flowers in the window

today i believe in nothing so much as flowers on the windowsill. cool showers and white collars.

today i believe.

i believe in open windows. and climbing back into bed immediately following a bath. i believe in surprise visits and spur-of-the-moment trips. in high-waisted bathing suits, the beatles, and open-air-markets. that sunday mornings were made for pancakes. and that i'll fall in love with the man who wears his hat backwards and will clear the living room of furniture just so we can spend the night dancing.

in a corner of nyc in 1949...

after a lovely dinner thai dinner, with my friend angela, that ended in a search for mr. softie ice cream--i sauntered over to the bookstore to troll the aisles in search of some of your suggestions

i ended up getting The Time traveler's Wife because i was told that it's wildly sexy (and because it was a today show book club selection--and since i stood in line behind matt lauer at the ice cream shop yesterday--i took it as a sign)

after passing up countless books that i could have snatched up in a second if it weren't for my tight purse strings, i ended up in the postcard section

years ago, when i first became a wee bit sad my general practitioner sent me to a fantastic life coach in houston. life coaches focus not on the root of the problem but rather what can be done to improve your life immediately--little things: making lists and collages, identifying what makes you happy, and so on and so forth

one of the things this life coach asked me to do was cut out pictures from magazines that in some way lit a fire under me...well i'm doing this again. now.

above my work desk (in the corner of my bedroom) i'm gluing images right onto the wall. blogs are veritable treasure troves of delicious images so that's where most have come from.

but tonight, in the postcard section, this one struck me:

i flipped it over.

"Tanaquil Le Clercq, Donald Windham, Buffie Johnson, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal at Cafe Nicholson, NYC, 1949. Photograph by Karl Bissinger"

holy smokes. 

the quintessential Balanchine dancer, the pioneer of female painters, and three of the greatest, most prolific American writers. ever.

you think gatherings like this still happen anywhere? i sure hope so.

it's going up on the wall. now. 

Si se puede.

It is at moments like this that I become keenly aware of the inherent failing of words. Sometimes they are just not enough. However, years from now when my children ask me where I was when the face of history changed, it will go something like this...

I was in Brooklyn, taking acting class where the focus of the night was will and energy--I know, I know sometimes the push of an acting class can seem so ridiculous, but for this one night it was anything but. We stopped work around nine and moved next door where we drank ourselves silly and gorged on expensive chocolates as the masks of Bali, that adorned the walls, smiled down on us. The reports were already good, as they had been for days, so a breeze of optimism hovered like a promise. 

It was practically done. Obama had taken Pennsylvania, and as the CNN expert did everything he could to get McCain to a hypothetical 270 electoral votes, he came up short each and every time. 266, that was McCain's best chance. But if we Americans learned anything eight years ago, it is that things are not always as they seem. 

I was absorbed in a conversation when it happened. I don't know what we were talking about, but I turned and there it was. The ticker. The promise fulfilled. The hope that we longed to taste: the ticker running across CNN's screen declared Obama as the president elect. Everything shifted. The texture of the air changed. The reverberations of that moment will be felt for generations to come. 

I will never, ever forget the emotion that took my body captive. It was, is, beyond words. A mixture of joy, disbelief, shock, pride, understanding, gratitude, and above all, hope. We jumped, danced, started, stared in silence, made phone calls, clapped our hands, hugged our friends, took pictures, and all throughout I desperately tried to remember every detail--to make tangible the intangible. But I couldn't. And that's when I realized, I mean really realized, this is so much bigger than all of us. 

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not naive enough to think one person can change a country (well, maybe they can because Bush sure did something) and I know the system is flawed, perhaps beyond repair. But for this one night I was going to celebrate. Celebrate that 13 million more voters than ever before cast a ballot. Celebrate that a young, vibrant, African-American family would be moving into the White-House. Celebrate that Virginia, yes Virginia, went blue. Celebrate that the American people did what sixty years ago, even ten years ago, even ten months ago, many believed impossible.

And celebrate we did. We took to the streets, chanting, cheering, talking to random strangers--people we'd usually avoid because the differences between us seemed too great to overcome. And as the night ended, and I headed back to Manhattan, the taxi came to a light on a street that was overrun with people. The taxi could do nothing but crawl. And what's a girl to do in a moment like that but hang out the window and join in? I'll most likely never again see most of the people I met on Tuesday night, but I'll carry them with me forever, because on Tuesday night, the fourth of November, I met the best of what America has to offer. 

Musings, ramblings...Or what you will.

It's a perfect Saturday morning in the city. Quiet. Cool. Slightly overcast. My laundry is tucked away in one of the many washing machines two doors down and a hint of breeze is slipping in through the top of my window. 

When I was little I played make-believe more than most children do. I carried out the humble manifestations of my dreams and idyllic ideas long after most girls had become boy-obsessed. When I was tiny I played wedding make-believe. And god bless my mother as she was always in search of the perfect underslip that would easily turn into the perfect wedding dress (I guess I envisioned separates?). I played house, most especially whenever my father brought home flowers, for they brought out any domestic goddess tendencies that now lay dormant. I had my own little Fischer Price kitchen in the pantry and I would piddle away the time answering the yellow telephone and taking things in and out of the stove. God, I still remember the curve of the plastic and glamor of it all. The first two jobs I ever aspired to were those of cheerleader and flight attendant. Think about it, a young girl's first two job choices: flight attendant, chearleader...yes, clearly feminism was alive and well. Not to worry, in time I dreamt of becoming a pediatrician or the first female President of the United States. But when I really think about it, from a very young age, I wanted nothing more than to live in Manhattan, all by my lonesome, and live the life of  a sophisticated, hard-working, single gal. I didn't dream about marriage or even men. I dreamt about the life I could build by myself, so that when I did meet the man of my dreams I would be ready for him.

At school, for four years, all I ever heard was, if you can get through this, you can get through anything--that our schedule would be harder than anything we'd ever come up against. Well, let me tell you...no one, absolutely no one, prepared me for this. Working a myriad of jobs (while constantly seeking to expand the circle of employment), auditioning, taking class to make you a better artist because really you're working to become a better person, keeping up with friends and family, and oh yeah...trying to keep my head above the rip-roaring currents that constantly threaten--that's hard. It's so hard. Remember, a while back when I said that I wish it could be just a little bit easier? I still hope for that, but now I'm not just hoping--I'm working towards it, on a daily basis. It's so hard...and right now, I wouldn't have it any other way. 

I was so taken by CJane's post where she wrote that Christian spoke of literally feeling the prayers working on him. The idea of that humbles me in every possible way--the idea that prayer is not a thought, but an actual action, an energy that moves through the world healing. Well, I'm starting to believe that prayers coupled with the million daily miracles that keep life moving forward can actually change us--heal us, alter our physical make-up. My day requires alot of travel time. Busses, subways, foot traffic. And well, I can feel those hour long subway rides working on me. Those cross town bus trips shaping something new and different. The very ebb and flow of the city is moving over and through me, carving a new outlook, eroding doubts, dislodging fear. Something much greater than me is healing me, making me whole again. Two days ago, walking in Brooklyn before class, I realized that right now, at this very moment, I am living the life I envisioned for myself as a child. I am beholden to no one but myself. I am working as hard as I can, but as of yet, my life is completely anonymous. My life is my own. The other day, when I claimed those words as my new working mantra, I had not a clue as to how truly fitting and potent they could be, because there is a freedom in that anonymity like nothing I've ever before experienced. And yet, even that statement my life is my own, is somehow false. My life belongs to something much greater, much larger than me. I don't know where my religion stands right now (I'm working on it) but I do know that a higher power is working on me. So my life in many ways, is not my own at all. And I'm so glad it's this hard. Because I'm not alone. And I know that five years from now, I'm going to look back on this period as pure, unadulterated bliss. And in those five years as success gradually takes on new forms and different names, each period will be just as miraculous as the last. Now that I am aware of the joy inherent to any present moment, it will just keep coming, so that each new period of my life will be just as important and joyous as the last. Different in form, but similar in spirit. 

And thank God for that.