saturday morning movie date

i believe in crying the way most people believe in exercise.

that it should be engaged in often and that it's essential for the health of the body.

i'm in need of a cry. a good cry, a solid cry. i'm not terribly sure why, all i know is  i can feel my body calling out for it.

usually when this happens there's a backlog of tears and i never find the release until that fated moment when i hit the top of my head on the underside of the bathroom's standing sink.  it doesn't hurt much--it never does--but it results in pretty substantial heaves and me crumpled despairingly against the cool tiles of the bathroom floor. (i've lived a life on that bathroom floor).

to prevent this i'm taking myself to the movies this morning. a date! for (with) myself!  i've indulged in a medium soy chai latte (fear of soy and sugar be damned today!). a six dollar movie ticket, a cool, dark theatre, and a space in which to silently water my soul? huzzah! (does that sound dramatic and cliche? that watering of the soul? oh but it is! this is all serious and important work i'm going about.)

alright, must be off, i'll let you know how it goes.

image credit: unknown

(if anyone does know who

this is by please comment below).

week of july 23 - july 29.

this is the week i spent more time waiting for the subway to arrive than actually riding it.
the week i rearranged my room and brought fresh lavender into my home to keep myself calm.
the week my aunt and i sat in yankee stadium eating ice cream (me) and drinking beer (her) while waiting out a rain delay. the week i cut bangs and painted my toenails red.

to live in this world, you must be able to do three things:
to love what is mortal:
to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

mary oliver

the hudson (from where i sleep)

i have a skewed sense of money. i'll pay four bucks for a cup of coffee with only the slightest twinge of regret, but i absolutely refuse to leave the refrigerator door open for one second longer than necessary. don't get me started on running a half-empty dishwasher--i feel bad enough running the full one.

and then there's air conditioning. my guilt at turning on the small window unit in my room knows no bounds.

my stomach is in knots just thinking about it. actually, come to think of it, my stomach may be in knots because i just broke one of the keys on my brand-spankin'-new-macbook-air...sigh. kerfuffle. splat. {feeling like a bit of a disaster today. most days, really}.

but that's another story for another day.

back to the air conditioner.

when new york got hot this summer and the heat rash broke out on my stomach i swallowed my guilt and started pressing that glorious little button of that cooling machine. at first i'd pull my reading chair right up to it and let it blow over my face. i'd close the doors to my room and create a little ice box: air conditioner, fan, closed windows, closed doors, and me in the corner--a greedy little kid stealing cool air from the pantry and hoping not to be caught.

from there my idea of it expanded. i'd turn it on and walk about the room, unapologetically. i even took to sleeping with it on at night (though usually i'd wake sometime just after three to turn it off in a half-wake/half-sleep/half-guilt stupor.

and then new york got hotter. and these old buildings--these buildings that have seen it all and tell countless stories began to take that heat on and in and i started to lose my mind.

and just as the mind went, clarity arrived (go figure). why not move my bed as close to the window unit as possible? why not switch my room around for the sake of the practical.

when i took this room--this room with two separate window looking out over the hudson--i knew one thing: my desk would sit between those windows. and mornings would be spent there with coffee in hand taking in the water's gleam and getting work done.

from there i arranged the bed. the bookcase. the dresser. and it was just right. just as it should be.

but having flipped the room, for the sake of the practical, well, i can see the hudson and the green of the palisades when i wake in the morning (from my bed). gone is the image of the red building across the way--a building who's facade i loved and was always glad to greet upon rising. turns out river and trees trump red brick, every time (go figure).

i'm not sure why i'm writing about this this morning. i think because there's a metaphor in it.

i didn't want to move my bed. i thought it was in the perfect spot. but i did because i knew i'd be cooler at night. turns out, the air conditioning isn't even what i most love about the shift. it's the view. the view i least expected. the view that i'm not quite sure how i didn't work out months ago was best seen from this position.

my mind is in a fog this morning. what i'm getting at (and what i need to take away) is that shifting one's perspective can illuminate a lot more than you bargained for.


hmph. something like that. and because i always like seeing people's space and home and such, i give you some of mine:

these were the words i took away after seeing the final installment of the harry potter journey

words are, in my not so humble opinion,
our most inexhaustible source of magic. 

harry potter and the deathly hallows








dear j. k. rowling, 


thank you for illuminating the world. and showing us we already have all the tools to change it. 


sincerely,


your faithful reader--one whose only act of schoolgirl rebellion was to sit in the back of eighth-grade american history with the sorcerer's stone on her lap, just below her desk, hoping no one would catch her

to the readers who suggested what follows: well played.

escape.

one of the best pieces of advice i ever got was as follows:

do five things you don't want to do. and do them all before noon.

some days, like today, the list begins with (1) getting out of bed and (2) taking a shower. and i continue on from there.

i don't know if it's the heat, the long days of summer or what but i've been feeling a lot like turning on my "no vacancy" light. there are things i simply don't want to deal with.

i'm starting to think i should be sequestered to a remote island for the coming month where my interaction with people will be minimal.

actually, come to think of it, a month in natural sunshine, by real water, far away from the concerns of every-day-life...that's ideal.

hmmm. how do i make that happen?

photos by: 

liivia s (1)

antipodeuse (2, 3)

my manhattan: and summer rushes in.

{i am a terrible person in this heat. it turns me into an utterly horrible human being}.

for anyone who wishes to enjoy the real new york i invite you to come stay in a prewar apartment--an apartment without central air. let's make it a sixth floor walk-up, shall we (just for kicks)? sixth floor walk-up means no elevator.

now i invite you to bring your groceries up those six-flights into your non-airconditioned apartment. keep in mind it's 100 degrees and new york humidity rivals the very best (i'm from houston, so i should know). remember that in order to get those groceries you had to head into the bowels of the city and travel on a steal contraption (the subway) with countless other terrible human beings (made so by the heat) where you fought tooth and nail to get a small basket through narrow aisles and to not be run over by women half-a-foot shorter who've lived in new york so long they give the word entitlement new meaning.

this is just a slice of life right now.

winter here is long and hard. and i always suffer a little bout of sadness. the thing is, i'm starting to think the heat has the same effect.

the texan in me knows little more to do than pray--pray for the sweet release of a thunderstorm.

thank goodness for sunday brunches with the best of girlfriends, friday night viewings of harry potter, and thai papaya salads to keep me from all-together-falling-apart.

here's to hoping this next week the rain comes, things cool off a bit, and my friends continue to tolerate my changing disposition.

when i start to get sad,

the violet: summer edition.

there's really nothing i can say. the magazine speaks for itself.

so take a look, won't you?

in her palm.

she was really good at this point. at this staying one step ahead of him.

she always knew where he was. knew which way to turn her head so he'd see her and she'd noticeably not-see-him.

it wasn't terribly fair. she knew that. and it wasn't terribly honest. but it was her right. and dammit, she was gonna take advantage of that.

not caring. the appearance of not caring. that was her gift.

or curse. she knew that. she carried that.

but she did wonder if this one saw through it.

if he knew that she sometimes went to bathroom just to take long, deep breaths. or to cry, even (though that was only the once, so...).

she could disappear behind her eyes. retreat to a region he couldn't touch--or at least, couldn't see that he touched. only one man had ever pulled her from there. only one man had ever said, i see you fleeing--i see you fleeing there and i refuse to let you go. even if it is hard, and even if i can't love you, i demand that you live through this--feelingly. it seemed like an unfair demand. but it wasn't. because she loved him and in his own way, he her. it was his great act of kindness that pulling-her-out even as he pulled away. but that was so long ago. and he was a better man than these others. or, well, he knew her better.

 something like that.

but just the other day this one had caught her. she had stood up and there he was. he wasn't supposed to be there. she wasn't supposed to see him. there was no preparing for this. and so her stomach dropped to her toes. and she felt the heat of the whoosh. and because she couldn't retreat fast enough she simply averted her eyes--looked away.

but she was left wondering if in that moment she'd been found out. if in the infinitely small moment of space between seeing him and looking down, had he seen her? for the first time? had he noticed she carried her heart right there in the palm of her hand?

probably not. they never usually did.

photo by lobymustard

on flickr.

if this isn't just one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen:

dreaming of lolla. (as a girl does).

wanting to take a quick vacation this summer i bought myself a ticket to lollapalooza.

yes, i will be going to chicago to see good friends and good music. and i find myself getting mighty excited.

right now the excitement has landed on two things specifically:

this is perfectly normal, non?

photo of charlie fink (noah & the whale) 

by frazer harrison/getty images

photo of taylor rice (local natives)

  via The Stranger

this is just to say:

there's something about a man who can rock a pair of ray-bans, you know?

you will always have some excuse
not to live your life.

chuck palahniuk

writing about the intangible.

sometimes the only thing that'll get me to crawl into bed at night is the thought of the morning latte that awaits the other side of sleep--the one from the coffee shop halfway up the hill.

the coffee i drink each morning--whether it's cafe bustelo in the green mug of my kitchen cabinet, or the latte from the corner cafe--it is tangible. i can hold it between my hands and feel it. it is real and right and mine.

but more than that it is a marker. some sort of touchstone--benchmark. a portal, really.

i pick up a cup of coffee and i remember when i first began to drink the stuff--sitting at the dark, circular kitchen table in an apartment on 104th. quietly sipping as i mustered both the courage and energy to face another day. to walk out the heavy door of 2B and get myself to school. morning after morning.

and with a warm cup of coffee between my hands i remember the time i went to australia--the first time i ever traveled out of the country by myself--halfway across the world. i remember having my first latte there and the revolution it was. heaven was that latte. sweet and earthy, unlike anything before. i remember those two weeks traveling alone. how i'd sit in cafes or outdoors and attempt to write. i remember the pendulum swing between good days and bearable days.

and i remember last summer in utah when sadness stole upon me once more. and how i couldn't breathe. i remember the two days i spent in park city with my parents. how each of those two mornings we began at a breakfast shop: bagel with egg and cheese, the new york times, and a medium-sized latte. and how those two days were a respite in which i felt safe and loved. and remembered, if only for a moment, that this passing, eclipsing cloud of a sadness would in fact do just that, pass. even if it took some time.

the coffee is tangible. but it's not the point. i know that. but it points to the point--helps me see just how far i've come. between the cups of coffee and the memories has been a life. each morning coffee contains each and every cup (day) that has come before it--allows me to pay homage to who i was, who i am, and the space between.

helps me make tangible what words will never fully do justice.

i was in love once. with a man. really and truly desperately in love. i would have followed him to the ends of the earth had he asked. my first love. and in all the time since i have carried the seeds of that love in me. the memory has filled me. and the knowledge that i am capable of a great and profound affection--the very kind that shifts our makeup and demands that we be more--well it has served as a bedrock of sorts.

i write about vespas and i write about lattes. i write about long-lashes and curly hair and broad shoulders because they are the tangible--they are the portal. but they are not the point. adventure and whimsy and absolute trust. willingness to fight, to disagree, to stand by the person even when you most disagree--those things are the point, i understand that. my parents will have been married for thirty-three years come this august. and trust me when i say they have modeled "the point" for me each and every day. i could not be prouder of them and their many accomplishments.

i am not so busy planning a life based on whimsical notions that i'm not grounded in the reality of what's unfolding before me. but i get to dream. and i get to play. and love is impossible to write about. it is abstract and profound and so beyond the understanding of this human language that i choose to write about the small, tangible things and then hope that in some way the metaphor translates--transcends.

i write about what many might consider insignificant because i know that in my own life--in my single life--in coming back from the edge of absolute sadness--those seemingly insignificant, ridiculous things like coffee and a new blouse and a window over-looking the hudson--well, my God, it has been those things that have made all the difference.

friday night.

on friday night i had a date (don't get your panties in a twist ladies--it was a friend date) with my classmate and one time prom-companion, ben.

we hadn't seen each other in a year. a year, an impossible amount of time!!

but i tell you it felt like mere weeks. i laughed so hard and was coaxed into drinking far more than my usual amount.





the nice thing about going out with ben is you know that what begins as dinner will inevitably turn into an eight hour tour of some of nyc's best haunts.

and that for those eight hours life will be nothing short of really wonderful.

you should date an illiterate girl. by charles warnke.

can i say i think i love this ever more than date a girl who reads? i think it's the male voice i find so moving. something about the juxtaposition of the male voice speaking about the power of a woman who does read... i think that's why this undoes me. 

anyway, just thought it was something lovely to start the week of with. 

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

summer in the city.

it was so hot in new york the other day.

so hot that i wanted nothing more than to get home, strip to my bones, get as close to the floor as possible and just lie there. not move. just press into any remaining winter that the floor might've retained.

instead i purchased a pint of ben and jerry's at the corner store and trekked down the hill, toward the river, breathing in the heavy, still, hot air.

i was barely in the elevator before i could take it no longer. off the top of that ice cream flew and there i found myself face first in a pint of ben and jerry's half-baked.

no spoon.  just dove right in.

it was not a pretty sight. me face first in a pint of ice cream.

and as i was there getting equal parts cold and mess all over, the thought i kept coming back to was: if something were to happen to me. if in the next few days something really bad were to happen and the police had to go looking for some trace or trail, they'd come across this. this elevator surveillance. of me. face first. pint of ice cream.

i weighed my odds. sent up a prayer for my continued health and safety. and sojourned on (foodie that i am).

and just as the elevator neared the sixth floor, the doors opened and my fifth-floor neighbor stepped on-- the one who always says hello--the one with the children i remember to ask about. he appraised me. smiled. said something about catching me in a weak moment.

and i just stood there, pint in hand. one painful floor more. face covered in chocolate and flushed with being-found-out.

i finally arrived home. pulled out a bowl. plucked a spoon from the drawer. stripped to a tank and shorts. situated myself directly in front of the fan and carefully (and demurely) ate what was left.


new york city living really is terribly glamorous. and sometimes a gal shouldn't have to wait.

photo. 

clarification.

i've always wanted a little boy.

liam, we'll call him. or gavin. something short and strong. a warrior's name.

and his hair will be lighter than mine. curly.

this much i know, this much i have always known,

that someday, somewhere a little boy is waiting for me.

but when naomi was pregnant, i sat on the long subway train headed uptown and thought of what that means--to grow a baby. of all the million miracles that have to take place. it's staggering. the whole thing is absolutely unnerving in its power. and as i sat there, i imagined the moment a child enters into a world.

i imagined giving birth.

and the thing is i imagined having a girl. i'd never thought of it before. it'd never crossed my mind. and the power of the image was so grand, so beautiful, so absolutely wonderful that i began to cry. just a little. just a few tears of happiness. for how wonderful this life is. for how absolutely divine this world in which we live can be.

a little girl. heaven.

i was telling one of the guys i work with about this--was telling him because he has a new baby girl at home and anyone can just see that he's burning with a fire for that baby--that he didn't expect to love fatherhood so much but heaven help him, if it's not just the very best thing he's ever done in this life.

so he listened to my subway tale, gave me one of those slow burning smiles and said baby, you're sunk. you need yourself a man. 

and i laughed because he's right. i know he's right.

it seems to me that men in new york, when it comes to that first date, all ask the same question: what are you looking for? and what they mean is are you looking for commitment? marriage? someone to fool around with? and i'm starting to think that that question, asked on any first date, might just be the first red flag, a deal-breaker in and of itself.

because it's so shortsighted. it's an attempt to define what hasn't even yet begun.

yes, i want to get married one day. and yes, i want to have children. and by golly, i want to do all these things and remain tethered to my hopeless-romantic roots.

but this is not to say i'm not practical. (but practical isn't terribly interesting and so i don't often write about it).

i will get married when i meet the man i want to marry. you're not him? no worries, let's have our wine, enjoy it, and why shouldn't we have another date?   

i am not in the business of looking for a husband. i am just trying to live a life. fully and deeply.

how can i answer the question of what i want when asked on the first date? because really the question is what i want with you and i hardly know you--it's only the first date! what i want is to find out.

to find out, what i want, with you.

i want to live my way into the answer.

and let's find out. together. shall we?

i worry about the blog. when it comes to men, i worry about the blog.

if i'm interested in a guy i try to keep this little corner of the internet a secret. i try not to give out my last name because google is mighty easy to navigate and i'm not so naive as to think that men don't know how to use it.

i'm not ashamed of anything i've put here. but i am aware. aware that it's in many ways a one-sided portrayal. and a whole heck of a lot of information--all at once, at that.

and goodness, call me old-fashioned, but i'd kind of like to tell the man all of this stuff. face to face. and i'd like that coming out of my mouth it should be the first time he hears it.

does this make sense?

new york is stunning this morning. cool and sweet. a breeze issuing forth from the hudson. and sitting here, next to the window i am happy. when i sat down to write this morning i had every intention of describing the roar of the fan behind me and my hopeless devotion to it. instead i got this. forgive me, won't you?

we are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well
that death will tremble to take us. 

charles bukowski

after school. (after juilliard).

i remember at the age of nineteen sitting on the weathered red chairs in the lobby of juilliard when a dear friend in his fourth and final year took a breath, appraised the chair, appraised me and said: it's going to be strange not coming here every day. i'm not sure how i'll do it.


no one tells you how hard the time just after college is. no one prepares you for it.

for the countless hours you traverse the city taking more classes, meeting more people, working never-ending jobs to pay the never-ending bills, all the while wondering what possessed you to get a bachelor of fine arts in the first place? for those nights you find yourself on the bathroom floor because really that red wine did not go down well or really that guy was so-not-the-one, but this feeling, well--goodness, it sure does feel like a broken heart.

(or the nights, like tonight, you find yourself sitting propped against the toilet because the bathroom is the only place you can connect to the internet).

but then again, no one prepares you for how it's better than all that's come before. how it's richer and fuller.

for that first phone call from a girlfriend to tell you she's pregnant--for how much fun it is to watch these people you love marry and grow families. and how you get to choose--yes, choose!--who you surround yourself with. who you love. who you laugh with. who you call in the middle of the night--from the bathroom floor--when that old sadness creeps in.

and no one says how there's nothing so much like love in this life. love of a child. of a friend. love of all those small things that amount to a life.

and lord help me, if there's anything i've learned from naomi over the years, it's how to love the small things.

the thing is, watching as she and josh parent eleanor--as they give selflessly of themselves, i have a feeling that in the coming years i'm going to get a good schooling on the big things, as well.



dear naomi, josh, and little miss e: thank you for a wonderful weekend, your wonderful friendship, and the love you so freely give.




(plus, it's so fun to hang out with people that lug their camera everywhere and take just as many photos as i do {most people don't get it}).

trading in manhattan for the district and old friends. (mostly for the friends).

just above my bed.

it does, it really does. 

lyrics from

noah & the whale's

old joy

made by this lovely lady.

a love letter to our future life (the vespa dream).

we're gonna have a black vespa, you and i.
for the two of us, it'll have to be black.
we'll tackle manhattan with that vespa.
find the perfect basket to fit our groceries,
abandon it on nights when we've drunk
too much at our favorite west village haunt.
returning the next morning for a restorative mocha
before we push in the key and speed back home. home,
where we'll collapse in bed with groans and giggles
and pass out till late afternoon. i'll wake to find you looking
right at me: lets do it again, you'll say. a slow smile will fill
me as i burry my head in that special, sloping valley
of your neck and you'll know i am
lost. i am yours. and i will go. of course
i will go.

dear ladies,

i need your help. i'm working on the summer issue of the violet and i need to know your favorite beauty products! what do you most like? what drugstore purchases can't you live with out? where are you willing to spend a little more money--concealer, foundation, the perfect blush shade?

since i've declared this the summer of red lips and my beloved clinique party red is at the nub (and they no longer make it {blerg}) i allowed the woman at sephora to talk me into the pretty expensive YSL rouge pur couture. it's very red (read: of the orange family) but she told me it would work with the yellow in my skin and then went for my achilles' heel by saying it's all the rage in europe! ah, the coup...anything to make me more european. time will tell if it was worth the extra bucks.

bring on those answers!!

on a bench in a park.

there was a stolen hour when i was in boston a week ago. an hour in which i found myself on a bench in boston commons sitting next to one of my oldest friends. we sat, the two of us, dark, green wood beneath us, looking out over children and their families, young couples, and the ever present waddle of the ducks.

i was fourteen when i fell half-in-love with sam. he was seventeen and, heaven help me, did he seem old and wise. i was out of my depth around him. knee-deep in wonder and hormones and absolute amazement.

we have lived countless lives since that summer so many years ago. the two of us. we've each lived countless lives in opposite directions.

but just over a week ago, on a bench in a park, in a place called boston we sat and spoke. of all that we know and don't know. all that we've learned and are just now waking to.

mostly of love. of how terribly hard it is. and how terribly painful it is. and why, oh why do people the world over subject themselves to it's brutal whims and terrifying fancies again. and again. and again?

because it's deliriously good. that's what we decided. because of just how delicious it can be--if only for a short time.

we spoke of the beginning of it. of how you can barely look at the person for fear of being found out. and the end of it. of how you can barely look at the person for fear of... being. found. out.

and sam teased me. asked if i still doodled my name across notebooks with the surnames of all the men, the world over, i'd ever been to afraid to look at? and i laughed. tilted my head a little and laughed. no, no of course not. that's not to say i haven't thought about my name next to his. and his. and his and his. 


and do you know what sam did in that moment? he didn't make the expected comment about girls and their nonsense, he just leaned back against the bench, took in the water before us, appraised the park in which he'd spent so much of childhood, and said, it's hard for us--us hopeless romantics, isn't it?


and i smiled. fell half in love with him all over again and thought, certainly, it is.


and if i wasn't tethered to sam before, i am now. for that moment--that one right there. that simple moment of absolute inclusion when somehow, i least expected it.

and even if it is hard, and it is, certainly, i wouldn't change it. not for anything.

we're a band of thieves, us hopeless romantics. stealing the world of all its very best love.

photo by eric neuman.

cherish your solitude. take trains by yourself
to places you have never been. sleep out alone
under the stars. learn how to drive a stick shift.
go so far away that you stop being afraid of not
coming back. say no when you don't want to do
something. say yes if your instincts are strong, even 
if everyone around you disagrees. decide whether 
you want to be liked or admired. decide if fitting in
is more important than finding out what you're doing here.
believe in kissing.


even ensler

because i love npr. this video. and you get two songs for the price of one.

three songs (for the price of one), actually. 

what cannot.

when i think back on the many years i spent acting my mind gravitates to the space just off-stage. to the countless moments just before an entrance. the great gaping mouth of that threshold between reality and make-believe. the cool, dark nooks ringing-round the edge of light. the sacred space in which fear and potential mingled, lived-side-by-side, drew breaths one from the other.

and then onto the stage. into the space. into the light.

i was never aware of being watched. never aware of even thinking up there. it was...it just was. perhaps the purest, most authentic form of myself. but cloaked under the pretense of...pretend.

(and under the pretense of pretend everything is a bit more real).

i don't miss acting. i don't think i do. if i'm really honest, i don't. and then i feel tremendously guilty for the not. the not missing. the not wanting. the non-pursuit.

but maybe i do. maybe the not is really the non-remembrance. perhaps if i found myself in those wings once more i might suddenly become aware that i have lived the past three years without ever once breathing.

i don't think so. because there is this, this writing. and there are lungs to these words.

but the thing about writing--at least in this domain--is there is an immediacy and a lack of anonymity that i am suddenly finding all-together-terrifying.

i find myself. center stage. staring out. breaking down that fourth-wall. aware of all those eyes. 

and i am, for the first time, more aware of what cannot be written than what can.

of how i cannot write of the boy i met on the bus from boston. or the one who took me to a wine bar in the west village. i cannot write about the man who's face i've conjured up so many times i can't remember what he looks like.

point of fact, i cannot write about men at all. except the imagined. always the imagined. only the imagined.

i cannot write about loneliness or the holes in faith that pepper most mornings.

i can't write about the new scented soap that lives in my bathroom and makes me utterly sick to my stomach. how the scent creeps out into the hallway, into the living. room. how i hate that soap. hate what it stands for.

i cannot write about any of these things because these things--these thoughts--are tethered to people. and these people deserve their anonymity, if anyone.

i cannot write about the monotony of the days now abutting one.into.theother. nor how i am suddenly aware that a thinner frame doesn't make any of this easier. i mean i knew that, but now i know that. there's always someone skinnier, blonder, more vibrant.

how it's apathy i find most dangerous. most unnerving. how i take in deep breaths and am met with no air.

i cannot write about how i just want someone to go grocery shopping with. how i went to make dinner for them. do their laundry. it all sounds so terribly un-feminist. so not-of-the-moment.

and if these things are to be written, to be read--if they are to be read would the words lose their air?

an open letter to any man (the world over) who may ever reject a woman:

dear man-lucky-enough-to-have-a-woman-ask-you-on-a-date: 

keep it simple. and pay homage to the deeply courageous thing she did by putting herself out there.

(1) express how deeply flattered you are and (2) simply say, no thank you.

that is all. leave it there. let it alone. even if she responds. say nothing, or if you must (and only if you must) reemphasize the above two points.

anything else that you might say--in hopes of making her feel better (or even yourself)--will inevitably be the thing she finds patronizing and upsetting. and of course, it will inevitably be the thing she replays again and again.

and then, and i can't emphasize this enough. in the days that follow: stop being so damn nice. stop being the guy she liked in the first place. it makes it that much harder.


she will like you all the more and all the less for the kindness you offer up. and she will feel crummy for not being able to meet your friendly gaze. so please don't ask or expect her to.

just a friendly piece of advice,

meg

date a girl who reads.

it's been one of those weeks. one of those weeks where i've been feeling a little...less than. a little unworthy or unfilled or who knows...just not enough i suppose.

wednesday afternoon i found myself with nothing to do. so i took myself to the corner cafe and put pen to paper (so to speak) and as the words flowed out i thought, i have worlds within me. 

i have endless stores of worlds in the form of words. we all do. i may not have the perfect job or the dream man, but i am filled by words. and when all is said and done they satiate me in a way nothing else can.

so in trolling through blogs last night this hit a particularly poignant (and potent) note. 

(for the life of me i now can't remember where i read it, but if it's yours, you know it, email me and i'll give you some credit!)

Date a Girl Who Reads by Rosemarie Urquico 

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by God, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

ps: happy fourth!!!!