goodnight, goodluck

Something happened. I'm not sure. The sort of...self-arrangement this blog required made me sleepy. And then things got real big and real small and there's this kitten and all so either way, I'm moving over here for a while, where it seems more okay to be a little messy. I'm never going to have a nice purse or furniture not chewed by kitten and I only own one pair of Rachel Comey shoes and I can't take a selfie to save my life (seriously, there's a skill to that it seems). So maybe Tumblr is only for the youngin's, but I'll try it on for size.

Come visit, if you'd like.

Either way, I leave you with this.

stopping by

Does attempting to renegotiate your APR count as an act of bravery? 

Hello to you, if you are out there. I am in here. Very deep in here. 

I'd like to dig out and come back, some time. We could chat about where we've been and eat some cherries. They're almost in season. I'd show you lots of photos of my kitten. 

Do let me know how you're doing, though. That has always meant more to me than you know. 

people (real and imagined) who are helping me through my latest crisis

- Taylor Swift
- anyone unlucky enough to find themselves in gchat range
- the kitten
- Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons
- the Me of late 2010-2011

it will not be harmed

Pericardium 
                  Joanna Klink 

Am I not alone, as I thought I was, as I thought 
The day was, the hour I walked into, morning 
When I felt night fly from my chest where prospect had 
Slackened, and close itself off, understanding, as I thought I did, 
That the ground would resist my legs and not let them 
Break nor let them be released into air as my heart, in its 
Muscle, might be released from the body that surrounds it, 
Like someone who, placing a hand on a shoulder's 
Blade, felt a life move inside an hour and a day 
Break from the day the hour meant something more than weakness, 
More than fear, and flew forward into the depths of 
Prospect, your arms, where you'd been, before me, waiting 
For me, the way the body has always been waiting for the heart to sense 
It is housed, it is needed, it will not be harmed.

things i like a lot in theory but which ultimately terrify me

- horses

- hang-gliding 

- motherhood

- false eyelashes 

- relationships 

it's also pretty hard to remember life's marvellous

In Favor of One's Time 
                          Frank O'Hara 

The spent purpose of a perfectly marvellous
life suddenly glimmers and leaps into flame
it's more difficult than you think to make charcoal
it's also pretty hard to remember life's marvellous
but there it is guttering choking then soaring
in the mirrored room of this consciousness
it's practically a blaze of pure sensibility
and however exaggerated at least somethings going on
and the quick oxygen in the air will not go neglected
will not sulk or fall into blackness and peat

an angel flying slowly, curiously singes its wings
and you diminish for a moment out of respect
for beauty then flare up after all that's the angel
that wrestled with Jacob and loves conflict
as an athlete loves the tape, and we're off into
an immortal contest of actuality and pride
which is love assuming the consciousness of itself
as sky over all, medium of finding and founding
not just resemblance but the magnetic otherness
that that that stands erect in the the spirit's glare
and waits for the joining of an opposite force's breath

so come the winds into our lives and last
longer than despair's sharp snake, crushed before it conquered
so marvellous is not just a poet's greenish namesake
and we live outside his garden in pure tempestuous rights


(hbd, frankie.)

truth

It's amazing that I ever forget how good it feels to write.

that ain't all sam'll do for you

random act of bravery

I threw myself a birthday party.

My iPhone shattered and I locked myself out of my apartment. I wore silk on silk and rocked it like a grandma in lounge pyjamas. The icing got all over everything. The next day my head felt like it might explode from cheap tequila, my weapon of choice. What I remember: the door continuing to open, and people I love flooding in. The friend who asked me to close my eyes and then placed the flower crown he had made for me on my head - all because I dreamt it, and told him. I remember a moment I stole for myself in the bathroom, when I realized my cat-eyes had smudged across my brow and nose and I thought seriously about hiding in the shower for the rest of the night, arrested by panic and anxiety, knowing in that moment I would probably never throw myself a party again. But then everyone sang my name.

I turned 29 years old. You made me a cake. It's time to stop being so afraid that everyone will leave and never come back.

things you don't know about me (yet)

1. I have this sleep app on my iPhone. I have it set to a mixture of 2 parts "Beach (small waves)" and 1 part "Heavy Rain."
2. I am happy with my appearance maybe 1% of the time, and all of those times occur when I accidentally catch myself in a mirror or the glass of an elevator, something in reflection where I think, "Oh, she's pretty," before my brain hiccups and I realize I'm staring at myself. I would say 99% of that 1% happens because I'm wearing bright lipstick.
3. Sometimes I go searching for you late at night.
4. When I was maybe 13 I was playing with a baby and I lifted her up too high and smacked her head against the door frame. We both went wide-eyed with shock and I could swear that she looked at me like, "I know what you just did." She cried and I handed her back to her mom and I never told anyone about it. I don't even know who that baby belonged to.

hopeful

via even cleveland 

random act of this thing i did that was stupid and hateful

Last night I went to Anthropologie with the express purpose of buying a blazer with which to increase my professionalism, productivity, and general sense of self (didn't work; see aforementioned boobs), but instead I fell for this super awesome and frivolous beaded clutch.

I hemmed and hawed and finally, bolstered by the thought of how adorable said clutch would look against my summer skin (same as my winter skin, maybe slightly more red), decided to buy it. I was in line to check out when I literally thought, "You don't deserve this." Then I turned around, climbed over the rope line, and left the store.

I don't DESERVE a $40 beaded clutch? What kind of bullshit self-hatred is that? It's International Women's Day, for fuck's sake. Sometimes I feel like I'm perpetually babysitting my 15-year-old self, all Fiona Apple and body dysmorphia, scrubbing her spit-covered thumb against the pen lines someone drew between the freckles on her legs, terrified to the point of inner collapse before she even made it down the stairs for breakfast.

Have some champagne, kid. We're gonna go buy you that clutch. And a new bright pink lipstick. 13 years from now you'll even be bold enough to wear it.

things i wish were better than they are

- The Mindy Project
- hummus
- the ending of Ali Smith's There but for the
- my wardrobe

we strive towards the higher we

George: The one sort of obvious thing is that there’s a big gulf between all of those thousands of in-the-moment typing bursts and what I would consider “the literary” - and that is revision. For me, that process of taking a first draft and working with it over a period of months is EVERYTHING. That’s where a person finds out what he really means and (you could argue) who he really IS. So I suppose one danger is that we might get the idea that, you know, “to blurt, is to be.” The idea that whatever comes out is good and is us. Whereas someone who has really worked with text realizes - well, that neither one is “really” you, but that the considered version might represent a “higher” you - brighter, less willing to coast or condescend, funnier, and (mysteriously) also, I think, kinder.

 - A George Saunders gchat in the Paris Review.

so show me where you fit

So here are some things that happened this week.

The new James Blake single has been on serious rotation.

Someone over at Pitchfork compared his vocals to D'Angelo, which I love, because who doesn't love D'Angelo? I want you to show me the human being who doesn't love D'Angelo, and I will show you - I don't know, I don't even want to think about it. I love D'Angelo in a very passive way, but every now and then (not often enough), "Untitled" will be playing somewhere, and that thing happens where the world melts a little and everyone around you suddenly seems fascinating and sexy and wild and alive. Also that profile on ?uestlove in the New Yorker was really great, and D'Angelo seemed very difficult, which weirdly endears me to him even more, like he's actually this deeply shy man who just wants to sit at home and read scholarly articles on post-war American architecture, but there's this fire burning in him and he has to do something about it or die.

That was a tangent. James Blake sings, "we're alone now / we're alone now / we're alone now / I'll wait." He gets it.

I had two short pieces in The Billfold this week. The friend I interviewed for the first made the observation that the commenters over there are some of the most astute, most kind, most generous he's ever encountered, and it's true. They offer incisive, thoughtful feedback, almost unheard of in the world of internet commenters. Never change, Billfold. I feel really lucky to be part of that community.

I monetized my feelings about Valentine's Day in the second, maybe my own attempt to diffuse a day that remains fairly loaded despite all efforts to shrug it off. I was unhelpfully reminded of last year, when I was lucky enough to spend the evening with someone extremely dear to me, someone with whom I no longer have a relationship. The day has the unfortunate effect of highlighting absence rather than wealth, which is honestly what I have - a wealth of love. I shoved some of that love onto my coworkers and then took my friend out for dinner and a play. The timing was awkward: someone he loves is slipping from him, and he looked me in the eye and said, firmly, "I will never love again." It's not true - he will, he is too full of love not to - but goodness. It's hard, isn't it? I wanted to put my hands against his cheek.

It's hard. It is hard. All of it. Having been back in the dating game for a few weeks now, I'm starting to feel the inevitable fatigue. I tried to explain this with as much earnestness as I could muster after two pitchers of margaritas on Friday. "I want to be seen," I think I said, by which I meant that I want to be judged not on what I am or am not saying, my actions or lack thereof, all of the negotiation and game-playing that feels fundamental and inherent to dating, but rather just - I just want to be seen. That's really it. Even sober, it's the same sentiment: I would like someone to see me for my wholeness, and not as the sum of these carefully plotted behaviors. This is what exhausts me most about dating - not the endless parade of messages and drinks and the hope and the resignation, but the behind-the-curtain-ness of it all, the smoke screen, the haze. If there's an upside, it's that it makes me that much more grateful for my friends, the ones with whom I can drink two pitches of margaritas and then say things like, "I WANT TO BE SEEN."

This tribute to David Rakoff is beautiful, and offers a lesson I'm trying to appropriate and remember: Don't trade up. "Don’t grade friendships on a hierarchical scale. Don’t value people based on some external indicator of status. Don’t take a competitive view of your social life." Here, here.

Also, go get 'em, Connie Britton. 

what we talk about when we talk about patrick wilson

Last night's episode of Girls gave me many feelings. The whole internet is teeming with collective feelings. I've read numerous recaps that have described it as "the worst episode of Girls ever," and to those people, I issue a giant faceful of New York curb slush. Last night's episode was strange and brave and vague and awful and intensely emotional, and if Patrick Wilson lived in your neighbourhood, don't tell me you wouldn't have done exactly the same thing. What gets me about the show is how wildly it can swing from satire to genuine, difficult truth, and how messy all of that can be when you try to take it in all at once. I can understand why people hated last night, but it felt, to me, like this stylized microcosm of a relationship, how one moment someone is telling you you're beautiful and you suddenly understand that they actually mean it, and maybe no one has ever meant it before, and then how sometimes that's almost too much to take, and you have to break it just to feel stable again. Which is not to say that Josh(ua) could have saved Hannah, or that he was meant to be anything more than a game of naked ping pong, but rather that we all, when confronted with the possibility of happiness, even just its blue shadow, have the potential for panic. We all do this. You do this too.

In other news, I bought a pair of cheap-o running shoes this weekend that are hologram and neon. Such a thing exists now on my feet.

Also, I saw Lena Dunham having dinner with her boyfriend and mom and friends a few weeks ago, all sublimely happy and gleeful and open, and it was all I could do not to just go and hug her and tell her that she's beautiful, but that also it doesn't matter, because she's goddamn brilliant and an inspiration to young women everywhere so there.

random act of bravery

We open up again. Our hands, our OkCupid accounts. We keep trying.

and it's like you said

help yourself

I've been in New York for a year and a half and I have been rejected by over 20 therapists.

It's always something - schedule, insurance, possibly being deeply uninteresting to the mental health profession as I want nothing to do with drugs, have no visible psychoses, and would really just like someone to tell me how to get over my evil ex-boyfriend and crippling self-doubt, yawn. But my last attempt - wherein I finally got someone on the phone and was soothed by her dulcet, caring tone, so deeply lulled that I almost didn't notice when she said that oops, she was actually out of network and that would be $160 a session, please - sort of put me over the edge.

I miss my DC therapist. She was warm and critical and pointed and genuine and soft. She called me after the session in which I did nothing but gulp for air after an old professor of mine posited, her mouth full of salad, that the reason my ex walked out on me could probably just be summed up as, "Well, he obviously didn't love you anymore," and when I finally got up from the floor of my shower where I had been sobbing for the past hour and got my therapist's voice mail, I realized that a) I was extremely lucky to have found someone who gave a shit, and b) the fact that I had disturbed my therapist enough to make a house call meant I really had to pull it together.

I never imagined I'd be in therapy. It's not something my family did. Most of my friends are the healthy, rosy-cheeked outdoor types, who work out their issues by rock climbing. But I needed it, and I went, and it helped. And maybe that's enough for now, because being rejected by therapists is a uniquely destabilizing experience and to be honest, even if I could find another warm and critical and pointed and genuine and soft woman with a nice couch and a 5:30pm Tuesday opening within walking distance of my office who accepted my insurance, I couldn't truly afford the copay.

And so, in the continued aim of self-improvement, and of getting over it already (or learning how to live in it, or learning how to let it be part of me without defining me, or learning how not to equate my self-worth with the garbage that another person deemed me to be), my recent Amazon shopping cart:

The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Turn the End of a Relationship into the Beginning of a New Life

The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now

The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times 

Those self-helpers really love a good colon, don't they?

I also picked up Slouching Towards Bethlehem, thanks to a good friend who proclaimed Didion her own therapist, and the new George Saunders, just cause.

Just wait till next month, kittens. You won't even recognize the sunshine.

(Addendum: It's actually really difficult to read those titles without reflexively gagging. It's actually really difficult to talk about this stuff. I can go forth with glibness but it's raw and frightening. If anyone has other recommendations/tips for self-care/surefire ways to feel better, I welcome them.)

weekends below zero, 2

More margaritas this weekend. I'm on a margarita kick. I drank these gorgeous grapefruit margaritas with brown sugar at Barrio Chino a few weeks back, and since then the desire has been unrelenting. It could be the deep freeze of New York, and the longing for spring, which is manifesting in a need for guacamole and tequila. We booked tickets to Arizona earlier this week. We'll see the canyon. We'll drink by the pool. 

Speaking of, have you seen Google's Canyon mapping?

I've been diving into the What I Read series over at The Atlantic. Jenna Wortham's, in particular, exhausts me. 

I bought a dress. I'm still having some sort of existential crisis that is manifesting in my wardrobe. This dress is not the solution, but it's pretty. 

You don't want to know how many times I've listened to the Pitch Perfect soundtrack this week.  

One of my intern babies dyed his hair lilac. It is glorious. It is tempting. 

Other weekend activities: rehearsal (tunnels, trains, storm clouds); birthdays; snack stadiums. I'm also hoping to nest a little, in preparation for the impending arrival of an as-yet-unidentified kitten. Like lovingly wallpapering a nursery, only the cat gets a litter box and my utility closet. 

weekends below zero

I'm heading to Providence this weekend, where I plan to drink margaritas, cuddle a wiggly noodle of a dog, and walk along the beach to see if the ocean freezes where it meets the shore.

You should read this essay, although maybe wait until Sunday night, since it will rough you up a bit.

I've been complaining about the cold, but I don't really mind it. I like the way it attacks. It's energizing, always playing defense.

Happy weekend, all.

and one more (more of this)

Jenny Holzer 

on being hungry

I've hesitated over writing the customary round-up post, hashing out all that happened last year, ruminating over what the new will bring. I was absurdly excited for 2012. I felt almost prophetic about the whole thing. Like a full-body goosebump. And it's not that 2012 was bad, per se, but it was not...great. I mean, hush. It was wonderful, in so many ways. It was great! Great things. I don't want to list them. They were there. They existed. It's not that I believe in tempting fate, but - almost right out of the gate, 2012 threw a few curveballs, sort of alarmingly in proportion to how sure I was that it would be the best yet. So it was a year. It happened. Maybe that's what I can say about the year: it happened. It also happened FAST. Did anyone else feel that? That it was just the speediest year ever? It was January, I was making resolutions, I made some tea, and then I blinked and it was 2013.

So I don't know. I'm feeling more cautious about what is to come. Not pessimistic or bitter (I'm leaving bitterness behind), but just - less concerned. Or less...like, what is a new year, really? It's just switching the calendar on my wall, changing out the pages of my datebook. It is nothing more or less than yesterday or tomorrow. We make some tea, we blink, we pick up a book. We wake up, we turn the page.

I have made some resolutions for 2013, although I'm not sure I want to call them that. I didn't really accomplish the things I set out to last year - I didn't find a perfect strapless bra (newsflash: such a thing does not exist), I didn't finish War & Peace. So this year, it's less what I want to accomplish and more...what I want to enact. Just what I am already doing that I would like to do more of. I would like to move more. I would like to indulge more. I would like to collaborate more. I would like to love more.

And this is going to sound antithetical, but I think it actually makes sense: I would like to stop setting goals for myself. I make more lists than most anyone I know, and I LOVE them. I enjoy nothing more than a carefully plotted list of the day, week, season, year, tasks aching to be crossed off. It offers such an intense feeling of control over my life - which is, of course, a fallacy. I struggle with my need to control. You'll know this if you've ever lived with me, and found me adjusting a stack of mail on the kitchen counter, the placement of a chair that was two inches to the left when I woke up and has mysteriously moved two inches to the right and IF IT DOES NOT MOVE BACK I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO FUNCTION.

I believe in accomplishment bestowing contentment. I believe in forward motion. But the real problem with my incessant list making is my belief that if I accomplish all the items on my list, if I'm able to place a careful check beside each item, I'll achieve some previously unmet level of happiness. It is just the list standing between me and where I'm meant to be, the frequency at which I should be vibrating to live my best life. So I'm forever staring at these unfinished lists ("Write 50 pages of novel this week; visit 12 museums this month") and berating myself for how I'm sabotaging my own happiness; when, in reality, there is no magical pinnacle of achievement that will be the permanent solution to my feeling unfulfilled. Even if I were to finish my novel tomorrow, I'd be staring down the fact that I haven't seen the humpback migration, and by god I won't be complete until I do.

So. Let's focus on what the lists are really about, which is my desire to move towards happiness. Rather than a litany of uncompleted tasks, I'm going to just try to do more of what I know fills me up. I'll continue turning my apartment into more of a home. I'll continue writing, maybe a little more each day, if that's what feels right. I'll continue seeing my friends, making them more of a priority, allotting them the time they deserve. And I'll make more friends. I'll travel more. More New York. More Broadway Bodies. I'll take more classes and learn more and try more new things. And I'll do less of what makes me unhappy, like watching Law & Order: SVU on Netflix for 6 hours straight, except for when that would really make me happy, in which case it's just fine.

Can "more" be the theme for the year? A slow, steady more-ing. Fill it up. Start now.

question

Is there any more depressing feeling than waking up from a dream in which something you desperately want to happen is happening and then forcing yourself back to sleep to see if you can recapture the dream because you know this thing will never happen in real life?

No. I'm answering my own question. No. There isn't.

random act of bravery

I spend a lot of time thinking about alternative careers I might have. Some of these are vaguely legitimate (management consulting seems like a thing I could do, as I very much enjoy figuring out what is wrong with other people), while others are even more legitimate, such as "spy" or "saving whales woman." The lost life I mourn most, however, is "Broadway Star," which was my plan until it became abundantly clear that I could neither sing nor dance. Sometimes I still think that maybe I could be an actress who is accidentally cast in a Broadway show, or one on a crime drama who plays a cop who has to go undercover in a Broadway show, and then I'd have to spend 6 weeks learning how to be a "Broadway Star" without actually having to be on Broadway.

No matter. Point being. Last night my coworker and I went to our first Broadway Bodies class, and as you can imagine, I. WAS. AWESOMELY. TERRIBLE. and also, it was the most fun ever.



There's some biological thing that allows you to move your arms and legs at the same time but in different directions. I didn't get that thing. When I was younger (ie. until two years ago), this meant that the general self-consciousness that fuels me would fly into overdrive when I was forced to move while other people were watching and my limbs would seize up as though I were having some sort of 16th century fit. Growing up, apparently, means not caring as much that the 8 other semi-awkward 20- and 30-something women and 2 delightful gay men in the class can see your desperate flailing that is meant to resemble a jaunty Charleston step. I laughed when I screwed up (all the time), threw my hips out in attempting a body roll, and sang along under my breath, and I loved it.

the titles

There is a corner in my apartment where my books snake perilously up the wall. They're waiting to be shelved, which really means they're waiting for me to purchase bookshelves, and it is likely they'll wait quite a while, since I recently decided that I had to have shelves worthy of their contents, and now everything seems paltry and less than. It's a sort of Jenga-like endeavour to sneak one out of a stack, which I actually appreciate - it forces me to pull books based on placement, rather than what title I want to read next. It's a surprise.

I read a lot in 2012. All hail the morning commute. Here's a list, not including poetry or web content or facetumbletweet.

If I liked you a lot, you get a star! 

*Bring Up the Bodies (Hilary Mantel)

Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn)

*Threats (Amelia Gray) (I can't say I thought this was perfect by any means, but it has wormed its way in.) 

American Gods (Neil Gaiman) 

The Light Between Oceans (M.L. Steadman) (This one gets a negative star. It was inane, predictable, manipulative, and had some of the clunkiest dialogue I've ever encountered. Never again will I trust a lighthouse.) 

*The Sense of an Ending (Julian Barnes) 

*The Hare with Amber Eyes (Edmund de Waal) (I wept.) 

*My Traitor's Heart (Rian Malan) (The stuff of scorched earth.)  

*A Song of Ice and Fire, Books I - V (George M. M. Martin) (aka Game of Thrones) (aka leave off, I loved these)

Aurorarama (Jean-Christophe Valtat) 

*Tiny Beautiful Things (Sugar) (Someone else put it best - I prefer Strayed as Sugar to Strayed as Strayed.)  

Dark Star Safari (Paul Theroux)

*Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (Wells Tower) (The vikings! The vikings.) 

State of Wonder (Ann Patchett) 

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Aimee Bender) 

Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee) 

*Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell) (a reread, still a champion) 

*number9dream (David Mitchell) 

A Field Guide to Getting Lost (Rebecca Solnit) (I was really into these essays at the time, and now it's all a wash of canyon and Joni Mitchell and I couldn't even tell you what the thesis is here.) 

Open City (Teju Cole) 

Mr. Fox (Helen Oyeyemi) 

Wild (Cheryl Strayed) 

Let the Great World Spin (Colum McCann) 

*Wolf Hall (Mantel) (Mantel is the most muscled writer I know. Her writing could kick the shit out of your writing. It has thighs the size of tree trunks.)  

The Imperfectionists (Tom Rachman) 

The Marriage Plot (Jeffrey Eugenides) 

*The Known World (Edward P. Jones) (Might take the cake. This book is a masterpiece. ) 

*Swamplandia (Karen Russell) (I found the gumption charming.)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) 

*The Light Princess (George MacDonald) 

When God Was a Rabbit (Sarah Winman) 

The Buddha in the Attic (Julie Otsuka) 

There's a little too much filler on this list. I might undertake something a bit weightier this year. 

I'd love to talk more about any of these, or hear what you loved most this year, what you clutched at your heart. 

recently

Wherein I explain how money can buy you love (kinda sorta), over here.