i'll take grace.

Mary Oliver

these days... (a photo dump, instagram style)

and then back to New York...

trading in my New York for the Berkshires.

Last week i took a quick trip to the Berkshires to do a play reading with the Berkshire Playwrights Lab--a beautiful new play by the inestimable Jessica Provenz (I've long been a fan of her work and think she's gonna move mountains with her words). It was such a treat on every level--from the kindness of the Artistic Directors, to the other wonderful actors, to our esteemed director, to the hospitality (and damn fine food) of the bed and breakfast. Now it's back to the real world and I find I'm already missing the sprawling vistas of green, the cool comfort of a theatre, and the general departure from the every day grind.

longing for fall.

I am child of Fall, born to October--a hopeless devotee of the month. I sometimes wonder if my attachment to the season begins and ends with this alone. But its more than that--the colors, the cooling, sweetening air, the promise of all that's just to come.

And this summer has been sticky and hot. I can barely open the door to leave the apartment when the need arises--thank you humidity and expansion--and after my first coned bill I refuse to turn on my small air conditioner (in fact I'd like to remove it from the window all together because it's blocking my view). Between the sweating that happens on-the-way-to or waiting-for the subway I feel cleansed and purged and ready to welcome the next seasonal chapter.

I don't mean to wish away Summer, I really don't. I just can't help dream of fall. So indulge me, won't you?

I've never been the girl that wants to strip down for summer. the layers--tights and scarves and jackets and boots--of Fall hold much more sway, and that's part of the pull right now, for sure. 

Here's to a happy Monday! And surviving this mid-August week, wherever we might be (unless of course you're in the Southern Hemisphere in which case that's a whole different discussion--and how exciting that Spring is just around the bend! {i am a big fan of Spring!}).

photo sources:

that inspirational girl tumblr

note to self tumblr

urban lifestyle tumblr, unknown

just me tumblr, matchbook mag

note to self, emerson fry

where the mind will go.

it's a funny thing to love someone from afar. because the love takes on a quality of what cannot be known or named. it cannot be defined or settled. it, by definition, lives in a sort of fault-line. cracked and heavily tread upon.

it cannot be touched or felt and it most certainly cannot be talked away.

i know there are others out there who will say, this is not love then.

but it is. if there is anything i know, it is this: it is most certainly--most assuredly love. some very particular version of it.

and i know this because it is my experience.

i don't know that love at first sight exists. i'm inclined to think, no. but i have never experienced it, so how can i say? how can i know?

loving someone from afar is a tricky thing in this age of social media where much as you might want to--much as you might try to escape the reach of information, it's not so easy. and much as you might wish for their happiness--more than anything--there is still a sadness in watching it unfold without you.

i didn't understand that before. didn't know.

i went to a tarot card reader not too far back. and i asked about a guy. and a very particular lie that was told. and she said to me, he doesn't look too often--because he sees that you're happy. and this makes him sad. and i didn't get it then.

how you can want the best for a person? how you can truly wish them nothing but happiness? and how can there be a sadness in that actualization? how can both these things be true? how is it both selfish and not? how it is so achingly human?

you see only the snippets--you see the snippets and you fill in the blanks with your worst fears and unspoken hopes and there are all those damn unanswered, unanswerable question.

they haunt, they do.

and you wonder if this is forever.

and you move on. and you meet someone else. and they do too. and it's so good.

but still.

i guess this is what it is to be human. this is the human story--or mine at least.

and i know it could all change in a moment, in a minute. in the span of ten years, too, but that's mostly too far to think about.

you survive and you hope and they do as well. and you're left wondering if you've already witnessed the end of the story, or if that's still to come.

"I don't want just words. If that's all you have for me, you'd better go."

F. Scott Fitzgerald 

quick trip to the berkshires...

yesterday i hopped on metro north for a quick trip to the berkshires. i'll be here for the next few days doing a play reading and reveling in all the green and sharing as much as i can.

on calling the guy. or not. and the best advice yet given..

a day shy of turning twenty-three my mother gave me the best advice of my life.

i was just out of college, the month was october, the weather was heaven here in new york--or just outside of it, in montclair, nj--to be exact--something tells me this retelling needs some exactness--a level of precision.

it was night and i was sitting on my mother's bed and we were talking about a boy. and i use that word deliberately--at just-shy-of-twenty-three the male in question was still very much just-a-boy, as i was just-a-girl.

this boy and i had been talking and messaging and beginning something-or-other and it was ever so thrilling--as it is when you find some version of the right person at the right time and there is even a hint of that nameless affection that cannot be pinpointed or dissected or explained away.

but we had hit some sort of wall. and there had been an exchange of words that wasn't terribly clear or terribly kind.

and it was nearly my birthday and i hadn't heard from him.

so my mom listened and then looked right at me and asked: do you want to call him?

and i just sort of stared at her for a moment, thought about it, took a breath, and revelation: you know, i don't. and that was that. and i've never looked back. i've never wished that i did call or did try harder or done any one thing differently in regards to that moment in time.

that question: do you want to call him? was so simple and so easy and so very much the point.

none of the well, i've called twice now or i've not waited a sufficient amount of time since getting his last text--no rules or regulations or impossible to follow tenants as handed down by the dating-gods (also known as other-girls-flailing-in-much-the-same-fashion). just a simple: what do you want?

as i'm getting older i'm coming to realize the simplest advice is usually the best. the path of least resistance, the most efficient--go figure!

want to act well? put the brilliant playwright's words into space. just speak the language. that's it.

want to lose weight/be healthy? stop with the counting and measuring and time-tables. eat actual food and move your body when you can.

want kindness in your life? show kindness to others.

want to talk to the guy? take a chance and pick up the damn phone.

of course, there are always exceptions. sometimes it's not so easy. sometimes it takes a little more work. sometimes you can't just pick up the phone because there's been too much time and too much heartache and something in your gut is telling you that you must wait.

but maybe sometimes it's as easy as doing what you want. following that gut feeling that says yes or no--that gut instinct so unrelated to pride and pomp.

because at least then you're owning you're own experience. at least then you make the rules and it's easier to live with the good or the bad that eventually follows. because you did what was right for you. and that's no small feat.

MY NEW YORK// playing with color

dear husband-to-be:

i was in london, freshly minted in a world post high school, when my dear friend anna first planted the notion in my head--this idea of writing letters to the man i'd one day marry.

anna herself is now married. she's become one hell of a woman from what i can tell--gorgeous, smart, committed to a very handsome fellow, and living, as fate would have it, in that very city we toured at the age of eighteen.

different paths. lives diverging.

i didn't write the first letter until five years later--a year past college and four years into an illness that saw me vacate my life.

it wasn't so much a letter as it was a disclaimer and it wasn't so much thought-out as it was me groping in the dark--cautiously finding my way back to myself, unaware i'd gone anywhere until that very moment i turned on my heels to head back.

it was a reintroduction of sorts. an oh-i-like-this and an oh-i-don't-like-that and an oh-i-do-this-and-i-don't-do-that sort of thing.

i could tell you that over the years that the letters have gotten harder to write. but that's not true. they're the easiest thing in the world. easy and simple and sometimes cavalier but mostly not. mostly they are true.

whether or not they are still a sort of groping-in-the-dark, well...sometimes they are and sometimes they are not. which is life. sometimes i'm groping, sometimes i'm not.

i've been reading a lot lately. books on shame and whole-heartedness and critical awareness and new-wave feminism and anorexia and women's role in media and what it means to want--to have an appetite for food and life and men and love.

there's this sense in my life right now that education is vitally important--and i'm determined to get the sort of academic college experience i never had. and so i'm reading. i want to know how the human body works and how the female mind differs from that of the male and i want to clarify my own voice. i want so much. to know more. more of the world, more of myself. not for you, but for me.

and certainly i want to know you. but i'm okay to wait.

there are moment of loneliness, of course. a great gaping hole middle of my chest--a mouth ravenous to feed--to feel affection and intimacy and trust. but they are only moments. and i suspect these are moments of enormous power--humanity unfurled and waving in the wind.

and at other times i am deeply sated. just by walking or riding the subway or reading a book.

i don't think i'm desperate so much as deeply fearful. if there is something i am ashamed of it is this: my fear.

and so i give voice to that shame, bring it out into the open in an attempt to diminish its power.

i am fearful i'll never meet you--not that i'm unworthy of you--just that we might miss each other. deeply afraid i'll never know your love. i recognize this as ridiculous, even as i write it, i recognize its ridiculousness. and this fear is not an overriding sense or ache so much as a passing one, but...
well,  i know what it is to love a man who cannot or will not love you back and if there is a desperation, perhaps it stems from this--from this place so intimately acquainted with that soft and numbing thing called heartache.

but this desire to meet you, to run towards you, and to give voice to it--i think there is a power in it. because this, more than anything else, makes me human.

this need or want or insatiable hunger is in fact the crux of the human experience.

it is not lost on me that the way one overcomes an eating disorder is to identify all those things of importance--all the things more important than thin--all the things more important than losing those last ten pounds. and the one thing--the one thing that trumps it all--is love.

i always thought love would be the thing to save me, and it did. not in the way i expected, no. but love of self, love of family, love of the little stuff, and the promise of your love--those things most certainly did, in no uncertain terms, return me to myself. and those are the things that keep me going--groping, forging ahead. charting new territory and seeking out new adventure.

so, in a sense, i am already indebted to you--tethered to you--in love with you.


yours,

pen-in-hand-and-all

It is not easy… to wait. Waiting is what the hunter does, and the poet and the slugger. He waits for the moment of inevitability and fate and then he swings, or shoots, or takes up the pen to put down a line. They don’t teach us to wait in America; they teach us to grab. But waiting is what we do when we are looking for something beautiful, when we are looking for an end to our sorrow. Nothing is infinite in life, not even sorrow.  Cary Tennis

mom comes to nyc, part II (also...WHAT TO DO IN NYC)

i had such a lovely time with my mom here in town.

we mostly just walked everywhere and ate a lot and talked about all those things that mothers and daughter talk about (but can't necessarily say over the phone).

it felt so special. and sacred.

and it was the little things--always the little things: getting to show her this space. buying a bedskirt and new pot and cutting board (helloooo, adult life). setting up my computer in such a way so that we could fall asleep watching pbs' zen (my mother and i share a deep and profound love for rufus sewell). snacking on almond biscotti and peppermint tea. dinner with the dearest and best friends of my life. and a good, solid amount of some really robust laughter.

i won't take you through the day-by-day breakdown of our adventures, but i would like to provide a few suggestions:

(to do) cobble hill cinemas--an old-school movie theatre where the tickets are much cheaper than in manhattan (only 7 bucks on thursday nights).

(to eat) frankies spuntino--italian food has never been my go-to, but i'm madly in love with this spot on court street. the food is fresh and light, the decor is the right amount of rustic, and the outdoor garden is endlessly charming. order the sweet potato ravioli.

(to see) greenwood cemetery--a massive and historic cemetery here in brooklyn that's home of one of the revolutionary war's first battles. it is quiet, expansive, and something to see. i'm planning on heading there in late october for a guided tour of the place.

(to eat) buttermilk channel--this was a big hit with my mom. it's an unassuming place that i love because i feel like i'm somewhere in the south (my mom felt as though she was in boston, go figure). we suggest the jalepeno corn bread and cheese plate.

(to eat) alta--my good friend kim works the greenmarket in union square and so has gotten to know alta's chef harrison mosher and has nothing but kind words for him. he oh so graciously sent quite a bit of food to our table and we gobbled up every last morsel. i've only been twice now, but already this is one of my favorite restaurants and the first place that comes to mind when someone asks for a suggestion. do know that if you order "the egg" for dessert, it really is the size of an egg, which is to say quite small, but quite good. also, know that the restaurant can be hard to find (no sign out front).

(to eat {treat})) blue marble ice cream--i say get the pretzel cone (game-changer) and my mom says  the strawberry sorbet.

(to see) jefferson market garden--a lush space right in the heart of greenwich village. on the wednesday night we wandered past the place was filled with some stunning live music.

(to do) where to walk--the brooklyn bridge is not to be underestimated. on a beautiful day you must, must, must do this. the brooklyn promenade (right along the water). dumbo and brooklyn bridge park.

(to do) brooklyn flea--fun to walk around and look at jewelry and shoes and sample all the foods.

(to eat {treat}) marquet patisserie--sweets and treats and bread and coffee galore. my mother declared the man behind the counter "very french" which she roughly translated to less than obliging. but the cookies were delightful nonetheless.

mom comes to nyc, part I