blogging. and the love letter it is.
i live alone now.
in a tiny studio apartment. in a small neighborhood a little bit south of that place called manhattan. and i love it. i love everything about it.
i love walking east on fourth place just at the moment the subway is crossing ahead in the distance, above ground. the slow, soft rumble of it--its gentle movement--makes me feel as though i'm living life in miniature--like i'm a small piece on an oversized train set.
and sometimes it feels really good to feel so small.
i've finally gotten good at cooking dinner. it's almost always quinoa. or pasta. and almost always consumed between the hours of 11 at night and two in the morning. this feels unique to new york. and unique to living alone. and unique to not having a partner. unique to this particular, passing moment.
and this moment will pass.
i am grateful for the lonely. and grateful for the quiet evenings. i am grateful for how the air cools after the sun sets. for the soft summer rains and the smell of water on earth and pavement.
for how fleeting the wet is. for how fleeting the summer is. for how quickly time is moving.
and yet.
all of these many things terrify me, too.
how quickly time is moving! and how quickly this moment is passing, even as i use what little breath i have to curse the damn. thing. for. standing. still. for. so. damn. long.
sometimes i think, the reason i started this blog, all those many years ago, was i wanted to write a love letter.
to pause the movement of what was moving too fast.
i constantly look at things now and remind myself to look again. new york has this way of hardening a person, of making defense the default position. so, often i must ask myself to look again. to look again through new eyes. softer eyes. to look again and with great compassion.
i began writing this blog as a love letter to the life i wanted to lead. to the person i wanted to become. as a way of looking at myself, just as i was--in that moment, that paused moment--a second time and with great compassion.
somewhere along the way i forgot this. somewhere along the way i forgot that this was meant to be a-love-letter-to-life-as-is. somewhere in that land where the anthroplogie aesthetic met kate spade saturday i developed a tremendous and nagging suspicion that this blog was somehow not good enough. or glittery enough. or marketable enough. no commercial niche to speak of. and blogging is such a different world than it was just a few years ago. and so i began to wonder if in this land of what to wear and what to buy and how to look while doing those things--i began to wonder if this blog still had a place? if it still had value? i want to be very clear, i do not admonish or fault anyone who has figured out the commercial element of blogging--it is an art form unto itself. and as a single woman living in new york city who knows just how hard it is to make a living--let alone make a living doing what one loves--i fault absolutely no one for figuring out a way into the world of business. i both admire and wonder at the talent of it, truly.
and then there is the question of how this blog-as-a-love-letter affects love--or rather, the search for a shared-sort-of-love.
if ever i think of throwing in the towel altogether, it's mostly because of men. because dating is hard enough. and dating in new york city is nearly impossible (and not in the good, rewarding, wow-i'm-so-glad-to-have-this-experience-sort-of-way, but more in the this-is-an-as-of-yet-undiscovered-circle-of-hell). and to blog as a single woman about actual experiences when we're all just trying to figure it out, both separately and, when we get so lucky, together...well, it may just be... too. hard.
because i worry about the men i go on dates with. i worry about last names and the power of google and the sheer volume of information. i worry about the internet or a blog supplanting real conversation. i worry how oblique and out-of-context information can be misconstrued and misunderstood and falsely placed atop real experience. i worry that my melancholic writer's voice will somehow sound more loudly than the stutter of my laugh as we sit at the bar.
i dated a guy for four months and never once told him my last name. eventually he stopped asking. he knew why and he respected why and we made a small go of not-it,but something. and for a time it was really good.
sometimes i think if i could just hit the blogging-pause-button. figure out the man thing. get a grasp on the next five years. get married. have a baby. write a book. or some such. and then pick it back up again. assuming of course that (1) the aforementioned things will happen, and frankly i should be so, so (so very, very) lucky and (2) that blogging will still be around after i've lived my way into those major milestones (and the chances of that are...rare. no? perhaps just not blogging as we now know it).
i won't stop. but i will beg your patience if i go quiet for longer stretches of time. i'll beg your patience if my writing seems tedious and staid. if there aren't enough photos. if there are too many words. because, believe it or not, i am trying to figure out the next five years right now, day by day. and sometimes that means there is not the time nor the desire nor the energy to blog.
but if all of this is a love letter, a second look, than i ask for your kind eyes, your great compassion. i beg your understanding if a quiet does come. because sometimes silence is it's own sort of delight. sometimes silence is a love letter unto itself.
on growing up
There are things about getting older that no one prepares you for.
Like that first time you look at your face in the mirror and realize you’ve aged. You’ll have had your suspicions for a while--sort of squinting at your reflection in the mirror, wondering at the changes. Disassembling your face and attempting to add up the sum of the parts.
And then one morning you’ll wake, rinse water, look up, and it’ll hit you. I’ve aged. I’m older. And your face will reflect that. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s not an altogether bad thing. It’ll suit you. The age will settle in nicely around the eyes, pop your cheekbones just a bit. But there will be a certain youthfulness that is lost. A sweetness and roundness that is no longer yours to claim. And there will be a sadness to that small loss.
There is a loneliness to adulthood that is sometimes good and sometimes not. A loneliness to knowing that all of the firsts still ahead of you have long since passed for many you love so dearly—the people who came before you and readied the path. Their firsts are now shadows and ghosts and loss lurks in the wings, a persistent threat.
Your breasts may come in late. Like at 22. And you’ll think it has something to do with the added weight of that age. But when the weight is lost and the roundness of those curves remains, make peace with it. It is okay if they look nothing like your mother’s breasts. It’s okay if you do not have your mother’s body. This is not a betrayal. It is not a betrayal of your mother that you do not look like her. The look of a woman is a vast, boundless thing.
You will arrive at an age when what you develop this insatiable need for the conversations that come at the end of the day.
Oh, you’ll want the other stuff too—this kisses and the sex and the Sunday morning coffee runs. But there is a thing so particular about needing a person in which to empty secrets big and small. To tell the really banal stuff. And you’ll go on all these dates, so many dates. Bad dates and terrible dates and lonely dates and good ones too, but at the end of them you’ll just want to go home, crawl into bed, and tell your person just how hard and funny and ridiculous it all was. But they won’t be there. In fact, you’re only going on those dates to get to that person. And the irony of this is a sort of insult to injury. But that person—your person—will be born of these dates, both bad and good.
Or so you are told. And so you keep going.
The cost of some friendships is too high. And you must let them go. You may feel like a bad person because of this. You may feel disliked. And you may think it is because you are not bubbly enough or kind enough or palatable enough. And that may be true. But you know what else may be true? Sometimes you outgrow things. It is as simple and as complicated as that. You do not have to be liked by everyone. Let me say that again: YOU. DO. NOT. HAVE. TO. BE. LIKED. BY. EVERYONE. And you must be courageous enough to accept that. Not everyone grows up. Not everyone takes risks. So not everyone deserves what little time you have.
There will be men who hurt you. And there will be men who make a fool of you. And the second is somehow far worse than the first. Because it is disrespectful and unkind and stitched together by small, selfish lies. These men—the ones that take you for a fool—these are the men more concerned with being seen as the good guy, than actually being the good guy. These are the men who worship at the altar of cool and casual and isn’t-this-fun. The men who lack courage. Who say they are fearless when fear is their motivating factor.
Many of these men are really, really good and worthy people who have yet to figure out just how good and worthy they are. But they’re not there yet. And you don’t need to wait around for them to figure it out.
The great challenge of adulthood (other than figuring out just what the hell it is you are actually doing with your life) is learning to speak honestly and kindly. Finding where those two things live—which, I’m pretty sure, is in that sacred space where courage and self-worth meet.
The pursuit of honesty and kindness is much like standing small and vulnerable in the great, big ocean. Leaning into the waves as they crash over you. You might come up gasping for air, totally water-logged. But hell, if it doesn’t feel good. Scary and overwhelming, but vital. Like there’s more life in there—in that moment of impact. Because to go in pursuit of honesty and kindness takes fearlessness. It demands power and self-awareness and a heaping dose of humility. Honesty and kindness are not easy. They expose vulnerabilities and flaws and force us to admit our wrongdoings. But they are humanizing. Which is the only level on which any of us can ever really meet. Not too high, not too low.
Assertiveness is a hugely misunderstood and undervalued skill. You have to figure it out. That’s part of what growing up is. Read about it and practice it. And hold yourself accountable. Assertiveness is neither passive, nor aggressive (and most certainly isn’t that thing we call passive aggressive, which for the record is still aggressive). Be better.
Because some things don’t age well; anger is a really ugly thing in an adult.
There are certain words that will resonate differently as the years pass. For example, I am a woman possessed by the notion of home. Obsessed with its meaning and variations and color. I want to know what it tastes like and what it feels like and if I can hold it in my hands.
At the age of twenty-six, just months shy of my twenty-seventh birthday I moved to what I now declare is very-nearly-the-most-perfect-neighborhood-that-ever-was-and-ever-will-be. And a little bit of home was revealed to me in the mess and perfection and symphony of these tangled streets.
I travel away from it each day. Because I must. For work and for play and for all the things between. I take the subway to midtown Manhattan, which I hate. And I take the subway to Williamsburg or Park Slope or the West Village, which I love. But at the end of the day, I return home. Always, I return home. To this small pocket of green and brownstone. And my eyes soften and my chest unfurls as I come up and out of the train station onto Second Place. And I think: if the only value of this place is the joy I find in returning home to it, that is enough. Even if I didn’t have to leave, I would, just to experience the pleasure of the return.
I think maybe that notion applies to worth as well. Sometimes self-worth flags. Sometimes it is lost all together. But if the value of that happening is the journey back to it—the journey back to self-worth, which is maybe just the journey back to self...well, that alone is worth it. Therein lies the value. Because it’s a really good, really worthwhile, really satisfying journey back.
Home and its many gradations.
And I go in search of it. Again and again and again. Forged as much by what I find, as the search itself.
round these parts | solace in fresh flowers, quiet streets, neighborhood oddities, and sweeping skylines
(small pleasures)
(stoop sale)
(the F train is above ground before it hits Carroll Street; and because it's been hotter in New York than any of us know how to handle {and waiting underground in the hotbox that is a subway station doesn't appeal to anyone} it's been especially pleasant to watch for the train's approach before heading down)
(not a stoop sale. simply for the taking)
(from the top of the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg)
it has been hot in new york. so hot i'm barely functioning--everyone is barely functioning. on top of that i'm taking a Princeton Review course to prepare for the GRE and i can't recommend it enough--it is so very, very good. but it is so very, very, very much work and i always feel like i'm two lessons and three practice tests behind where i'd ideally like to be. so, if you ever feel so inclined to take such a course--opt for the one that's just once a week, as opposed to twice. turns out there are only so many math problems i can do before my brain turns to mush and my eyes glaze over. so blogging has been taking a back seat...
i've got like two mammoth posts all typed up in word document, but i can't quite finish either--i'm not sure if, it's in actuality, just one massive post.
i've been thinking a lot about kindness and honesty and where those two things meet. and men and worth and why they feel tied together, even though they're not. about growing up and how hard but rewarding it is (and how many people refuse to do it because they're scared of the hard bit). all of these thoughts are swirling around, but have yet to really come up and out in any coherent way because all those damn math problems are taking up what little time and space i have in my life (and mind).
so, this is all to say, apologies that things are a bit quiet around here. there's a lot of life happening...which doesn't always allow for a lot of blogging. not now, at least.
happy monday. 
what i'm listening to | frank turner
in ahhh music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF3U_t3yjic earlier this year i dated a lovely, lovely guy.
and i was absolutely terrible to him.
i lacked courage and thus behaved very badly in the hopes that he'd think very little of me and just walk away. (really not my finest moment). but a tremendous learning experience that turned quite a bit around for me.
he introduced me to frank turner. and for that i am in his debt.
this video is charming and lovely, and so you're welcome. (the second song in particular).
gotta love NPR.