Deconstructing: It’s a Wonderful Life

It’s a Wonderful Life is one of my favorite holiday movies. It’s got it all. Love! War! Fiscal cliffs! Italian's who own martini bars named Martini's! The core of the story centers around a guy named George Bailey, played pitch perfectly by the amazing Jimmy Stewart. George is a guy who just can’t catch a break, and when he finally hits rock bottom he stumbles upon his guardian angel, Clarence (and boy, what a weirdo angel he turns out to be). After George wishes he’d never been born, Clarence gives him the chance to see what the world would have been like had he never existed. 

This seems to be just some great old-timey black and white holiday fodder, but the movie actually addresses some pretty deep philosophical questions. As I attempted to deconstruct this classic film, I discovered that this bit of "Capra-corn” is actually a whole lot darker than I ever realized, leaving me asking question - just how wonderful a life is it really?

At the start we meet young George Bailey, a hardworking kid who seemingly runs around Bedford Falls saving people. First it’s his younger brother Harry from the skating rink (who knew you could lose your hearing from cold water?), then it’s grief-stricken Mr. Gower at the pharmacy. Mr. Gower is upset about his son dying, so he gets confused mixing up prescriptions and actually puts POISON into someone’s medication bottle (why does this pharmacist have poison again?). George notices Mr. Gower’s gaffe and prevents him from killing some kid, though not before getting a few good smacks to the head (child abuse, and we’re only ten minutes in!).

George grows up dreaming of fleeing the "crummy old town" of Bedford Falls (I dunno, it seems nice enough to me), but literally EVERYTHING gets in his way. First, he starts to fall in love with Mary after they Charleston their way into the pool under the dance floor, then sing that annoying song over and over again, (who is this buffalo gal anyway?)  Mary knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to go after it, which for a female character in the 1940’s I really appreciate. George even asks her want she wants. “What is it you want, Mary? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey, that's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary.”

SWOON. George is kinda hot!

Just as George and Mary are about to stop talking about lassoing the moon and finally make out, George’s dad dies. BAH! TIMING! His death stops George from spending his summer in Europe, while also compromising the status of the family owned Building and Loan. Meanie old rich guy Mr. Potter, who is in a wheelchair and has a really nice plaid throw blanket over his legs all the time, is a major shareholder. On the day George is ready to leave for school the board decides they should sell the business to Mr. Potter. This gets George super upset because Mr. Potter really hates the poors and wants to take away their loans and stuff. The board realizes they’re all really stupid, and so they agree not to sell on the condition that George, the only smart person within a 100 mile radius, takes over.

FOILED AGAIN! George gives all his college money to his brother Harry with the understanding that when he gets back he’ll take over the family biz, and then George can FINALLY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD go travel the world. Oops, that doesn’t exactly go as planned. Sorry George! Harry comes back four years later, and he’s married, and is all, Hey, this is my wife and her dad just totally offered me this great job, so would you be a pal and forget all about your dreams and let me go make a ton of money while you keep on looking after the Building and Loan? K, thanks.

Mary comes back from college, and gets George to finally realize she’s the one for him. In a scene I always thought was particularly romantic, Mary and George kiss while some guy named Sam “Hee-Haw” Wainwright is blabbering on the other end of the phone from an office in Chicago or somewhere (remember him, he’s important later on in the story). “Oh Mary, Mary, Mary,” he says. “Oh George, George, George,” she says. And then they kiss in the weird way people did in movies from the 1940’s which is just like, moving their heads around a lot with their closed mouths touching.

George and Mary get hitched, and no sooner do they leave the church than there is something afoot at the freaking Building and Loan! What can I say, owning a small independent business is bad news. George, always the one to swoop in for the rescue, leaves his wife in the car and goes to check it out. I don’t know about you but I think I’d be pretty annoyed if my husband left me on the way to our honeymoon. But whatever, Mary is cool.

This scene always really gets me riled up. Could the people of Bedford Falls be any more annoying? There’s a run on the bank, and everyone in town is in there demanding cash on the spot or they’re going to sell their loans to Mr. Potter. Calm down people! George rationally tries to explain to them what’s happening, but everyone is just like, “I need my $82.50!” until Mary shows up and gives these ungrateful idiots all their honeymoon money. Then there’s a lame faux honeymoon staged by policeman Bert, and cab driver Ernie (is this where Sesame Street got it from?), and then they have like four kids (you only need to know about Zuzu), and then the war happens and Harry enlists but George can’t because apparently if you can’t hear well out of one ear you can’t shoot a gun.

Skip ahead a few years, and that’s when we get into the intense stuff, the turning point, the straw that breaks poor George Bailey’s back. Freaking. Uncle. Billy. I mean, amiright?! It’s Christmas Eve, and this MORON forgets he wrapped up $8,000 in a newspaper and then basically just handed it over to George’s nemesis Mr. Potter. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! George freaks out, nearly kills Uncle Billy (I know I would), and then runs off to make a desperate plea to Mr. Potter. This scene is like, really sad. I mean, this poor guy just can't catch a break. George is freaking out about the lost money all while Mr. Potter has it right there wrapped up in that nice plaid blanket of his! Then Mr. Potter, because he’s rich, offers George a cigar and tries to hire him, saying things like, “You wouldn't mind living in the nicest house in town, buying your wife a lot of fine clothes, a couple of business trips to New York a year, maybe once in a while Europe. You wouldn't mind that, would you, George?” And George is thinking, YEAH DUDE that sounds freaking AWESOME, until he realizes that Mr. Potter is just part of the manipulative one percent, and so stands up to him and gives his great speech, “Mr. Potter, in the whole vast configuration of things I’d say you’re nothing but a scurvy little spider!”

You tell him, George! Spiders are awful!

Soon George is on the lam because Mr. Potter calls the cops on his broke ass. Ugh, rich people are so mean it's not even funny.

This is where the movie gets DARK, and George hops on a downward spiral for the ages. He goes home, where I have to say, that the faulty knob at the end of the banister is a small yet amazing device. Maybe it’s because I grew up in an old house where stuff was always on the brink of destruction, but I think it’s such a frustrating thing to have to deal with. Because sometimes it's the smallest thing that can really send you over the edge. THIS! FUCKING! BANNISTER!

George finds his littlest daughter Zuzu sick in bed. Some stupid teacher didn’t tell her to put her coat on or something, and now she’s got a temperature (basically everyone in this town is an idiot in case you haven’t caught on to that already). George and Zuzu have this really touching moment where he tries to tell her that her flower isn’t dying, and shoves the dead petals into his trouser pockets. Then shit gets real.While this scene is intense, I love it, because listen, sometimes parents lose it because being an adult is hard. George blows up at Zuzu’s teacher over the phone, and Tommy or whoever just needs to stop playing the SAME DAMN SONG ON THE DAMN PIANO, and then George freaks out about this drafty damn house, and this stupid damn town, and on, and on, and on. Mary just stands there looking like, holy cow, somebody get this guy a drink.

So he does just that. George flees the house and heads over to the martini bar called Martini’s run by and Italian guy named Giuseppe Martini (I mean, give me a break). He proceeds to get drunk and crash his car (I always hate that asshole who is all worried about his freaking oak tree or whatever, and not the fact that this person who actually crashed into it might be hurt). Then, in one of the darkest moments of this feel-good film, George is like, screw this shit and this town and Mr. Potter, “I’m worth more dead than alive,” and he pulls himself up on the railing of the bridge. Just before he’s about to say goodbye cruel world, there’s a splash and someone else falls in. George jumps in to save the guy, and while they both should have met a cold, watery end together, they don’t. It’s a Christmas miracle.

Enter: Clarence, the guardian angel who only drinks mulled wine and is on a mission to get his wings. As they’re warming up after the jump in the water, George angrily tells Clarence he wishes he’d never been born. This is when Clarence decides to take George on a wild ride through an alternate history for pretty much his own self gain (read: wings).

And it sure does take George a while to catch on. “Ma car! Ma car! What happened to ma car?!” he keeps asking. And Clarence has to keep being like FOR CHRIST’S SAKE GEORGE, HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY IT? YOUR CAR ISN’T HERE BECAUSE YOU WERE NEVER BORN!

We soon find that without George Bailey, Bedford Falls would have fallen into a dictatorship, Mary would be been a dried up old spinster librarian (with glasses!), Harry would have died, Mr. Gower would have become homeless and been treated poorly by the Italian bartender, Violet would have still been a tramp, and Uncle Billy would still have been a complete and total moron, only this time he’d have been locked up in an insane asylum where he belongs.

Now we’re finally coming to the end of this festive epic. George is not at all happy with the way things are without him, so he goes back to the bridge and pleads, “I want to live again!” Aw. The snow starts to fall, and George checks his pockets for Zuzu’s petals. There they are! Zuzu’s petals! BOOM. George is back. He takes off, all hopped up on life and good cheer, and starts running through the town. He remembers that it’s Christmas, and is now apparently totally fine with the fact that life has pretty much screwed him up until this point. “Merry Christmas Bedford Falls! Merry Christmas movie house! Merry Christmas you wonderful old Building and Loan!” Building and Loan? Really? Somebody has clearly forgotten about that sham honeymoon he was forced to go on.

Mary, always the one to keep it together, has rallied the town during George’s psychotic break. Before long, everyone in Bedford Falls is in George’s living room proffering cash. We’re even meant to feel okay about that single woman who says she’s been saving her money in case she ever found a husband. Ugh, sad! Keep your money! You’ll find a man! Then that character from two and a half hours ago that we’re supposed to remember, Sam Wainwright, hee-haws George and his family not just $8,000, but A $25,0000 LINE OF CREDIT! That was like a MILLION dollars back then! Mary should have married him when she had the chance! Harry, who has blown in looking handsome as ever, calls his big brother “The richest man in town” (but you get it right? It’s not about the money, it’s about family and friends or whatever?), and then everyone starts singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing.

We don’t know where she gets it from, but out of nowhere Zuzu hands George a wrapped present. It’s the copy of Tom Sawyer that Clarence always carried around (I always thought that was a bit random for an angel, no? Shouldn’t he be holding the Bible or something?). Inside the book Clarence has written “No man is a failure who has friends.” To me this is sort of like, well, you basically are a failure and everyone knows it, but good thing you have some people around you who don’t really seem to mind.

On cue, someone, probably some lowly production assistant, bumps into the Christmas tree behind George, Mary and Zuzu, and a bell rings. This prompts Zuzu to say the classic line, “Teacher says, every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings,” and George smiles, apparently forgetting this is the exact same damn teacher who got his kid sick. Then everyone starts singing that song that doesn’t make sense about old acquaintances being forgot, and it looks like George is having a hard time remembering all the words just like the rest of us.

In the end George seems happy enough, but re-watching this old classic I can’t help but wonder how long it will last. Let’s not forget that Mr. Potter is still lurking out there somewhere plotting to take down George and turn Bedford Falls into Pottersville. And I’d say it’s pretty likely given his track record that Uncle Billy will do something epically stupid again in the near future to make George want to kill himself.

So when all is said and done, is it really a wonderful life? I used to think so but now I’m not so sure. And I bet if you asked George Bailey today, what with the looming financial crisis, and the high unemployment rate, and four kids to get through this country’s overpriced higher education system, something tells me he’d probably agree. 

“I never thought it was such a bad little tree.”

It’s here. I think I was shell-shocked after Thanksgiving, still in denial (perhaps it was all the wine), that the holidays were much further away than they appeared. But Wednesday morning I realized, as it literally hit me on my walk to the office. Just as I reached Fifth Avenue at 52^ndstreet  - bam! - a guy bumped into me like he didn’t see me at all. My shoulder was thrown back and I turned around ready to yell. Upon further examination I figured he probably actually hadn’t seen me because he was a tourist (made obvious by a lot of things including but not limited to the jeans, sneakers and baseball cap in Midtown on a weekday), and tourists don’t see anything because they walk with their necks craned as though they’ve never seen tall buildings before.

And maybe they haven’t.

“Unbelievable,” I said, my go-to response for all types of frustrating encounters with people in and around this city (sometimes when it’s really egregious there’s a certain bleeping expletive placed before it). “Watch where you’re going, dude.” I opted for “dude” in an attempt to take a bit of the sting out of it instead of, say, “moron” or “blind idiot.”

“Oh my gosh I’m so sorry, ma’am!” he said. I turned around and he had his hands out in front of him as though he were bracing himself for me to throw a punch. I’m not sure what I was more taken aback by, how apologetic he was or that I’m now, apparently, old enough to be referred to as ma’am. I relented taking pity, and simply shook my head at him. It was a chastising but accepting gesture of his apology, and I proceeded to stand on the corner to wait for the light to change.

“I really am sorry,” he continued. “I’ve never been to New York before, and we’re in town for the tree lighting tonight and I’m trying to find where to go…”

My heart seized. The bleeping unbelievable Rockefeller tree lighting is TONIGHT? In all my denial about the holiday season I’d forgotten this annual tourist trap was upon us. Now all I could think about was how from tomorrow until the end of the month I’m going to have to push back against a torrent of tourists all gawking at store windows and blocking the sidewalks with their enormous shopping bags every time I enter or leave work.

“It’s three blocks that way,” I said not turning around, extending my right arm and index finger southwards down Fifth the way the Ghost of Christmas Future points to Ebenezer Scrooge’s grave.

I think he said thank you but I didn’t hear it, I was already crossing the street, leaving him stranded looking for where to go for what was sure to be one of the most irritating nights of his life. What is it about being wedged in with hundreds of people for hours waiting for Justin Bieber to sing a bad rendition of “Frosty the Snowman” that makes people feel like that’s what the holiday season is all about? I guess it’s the same people who eat their Thanksgiving dinners in tents outside Best Buy.

I wonder where they get it, the propensity not to feel depressed and annoyed at this season of emotional and materialistic stresses. Doesn’t it get to them, all the expectation and pressure, how we have no choice but to remember the way things used to be, that time when life was a lot less complicated? I’ll admit that for the rest of the year I’m a lot better at pushing the past and everything else back, keeping it at bay. But for some reason this season goes down like a glass of eggnog laced with melancholy, and I tend to go through December with my head down holding my breath until it’s over. 

Later that night while I was still at the office, I found myself remembering two years ago being at dinner with my friend Matt downtown the night before we were both meant to leave the city for Christmas. It was the last chance we were going to have to go skating at Wollman Rink in Central Park, and we decided as we paid the check that we should go. We hopped in a cab and sped uptown, shoving extra cash at the driver to get us there in time. He dropped us at Central Park South, and we ran through the darkened snow covered lanes of the park until we saw it, the bright icy circle floating in the distance, holiday music booming from surrounding speakers. 

We sprinted to the ticket window, and when we arrived, panting and out of breath, the woman told us the rink was closing in ten minutes, and they weren’t letting anyone else in. Matt and I, still both determined to enjoy this last bit of childhood holiday nostalgia, pleaded with her, reminded her of the spirit of the season. Soon she smiled and gave in, and shook her head at us as she waved us through. It was a Christmas miracle. We had enough time to make about five laps around before they started to turn off the lights. I remember how happy we were to have even that brief time on the ice, how the woman behind the ticket window told us to have a Merry Christmas as we left, and how we reminisced about some of the happier Christmases of our pasts as we walked through the abandoned red and white holiday tents in Columbus Circle on our way home.

Thinking back on that night I realized that's what they're trying to do, those crazy people waiting out in the cold to see the first initial lighting of the tree. They all want to feel something, they want back, even for a moment, the lightness and happiness of youth that Matt and I tried so hard to reclaim that night at the rink. Yes life is difficult and we can't get back the past, but it's important not to give up and lose sight of the good things right here in the present. 

That's why I decided to wait. I waited until Mariah Carey and tourists were all gone, and took a detour to the subway home. It was late and the sidewalks were already emptying as I walked down along Fifth Avenue - 50^th, 49^th, 48^th - and then suddenly there it was. It stood tall and proud, an 80-foot Norway Spruce from Mt. Olive, New Jersey that had been growing in the backyard of one Joe Balku since he bought his home in 1973. It had made it through Superstorm Sandy even as the surrounding trees in Balku’s backyard all were downed. Yet this tree remained. It battled the rain and the high winds only to find itself here, pulled from its roots and adorned with 30,000 lights and topped with a Swarovski crystal star.

Some people were still lingering, all posing for pictures, big smiles on their faces with the giant green tree alight behind them. That’s when I felt it - this tree is a survivor. It gave its life to bring all of these people together, and it will stand here as a beacon of hope for forty days, and after its stint in the spotlight it will become lumber for Habitat for Humanity in order to change the lives of others yet again. It will carry on. Because that’s what we do, in spite of or maybe because of the hardships in our lives we carry on, we survive. We may not know what our destinies hold but we adapt, we strive to find purpose and meaning, we aspire to effect change and to spark love in what little time we have to be alive.

We are all undiscovered trees in distant backyards waiting to find our place in the world, and we do what we can to get by. Maybe that’s the true meaning of the season, to find something that brings us together and reminds us we’re not alone.

A young couple both in puffy jackets and knit hats asked me if I’d take their picture. It took a few tries (I’m not handy with iPhones), but I think we finally got one with real greeting card potential. As I handed the phone back to them they thanked me, and I asked where they were from.

The girl looked at me strangely, cocked her head to the side and said, “Queens.”

Such a thing for two New Yorkers to find themselves together here in front of this tree. 

Further proof I suppose, that the brave New Jersey Norway’s lights shine for all who need it, no matter where they happen to call home.

Love (Online) is a Battlefield.

At a bar in the West Village I saw him standing there waiting for someone to show up. He was wearing what seemed to be his first date casual uniform – a blue gingham dress shirt (why do men insist on refusing to tuck in their shirts?), and jeans that had a bit too much flare. I was sitting with friends, and noticed him the way you notice people at bars who are by themselves. 

He, short and blond, was looking intently at his phone thumbing through messages in what I assumed to be an attempt to look occupied, inconspicuous, less nervous. It wasn’t working. She, shorter and brunette, was wearing a black dress and arrived apologizing profusely for being late. I noticed that their introduction was awkward. There was neither an embrace nor a handshake indicating the lack of intimacy of close friends or people who are currently dating, while also ruling out a business drinks meet-up. This, I assumed on a Sunday night in a dimly lit bar, was an online created first date. He ordered a beer, she something with a pinkish hue. They seemed to chat amicably enough, and after one drink they were gone.

Being myself a newcomer to the scene of online dating, (I’m coming up on my three week anniversary) I wondered what it was in their profiles that made them both think they might be right for each other. What was it among those strange questions and rankings of importance of religion, drug and smoking habits that felt so right that they decided to make a date? There must have been something there that made them both willing to overcome a whole array of fears in order to put on their casual first date uniform best, step outside their comfort zones, and meet a complete stranger. All this was I’m sure on top of the fact that they were both deep down hoping this person had the potential to become someone they might be with long term. I mean, isn’t that the ultimate endgame for all this dating, the prospect that at one point you won’t have to do it anymore?

I’ll be honest with you, filling out an online dating profile was probably one of the most soul sucking experiences of my life. I’m sure it didn’t help that I did it over copious amount of Aberlour, and with a crooning Ella Fitzgerald playing on vinyl in the background. I tried to take seriously questions like “what’s the most private thing you’re willing to admit” (as though that’s somehow any indicator of the kind of person I am?). It was hearing Ella’s voice that really started to make me lament for the old days, the ones when the concept of romance didn’t take place over a computer screen. This isn’t how Ella did it, or the folks who fell in love to her crooning voice on dance floors in jazz clubs back in the 50’s. Surely I too could find a better way? 

But the longer I sat there listening to her, the blinking cursor flashing in the empty field before me, the more I realized that women in the 50’s had their own set of issues to deal with, and it was time I started living in the present, no matter how much at times I might happen to resent it.

It takes a while for a somewhat old fashioned mentality like my own to come to terms with the fact that the man I might end up with could potentially start out as a thumbnail picture alongside a list of six things he could never live without (most often it seems to include different iterations of beer, football, video games, Breaking Bad, and working out). But I decided, as the A-side of the record came to its inevitable end, to defer to the very smart person who somewhere once uttered the mantra of people who give up everywhere - if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So I downed another stiff finger of single malt, flipped the record over, and started to tackle how best to respond to the very daunting (and a little bit overwhelming for an online dating profile, no?) question of: WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE?

Are they kidding me with this stuff?

As Ella started in on one of my favorites, singing, “The radio and the telephone, and the movies that we know may just be passing fancies and in time may go - but our love is here to stay,” I wondered if she, at the time she was so graciously belting out the words penned by Ira Gershwin, knew that the radio and telephone eventually really would go, and love, whether it’s here to stay or not was going to end up being sought out on a medium she probably couldn’t even begin to conceptualize.

What am I doing with my life? Damned if I know, but I guess I have no choice but to take a crack at answering it anyway.

Back at the bar I’d forgotten all about the first daters. I left not long after them and headed for the subway. It was there, waiting at 14^th street for the uptown 1 train that I saw him, blue gingham standing but three feet away from me on the platform. Of all the subway platforms in all the city. He was alone and thumbing through his phone again, only this time there was something about his gaze that made me feel like something was wrong. It was as though there was a spark that had been drained from his face since I first spotted him at the bar a little over an hour ago. And then I realized. He had just gone through what he’s probably been going through for a long time now - a series of first meetings full of potential that ultimately end with the morale shattering answer of she’s not the one for me, and back to the drawing board he goes.

On the train he sits across from me. While the whole car is either listening to iPods, or reading books or scanning the day’s copy of the Times, he’s just sitting there. He’s sitting there staring straight ahead into nothingness as though he’s reliving the date, trying to pinpoint where it went wrong, what he said, what she said, if it was his fault or hers. As we reach 42nd street I think I see despair settle into his eyes, and wonder if he’s asking himself just how much longer he’s willing to do this, to put himself out there with the results always being the same. Wasn’t it Einstein who said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? 

I fear that insanity, and there it was sitting right across from me as I tried to avert its gaze. It’s what I wonder about now that I’m a part of this world of trying to find love on the internet - how long do we go on for, how long to do we try? I suppose I’m too new to the game to really ask that question seriously, but I know it’s an option, lurking there somewhere in my future when I might be blue gingham (I do happen to own that shirt), on the subway heading home after one-too-many-first-dates-to-count wondering how it ended up like this, how my love life became so difficult, a numbers game summed up by how well I can take a picture, and how interesting the most private thing I’m willing to admit is (and just for the record, apparently “I’ve never been in jail,” along with any other trace amounts of sarcasm doesn’t seem to go over too well).

But blue gingham realized a long time ago what I’m only just coming to terms with, that this era of finding love online is the one we live in now, and I’d be a fool to keep pretending otherwise. Ella is meant simply to be listened to, relegated to the past as the way things used to be, not the way things are. And since my track record of finding love offline hasn’t been very successful, perhaps it’s time to take a tip from her other songs like: Who Cares, because eventually I’ll meet Somebody from Somewhere and despite the fact that it ends up being online, maybe we’ll both just say screw it, Let’s Fall in Love.

We’re not a generation comfortable with approaching people at bars or book readings or on subway platforms or dance floors. We like to keep our ear buds in, smile briefly only to look away, to board the subway or leave the street corner wondering what could have been had we only just had the guts to say hello. So we go online. We hide behind profiles and head shots and hope for the best. And I get it. I am that person. But what I’ve also learned (and am still learning), is that it’s all about letting go of the way you thought things were supposed to be. Because supposed to be can ruin you. You can wait forever for it, and in the end the Rockies may crumble and Gibraltar may tumble so you might as well figure out a way to be happy while you have the chance.

To blue gingham I say once more unto the breach, dear friend. Online dating is a battlefield, it is a war of return on investment, a crapshoot pitting your energy, patience and expectations against less than encouraging odds. 

And yet while there may be defeats lurking on the other end of every of the click of the mouse - so too might potential be. All we can do as urban warriors of our own destinies is keep fighting, keep messaging and reaching out and taking chances and putting ourselves and our hearts out there with nothing but hope and the idea that one of these days, if we’re very lucky, we just might be fortunate enough to win the war.

Until then, of course, expect more reports from the field. 

HeTexted.com -- Crowdsourcing Relationships

The pitfalls of texting while dating, and living in an age where our minds have been taken over by the constant need for Text Content Analysis.

Read my piece at Huffington Post.

An Open Letter to People Who Repin My Pins on Pinterest

Tina, you repinned my pin “Summer Dress.”

Tina, that dress I posted to my “Haberdashery” board (which I called “Haberdashery” in an attempt to be clever and interesting), costs almost as much as my rent - why are you repinning it? I guess it’s because you like the style as I do, but in no real world scenario save for the both of us hitting the lottery, or maybe becoming best friends with the designer, are either of us ever actually going to be able to own that dress. Unless you’re really wealthy. Are you really wealthy, Tina? If you are then why are you on here pinning things when you could be out there actually buying them?

Emma, you repinned my pin “Apple Galette with Butterscotch.”

That galette looks so amazing, right Em? But let’s be serious here, are we ever really going to make this thing? I’ll be honest with you, every time I pin something to my “Sweet” board (much more interesting than “Desserts”), it’s because I’m stuck at the office feeling really hungry. In an ideal world I’d like an apple galette, or that six-layer chocolate cake Sarah pinned to just like, magically appear on my desk. But you and I both know that’s not going to happen. And I don't know about you, but if I'm being honest, and I think I should be, there’s no chance in hell I’m going to trudge home after a long day at work and attempt to make a galette in the kitchen of my studio apartment that has only enough counter space to store a cereal box. Emma, I bet you don’t live in Manhattan. If you did you’d probably just go and buy an apple galette on your way home at any number of bakeries this fine city has to offer like I will. Also, don’t you find the part of the recipe that calls for making the butterscotch from scratch hilarious? HELLO! YOU CAN BUY BUTTERSCOTCH IN A JAR! Crazy pinners…

To everyone who hasn’t repinned anything from my “Straight Up” board (so much more clever than “Cocktails”). I guess it’s because you, like me, prefer to have drinks made for you at bars instead of buying all the ingredients for, say, an English Heat (made with Beefeater, jalapeño-infused agave, lemon, Tuaca (?!?!), and dry vermouth), only to drink it alone in your apartment standing at your very small counter that has nothing on it but a cereal box.

Hey Alex, remember when I repinned that picture you pinned of a beautiful log cabin on a lake from your “Favorite Homes” board to my “Dream Home” board? You have other pins on that board too - a rustic Virginia colonial, a quaint cottage in Belgium, an Italian palace – so pretty! - however while these are your favorite homes, something tells me you don’t actually live in an Italian palace. Don’t worry Alex, I won't tell anyone (and while we’re admitting things, I’ve never been to Belgium). However, seeing as how it’s your “favorite,” I do hope that one day you get that lake house. You seem like a nice guy, and I bet you deserve it.

To my meager 30 followers. The reason I haven’t repinned you guys in a while isn’t because I don’t like your pins of pictures of dogs in trench coats, and wedding tablescapes, and black and whites of a brooding Ryan Gosling—it’s just that, well, I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do with them. I feel like Ben and the Pinterest Team would call me a fraud because I’ve never painted a table from Ikea using whatever color is hot right now (green?) and added a stencil of whatever animal is trendy right now (whales are the new deer are the new owls?). Nor have I ever used any recipe that I’ve pinned, including the one that looked especially tasty of herb roasted chicken with truffled cauliflower mash and lemon-caper gremolata.

I don’t even know what gremolata is. I usually have cereal for dinner.

I don’t know how to pull off mint jeans, or faux fur vests or knit leggings or horizontal stripes. Posts of Elizabeth Taylor, serving bowls, fruit smoothies, lacey underwear, outdoor lounge chairs, pictures of Sammy Davis Jr., antique jewelry, wedding dresses, feather headbands, Chanel handbags, Prada handbags, Coach handbags, signs that say things like, “Shit could be worse,” or “Punch today in the face” or “Don’t let anyone ever dull your sparkle,” —I’m just always like, I mean, I guess?

But I’ll keep pinning and repinning if you do. I don’t mind telling myself that I’ll eventually learn one day how to do my hair in that messy bun style, or match floral prints with neon, or make my own popsicles. I suspect we’re all kidding ourselves just a little bit every time we log on there anyway. It’s like HERE ARE ALL OF THE THINGS THAT WILL MAKE YOU BETTER BUT YOU'LL NEVER DO OR HAVE! Which is really sort of depressing, amiright? But at least it’s pretty to look at. I know my life would be better if I stored my toilet paper rolls in a glass flower vase, or used vintage hat boxes to organize my closet, or made my own face cream using egg whites and mayonnaise –but I just can't be bothered.

And then I saw that Erin posted to her “Dream Big” board a sign that said, “Life is what you make of it.” Erin what can I say, you’re so right. I’m going to go and try to track down Tina now. I have a sneaking suspicion she’s a millionaire.

Happy pinning!

How to Date in a Technological Age

(A response to Molly Templeton’s call for how-to pieces by women.)
 
When it comes to dating we know there are rules, and it just so happens that at this particular moment in our dating history, the rules are more complicated than ever before.

There was a time not so long ago when it was far less complicated. Lovers were separated by distance, and confessions of feeling could only travel slowly through this thing called the mail. This of course, was only after you had taken a considerable amount of time to actually write down, on paper, by hand, your thoughts. Because of this, there were many chances to second-guess yourself, to step back, clear your head, crumple that piece of paper up and throw it in the trash before breathing a sigh of heavy relief at your narrow escape from over-sharing.

We no longer live in that time. We live in a time where you can, at any moment you so choose, communicate with the person you like with just a tap your thumb. We think to ourselves, Yay progress! But we are wrong. Such access to say how we feel at the exact moment we are feeling it only opens us up to missteps, and subsequent meltdowns.

In an ideal world it would be okay to just tell people how we really feel. But love without games? Surely you jest. I'm confident there are some brave souls out there who have actually tried this approach. Whoever you are, I salute you. As for the rest of us, we’re cowards who painfully look at the clock until enough time has lapsed and we feel it's okay for us to text back an answer to the seemingly terrifying question of: Do you want to go to a movie tonight?

So if you (like me) are that person, here are The Rules:

Rule #1 - When to Move From Emails to Phone

If you’re emailing, you’re going to want to wait at least one day before writing back. You’re busy, and even if you’re not you want the other person to think you are. However, when you get to the point where the two of you are actually making plans, the rule is, cell phone numbers should be proffered. If you’ve set a date and time to meet for a drink and they never show up, you want to be able to call them to know if you should be really angry, or if they just got hit by a cab and are now in an ambulance en route to the hospital.

Rule #2 - How Long to Wait Before Texting Back/Amount of Texts

Texting is like tennis, and you send text for text like a ball across a net. You’re in a conversation of words on a screen, and it’s okay to keep it going. You will of course, inevitably reach the point when someone drops the ball and doesn’t write back. If it’s not you, you are allowed exclaim a la McEnroe, “You cannot be serious!” But fear not dutiful last-responder, if this other person knows the rules they’ll know that if they chose to end the text volley, it is now up to them to pick it back up (within the next three to five days is appropriate).

           

Rule #3 – Texting While Intoxicated

The hard and fast rule here is, never. I mean, you’ve been doing so well up to this point, cleverly crafting every perfectly timed response, why throw it all away now? It’s like running a marathon and halfway through just saying, screw it, I’m going to stop and go grab a slice of pizza. You’ve worked too hard for this to just throw it all away because of one too many vodka sodas! Texting under the influence always means mistakes will be made. The rule here is that once a drink is poured, power down.

*There is, of course, a loophole here. If you’ve decided that the only thing you really want out of this relationship is purely physical, then a drunken text is a surefire way to expedite the process of dating and get some action.

Rule # 4  - Skype

The ability for someone I’m interested in to see what I'm doing at any time of day scares me, which is part of why I refuse to replace my old laptop that was built before webcams existed. The only time video chatting is warranted is if the person you are dating lives in another country. And let’s be honest here, if you are dating someone who lives in another country, no amount of technology is going to make that relationship work. Get out while you still can.

Rule #5 – Google Chat

Ah Gchat, the instant messenger of the adult set. If you’re already emailing and texting with someone, online chatting can be excessive. You need to be able to leave at least one communication medium a no-bother-zone, especially if it’s one that a person might be on during office hours. Also with Gchat, there’s never a real endpoint to a conversation. Most of the time you chat for a while until eventually the little dot near someone’s name turns orange or they simply disappear. And everyone is OK with that. It’s like the silent understanding of Gchat. Gchat means never having to say goodbye. However, when you’re dating someone and they just disappear, well, that rule will go right out the window. The point is - all it takes is for one person to type “hey!” into one of those little boxes and hit send. Don’t be that person.

Rule # 6 – Emoticons

I get it, you’re trying to be cute. But if you’re not clever enough to convey that you’re happy or sad through actual words, putting a smiley face in there isn’t going to make me feel any better about what you’re trying to say. You didn’t see John Keats adding little faces with sunglasses at the end of witty lines in his love letters to Fanny Brawne, did you? The greatest communicators (and loves), didn’t need them. Assume you don’t either.

In short, love and relationships are complicated. Fortunately, you now have these rules to help you out. And don’t worry, if you mess up your current relationship because you over-texted, remember what Alexander Graham Bell said, “When one door closes, another opens.”

But then again, he’s the guy who invented the telephone, which was basically the beginning of the end for relationships everywhere. 

That said, good luck out there. Odds are you're gonna need it.

Hot Child in the City

The city is melting. Or I am. I don’t know which because it’s so hot I can’t really think straight. The heat rises up out of the pavement, and swallows my feet first before making its way up my entire body. When it reaches my chest my heart seizes. I look at the people passing me on the sidewalk like, holy shit you guys, is this for real?

And they just wipe the beads of sweat from their foreheads with the backs of their hands in an exhausted gesture of, yes, yes it is.

It’s hot here. Like Hades hot if you could venture a guess of how hot Hades might actually be (and I hope I never find out). And it’s all anyone can talk about, because for some reason, we just really can’t get enough of talking about the weather. I guess because it’s the one common thing that we have to unite us as New Yorkers - Park Ave. to Park Slope odds are you’re feeling the heat, and you’re not at all happy about it.

For the most part, we all really love it here, but the heat makes us hate it because it does crazy things to our minds. While there is no universal definition of a heat wave, it is the result of a high pressure system, which makes sense because that’s what we’re all under here, and it can take something like a significant jump in temperature to simply make us snap. When the mercury stretches up past 95 degrees, it’s as though everyone and everything in the city gets thatmuchcloser. People can be sitting next to me on the subway as they do any other day, but when it’s 95 outside (and feels like 100) its like they’re right on top of me, and I’m looking at them like: Would you just get the hell off of me for Christ’s sake!?

I don’t say that of course, because that would be crazy. And I don’t want to turn into that person who actually is crazy, who shouts crazy things at people on the subway that I usually look away from while thinking wow, that dude’s crazy. But when it’s this hot I’m like, thisclose to becoming that guy. So I tell myself, don’t be that guy, and I close my eyes and count to ten, and try to envision myself in the North Pole or someplace where it’s probably pretty cold.

I did that this morning when I was standing on the subway platform. I could feel a few beads of sweat make an appearance on my brow, and then attempt to make their way down the side of my face. I felt like I was sitting in a sauna wearing a dress and holding a handbag. I tried to focus and remain calm. North Pole, Antarctica, Iceland. Wait, is Iceland actually cold? In my attempt to muster Zen-like concentration to regulate my core body temperature, I couldn’t help but notice that the woman standing next to me was desperate. Her face was red and sweaty, she was fanning herself with her AM New York, and moving from side to side in frustration as we waited for the downtown 1 train.

I could see the dark rings already getting larger under her arms. I wanted to tell her that today was not the best day to wear silk, but I figured she was already having a tough time of it that I shouldn’t kick her while she’s down.

When the subway arrived, a near-empty car stopped before us. Anyone who’s been here long enough knows that when it feels like 100 degrees out (and 150 underground), and an empty subway car presents itself at rush hour, it doesn’t mean it’s your lucky day. What it actually means is that the AC is broken, and you need to start making your way towards the next car fast, because there’s going to be a legitimate stampede in approximately three seconds.

The girl next to me did not know this. Maybe it was her first day living here, or maybe she was so hot that her brain had actually stopped functioning properly – either way she looked so relieved to see that she could, in her anxious and overheated state actually sit down, that she bolted inside as soon as the doors opened.

I would assume that she probably passed out when she realized her gaffe, along with the handful of other people who didn’t know better. But I was too far away at that point to know for sure. Later, when I was wedged in a cool car like a sardine next to a guy who smelled like he definitely overdid it that morning with the Axe, I thought that maybe I should have said or done something to save her.

But this is a heat wave on a sweltering island with 8 million people. This is a battlefield. It’s every man and woman for themselves.

And it’s okay though, because according to Bill Evans and his Accuweather forecast that is, like, 90 percent of the time inaccurate, we’ll only have to endure this trauma for one more day. After that we’ll go back to normal (by the weekend 85 high, chance of rain 30%), and resume our lives as New Yorkers where our headaches are sourced from an unlimited list of grievances that don’t pertain the weather at all.

Our perspective will resume, and that extra inch on the subway will suddenly feel like a football field. We will go back to thinking clearly, dressing accordingly, using body spray in appropriate amounts, and the overall state of the atmosphere will adjust itself around us.

But I figure when that happens I should probably judge the crazy people who actually are crazy a little bit less, because I’ll know at that point just how narrow my own escape was from the same fate. 

So try to stay cool and sane New York. You have 24 more hours to go.

If you see something, say something.

You meet someone at a bar (even though you never meet people in bars), and have a wonderful conversation. You realize you have a lot in common while also finding them attractive. After hours have passed in what feels like a blur, you think to yourself that you’ve hit the jackpot because this is most definitely going to become a future date. This person has possibility, this person could be someone you like (and you don’t like anyone!).

They ask for your number, and you try not to think about all the people who have asked for your number before and never called. You’re trying to be optimistic this time. The phrase, “Benefit of the doubt” comes to mind even though you’re not entirely sure what that’s really supposed to mean. They tell you you’re wonderful, go on how much they want to see you again, and just as you're allowing yourself to believe they're actually telling you the truth, they tell you they’re flying home to Austin, Texas tomorrow.

You deflate. You actually feel it happening to your heart as the words come out of their mouth.

So you go home with a strange and unsettling feeling in your stomach, the one that comes when you recognize a missed opportunity. You repeat to yourself the phrase that all people who feel powerless to a situation tell themselves: It just wasn’t meant to be.

Two days later, however, they text you. You’re surprised to hear from them. You’re even more surprised when they say that if they lived in New York they would have wanted to take you out to dinner, or a coffee, anything to have had another chance to see you again. But they can’t, so instead they want to stay in touch, and ask you how your day went. This makes you upset. You think about all of the people who have asked for your number in the past and live only a few subway stops away and never reached out to ask you anything, let alone how your day went. But this guy. Well, of course.

So you sit. You sit for a long time staring at your phone contemplating your limited choices in this particular situation. You either respond and start up a conversation with a near stranger who is currently halfway across the country but has still somehow managed to captivate your thoughts, or you don’t. It takes you a long time to come to a decision. You think about how you’ve been here before, somehow having become incapable of meeting people who live in the same city as you, but finding that when you leave Manhattan all of that seems to change.

You have theories on yourself and geography, and figure that one day you'll inevitably be forced to leave the island if you ever really want to find love. Because of that, you have been open to the idea that geography shouldn’t really be a factor when it comes to finding someone you can have a good conversation with, (and years of meeting people in Manhattan has shown you that’s almost impossible to find someone with whom you can have a good conversation). Surely distance shouldn’t matter, not now, not in 2012. Wasn’t the whole point of progress and technology to teach us that we’re not limited by our zip codes? We can text and Skype and get great deals on JetBlue - shouldn’t it be possible to love across state lines?

But, like most things, it’s never that simple. Because if you have been here before, you know all too well that there will come a point when you’ve spent a lot of time getting to know someone through means of communication that doesn’t involve sitting across a dinner table, and it will be great and you’ll become invested, and one day you will even go to visit them and come to find that they have in fact, like a normal person, met someone they can see on a somewhat daily basis. Someone they can see a movie with, hold hands with, have an actual physical relationship with. These things trump all else. They even trump good conversation, and chemistry and the basic fact that you like each other when even the both of you know that finding someone you like and likes you back and wants what you want at the exact came time you do is tantamount to hitting the lottery.

Even that will be overlooked for a person who’s in reaching distance.

Well, you suppose, that makes sense.

So this time you tell yourself you’ve learned. Because you can know what you want in life, you can find it even, have it right there in front of you —but that isn't always enough. It’s a sobering feeling to have in a world that makes you feel as though there are no limits, when you come to find that in the end, no matter how much you try, when it comes to matters of the heart there are always meant to be limits, and sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it.

Something as seemingly insignificant as the place you’ve chosen to live can change everything. Geography stepping in, setting its own restrictions on you without you even realizing.

So you look at the phone and you make a conscious decision not to write back. You do it against your own better judgment, but you know it’s the right thing to do, (and the right thing is never easy). Sometimes you’re just meant to meet people for a brief period of time, and that’s all it’s supposed to be (this is also what all people who feel powerless to a situation tell themselves).

You do, however, sometimes find yourself at random moments on the subway or walking up Broadway, wondering about what could have happened if you'd just written back. Maybe, just maybe, this time it would have been different. You’d have stayed in touch, you’d have moved on to talking on the phone (even though you don't particularly like talking on the phone). You’d have visited Texas or they would have come to New York. You'd have started making plans, realizing that even though you were both still dating in your respective cities, you just weren’t meeting people you liked as much as you liked each other. And you’d have moved to Texas or they to New York or who knows, maybe you’d have ended up somewhere else entirely, and gotten married and bought a house with a garage and taken out a mortgage and had kids and grown old together, always telling that funny story about how one night you met in a bar in Manhattan.

And telling the story you’d realize that there was a moment when it all came down to you. There you’d be, older now, graying, telling your grandchildren the tale. You’ll say something like, “You know, if I never wrote back, if I just ignored the message entirely because I assumed I already knew how it was going to end, none of you would even be here.”

Life can be funny that way. And mysterious and mind-boggling, always making you question whether or not you’re making the right choice, always leaving you wondering about what could have been (and "what could have been" can torture you forever).

But you try to remind yourself about what you know about life, that it isn't a movie. You tell yourself you know better. Because you do, don’t you?

And then you wonder when it was that you decided to stop taking chances.

The city reminds you at every turn: IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. When it comes to most things in life, from national security to love, you never know what something could be if you make the choice not to do anything. Anything only ever changes if you do.

So you decide that you don’t know it all and never will and it’s foolish to ever think so. Next time, you vow to yourself, you won't be so afraid. Because the signs that read “Be suspicious of anything left unattended,” ought to apply to your heart as well.

On my birthday, 20 years ago.

April 17, 1992

The fourth grade totally sucks. They make us do math, like ALL THE TIME. Every time Mrs. Polanski gets up there and starts writing questions on the board my palms get all sweaty. I feel like everyone else around me is GETTING IT and I’m not. What does that mean? I guess if I don’t know this then I won’t do well and go to a college and get a good job and I’ll live home with Mom and Dad forever which wouldn’t be so bad I guess because I like our house and my room and we have a pool.

I used to want to be a doctor but then when Mom told me you need to know a lot of math to be a good doctor I was like, uh, NO WAY JOSE!

I’ve tried a lot of things already to figure out what I’m good at. Maria already knows what she wants to do which I guess is what happens when you’re older, which she is by two years. She says she wants to be the first woman president, which I think she would be good at because she’s good at bossing me around. She’s also good at ballet and goes to lessons all the time and I have to sit through those recitals which are SO BORING I want to die. I’ve seen The Nutcraker like a thousand times. It’s the longest ballet ever.

Mom and Dad have taken me to a lot of lessons. I took guitar lessons for a while, which was fun at first but then I hated practicing and just wanted to be outside and ride my bike. I didn’t practice and I would show up to lessons and Mr. Patrizio would be all, did you practice this week Victoria? And I’d lie and then I’d feel bad because I guess I’m not supposed to lie. Mom says I play pretty well considering I don’t practice and imagine how good you’d be Victoria if you actually practiced. Whatever Mom. My fingers hurt.

Mrs. Polanski put this on the board:

Thomas buys a skateboard that is 2 feet long. What is the length, in inches, of the skateboard?

Why do I need to know inches when I already know how long it is in feet? THIS IS SO STUPID.

I took gymnastics for a while, then quit. I don’t like wearing leotards and the girls in my class were not nice girls. I tap danced for a while because I wanted to be like Fred Astaire in those old black and white movies. I was super good but then I stopped because I got bored. I’m playing the piano now which I actually like because I don’t have to be in a class with other people and can do it on my own, and I started figure skating lessons because when Kristi Yamaguchi won the Olympics a few months ago and Dad said she was born with club feet like I was I thought ohmygod I have to do that too maybe I’ll be good at it! I’m not good at it at all.

Mrs. Polanski put this on the board:

Melissa has a rope that is 84 feet long. She is cutting it into 7-foot pieces to make jump ropes. How many jump ropes can Melissa make?

Why is Melissa buying all that rope and just doesn’t have a real jump rope like I have? It seems like a lot of work just to jump rope. Maria and I jump rope a lot in the driveway with our friends from the neighborhood. I’m good at that, but I don’t take lessons and I probably couldn’t have a job jumping rope. I don’t think they pay you for that when you grow up. You have to go into an office and get dressed up for a job. I have no idea what I’m going to be when I grow up because I’m not good at anything at all and that really scares me.

Mrs. Polanski put this on the board:

Milton takes $400 on a shopping trip. He plans to spend 1/5 of his money on cassette tapes. How much money will Milton spend on the tapes?

I don’t know the answer to that so I guess that means I’ll never have a job.

Tomorrow is my birthday and sometimes I think about where I’ll be when I’m old, like really old, like 29, and I’ll be married and have kids and own a big house like Mom and Dad. But that’s SO FAR AWAY and right now I’m really just excited about math class being over because art and music are later this afternoon after lunch and I really like those. I like when we read too. We just read Island of the Blue Dolphins. I love that book so much. I also like Where the Red Fern Grows. That’s so sad but so good. I like to write stories too but I hate math and I don’t like science and I don’t know why I have to be good at all of them because most of the time the questions are stupid.

Like how did Milton know how much money he wanted to spend on tapes when he didn’t even know what music he wanted to listen to? I don’t get that! I bet it was stupid music anyway. I like it when Dad plays music from the really big record collection he has and Maria and I dance around the living room. He used to be in a band. He played the drums. I like it when he plays the Rolling Stones. Dad said he saw them in Albany just fifteen minutes from our house back in 1963. THAT IS SO LONG AGO. I wasn’t even alive.

I hate the fourth grade it’s so stupid. It will be nice to be old and be able to do what I want to do which will mean NOT math. I think I’ll quit skating and try tennis next. Maybe I’ll be a professional tennis player if I’m not a professional piano player first.

I hope I’ll be good at something some time. I worry about that a lot. What if I'm not? How am I supposed to figure all that out? Mom tells me not to worry and always says to appreciate being a kid now because when you’re older you’ll wish you could go back.

Um, I DON’T THINK SO MOM.

I can’t wait to grow up. Everything will be better I'm sure of it.

Being a kid totally sucks.

I accept Time absolutely.

What a silly thing time is and what it is to look back on your life and see how much has disappeared. If you’re like me you compare everything to what happened to you on this very day five years ago and think even now, so many days and hours and minutes removed from that one moment in your whole vast life that somehow, it still feels like it happened just yesterday.

I guess that’s what happens when you lose someone you love and you lose them quickly, unexpectedly without warning at a time when you figure you have so much more time with them ahead of you. You go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning to a ringing phone that’s going to usher in news you don’t want to hear but can’t avoid no matter how much you try. And you don’t have time to say goodbye. Such a small word really, but as soon as the chance to say it gets taken away from you it suddenly means so much.

Everything before everything changed feels like another life, like it happened to someone else because now you think, looking back on it, that there was no way something like that could have happened to you, no way it could have happened and you survived.

Because things like that happen to other people. You are separate from them, distanced from the names and faces on the evening news, from the stories you hear friends tell about other people and families to whom tragedy has struck. So you continue on with your life, turn off your television, shut out the light and crawl into bed. You sleep with the comfort of knowing that they are not you, you are not them.

Then, one day, it happens. Time catches up to you. Fate, luck, chance, the outcome of so many decisions and choices made by so many people over so many years that lead you to that one seemingly unavoidable moment when you wish you could go back and change everything. But you can’t. So instead you ask yourself: how did this happen to us? And that question will torture you for years, maybe forever, until you accept and start asking the right question, the one we should all be asking ourselves all the time: why not us?

And time keeps moving forward and so do you, and you realize after not having been able to feel it for a while that your heart’s still beating. People lose people all the time, you’re not alone in that so you figure you ought to learn from it, learn from how fast these things can happen, how fast life happens and how easy it is to take it for granted. Because we do it all the time, something as simple as thinking we know what tomorrow will bring. We expect everything to go as planned - we expect the subway to come, for our local coffee shop to be open, for our jobs to be waiting for us. Above all we expect the people in our lives will be waiting for us, too.

If you’re like me you know better and you think people who don’t are a lot worse off than you because they don’t understand (but at some point eventually, they will) that this is it. Because this isn’t misplacing. No, 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 letter or picture. I just had it, you think to yourself. I just had it.

Your logical will struggle with your non-logical as you try to come to terms with the fact that there is no re-tracing your steps, no hope of ever getting back what you’ve lost. Finality like that is overwhelming and it changes you, it has to, because when you lose certain things for good like a person or a love or a chance of a lifetime you’ve got no choice but to see the world differently along with your place in it.

If you’re like me you’ll sleep fitfully and will wake some mornings even after so much time has passed and still think to yourself – was all of it just a bad dream? And for the briefest of seconds, in the amount of time it takes to blink an eye you’ll remember what it felt like to be truly happy, as the weight of loss lifts off of your chest and frees you to how you were before when you were not them, they were not you, when you were just like anybody else.

So you learn. Yes you learn to take more risks and more chances and to be brave and to not be so afraid, but the most valuable thing you learn are the tricks that Time can play, bewitching, deceiving, there’s-never-quite-enough-of-it Time. You know now for certain something so obvious and yet were only really able to fully understand five years ago —that you can just have a lot of things before they slip right through your fingers.

The question now, I suppose, is how often do you let them? Or have you also learned the very important lesson of knowing when to tighten your grip on what matters while you still can.

To the girl at the corner store.

I know it’s tough, it has to be. Every day it’s the same, the same people asking for coffee, asking for change, asking for your number.

They’ve been coming in for months now with their large coats and boots and pressed suits, knowing that every day it will be the same, that they will walk in and you’ll be here.

I know it won’t be long though, and soon they’ll be coming in with tanned faces from their weekends at the Hamptons or afternoons in the park, all wearing t-shirts and flip flops and they’ll find you…gone.

You feel as though your life is happening somewhere else without you, and that no one here understands. As you watch customers come and go you find yourself wishing you had someone to count on. Count on. Count faces, count names, count dollars, count designer sunglasses and handbags and scarves, count missed chances and glances and lost lives.

You think that in time they’ll remember. Once you’re gone, once you’ve taken the chance to start your life out from behind the counter of this city that moves too fast for you they’ll think— who was that girl? and, I wonder where she went?

But you don’t count on it.

You’re tired of counting. So you smile and say good morning and good afternoon and goodbye. The only thing you know you can count on is the fact that nothing changes. Until it does. Until you make it so.

Because you know that it’s easy to love people in memory, looking back on them in the safe and comfortable light of retrospect. The hard part, you realize now as you begin to tally up the regrets, is to love them when they are there in front of you.