let's all be happy together

here

further proof

You know those beautiful posts all those beautiful style bloggers are always doing - the "in my purse" ones? Where next to their Marc Jacobs tote or whatever they have a dainty grid of NARS lipsticks, antique coin purses, and rolls of Japanese tape?

Would you like to know what is in my purse (a 4-year-old Brooklyn Industries feather tote with a peeling plastic overcoat that I pick at when anxious) right now?

- my wallet (Target)
- two notebooks
- Filofax agenda
- five pairs of (clean, thankfully) underwear
- sweaty sports bra and t-shirt
- dirty Tupperware
- orange sandals
- Disgrace
- tiny Fresh lip balm (free gift from Sephora)
- deodorant
- two Rumpus Letters in the Mail 
- umbrella
- half-eaten bag of mango licorice
- one band aid

FIVE PAIRS of underwear. FIVE PAIRS.

the consummate smart cookie

The other list, of the things she will miss, begins with “my kids” and “Nick” and ends this way: 

 “Taking a bath 

Coming over the bridge to Manhattan

 Pie.”

surrounded by nothing / but the nothing's surrounded by us

On the flight back to the city from Vancouver, waterlogged with fatigue, smudge-eyed, limbs folded and aching, I listened to Youth Lagoon's "Year of Hibernation" about 12 times. It's not really music for airplanes - more for summer nights in Brooklyn - but it was the only thing that lowered my heart rate to a manageable beat.

I was at this concert last year, drunk. I remember feeling like I was on fire, each cell of my body being plucked and strummed, as though lightning was being loosed down my spine. Does that sound ridiculous? You'll know it if you've felt it. It was the music, the company. It was the whiskey and the way the anxiety I'd been battling all fall was finally lifting.

I have a lot more I want to say about that. I have a lot more I want to say about everything, lately, but I'm feeling stuck. I think I've been talking/writing around it: I'm unhappy. Not all the time, not chronically or inescapably, not dangerously, just - unhappy. I'm going to try a few things. First a haircut. Maybe a few late nights out in the open, with fireflies, if I can arrange it. I want the summer to come - to really come. I want to be wet and ready, because I want something to happen. I want to make something happen.

two things

‎"It’s a summer day, / and I want to be wanted more than anything else in the world." 


- Frank O'Hara. 

here. 

treat yo' self

Indulgent lunch: New Game of Thrones for an impromptu trip home; NARS lipstick in Heat Wave. You deserve it.

heart

I forgot to ring-in my one-year New York anniversary. It was Sunday. I did it up on Sunday, don't get me wrong: celebrated my best friend's birthday in Prospect Park with leftover cupcakes and a bottle of sparkling cider; went to an open house (4th floor walk up, too dark); cleaned my apartment (FEELS SO GOOD); ate my favourite spicy basil noodles with a bottle of rose; walked to Ample Hills with the roommates for a cone of salted crack caramel (HOLY HOLY); watched the season premiere of True Blood (someone needs to tell me to stop watching that show). But at no point did I stop and raise a glass to myself and stare out at the skyline and reflect on what this past year has meant to me.

Which seems to actually be a very fitting way to celebrate a year of New York living: a mess of frantic activity, holding the wild threads together in any way you can, forgetting to pause and notice what's around you.

This morning on the subway a guy was singing along to "Moves Like Jagger" (is that what that song is called?) on his iPod at the TOP OF HIS FUCKING LUNGS, so terribly, and dancing with his whole body in the aisle. He was doing it with joy. And instead of being annoyed, everyone on the train smiled and laughed and made eye contact and applauded.

I live in New York. I love it here.

random act of bravery

When I was in grade four I used to read in the library during recess and lunch, and the other kids would come and hide behind the stacks to point and laugh. I used to tuck myself deep down behind the pages and pretend not to notice. Then I grew up, and last week I smiled at a boy on the platform and made sure to hop aboard his car and gave him short, sharp looks above my book because he was very tall and scruffed up and looked fun, even in a tie, but I still blushed like my younger, petrified self when he smiled and slipped me his card before jumping off the subway.

It's nice when someone else does the brave work for you.

passion is work / that retrieves us

                                   Desire

is the honest work of the body,
            its engine, its wind.
It too must have its sails - wings
           in this tiny mouth, valves
in the human heart, meanings like sailboats
            setting out

over the mind. Passion is work
            that retrieves us,
lost stitches. It makes a pattern of us,
             it fastens us
to sturdier stuff
              no doubt.

from "I Watched a Snake," Jorie Graham

I read this today. Hoo, boy.

random act(s) of bravery

Open houses, saying it straight, late-night visiting, taking things on, taking things off. Rejections, in all shapes and sizes. Orange pants. Also I've had all these zits lately, and most of the time I continue to leave the house, so let's all wave our banners, okay?

And you?

two things

1. I never regret buying myself flowers. These market peonies are in full eruption beside my bed.

2. Go here for some good tunes today. A little derivative, perhaps, but he still gets me. It's music for long roads, for fields, for sunsets, for summer.

underground new york public library

Completely enamoured of this tumblr. I love how intimate it makes the subway seem. I feel that way, often - cocooned, connected. I get more reading done on my morning commute than at any other time. I've frequently entertained the thought of just continuing to ride, past my stop, all the way up to the end of the line, wherever that might be. You know I haven't been north of 81st since I moved to New York? A day riding the lines back and forth with a book seems like a wonderful, if completely nonsensical, remedy.

sunday morning

Watching:

   via evencleveland

Reading: Emily Nussbaum on Doctor Who in the New Yorker

Eating: Greek yogurt with rhubarb compote, agave, walnuts, and strawberries from the market

Googling: "how to wear a slip as a dress," "questions to ask at open houses"

Pondering:

found here

Planning: Late afternoon picnic in Prospect Park with bagels, greyhounds in water bottles

Writing: Thoughts on privilege, on fetishizing the poor, on the 99%, on houses in France 

Considering: How to get back to Newfoundland 

also, this is the best thing to have happened recently

mostly just the shoes

Sometimes I think I'd like to start a blog that is only about the things I ate and why I ate them.

The six bites of your pad see ew on Tuesday night? That was my dinner. Because I had a vegetarian Chipotle burrito for lunch, because I recently had to switch birth control brands, because the American health care system is a joke, because 10 years ago now I wanted to leave home and go as far as I could without crossing an ocean, because I fell in love and stayed, and now I'm here, in this bar, drinking a whiskey ginger, losing at trivia, about to get a lecture from your best friend as to why I should stay away from you.

All that from pad see ew!

My coworker brought me $5 worth of rhubarb from the Union Square green market last week. I turned it into: a rhubarb buttermilk cake with cinnamon sugar topping; rhubarb lemon ginger muffins; soft rhubarb compote.

Shoes!

Brunch! 

All day long I'll listen to the soundtrack of Les Mis. (This is a factory, not a circus!) Why not? There are some projects I'd like to finish up this weekend. One of those projects is writing lists of all the projects I'd like to finish up this summer. It's finally time to start a New York bucket list. I'll sit outside as much as possible. I'll contemplate. I'm going to have lots of time on my hands now that I've sworn off men again.