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-knowswere 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.