...
in quotes
On what to give up for Lent...
last night i found myself at a small downtown club listening to some really fine new orleans tunes--dueling trumpets, rich and broken voices. organized, beautiful chaos.
and there was a moment when la cucaracha came spitting out of one of the horns and i had this very clear memory of how as i child my father would pull me from the shower and towel me off as he sang that ridiculous song. and i'd forgotten. and how could i forget that? and what other memories have too long sat on a shelf somewhere?
standing in the too crowded space just before the stage i turned to this lovely man who i'm just now friends with--this person who barely knows me--and i said, if this tuesday is already fat tuesday then i must think of something to give up for lent immediately.
and before the words were even out of my mouth, he looked right at me and said, how about self-doubt?
and god how that question literally took the air from my body. few times in my life have such simple and elegant and wholly true things been said. and he barely knows me. and so how did he know that?
i thought i'd gotten good at faking it, you know?
i felt so exposed in that moment. so seen and not, all at once.
self-doubt.
how about self-doubt? divinity mostly arrives in unusual forms.
BOSTON | in love with color
I am utterly in love with Boston--helpless against its many charms. Mostly the color.
The city is knee-deep in color. Vibrant and rich hues--red brick everywhere and copper pipes. And every time I visit the city woos me just a bit more and I leave ever more reluctantly.
instagram.
and last time I was in Boston...
i saw my brother taste Ben & Jerry's
for the very first time.
and had a heart to heart on a park bench
about my romantic bent.
and last time I was in Boston...
i saw my brother taste Ben & Jerry's
for the very first time.
and had a heart to heart on a park bench
about my romantic bent.
I don't think it was really like prom at all...it was better.
Just the other day I said to someone, I didn't make a lot of mistakes when I was young, I've got some free passes I need to cash in.
Which isn't true of course, I made big mistakes. Life-altering mistakes. The sort of mistakes that when someone asks you how you came to figure this-or-that out and you say the school of hard knocks and they say no, that can't be right, you're too young, they are both right and wrong--age being a funny and deceptive thing--not nearly as linear as we'd like to believe.
It's just that, when I was young, I didn't drink too much or stay out too late or follow the wrong men home. I didn't do what others would perceive as foolish and messy.
My mess was a private sort of thing.
But with age and a little knowledge there is some real joy to be found in making those mistakes now.
I doubt my Saturday night was anything like a typical prom. I got ready sitting in front of my brother's microwave and doing my hair in its reflection (of all the places in his apartment it was the best mirror, with the best lighting). We went to dinner early, followed by drinks and pictures in a friend's apartment before heading to the Fairmont.
I got drunk very early in the night. Which, I must tell you, while not calculated, worked brilliantly. While everyone still had their wits about them, I seemed very fun. It also meant, I drank mostly water 10 pm and on and so awoke without a hangover.
There was much dancing and laughing and a fair amount of shenanigans at the ball (prom)--we may very well have been the only group with a to-do list that included icing people, getting rejected by better looking members of the opposite sex (more attractive as voted on by 70% of the group), and making it rain $2 bills (this sadly did not happen...something for next time).
It was at two-thirty in the morning when I found myself trailing behind my brother and his group of friends up a steep hill at the back end of Beacon Hill, four boxes of large pizzas, our finest dress clothes in various stages of disarray, and I had the thought: this is youth. This is something like youth.
It was one of those moments where the image is so clear: a group of friends trekking up a hill as the night lightly sifts out snow, and the only sound are heels on cobblestone and the sort of laughter born of comfortable friendships and too much wine. An image of youth. A tableau of youth. One of those moments that as it's happening you find yourself mentally crossing it off life's to-do list, not even knowing it was on there until you stumbled into it.
Youth and follies and time. And none of it linear.
Stumbling home through the snow, too late, and with a group of near-strangers-now-friends--god, I can only hope more of life unfolds with as much mess and grace as that moment.
PROM!!
So, I'm totally going to prom this weekend.
Which isn't so much prom as a junior league charity event in Boston.
But my brother and his group of friends have taken to calling it prom, and since I never had prom in high school (strange Southern traditions of cotillion and all that nonsense), I'm seizing this moment and declaring that yes, indeed, this will be the weekend of my first ever prom!!
I got my dress at a vintage shop here in Brooklyn for a ridiculously low price and yesterday my mother took me shopping for some gold-heeled-shoes. My girlfriend Kim told me that the heel is entirely too low for any event masquerading as a prom, but since that it was my first real foray into heeldom, they would suffice.
My brother, being the organizer that he is, began an email chain which quickly devolved into prom do's and don'ts, followed by an extremely detailed email correspondence between one of my brother's friends and his girlfriend Lennay Kekua (does that name sound familiar? google it). The whole thing was genius and if I wasn't before excited to meet Connor's friends, I am now.
But I do want to get back to the subject at hand: PROM!!
What are the do's and don'ts? A low heel may be a don't, but it's a don't that I'm going to own with pride. Some of the other suggestions were to bring a minimum of three flasks (one is a tease) {If you are going to prom and are under the age of 21, I am in no way condoning drinking. I am 27 and therefore, very, very legal. We all must pay our dues}. And that polaroids are better than instagram (which means my Fuji instamax is already packed). But what else?
What does one do at prom? What did you all do and wear at your first prom?! Tell me everything, bring me into the circle of girl-talk.