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.
December 31, 2008
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.
November 9, 2008
Pushing my love over the borderline.
It's really nice that I have so many friends who insist on falling in love. I always thought that finding the love of your life was no small feat, a process of pure luck and determination combined with being able to pull off that I-don't-care-when-I-really-care thing which can take years (if ever, if we’re being honest with ourselves) to achieve. And even after all that, it can sometimes leave you feeling a little: this is it?
However thanks to online dating sites and the genuine hard to resist gentlemen from the Midwest, I have close friends who are getting married, committing to the rest of their lives, mapping out their futures in houses with garages with tools in them – all while I'm still budgeting my small amount of dwindling funds around allowing myself to enjoy at least one glass of wine per evening (which may or may not force me to resort to a few spoonfuls of peanut butter for dinner). Regardless, this is all about choices…and priorities, and depending on which side of the fence you're on, one of us may be entirely out of our minds.
But what's also really nice, is that these friends like me enough to ask me to be their Maid of Honor. I mean, sure, I could do without having the word "maid" attached to my name for at least another twenty years (however society would leave you believe that a single woman past a certain age can't be qualified as anything else), and "honor," well, I'm not even really sure what that means (don't sleep with the groom?). All I know is that I'm in charge of helping to make the most important day of their live turn out to be a great success (no pressure).
In the end it's about assisting and supporting their choices and priorities by purchasing gifts and plane tickets and shoes, pulling off (god willing) a dress with a huge bow attached to my bottom, dancing sans a plus one like an idiot (nothing like a wedding to remind oneself of how single they really are), and crafting a sentimental (yet humorous) speech for 200+ people all about the very thing I know next to nothing about – love.
Of course it's also about foregoing the monetary comfort that allows me to imbibe enough on a daily basis to get me from one week to the next in this city that never sleeps – and November is looking like it's going to be a particularly dry month what with one wedding coming up in just under two weeks.
I thought sacrifice when it comes to love only applied to the people in love?
Just goes to show how much I know.
However thanks to online dating sites and the genuine hard to resist gentlemen from the Midwest, I have close friends who are getting married, committing to the rest of their lives, mapping out their futures in houses with garages with tools in them – all while I'm still budgeting my small amount of dwindling funds around allowing myself to enjoy at least one glass of wine per evening (which may or may not force me to resort to a few spoonfuls of peanut butter for dinner). Regardless, this is all about choices…and priorities, and depending on which side of the fence you're on, one of us may be entirely out of our minds.
But what's also really nice, is that these friends like me enough to ask me to be their Maid of Honor. I mean, sure, I could do without having the word "maid" attached to my name for at least another twenty years (however society would leave you believe that a single woman past a certain age can't be qualified as anything else), and "honor," well, I'm not even really sure what that means (don't sleep with the groom?). All I know is that I'm in charge of helping to make the most important day of their live turn out to be a great success (no pressure).
In the end it's about assisting and supporting their choices and priorities by purchasing gifts and plane tickets and shoes, pulling off (god willing) a dress with a huge bow attached to my bottom, dancing sans a plus one like an idiot (nothing like a wedding to remind oneself of how single they really are), and crafting a sentimental (yet humorous) speech for 200+ people all about the very thing I know next to nothing about – love.
Of course it's also about foregoing the monetary comfort that allows me to imbibe enough on a daily basis to get me from one week to the next in this city that never sleeps – and November is looking like it's going to be a particularly dry month what with one wedding coming up in just under two weeks.
I thought sacrifice when it comes to love only applied to the people in love?
Just goes to show how much I know.
November 5, 2008
It's red (again).
Getting off of the subway today and walking towards the office I was half asleep thinking about daylight and savings and time and how it's all just a stupid tradition that happens every year (and we don't know why) but we go along with it anyway in a very, "Time to turn back time? Sure thing dear, just let me finish my coffee..." And speaking of coffee, (as I do frequently), my thoughts were interrupted by bright flashes of red that caught my eye. What? And then flashes of green. People were carrying these colors in their hands as though they were part of their briefcase or an extension of their fingers.
Could it be? Starbucks holiday cups are here...already?
And that's only the cup we're talking about. Around the corner I entered the store in need of my morning fix and I saw (who could help not to?) that the whole place was an explosion of red, with shelves upon shelves of holiday flasks, mugs and other festive paraphernalia. I looked around at all the happy red-cup-holding-New-Yorkers in desperate concern - can we even get Thanksgiving first?
Apparently not. It's barely the first week of November and I'm already drinking Christmas Blend (smooth and spicy) out of a grandiosely decorated grande cup. "Pass the cheer!" it implores me in white loopy writing. "Bequeath a wreath!" it goes on to say, the words peeking out from under the bright green sleeve marked 60% post-consumer fiber. CAUTION: VERY HOT! How about CAUTION: HOLIDAYS MUCH FURTHER AWAY THAN THEY APPEAR.
And that's the problem. Because holidays aren't always holidays. When you're a kid or when life is just swell, sure, you feel more than happy to pass on all sorts of cheer while drinking from your snowflake adorned coffee cup. But once you get older and things in your life start to fall to shit you can't help but feel annoyed at the early pressure to be happy. Bequeath a wreath? Are they out of their minds? I just had a man elbow me out of the way while getting on a downtown 1 train so the only thing I'm looking to bequeath at the moment is a fast hard kick to a stomach.
I'm not ready to be happy or excited about anything. I just can't do it. Because the truth is you just can't be when your life gets turned upside down and inside out and you have no idea which way you're heading. You lose someone you love or you lose your job or your lover or the thing you've been working so hard for so long to get, and (poof!) there you are sitting drinking Christmas Blend and you don't feel anything but the hot memories of a simpler time gone by getting caught in your throat.
Could it be? Starbucks holiday cups are here...already?
And that's only the cup we're talking about. Around the corner I entered the store in need of my morning fix and I saw (who could help not to?) that the whole place was an explosion of red, with shelves upon shelves of holiday flasks, mugs and other festive paraphernalia. I looked around at all the happy red-cup-holding-New-Yorkers in desperate concern - can we even get Thanksgiving first?
Apparently not. It's barely the first week of November and I'm already drinking Christmas Blend (smooth and spicy) out of a grandiosely decorated grande cup. "Pass the cheer!" it implores me in white loopy writing. "Bequeath a wreath!" it goes on to say, the words peeking out from under the bright green sleeve marked 60% post-consumer fiber. CAUTION: VERY HOT! How about CAUTION: HOLIDAYS MUCH FURTHER AWAY THAN THEY APPEAR.
And that's the problem. Because holidays aren't always holidays. When you're a kid or when life is just swell, sure, you feel more than happy to pass on all sorts of cheer while drinking from your snowflake adorned coffee cup. But once you get older and things in your life start to fall to shit you can't help but feel annoyed at the early pressure to be happy. Bequeath a wreath? Are they out of their minds? I just had a man elbow me out of the way while getting on a downtown 1 train so the only thing I'm looking to bequeath at the moment is a fast hard kick to a stomach.
I'm not ready to be happy or excited about anything. I just can't do it. Because the truth is you just can't be when your life gets turned upside down and inside out and you have no idea which way you're heading. You lose someone you love or you lose your job or your lover or the thing you've been working so hard for so long to get, and (poof!) there you are sitting drinking Christmas Blend and you don't feel anything but the hot memories of a simpler time gone by getting caught in your throat.
November 2, 2008
fall back.
There are more occasions than I can count where I wish I could have turned back time. There’s nothing as painful as looking at all of the mistakes you’ve made and having to ask yourself in the harsh light of hindsight: seriously?
I know we all can’t get it right all of the time, but it would be nice if the odds were a little more stacked in our favor. And every day is a chance to get it right, but life happens so fast here in New York that if you miss one step you might just miss out on the chance of a lifetime. People will always push past you here leaving you to perpetually wonder what could have happened if.
If, if, if, the worst word in the English language. Because if leads to chance, and chance leads to timing, and we all know there’s never a lot of time to take a chance on something great when it finally does come along.
But it was nice, all of us here in New York today, together placing our fingers on the hands of the clock to go back, to try to reclaim things (quickly now that the days are shorter) and telling ourselves that we’re smarter now, that this time (perhaps) things will be different. At least until spring.
I know we all can’t get it right all of the time, but it would be nice if the odds were a little more stacked in our favor. And every day is a chance to get it right, but life happens so fast here in New York that if you miss one step you might just miss out on the chance of a lifetime. People will always push past you here leaving you to perpetually wonder what could have happened if.
If, if, if, the worst word in the English language. Because if leads to chance, and chance leads to timing, and we all know there’s never a lot of time to take a chance on something great when it finally does come along.
But it was nice, all of us here in New York today, together placing our fingers on the hands of the clock to go back, to try to reclaim things (quickly now that the days are shorter) and telling ourselves that we’re smarter now, that this time (perhaps) things will be different. At least until spring.
October 29, 2008
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.
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.
October 22, 2008
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.
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.
October 20, 2008
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.
...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.
October 9, 2008
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.
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.
October 1, 2008
“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.
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.
September 29, 2008
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?
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?
September 21, 2008
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.
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.
September 16, 2008
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.
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.
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