words to live by

You shouldn't try to stop everything from happening. Sometimes you're supposed to feel awkward. Sometimes you're supposed to be vulnerable in front of people. Sometimes it's necessary because it's all part of you getting to the next part of yourself, the next day. | Cecelia Ahern

Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretense. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true. | Adyashanti

So avoid using the word "very" because it is lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Do not use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. | John Keating

I demand unconditional love and complete freedom. That is why I am terrible. | Tomaz Salamun

The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you. | David Foster Wallace

There is nothing rational about love. Love stutters when it gets nervous, love trips over its own shoelaces. Love is clumsy, and my heart refuses to wear a helmet. | Rudy Francisco

things, the importance of which, cannot be overstated.

Pants that perfectly fit a man’s derriere—not too tight, but tight enough

(a man's derriere)

A bouquet of flowers.

Renegade smiles--unexpected smiles

Intelligence

Clearing the table without being asked

Frozen margaritas

A made bed

A perfectly tailored suit

When a man offers a woman his seat on the subway, for no reason at all

Soft-scrub

Front porches and rocking chairs and cold lemonade

Thunderstorms, anywhere

The scent of a single cigar on a warm summer night

Eating hard-boiled eggs at one in the morning

Crawling into bed, bone-tired

A fine pair of heels

How much is possible in the morning if you wake up early enough

on flirting. and being really, really, REALLY bad at it.

It is generally acknowledged that I am the world’s worst flirt.

The truth of this becoming increasingly real with each passing day.

(And age).

When I mentioned this to my good girlfriend Alisha, she cocked her head, smiled, and said, Yeah, we’ve known this for a while now. (And by we, she meant me and her and, I’m assuming, everyone else.)

I—I just, well, I thought that was just something we said.

Oh. Yeah, no. No, we were being serious, she responded, chuckling as she sucked down a bit of frozen margarita through a straw.

A guy at work—a lovely man with a wife and two kids and a keen sense of honesty, recently said to me—Oh, you’re that girl who, when you like a guy, has got the car in reverse.

Which is about as true a thing as anyone has ever said to me.

Flirting in reverse. My particular specialty. (And also what is sure to be the title of my first book of essays, so don’t anyone take it. I’m claiming the title here and now, on this, the 30^th day of May in the year 2014).

What is so tremendously frustrating is that I am not without skill. I know what to do and how to do it, but only—and this is key—when nothing is at stake.

Because in front of a man with light eyes and superbly fitting pants (oh, the pants)—the composition of his face such that it’s hard to look at, and harder not to, I am inept. Befuddled. Bumbling and wordless.

I am eight years old, wide-eyed, and mute.

And occasionally mean.

Very often mean. Unfriendly, unkind, and un and un and un.

And, the thing is, none of these things is an appropriate response when a man flips your stomach. Because life is hard enough—for all of us—without assholes like myself giving all the wrong cues, to all the wrong people, at all the wrong times.

I have spent my entire adult life living and dating in New York City.

Which is a fate I would wish on no one.

This city is ruthless in so many ways. And love and dating are no exception—the rules of both being unwieldy and unclear and mostly capricious.

(Or so I thought).

Sitting in Tom’s office recently, I was detailing the many, many ways in which I manage to flirt-in-reverse, which is to say act-as-unfriendly-as-possible-to-the-men-I-am-attracted-to/sometimes-act-unfriendly-and-sometimes-not-which-may-actually-be-worse-because-it-is-confusing-and-unfair-and-has-everything-to-do-with-those-crazy-making-things-known-as-MIXED-SIGNALS!!

So there I am, sitting in Tom’s office, lamenting how unfriendly I am (because come on, I’m a puddle around a handsome man) and he looks me squarely in the face, So what you’re saying is, the only guys who end up approaching you are the one’s who disregard your signals entirely.

Oh, oh, OH—those are so not the guys I want!

And Tom looked at me, half-smiling, You think?

Because all I really want—what I imagine what so many of us really want—is to feel like I am both seen and heard.

Because, well, that is a big fucking deal—THE DEAL, maybe.

Over the years I’ve dated a few different guys—a strange sampling of the population. Varying religions, careers, upbringings. And because they were so seemingly disparate I couldn’t understand how time would invariably, unfailingly, INFURIATINGLY reveal how very much the same they all were.

So many different shades of…not-good.

And then Tom went and pointed out something so obvious as signals and a person’s response to them! And I found out I was the problem—which is THE BEST sort of news.

(This is why Tom gets the big bucks).

You see, I was, without realizing it, weeding out anyone who might actually be worth my time.

(Easy fix).

And this is how we shoulder the universe forward two inches: easy fixes and small leaps and little bit of courage.

Except that it wasn’t such an easy fix. Mostly because I’m a deeply fearful person and the notion of that first big bridge—that moment, or collection of moments when a person you like actually sees that you like them—well on the other side of that bridge is either crazy good things or…Dum dum DUM…rejection.

And I am not so great at rejection. (I know, I know).

And so I’m sitting there, hashing it out with Tom and bumbling on about how I’m scared and if I’m still so scared after all this time, and all this experience, is it because I’m not actually that keen on myself?

Because, well, I thought I’d gotten to the point where I was pretty okay with myself. And, shoot, are the miles betwixt here and there so innumerable?

And Tom, in typical Tom fashion says to me, I don’t think it’s as complicated as you’re making it. Any feedback you’ve received in the past is inherently distorted because you weren’t putting in any input—or at least, any appropriate input.

Which I gotta tell you, feels so rational and so right, that it might just be the game-changer I was waiting for (without knowing I was waiting for it).

There’s such a thing as a feedback loop and it has to be fed.

Which brings to mind a certain Noah and the Whale lyric: But if you give a little love, you can get a little love of your own.

If you give.

If, then. Causation.

Sometimes things take effort. Sometimes, smiling or speaking up is an uncomfortable jaunt up a very steep hill. Sometimes what comes so naturally to some, doesn’t come so naturally to others.

But finding out that we are the problem is so incredibly good—so incredibly empowering.

It is the beginning of a totally different ever-after. Or rather, the beginning of a totally different pursuit.

The ever-after will take care of itself.

memorial day weekend + the importance of a good costume

My flight to Virginia was canceled on a Friday night. No explanation. Just a small email.

And then a thunderstorm rolled through New York and I found myself zigzagging through the streets of SoHo, absolutely drenched, ducking every time the sky lit up, and laughing all the while (totally relieved I wasn't in a small plane moving through those clouds).

The funny thing about a really big storm in a place like New York is that suddenly people actually look at each other. And smile. It's amazing--nothing like shared experience to bring people together.

I am a person who laughs in the rain. Which I'd sort of forgotten. But hell if Friday night didn't remind me. You see, I've been mired lately in a bit of not-good-enough, not-smart-enough, not-going-anywhere muck and it was good to be reminded that yes, in fact, I like to get a little wet. I like the zigzag and the adventure and the inconvenience of a good rain storm.

I often think of Dr. Maya Angelou's very good and very simple words: I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

Well this weekend, holed up in the mountains of central Virginia, I thought of something I'd like to add to that list: what a person does with a costume closet.

Because, for myself,  I'll take the people who dress up--who dress up with flare and gusto and absolute abandon. The people who ask no questions, who turn on their heels and ascend two flights of steps, and piece together a costume with a nod to the absurd.

Life is short. But one of the great blessings of this very short life is that we have the ability to choose the people we sit around a dinner table with. And I couldn't be more grateful that the people I know are willing to sit around said table, after a very long (very hot) day, wearing ridiculous hats and dresses and Civil War jackets.

There are things to be learned from thunderstorms. Things to be learned from missed flights and day-late- drives in oversized pick-up trucks. From mountain views and frigid swimming pools.

And from costume closets. Where the best of us is hidden, and then found.

details

photo.

I mostly have a nearly impossible time imagining the future. Like big-picture-future.

But then I think about all the nights still to come that’ll see me don my gold-glitter heels and stay out way too late.

And I think of the Sunday mornings when, in nothing more than an over-sized t-shirt, I’ll read the Times and attempt the crossword and drink three lattes in a row.

I think of late evening strolls in those deep summer months when the city is quiet and the only respite from the heat comes hours after sunset.

I think of the times I’ll wear a bikini for reasons having nothing to do with how I look in it.

And of bike rides and rich meals and mornings that’ll tangle sheets. Tuesday nights and too many margaritas and Wednesday mornings paying the price.

I think of long glances--their genesis being, as of yet, unknown. (Maybe).

And I think of the small leaps that bring two people together—held-hands and fumbled language.

I think of the many collared shirts yet to be unbuttoned.

The discussions and the fights. The words you give to a person and the worlds you let them in on.

I think of the vibration—the frequency— of a child’s laughter and how that’s maybe the only answer I’ll ever need.

And how the rest will sort itself out. Big picture brought into focus by the mess and blessing of mostly ordinary and nearly perfect details.

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