defect/asset

in







If you obsess about some defect, you make it obvious to everyone, and suddenly everyone is staring at just that defect. It's always like that. The more you hide something, the more it shows. But when you accept your defect, suddenly no one on earth sees it anymore. In fact, it becomes an asset.

Audrey Tautou

in





One thing you have to give up is attaching importance to what people see in you.

Jeanne Moreau

on forcing one's self to look up. and the fight that ensues.

in




































i saw a mouse on friday night. a live one.

i was sitting in the living room watching dateline's lived to tell the tale when something caught my eye.

a mouse. moving.

i have dealt with every kind of bug situation since moving to new york. ants and roaches, bed bugs and larvae, maggots and dead pigeons (those two were related, as it turns out).

but not a mouse. not. a. live. mouse.

so i sat on the couch and willed the thing to go away. but just as i began to relax, it thought the coast clear and would attempt to run from the hallway to the kitchen (food!) and i would let out a squeal and back it would go.

you see, i was a little undone by this wee of the mouse. but that poor mouse was absolutely terrified of me--this notion upset me all the more.

and so i began to cry. not too much, but enough to know that i wasn't really crying because of the mouse.

something bigger was at play here.

and to some extent i know what that something is, but also i haven't a bloody clue and how is that possible?

i'm pretty sure it has to do with shifting terrain and the sense that at any moment--should i make the decision--my world will open wide. and there will be light. or absolute darkness. or something in between.

{ahhh, that familiar territory of the unknown i so adore}.

but back to the mouse. so there i was: crying. legs pulled up under me on the couch. friday night. dateline on the television. and i made a decision.

i did what any manhattan-dwelling single-woman in her mid-twenties (actually, let's take a moment to clarify that, shall we? mid-twenties. not late-twenties. mid. MID-TWENTIES. got it? okay) who's home alone on a friday night would do: i ran to the bathroom, drew a bath, and locked myself in there. mouse be damned.

and when i finally emerged, a little bit cleaner and a little bit calmer i clomped about the apartment in flip-flops, trying to scare the thing back to wherever it had come from. out of site. out of mind.

i haven't seen it since. knock on wood.

more worrisome than the mouse is the nagging sense that i'm not feeling totally well--the tears brought on by something bigger than myself.

that old sadness creeping in.

sleeping a little bit more than usual. eating a little bit more than usual (and by a little bit, i mean, a lot).

it's always a humbling experience to find myself face to face with the eating disorder once more. mostly because there are things you forget--experiences and moments and memories your body protects you from. like how you sometimes remain as still as possible so as to not feel yourself in a body that is just a little bit bigger and a little bit less yours.

but then there are moments that pull you out. in the form of a kind boy with big eyes who's far more interesting than the burrito before you, or a night out at a bar in chicago that words will never fully do justice, or the man who wants to kiss you even when you're wearing that old, navy blue dress you only pull out when you feel you need both a little more coverage and a little more breathing room (i have an inkling he hasn't a clue about the dress. and even if he did, he wouldn't really care).

i know enough to know that this steep pendulum swing between being just fine and ever, so off-kilter is always--without a doubt--the period of the most growth. i come out better for it. and as a very lovely friend said to me the other day, it always passes. and there is such comfort in that. 




happiness.

it was at a slip of a table at a restaurant in midtown west four years ago that a conversation took place. happiness is a choice. that's what we settled on, circled around. it's a choice. i can't tell you how many times i've returned to that place, that time, that thought. turned those words over in my hands, swallowed them whole and felt them burning at the pit of my stomach.

but then just recently i came across the wise words of ayn rand:

Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness. 


fight for your happiness. don't just choose it, fight for it. somehow that seems more apt. the actor in me understands that: the difference between those two verbs is an intensity of action. and the more active the verb, the more interesting the choice.

fight for your happiness. and value yourself. of course.

easier said than done, but an exciting proposition no?

i read an article in the huffington post this morning about what makes a person happy, really happy. and how mostly it's the small things.

and lord knows i've blogged about this before. (here and here, most recently).

but because right now i'm feeling a bit like i really need a tangible list of weapons with which to fight i want to include an addendum to my previous cocktail for happiness.






so here goes. addendum. (other things that make me happy. in no particular order)...

when my father sends me clippings from the new york times. (and they arrive the old-fashioned-way: posted mail).

speaking of my father, when i look down at my wallet--my absolute mess of a wallet and i know in that moment--in that absolute instant that i am actually my father's daughter. (i'm not daddy's little girl. never have been, never will be, because i am my father. i am his daughter, for better or worse, i am his child--nervous stomach, messy wallet and all).

when my parents do something--have a little argument, make coy comments, and i am reminded that even after all this time, they still love each other enough to poke fun and be willing to laugh.

always having a set of concert tickets in the little, white box atop my dresser. (someday i'll write about this year in which i became bold simply by listening to really good music).

pretty bowls. dried lavender. a long, slow brunch. getting dressed up--from the shower to the makeup to properly chosen under-garments (note to self: rid drawer of that pair of bridget jones-esque underwear {you know the pair, the terrible control top pair that is only okay when seen by no one but herself {actually, even then, it's questionable}) .

turning the subway into a movable cafe with a to-go latte in one hand and good book in the other. pulling the dirty clothes off my reading chair just long enough to actually read in it (a novel idea!). a good pun. the weight that is lifted the moment i finish my laundry. the promise of a good first-date. a really good literary illusion.





i gave myself two goals this week--two tangible things to pull myself from that metaphorical couch on which i sit, legs folded, afraid of a mouse for goodness' sake!

1. to try a new recipe each day. and 2. to lug a camera everywhere. that's it. that's all. a goal. and a gift to myself.

so do tell, won't you. what are the tangibles you pull out? what are your happiness triggers? i want to add to the list, make a communal one from which we call all draw...a starting place from which to fight for happiness.




(post script: happy tuesday).

the new york times wrote about my neck of the woods!

in

when i first moved all the way up to washington heights from my beloved upper west side i defended the area. a lot. to myself. to others. and there was a point last year that i couldn't wait to move--couldn't get away from the long, rumbling A train fast enough. but something shifted. and i fell in love with this corner of manhattan all over again:
the first thing i see in the morning is the hudson river abutting the stone facade of the palisades. i get my coffee from a place that isn't starbucks. the corner grocer knows my name, knows what i like, and knows when my eating is off. bikers hike here from all over the city on weekends. i walk on hills and know my neighbors's names and phone numbers. 
well, yesterday, the new york times published a beautiful ode to my little neighborhood. and i thought i'd share. because there's only so much truth to what i say and well, the new york times carries a hell of a lot more weight...
(ps: two of my favorite posts about the neighborhood. (it's like paris!) and (calling it home).




“HEY, look out!” cried a man on the street as he grabbed an elderly woman from the path of a bicyclist whizzing down the steep slope of West 181st Street, toward Riverside Drive. The cyclist was gone in a flash, trailed by a few choice expletives from the pedestrians in his wake. No one was hurt, yet there was plenty of harrumphing on the sidewalk. People gathered to commiserate, to make sure the woman was O.K., and to see if anyone needed help carrying packages up the hill.
This neighborhood is not for everyone, said Laura Hembree, a longtime resident of Washington Heights who is also a broker at Simone Song Properties, which has served these parts for 25 years. “You have to like the parks and the quiet and not be concerned with being in the fashionable place.”
West 181st, from Fort Washington Avenue to Riverside Drive, cuts through a part of the city that seems caught in time. If not a leafy European suburb unruffled by economic crisis, then perhaps the Upper West Side, circa 1987, before the slick condos and big-box stores began to take over. In fact, there are a lot of expats from 10025 here. (Earlier immigrants include the Dutch, the Irish, German Jews, Russians, Dominicans and Mexicans.)
Only three blocks in length, the stretch seems a lot longer, in part because of its hilly topography, curving pattern, big sky and leisurely rhythm — whizzing bikes notwithstanding.
Here, neighbors stop to say hello to one another. Dogs on leashes do, too. Fathers mind the kids, some of them trooping up to Bennett Park where a high natural point in Manhattan (267.75 feet above sea level) is marked with a plaque on a stone. Ladies in Lycra chat post-workout in front of a Pilates studio. Old people mix with trendy young ones. A woman who lives at Pinehurst Avenue and 181st has a place in the Catskills where she grows things to sell at her little farm stand, which appears sporadically on the sidewalk.
There’s even an echo of Montmartre on the tree-shaded steps between Cabrini and Pinehurst Avenues that lead from West 181 to West 183 Street and Bennett Park, complete with cigarette butts by the benches and buckets of empty booze bottles.
“It’s surprisingly friendly and open,” said Barbara Taylor, 65, a fund-raiser who moved to 870 West 181st Street in 1986. When she first arrived, “there was fear,” she said. “Crack cocaine and a couple of murders. Now there are a significant number of musicians, actors and other artsy types, and still those vestiges of wonderful old folks.”
Along with one bustling block on West 187th Street, West 181st is the commercial center of Hudson Heights, a microneighborhood within Washington Heights. It is roughly demarcated by Broadway to the east, 173rd Street to the south, Fort Tryon Park to the north, and, indisputably, the Hudson River to the west.
The good people of Washington Heights may bristle when they hear the sloping patch referred to as Hudson Heights. Maybe it has the whiff of elitism, this carving out of a few blocks that are markedly tidier and more white-collar than the rest of the district. But names change: Washington Heights takes its name from Fort Washington, which, for a while after the British captured New York, became Fort Knyphausen. Cabrini Boulevard, named in 1939 in honor of Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American citizen to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church, used to be plain old Northern Boulevard.
Take the A train, as the songwriter Billy Strayhorn did in the 1940s, en route to visit Duke Ellington in Sugar Hill (“Hurry, get on, now it’s coming/Listen to those rails a-thrumming”). Don’t get off until 181st Street — about 26 minutes from 14th Street. Then, pop out of the station to enter another world.
“The air is good,” said a resident who moved here 10 years ago from the East Village and was out walking his little terrier the other day. No one asked him; he just volunteered his critique in a nice, neighborly way.
Apartments go for a lot less here than in many other parts of Manhattan. A 1,050-square-foot garden apartment in Hudson View Gardens, a 1924 co-op that seems plucked from the imagination of Beatrix Potter, recently sold for under $500,000. A 1,500-square-foot loft space at 875 West 181st Street, a co-op constructed in 1917, is listed at $699,000. In SoHo, that kind of loft space would cost at least $2 million — and it would not come with unobstructed views of the George Washington Bridge and the open sky over the Hudson River across to the Palisades.
Those are what the trade calls trophy views.
According to the Corcoran Group, whose broker Kelly Cole and her team do a lot of business in Upper Manhattan, the average sale price in the second quarter of 2011 for co-ops uptown, including Hudson Heights, was $584 per square foot. Downtown, the average was $891; the East Side, $943; and the West Side, $978.
It feels like a hamlet, especially when a black squirrel skitters across your path, or you hear German spoken, or you notice that the locals refer to anything south of the George Washington Bridge as “downtown.” There is lots of greenery, and residential complexes with well-kept private gardens.
But there’s concrete, ethnicity and bustle, too. New restaurants are opening up, following Saggio (No. 829), the sunny Northern Italian that’s become a neighborhood favorite. The expansive Cabrini Wines and Liquors (No. 831), owned by Ernest Campos, whose family came from Cuba and who has been doing business here for 35 years, serves as a kind of community hangout.
Moscow on the Hudson (No. 801) is a funny little market with shelves piled high with jars with Russian labels identifying marinated mushrooms, special mustards and “chilly” sauce, and a glass display featuring smoked mackerel, salamis and cakes. A Starbucks has taken over a corner of Fort Washington Avenue. There’s always a scene on the benches out front: serious cyclists, old dears, novel readers, weary travelers. And the other day, a preppy young couple walked by, he carrying a trumpet in a leather case. On the sidewalk outside Lissemore Music Studios at 495 Fort Washington, you sometimes can hear opera singers practicing.
It’s no wonder that people come to West 181st Street to discover this part of Manhattan. “More space for the dollar, that’s the obvious draw,” said Paul Cole, a sales agent with the Corcoran team led by Ms. Cole (his wife). “But there’s also a little bit of a different quality of life.”
Ms. Taylor, who lives in 2,000 square feet overlooking the Hudson, agrees. “It’s infinitely friendlier,” she said. “It really is small townish. There’s something so relaxing in having that big damn river. And the bridge, when it’s illuminated, it’s like honeycombs.”