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.
February 24, 2009
February 19, 2009
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.
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.
February 4, 2009
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.
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.
February 2, 2009
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.
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.
January 29, 2009
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.
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.
January 26, 2009
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.”
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.”
January 20, 2009
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.
"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.
January 19, 2009
In Brief.
Everything that drives me crazy about this city can be summed up in four words.
Stand to the right.
Stand to the right.
January 15, 2009
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.
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.
January 14, 2009
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.
Missed my shoes by about one foot.
Yeah, that’s pretty much how I feel about today, too.
January 4, 2009
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.
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.
December 31, 2008
Should auld acquaintence be forgot.
I like to think that I’d have learned by now that no amount of resolutions I make at the start of every year will ever change who I really am. Why do we bother? Why do we keep insisting that there’s so much about ourselves we need to change? I suppose it’s because most of the time we’re all ready for something different, recognizing the things we lack in, the things we need to work on and do better at, that somehow along the way throughout those 364 days of our lives we give up on, or forget, or find new things to be upset about or frustrated with and promise ourselves we’ll fix and never do. I suppose there’s nothing like being able to see the actual passing of time the way you do when the clock strikes twelve at the start of a new year where you can almost see the past year of your life fly out the window and become lost, that makes you want to do something.
I wonder what most of us will be thinking as the countdown begins. All the anticipation, the expectations of where we should be in order to say so long to the past and welcome in the future. Does it matter more where we’re standing or who’s standing beside us? Traffic is blocked off in midtown, people have been outside in huddled masses next to strangers in almost single degree temperatures for hours just to watch a ball drop from the sky.
In this crazy world where things that are important can slip away from us so easily, I wonder why we bother celebrating the end of something as much as we do today over champagne and over-priced dinners and over-hyped spectacles in the middle of 42nd street. I suppose it’s the hope of starting over again or starting fresh with a clean slate that has us all in a frenzy, calling friends across the world with well wishes at midnight while enjoying a drink at an overcrowded and overpriced bar we paid too much to get into.
As the seconds slip down 10...9...8...7...6 I like to think I’ll be feeling OK about how this year has come to pass, fully accepting that while there are great many things I’ll resolve to do, almost none of them will get accomplished. 5...4...3...2...another day, another chance, another night without cabs, without inhibitions, without lost hope, without regret. Happy New Year.
I wonder what most of us will be thinking as the countdown begins. All the anticipation, the expectations of where we should be in order to say so long to the past and welcome in the future. Does it matter more where we’re standing or who’s standing beside us? Traffic is blocked off in midtown, people have been outside in huddled masses next to strangers in almost single degree temperatures for hours just to watch a ball drop from the sky.
In this crazy world where things that are important can slip away from us so easily, I wonder why we bother celebrating the end of something as much as we do today over champagne and over-priced dinners and over-hyped spectacles in the middle of 42nd street. I suppose it’s the hope of starting over again or starting fresh with a clean slate that has us all in a frenzy, calling friends across the world with well wishes at midnight while enjoying a drink at an overcrowded and overpriced bar we paid too much to get into.
As the seconds slip down 10...9...8...7...6 I like to think I’ll be feeling OK about how this year has come to pass, fully accepting that while there are great many things I’ll resolve to do, almost none of them will get accomplished. 5...4...3...2...another day, another chance, another night without cabs, without inhibitions, without lost hope, without regret. Happy New Year.
December 21, 2008
Home for the holidays.
Every family has their Christmas traditions and mine is no different. Growing up my sister and I believed in Santa Claus, we had faith that, despite our sometimes bad attitudes, on the whole we were good kids which meant we should be rewarded with the toys we diligently selected from the Macy’s catalogue.
However what I remember most was every Christmas Eve, my parents, sister and I would sit on the couch in our pajamas after having gone to church, and watch the 1983 performance of the holiday Boston Pops Orchestra that my father taped off of PBS. John Williams was the conductor and led the Pops through the typical holiday favorites, at one point the audience (and us) would join in on a sing-a-long, Lorne Greene would read T’was the Night Before Christmas, and at the end Santa Claus (who my sister and I always insisted was the "real" Santa) would come through the back doors of Symphony Hall, give out candy canes on his way up to the podium, before brandishing Maestro Williams with a miniature E.T. in black tie holding a conductors baton. Every year it was the same, the same performance with audience members whose clothes and hairstyles began to look more and more dated as the years progressed.
As fate would have it, I ended up going to college right down the street from Symphony Hall, and every year my parents would say we would get tickets to the real thing, and every year we didn’t get around to it and said: "we’ll do it next year."
A few years ago, my sister and I feeling too old to be bothered with sitting through yet another performance, muttering things like "this is lame," while texting friends from our cell phones, watched distractedly until my parents gave up and turned it off. The next morning the old 1983 tape was accidently taped over, and the look of loss in my mother’s eyes had been acute. Looking back I know it wasn’t just the pain of losing this old recording that each of us had by that point memorized, rather, she was mourning the loss of our childhoods, of time, of the past parts of our lives that you only recognize you can’t ever get back again until you lose something real.
Of course after I lost my mother and last year being the first Christmas without her, I felt compelled to try to reclaim something my family had lost. I made calls, left countless messages and emails with the main offices of Symphony Hall until finally, just five days before Christmas, a woman in their offices on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston wrote me back. She told me that my story touched the hearts of everyone in their office, that it's the reason they keep doing their holiday concerts, and she would overnight me the tape. So, there we were on Christmas Eve, my Dad, sister and I watching it tearfully in the painful emptiness of the living room that was now showing us the one thing we took for granted the most - time.
The thing is, every year it’s the same and every year we buy presents and spend too much money and lose our minds while losing sight of what really matters. We grow up and grow bitter and let ourselves forget that at the end of the day we’re all packing and traveling and gift-giving because of the people in our lives that we love driven by the hopeful idea that something small, like an old recording of a concert, can bring a family together. We say "as soon as," and "next time," and "next year," when we know we shouldn’t be wasting another minute. We stop believing, in people and the innocence of youth, and become accustomed to coming home to certain things that once are gone leave holes in our hearts no amount of time can repair.
They say you can’t go home again, but we all keep going home every year to a place that constantly changes, a concept that means different things to each of us in different parts of our lives. But it’s important to remember as we go home and start to count down the final days of yet another year, of time continuing to get away from us, the memories of how things used to be, and the realization that in the end not everything has to become lost.
However what I remember most was every Christmas Eve, my parents, sister and I would sit on the couch in our pajamas after having gone to church, and watch the 1983 performance of the holiday Boston Pops Orchestra that my father taped off of PBS. John Williams was the conductor and led the Pops through the typical holiday favorites, at one point the audience (and us) would join in on a sing-a-long, Lorne Greene would read T’was the Night Before Christmas, and at the end Santa Claus (who my sister and I always insisted was the "real" Santa) would come through the back doors of Symphony Hall, give out candy canes on his way up to the podium, before brandishing Maestro Williams with a miniature E.T. in black tie holding a conductors baton. Every year it was the same, the same performance with audience members whose clothes and hairstyles began to look more and more dated as the years progressed.
As fate would have it, I ended up going to college right down the street from Symphony Hall, and every year my parents would say we would get tickets to the real thing, and every year we didn’t get around to it and said: "we’ll do it next year."
A few years ago, my sister and I feeling too old to be bothered with sitting through yet another performance, muttering things like "this is lame," while texting friends from our cell phones, watched distractedly until my parents gave up and turned it off. The next morning the old 1983 tape was accidently taped over, and the look of loss in my mother’s eyes had been acute. Looking back I know it wasn’t just the pain of losing this old recording that each of us had by that point memorized, rather, she was mourning the loss of our childhoods, of time, of the past parts of our lives that you only recognize you can’t ever get back again until you lose something real.
Of course after I lost my mother and last year being the first Christmas without her, I felt compelled to try to reclaim something my family had lost. I made calls, left countless messages and emails with the main offices of Symphony Hall until finally, just five days before Christmas, a woman in their offices on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston wrote me back. She told me that my story touched the hearts of everyone in their office, that it's the reason they keep doing their holiday concerts, and she would overnight me the tape. So, there we were on Christmas Eve, my Dad, sister and I watching it tearfully in the painful emptiness of the living room that was now showing us the one thing we took for granted the most - time.
The thing is, every year it’s the same and every year we buy presents and spend too much money and lose our minds while losing sight of what really matters. We grow up and grow bitter and let ourselves forget that at the end of the day we’re all packing and traveling and gift-giving because of the people in our lives that we love driven by the hopeful idea that something small, like an old recording of a concert, can bring a family together. We say "as soon as," and "next time," and "next year," when we know we shouldn’t be wasting another minute. We stop believing, in people and the innocence of youth, and become accustomed to coming home to certain things that once are gone leave holes in our hearts no amount of time can repair.
They say you can’t go home again, but we all keep going home every year to a place that constantly changes, a concept that means different things to each of us in different parts of our lives. But it’s important to remember as we go home and start to count down the final days of yet another year, of time continuing to get away from us, the memories of how things used to be, and the realization that in the end not everything has to become lost.
December 10, 2008
You can plan all you want to.
You can lie in your bed
and fill whole notebooks
with schemes and intentions.
But,
within a single afternoon,
within hours or minutes,
everything you plan
and everything you have fought to make yourself
can be undone
as a slug is undone
when salt is poured on him.
And right up to the moment
when you find yourself dissolving into foam
you can still believe
you are doing fine.
and fill whole notebooks
with schemes and intentions.
But,
within a single afternoon,
within hours or minutes,
everything you plan
and everything you have fought to make yourself
can be undone
as a slug is undone
when salt is poured on him.
And right up to the moment
when you find yourself dissolving into foam
you can still believe
you are doing fine.
December 7, 2008
21 degrees, and none of us can feel a thing.
"Cold out?" he asked, concerned. Seemed like a rather obvious question to me, what with the tip of my nose bright red and my teeth in the early stages of uncontrollable chattering. "Quite," I said.
I know that in this city we’re constantly surrounded by nameless faces, strangers and unrecognizable shapes in thickly insulated jackets, that on cold nights sometimes all we need to know is that we’re not alone. When the air dips below unable-to-walk-ten-blocks-without-hypothermia, we need reach out to a fellow New Yorker just to make sure that we’re not the only ones who are hurting, not the only ones who can feel the cold that aches like unrequited love on the sidewalks, (if only they could just feel how I feel then they would know how it feels...).
We need to know (tough as we are) that someone else, one of these nameless faces who so intimately share our seats on the subway (legs touching) and stand beside us at crosswalks (shoulders brushing) and in elevators (is that your hand on my...?) every day of our lives, are real too.
"Well I hope you get home ok," he said. See, we’re not as mean here as people think we are. We’re just as lost and scared and confused and lonely and hopeful and concerned and desperate as everyone else is on cold nights where you can’t feel your nose and all you want to do is get home to something or someone (whether you have them or not) whose face doesn’t seem quite so foreign.
Feel that? Yeah, me too.
I know that in this city we’re constantly surrounded by nameless faces, strangers and unrecognizable shapes in thickly insulated jackets, that on cold nights sometimes all we need to know is that we’re not alone. When the air dips below unable-to-walk-ten-blocks-without-hypothermia, we need reach out to a fellow New Yorker just to make sure that we’re not the only ones who are hurting, not the only ones who can feel the cold that aches like unrequited love on the sidewalks, (if only they could just feel how I feel then they would know how it feels...).
We need to know (tough as we are) that someone else, one of these nameless faces who so intimately share our seats on the subway (legs touching) and stand beside us at crosswalks (shoulders brushing) and in elevators (is that your hand on my...?) every day of our lives, are real too.
"Well I hope you get home ok," he said. See, we’re not as mean here as people think we are. We’re just as lost and scared and confused and lonely and hopeful and concerned and desperate as everyone else is on cold nights where you can’t feel your nose and all you want to do is get home to something or someone (whether you have them or not) whose face doesn’t seem quite so foreign.
Feel that? Yeah, me too.
December 1, 2008
December.
It was 55 degrees in Manhattan today and it doesn't feel like Christmas is only 24 days away. The tree sellers are already out on the sidewalks making long lines of green against the grey pavement, and it's nice to inhale deep the scent of pine you walk by. What is it about the smell of pine trees that makes me feel like a kid again? This will be my third Christmas in New York and the first year I won't have a tree. What is it about the lost memories of the past that pulls the holiday spirit of youth away from you? Perhaps it’s inevitable that after all this time the sound of Burl Ives humming from overhead speakers in the grocery store only ends up making me feel depressed.
The Rockefeller Center tree lighting is Wednesday. My first year here I tried to go see it, but like most things in this city the tourists ruined it, packing into the place well before 3PM making it impossible for locals to swing by six hours later – the time of the actual turning of the switch (I only live 20 blocks away!). Inevitably once 48th to 51st streets get lit, the rest of the city goes up in holiday flames as well, and there's no escaping it (and it doesn't help that my friend just got a job working weekends at this place of which I have strict instructions to visit on Saturdays anytime from 12-6).
It's only a matter of time before chestnuts roasting on a open fire will be painfully ingrained on my brain despite the fact that I’ve never actually roasted chestnuts before, on a fire or otherwise. And don't even get me started on The 12 Days of Christmas, the song nobody knows the lyrics to but insists on singing loudly regardless, coming in from other rooms just to shout fiiiiive goooold riiiiings (yeah, that's the only part I know too). The Salvation Army bell will now be ringing on every street corner, making me feel guiltier than ever with every cling-clang cling-clang about not wanting to give up what little Starbucks money I have left after rent. More people than ever will be crowding onto the subway with big shopping bags all getting in my way and reminding me that gifts and bags and boxes with bows aren’t nearly as important as people make them out to be. I'll send out Christmas cards to friends, needing to ask again for the new addresses of those who have sadly left Manhattan since last year, causing me to question why I'm still here...
And then it will snow. Sure, maybe sometimes all anybody needs to feel better about the approaching holiday and the amount of money they're going to have to spend on the people in their lives just to prove they care about them in this financial crisis, is a nice soft blanket of white – but I have a feeling that just won't work for me this year. Because once the snow lands in Manhattan it turns dirty fast, creating brown mountains on the sidewalks alongside the mountains of trash bags that pile up after the blizzard stops the garbage trucks from getting through. Quelle disaster.
No, it's 55 degrees in Manhattan today and the last thing in the world I want to think about is the approaching holiday and the ending of a year I can't help but feel I wasted. Maybe a miracle of George Bailey proportions will happen between now and the end of the month to change the way I feel - but I'm afraid I’m about as confident in that as I am in knowing what comes after a partridge in a pear tree.
The Rockefeller Center tree lighting is Wednesday. My first year here I tried to go see it, but like most things in this city the tourists ruined it, packing into the place well before 3PM making it impossible for locals to swing by six hours later – the time of the actual turning of the switch (I only live 20 blocks away!). Inevitably once 48th to 51st streets get lit, the rest of the city goes up in holiday flames as well, and there's no escaping it (and it doesn't help that my friend just got a job working weekends at this place of which I have strict instructions to visit on Saturdays anytime from 12-6).
It's only a matter of time before chestnuts roasting on a open fire will be painfully ingrained on my brain despite the fact that I’ve never actually roasted chestnuts before, on a fire or otherwise. And don't even get me started on The 12 Days of Christmas, the song nobody knows the lyrics to but insists on singing loudly regardless, coming in from other rooms just to shout fiiiiive goooold riiiiings (yeah, that's the only part I know too). The Salvation Army bell will now be ringing on every street corner, making me feel guiltier than ever with every cling-clang cling-clang about not wanting to give up what little Starbucks money I have left after rent. More people than ever will be crowding onto the subway with big shopping bags all getting in my way and reminding me that gifts and bags and boxes with bows aren’t nearly as important as people make them out to be. I'll send out Christmas cards to friends, needing to ask again for the new addresses of those who have sadly left Manhattan since last year, causing me to question why I'm still here...
And then it will snow. Sure, maybe sometimes all anybody needs to feel better about the approaching holiday and the amount of money they're going to have to spend on the people in their lives just to prove they care about them in this financial crisis, is a nice soft blanket of white – but I have a feeling that just won't work for me this year. Because once the snow lands in Manhattan it turns dirty fast, creating brown mountains on the sidewalks alongside the mountains of trash bags that pile up after the blizzard stops the garbage trucks from getting through. Quelle disaster.
No, it's 55 degrees in Manhattan today and the last thing in the world I want to think about is the approaching holiday and the ending of a year I can't help but feel I wasted. Maybe a miracle of George Bailey proportions will happen between now and the end of the month to change the way I feel - but I'm afraid I’m about as confident in that as I am in knowing what comes after a partridge in a pear tree.
November 26, 2008
tradition.
Wouldn’t it be nice if some things never changed? Thanksgiving is all about traditions, those things that stay with us and mark who we are and what our lives have been like and what keeps bringing us home year after year from all over the world just to sit at a table and do the same thing again and again.
So it’s easy to take for granted how much it means to have some things that never change. Because there’s nothing like sitting around a table among family at Thanksgiving to really see what’s missing. There’s nothing like an empty chair to make you really understand how important those lost years where everything stayed the same really were.
I figure now it’s important to remember as you sit down to an astoundingly large turkey in the middle of your table while getting frustrated with questions from relatives about the overall direction of your future, (questions of money, stability, growth) with that Grandmother (who at one time seemed so sweet), pestering you about when, when for crying out loud, will you just bring home a nice boy for all of us to meet - to be thankful for what you have when you have it. Because there’s only one reason that we book train tickets and sit in gridlock traffic and wait in terminals and board delayed planes - and it never quite means as much as it did before everything begins to change, and you aere forced to start to make new traditions of your own.
So it’s easy to take for granted how much it means to have some things that never change. Because there’s nothing like sitting around a table among family at Thanksgiving to really see what’s missing. There’s nothing like an empty chair to make you really understand how important those lost years where everything stayed the same really were.
I figure now it’s important to remember as you sit down to an astoundingly large turkey in the middle of your table while getting frustrated with questions from relatives about the overall direction of your future, (questions of money, stability, growth) with that Grandmother (who at one time seemed so sweet), pestering you about when, when for crying out loud, will you just bring home a nice boy for all of us to meet - to be thankful for what you have when you have it. Because there’s only one reason that we book train tickets and sit in gridlock traffic and wait in terminals and board delayed planes - and it never quite means as much as it did before everything begins to change, and you aere forced to start to make new traditions of your own.
November 24, 2008
In good times, and in bad.
I was just in the Midwest for a few days where things are slower and people are nicer and lives are lived a little differently than I'm used to. My friend got married, and as Maid of Honor I honored her amazing good luck at having been able to find a perfect match in this less than perfect world for that as-long-as-you-both-shall-live portion of her life.
In the Midwest and at the wedding however, I was a foreigner. At the reception when I told someone I had flown in from Manhattan they said, "Oh, you're one of those," and wrinkled their nose as though they could smell the wide array of unrecognizable scents that hit you on the corner of 42nd street. Yes, I'm one of those, whatever that means. (Funny isn't it, how we can sometimes react to outsiders?) He was so adamant in his judgment that I was tempted to tell him that if he were to come to Manhattan, some of us just might upturn our noses (tourists, le sigh) and suddenly he would become one of those as well.
Maybe we should be more understanding of Geography and recognize that no matter where you're from, in the end, it's all about what you choose to go home to. After being trapped in the airport for five hours last night waiting to get back to New York, I couldn't help but think that maybe marriage and Manhattan aren't so different. Home can just as easily be a person as it can a city or town or house on a street.
When we finally landed (well past midnight) and I had to take an overpriced cab back to my overpriced apartment, I realized how much your life changes after the "Do you take this person?" question presents itself. In New York our vows when standing at the alter of Signing The Lease include (but are not limited to): letting people off the subway first, avoiding Times Square at all costs, standing to the right, capitalizing on anything free, never exceeding our income, promising to leave the moment we let ourselves forget how truly amazing this city really is (because then, what’s the point?).
You can only hate on what you don't know for so long until you realize that we're all after the same thing – something we just can't wait to get back to, and for some of us it just might be a place on a map.
Of course the only thing about New York is that there's certainly no honeymoon period (in this place, everything comes at a cost). But I figure I'm okay with simply leaving that to them.
In the Midwest and at the wedding however, I was a foreigner. At the reception when I told someone I had flown in from Manhattan they said, "Oh, you're one of those," and wrinkled their nose as though they could smell the wide array of unrecognizable scents that hit you on the corner of 42nd street. Yes, I'm one of those, whatever that means. (Funny isn't it, how we can sometimes react to outsiders?) He was so adamant in his judgment that I was tempted to tell him that if he were to come to Manhattan, some of us just might upturn our noses (tourists, le sigh) and suddenly he would become one of those as well.
Maybe we should be more understanding of Geography and recognize that no matter where you're from, in the end, it's all about what you choose to go home to. After being trapped in the airport for five hours last night waiting to get back to New York, I couldn't help but think that maybe marriage and Manhattan aren't so different. Home can just as easily be a person as it can a city or town or house on a street.
When we finally landed (well past midnight) and I had to take an overpriced cab back to my overpriced apartment, I realized how much your life changes after the "Do you take this person?" question presents itself. In New York our vows when standing at the alter of Signing The Lease include (but are not limited to): letting people off the subway first, avoiding Times Square at all costs, standing to the right, capitalizing on anything free, never exceeding our income, promising to leave the moment we let ourselves forget how truly amazing this city really is (because then, what’s the point?).
You can only hate on what you don't know for so long until you realize that we're all after the same thing – something we just can't wait to get back to, and for some of us it just might be a place on a map.
Of course the only thing about New York is that there's certainly no honeymoon period (in this place, everything comes at a cost). But I figure I'm okay with simply leaving that to them.
November 17, 2008
Numb.
It’s cold here in New York and walking down the streets its easy to think a lot more about the bad things in your life when you can’t feel your nose and toes. We know it comes, every year it’s the same and yet it still catches us off guard. Hands digging deep into pockets, collars up-turned we curse it under our cloudy breaths, try to accept all we’ve lost (those long hot days, light ‘til 8PM, shorts and t-shirts) and how much longer we’re going to have to go without (December, January, February...).
Time seems endless when you can’t feel a thing.
Time seems endless when you can’t feel a thing.
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