- The Mindy Project
- hummus
- the ending of Ali Smith's There but for the
- my wardrobe
2.21.2013
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.
2.17.2013
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.
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.
2.11.2013
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.
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.
2.06.2013
2.05.2013
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.)
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.)
2.01.2013
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)