the desperation over the twenty-five cents.

The whole scene was just so awkward for me that it was all I could do from turning around and running away, my only typical response to intensely awkward situations - flee. When Irwin was only one person away from the head of the line, the British guy behind me jokingly asked me if I had a dime. I started to laugh and then Irwin shot us both a hateful look and asked pointedly: “Are you laughing at me?”

Well, I guess sometimes life (and Starbucks) is like #71 says: the minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.

Re: Sneakers.

Could it be that on the last night in my first New York apartment that I’m feeling a bit sad? I think it’s inevitable after you invest so much time into something, take care to make it a part of your life and who you are, that if you have anything pulsing through your veins you can’t help but become attached. This place has treated me well, but timing being what it is, it’s time to go. I’ve always felt compelled to keep moving, somehow always thinking (foolishly?) that whatever might be just around the corner is going to be better than what I already have. The reason behind it? My greatest fear (aside from spiders and never falling in love) - the fear of becoming static.

The trouble with that however, is that no matter where you’re going you can’t help but ask yourself if you’re really running from something. I figure all of us have our Asics on all of the time in some form or other - running from responsibilities, from love, from taking a chance, from growing up, from doing the right thing. There’s always risk involved, there’s always possible defeat and humiliation and injuries that vary from leaping out of a plane (hurts more) to the wounds that can fall upon our hearts (lasts longer).

But I’ve got the keys (all four. Front door, foyer door...) and I don’t know (you never can) what the outcome will be. I’ve boxed up everything I want to take with me and found a lot of things I plan to leave behind. Like I said it’s easy to become attached, and I’m working on getting better at letting go of the things you learn over time you shouldn’t (or aren’t meant to) hold on to.

And that’s the other good thing about starting over somewhere, you can get better mileage from all of the complicated things of your not-so-distant past, and start to realize (and be hopeful even), all the things that you’re suddenly running towards.

When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.

I think that if you own a house and are seriously considering re-locating, the only answer is to simply burn the place down. Do it quick like a band-aid, and just set your belongings ablaze and start over fresh, a clean slate, without all the junk you’ve inevitably been holding on to for much longer than you should have. Truth is I’ve been doing what I do when I don’t want to deal with something that I know I can’t avoid - pretending like it isn’t happening. Moving in four days and nothing is packed? No big deal! I’ve got plenty of time! After all, this apartment isn’t that big! How much stuff can I really have accumulated over just three and a half years? Don’t answer that question. Well you can’t answer that question because you’re not here. And be thankful for it, because I am here in the middle of all the mayhem where there’s piles of stuff I didn’t even know I had surrounding me at ever turn. I’m wishing I were in a million other places, like say, a week from now when this move will finally be over and I won’t have to worry about it anymore. Tonight with a glass of wine in hand and Brubeck on the record player, I began to tackle all the tangible things of my life - and I have to admit, it left me a little confused. Umm, what possessed me to buy a vegetable steamer? Have I ever even used it? Do I even know how? And all those spices. Cumin. Cloves. Cream of tartar? What is that? Five different coffee travel mugs are in the cabinet and I always buy my coffee at the cart in front of my office for $1.10. So...that’s weird. And exactly how many pairs of black flats do I really need? Had they been giving them away somewhere? Same thing with black turtleneck sweaters. And black blazers. And black pants? What’s more worrying than the fact that I am, actually, moving into an even smaller place than I’m in now which will make the logistics of fitting much of anything, (let alone things I don’t need or haven’t used in over a year), one of the most difficult tasks of all time - is that I’ve got all these things and I don’t know why. I know we’re a consumer-driven world and over time we buy things (three containers of baking powder?) and are given things (just because I’m a writer doesn’t mean I automatically need journals. I currently have six and I suppose I’ll get around to filling them all when I reach retirement), and there’s that feeling of not wanting to waste things or throw them away - but do we really need to hold onto them? Is our inability to let go making our lives better or worse? I started to worry that perhaps these objects were simply filling some unknown void I didn't want to recognize, each piece somehow helping to justify my existence. We store these items in boxes and put them in cabinets and tell ourselves that one day we’ll need them (just you wait!) and then promptly forget we have them and go out and buy the exact same thing again and again until we have not one but two containers of cream of tartar (still don’t know what it’s for?) and watch as the things we don’t need start to close in and suffocate us. After four hours of tackling just part of the kitchen and hall closet, I thought seriously about taking a tip from the venerable Mr. Thoreau and fleeing to the woods to live deliberately. I could manage a small cabin (roughly the size of my new studio) and not have bother about packing up all this stuff I don’t want or need, come to mention it. But it was just a fleeting thought of course. Aside from forests in the Manhattan area being thin on the ground, I hate bugs, and figure life just really wouldn’t be the same without things like my french press, all my back issues of the New Yorker, and that baking powder I need once a year when I finally get around to making that pie. I suppose when you have to look at all the useless things you own in harsh light of having to pack them up and take them with you someplace else, one can’t help but feel a bit ashamed and ridiculous. So you do what I did, solemnly swear to yourself standing before your humming refrigerator that you’ll never obtain, purchase, receive, accept or acquire another useless piece of anything for the rest of your Manhattan-living-life. Until of course you finally buy a house somewhere. Then all you have to do is remember where you put the matches.

New York I love you, but you're bringing me down.

I haven’t written in weeks. Life happens and New York happens seemingly so quickly, that you’re too busy living it to bother writing about it. And besides, I’ve just gone through one of the most insane, crazy, time-consuming, and stress-inducing things any New Yorker can ever go through – the painfully long and tedious dance of looking for a new apartment.

In today’s market people keep saying things out there are a steal, “Everything is so cheap now!” and “This is the time to make the move!” Firstly, no matter how bad this economy is, diving full speed ahead into the bottom of a cesspool of record high unemployment rates and bankruptcy, nothing in New York, especially apartments, should ever be classified as “cheap.” Secondly, making the move, as it were, is filled with so much more than just finding a place, packing up your stuff and moving to another neighborhood. Looking for an apartment in New York is a full-time job. It’s long hours and takes determination, stamina and the creative ability to look at even the bleakest of places and be able to envision something more.

Having lived with roommates for what now feels like my entire life, I decided it was time, four scary years away from turning thirty, that perhaps it was in fact the pivotal moment to make the leap. Sure, anywhere else in the country having your own place isn’t a big deal. There are people I know all over the place from San Francisco to Madison, Wisconsin who live in entirely palatial places for half the cost of what a closet in New York would bank you - which is why in New York it’s entirely normal for you to be rounding thirty, even say, thirty-five and still have roommates. It’s costly to live here of course, and I’ve seen relationships speed up from casual dates to full blown engagements just because splitting the rent on that one-bedroom is going to save them enough money that making a life-time commitment is entirely worth it.

But as the ever-single New Yorker that I am, I started gallivanting across the island, Murray Hill, Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea, the East Village – all in an attempt to find a studio where I might fit in (and be able to fit my stuff). I’ve spent the last three and a half years on the Upper East Side with people with strollers, and old people with canes, girls my age who flaunt designer handbags and clothes a la Gossip Girl, and guys who look as though they just stumbled out of their college frat house. I’m a little behind in getting the memo I guess, but Change (surprise!) is what it’s all about these days, so I decided life’s too short not to get on board.

I saw apartments that might be able to fit a chair and a twin bed (it would be pushing it), with no windows, one small burner and the overwhelming smell of bleach costing more than one paycheck. I saw basements with bugs, and five-floor walk-ups with no bathroom sinks. I saw lofted beds and partition walls and entire apartments newly created in what used to be an actual hallway now converted into small (I could extend my arms and touch both walls) living spaces which I was supposed to pay for but would only really be good for someone with an extreme case of agoraphobia.

I was taking meetings whenever people could meet me, morning, noon and night, because like anything in New York, things happen fast, and with one delay you could lose the (small) place of your dreams in a New York minute. I was taking trains and buses and walking in the rain, and calling brokers and landlords and checking Craigslist religiously every thirty minutes for updates of places in my low price-range. I was starting to lose my mind. I was getting discouraged. I was becoming sacred that I might get fired after three days of being so apartment obsessed that I wasn’t getting any work done. New York! What the hell?! Why do you have to be so expensive!? Why do you have to be so difficult!?

As luck would have it (though I don’t believe much in luck) I stumbled across a place I initially wasn’t going to bother seeing. The Upper West side seemed far after having spent so much time taking the train downtown from the East (but I’d quickly come to the painful realization that I couldn’t afford downtown. New York, I hate you!). I dragged myself up to take a look anyway. There’s something to be said about that cliché that happens to you when you find something that’s meant to be, be it a job, love or an apartment – when you know, you just know, and it happens when you least expect it.

The search was over. The paperwork was assembled, the appropriate funds (broker fees, don’t even get me started…) were obtained and dropped off, and suddenly I found myself signing the lease to my first solo apartment. Sans roommates, sans drama. Sure, I’m paying more now for just a room with a kitchen in it, but it has windows and a fireplace and so much character that it’s entirely worth the impending upcoming nights when all I’ll be able to afford to do is sit in my new place, alone, and learn all over again why New York really is the greatest city in the world.

Seek Alt. Routes

After an informative session at a bike shop on Morton Street in the West Village (where yes, I’m thinking of attempting to commute via bicycle. Eco-friendly! Economical!), I was feeling like this new lifestyle could if nothing else, get me to where I wanted to go faster than walking. It’s the wave of the urban future after all. The New York Times said so on Sunday.

As I promptly turned the corner onto Hudson Street, thinking that I’d check out bikes on the cheap on Craigslist when I get back to my desk, I was shaken from my thoughts of carefree two-wheel travel when the screeching brakes of a car caused me to look up. I watched in horror as a large white van hit a gentleman in the middle of the intersection, on, you guess it, a bike.

He eventually stood of course, visibly shaken as the driver jumped out of the van to see if he had seriously flattened him like a pancake at Clinton Street Bakery (voted “Best Pancakes,” NY Magazine, 2005!). Thankfully, he had not, and the biker continued on his way.

Come to think of it, perhaps I’ll just stick to NYC transit.

For a little while, anyway.

Weekend New Yorkers.

When the weather is warm and everyone in Manhattan is out on the streets, it’s easy to see how much people change on the weekends. New York is a place that’s easy to forget yourself in, easy to go through your days on auto-pilot, passing interesting things all the time without even noticing.

But when the weather is warm on a Manhattan weekend that all changes, and drifting through neighborhoods I could see it as I walked the entire length of the east side of the city, down past the crowded shops near fifth avenue, through the street fair in Murray Hill where Lexington was blocked off for fifteen blocks filled tables selling t-shirts that say “I Love New York” (yes I do!) and expensive looking rugs for thirty bucks a piece, and handmade dresses and pulled pork sandwiches and big cups of cubed watermelon. In Madison Square Park there was live jazz (and the longest line at Shake Shack that I’ve seen in a while). In Little Italy, Mulberry street was blocked off, and through the crowd I watched people step up to the shooting range to score a stuffed animal, test out their throwing arm at the dunk tank (a man about seventy had a killer right arm and got him on the second try). They ate cannoli’s the size of hot dogs and listened to a man singing Sinatra while sipping cappuccinos.

Great days in Manhattan when the weather is warm it makes it even more difficult to have to face the beginning of yet another week. And there they’ll all be in the morning, all the same people but in their ironed suits with their eyes in their newspapers and blackberry's, chugging coffee and dreading their days. At the office there won’t be any watermelon or Sinatra or deals on floor coverings - just emails waiting for them, and responsibilities along with the constant watching of the clock to count down the day, and then the week, until the next (and hopefully warm) weekend is upon them once again.

tick tock goes the clock.

If you were to talk to me about timing, I’d be honest with you and say that I’m not the right person to be around if you want to get anywhere you’re supposed to be. Stay away, I’d tell you, keep clear if you’d like your life to happen, because I’m bad luck.

I’m never at the right place at the right time, do the exact wrong thing (and say the even worse thing) at the exact wrong moments. I’m constantly caught in the rain, walking outside without an umbrella (in the sun!) minutes before the sky opens up (how does it always happen so fast!?) and am forced to walk the entirety of Houston Street in a downpour. I’m always running towards the turn-styles just seconds before the 6 train closes it’s doors (please swipe again!), and wondering as it speeds away if there was something or someone on that train I was supposed to see.

I’m convinced I’m leaving bars (after sticking around for far too long) just moments before someone I could actually like walks in. I take chances when it’s too late, open my mouth to say something important just as someone else chimes in and speaks for me. I fall for people the day before they’re supposed to leave the country, and finally allow myself to admit I like them just before they’ve fallen for someone else. I repeatedly show up at happy hours minutes after they’ve ended, need a cab when they're all full, and always somehow have to leave town the same weekend my favorite band is scheduled to play.

In New York, with all of these people and all of these things happening every second of every day, I wonder how much these little shifts and missed moments I have no control over are changing my life without my even knowing it. Is there no choice left sometimes, but to watch the clock and hold your breath and have faith that somehow their hands will get you to where you’re supposed to be in the end, regardless of how long it takes? I miss trains and planes and opportunities every moment of every day that could all, if I were a normal person, lead me to somewhere that I think I’d like to go, if only timing would ever get me there.

love story.

I overheard a girl on the street talking to her friend about her impending marriage:

“..and I mean he just needs to be prepared. Like, I mean, let’s face it, like if I’m not happy, he’s not gonna be happy. I mean, right? That’s just the way it works. So he’d better do his best to get me what I want.”

“Totally.”

Why is it the people who don’t understand love always seem to find it the fastest?

could be anything.

I don’t know when spring got here but it did, behind my back. One day I was sitting on the cross-town bus going down Fifth Avenue and I could almost see right through Central Park to the West Side. The branches were bare and the yellow cabs were visible along with the early morning runners and people with their dogs.

But suddenly today, in what seemed like mere hours, green leaves were in abundance blocking my view and covering up the tall buildings of Central Park South. Spring showed up, officially ending another season, another year. Gone are the harsh winds of winter, the biting cold, the unbearable frigidity of the dark pavement of Manhattan that has a way, (by the time February rolls around), of making you start to lose your mind.

It never ceases to amaze me how much (our lives, everything) keeps happening right in front of our eyes in this city when we’re too busy (stupid, greedy, blind) to notice.

"...Requesting the honor of your presence at the marriage ceremony of..."

Things happen so fast in this city that it’s easier than you think to lose track of your life. Away for the weekend to see a friend get married in Boston it seemed like just yesterday that I met her in college when life was easier and slower and no one was worrying about things like planning for the future and where to start a family.

But time flies faster than the Fung Wah hurdling down the Mass Pike, and before you know it you’re dressed up in outfit one of two as Maid of Honor for the most interesting and long (3 hour ceremony!) Indian wedding you could ever have imagined. After two days of ceremonies and henna tattoos and stress leading up to the big day, it finally arrived and almost 400 people gathered to watch the street procession of the groom around the block before he was carried in where his feet were washed, and then watched again as the bride was carried to the altar in a basket filled with rice and fruit (bananas, coconut and...?) where there was a lot of throwing of rice and flowers and chanting of words I couldn’t understand for a few hours. As I sat there and watched her, this close friend I met so long ago (seems like yesterday) officially get married (from what I could gather) between the lighting of fires and dripping of oils, I felt time and my life getting away from me faster than ever.

I was panic stricken of course, (but tried not to show it), when my name was called and the spot light was on me and I walked slowly to the stage and up the stairs and reached out to take the microphone to talk to these almost 400 people about something I don’t know much of anything about but keep having to talk about at weddings: love. As I began to speak, I realized looking out over the shadows of people illuminated by the light, that days and weeks and years pass so quickly that when it comes to finding out how we’re meant to spend the rest of our lives I figure you’ve got to have some of the best luck in the world working on your side

I didn’t mention that of course, because I think it’s a good rule to stay away from using words like “good luck,” when giving a speech at a wedding. But I don’t think we should lie to ourselves about the rarity of finding what might be the most coveted thing in the world, more than money, more than success, more than a rent controlled apartment in the West Village. So I was glad to see they’d found It, and walking back to my table I realized how much we take love for granted and how we might already have It (once you have It, never let it go), or the hope that one day we will.

Hope. That’s a good word to use in a speech at a wedding. Hope for the best. Hope for the future. Hope for a long and happy life together full of all the great and wonderful things love has to offer.
Hope.
Hope.
Hope.

I suppose you could do a lot worse than live your life on the hope of love (better odds hitting the lottery!) - but for now I’m okay with just having to talk about it to people at weddings, and pretending every time I get up there that I have any idea what it’s all about.

Cheers.

Catch 22

Do you know what I think is ridiculous? Being successful, owning a home, getting married, having a lot of money, raising children, and being only twenty-two.

I think there was a time that when looking at that age I thought I would surely be a well rounded, successful adult with enough money to buy a house and have had enough time to have found a good man. And I think when I thought all that was when I was about fifteen. Now, a few weeks shy of turning twenty-six, I don’t think I have hardly anything together. I’m still making the same mistakes, doing all the wrong things, saying all the wrong things, entirely unable to afford my own life, my own apartment, and at this point, even get a date.

All of this and many more reasons is why I can’t in all honesty watch One Tree Hill anymore. Okay so I know I never write about anything like a show on the CW, but sitting there watching the tail end of this ridiculous drama, I didn’t realize exactly how ridiculous it was until one character blurted out that she was twenty-two. I almost fell off the couch. Never mind that the actors themselves are older than I am, but twenty-two? I started to panic.

Who at that age has their own magazine, owns a house/a clothing store/a business, is raising a seventeen-year old runaway, and is passing up offers from hot young men to come with them to LA? I’m pretty sure I can safely say that at twenty-two I was an emotional wreck, who had exactly no idea what I wanted to do with my life, was drinking far too much, and was continuously falling for all the wrong guys who never even asked me to go to dinner let alone follow them across the country (some things never change).

I suppose it’s nice in this economic, love and life recession I’ve found myself in over the past few years, (as my age creeps ever so slow further and further from twenty-two), to watch on television how my life could have turned out were I not living in the real world. But what’s so funny however, is that when the above mentioned twenty-two-year-old-success-story turns down the guy at the airport for reasons all viewers I’m sure couldn’t understand (I mean, did you see him?) the gentleman in question said, “You know, if this were a movie, all of this would be ending differently.”

So you see, he knows how I feel. If it were a movie, (or come to mention it my twenty-two year old life), she would have wrapped her arms around him and gone with him. Because there’s nothing like looking back on all that’s gone by and recognizing an opportunity you let pass you by because of obligations you weren’t even ready to make. You’re only young once (and getting older every second) and there’s time enough to figure it all out and find what defines your own success...after you make the choice to take a leap on to the symbolic plane of your life.

Because what tragedy it would have been had those emotional, drunken, aimless and confusing days of my twenty-two year old life never have happened - I’d hardly have been prepared at all for the last four years

West Side Line.

I always told myself I never wanted to be that kind of New Yorker who shied away from things far away from the basic radius of my usual life. Brooklyn, okay sure, I’ll go to Williamsburg. Eighty-ninth and Fifth to the Guggenheim? I mean, it's art. Staten Island? Umm, what’s the point. But when friends decide, for their own insane reasons, to move somewhere like West 225th street (literally over the Harlem River!) and want me to take the 1 (local only!) train for longer than I’ve ever been on any subway train since I’ve been living in the city, and show up at their housewarming party with a bottle of Prosecco after having walked ten minutes (lost!) in the wrong direction with not one person (not one!) on the street, and me, looking as out of place as a Midwestern couple with bright neon fanny-packs and huge billowing maps in the middle of Midtown Manhattan...don’t expect me for one up-up-uptown second, not to make the most of it.

Because the things is, you never get quite as drunk or spend half as much time at someone’s party talking to basically everyone in the room, willing listen to the entirety of their life’s story as when a) it took you the better half of the night just to get there, and b) you’re dreading more than anything you’ve ever dreaded in a long while, having to go all the way back home.

Various Notes Made on Various Napkins at Various Bars on Various Subjects:

-great song! remember to listen to rumours album again soon

-maybe it will be easier for him to do this thing over the phone because he’s a huge failure in person. so maybe an advantageous loophole?

-just don’t start falling for a phone. that’s if he calls.

-what hasn’t happened yet is far more important than what already has

-am I bitter: yes (crossed out). no (crossed out). it would be rare to diagnose a disease after two symptoms, no?

-be brave. be brave. be brave.

-bartender said: "can i just tell you that you’re really beautiful?" remember to come back here. something green? greenhouse? green owl?

-if this guy says "like" one more time...

-when everything changes, i suppose that means we have no choice by to change with it

-shameless flirt. of course he likes her. ppfffffffffttttt!

-c train to clinton/washington (don’t cross atlantic)

-black sweater (cute, brown hair, tall) talk to him next time he walks by

-when did people in new york get to be so boring?

-any day anyone is no other than someone

Just another Saturday night.

I think there has to come a point (doesn’t there?) when we all just stop pretending.

We meet people and we take an interest and ask questions in a very where-are-you-from-what-do-you-do sort of way, as though those questions can really help us to better know a person, like our jobs and places of birth define who we are. And it's hard not to wonder after a while, after so many of these conversations and question and answer sessions over drinks with people, if anyone out there really knows you at all.

But we meet people and take an interest and ask questions, and keep going through the motions that are forced upon us in a place full of millions of strangers. So you drift and float from one group to the next, one bar to the next, in an effort to figure out where you fit in.

And there comes a point when you’re standing in the middle of the open back patio at Union Pool on Saturday’s warm night in Brooklyn because the music inside was so loud you could hardly hear your own thoughts and had to escape, holding a beer and smoking a cigarette and staring up at the moon, bored, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, and can’t, for another second, stand the thought of having one more person that doesn’t mean anything come up and ask you where you’re from and what you do because there has to come a point (there must be, there has to be) when we all just stop, stop, stop pleaseforcryingoutloud, pretending.

"And now the weather..."

People love to talk about the weather because it’s one of the most universal things there is to talk about. Sun? Yeah I’ve seen that. And rain and thunderstorms and fog and sleet and bad snow storms on the first day of March when all we’re hoping for (wishing for, praying for) is the not too far away days of spring.

We like to talk about the snow because it’s one more thing in this place we can all complain about. Delayed trains and slush on sidewalks and wind (my god the wind!) Time to move to Florida, time to move anywhere, I’m over this shit, I can’t take it anymore, how much are we supposed to get tomorrow?)

People love to talk about the weather because it brings us together. I watched a woman’s hat get blown off her head this morning and as it tumbled down the sidewalk I saw five people (five!) start to run after it as though the hat were a lost child. Today was all very: Watch your step, Look out for that, Here let me help you with that. (What makes me think that tomorrow we’ll be back to: Get out of my way, Watch where you’re going buddy, Who are you telling to move, asshole?

It changes us somehow, makes us like little kids living in a white world where nothing all that bad can really happen. I even got a text message from a friend waking me from sleep this morning before seven o’clock (thanks man) saying simply, "Yay Snow!"

After dinner with friends last night up at Sfoglia on 92nd and Lexington, (my new favorite place in the city) over bottles of wine and some of the best Pappardelle I’ve ever had, we all looked, hands on coffee cups poised halfway to our lips - and there it was. The soft white flakes had begun to fall over dinner, and all hopes for spring were suddenly dashed along with our bank accounts.

After paying the bill (and crossing my fingers that my credit card would go through) we pushed through the front doors and cabs were hailed, but I said no. Only twenty blocks home down Lexington Avenue on what was the first (and maybe last) good snow fall of the season, and I have to admit it was one of the best twenty-block walks I’ve ever had in this city.

You forget what it means to be in a place like this, and why we keep insisting on talking about the weather, until you’re out in the middle of a quiet Manhattan night walking past store fronts and gazing out at the long expanse of Lexington Avenue dotted with lights and realizing what you never get a chance to when you’re walking around Manhattan when it’s loud and snow-less and full of people - that while it would be nice to have someone to share such a great New York moment with, the city itself, even on the stormiest of days and coldest of nights, can make for the perfect companion and the best home in the world.

Yay snow.

Bonne Chance.

I didn’t think he’d fit, the man standing on the platform of the 23rd street stop of the 1 train. Physically of course he could. He was young and handsome and I even looked twice when I caught those big blue eyes looking back at me with a smile when I walked by. Who, me?

But it was what he was holding, after my numerous attempts to count, forty-eight, no, fifty-two balloons, that was going to cause the problem. They were gold and black and the strings that were wrapped around his arms were so long they touched the ground. I wondered what or who they were for. A woman, presumably (lucky girl) or an anniversary party or a birthday or a reception or maybe they were just for his apartment (new decorating idea?).

I heard the subway in the distance and pried my eyes away from him. It was late and when the train arrived, and after he managed to pull all of the balloons in behind him, we were the only two people in our car. What a funny thing it was to be sitting there across from a sea of black and gold as the train hurdled forward. We smiled at each other, and he acted casually as though he weren’t attached to what could qualify in most places as a small county fair.

In my head I thought of a million things to ask him, a million funny things to say, that would in the end, make him fall madly in love with me where he would ultimately, one day, buy me forty-eight, no, fifty-two balloons. This is Manhattan. Love and balloons and cute guys alone with you on the subway don’t happen to you all the time. In fact, I don’t think they happen at all.

"What are they for?" I asked, apparently forgetting the moment I opened my mouth all those funny and clever things...

"Oh. Ah. Une Livraison."

I think my look of confusion came across as clear as my poor attempt to flirt with him.

"Uhh, delivery?" he said, his French accent was think. He pulled a small map out of his back pocket and showed it to me and pointed. "La direction de Wall Street?"

I nodded to say that yes, Wall Street, delivery, I understand, and he smiled at me sheepishly. It became clear quickly that he couldn’t speak English any more than I could understand French. Damn. I cursed myself for taking Russian in high school and how the cute ones are always taken or gay or can’t….speak English(?), and how it always seems so impossible to meet a man who can communicate.

Just before we approached Houston Street where I began to collect my things and stand up, he spoke again.

"Un moment," he said, and unraveled in the time it took me to blink, a gold balloon from the labyrinth of strings on his arm (now fifty-one) and handed it to me. I stared back at him while other people started to file into the train and I felt my heart swell. A smile was all I managed before I had to jump through the doors before they closed.

As the train sped away I stood there holding the balloon and wanted to shout at it to come back (where is life’s rewind button when you need it?). For a split second I thought seriously about hailing a cab and taking it to Wall Street and not stopping until I found him. I’d learn French! I could take night classes, get books on tape! I love Paris! What I wouldn’t do for a pain au chocolat!

I thought the better of it, and realized (again) that timing in life (and love and balloons) is everything. As I got above ground and began walking I started to think that if I couldn’t work things out so that one day he and I would be together in a subway again then my name isn’t Classy Girl.

Which, of course, it isn’t.

Manhattan Navigation.

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

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

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

Sometimes, however, we have no choice but to stop and recognize the fact that no matter what we do we’re not alone here (or anywhere, really). On the 1 express train this morning I wasn’t paying attention, seriously balancing a 500-page book, when the woman standing next to me started yelling into the little speaker on the wall near the door which is marked in black and red: EMERGENCY BUTTON.

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

I have to admit, regrettably, that I first looked at her with a look of hateful irritation. Here we go, I thought. Another crazy person on my train, going to start yelling random things that don’t make sense. And it’s always my car. Why does it always have to be the car that I’m in that gets the crazy people? The Bible quoting homeless man, the woman carrying barrel-sized wheels of bubble wrap, the dude with headphones on across the train whose music I can hear making inappropriate gestures toward me (dream on). Of all the subway cars in all the city…

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

No one seemed to care. No one seemed phased. The one big thing we all seemed to manage to do was simply to look. We all just looked. The train stopped at 14th street and the subway conductor called for a doctor. As I left the train (to switch to the local) I saw the body attached to the hand on the ground - eyes closed, blue fleece jacket, light brown hair. He was someone. To us we’re all just anybody. Could be anybody, we all thought. What can we really do about just anybody? People all around him were still. And my heart sank. I watched as they all just went back to their newspapers, their novels and their New Yorker, silently upset that their few morning moments of peace and quiet on the subway were lost just because of somebody else’s someone.

cut to the chase.

There she is, drunk
and all over him
talking nonsense,
and he doesn’t seem to care at all.

Sometimes I think
that if I just stopped making sense
(or just stopped talking altogether)
I’d get every man I wanted.

Her hands are holding his,
and then stroking his hair
and everyone at the bar can see
that she's kissing his neck.

Why bother I wonder,
to spend all that money on that many dirty Goose’s,
when it would have been so much easier
to just stay home.

Pretty Woman.

I was sitting on the crosstown bus diligently reading last week’s New York Magazine that I hadn’t had a chance to get around to. It was early (even though I was running late) and the traffic along Fifth Avenue was in near gridlock. I tried not to think about it (or check my watch) but I knew it wasn’t looking good.

It’s always the mornings where I have to be at work for a meeting or a phone call that the traffic is at its worst. Days when it wouldn’t matter if I showed up at the office at all, we breeze down and through Central Park in what feels like mere seconds.

So I sat patiently and tried to absorb as much as I could about stock-surfing the tsunami (whatever that means) as seconds turned to minutes turned to I-am-going-to-seriously-freak-out-if-we-don’t-get-moving-soon.

I could sense it before anything else, just at the moment I was about to really start breaking out into full blown hysterics- eyes watching me. Tense and slow I looked up, and saw, much to my surprise, a little girl about six years old on her knees in the seat in front of me. Her face was about one foot from mine and she was looking directly into my eyes. She had a pink headband on with a big flower on it, and a bright orange backpack strapped to her back. There was something about the innocence of her face, her bright blue eyes and pale as snow cheeks that made me hate the way this city, with its schedules and deadlines and routines, can sometimes make you so ugly.

We looked at each other for a minute, me confused, and her, just smiling without a care in the world with a look on her face like she knew something I didn’t. "You’re pretty," she said very matter-of-factly, leaving me sitting there looking like a deer in the headlights. Her mother, who I only then noticed was sitting next to her, told her this was their stop and they left the bus without another word.

Strange isn’t it, what we see when we open our eyes?

And once they were gone, the traffic (thank God) began to move.

And your hearts still beating.

When you lose something you can’t get back, it’s easy to feel like you’re lost yourself. And I don’t mean just misplacing things, I mean really losing them. You can re-trace your steps all you want, count through your entire day from the moment you pulled back the covers hating through every movement how much you have to face another day, suppressing the urge to throw that beep beep beeping alarm clock against the wall.

I’m not talking about misplacing. We can misplace all we want because with misplacing there’s a very distinct chance that whatever we’ve lost we will inevitably get back. And that’s all we need isn’t it? That logical answer of: well it couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air?! Your keys, a book, your ipod, subway pass, that coupon or letter or picture. I just had it, you think to yourself. I just had it.

When something is misplaced for too long you can tend to lose It. You start to open doors and drawers you haven’t opened in years. Suddenly you’re Uncle Billy in It’s A Wonderful Life when Mr. Potter takes George Bailey’s $5000 for the Building and Loan. Crazy Uncle Billy. But that’s just the thing. In the end there always is that logical answer when it comes to misplacing.. There is a Mr. Potter or a sneaky magazine just barely covering what you’ve been digging for. There are my keys! (d’oh!) Right there on the counter!

But there are some things in life that you can’t get back. They are missed, not just mis-placed. And your logical will struggle with your non-logical and most of the time you don’t even feel like you’re functioning on the same plane as everyone else. Because when you lose certain things for good, like a person or a love or a chance of a lifetime, you find yourself not only not believing that it’s a wonderful life - you find yourself not believing in much of anything at all. Because when you lose certain things for good, sometimes you can’t help but lose yourself.

I just had it, you keep thinking. Just, just, just. You can just have a lot of things before they slip out of your fingers. Just-had-it becomes never-will-again. So you keep a closer eye out (watch, wallet, keys, check! check! check!), file things away, classify and organize and try to take part - all while reminding yourself that your hearts still beating, and justs are just justs, and there’s nothing you can do about it but hope that you’ll find what you’re looking for eventually.

Change. Please.

It’s the same, isn’t it? Every week starting too early and you’re out of coffee and you’re tired getting to work and you’re tired of work and everything that goes along with it. You’re worried about your life and money and if what you’re doing is really making you happy, and if it isn’t, what in the world are you going to do about it.

It’s the same, isn’t it? Every morning, every day and it’s cold and you dig your hands deep into your pockets as you walk and turn up your collar to block your face from The Chill. You wonder if it will every get warm again, if you’ll ever start to feel things again and you worry about your life and the future and if you’ll ever find love, and if you don’t, what in the world are you going to do about it.

It’s a struggle to keep going sometimes when you know what’s coming next. And each day ends too late and you’re heading home reminding yourself as you walk (hands in pockets, collar up) to buy coffee for the next morning, and the next morning, and the morning after that - until a hand reaches out in front of your face on the corner of Houston and Broadway causing you to jump, jolting you out of the sameness of your life as the jingling sound from the half empty cup echoes in your ears, saying what you’ve been saying to yourself all day every day for as long as you can remember: “change, please.”

spare change.

I think it’s because most of the time we don’t have anyone to talk to. We are constantly surrounded by so many people that at times it almost seems strange that we don’t know a single one of them. So I understand the need to speak up, to feel like you’re not just another face in the crowd. However I’d rather you not make that decision around me, in the morning, before I’ve even had my coffee.

"Is this the train that goes to Houston?" she asked. She was middle-aged and obviously from out of town and confused. I was leaning up against the pillar at 14th street waiting for the downtown local 1 train, seriously reading my book.

"Yeah," I said, figuring that was going to be enough. Contrary to popular belief us New Yorkers are fine with helping people. If we know what you’re talking about (and for the most part we do) we’ll take a moment out of our crazier-than-ever days to help you crazier-than-ever tourists.

But let me warn you, there’s a line.

"Whew," she said breathing a deep sigh of relief. "I was worried there for a minute that I was totally lost."

When people here insist on talking more than they should I feel like I have no other alternative than to politely ignore them. I understand the need to speak up, but I also understand the need for what little solitude we’re allowed in an otherwise insanely crowded place.

So I smiled, and nodded, and looked back at my book.

"What are you reading?" she asked. Sigh. Here we go. I know it’s an awful thing to feel annoyed when someone else is just making conversation with you, but give me a break. It’s early and I’m tired and I’ve just gotten to a particularly interesting part of chapter twenty and really don’t want to be bothered with your curiosity.

"Ummm," I said, debating on not saying anything at all. "America America?"

"Oh," she said and looked away disappointed. "Never heard of it."

That’s nice. I smiled and nodded and went back to reading.

"People are real happy about America today though let me tell you," she said, and I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me or herself or anyone that would listen. "Real happy. This book about anything to do with what’s happening today?" Her voice was hopeful that this time my answer wouldn’t disappoint her.

"Not really."

"Oh," she said looking down the track waiting for the train. "That's too bad."

What is it about people and what they care about and what they think about and what they feel compelled to say? After all this time in New York surrounded by all these I can’t even begin to explain it.

"Say, you got fifty cents so I can buy a coffee?" she asked.

And I don’t think I ever will.

In Brief.

Everything that drives me crazy about this city can be summed up in four words.

Stand to the right.

chances are.

I was never good at math, leaving my ability to fully understand statistics somewhat underdeveloped throughout the years. However I have to say, that being on the only airplane to crash in the United States in the last seven years is almost a statistical impossibility.

We walk through our days not thinking much about the odds, believing perhaps too heavily in luck, always thinking: well that could never be me. We watch, like we did from our televisions today, as scared and cold passengers huddled on the wings of an airplane waiting to be rescued (birds, can you even believe it?). We sit, like I did, in our offices a block from the river and listen to the sirens that pass by and then fade away in the distance. Somebody else’s life. Somebody else’s problem.

What do you do, I wonder, when you find yourself sitting there thinking about your life (or nothing at all) and hear the captain announce that you’re going down? What goes through your mind as the plane slowly loses altitude and the thick icy blackness of the Hudson gets closer and closer outside your window? Do you pray? Do you scream? Or do you sit in silent anticipation of a fate you have no control over?

We are mere pawns, the weak and numerous infantry of the world who every day step outside thinking we’ll certainly have more days like this one. More chances. More time (what are we waiting for?). Because there are a lot of miles on the road without a front wheel blow-out, a lot of late nights alone on the street without encountering the armed mugger a block away, a lot of pianos that fall a minute after we’ve passed, or a month, it doesn’t matter.

Because there are no real tools for predicting and forecasting our lives. We don’t know about tomorrow. Or the day after that. But I figure the bright side (and there should always be a bright side) is that chances of being on a crashing plane more than once is simply out of the question. So those on board today can safely fly without fear, forever.

That is, if they’re ever willing enough to get back on a plane.

You know things are bad when...

This morning on the cross-town bus, just before realizing with utter disappointment that today was in fact Wednesday, not Thursday, the woman sitting across from me made a face, and then abruptly proceeded to throw up all over herself (come to think of it she was looking a bit pale…).

Missed my shoes by about one foot.

Yeah, that’s pretty much how I feel about today, too.

Any day anyone is no other than someone.

When it’s after two o’clock in the morning at The Corner Bistro and you’re talking to me, leaning in too close every time you tell me something because the music is too loud, tell me your name while telling me I’m beautiful, go on about how much you love New York and writers and a woman with a good sense of humor - don’t, please, for crying out loud, ask for my number at the exact same moment you tell me you live in Dublin and are flying back to Ireland tomorrow.

Because truth is, I’m not going to call you back.

New Year’s Resolution #1: Stop falling for men who don’t live in New York.