love in the lift.

What’s so great about New York —
is that all the strangers you see everyday,
don’t nearly make your heart beat as fast
(and who can even recall all of those lost subway moments now??)
as when you get a few seconds alone
in the elevator of your building
with the guy on the 18th floor.

scissor sister.

Sitting on the crosstown bus on my way home I was tired. The days are long now that the weather has turned cold making the trip back from the west side to the east side happen in the dark. I was hardly concentrating on this week New York Magazine (The Manic Depressive Economy) when I stared to hear the woman behind me talking into her cell phone.

Hello? Yes can you connect me with the Aveda Salon on 72nd and Columbus? Thanks, I’ll hold.

It caught my attention because at that exact moment I noticed that the bus we were on was just passing the Aveda Salon on 72nd and Columbus.

Hi, yes, is this the main number at the salon, because I know you have other numbers but I just wanted to make...oh, it is? Thanks, well I just wanted to call because I just had my hair cut with Celia and she cut it too short, but I just wanted to make sure she knows it’s OK. I mean it’s just way too short, but I mean it’s not a big deal, I don’t want to make her feel bad or anything. It’s just hair, it’ll grow back. So that’s it, I just wanted to call and say it’s not a big deal. Ok. Yes. Thanks.

The woman’s voice was very soft and she sounded like a ten year old apologizing to their mom for having spoiled their appetite for dinner by having too many candy bars. Most all people in small and cramped spaces in New York like to talk on their cell phones blatantly and loudly. We are, it seems, a city full of those who don’t notice or care about anyone around them other than themselves. Yet, as my luck would have it, this one woman’s story which was so intriguing (any good writer will tell you that overhearing great conversations is the best practice) had the decency to talk in a low and quiet voice.

I was struggling to hear, back flush against the seat, using all available willpower to not turn around to catch a glimpse of said disastrous hair cut (too short!) and tell her really, it’s not so bad (we've all been there).

The woman proceeded to call her friend to tell her the events of the day.

Did you get my message? Oh dear it’s awful. It’s just too short and I just called to tell her it’s OK because I felt bad I got so upset in front of her. I said that it’s just hair and that it will grow back...but God Meredith....too short. She took too much off the sides and I was sitting there.....couldn’t tell....I felt bad....how am I ever going to...

It was more difficult to hear everything as we passed more traffic on Central Park West, but I was piecing it all together. She had a big date. Her friend Meredith was being supportive. What good is it to make a big deal out of nothing? Men don’t usually like her anyway. But of all the salons in the city this had never happened to her before. Why does everything have to be so hard? New York isn’t all she thought it was going to be.

All I do is take the bus from one end to the other. I get up in the morning and take the bus from the east side to the west side. After work I take it from the west to the east, crossing through the park is my only real adventure.

When we reached 1st avenue she was still sitting there as I got up. Looking (how could I not?!) at her I could tell that it was short, a chocolate brown mop cut close to the sides of her face and head. She was pale with chubby red cheeks but the only bad thing about her hair was that it made her lonely and sad eyes more distinct.

It’s not bad at all. I told her. Really, you look lovely.

I left before she could say anything, the phone still paused at the side of her face, Meredith still talking on the other end. But as I walked by her I swear I saw a bit of a smile.

Sometimes all you need in this frustrating and lonely city and this frustrating and lonely life, is a little bit of hope.

People don’t change, so it’s a good thing seasons do.

I don’t know why it always amazes me that one day we’re all out on the sidewalks complaining of the heat, sweating on the subways struggling for some amount of leftover non-smelly space as every person feels closer than usual, more suffocating, more crowded...

...and suddenly there we are, all huddled on street corners waiting for the bus with hands digging deep into pockets of coats we forgot we had.

In the red.

There comes a point in every Manhattan girl’s life when the process of checking ones bank account becomes an altogether horrifying task, inducing gasps, nausea and overall denial. I am not a big spender and never have been, which is a good thing because one can’t afford to be in this city. I have clothes from high school (the classics never go out of style) and eat modestly (it’s amazing how long a jar of peanut butter can last you) and have never cared much in the way of designer handbags or fancy jewelry (how much for that silver bracelet?!?!).

But after nearly three years of living in a city that refuses to pay me what I’m owed and charges me way too much to live in what most places would refer to as a walk-in closet, it was inevitable that I would, one day, look at that dreaded bank account, despite all my efforts to be frugal, and see staring back at me not just any number, but a number in red. With a negative sign in front of it. (The horror!).

It’s a scary feeling realizing that while you are (in most regards) a grown woman capable of holding down a high stress job in a higher stress city, that you can’t always live within your already meager means.

Yes, New York is the greatest place in the world. No, I don’t have any plans to ever leave it. But there comes a point when you can’t help but ask yourself what it means to be in this financially freaked out fragment of time, and recognize that everything you’re working for, everything you have worked for, for forty-five plus hours a week for the past three years of your life, has at the end of the day, not really amounted to much of anything at all.

Oh, and donations are welcome.

“For best results, squeeze tube from the bottom and flatten as you go up.”

Why is it my best and most ridiculous thoughts upon me when I’m brushing my teeth (vertical strokes, not horizontal) and absently looking back at myself in the mirror?

Tonight was: Relationships are like toothpaste.

Ever notice that when you start off with a new tube you use significantly more than you need to? You’re liberal about it because it’s new and you figure you have a whole tube left that conceivably won’t run out of steam for a good long while (there’s comfort isn’t there, in thinking you have a lot of time left on something?).

But as the days pass you find yourself cutting back, rationing, scared at the thought that it will run out and you’ll be forced to make the effort to go out and get a new one (they’re all the same in the end anyway). The tube gets flatter regardless, causing you to sometimes skimp on your morning brush knowing that you’ll be having coffee in another hour anyway, so what difference will it make?

And then you find yourself in the final days, pushing your index finger along the thin glossy surface from the bottom up, pressing from the T-S-E-R-C all the way to the top, trying to capitalize on every last drop because you have reached what at the beginning you know would inevitably come - the end.

Followed by: I think I might have a cavity.

Dining Briefs.

We were sitting at the bar of the hot new spot in alphabet city (so hot and new in fact, that the New York Times was sitting next to us snapping pictures of their signature cocktail for this story) drinking too many Poquito Picante’s talking about how life in New York isn’t worthwhile if you don’t take advantages of all the city has to offer and that it's true: Life. Happens. Here.

We became friendly with the bartender, Douglas, who went on to make us drinks we didn’t order that tasted unlike anything we’d ever had before. Drunk, and alone at the bar when my companion went to the bathroom, I watched as Douglas leaned in and asked me: is that guy your boyfriend?

"That guy has a boyfriend of his own," I said.

Why is it the ones who always ask never do anything about it, and the ones I’m with are already taken?

Safely walk to school without a sound.

Something about fall makes me want to buy binders and organize all of the messy parts of my life into folders marked things like "finances," and "goals" and "relationships." I’d like to 3-hole punch those documented pages detailing the specifics that might help me going forward to make sense of everything. I’d write notes in the margins in colored pencil, supply a grading system to keep on top of things: finances: C- (needs work), goals: B- (try harder), relationships: F (utterly hopeless).

I’d like to put all of the people I know into designated slots in the front of my backpack and carry them around with me so I’d always know where they were, letting me pull them out at the exact moment I need them. I’d like more gold-star days, I’d like more time for recess. I’d like to go back to the time when going to gym meant so much more than running for an hour on a machine that doesn’t take you anywhere at all, except further down the path of never-satisfied self-hatred.

I want those big pink erasures to rub away all of my past mistakes, leaving nothing behind but little darkened crumbles that I can simply brush away with a flick of my wrist. I’d like to not have to worry about time and finding dates and someone to love me for who I am. I’d like to not feel the pressure to think about settling down and getting married and having a house with a garage with tools in it (wasn’t it nice when just holding someone’s hand was enough? There was something exhilarating about the courage it took to just reach out and take hold of that one person’s hand you brushed your hair for, the one person you always looked for in the crowd, the one person you always hoped you’d get to sit next to in class).

Fall makes me want to go back to when everything was so much easier, and a failing grade didn’t necessarily mean that you were failing at your life. But it will pass soon enough, this urge for me to buy #2 pencils and make sense of everything that ultimately doesn't make any sense at all. With the coming of the winter weather I’ll just look for whatever extra credit I can find to get me through to next year, and hope that by then I'll have been able to bring up my grades.

You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em.

You don’t have to go to Vegas for four days like I did in order to know that it’s easy take too many risks and place bets on your happiness. You also don’t have to go to Vegas for four days to realize that it is, in fact, the most depressing place in America.

Without much to gamble (what with rent already late) I was a bystander, an observer to the endless hope and silent desperation in those large smoke-filled rooms of flashing lights, without windows or clocks, (causing you to question not only what time of day it is, but who you are).

I can understand of course, that we like the challenge, that we always think we have more chances to win back what we’ve lost - all we need is just a little...more...time. It’s amazing isn’t it, how fast the things that you work so hard for can disappear so suddenly (money, dreams, love...) before you even have the opportunity to realize you were losing them? Most of the time it seems we try so hard to follow the rules that keep us away from the things that we want because we forget that we don’t get as many chances as we’d like to make of our lives all that we want it to be.

Admittedly I’m not much of a gambler, always preferring to play it safe in the face of rejection, of loss, of regret. But back in the real world where clocks exist to remind me of how much time I’m losing, I figure it’s never too late to take a risk on the things that matter. Time isn’t unlimited (just like money) and the hands of the clock are always there to pick you up behind your back and throw you out into a place where the days continue to pass you by.

You don’t have to go to Vegas for four days like I did to know that sometimes nothing ever changes unless you take the opportunity to place a quarter in the slot machine of your life, and pull the lever —just remember to keep in mind that it's always important to try and quit when you’re ahead.

Maybe kids aren't so bad after all.

Standing on the downtown 1 train minding my own business and late to work (I have officially given up on caring about being on time) I was enjoying perusing at the latest fashion magazine of things I can never, in all intents and purposes afford short of selling everything I already own, (lace is in this season, leather is out. Plaid is in, flower print is out…) when I spotted next to me the little girl in a stroller. Her and her mothers entry into the subway car had been time consuming, as these New York City strollers are roughly the size of my apartment and have enough food and water storage space to keep both mother and child fully sustained in the off chance they get stranded underground for the next ten to twelve months.

She was about four with thick goggle glasses, far too many purple plastic barrettes in her pig-tailed hair, striped pink and green stockings with a plaid (so in!) skirt and yellow shoes. She was a fashion disaster and part of me thought seriously about handing my magazine over to her mother for some sort of assistance.

The girl sat quietly and counted down the stops, holding a half-eaten muffin in her lap that was the size of her head. She was picking at it, stuffing the crumbs into her mouth with her little fingers as she talked:

"What stop is this?" and
"Why aren't we getting off now?" and
"What stop is this?"

Her mother said things like:
"This isn't our stop dear," and
"This still isn't our stop dear," and
"Just two more stops dear."

I caught the handsome gentleman in front of us turning back to take a glimpse at where these pestering questions were coming from, and his reaction seemed to have found the little girl to be much more endearing than I did. He smiled at the girl and then at me in a sort of aw-isn't-she-cute sort of way, all while I had a quizzical look of, what has happened to this city? I thought we were all supposed to be mean and annoyed and frustrated at signs of those who don't belong and get in our way and disrupt the silence of our early morning commutes.

Just then the little girl, mouth full of blueberry muffin, sneezed. And, knowing what I know about kids, she didn't bother covering her mouth. Sitting where she was at knee-level to the rest of us, I watched as large saliva covered chunks found themselves on the back legs of the handsome gentleman's pinstriped pants.

He turned around again, and not being in viewing distance to his backside, smiled just in time for the mother to wheel the little girl off the train at "now this one is our stop, dear."

This time, I couldn't help but smile too.

Mr. Biology.

It feels like it's been a really long time since I've posted. I suppose it feels that way because it has. September is here and summer is on its way out and I don't even recall having the chance to say goodbye.

The thing I've come to find is that as a writer you always want to write, but what stops you at times from showing it to others is the fear that it is in fact, at the end of the day, total and complete crap. That very real possibility compounded by living and working in a place that does nothing less than give me a hard time at every street corner, I’ve been halted from torturing my readers with nonsense posts for nearly a month.

And really, after writing for almost three years about this city I've run out of steam – I work too much, I'm tired, drained, poor, and the little things about this thriving metropolis that used to feel so unique, so post-worthy, are now just the annoying and all-too-regular aspects of my everyday life that I'm starting to hate: Has someone shit on subway again? People still haven't learned how to navigate a sidewalk? The only good men in this city are engaged or on social security?

But a writer's work is never done (and you see here after all this time I'm finally referring to myself as a writer. Another thing I've come to find about this city is that everyone wants to proclaim to the world what they are before they even make the effort of actually becoming it, and I'm tired of sitting around waiting while everyone else takes undue recognition. And anyway, just throw a stick in this city and you’ll hit a writer).

I read a quote somewhere by writer Richard Price that made me nod my head in agreement was I got to the end of it. "The only thing I can compare it to is if you're a woman of a certain age and you haven't had a kid yet, and Mr. Biology is tapping you on the shoulder and you're in a panic. You don't want to raise the kid by yourself, but you wanna be married . . . so you rush it, and you wind up in this horrific divorce with a kid . . . I've written - started books - that I never should have started . . . but I was too freaked out about not writing to stop."

I figure I’ve been married and divorced at least five times by now - but like any naive New Yorker who wants to make something of themselves, I’ll keep at it until I find true love.

Gabardine Sleeve of Hope.

Relationships in New York aren’t in any way necessary. If you ask me (and I guess you didn’t) spending all that time trying to make sure someone else is happy in this city is just a big waste of time. New York is a place where you can really only be bothered with having to look after yourself (and who can afford dates anyway?). I’m lousy at talking on the phone and I hate holding hands and don't understand the pressure to rehash all of the trivial details of my day to someone who will inevitably leave me for someone prettier, more clever and less argumentative in the long run anyway.

That being said, I'll be the first to admit that this city can be a hell of a lonely place when it wants to be, and like most New Yorkers I'm always looking for something better than what I already have - which in this case, happens to be nothing at all.

So when I was standing in the rush hour train at 8:50AM holding on for balance with one hand and propping a 250 page book against my stomach with the other, (overwhelming scents of perfume, shampoo, body odor and aftershave taking up half my concentration) a navy blue blazer arm pushed past my ear and grabbed hold of the bar by the side of my face and suddenly I started to wonder. There it was, awkwardly one inch from my cheek with seemingly no body attached, and as I stood there trying read and picture at the same time what the rest of him looked like, I caught the lingering scent of cigar smoke and coffee and for a moment (this city is full of dreamers) wondered if this could be someone great.

Of course we all know that forced moments on the subway never go anywhere (do they?) but it’s always nice to see that they exist, that there are some men who carry with them the possibility of hearing the mundane details of what I had for breakfast (this city is full of hope).

I can’t say that I’m asking for much, but is it really so much for you to find a tie that matches your shirt? Is it necessary for the first contact I have with your eyes for me to see your own glaring everywhere other than my face? Does the first time you talk to me have to be you drunk on cheap beer at a bar uttering monosyllabic things like "Sup?" Is it really too much to ask that you have read a newspaper or book recently? To call when you say you will? Is it possible for you to not have "Tommy" tattooed on your upper right arm causing me to wonder if you put it there in the off chance that at any given moment you might in fact, actually forget what your name really is?

No, I’m not asking for much. Actually at times it appears as though I’m not asking for anything at all - which is why there’s nothing like a foreign navy blue sleeve in your face at 8:50AM to jolt you out of the reality that is your life and into that always exciting realm of possibility that is nowhere greater in the world than it is on a Manhattan subway. Could this be the sleeve I’ve been waiting for?

One small glance up from my book as the doors opened at 42nd street I could see the navy blue sleeve was in fact attached to a man about twice my age, with a protruding gut, yellowing teeth, and a striped tie just didn’t work.

Damn.

I will tell you what I know to be true.

I know that life is short and that the moment I start to recognize the sad but blatantly real truth about time and how fast it passes (August already?!) the sooner I’ll start living my life the way it’s meant to be lived.

I know that there’s no real point in getting up every day and trekking to work (cross-town bus, downtown 2/3 to 14th street, 1 local to Houston...) in order to do a job to pay the rent for an apartment I can’t afford in a city that often turns its back on me, only to come home and go to the gym and sweat and struggle (all mice on our wheels) trying to become a better version of myself - but I do it anyway because that’s just who I am and there’s nothing like hope to get you out of bed in the morning.

I know that people I care about always end up leaving for one reason or another (sometimes it’s forever), and no matter how much I want to, (boy I hate change) I can’t stop them.

I know that there’s nothing like leaving New York for seven long days, traveling to six different cities in order to make me appreciate what I have right outside my doorstep on a daily basis. What a shockingly strange reminder that in other places across the country restaurants close at 10 (what?) cabs cost exponentially more to get you from one place to the next (being that everything is so far apart) and the chance to meet someone new and interesting on the way to get your morning coffee is nowhere else as palpable as it is in Manhattan.

I know that when I heard the bus driver on the M72 this afternoon on my way home from work (a job I have in order to pay for the apartment I can’t afford...) talking to a friend of his who was perched on the seat by the door about the woman in his life who he let get away ("she doesn’t know how much this is hurting me, how much this is tearing me up inside") - I realized that there’s no point in love unless you can be honest about it, and that there’s no point in life if you’re not.

I know that I don’t know half as much as I should about things in general at this stage in my life, (how is it possible that I’m still making so many mistakes?) but there’s no fun in knowing it all (who ever wanted to be a know-it-all anyway?). I’m a knows-enough-for-now, and I figure that’s good enough to at least get me through tomorrow.

People tell me things.

I didn’t do anything this weekend,
and by Sunday night I was more tired than ever before.

Don’t know about you, but I really can’t afford to leave my apartment this weekend.

Last week he told me he couldn’t talk to me anymore
because his girlfriend was getting mad and wouldn’t allow it.
Yesterday they broke up and he sent me an email.

I got bit on the lip by a spider while I slept last night.
It scurried out from under a pillow while I was making the bed today.
Killed it.

I’ll definitely have kids in the next five years.

I have been on the crosstown bus at 23rd street for 15 minutes,
and have gone only two blocks because someone in a wheelchair wanted to go one block.
You are already on wheels. Go.

Since it’s raining does that mean I don’t have to go to Brooklyn?
Please!

Tell me about it. I know. Falling in love in New York
is like hitting the lottery. You have to be in the right place
at the right time, and most of us have horrible luck.

Vertical New York is making it hard to see.

I don’t know when things changed and everyone started to lose sight of themselves in the haze of other people’s lives. All the time is the constant humming of other people’s lives in our ears, sometimes loud, sometimes drowned out by our own questions that have been testing us.

Because we deep-down-know, (don’t we?) that we’re just another face on just another subway, holding just another railing, hand over hand, the railing that helps us up and helps us along, helps us out of the haze. Lost, (aren’t we?) even after so much happens, that at times we can’t help but look back and wonder how we ever made it through, how we’re still here, right now putting foot in front of foot, walking forward, walking home. But we can’t really forget, (can we?) who we really are in the midst of all the confusion.

Being in New York it’s easy to feel like you’re not measuring up, like you’re not as good as the next person, not as pretty, not as successful, not as important, not as smart, (and) without the: better bag, better career, better apartment, better boyfriend, better reservation at the better
restaurant...how are we, in a city full of so many people who know exactly what they want, supposed to fit in and find a place of our own?

Seems like things pass so fast here that if you spend too much time thinking about what you really want you’re going to miss out on it to the one’s that already do, (and they do, don’t they?)They know and you don’t know why, or how, or what led them into the arms of such extreme clarity that they’re able to go through each day with it all seemingly figured out.

Wish we had our own personal copy of TONY delivered secretly to our apartment door every week that would tell us exactly where to go to get everything we want: Time Out New York would suddenly become Time Out [insert your name here].

Maybe that’s the thing about this city that makes you start to lose sight of yourself in the haze of other people’s lives, makes you want to skip town altogether and find a place that isn’t so threatening to your dreams - too many people all wanting the same things always means that someone is destined to end up blind and empty-handed.

I don't feel like I ask for much.

In fact, I think I'm someone who has gotten pretty accustomed to being disappointed when it comes to most of the things in my life mainly due to my altogether too high expectations. This character trait if you will, prompts most of my friends to call me things like "bitter" and "pessimistic," forcing me reply that I'm simply quoting the reality of things, (and trust me, I don't enjoy having to do it). The thing is that in the end I can't help but feel that most of the time there's really no escaping things not turning out the way you want them to.

So, on this dark and rainy Monday, getting up in a lazy weekend-induced stupor, paralyzed at the idea of having to go back into the office, I was struggling to keep focused by the time the clock struck 3:24 PM. 3:24?! The worst thing that can possibly happen to a person on a dark and rainy Monday is when you go to look at the clock feeling more than 100% sure that it's at least a quarter past five, and finding that it's merely 3:24.

Actually, the worst thing that can possibly happen to a person (me) on a dark and rainy Monday is that when the clock strikes 3:24 and you think it's a quarter past five and you go to your local distributor for your much needed fix and come to find when you order that grande Pike Place (all while knowing you can't really afford it but can actually taste it standing in line and listening to Sinanta croon Don't Get Around Much Anymore) - they are out. (the horror!)

Starbucks, I'm really trying here to turn over a new leaf of understanding, patience and overall optimisim - but it's really too much to ask of me to not be bitterly infurated when you, the largest coffee chain in the country, are actually in fact out of the very thing that you proclaim to sell, at the exact moment I need it most.

"Do ya want...decaf?" the barista behind the counter asked with mild trepidation. Decaf? I was about to look behind me for the candid cameras when I closed my eyes, counted to three, took a deep breath (all while thinking of those friends, you readers out there, who keep telling me to try to be more patient, to calm down) and told him no thanks.

"Well...what do you want instead?" Instead. That word. Really the worst word in the English language. Instead. What I wanted to tell him (yell if there hadn't been so many people behind me in line) was that what I wanted was the chance, in this most patience-testing city in the world, (what with people stopping at the top of staircases, infront of subway doors, right infront of you on the street to take a picture or answer a phone or write a blackberry message, all impeding your life from happening at the exact pace and flow that you want it to. What with seemingly every person around you all competing with you for a better job, better seat on the bus, better apartment, better friend or better lover) - was to for once, have someone to be able to give me the exact thing they're supposedly offering, the exact thing I deserve really, without my having to settle for something...less.

Instead.

I am bitter and pessimistic for a reason.

"I guess I'll have a latte," I said. "Not decaf."

How pressed for time are you really when you feel compelled to clip your fingernails on the subway?

Of course the real question here is about luck, bad luck mainly and the law of probability and how after a long day back at the office that nice gentleman had to sit down next to me (how lucky I thought I was to score a seat during rush hour!) and after taking a deep breath he pulled out the clippers and started snap snap snapping away.

Little bits were flying everywhere, and as we all looked on in disbelief I sat for a while contemplating my options:

sore feet (new shoes I can’t afford) and a seat where I can comfortably read my book
or
stand safely outside the nail-fly-zone.

Where else is one forced to make such decisions on their journey home?

It didn’t take me long. I was up and away just before he started to remove his shoes.

If you live in New York City...

...it’s only a matter of time before you find yourself
on your hands and knees
wearing yellow plastic dish gloves
scrubbing ever corner of your apartment at 11 o’clock at night
half drunk on a bottle of wine
blasting The Rolling Stones
and cursing under your breath
because you saw a cockroach scurry across your floor earlier in the morning.

You can’t always get what you want, indeed.

when it rains, it pours.

Its been raining in New York for days now and the streets look the way they do in all the movies with the lights reflecting and the people running with umbrellas over head, and newspapers and coats. The tourists curse it. He/she/they say it’s bad luck, bad timing, bad news. Rain in June? they ask. And their maps get wet and they’re slowed by the rain and so are the cars and the busses and my commute home.

All tourists do when they come here is spend too much money on stupid souvenirs, all that crap from junk-filled stores to try make the memory more real. I take home matchbooks and napkins I’ve written notes on and mental pictures of faces and distinct sounds of laughter, and figure I have legitimate mental souvenirs of every place I’ve ever been.

And you can find yourself sheltered from the storm in a little coffee shop and realize that you don’t need a map to get you to the places in life that you need to see. And you don’t need to spend money on anything more than a café latte to strike up a conversation with a normal person with a normal life to realize that New York in the rain is just as good as New York when it’s not.

Because you can never have too many chances.

One of these days I'm going to finish something (and I don't mean drinks or boring phone calls or bad movies). I mean one of these days I'm going to follow through with all the things I think about doing and talk about doing and feel in the pit of my stomach that I should.

But I keeping losing time. It flies, doesn't it? Like flies that float and land on burning lamp bulbs and disintegrate or get squashed and disappear.

For too long I have thought I have an infinite amount. And that's so easy, isn't it? With clocks everywhere counting down your every moment, quantifying and qualifying every part of your day, your everyday that never seems to change. And there will always be more vodka sodas and boring phone calls and bad movies - but not chances. You can never have too many chances.

Because one night you can go to sleep and wake up in the morning and find that time has caught up with you. And clocks stop and you don't want them to (you never do), then there you are in the middle of a sea of crowded minutes, hours, days, all struggling against the drowning chances that you know you've missed, swimming in the regret, suffocating in the always too-late realization that it’s a silly time to learn to swim when you start to drown.

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 with their large coats and pressed suits knowing that every day it will be the same, that they will come in, and you’ll be here. I know it won’t be long, and soon they’ll be coming in with their flip flops and tanned faces from their weekends at the Hamptons and they’ll find you’re gone.

You feel your life is on the other side of the world, that no one here understands you, and you wish you had someone to count on. Count on. Count faces, count names, count Burberry scarves and Dior sunglasses, 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 somewhere else, out from behind the counter of this city that moves too fast for you.But you don’t count on it. You’re tired of counting, so you smile and say good morning and good afternoon and good bye.

Because you know it is easy to love people in memory, the hard trick, is to love them when they are there, in front of you.