There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by myself.
Brian Andreas
i was reading the words of brian andreas when i wrote this. i think part of the secret of success in life is to find those--those in your life and immediate circle of friends, as well as poets and musicians and artists--find those people that speak to the very deepest parts of yourself and cultivate those friendships, those affairs. cultivate a taste that no one can question--that is yours--fill yourself up with that love.
i'm realizing i'm a better person when i begin the day with oatmeal, some really good music (lately, the tallest man on earth) and the words of someone so much smarter than myself (like brian andreas).
remember when a few weeks back i posted about happiness and asked that you all might help me make a list of tangible things to pull us from that place of funk? well yesterday, this one was added:
i am great. i need nothing but myself to make me happy.
and just this week both the huffington post and the guardian wrote about a new study in which researchers suggest the caffeine in coffee might actually alter the brain chemistry in such a way as to ward off depression.
as someone who's been wildly depressed, is hopelessly devoted to coffee, and really has written quite a bit about how coffee is one of the things that keeps me happy...i think the articles (and perhaps the study too) miss the point...didn't expect that did you?
we'll talk about it tomorrow. for now i'm off to enjoy a mid-afternoon pick-me-up.
lord knows i love the head and the heart. having seen them last february i was particularly struck by some of the lyrics this go round. how simple the syntax and profound the thought.
this go round jonathan russel came out and sang a solo song as part of the encore.
and i found the song itself--with its potent words--one of the most captivating moments in the night.
(so enjoy this video i found on youtube). and a very happy thursday to you all.
is it muggy where you are? new york has been mugged in (let's call it that, shall we?) for like two weeks now and i'm desperate for fall to return.
i was walking across the park two mornings ago. the air warm, sticky--battling off fall's advance.
i shuffled along the cobblestones lining central park south lost in thought--lost in a mess of thoughts, a tangle of half-formed, ill-informed notions, no one clear or strong. and i was swimming. taking laps in the discomfort of it all when one surfaced, thrummed up and through. came out before i even knew what was what was happening.
clear as day and eight words.
it was a prayer.
God, grant me the courage to be happy.
and from my body there went a little bit of air. oh. so that's my great wish. the courage to be happy.
i didn't pray for happiness, didn't ask for the thing itself. my plea was for the courage.
the courage to pursue happiness.
sadness is known territory. it is a settling back on one's heel. it is a falling inward that comes naturally and takes little to no work. that's not entirely true, it takes a great deal of work, but the work is easy and deceptively alluring.
happiness, well, happiness demands that i be bold. demands that i say yes (most especially when i don't want to). it demands that i value myself enough to feel worthy of happiness.
ay, there's the rub. there's the tricky, unsettling part: it demands that i value myself enough to feel worthy of happiness. why is that so hard, to say, i am worth fighting for? this good thing, it's okay that i want it. and it's okay that i might get it.
the prayer, that monday morning prayer, was an answer, an affirmation in and of itself. it was illumination.
but in riding the train home last night, clinging to my little prayer, there came a bit more.
relax into it.
fight for happiness. be bold. say yes. and then relax into it. ride the wave. recognize that this thing you think is terrifying might actually be thrilling. and you'll look back in ten years and wonder where that feeling went--that one that you're fighting so hard against right now--and you'll find yourself praying for a way to get it back. imagine that. so enjoy it. live in it. revel in the unknown and uncertain and the delicious discomfort of it.
and know that you're worth it.
(post script: know that in reading this over i started to cry. and i'm not entirely sure why. perhaps because as true as i know this all to be, there are moments where it is so very hard. to fight and not know and not understand why what's happening is happening. life is hard, you know?).
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
i was going to wake up and post something brilliant.
i reorganized my room instead. (it looks like a disaster now, but the day is calling and i must hence...).
i always know when i'm getting sick because i feel like i can't breathe. a constriction of air in the chest. panic. that's always where it begins. lack of breath. tightness in the chest.
{i'm be the girl lathered in vick's vapo rub even before the first grumbling of the stomach flu}. no relation. those two things have no relation. so my mind moves.
this go round it was strep. and something about sickness...it makes me so terribly lonely. suddenly i'm eight again, but there's no one there to rub my back until i fall sleep.
thus i was a miserable human being this weekend. and i'm still a bit batty--feeling like the medication should be working faster.
but a patience is a virtue. just not my virtue. {le sigh}. i'm working on it.
(so let's pretend i posted what follows last friday. we can all imagine, can't we?)...
i really like portugal. the man. (the band). so much so that i find myself trolling their facebook page and enjoying this, this, and mostly this. (don't think i haven't slept on a chocolate bar myself. i was so confused when i woke up).
seeing these guys at the bowery ballroom this week. so much has changed since i saw them last february. will be interesting to mark the passage of time while listening to their gorgeous words.
sometimes i go to call out to you. sitting in my plump reading chair with my coffee on the desk and a large bowl of oatmeal before me--flax seeds, blueberries, almonds and all. and i read something. sitting there i come across some words that draw all the breath from my body and i stretch my arms to the sky, and my toes to the wall and there is this impulse:
babe. i want to call out. i want to turn my head to you, babe, listen to this. these words...have you ever heard anything so remarkable?
and then i remember that you're not there. and i could be sad. but i'm not. because you will be. soon enough, you will be.
I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand & the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep & there are no words for that.
remember this. this sacred time of night. this alone time. this feel of the air. this ritual that has made your life these last few years, remember this. your days by the river are numbered. these carefree days--untouched and totally afraid--are numbered.
i turn 26 in less than two weeks. and my trepidation at the larger number has me wanting to celebrate
it all! and intensely! i want to see my friends and throw a party and stay out all night dancing and ask for extravagant gifts because...why not?! well, i know why not, but i can at least ask for them, no?
three things topping my list:
1. a really nice camera bag. yes, this one is expensive. but here's how i think of it: i spent a lot of money on my camera. i want to invest in the very thing that will help protect it. i want it to be stylish so i can feel good about lugging it (and thus the camera) anywhere and i want it to be able to double as a place to put my wallet. so for a purse/camera bag...steal, i say! or, at least, wise investment.
2. dinner at pure food and wine. the food is vegetarian, vegan, and raw (not to mention organic and local). not everyone's food dream, it is mine.
3. a record player. because why not?
there are of course other things i want...like an unlimited, lifetime supply of massages from my favorite place on 80th or a facial at bliss or even a reflexology session at angel feet in the west village. but for now, i'll stick with these three.
(for anyone who might remark on how expensive this all is: it's a wish/dream list and a birthday/christmas wish list, at that.
and i don't expect to get everything i ask for so calm down, already).
i am insecure. i second-guess. i worry and wonder and spin tall-tales, fabricate nonsense, pull from from thin-air. i make myself small, diminish my own worth and power. i relive memory after memory until they are worn dull from overuse, from being taken out too often, exposed to the air and error of misremembering.
and then i think that perhaps what makes me a woman is the co-existance of all these things with a deep-seated sense of how i could, given the chance, transform the world--so potent and reaching is my strength.
i've been worrying a lot lately. so much so that at times i can feel my chest closing in on itself--constricting breath, creating a needle of pain.
and then a few nights back, from that deep place of sleep, i had a dream in which i lived through the very thing i'd obsessed about and mulled over and doubted might ever be. and before i knew it was just a dream, while it was happening, i stepped out of myself and spoke. the deepest, fullest, truest part of me--the bit closest to divinity, spoke:
enough. it said. enough of this nonsense. the next time you begin to worry. the next time doubt creeps in you must remember this moment, this moment right now. you must look at what's happening before you--to you as evidence. that's what you want, right? tangible evidence? well, there it is. that is my gift to you. so stop. enough. be better.
and then i woke. transformed. knowing the very deepest part of me trusts in my worth--in my right to desire and the pursuit of such.
when the impulse for a binge came i could feel it travel through me. a slow, steady, steam-roll of progression.
first came the thought.
that was all. an idea. a whisper, a promise, a strand of air. the thought: binge, it would say. go ahead, make your way to the store, get what you will, and eat it. all of it.
and that was it. the thought was the beginning, middle--the end. i was helpless against it. it would slip down my throat effortlessly, burn a little as it passed through my neck and across my shoulder blades, and then it would sit heavy and pulsing at the pit of my stomach.
i was a woman possessed. there was no defense against the thought.
it was a helplessness that i'd not experienced before and God willing, never will again. it was consistent, relentless, overwhelming and at one point, near daily. and it was stronger than me. it was real and nearly impossible to describe to others.
if it's just a thought, why not ignore it?
if only.
how to explain?
to ask me to ignore it would have been like asking the waves to ignore the pull of the moon. to stop their continuous and steady progression along the coast line.
impossible.
the very first time i met with tom (head of the eating and weight disorder program at one our new york city hospitals) he so clearly and calmly said to me: it's called thought action fusion. right now your brain can't distinguish between the though and the action that will follow, the binge. it's physical and it's science.
life raft. that information was the first life raft.
have the thought to binge. wait five minutes, and then go ahead.
next time, give yourself ten minutes between the thought and the action.
then fifteen, then twenty, and on and on. that will strengthen that muscle in your mind. it's exercise. and it will allow you to separate the two.
the thought is the thought. the action, the action. they are separate. apart. different.
and so it began. and i began to accumulate life rafts. little bobbing boats that pulled me from the great, unforgiving, unrelenting tidal wave of blue.
it has been such a long, slow road to finding my way back--much of it chronicled here, peppered through the now three-year archive of this blog.
an eating disorder is a disease. an addiction. but you don't get to swear off the substance you so like to abuse. and while you, like so many others need to lose weight, every lick of leading diet information and advice will not aid you, it will not only serve to make you far, far sicker.
take a minute to imagine that, will you? if every piece of good medicine or leading nutritional information or common, popular dogma only served to make you worse, immeasurably so.
for me, the process of getting better has been one very grand experiment. and as with any scientific study failure is necessary--it provides some of the most valuable feedback.
i pretty quickly figured out some basic things: counting calories doesn't work. cutting out carbs doesn't work (but don't think i didn't try both those thing many, many, many, many times just to be sure).
the long and short of what i've learned is this: if i can't do it every day for the rest of my life, it just won't serve me.
i learned to make food bigger than myself. i became a vegetarian because it's good for the environment. and what right do i have to place the human desire for meat over the welfare of planet earth? that's not to say i encourage everyone to cut out meat. or eggs or cheese or any of that. though i do implore others to eat locally. to support restaurants that employ the farm to table model. to buy from road stands and refuse the plastic bag when you can carry the container of blueberries and bottle of water the short distance of the corner store to home without it.
i learned that (for myself) i'm happiest when i delay breakfast, when i don't worry about five square meals. a late breakfast and three do me just fine. i like eating lighter in the morning and heavier at night. i do that and i lose weight--how bout that for going against the grain?
i also worked out that sometimes going to the gym just isn't in the cards. and so i get a massage instead. because there are a million different ways we can be kind to our bodies. and because when i'm ready i do return. and the pulsing and the squats and the pain of it all--well, my body likes it, even if i don't.
i learned that exercise is best when i engage the mind.
and that the further away i get from that abysmal period in which i starved myself (six years now) the more forgiving my body is of those moments i over eat. because my body knows me now. knows i won't ever withhold again, so there's no need for it to hold onto the empty calories.
as well as i am now, and i am, i'm very well, there are pockets of time when i slip into old habits and old ways. these pockets don't usually last so long but they are unsettling and difficult nonetheless.
these last three weeks i've eaten little more than entenmann's doughnuts and ben and jerry's ice cream.
there i said it. my two great accomplices. donuts and ice cream. and of course these two things make themselves visible on my body. because those can't be your two main food groups and you not see a change. and in the throws of something bigger than myself i look in the mirror and voila! i am as big as i've ever been (not true), but so the feeling goes.
the thing about this go round, this little battle with the gods of health. well...this go round life continued on. and life was good. despite the difficulty in getting out of bed. despite not feeling beautiful. despite feeling down and low and wanting to eat just to eat, i went out at night. went on dates. sojourned out with my best gal pals. i would wake in the morning and have my coffee and play the music and attempt to live normally. and all in all, life was pretty good.
better than pretty good.
and as i separate life from the eating disorder, as the two things begin to live in different spheres, i am reminded of though action fusion and the strengthening of the muscle that separates the two.
i am strengthening the muscle of life and the more space--the more distance i can put between my life and my struggle with food, the weaker the struggle with food becomes until eventually it is eclipsed, outrun, overrun by the bounty of my desire to live well and truthfully and with integrity.
most people say that those who struggle with eating issues will do so for the rest of their life. it's a lifelong battle, a lifelong struggle. a chronic disease.
i say, what a grim diagnosis. what a shortsighted, but easy to propagate media sound bite.
i'll be damned if i deal with this for the rest of my life.
there are few things i know with great certainty in this world, but this i know (in my gut, in my toes, in every fiber of the purest form of me) i know this: i will not struggle with an eating disorder for the rest of my life. i will not even struggle with eating issues for the rest of my. because i'm dealing with it now. because i'm challenging it on every level at this very moment and so it will pass and i will pass on to better things. because i am armed with invaluable tools and immeasurable amounts of (the correct) information. and because i am slowly regaining an inner confidence stronger than any amount of weight, any number of donut boxes, any stockpile of mornings in which getting out of bed is difficult.
i'm willing to venture and say that, at this point in time, my relationship with food is healthier than the average american woman's. this is not to boast, but rather to comment on the despairing nature of food culture in this country.
there is a balance that must be struck--a balance between loving the body i have in this moment and a desire to be kind to it. and the more i love my body, the kinder i am. and the kinder i am, the more my body surprises me and the more beautiful it becomes.
i have hips. beautiful, lovely, full hips. and why shouldn't i celebrate them--just as i celebrate the inordinate number of moles peppering my skin and my almond-shaped eyes that nearly disappear when i smile?
dear kate moss, nothing tastes so good as skinny feels? what a sad and constricting way to live one's life. what a small idea to think the two mutually exclusive (dangerous, even). what a lie that's being parceled out by numerous sectors of our society.
i want to live in a world where i don't read magazines in which they suggest the best way to deal with body image issues when showering with a man is to wear a t-shirt--more coverage for you, male-fantasy for him. don't get me wrong, the whole t-shirt thing sounds kind of exciting. but really? really? the men don't care. they don't see the extra weight. they're beside themselves with giddiness. it's not the men making women self-concious--it's the articles suggesting you should be aware, uncomfortable--that there is something to hide.
someone recently asked if i regret any of what i've written on the blog regarding my struggle towards health? if it's uncomfortable to know that both friends and family read it?
i would be remiss if i didn't say there were moments it was difficult or embarrassing or even shameful. but for me it was necessary. so that other's might understand, (especially so my parents might understand) what i'd never have the courage or clarity so say out loud.
but to say i regret any of it would be to diminish the power of this life--not just my life, but the sphere of life in which all things take place. to say i regret any of it would be to dismiss humanity.
so i found my humanity in a box of donuts and an eating disorder? it's a little funny, no? and a little beautiful and little bit just entirely the way life goes.
i don't regret the past or the mistakes or my few extra pounds because they're all part of the story. and the story's still unraveling. and i have this sense that i'm just about to get to the good part.
{i know everyone does this. i know, i know! i know i am going where almost all bloggers have gone before in doing this. but, confession? i love when people do these link lists. (especially the one go fug yourself puts up every friday afternoon). and then i had this thought! the links i list might just differ from most. and maybe some people will like these little jewels i've culled together. so let's give it a go, shall we?}
(in other news, fall barreled into new york last night--literally, it just ploughed right in. so this morning i removed the fan from the corner of my room, lit a pumpkin-inspired candle, and gave some serious thought to donning a pair of boots for the rest of the day. oh fall, you and i, kid. you and i).
i was not impressed by serena william's behavior during the final of the us open. (in fact, as an american, i was embarrassed by it).
my love for aziz ansari knows no bounds. (hint: food and fashion).
i believe in the printed word. but how much of say will i have in it, and for how long? this makes my heart ache (though not so much as visiting a borders a few days ago and seeing all the empty shelves).
but then again, there's this. whatever the truth may be, i like my bookcase sans doors, thank you very much.
i literally had this song on re-play for nearly the whole of the week. i can't stop listening to it. (i'm seeing portugal. the man in october and am nearly beside myself with excitement).
yesterday i woke up feeling slightly more like myself. so as a reward i splurged on a new moleskin-- because heaven only knows how long it's been since i used up the other and because i've taken to writing sweet nothings on scraps of white paper--which don't get me wrong, i adore, but the chance of me losing the idea that will one day make me millions is greatly increased by this loose-leaf method of organization.
so i get myself a lovely moleskin and my favorite paper mate flair pen.
and then i set about cleaning up the mess you see behind me in those photos.
(the other great hope of the lovely, little journal? less clutter on the desk. time will tell).
it has something to do with an out-of-sorts-in-my-own-skin issue.
you know the feeling, don't you? you must?
you don't? oh, lucky, lucky you.
and beauty is a funny thing--a fickle mistress, if you will. she has little to do with the knowing you're beautiful, and almost everything to do with feeling you are.
because all the evidence in the world could stockpile against you: men staring on the train, lovely guys in your own life who pull you close, push your hair behind your ear.
and objectively you understand. that others perceive you as such. as beautiful. and you're grateful for that. really. you know how lucky you are. but dammit, you just don't feel it. so there exists a discord, a disharmony.
and such is the disharmony that neither ryan gosling or portugal. the man's john gourley (ma {that's "my" with a funny accent} soup du jour) could walk right up, take you in their arms, whisper into your ear that they've never before scooped up a stranger, but they saw you and were overcome.
and it wouldn't make a lick of difference. not a lick.
(okay, well, maybe a lick. i mean, hello. ).
but you know what i mean, don't you? you gain three pounds and suddenly you're bigger than you've ever been (lie! but that's how it feels). and those three pounds signal dull skin and hair in need of a trim and you do all the right things and you take long baths to calm yourself, but you wake morning after morning (for a month, or some brief, but seemingly interminable amount of time) and you think, still? because you know, even before climbing out of bed, you know that you're not yet yourself again. you're you at your worst (lie! lie! but such is the pull of the mind).
last wednesday, was it wednesday? oh heck, it doesn't matter and if it does, well then i'm starting to tell stories like my father and that's the beginning of the end...okay. so. sometime last week i went out with my girlfriend, ashlea, after work. she was meeting up with her lovely boyfriend john and his friends. and i wasn't feeling beautiful and i wasn't dressed appropriately, but heck. that's life. and i know that often to come out of it, you have to head into it, whatever it is. so i waited for ashlea outside the C train at 50th street. i was speaking on the phone when another man approached the station, on his phone, and lingered there for a moment before heading down.
and now, when i say this man rivaled the ryan gosling, john gourley level of ability-to-raise-my-blood-pressure, you'll have to believe me. his hair was a bit too long, blonde, and curling at the edges. he was like tom brady, but not so pretty. a new york hipster-grunge-tom-brady. oh, that doesn't sound good? oh no. believe me when i say it was. it was. good.
so there we were, both on our phones, outside of the station. both poised to head downtown. and i gave him the eye. kind of. (usually when i think i've given a guy the eye, they don't get it). but i gave him my-version-of-the-eye and he looked for a minute and then continued on. and i felt really good about it. about the manner and length of his look's reciprocity.
so as he moved to the steps to head into the mouth of the subway, i turned to give myself a metaphorical pat on the back, and happened to look down.
at my bra.
my exposed bra.
my oh-your-top-button-came-undone-so-your-bra-is-out bra.
hmph.
well. that's life.
and it's worth a good laugh.
and turns out, nothing makes me feel so beautiful as a good laugh, especially when it's at myself.
(photo credits unknown.
if you do know, pass the info my way.
they are not mine, do not belong to me.)
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.
i get an idea. something to write about. and i let it gestate. move it around a bit. allow it to breathe. think about it. don't. expose it to light. and then, when the the need of it becomes so immediate, when the pocket of space in which it lives, calls out, i answer. pen to paper. and through me it moves.
the thing is, that sliver of time--that sliver in which the moment is right, well, it doesn't often last long. and it certainly doesn't wait. doesn't allow me time to move through my own pockets of apathy or sadness.
and so sometimes the ideas--the very things that once lined my skin--move up and out. and i am left. alone. that's when loneliness really settles in. not when the words fail, but when they pass through unacknowledged. when i fail the words.
the terrain is shifting. the terrain of my life is shifting. and it's terrifying. terrifying because it's suddenly upon me and terrifying because it's been so long in coming. but mostly terrifying because there's a sense that if i'm not careful i'll miss this moment--this glorious sliver of time--and the ground will settle and i'll be left. standing still. same spot. my feet tethered to a place i can no longer call my own.
i've never been able to lie to myself. that's one thing i've just not been able to do.
i have spent the three years since juilliard searching for meaning. trying to figure out why i went to a school for four years to study a thing i couldn't bring myself to do after graduation. looking for a reason as to why others went on to success when i could barely get out of bed in the morning.
i have wasted hours upon hours trying to connect unconnectable dots. reading the morse code of the moles on my arms and hands. attempting meaning in a void. i have stood in restaurants and department stores and wondered when was it--when was the exact moment that i veered off course. where was the first hint of failure. at what point did i fail the expectations of others? of myself?
why was i given a talent, a gift and then unable to use it?
i am not a terribly religious person. well, that's not entirely true of course, but my religion is no longer that of my childhood. the manner in which i pray has changed, it is more impromptu, off the cuff, in the middle and on the move.
and the most consistent prayer, the most demanding wish i have arced up to the heavens these three years has been this: show me the path. please, just illuminate the way.
and now as i sit here and write this (write) i can laugh and say of course it was unfolding! and of course it continues! how silly was i to doubt. but, you see, i am human.
it took illumination after illumination for me to stop and listen. i can trace the first one back two years. but it is only now, in the past few months, that it seem so clear, the message so abundant--little pieces of it abutting each other. so crystallized.
now i can almost look back and pin-point, oh yes, that makes sense and oh, yes, that had to happen that way, and oh, well, that'll be terribly helpful.
the thing is, this thing that i feel i'm meant to do--this thing pressing up against my gut, i've never done it before and i'm quite certain, there's a good chance, i won't know how to do it. and this push and pull between absolute certainty and absolute doubt has me standing still, afraid to dive into the sliver. afraid the sliver will pass.
but the push and pull is also the belief in the divine versus my own, small and pitying self-doubt.
and who am i do deny that something larger is at play? and i use that verb--play--carefully, because isn't that much of what this life is--what it's meant to be? aren't we meant to play and explore and do the very things we think we cannot?
i can't tell you where i've been. because, well honestly, i haven't a clue. {all i know is it was somewhere else (in that strange, ethereal land of brain mush)}.
i've been feeling this emptiness, this hollowness building within me.
it is neither sad nor lonely, it simply is.
space. it is space.
the making of room for something else--for whatever it is that's about to come. because it surely does feel like something's coming. and that's a little terrifying because there's a sense that if i'm not brave enough--open enough, it'll pass by me--instead of through me.
If you obsess about some defect, you make it obvious to everyone, and suddenly everyone is staring at just that defect. It's always like that. The more you hide something, the more it shows. But when you accept your defect, suddenly no one on earth sees it anymore. In fact, it becomes an asset.
Audrey Tautou
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
One thing you have to give up is attaching importance to what people see in you.
i was sitting in the living room watching dateline's lived to tell the tale when something caught my eye.
a mouse. moving.
i have dealt with every kind of bug situation since moving to new york. ants and roaches, bed bugs and larvae, maggots and dead pigeons (those two were related, as it turns out).
but not a mouse. not. a. live. mouse.
so i sat on the couch and willed the thing to go away. but just as i began to relax, it thought the coast clear and would attempt to run from the hallway to the kitchen (food!) and i would let out a squeal and back it would go.
you see, i was a little undone by this wee of the mouse. but that poor mouse was absolutely terrified of me--this notion upset me all the more.
and so i began to cry. not too much, but enough to know that i wasn't really crying because of the mouse.
something bigger was at play here.
and to some extent i know what that something is, but also i haven't a bloody clue and how is that possible?
i'm pretty sure it has to do with shifting terrain and the sense that at any moment--should i make the decision--my world will open wide. and there will be light. or absolute darkness. or something in between.
{ahhh, that familiar territory of the unknown i so adore}.
but back to the mouse. so there i was: crying. legs pulled up under me on the couch. friday night. dateline on the television. and i made a decision.
i did what any manhattan-dwelling single-woman in her mid-twenties (actually, let's take a moment to clarify that, shall we? mid-twenties. not late-twenties. mid. MID-TWENTIES. got it? okay) who's home alone on a friday night would do: i ran to the bathroom, drew a bath, and locked myself in there. mouse be damned.
and when i finally emerged, a little bit cleaner and a little bit calmer i clomped about the apartment in flip-flops, trying to scare the thing back to wherever it had come from. out of site. out of mind.
i haven't seen it since. knock on wood.
more worrisome than the mouse is the nagging sense that i'm not feeling totally well--the tears brought on by something bigger than myself.
that old sadness creeping in.
sleeping a little bit more than usual. eating a little bit more than usual (and by a little bit, i mean, a lot).
it's always a humbling experience to find myself face to face with the eating disorder once more. mostly because there are things you forget--experiences and moments and memories your body protects you from. like how you sometimes remain as still as possible so as to not feel yourself in a body that is just a little bit bigger and a little bit less yours.
but then there are moments that pull you out. in the form of a kind boy with big eyes who's far more interesting than the burrito before you, or a night out at a bar in chicago that words will never fully do justice, or the man who wants to kiss you even when you're wearing that old, navy blue dress you only pull out when you feel you need both a little more coverage and a little more breathing room (i have an inkling he hasn't a clue about the dress. and even if he did, he wouldn't really care).
i know enough to know that this steep pendulum swing between being just fine and ever, so off-kilter is always--without a doubt--the period of the most growth. i come out better for it. and as a very lovely friend said to me the other day, it always passes. and there is such comfort in that.
happiness.
it was at a slip of a table at a restaurant in midtown west four years ago that a conversation took place. happiness is a choice. that's what we settled on, circled around. it's a choice. i can't tell you how many times i've returned to that place, that time, that thought. turned those words over in my hands, swallowed them whole and felt them burning at the pit of my stomach.
but then just recently i came across the wise words of ayn rand:
Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.
fight for your happiness. don't just choose it, fight for it. somehow that seems more apt. the actor in me understands that: the difference between those two verbs is an intensity of action. and the more active the verb, the more interesting the choice.
fight for your happiness. and value yourself. of course.
easier said than done, but an exciting proposition no?
i read an article in the huffington post this morning about what makes a person happy, really happy. and how mostly it's the small things.
and lord knows i've blogged about this before. (here and here, most recently).
but because right now i'm feeling a bit like i really need a tangible list of weapons with which to fight i want to include an addendum to my previous cocktail for happiness.
so here goes. addendum. (other things that make me happy. in no particular order)...
when my father sends me clippings from the new york times. (and they arrive the old-fashioned-way: posted mail).
speaking of my father, when i look down at my wallet--my absolute mess of a wallet and i know in that moment--in that absolute instant that i am actually my father's daughter. (i'm not daddy's little girl. never have been, never will be, because i am my father. i am his daughter, for better or worse, i am his child--nervous stomach, messy wallet and all).
when my parents do something--have a little argument, make coy comments, and i am reminded that even after all this time, they still love each other enough to poke fun and be willing to laugh.
always having a set of concert tickets in the little, white box atop my dresser. (someday i'll write about this year in which i became bold simply by listening to really good music).
pretty bowls. dried lavender. a long, slow brunch. getting dressed up--from the shower to the makeup to properly chosen under-garments (note to self: rid drawer of that pair of bridget jones-esque underwear {you know the pair, the terrible control top pair that is only okay when seen by no one but herself {actually, even then, it's questionable}) .
turning the subway into a movable cafe with a to-go latte in one hand and good book in the other. pulling the dirty clothes off my reading chair just long enough to actually read in it (a novel idea!). a good pun. the weight that is lifted the moment i finish my laundry. the promise of a good first-date. a really good literary illusion.
i gave myself two goals this week--two tangible things to pull myself from that metaphorical couch on which i sit, legs folded, afraid of a mouse for goodness' sake!
1. to try a new recipe each day. and 2. to lug a camera everywhere. that's it. that's all. a goal. and a gift to myself.
so do tell, won't you. what are the tangibles you pull out? what are your happiness triggers? i want to add to the list, make a communal one from which we call all draw...a starting place from which to fight for happiness.
when i first moved all the way up to washington heights from my beloved upper west side i defended the area. a lot. to myself. to others. and there was a point last year that i couldn't wait to move--couldn't get away from the long, rumbling A train fast enough. but something shifted. and i fell in love with this corner of manhattan all over again:
the first thing i see in the morning is the hudson river abutting the stone facade of the palisades. i get my coffee from a place that isn't starbucks. the corner grocer knows my name, knows what i like, and knows when my eating is off. bikers hike here from all over the city on weekends. i walk on hills and know my neighbors's names and phone numbers.
well, yesterday, the new york times published a beautiful ode to my little neighborhood. and i thought i'd share. because there's only so much truth to what i say and well, the new york times carries a hell of a lot more weight...
“HEY, look out!” cried a man on the street as he grabbed an elderly woman from the path of a bicyclist whizzing down the steep slope of West 181st Street, toward Riverside Drive. The cyclist was gone in a flash, trailed by a few choice expletives from the pedestrians in his wake. No one was hurt, yet there was plenty of harrumphing on the sidewalk. People gathered to commiserate, to make sure the woman was O.K., and to see if anyone needed help carrying packages up the hill.
This neighborhood is not for everyone, said Laura Hembree, a longtime resident of Washington Heights who is also a broker at Simone Song Properties, which has served these parts for 25 years. “You have to like the parks and the quiet and not be concerned with being in the fashionable place.”
West 181st, from Fort Washington Avenue to Riverside Drive, cuts through a part of the city that seems caught in time. If not a leafy European suburb unruffled by economic crisis, then perhaps the Upper West Side, circa 1987, before the slick condos and big-box stores began to take over. In fact, there are a lot of expats from 10025 here. (Earlier immigrants include the Dutch, the Irish, German Jews, Russians, Dominicans and Mexicans.)
Only three blocks in length, the stretch seems a lot longer, in part because of its hilly topography, curving pattern, big sky and leisurely rhythm — whizzing bikes notwithstanding.
Here, neighbors stop to say hello to one another. Dogs on leashes do, too. Fathers mind the kids, some of them trooping up to Bennett Park where a high natural point in Manhattan (267.75 feet above sea level) is marked with a plaque on a stone. Ladies in Lycra chat post-workout in front of a Pilates studio. Old people mix with trendy young ones. A woman who lives at Pinehurst Avenue and 181st has a place in the Catskills where she grows things to sell at her little farm stand, which appears sporadically on the sidewalk.
There’s even an echo of Montmartre on the tree-shaded steps between Cabrini and Pinehurst Avenues that lead from West 181 to West 183 Street and Bennett Park, complete with cigarette butts by the benches and buckets of empty booze bottles.
“It’s surprisingly friendly and open,” said Barbara Taylor, 65, a fund-raiser who moved to 870 West 181st Street in 1986. When she first arrived, “there was fear,” she said. “Crack cocaine and a couple of murders. Now there are a significant number of musicians, actors and other artsy types, and still those vestiges of wonderful old folks.”
Along with one bustling block on West 187th Street, West 181st is the commercial center of Hudson Heights, a microneighborhood within Washington Heights. It is roughly demarcated by Broadway to the east, 173rd Street to the south, Fort Tryon Park to the north, and, indisputably, the Hudson River to the west.
The good people of Washington Heights may bristle when they hear the sloping patch referred to as Hudson Heights. Maybe it has the whiff of elitism, this carving out of a few blocks that are markedly tidier and more white-collar than the rest of the district. But names change: Washington Heights takes its name from Fort Washington, which, for a while after the British captured New York, became Fort Knyphausen. Cabrini Boulevard, named in 1939 in honor of Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American citizen to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church, used to be plain old Northern Boulevard.
Take the A train, as the songwriter Billy Strayhorn did in the 1940s, en route to visit Duke Ellington in Sugar Hill (“Hurry, get on, now it’s coming/Listen to those rails a-thrumming”). Don’t get off until 181st Street — about 26 minutes from 14th Street. Then, pop out of the station to enter another world.
“The air is good,” said a resident who moved here 10 years ago from the East Village and was out walking his little terrier the other day. No one asked him; he just volunteered his critique in a nice, neighborly way.
Apartments go for a lot less here than in many other parts of Manhattan. A 1,050-square-foot garden apartment in Hudson View Gardens, a 1924 co-op that seems plucked from the imagination of Beatrix Potter, recently sold for under $500,000. A 1,500-square-foot loft space at 875 West 181st Street, a co-op constructed in 1917, is listed at $699,000. In SoHo, that kind of loft space would cost at least $2 million — and it would not come with unobstructed views of the George Washington Bridge and the open sky over the Hudson River across to the Palisades.
Those are what the trade calls trophy views.
According to the Corcoran Group, whose broker Kelly Cole and her team do a lot of business in Upper Manhattan, the average sale price in the second quarter of 2011 for co-ops uptown, including Hudson Heights, was $584 per square foot. Downtown, the average was $891; the East Side, $943; and the West Side, $978.
It feels like a hamlet, especially when a black squirrel skitters across your path, or you hear German spoken, or you notice that the locals refer to anything south of the George Washington Bridge as “downtown.” There is lots of greenery, and residential complexes with well-kept private gardens.
But there’s concrete, ethnicity and bustle, too. New restaurants are opening up, following Saggio (No. 829), the sunny Northern Italian that’s become a neighborhood favorite. The expansive Cabrini Wines and Liquors (No. 831), owned by Ernest Campos, whose family came from Cuba and who has been doing business here for 35 years, serves as a kind of community hangout.
Moscow on the Hudson (No. 801) is a funny little market with shelves piled high with jars with Russian labels identifying marinated mushrooms, special mustards and “chilly” sauce, and a glass display featuring smoked mackerel, salamis and cakes. A Starbucks has taken over a corner of Fort Washington Avenue. There’s always a scene on the benches out front: serious cyclists, old dears, novel readers, weary travelers. And the other day, a preppy young couple walked by, he carrying a trumpet in a leather case. On the sidewalk outside Lissemore Music Studios at 495 Fort Washington, you sometimes can hear opera singers practicing.
It’s no wonder that people come to West 181st Street to discover this part of Manhattan. “More space for the dollar, that’s the obvious draw,” said Paul Cole, a sales agent with the Corcoran team led by Ms. Cole (his wife). “But there’s also a little bit of a different quality of life.”
Ms. Taylor, who lives in 2,000 square feet overlooking the Hudson, agrees. “It’s infinitely friendlier,” she said. “It really is small townish. There’s something so relaxing in having that big damn river. And the bridge, when it’s illuminated, it’s like honeycombs.”
