call and response.

I have a really brilliant hairstylist. His name is Simon. The last time I went to see him I brought a picture of the bangs I wanted.

Simon, can you do this? I asked.

I can, but I won't, he replied.

Why not?

Because no man will ever approach you in a bar if you've got those bangs. They're too angular. They're too harsh.

But Simon, men hardly approach me in bars as it is.

And you want to make it harder, why?

I didn't get the bangs. I got pretty darn close. Simon's good that way. Compromise.

Simon knows everything about me. I tell him things that I tell almost no one else. He knows the names of the men I've loved (and the number of other people in the world with that information can be counted on one hand).

He is privy to all of the information too private to share here.

And so we talk about everything. Past lives and bathroom habits and political beliefs and what it is we feel called to do.

This last time I saw him he told me something I haven't been able to stop thinking about since:

There is almost no more traumatic event that the human body can go through than to give birth. And if a person didn't know what was happening they might think they were dying. It is an insane proposition before a woman: growing a child and then pushing it out. And the event of that, while sacred, is violent and bloody and is there anything harder? But it passes. And what comes from that violence and blood and struggle is life. New life. Perfect life. In fact, there is nothing more perfect and good and wholly right than that new life.

And the metaphor of that--the extension of that is that suffering and trauma and what feels like it might be killing us may be the very thing pushing out new life. The moment is just a moment. And when all is said and done few things are more worthwhile than the temporary pain during which it seemed life was ending.

Seemed.

I thought about that as I was on my knees today, praying--and how that thought was both the prayer and the gentle, unfolding response.

the alarm.

I spent this morning chasing my coffee cup around the apartment.

Which is to say I spent an hour on the phone with Time Warner and then decided that I have to cultivate the skills my mothers so gracefully possesses and figure out how to organize and keep track of and learn to love file folders.

This is such a specific time in my life: chasing a coffee cup around the apartment. Setting it down before setting off to find the internet passcode before then wondering where the hell I just put the mug. This is such a luxurious problem to have, I know that, I can see that.

Things will change.

I have to remind myself of this. Often.

Just the other day, leaving work, I pushed through the turnstile to the F train and thought, I know it won't always be this. I won't always be 27 at a job that, while I'm extremely grateful for, is not the goal. I won't always live here in this tiny flat, alone. But oh, how this moment in time feels like it will stretch out forever.

I sobbed on the phone to my mother today.

I am ready for the next. But how does one get to the next? It is the getting there that I'm struggling with. Much as I now know where I want to go (which, man, I never thought I'd get there) it seems like there's a mountain before me and I don't know how to get over it.

And my smoke alarm's going off. So, I've got to go take care of that. (I'm making my baked potato {veggie #1 of 3 for this week's weekly wellness challenge}).

the asking.

A good long while ago I liked a man, the reasons for which now somehow inexplicable. But such is the kindness and clarity of time—of knowing just enough or just a-little-too-much when all is said and done.

Because when the said-and-done had come he was not the right guy. He was not even a good guy. But before I knew too much or even just enough, I thought maybe.

And he thought maybe.

And together we lived in that delicious and fertile place that a maybe is--until we found ourselves on opposite sides of the same answer: no.  

Absolutely not.

And there in the wake of the said-and-done in the land where maybe became a no was the exposed mettle of a man just not good enough.

But I was lonely and had so long accepted his meager kindnesses that I confused his not good enough with my not good enough and that became the story I told myself. That I was not good enough.

Of the few men I’ve known and loved and cared for in this life I’ve stood before each and every one of them and asked them to love me. Not really asking, of course. Not giving voice to what fear rendered silent and desperate. But asking in the absence of those words. Asking in the silence of what I was too afraid to say. I asked by simply not having the courage to assert my worth.

And then I accepted their small and selfish answers.

Yes, but not now.

A little, but not enough.

Not really, but I’ll do what I can to make you think that I do.

None of these things stated explicitly, but derived from the morse code that is shifting feet, hands in pockets, half-smiles, gentle bows of the head.

But it was the asking that was the problem. Even more than the answers. It was the asking that unraveled whatever might have been.

MY BROOKLYN// and suddenly my camera isn't heading to manhattan as much.

on saturday my dear friend kim and i had something of a stay-cation here in brooklyn. it was everything i needed and more. new neighborhoods, vintage shop hopping, good food. i really am smitten with this place.

a love letter to the man i don't know.

i remember you must have asked about my birthday a hundred times that first year. when was it? what was the date? and each time i sat in the silence following my response i could feel you attempting more alchemy than math as you worked the numbers in your head. you would ask again  as though my answer might change--as though the difference between us might suddenly make sense. as if you might be able to line the numbers up just so to account for the space between--the years that seemed mighty when we were young, now meaning little.

i'm pretty sure you were trying more to account for a life you hadn't planned for. and so it wasn't really a question of numbers or ages or years or the dates of birthdays. it was a question and risk and reward and the great unknown.

i've always said i learn best by doing it wrong and i wonder if that's true for you too. if you had to look in the face of something right and good and choose instead what-had-long-been-planned-as-right-and-good--if we both had to fail in opposite directions for the alchemy to take hold.

i feel so far away from you now. as though we'll never speak again or meet again. as though i might wake tomorrow, my memory in tact, but for you--a different sort of rip van winkle slumber. but someone asked about you recently and before thought could catch up to feeling i said i'm in the eye of the storm. this is the calm.

but i don't know. it's been so long. maybe too long. and maybe too much has happened. and maybe all that will ever be is a stolen moment each october 4th remembering how often i uttered that date in response to all the questions you were afraid to ask.