If you see something, say something.

It’s one of the easiest, most basic words in the English language and yet, more often than not we’re paralyzed with fear at the very idea of actually saying it to someone. Perhaps it’s because as New Yorkers we’re so good at keeping our heads down - eyes on blackberry’s and iPhones, in books, newspapers and on Kindle screens that we’ve forgotten how to look up, how to look around. We’ve forgotten how to see.

He walked on the uptown 2 train at 14^th street and was tall and blonde wearing an impressive looking blue European cut suit, a striped half-Windsor and burgundy wingtips. He was carrying nothing save for a hardcover book in his left hand, and as he reached out his right to grip the bar I was holding, the cuff of his jacket inched up ever so slightly enough to illuminate a silver watch, the face of which was so big one could have an absolutely cracking game of hockey on it. We made eye contact but briefly, as he looked away suddenly finding the ad for The School of Visual Arts on the wall above the seats incredibly interesting, apparently.

I shrugged inwardly. Perhaps he’s thinking of applying now that he’s made his millions on Wall Street.

I looked at the book in his hand and caught a glimpse of the cover: Rainmaking Conversations: Influence, Persuade, and Sell in Any Situation by Mike Schultz. So he hadn’t yet made his millions. He was still reading books to learn how to…IN ANY SITUATION. This suit, for all I knew, was the only one he owned. The more I pondered him the more it intrigued me that he wasn’t carrying a briefcase or a messenger bag or, for that matter, anything at all. Where did he keep his things? Didn’t he have things? I have a bag that always has a book, an iPod, a planner, a wallet, two blackberry’s, a pen, a small notebook for writing down observations, my grandmothers old compact mirror, a tin of Rosebud lip balm, and a tube of red lipstick. Where were this man’s things? Where were his keys? (hopefully not in his pocket ruining the lining of an absolutely splendid pair of trousers).

Perhaps today he was running late and simply left all of his things behind. Or maybe he just had an interview that didn’t go well and he threw away his mostly-empty briefcase in the trash just outside the office in a fit of frustration. Either way he must have sensed me staring, for he looked back at me and I managed a smile and thought seriously about saying that word, that easy I-say-it-all-the-time-to-everyone-I-know word that was now, for some reason, stuck in my throat.

I thought he was handsome and put together and I wanted to know his name and what his voice sounded like saying it. I also had a lot of questions for him, namely about the general whereabouts of his keys, but I wanted to sit down with him over a cup of coffee and hear his story and how his day had brought him to be here, standing in front of me on the express train speeding uptown.

I felt my heart skip a beat as his hand slipped on the bar and landed just above my own. I thought about what could happen if just said that one word, those two simple, almost insignificant little letters. I thought about all the ways my whole life could change in the amount of time it would take me to say, hi.

Maybe he had a girlfriend he wasn’t happy with anymore.

Maybe he was single.

Maybe I was just the kind of person he’d been looking for.

Maybe we had everything in common.

Maybe he was a Democrat and a Red Sox fan but that wouldn’t matter.

Maybe once he started talking to me he’d never want to stop.

Maybe I’d feel the same way.

Maybe we’d move in together and stay in bed all day on Saturdays and drink coffee while reading the Times all day on Sundays.

Maybe we’d travel the world together and go to movies together and argue over politics and baseball together.

Maybe we’d get married and have kids and bring them to piano lessons and swimming lessons and go to their school plays together and pay for their college and take a mortgage out on a house together.

Maybe we would grow old together, go on Social Security together, and eventually die, him before me or me before him, but there we’d be, in the end, together.

If only I just said it.

Because a word can change everything. It can be the only thing between you and what could have been. What could have been is what you think about when you find yourself looking back on that window of opportunity you had to reach out and take hold of something before you let it pass you by. What could have been can torture you for years.

Because you never know. Because there are infinite possibilities in a declaration, a comment, a gesture or a look. Because most of the time we’re there all thinking the same thing but none of us are brave enough to say something. Because everything is always the same all the time every week, day, hour, moment of our lives until, suddenly, it isn’t.

The question is: what are you going to do about it?

As I watched him leave the train at 72^nd street I thought about going after him but I stopped myself because that’s just not what you do.

But maybe it should be.

Maybe we should all stop being so afraid.

And then the doors closed on him and what could have been, and I wondered for a long time after he left how much we change our lives all the time simply by the things we leave unsaid.

Idiot.

The Home Relationship

Apartment, you’ve really been great. Honestly I’ve had so many bad relationships with apartments past - inconvenient locations, insane roommates, impossible to locate landlords with almost impossible to pay rents, that after almost two years together I feel we’re really meant for each other.  My finding your profile on Craigslist wasn’t chance, it was destiny. The very moment I approached your front door, thick oak attached to an aging but classic late 1800’s brownstone on a tree lined street on the Upper West Side, it hit me (bam!) like a taxi on Broadway –love.

And its been a nice two years, (ed. note: best and longest relationship), and during that time I’ve overlooked a few things. After all, isn’t that what a relationship is all about? Ones ability to let go of and accept all the little things you know you can’t change only to recognize at the end of the day the admirable qualities that outshine the more annoying ones?

Sure you’re just one room with a kitchen sink equivalent to those found on a Boeing 757. You proffer but one closet and provide me with what can only be classified as an eat-in bedroom, what with the refrigerator hovering ever so closely to the bed. But that’s OK. These offenses are nothing in comparison to what I have to deal with once I leave your four walls. Over the years you’ve been there as a constant, well-maintained and welcoming sanctuary from my hectic New York life. My office has no windows but you give me three, and I like to look out of them after a long day at work while eating dinner standing at the counter. You are quiet, save for the man downstairs who takes to playing the piano at late and random hours, but I find I enjoy that, especially in the summer when the windows are open and Rachmaninoff blocks out the sound of car horns.

I’ve even been willing to accept the infrequent strange bug you’ve added to occasionally disturb the peace. So far we’ve bypassed the crazy bed bug scare of 2010 and have worked our way up to the occasional cockroach sighting. Of course I freak out initially, but then take deep breaths and repeat the mantra I always do when things here really start to get me down – it’s OK, this is Manhattan, it’s OK, this is Manhattan. One must take charge of their life here, not run from it. Roach motels were purchased and installed. My Swiffer became my weapon of choice. Smush, Flush, Clean (SFC) became the Gym, Tan, Laundry (GTL) routine of my apartment life.

We even acquired a mouse recently (look at us!). The little guy darted across the floor with such speed I thought you must be playing a trick on me. As one determined to maintain her status as Urban Warrior, and in the vein of Macaulay Culkin in the ultimate bible of residential battles Home Alone (“This is my house and I have to defend it”), I set up traps and simply pretended he was that nice little boy from The Witches.

All was going well. Our future, well, it had never been brighter.

However like any relationship we reached an inevitable breaking point. One night while reading on my couch I spotted a roach having a field day running up and down my nice curtains. I panicked at first, repeated the mantra, then grabbed my trusty Swiffer. Before long he was down the drain and I was fine, knowing that if the past were any indicator I wouldn’t see another one for at least three to six months. Later I drifted to sleep, outside traffic humming, work-week halfway through. Oh Apartment, you’re grand.

I’m not sure how I woke up or why, perhaps it was a noise or a feeling or just a subconscious message from my beloved Apartment trying to help me out - but as I sat up, through the din I could see clearly a dark spot on the pillow beside me. In one quick movement I was up and on my feet with my fingers on the lamp switch. There, sitting calmly on my pillow illuminated by my GE Energy Saver light bulb was Cockroach #1.

At first I wasn’t entirely sure if what was happening was real or just a terrible nightmare, however upon seeing another flicker - Cockroach #2 scurrying through the covers - I became all too aware of just how real this little tableau unfolding before me really was. As the sweat on my brow began to form, I looked up and saw Cockroach #3 hanging out on my headboard as if simply to say, “How you doin’?”

The new mantra quickly became: Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God.

In what can only be defined as a panic-induced frenzy tantamount to an epileptic fit, I began to furiously run my hands through my hair, feeling quite certain that there was at least a Cockroach #4 somewhere in there probably laying eggs, possibly burrowing into my brain. As I carried out this embarrassing performance, I managed with extreme precision to throw my thumb and its corresponding fingernail directly into my right eye. It felt like I punched myself in the face. Then, to my horror, the white of my eye began to bleed.

In a state of shock I began to recognize the truth that was slowly starting to take shape in front of me - my lover had just pushed our relationship too far. At the point when I was crying, shaking and holding the Swiffer in one hand prodding the roaches on my bed while dabbing a tissue to my blood-dripping eye with the other - that's when I knew we'd hit rock bottom.

I was reminded of a scene from a movie by another New York lover about their New York apartment, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. When she calls Alvy to come over to help her kill the spider the size of a Buick in her bathtub, Annie presented the age old question: when something bad happens to you in your home, what do you do and who do you call?  I called three people in no particular order at two o’clock in the morning on a Wednesday, and no one answered. Standing alone and feeling out of options and hope, I let it sink in that my apartment had betrayed me. I suddenly felt like Bill Pullman in every romantic comedy, or at least as devastated as someone who doesn’t get a rose on The Bachelor.

When I finally got through to my sister she told me to calm down and get into a cab and stay at her place. I needed some space. I needed a break. My apartment was turning into Animal Planet. Now, after a few days and the exterminator en route I’m still not quite ready to go back. I still feel a stinging sense of unfaithfulness (in addition to the stinging pain in my eye). But the thing is, what I deep down knew even as this whole horror show was unfolding, was that I’d go back eventually. There was never any question. I’m not sure if it’s because it really is true love or because the whole idea of moving on and trying to find something new simply isn’t worth the hassle - either way I knew I wasn’t ready to give up. And besides, a whole new set of problems would inevitably find me wherever I went. You can’t run from your demons, I’ve learned, because they catch up to you eventually. Sometimes the bravest thing is to choose to stay and fight.

And anyway perhaps we all have a masochistic relationship with the places we live. They can’t be perfect but we know all too well that we aren’t either, and so exceptions have to be made. We live and love in denial and endure the rough patches in order to come out on the other side more enlightened, happy warriors of our homes and our hometowns. Alvy Singer was right. Relationships are irrational and crazy and absurd but we keep going through it because most of us just need the eggs.

All I really know is that according to my optometrist my eye will heal in ten to fourteen days. Maybe by then, Apartment, I’ll be ready to forgive you.

*Note the events of this post took place during the summer of 2010, and while I won that battle the war wages on. If you have stories of battles with your home I’d love to hear them. Please leave them in the comments.

“There are many things my father taught me. He taught me: keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

I would bet just about anything that there isn’t anyone, including scholars who have studied for most of their lives, who knows more about World War II than my father. There has actually come a point just recently when he held up his hand and pleaded to me, “Please, for the love of God no more books on World War II. I already know everything.”

From him I’ve learned:

To expertly wield a wiffle ball (during those intense backyard games of baseball).

How to throw a fastball, a curve ball, a knuckleball.

The best way to make pancakes.

How to enjoy good scotch.

How to mow the lawn.

How to use a power drill.

How to appreciate madras plaid.

The importance of having a political point of view.

The importance of music (his extensive record collection consists of: Zepplin, the Stones, The Who, The Beatles, The Doors, some Dylan, early Elton John, Hendrix, Fleetwood Mac, etc.).

About how great Thurman Munson was.

About how bad the 1961 Yankees were.

To stand up for myself.

To stand up for what I believe in.

That it’s important to love without conditions.

That it’s possible to love beyond ‘til death do you part.

If I were ever to see him and he wasn’t dressed sharply and tan and didn’t call me his buddy ole pal and then immediately tell me how disenchanted he was with the Yankees, local government and his golf game while still caring desperately about them all, I’d think there was something wrong.

I love that the baristas at the Loudonville Starbucks have to brew a fresh pot every time he goes in there because he’s the only person in the tri state area who drinks decaf. I love that I got him to go to Starbucks at all because he believes so strongly in small business. I love that when he gets up to the counter to say his order it’s with authority and conviction like just about everything else he does: Tall! Decaf! Misto! I love that he orders a misto even though after telling him several hundreds of times I’m still not entirely sure he really knows what a misto is.

I love that he always rents movies that my sister and I have never heard of before, “I don’t know it could be good. It’s got that guy from Gladiator in it.” I love how much he appreciates it when I bring him really good sfogliatelle from the city. I love that he doesn’t understand why men aren’t lining up outside my apartment to take me out on dates. I love that he respects that I want to be a writer yet sometimes says things like, “well you know dentists make a lot of money, have you ever thought about doing something like that?”

I love that he consistently quotes Scarface “meet my little friend” and The Godfather, “leave the gun, take the cannoli,” and always tries but gets confused quoting Churchill, “this isn’t the end, but it’s the end of the beginning. Wait, no, it’s the beginning of the end. Wait, no…”

I love that he yells at the television when he watches the Sunday morning shows. I love that the license plate on his Jaguar XKR convertible says "40thPrez."  I love that he has an XKR because he's worked hard his entire life and deserves it more than anyone I know. I love that he can fix or build anything. I love that he's addicted to YouTube.

What I love more than anything is sitting with him on the deck in the backyard as the sun goes down while we both smoke a cigar and nurse a glass of Macallan in the soft summer breeze.

“Did I tell you about that book you gave me, The Third Reich at War?” he says looking over at me. “I was reading it and it was all things I already knew, but you know, there were a few bits that were new to me.”

I smile and look at him and think that we never know everything even when we think we do. I’ve learned most of everything that matters from him and I forget, more often than not, to tell him that I’m grateful.

So Dad: Thanks! For! Everything!

I love you, but I’ll never be a dentist.

Me age 2, with Dad. His t-shirt reads: #1 Dad.

It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel…well, okay really.

I wasn’t really aware that there are folks out there talking about the world coming to an end on Saturday. I guess I’m not on the doomsday distro list, which is just fine with me because if the world does decide to come to an end I think I’d like to be surprised. I don’t want to have a whole lot of time to sit around and think about the impending unavoidable end of everything. Let’s make it quick – surprise! – no time for regrets, or, I knew I should have seen Bridesmaids the night it came out because I really could have used a laugh what with all this the-end-is-nigh talk lingering in the air. 

Make it quick. Like a band-aid. See you.

And then I saw this, a post on Craigslist where some chap from Ronkonkoma (is that even a real place?) is trying to get people to give him all their worldly possessions because hey, after Saturday, you won’t be around to use them!  He’s obviously a terrible person and anyone willing to give him anything probably deserves to be blown away in a shattering cloud of flames straight out of Independence Day.

But that’s beside the point.

The point is I got to thinking about the things I have that are worth something to me that I’d be loathe to leave behind in the event of Armageddon. I guess it’s sort of like the question you ask during that fun game while drinking with friends: if your apartment were on fire, what would you take with you? Well this guy is asking for money, cars, canned food and durable goods, and while I’m not entirely sure what the latter is, I do know I don’t have very much, if anything, of the former (though I do think there is a can of pumpkin in the back of my cabinet from when I got it into my head a few Thanksgivings ago that I was going to bake a pie). 

What I think I’d want to take, in no particular order, are the following: original LP of Dave Brubeck’s 1959 Time Out, a bathrobe, and a laptop.

The album. Well because it’s my all-time favorite jazz album that I spent a long time trying to find, but also because I talked my way into getting it free of charge from a frat boy at a party in college. While drinking Miller High Life out of a red plastic cup I came upon this gentleman’s extensive and amazing record collection (which happened to be his father’s, his son didn’t know Dave Brubeck from Dave Matthews). I began to tell him that it wasn’t really worth much and he would probably hate it if he ever did get around to listening to it, or, for that matter, purchasing a turntable to play it on. The kid had more resolve than I anticipated in the end, maybe the idea of his father getting angry really terrified him. Either way it left with me at the end of the night, and whenever I listen to the record I still find myself wondering how his dad reacted when he found out.

The bathrobe. It’s folded neatly in a plastic bin under my bed where it has been, largely untouched, for five years. It was the last thing I remember my mother wearing, and for a while after she died it still smelled like her. It doesn’t anymore, but sometimes if I put it on for just a moment it feels like she’s still close by. It’s as though this one piece of fabric has the magical power to transport me back to a time when there wasn’t a gaping hole in my left ventricle.

The laptop. I never got around to catching up with where things were in the technology arena, so every Mighty post from when I started the blog in 2006, (along with every college paper, and short story and word I’ve ever written), is saved on the hard drive of my 2004 Dell laptop. I figure there’s probably some pretty terrible things on there that ought to disappear forever in a blinding haze of blue screen of death, but it’s good, I think, to remember the crap you’ve produced to realize how far you’ve hopefully come. 

Anyway all of this doesn’t matter of course, because the world isn’t in fact (spoiler alert!) ending. If it were what I would take with me wouldn’t really be an issue. It does however, remind me a bit about the things that really do matter that we so easily forget about and lose sight of in the daily course of our lives, when we never stop to think, hey, one day this is all going to end, isn’t it?

Because it’s not really about the objects at all, it’s about how they make us feel and their ability to remind us who we are. Maybe the real point (yeah dude in Ronkonkoma, I’m talking to you), is to try to embrace those feelings a bit more and work harder at living the kind of life so that if the world really were to fall into the Rapture (whatever that is), you’d at least know you lived not being afraid of experiencing the whole vast range of the emotional spectrum, (that’s the good to the exceptionally shitty), and maybe then the end of everything would sort of be…well, okay really.

So perhaps tomorrow I’ll slip on the bathrobe and listen to Time Out while transferring all my files to a newly purchased USB drive (one has to start somewhere I suppose). I’ll do it for posterity if nothing else, but also as a testament that I’m still here, for now anyway, so might as well at least start backing up my files.

I might even make that pie.

You had me at “so, what’s up?”

I know many who say that in this world of online dating that romance, whatever that is, is apparently on its way out. We are content with reaching out to each other through computers screens and defining ourselves in profiles, as though we are simply one-sided machines quantified only by the kinds of music we listen to or television shows we watch (well, I could never love a Baywatch fan).

I was recently on the phone with a friend who was looking at her OkCupid profile and she told me that there were currently 66,741 people online. That’s a lot of people out there all sitting inside their apartments surfing through photo-shopped pictures and perfectly crafted profiles describing what people think is the best version of themselves (read: mainly lies). When my friend told me she got an instant message on the site from a gentleman with this lovely request, “want to cuddle?” it was then that I really felt I made the correct decision in getting myself off the site.

Let me explain. Getting online, creating a profile, setting up a series of dates and over drinks talking all about myself doesn’t sound like an activity I would in any way enjoy participating in. And of course I’d have to ask questions too: Where are you from? What do you do? Where do you live? How long have you been in New York? Christ I’m already bored. Of course I know for some it works. My friend from college not only met her perfectly matched husband on Match.com, she met him on her very first Match.com date (like I say, love is like hitting. the. lottery), however I can safely say it’s not for me. I’m not quite yet ready to give up on that perhaps impossible thing called meeting someone the old fashioned way – you know, face to face – a concept of which close friends of mine (I won’t name names) can’t seem to entirely come to terms with. In their attempt to right the wrong of my singlehood – and in pure horrifying romantic comedy fashion – they decided to create an OkCupid profile for me without my knowing about it. For three weeks they secretly managed the account, letting messages filter in from men all over New York who thought my friends having added “scotch” as one of my interests was enough for them to want to date me.

Upon hearing the news and getting an email from OkCupid informing me that I was apparently now deemed in the top 10 percent of the most attractive people on the site and they were now  – great believers in love that they are  – going to start sending me more attractive matches (I bet they say that to all the girls!) I was at once offended and just a little bit sad. Offended, well, for obvious reasons (my friends and I are now back on speaking terms), and a bit sad because their gesture, while I guess well-intentioned, spoke not only to the nature of how we as a society view our approach to relationships, but also to the somewhat disturbing idea that being a certain age and being unattached is in some way, somehow, a real problem.

I deactivated the account, leaving behind what I’m sure could have been great loves of my life, men who had sent compelling messages like, “I like scotch, too,” and went back to the business of thinking about love in the ways of yesteryear.

Then I received the following text message:

“Hey, I don’t really know you, except that I got your number at Brooklyn Bowl in January and I vaguely recollect talking about art…so, what’s up?”

Right. All those months ago I too have a vague recollection of talking to some guy at one o’clock in the morning at Brooklyn Bowl about, above all things, art, a topic which at the time seemed to interest him (well, I had a lot to say on the subject) enough for him to ask for my number and then promptly never call me.  

The more I thought about it the more I realized that perhaps I’ve been telling myself lies as much as the people in their OkCupid profiles (I mean do you really think I’m going to believe you’re a “young” fifty? What does that even mean anyway?). How long have I been in New York meeting men face to face, handing out my number (it must be stored in cell phones across all five boroughs!) never to have it really go anywhere? However much, much more to the point: where did I get this idea that meeting people in the flesh is the answer, or so much better than the alternative? Perhaps yesterday I should have given a chance to the guy who, from the window of his car shouted out to me as I passed him on the sidewalk carrying my laundry bag for drop-off “Hey beautiful, I’ll do your wash and fold.”

I guess it’s hope. Hope and my general unwillingness to stop believing that two people can, through circumstances greater than themselves, find each other sitting over drinks at a bar or being introduced by friends and connect (when a man and a woman see each other and like each other they ought to come together - wham! like a couple of taxis on Broadway - not sit around analyzing each other like two specimens in a bottle), creating a spark in a way that no message over a computer could ever aspire to ignite.

So I put it to you, dear readers, as I find myself at this particular crossroads of my romantic future: what would you do? Ignore the message realizing that surely this isn’t how things are supposed to go, or (!), respond and accept that perhaps the new norm is now a text message sent approximately five months after meeting someone, and come to terms with the fact that while one can hope for more (and one can always hope), perhaps these days we should know better than to be hoping for much more than “what’s up.”

The more there is, the more there is, the less there is.

I saw an old man crossing the street Sunday afternoon, a cane in each hand helping to propel him across Broadway. His small frame was bent over almost double at the waist and his back was nearly parallel to the ground. He had on a tan trench coat that covered his small eighty-some-year-old shoulders, and as he shuffled along he clung to a plastic bag from Zabar’s in his left hand. He was moving impossibly slow. Left foot. Stop. Right foot. Stop. People turned their heads as they approached him but kept moving after taking a few concerned looks and going on their way. I looked up and could see that the traffic light on this four lane two-way thoroughfare was about to change from red to green, and that he was about to get caught in the middle of fast paced moving traffic.

As I came upon him I bent down and asked if I could help carry his bag and get him across the street. At such an intimate distance I saw that he was in belted dress pants, he had on a crisp white dress shirt and a striped tie knotted in a full Windsor topped with a plaid cap that covered the stark white hair on his head. I wondered who he was and where he was coming from or going to and I thought, looking at him, that surely he was thinking: wasn’t it just yesterday that I was a young man able to get across the street without having to give it a single thought?

In a muffled tone he told me that he didn’t need any help getting to the bus stop. He didn’t even bother to look up at me as though I’d asked him an entirely absurd question that he was barely willing to justify with a response. I looked up and could see that the distance to the bus stop couldn’t have been more than about ten strides, but at the rate he was going he wouldn’t be getting there for at least another ten minutes. So I waited. I stepped back and stayed near to his side as the traffic light turned from red to green and cars and cabs began to move (annoyed horns honking loudly), around us.

As I stood by him his eyes remained firmly planted on the ground with extreme focus as he moved (left. stop. right. stop.) I wondered if all those years ago he could have in any way predicted this slow moving moment in the middle of Broadway with a complete and total stranger by his side. Because he was young once. He lived through wars and bad economies and bad presidents and raised a family and drank beers and went to baseball games and buried loved ones and watched his life go by only to find himself now here, in the middle of a busy street on a warm and overcast Sunday afternoon in Manhattan alone.

I guess we can’t, can we, allow ourselves to see that far into the future when all that’s there is what is left for us to look back on. How can we when our legs still move easily and we work out our muscles regularly and we eat too much and drink too much and are reckless with our hearts —who can be bothered now with the consequences that time will inevitably bring? Push it off while we can, those sad and distant moments of our future when we wonder where everything suddenly disappeared to, when we wonder where the time went and the days when we were able to get across the street on our own.

After we made it safely, I left him at the bus stop where the driver of the cross-town took over the job of getting this man to where he needed to go (perhaps that was all his day had been, small moments with nameless faces all of whom helped him bit by bit on his journey through this city that must look so different to him than it does to me).

Sometimes I think about what my life will be like ten, twenty, fifty years from now and how much the choices and decisions I’m making now, (in each passing hour, minute, moment…) will affect what it will look like if I'm fortunate enough to get there. A man who had been watching me assist the elderly gentleman across the street stopped me on the corner and shaking his head said, “So sad, that man. Just so sad.” Well, I thought, what do you know? What do any of us know about the lives being lived by the people around us? Sad that he's old? Sad that he’s by himself? Perhaps. But any New Yorker will tell you that being on your own doesn't necessarily mean sad, and from the looks of him this was a man who knew a thing or two about how to live.

So there’s no point in wondering where we’ll end up because there’s no real way to know all that our lives will be like as we move forward, regardless of the pace (because even when we think we have it all figured out, we don’t). So today as time flashes by more quickly than I can make sense of (April already?), all I can hope is that if one day in my distant future I happen to find myself alone in the middle of a busy Manhattan street with the traffic light of my life about to change from red to green —that I won’t look back on the road I took that got me there and find it paved with regrets.

And it wouldn’t hurt if I also happened to find myself impeccably well-dressed, too.

happy hours.

There are few things more awkwardly self-revealing than being in the middle of a slow moving pub by yourself waiting for someone or something to show up.

It’s small, the kind of place where there’s a pretty good chance that everyone really does know your name, and tabs run high and so do emotions and when you show up as an outsider to a place like that you can feel it, a distinct change in the atmosphere as though you’ve just entered a foreign country where you hardly know the language at all.

There’s a lot to talk about what with The Chill, and everyone agrees or disagrees about politics, sports, relationships and movies but it doesn’t matter to them because they all know each other and what they’re there for and playoff or primary every day is a big day for New Yorkers.

And you can tell easily enough those who have been here for hours, whose day didn’t include (from 8 to 6) being trapped behind office doors and bright and blinding computer screens with responsibilities so far outside of themselves that they’ve lost sight almost entirely of who they really are. No, they are trapped in different ways, perhaps. Their lives...well, you never know, do you?

It’s only in a place like this that you can sit by yourself and drink your $3 pint special (from 6 to 8) and think long and hard about what you’re doing and what you want and where you’re really meant to be in the whole vast configuration of things. It may even be in those twenty minutes you have to yourself (the only twenty minutes of your whole day it would seem) before someone or something shows up that you can even seriously allow yourself to begin to contemplate the answers. And if you’re like the guy next to me who had two too many two or so hours ago you’re sitting there with your mouth open and eyes closed probably dreaming of a time in the not-so-distant-past when things made a lot more sense.

Because when you suddenly find yourself in a foreign country right smack in the middle of your hometown you may find yourself questioning what exactly you’re waiting for and why, and the answers to those kinds of questions never do seem to be there looking back up at you from the bottom of your glass when you’re ready to go home.

love reservations.

Couples in all five boroughs will be sitting across from each other tonight, a candle between them illuminating their prix fixe menus and their relationships.

As the prosecco is poured and orders are placed for what is going to be just another dinner in a long line of dinners together, they can’t help but think about how it’s always so easy to love someone when they’re right in front of you.

And later, amidst the overwhelming smell expensive perfume and garlic you’ll be able to tell when another person has fallen out of love.

They’ll excuse themselves from the table leaving their steamed artichoke exposed near the heart, the discarded leaves with teeth indentations still sitting just off to the side, neatly stacked.

I accept Time absolutely.

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

I guess that’s what happens when you lose someone you love and you lose them quickly, unexpectedly without warning at a time when you figure you’ve got so much more time with them ahead of you. You go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning to a ringing phone that’s going to usher in news you don’t want to hear but can’t avoid no matter how much you try. And you don’t have time to say goodbye, such a small word really, but as soon as the chance to say it gets taken away from you it suddenly means so much. Everything before everything changed feels like another life, like it happened to someone else who was living in some alternate universe because now you think, looking back on it, that there was no way something like that could have happened to you, no way it could have happened and you actually survived it.

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

If you’re like me you know better and you think people who don’t are a lot worse off than you because they don’t understand (but at some point eventually, they will) that this is it. Because this isn’t misplacing. No, we can misplace all we want because with misplacing there’s a very distinct chance that whatever we’ve lost we will inevitably get back. And that’s all we need isn’t it, that logical answer of: well it couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air. Your keys, a book, your iPod, subway pass, that letter or picture. I just had it, you think to yourself. I just had it.

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

So you learn. Yes you learn to take more risks and more chances and to be brave and to not be so afraid, but the most valuable thing you learn are the tricks that Time can play. Bewitching, deceiving, there’s-never-quite-enough-of-it Time. You know now for certain something so obvious and yet were only really able to fully understand four years ago, that you can just have a lot of things before they slip right through your fingers. The question now I suppose is how often do you let them, or have you also learned the very important lesson of knowing when to tighten your grip on what matters while you still can.

shelter from the storm.

We don’t like to talk much about it, but—
we all have a lot more in common
than the weather.

The Chill is here and we are...miserable.
Manhattan and its surrounding boroughs are iced over,
(the way our insides have felt for a while now).

Because life keeps happening whether the weather
(whether we like it or not),
and we can’t see now that eventually it will all just melt away.

So for now we seek comfort where we can
no matter what it means—
even if it doesn’t mean anything at all.

Makes me long desperately for spring.

How To Strike It Rich.

On Tuesday night a friend gave me a lottery ticket. I wasn’t in any way aware of the Mega Millions Lottery as I’m someone who doesn’t believe much in luck. I’ve already accepted the fact that if it does indeed exist, it makes a distinct point to stay as far away from me as possible. My friend, well he (and apparently everyone else) was incredibly excited about the drawing. Later I was watching news stories showing helicopter views of people standing in lines at convenience stores that stretched around the corner for blocks. I heard about pools that had been set up among families and in offices and universities. What a special thing it was to see so many people take a stand against the pessimistic tone of our everyday lives and take a chance to believe in the idea that something so exceptional could actually happen to them.

I mean, just look at Ted Williams. Living by the side of a freeway in Columbus, Ohio holding nothing but a sign in an attempt to tell the world (and anyone who would listen) that he mattered. Suddenly he’s on every major news network in the country. Bam! Just like that. Everything. Changes.

Up until eleven o’clock on Tuesday night we were bound together as a nation by the exhilarating thought that despite the odds, someone, somewhere, was going to have to win this thing. I carried that ticket around in my pocket, and for approximately three hours was reminded of what hope felt like.

Of course it ended the way high hopes tend to, with a bit of inevitable disappointment. When you hear the winning numbers come through and see you don’t have a single one, you tell yourself: well, I knew it wasn’t going to happen anyway. You shrug off your chance of a lifetime and go back to accepting life the way it is. You finish out your week trying to forget all about those dreams you were having about what you were going to do with $380 million (Paris apartment! Pay off student loan! Maserati! Oh, and give to Oxfam, of course). You get a bit down when you start to feel that nothing ever changes at the exact moment a new year starts and change is what you’re desperately seeking most of all. You vow never to get involved in the lottery ever again and to find a new job, a new lover, a new apartment maybe, anything to feel better. Reports of more snow? Jesus Christ things are bleak.

But then you see Ted Williams all cleaned up on the “Today Show” talking about how long he waited for his second chance, and you remember that there are two people out there in the great states of Washington and Idaho who did, in fact, actually win.

One day it could be me, you think as you quicken your step. One day.

And so hope endures and you realize eventually that perhaps when it comes to hitting the jackpot of your life it could be anything, really. Truth is we are given winning tickets all the time, Mega Chances that could change everything.

I suppose the trick is simply to be smart enough to know when to open your eyes, reach out and cash them in.

time travel.

The year ends, as it always does, leaving me wishing I could travel back in time and do a hell of a lot of things differently.

As the clock strikes midnight I’ll inevitably look around and wonder how I got there, at the end of an entire year of my life seemingly empty handed. When did that happen (and more importantly - why haven’t we yet mastered a time machine?). I guess that’s just how fast it all happens - seconds, a moment, a word, a choice, a glance, a feeling - that’s how life happens, quickly, and most of the time without my even realizing it.

Life and the years of our lives happen as fast and fleetingly as it takes to count to ten, and I’d like to go back in those countdown seconds and warn my previous countdown self to the dangers looming in the distance of the upcoming year. I would have resolved then and there to proceed with extreme caution: warning, injuries and mistakes are closer than they appear. It would make a difference, wouldn’t it, to be able to go back right before you’re forced to go forward? Go back with clarity and distance and knowledge and collect what evidence you can on the inner-workings of your downfalls so you can stop yourself (for God’s sake) from making the same mistakes (again and again and again).

Because the answer isn’t to stop caring or to start caring about something like quitting smoking or losing weight or signing up for speed dating. No, we can resolve all we want to (and who are we kidding, really? Well, ourselves, always), but who we deep-down-are isn’t going to change no matter what promises we make for ourselves. All we can do is try to go back and in those ten seconds attempt to see ourselves in the harsh light of the year gone by. Shine the spotlight on those pivotal seconds and defining moments, those nasty words and foolish choices, those lost glances and forgotten aching feelings and continue to let life happen (quickly) but this time realize it.

And if you’re like me you’ll want to cling desperately to what little you got right (ok, so maybe my hands aren’t entirely empty...), and in those ten seconds you’ll vow to make every attempt to know better what you’re doing so you can do it all differently with your eyes more open (and your heart a bit more closed), so that maybe next year, if you can at all help it, you won’t have so many regrets.

Because until we can actually travel backward (and it’s only a matter of time, really) and allow the chance for history to diverge from our original past, we are stuck on a linear path moving forward into complete and total uncertainty which is both thrilling and terrifying at the exact same time.

Cause for celebration? Well, I guess.

It's always the ones -

Tall,
Dark,
(Not particularly handsome)

Who you know -
Could never understand you and,
Would never make you happy

That track you down through a friend of a friend
(Who was that girl in the black dress at the party on Saturday night?)
And want to date you.

Odds-wise

To me there’s nothing quite like being in a church watching a wedding take place to make me think about odds. This weekend as I sat there looking at these two people getting asked the standard round of questions: do you take, will you honor, do you pledge to love (I do, I do, I do), my brain couldn’t really quite wrap itself around the fact that it’s possible for two people to find each other at the exact right place at the exact right time and agree about things in terms of their lives forever-wise.

I mean, we’re talking about for-as-long-as-you-both-shall-live in a world where most of us don’t like to feel committed to anything much beyond the weekend, (and when it comes to love, well, are any of us ever really planning ahead?). I listened as the declarations ranged across the spectrum of health and illness, prosperity and unemployment, to the inevitable drastic flux on the good times v. bad times scale of things ending with the ultimate question: in light of all this, will you remain? And there they were both saying yes. Yes emphatically before God and everyone else with lots of money gone on invitations and venue fees with too many Tiffany’s candlesticks and pieces of flatware piling up on their kitchen table back home.

I sat there and thought about life and love odds-wise, and by the time they got to the you-may-now-kiss-the-bride part I figured that you probably have a better chance hitting the lottery than finding yourself up there saying yes to all that and really meaning it (and having the other person really mean it, too), and be able to look back years later knowing you were able to make it to death do you part. Because I think that’s the way it is odds-wise if you know what you’re looking for and don’t want to settle for anything less. How great can the probability really be when we’re all scared and confused and messed up and selfish and stupid most of the time anyway? At weddings I really feel like you ought to be up there acting like one of those people on the evening news in Gary, Indiana or someplace, in just total absolute shock at the sheer fortuitous luck of having struck it big. What were the chances?!

While I’m not typically big gambling-wise because the purchase of a lottery ticket is, from the standpoint of classical economics, foolish (did The Wealth of Nations have a chapter on marriage?), I do realize that in order to ever win one does, at some point, actually have to play the game. Yes you can bemoan odds and statistics all you want, but if you’re too scared and confused and messed up and selfish and stupid to at least get in line and pay the dollar for your ticket, well, you simply just can’t expect the windfall will find you eventually (in fact, I’d venture to say it will be lost to you forever).

So as the happy couple passed by me on their way back down the aisle I figured it’s best to go about the daily business of your life and from time to time take a chance on some of those numbers you have a particularly good feeling about and hope for the best.

A crapshoot? You bet. But that’s just the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.

It's hard work being out there. And everyone is.

Everyone is out there with their pasts stuffed in to invisible luggage by their sides as they sit on bar stools waiting for someone to make things right (as though some stranger could possibly fix all the broken hinges that are somehow, miraculously after all these years of abuse, still holding our hearts together).

And any day that someone could be anyone and most days we’re too busy to notice or particularly care. We keep on thinking we have more of the one thing in this city there’s never quite enough of, time (and an infinite number of chances), and we let it slip by us (December, already?) more easily than we should.

Isn’t that so funny about time and December and how that last month of the year always comes up slowly and then bam! there it is right on top of us, suffocating us, leaving us all asking the same questions: where has the time gone, where has the year gone, where has my life gone? It’s as though we’ve misplaced all the days of the year in the attics of our lives and here we are now frantically trying to find them beneath all the dust to take some of them back, to make things right (and there’s just so much clutter). And we make many failed attempts and that’s okay because it’s the holidays and we’re told repeatedly in greeting cards and by Burl Ives and George Bailey that this is the season of perpetual hope.

But we will not find the lost days of our year hidden under Christmas trees or in wrapped packages, boxes, or bags. They are gone, and so too soon will this season and then where will we be? Having to start all over again, I suppose. Out there tediously searching for the same things in different people at different bars - only then our bags will be heavier. We’ll be carrying with us what little we were able to salvage from before and everything we were able to survive. We’ll continue to chase time because that’s what you do when there’s something you want that there’s never quite enough of, give chase, pursue persistently, (possibly forever). And everyone will say the same thing they always say to me as though somehow it makes it all better, all worth it no matter the end – well hey, at least you’re out there.

Latest plans.

I saw him jump on to the subway, making it just in time before the doors closed behind him. He must have been running late (literally) because he had on sneakers and black track pants and seemed to breathe a sigh of relief that he’d made it. He looked, as I observed him standing there, like he was in a hurry.

Dressed in flats and whatever I manage to pick out to wear each morning, deep down I always feel like I’m wearing an invisible track suit, almost subconsciously compelled to make a mad dash to what’s supposed to come next in my life - even when I’m never really quite sure what next is.

He was young with wavy blonde hair and he held an iPod in one hand and a large manilla envelope in the other that was labeled, in scratchy handwriting, "Latest Plans." As I looked at him I wondered what it would be like to be able to carry around all my best intentions in an envelope so that I wouldn’t forget them. We’re making plans all the time, so much so that we don’t even realize it. We have date books and appointment books and scheduled events and hopes for the future even when we should know better by now (shouldn’t we?) that most of the time making plans (thinking we have any real control over what’s going to happen) is absolutely absurd.

He caught me eyeing his envelope bound for some unknown destination, and he held it closer to his chest. I figured it made sense that once you’re able to contain and define the latest plans of your life you’d be smart to put on your running shoes and try to get to where you’re planning on going fast, because we all know (don’t we) that plans are nothing if not subject to change.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers

So it has begun. It creeps up on me every year and then, bam! it hits me as I’m walking down Broadway and I see all of those wooden racks lined up along the sidewalks. They loom tall reminding me with a sudden push of panic to my stomach that time is getting away from me (wasn’t summer just here?).

I know then, that once I return to the city after eating too much turkey (for reasons I don’t really understand), those racks will be filled with green trees selling for $100 a pop. Soon families after failed attempts at negotiating down the price, will be dragging them home to put up in their cramped apartments until the needles fall off. I’ll watch as they pass me, the branches of their Fraser Fir bouncing as they cross the street, one person at the helm, one bringing up the rear.

This morning, however, everyone was hauling duffle bags and suitcases along the sidewalks as they headed for the subway, I along with them. We stood in silence as the train sped to our offices, eyes glazed over as we remembered quickly the disputes from last year over who was going to bake the pumpkin pie and who was going to bring the cranberry sauce. We tried to mentally prepare ourselves as the memory came flooding back of the incessant questions from relatives about how we can live in a place like New York. Isn’t it too expensive? How do you live? Do you have any money? How are you going to have any savings? Can you ever go on any vacations? Doesn’t it get exhausting? Why do you have to work so much? And when, (for crying out loud), are you going to bring home a significant other? Have you thought at all about online dating or have you just acceptedthefactthatyoumightbealoneforever?

And on, and on, and on.

We’ll endure packed planes and pat-downs, gridlock traffic and kitchen meltdowns, yet every year we throw our bags over our shoulders and once more unto the breach we go. This year I’m seriously questioning it along with the whole of the holiday season. Perhaps it’s my prickly nugget of a soul, but I no longer see the point. It’s always there waiting to ruin the end of my November and entire December by making me proffer gifts and good cheer, pies (yes, the pumpkin pie was me), and an inordinate amount of patience. (Is it even possible to think about what comes after all of it - the weighty unavoidable horror of facing yet another year come and go?).

It’s. all. just. too. much.

So as I left the train I gave a silent nod of understanding to my fellow New Yorkers all on the brink of tomorrow’s mayhem. Yes, my eyes told them, the questions will come but you don’t have to answer. The moment you return to the city the rest of your year will disappear among lots of red and green lights and you’ll think there’s nothing you can do about it. You will be asked to attend office holiday parties and Christmas weddings and at least one terrible Broadway show you can’t afford with a friend visiting from out of town. But take care. You’ve been here before. Know it’s never too late to take a stand against these holiday traditions of yesteryear that rule our lives. Invitations can be declined. Friends and family can still love us even if we don’t buy them an iPad. We don’t have to keep going through the motions when the motions no longer make any sense.

We are New Yorkers (for crying out loud), and if anyone can take back this season, it’s us.

Serenity Now.

Oh I'd say it's easy to forget that the world doesn't, in fact, revolve around you once you've been living in this city for a while. I wasn't surprised really when this study came out last week that New Yorkers are some of the most stressed out folks in America. It’s the economy (stupid), but it’s also the commutes and the people and the rents (too damn high). The list goes on. I mean sure, we've chosen this lifestyle, but then again, what does that say about us?

It was an early morning and I was tired after getting under three hours of sleep the night before and I managed, somehow, to get out of the office long enough to run next door to Starbucks for coffee on a day when I knew there wasn't enough coffee in all of the city to get me through it. I knew right away when I walked in that something was off. It was quiet and the line was much too long, and (horror of horrors), it wasn't moving. At all. I saw a few people shake their heads and throw their arms up in exasperation and then walk out. Places to go people to see, man. I tried to remain patient and inched forward for what felt like an eternity. In my attempt to keep my eyes open as I stood there, I looked around and saw an ambulance pull up outside. That’s interesting, I thought. And then I saw the medics pull out a big white shiny gurney and start to frantically move in my direction. Very interesting.

It was then that I put two and two together (I'm extra slow without caffeine before 9AM), and they pushed by me and this long line of sleepy impatient New Yorkers and made their way to the back of the store. Before long I saw that they were actually in the process of picking up a barista off the floor and strapping him into their little contraption. His face was red, his blond hair matted down with sweat, and I knew I was supposed to look away but couldn't. And then it happened. It bubbled up from my stomach to my aching head, and there was nothing I could do to stop it: Of course, I thought. Unbelievable. Of all the mornings for some guy to pass out in Starbucks it had to be today at this exact moment, didn’t it?

I immediately hated myself.

But that's the thing, was it even really me? The reaction I had was automatic, an almost subconscious response, the kind of response I've been trained to have especially living here in this city of endless inconveniences. All I wanted was a Grande bold. Just seconds earlier that was the biggest problem of my day so far (well, I mean, I guess), and now here I was watching this young little barista who made one too many café latte's that morning getting taken to the hospital. He just couldn't take it anymore. Passed right out. Extra hot, no whip, decaf? I'm done with this, he thought. Call 911.

After they wheeled him out I did eventually get my coffee, but it felt wrong standing there adding the cream and then walking out with it on my own two healthy feet (surely karma was going to drop a piano on me as soon as I got outside, right?). When did I get like this? When did we all get like this? We're stressed, yes, but there has to be a middle ground somewhere between being annoyed at someone’s extreme misfortune and calling the paramedics because of it. I vowed then and there to make a change and attempt to see the world and the people in it differently, because maybe I'd been looking at it the wrong way for a while now. Who knows who this guy was back there whipping up foam and espresso, and where he'd come from and what he's been dealing with. Who was I to be so quick with my impatience for just a cup of coffee? Have a little understanding, have a little faith.

75% of us are stressed, according to this survey by The American Psychological Association, compared to 65% nationally. Apparently we eat too much and are unhappy with our jobs and we’ve yet to really reach a “Network” moment (I’m mad as hell…etc. etc.). What’s going on in the rest of the country that’s so great? Who knows, but my first thought was that I bet there aren’t many people walking around getting upset with their coffee provider while he’s en route to the emergency room. Maybe in New York we get so used to praying at the alter of being-on-the-go-all-of-the-time (we never sleep, right?) that we’ve been sleepwalking right through our lives, ignoring everyone around us and chalking them up to just one more thing we have to deal with, one more thing to make us stressed. And we don’t need one more thing to make us stressed. We know that.

So tomorrow everything changes, the way I order my coffee, the way I address that person standing at the top of the stairs of the subway looking at their Blackberry, the way I react to my credit card bill….maybe then my blood pressure will drop and I’ll feel better, happier, more mellow. Who knows, maybe then the people around me will start to change, too. And we can change! That concept won the vote in 2008 and heck, New York (and life) is based around the one certain fact that things will forever be constantly changing.

We need to accept that, yes, however also there is the unavoidable knowledge that in a city with lots of open windows looming above us with every step we take, one really never can tell when those pianos are going to start to fall. I figure it can't hurt to be prepared.

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 non-sticky 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.

"I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service..."

It’s easy to lose touch with people. Life in New York (and everywhere) gets busy quickly and suddenly that plan for an email, or a drinks meet-up or weeknight dinner has come and gone, leaving you wondering if perhaps too much time has elapsed that you need to rethink the relationship altogether.

A longtime friends birthday arrived last week and I sent a text (why I never call anyone on their birthday anymore I can’t say) with well wishes and signing off by telling them how much I love them. Five minutes later I got a text back:

Wrong #.
(Love hurts.) Mz. Auterberry.

Wow. So much time had elapsed that this close friend had changed their phone number and I wasn’t aware of it. Actually, much more to the point, this friend changed numbers and never even bothered to tell me!

I always say that maintaining a relationship of any kind is a lot of work, but this was just too much. Mz. Auterberry (whoever she is), basically summed of my overall feelings on the subject, literally sending me a text with what very well may be the story of my life: terribly sorry, wrong number, try again, better luck next time.