random act of bravery

"We don't need sympathy, we need company."

Let's talk about real bravery: Tar Sands Action.

the calm before, and after

BON IVER "Holocene" from nabil elderkin on Vimeo.

Calm.

I completed Phase One of the grand move today. Or perhaps it's actually Phase Two, or TwopointFive, here I am, on a couch, in a new apartment that needs a coat of paint. I am happy to be here. I am anxiously giving the place a mental-makeover. I cannot wait to bake something. It's my form of christening. A bottle of champagne cracked on a banister, a loaf of chocolate banana bread emerging from the oven. I'm just ready to settle.

My brother is here, for which I am grateful. Apart from a migraine-induced meltdown at Bar Boulud, which culminated in my screaming a tearful epithet at him across the table as the hostess gracefully swooped in, top-knot bobbing, and ushered our food back to the kitchen, we're really getting along quite well. Today we even shared some dumplings and a chocolate-root beer ice cream sandwich at the Grand Army Food Truck Fest. Shared! Generously!

Oh, hi. 

Sweet things, I'm tired. This kind of tired. It's a lesser form of the migraine hysteria, where all my attention is concentrated on the boiling point in my brain, and if things are not exactly as they need to be I lose my ability to simply walk the line of basic human interaction. It's been storming all week in New York, grand gestures from above that swoop down hard and firm across the city, the sky going wide and black all at once. I'm thankful for the little things, like squid ink pasta, like Netflix, like pull-out couches. I'm thankful for my brother and his obsession with upper-body strength. I'm thankful for Caitlin, who is still shifting her life around mine, and for these new people who made room on their couch and under their table and in their home. I'm thankful for Bon Iver and Iceland and whoever thought to put them together. I'm thankful for glitter and Mexican leftovers. I'm thankful that a coat of paint can still make things right.

call it our life

A new Poet Laureate was just announced, which at my office constituted an event tantamount to a Russian spy satellite appearing suddenly above Arkansas. If you worked for NASA.

ANALOGIES!

I think Levine is a solid choice, and not only because I might have a teeny crush on him. This essay beautifully articulates his relevance. And this slip from "Our Valley" grabs me by the throat.

You have to remember this isn’t your land.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life. 

random act of bravery

Getting back in the saddle: a recipe.

1. Watch this video at least 20-30 times in the days leading up to the maiden voyage. Take your mind back to the exhilaration you felt when you too rode without training wheels for the very first time. Recall with horror that what actually happened was your dad letting go of you despite his promises that HE WOULD NOT LET GO, and within moments you had careened into the storm drain in the ditch next to the alley behind your house. Banish memory. Watch video again. Contemplate the security vs. extreme shame of wearing elbow and knee pads.
2. Buy cute helmet that matches bike. Ask very relevant, vital questions such as, "Does this helmet come in any other colours?" and "Does this helmet make my head look like a mushroom?"
3. Huff bike down from apartment. Point it at the road. Change your mind. Walk it carefully along the sidewalk. Treat it gently, like a tensing doe, or a feral kitten.
4. Curse Brooklyn and its lack of parking lots. How does anyone learn how to ride a bike here?
5. Find a small parking lot between Staples and a funereal home. Deep breath.
6. While pedalling in small circles, sing whichever inspirational song happens to come to mind. If it's the first verse of "Lose Yourself," don't question. Go with it.
7. You've got Eminem. You've got Detroit. You're fucking unstoppable. Ride that bitch to Prospect Park. Squeak a little at every car that passes you by. That's okay. You got this.
8. Hills are hard. You don't remember hills being this hard.
9. There is no more cruelly-shaped item on earth than a bike seat. Whoever designed these clearly did not have lady-parts.
10. Love the park. Love the downhills. Throw yourself onto the grass in ecstasy. Text your friends. Email your father. Take a photo of the bike.
11. Bikes are CRAZY. How did you forget this? How did you manage to forget all these tiny miracles, that two slip-slim rubber bands and the weight of your body can make motion, that your limbs will float on their own in water, that your legs will one day haul you upright and take you to a new city, and another, and another?
12. A key-lime pie frozen yogurt for your troubles is in order. Beam at the world. You rode a bike. You can do anything. Thumbs up for rock and roll.

actualize, self.

This is a happy place. 

I just registered for the Chopra Center 21 Day Meditation Challenge. Random act of bravery, go! Why am I doing this? Good question. Why not? On the heels of a minor meltdown in the Lord and Taylor in midtown Manhattan this past weekend, where I suddenly became a whirling dervish of consumerist angst, I've been reconsidering how my priorities unfold. New York is amplifying my worst tendencies, my deep love for pretty things. This past weekend, as my mom was wrestling me into an Eileen Fisher sweater (admittedly a beautiful, woven thing, light and handsomely draped, the jerk), I renounced both the sweater and my own materialist yearnings - because I ALREADY OWN FOUR GREY SWEATERS, and at some point you have to call it quits. 

(This sweater was the most lovely of the bunch. If you've got $200 tucked away in your sweater fund, I really do recommend it.) 

I've been putting quite a few things off to the fall, imagining that as soon as September shows its flushed, knee-socked self I'll be ready to hunker down and CHANGE MY LIFE, but this whole "putting off" thing is getting old. 21 days of meditation seems a good way to ease in to radical self-initiation. 

In other news, Phil Levine is our new Poet Laureate. Just grand. 

I made a wholly unsatisfying lentil salad for dinner. One of the roommates just made chicken sausage and I cannot stop the drool. 

I got to listen to Justin Vernon through a gate this evening. Still sublime.

The riots in London make me ache. 

I have a bike now. It's very blue and very adorable and very terrifying. 

Roasted beet and ricotta ravioli with poppy seeds; cantelope soup with ricotta sorbet; peach pie; an obscene amount of wine - grumpy, bullish Bordeaux.

I need to remember to wear my fedora at least a few more times before the season fades. 

want

here.

on being present

These photos of Camilla Engman's vacation really rile up my inner savages. 

I have the tendency to believe, in the moment, that this - life? - is not as good as what was, what will be, what others have. It's a niggling, ugly thing, and I'd like to be rid of it. This summer has been especially difficult. It feels ripped from me, somehow, with the move and the new job. I dream of cabins and lakes and oceanside popsicles and long, heavy afternoons with books and naps. 

It's that I've been lucky, really: last summer I spent the month of July in a small, rickety house by the sea. 

There was a summer in London, and France - long walks on the Heath, museums and dark pubs, and then the cicada-laden dreamscape of Privat, days that started and ended in the pool, long days where I would throw myself into the water in my summer dresses, take naps on the daybed, wander through the vineyards and stone villages, make dinners that took hours, slow roasting the market bounty, cheese and bread we broke with our hands. 

Fuck France. Seriously. It ruins everything. Spend a day there and suddenly idea of life anywhere else becomes not only unpalatable, but hopelessly illogical. 

So this summer has looked less like the ones in the past. Yes, less like I would have liked it to look. But I need to spend more time reminding myself of what I have, of how lovely this summer has been - how difficult, yes, and not quite as I would want it - but also how generous and surprising. 

A brief summer romance, a farmhouse in Vermont, days beside the lake and all my friends nearby, afternoons at the beach eating peaches and burying the pits in the sand, watching the sun splash the Manhattan buildings, long walks up and down the riverbanks, Cuckoos Nest in Bryant Park, Andrew Bird and lemonade, whole lengths of afternoons and evenings and nights on blankets in Prospect Park.  Epic novels and jaunts southward and air-conditioned movie theatres and Bon Iver right up close, bagels and ice cream sandwiches that will change your life. A ferry out to Governors Island. Butter Pecan in a cone. The polished planks of the High Line. Wild raspberries in the mountains. Swimming holes. Fireflies. Barbecues on scratches of grass known as New York backyards. Cold drinks in warm hands. Ice on the pulse points. Poetry on rooftops. Sicilian pizza. The list goes on. 

Everything glows more brightly in the rearview. But why drink the love up only after it has gone? 

random act(s) of bravery

first dates; getting back on stage; orange sandals; second dates; new people and old people; third dates; trivia; opening doors (literal doors to literal apartments); telling the truth 

there's no good reason for loving this as much as i do

thought of the day

Who would want to be engaged when you could be eating stale pizza and watching pirated episodes of True Blood alone in your room at 11:38 PM?