on living alone. and the things they don't tell you.

i spend an inordinate, unnecessary, somewhat embarrassing amount of time thinking about my next-door neighbor.

the next-door neighbor who i mostly refer to as my roommate, not because i think of him as such, but because that's the word that comes out.

i worry about whether my music is too loud--can he tell that i play the same three songs again and again? i wonder if he can hear my television and knows just how many episodes of the west wing i've watched since moving in. if i cook brussell sprouts does their tremendous smell (ugh) spill over from the hallway into his flat?

much time has been spent discussing whether i should leave a note. or a loaf of my famous banana bread. or maybe i should just hop over and ask to borrow sugar (never mind that i have plenty here). i mean, this man is my neighbor after all, perhaps he should have my spare set of keys? perhaps i should know his name so that if there is ever--God forbid--a serious issue, i can pound on his door and there will be some rapport.

maybe it's that i know we share a fire escape. that in this sense, he is the one person who well... quite honestly, could get into my apartment.

i've only seen him once. i've lived here just about two months now and i've only seen him once. maybe that is why i've come to think of him in the abstract.

it was the day i moved in. pushing a massive chest of drawers up the stairs, he squeezed past us--pizza box in hand. i can't tell you what he looked like. he was young, i think. cute, i think? when we (the girls and i) finally got the dresser up the stairs i said, let's leave it in the hallway for a moment, i can't even think about this or look at it right now. we showered, cleaned up, and when we finally decided to embark on that last push--getting the dresser through the doorway, he emerged from the studio next door, offered to help, apologized--said he should have offered earlier on his way up. i granted a pardon on account of the hot pizza. and that was the extent of our interaction.

two months. and i've only seen him that once.

well, except for the time that saw me leave my apartment just ten seconds after he left his (no, not planned. get your head out of the gutter, we've not entered stalker territory just yet) and i followed closely enough behind to try and get a good look. i lost him into the brooklyn bread bakery when i continued on to the subway. and that was that.

sometimes, coming home late at night, there is comfort in seeing his light on. i think it's an issue of knowing there is another presence. knowing that as separate and isolated and sometimes lonely our lives can be--and the spheres we occupy--there's another light on, another life just on the other side of the wall.

so the question remains... note? basket of muffins? request for a power drill?

WHAT I'M LISTENING TO// the tallest man on earth

back toward the beginning of june i went to see this guy at town hall here in new york city.

i went by myself, sat there with pen and paper as sometimes words come when you least expect them, and the whole experience was...

have you ever been in the presence of someone who is so damn present? like really there, in the moment, and you can tell they are fighting to say in it just as much as you then have to fight to stay in it with them? and what i mean by fighting to stay in it--it's been my experience that there are few places more terrifying and exhilarating because in the present moment it's as though you feel every human emotion there's ever been--and you feel them all at once--and strongly, deeply.

but if you can stay there, there's a sort of revelation that comes along?

i had an experience of sitting there, listening to mr. matsson's brilliant, brilliant easy and stunning music and suddenly knowing something about the future of my life--knowing in that bone-deep knowing sort of way. a ferocious sort of knowledge and confidence in the future.

and of course i can talk about the moment now, but the body knowing passes as it often does, and even to describe it seems ridiculous. and yet. it happened.

does any of this make sense?

this is all to say, this man's new album is something else. and seeing him live and in person...well, if you can, you must. you really, simply must.

"I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything."


F. Scott Fitzgerald 

via. 

walking across the brooklyn bridge.

my mom's been visiting for the week, and she's got her heart set on crossing the brooklyn bridge. so that's the plan for today. that, good food, and a little adventure. always a little adventure.

on anonymous commenters, those things that could be called love letters, appearing desperate, and what it means to be honest:

this is mostly in response to this and the comments that followed...

a good long while ago now i started writing little letters to the man i'd one day marry (should i be so lucky).

and much as i do believe it'll be fun to one day give them to him, to one day laugh about them, they are mostly for me, now.

they are a backdrop against which i suss out what's important--what's of value. they are part stream of conscience, part scrapbook, part hope for the future.

and they have meaning--for me, they have meaning.

i'm not suggesting they should have meaning for anyone else.

i am not suggesting that all woman should want to partner off with a man. or that all woman should want to have children. i am certainly not suggesting that everyone should marry (modern statistics indicate that very few in fact should). only that these are the things of value in my own life. and certainly people can attempt to belittle and make small and devalue these notions, but i'm not sure that they have the right. in fact, i'm quite certain they don't. because i am not attempting to proselytize this way of life, truly i'm not, i'm just saying, hey, i think this might be important to me. i quite think i want that one day. 

i dated a man one time who lived mere blocks from his parents. who had the keys to their apartment on his home keychain. who would pop over for sunday morning breakfasts or simply if the mood struck. and he had the audacity to suggest to me that i was too close to my parents. my parents, 1, 630.6 miles away.

he couldn't possibly have known what those 1,630 miles felt like, least of all because he never asked.

how easy it is for all of us to assume we know another's mind, another's heart.

someone recently pointed out that my letter's make me appear desperate. it is not the first time it's been suggested and i doubt it'll be the last. and so i gave it a moment's thought before realizing if i was truly desperate i'd probably be in a relationship now--probably would have been in many.

relationships for relationships' sake.

how many relationships appear perfect up until the moment they are over.

how many desperate women--desperate men--smile behind the facade of a seemingly perfect life?

i certainly don't know. and it's not for me to judge. we remain single--or with ill-fitting partners for a whole host of reasons, most deeply personal and not the right of the public domain.

sometimes someone will leave a lovely comment saying they are envious of my life and all i can think is no-no! you have no idea! it is tremendously difficult and there are some desperately low moments and i wouldn't wish this on anyone! and yet i wouldn't trade another's life for my own.

and so i want to say let's all enter into a tacit agreement shall we? i'll not wish for your life. and you'll not wish for mine.

i used to look at really thin women and say to tom, why can't i do that? obviously there are other women who are better than me--more successful. they are able to lose weight and keep it off. why can't i be like them? 

and he would respond, okay, but you can't just take that bit of their life, you have to take it all. and you don't know what another's secret shame or great sadness is. you don't know another's addiction. you can't imagine another's loss. 

and we all have something, don't we?

i consider myself a strong and independent woman. imperfect but also impossibly strong. relatively intelligent with an improbably fantastic group of friends.

but do i long for a man? yes, absolutely.

every shred of scientific evidence suggests that the reason we are here in this earth-bound-human-form is to make connections and form bonds. the bonds with friends being one, the bonds with family another, and the bond with a romantic partner all-together-different still.

i never realized that wanting a man--wanting to share my life with a man--made me less of a woman. made me somehow weak and an embarrassment to my sex. are the two things mutually exclusive? when did we as women do this too each other? is this the great, lasting legacy of women's lib?

because i don't want it. that's not the legacy i'll choose to take.

i am a strong, independent woman. and my desire for a man neither makes me more or less of these things. it simply is--and it is mine.

it makes me human. in need of sustenance. in the form of touch and affection and love.

but in wanting to find a partner--in wanting to choose the right partner--i want the man who compels me to be more. more of myself. who demands that i be as honest and as true and as good as i am capable of. and so in that sense yes, i want the man who will make an honest woman out of me. honest, having nothing to do with sin or sex or needing a man to complete me, but everything to do with allowing me to by myself--imperfect and messy and flawed in more ways the i care to share here.




....

i do want to take a moment to say this: if one more person says to me it'll come when you least expect, when you stop looking i'm gonna lose it. i can think of no more insulting cliche to throw at a single person. like saying, it'll be the last place you look for it. really, wow, thank you so much for the insight.

because to think that i haven't gotten to that place where i stopped looking, stopped searching, only to move on past it and circle back again more times than i care to count is a gross misestimation of me as person. i have felt deep affection for a great many men in my life. and i have found them when i was looking, when i wasn't, and at each of the many steps between those two extremes.

MY NEW YORK// greenwood cemetery and bit of DUMBO

home, sweet home.

the thing may tilt to the side, but it's light and airy and home and now that my mom's finally seen it (she's visiting for the week and i'd like that some things be done in person) i figured i'd share some photos here. it's been over a month now and i've yet to install the shelves in the kitchen or figure out how to give the windows a really good scrub. i've got no bathmat and no dishtowels to speak of, but i'm hoping to accomplish a few of those things this next week. 


there is a sense that twenty years from now i'll look back on this time, fully aware of just how sacred this experience was--so i'm doing my very best to soak up each and every moment. 

"No one looks back on their life and remembers the nights they had plenty of sleep."

a letter to the man who'll one day make me an honest woman,

the walk from the subway home is one of my very favorite things now. second place is lush in a way that is deeply comforting. just the other night i got home late, followed the usual parade of people out of the mouth of the train, past the rows of brownstones. it was dark, quiet, and i walked slowly studying the different doors and entryways. i was struck by a narrow staircase in one--the beauty of it such that my heart began to ache.

i wonder if you and i will ever live here together, in this particular neighborhood. i wonder if you will find such things beautiful, as i do, staircases and side streets. i wonder where we'll vacation, how we'll spend our saturday mornings, what book will be on your bedside table the first time you invite me over. if you'll have go-to karaoke song. if you'll be braver than me. and i wonder which side of the bed you'll sleep on. if you'll like thunderstorms--that particular green-gray that paints the sky. what you'll let me get away with and what you won't. if you'll like to nap like i do.

i dreamt last night that you were near. surely a gal can hope.

with all this thought and talk about home of late, it is not lost on me, that one day--should i be so lucky--you will be almost the whole of that answer.


yours, always yours

the journey home {off switch magazine}

In the fourth grade I went to the rodeo with my friend Rachel Keenan. The two of us climbed onto the sizzler, a spinning contraption in the parking lot outside, and just as I turned to complain that it wasn’t spinning and sizzling fast enough, the thing started moving with such force that I couldn’t lift my head from the seat. I don’t know that I’ve ever laughed so hard.

I’m not sure why I’ve been thinking about that moment of late, but I have. And I’ve been thinking about how just after my college auditions I took a cab with my mother to the airport and fell asleep with my head in her lap. These are the moments that make a life. These small, seemingly insignificant moments that only in hindsight can a person point to and say yes, that moment there—that was a really good day.

The night I moved I sat on the floor of my new apartment, boxes everywhere, the bedframe pushed up against one of the curtain-less windows. I was freshly showered, a glass of Oyster Bay Savinguon Blanc next to me, and as tired as I’ve ever been. It was the end of an impossibly long day in which, with the help of my two best girlfriends, I packed everything of worth into a U-haul and hurtled south to Brooklyn, where we then pushed and pulled and dragged all that worth up three flights of stairs into a tiny studio apartment that leans, just a little, to the right.

We did it ourselves, the three of us, Kim and Ashlea and me. And at some point during the worst of it Ashlea made me promise that for the next move I’d hire a company and we’d sit in lawn chairs drinking sweet drinks with small umbrellas while we watched as someone else did what we were doing now. Stuck between the second and third floor, my arms shaking under the weight of a box of books I wasn’t now sure I needed, I gave in: yes, next time, yes—but please God, don’t let that next time come anytime soon.

There were countless moments during the day in which I thought, for sure, we wouldn’t make it—we couldn’t possibly come out the other side. So at the end of it all, that box of books tucked safely away, we each poured a glass of wine, took a shower, and readied ourselves for a celebratory dinner. Even as it was happening, I knew. Even as I watched the girls search through my clothes and put on makeup and laugh, I thought, well, this here, we’re living through the best of it. This is one of those moments. It was remarkable in that hindsight wasn’t necessary. I could feel the moment printing itself on me even as it was happening. A tangible sort of happiness.

I don’t remember much of what followed--what we ate once we finally got out the door or what was said as night crept towards morning, but I do remember that at the end of it all, in those slow and sacred hours when the night is a particular sort of black, the sky opened up and it rained.

A cleansing. A fresh start. A new world.

I moved to New York at the age of eighteen and have spent the subsequent eight years here looking for a home—searching for a place where those moments that make a life—those moments that occasionally happen at the rodeo or in the airport or after an impossibly long day—could accumulate, take root and grow.

The night of the move, Kim, searching through my stuff for a pair of shoes, asked in which box I had put my high heels.

There isn’t a box, I said. I don’t own any.

--because I need some for this outfit, she continued, only to stop, turn her head. What do you mean? What do you mean you don’t own any?

I just—well, I don’t.

What?! She screeched. Why?

Because I don’t like them. Don’t worry about it, girls in Brooklyn don’t wear heels, I finished.

This isn’t entirely true. Girls here wear clogs and platforms and winter boots well into summer months, but heels—the kind of heels that Kim was talking about—you’d be hard pressed to find them here.

Perhaps this is one of the ways I knew that after eight years of Manhattan living Brooklyn was the place to be.

No high heels and an abundance of trees.

Now that I am here in this small neighborhood with which I am undoubtedly, unquestionably, desperately in love I wonder why I didn’t move sooner.

But the thing is, I didn’t know at eighteen that I would be the girl to eschew high heels. Didn’t know I’d be the girl to use the word eschew. Didn’t know I’d wake each morning and make myself a latte. Didn’t know it’d be men with dark hair and deep-set eyes that would invariably undo me.

I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know heartbreak. I didn’t know loss. And I sure as hell didn’t know failure. And without these things I knew very little of myself. It has taken eight years and many, many mistakes to piece together a picture of who I am and what I want.

And it is upon these things that a home is built.

I used to think that the I-don’t-knows were the point of this life. Which is to say the things that transcended understanding were what gave meaning to this earth-bound existence. But as I get older (and, I hope, a little wiser) the I-don’t-knows don’t hold so much sway. I like not only to love something, but to know why I love it—to be able to say why I love it.

The area in which I live now—the area I will proudly tell people I am building a home in—well, it was love at first sight. And immediately I knew I could explain and give voice to my wonder: the trees—the explosion of green, the Catholic Church one block south, the absence of tall buildings, the front yards and back yards and corner bars, the pace with which I naturally walk here—slower—markedly different from the speed I use to dodge tourists in midtown Manhattan.

Eight years ago I would have gotten off the train at Carroll street and I would have been smitten, but I couldn’t have told you why. I only know now—I can only say now because I know myself. Because I’ve circled back to that girl I was at five, at eight—the one who without fear got on the sizzler—the one who at seventeen chose a conservatory theatre program over an ivy league education—a fearless creature was she: a girl who knew she’d always take trees over concrete; a girl not interested in bright lights or sky-high heels or the cutout of a city skyline; the girl who would grow up to fall in love with a small and diverse neighborhood, who would love the old New York with its cobblestone streets and turn of the century charm.

Eight years. It took eight years in Manhattan to build a home within myself. To forget who I was and what I knew and what I wanted so that I could be surprised and delighted and totally in awe as I journeyed back to myself.

I didn’t move to Brooklyn any sooner because I wouldn’t have known it was for me. The eight year old in me would have known, yes, but I had yet to reclaim her. And now that I have, all I can say is, holy hell was it worth the wait.

WHAT I'M LISTENING TO// brandi carlile

i'm quite sure many have suggested this singer-songwriter to me before, but for whatever reason i either never looked her up or well... i don't know actually. yesterday i was lost in the world of jumping from one youtube video to the next (you know, as you do) and i came across her npr tiny desk session and was hooked by the first song, but then came the second and third. and now i find i'm looking up everything she's ever done. ever. so do yourself a favor and make sure you get to the 4:37 mark.

MY NEW YORK// along the waterfront

next door // downtown.

when i was twenty-one i moved next door. from one apartment to the next. on the same floor. same building. same small brownstone on 104th street.

i thought it would change things. somehow make things better. a little easier. from a galley kitchen to an eat in kitchen. from an awkwardly shaped living room to a more traditional floor plan. back of the building to front.

it'd be a fresh start.

and a fresh start, a new start, a start-again would change my life.

i've wasted quite a bit of time looking for fresh starts.

the noise that came from the street on 104th was nearly unfathomable. we hadn't heard it in the back, but from the front, the trucks that barreled through, and the parade of people leaving for work or school at seven made sleep past that hour almost impossible. you never know the achilles heel of an apartment until you've spent some time there--and the street noise in that front-facing-second-floor-walk-up was most certainly that.

the first few mornings in brooklyn i woke to the sound of nothing but birds. i'd look out my window--see only green, hear those birds, and lay my head back on my pillow while sending up a small prayer of thanks. it's good here, it's so good.

but where you live doesn't change your life. this much i know. and fresh starts don't exists. at least, not as i understood them. because there is no genie-blink-of-the-eyes-and-nod-of-the-head to try something again, or rewind the last inch on the film of our life.

we carry the weight of the past. we carry our cumulative histories. and this is not a bad thing--i'm not saying this is a bad thing.

in deciding to move there was this constant feeling that my decision to move to another neighborhood was an affront on some other person's decision to not. moving to washington heights was a question of money, yes. it was cheap. and for quite some time it was great. it was manageable and inexpensive and exactly what i needed at twenty-three. and then the costs began to accumulate. in the form of late-night-cab-fares, time spent on the A train, the unwillingness to go out on a Saturday night because the venue would inevitably, undoubtedly be so far from home. and so priorities changed and values shifted and i grew up a bit and what i wanted from a home and place became a tenuous balancing act between known prices and hidden costs.

and so i moved.

because the presence of trees and the sound of birds upon waking have more weight than they used to.

but it's not lost on me that the reason i moved next-door is not entirely different than the reason i moved downtown. or south of downtown, to be exact.

the upper west side holds so many memories for me. i can point and say that diner there is where i broke up with the guy i was dating when i moved here at eighteen. he gave me the key to his apartment and the terror that incited led to a rapid unraveling which ended there, in that diner, at that table, with time after time playing overhead. and i was sitting in that building, on that corner, when the first person i ever loved looked at me in a way that changed the course of my life. it was on that street that i lived in my first apartment. and over there, that's where i was when i called home to my mother sobbing, trying desperately to explain what words would never, could never, illuminate.

even now i can turn a corner in the neighborhoods of, what now seems like, my youth and i'll be confronted with memories that are somehow too close--too recent--for comfort.

yes, of course, there are the good ones. i ran barefoot down this side street on warm night in march after a lovely first date. or i sat in that burger joint there, with this guy and that guy. and we slipped and slid down columbus avenue after a snowstorm in 2005, piling snowballs, hurtling them this way and that, not a car in sight. some of my best memories are there.

but also many of my worst.

and every once in a while, when i'm least prepared, i turn a corner and my eyes light upon something that i haven't seen since i was nineteen and for a moment i forget where i am and who i am and where i've been and i'm nineteen again, afraid i'll be late to class, desperate to impress those around me. and then memory--or half-memories rush in and it is as thought all the the time between that moment and this barrels through. and it's not easy and it's certainly not good in that split second between forgetting and remembering to relive the last eight years.

i needed not more space, but a new space, for new memories. i needed to move where the streets weren't littered and crowded with my recent past. i needed a blank slate.

i wasn't so foolish this time to think that a move or a change in location would right my life, change my life. but i was aware that it was a gift.

an indulgence.

a new space, something of a new world in which to stretch the growing limbs of the woman i'm attempting to become.

there have been good days and bad days here, just as there will be should i move across the world. but i'm breathing a bit easier. walking a bit slower. savoring my battle wounds and the perspective they give--the courage they afford me to pick out new corners and new spaces in which to make new memories.

we move on. we move forward. maybe not a fresh start, but a forward movement.

from a rooftop in williamsburg.

some nights you gotta say to hell with what i should be doing or what needs to be done. the house will be cleaned another night. i'll stretch these writing fingers another night. sleep will be had some other time. for tonight, for this moment, i'll say yes, take a second glass of wine and have a little adventure.