under the tree

a wishlist

maybe this year will be better than the last

Last night I dreamt you kissed me during a Blue Man Group show. It was still pretty spectacular.

Tonight, with any luck, I'll fall asleep in Vancouver. All salt and wet and alive. I haven't been home in over a year. I am cleaving so closely to this happiness, which feels like a treasure each day, like something I have to pocket and keep close. I think it will be easier to indulge it at home, being with my family, hiking, skiing, baking, gifting. And I think, or maybe already know, that I will miss New York, and my life here, immensely. I am already excited to come back.

Big plane, seat 43K. I've got a New Yorker and an issue of Granta. I can't wait to leave them unopened and watch terrible movies on the long flight West.

See you soon.

random act of bravery

Confessed a crush. Are crushes still endearing at 27? Or did they go the way of baby backpacks and crop tops?

random act of bravery

The subtitle here could be: Bloggers! They're just like us. (Except with better footwear.)

Tonight I went to a book club hosted by a blogger I have long admired. It was lovely - all gingerbread and tea and generous spirits. I'll admit to lying awake last night much longer than I should have, lamenting my lack of clogs and the perfect vision that has long kept me from the glasses I believe would complete me. I should not have worried. These women - and one man with the most fabulous hair - were terribly kind and humble and welcoming, and that we were discussing Little Women only made the evening that much warmer.

Reading Little Women gives me the same feeling I have when peering in windows of the brownstones in my neighbourhood. I like best the empty, well-lit rooms, filled with bookshelves and carpets and photographs of faces I can't make out. Rooms that look as though someone is just about the enter them. It is always Christmas in Little Women. Someone is always pinning a flower to someone else's coat. There is no shortage of love in that book.

I filled the time between work and book club in a Chinese restaurant at a table for one with vegetable dumplings, soft, slippery blocks of tofu, and a pot of grassy tea all to myself. They were playing carols and I careened through the last few pages of the book and relished every moment of my solitude. It's strange how finally being content in my aloneness has allowed me an even greater appreciation of the company of others. A year ago I would have been too afraid to step into a little shop and open my mouth among these creative, intelligent, well-shod women, but tonight I hitched up my tights and just grew a pair. I hope Jo would have been proud.

on the time we have

"Are you satisfied with your experiment, girls, or do you want another week of it?" she asked, as Beth nestled up to her and the rest turned toward her with brightening faces, as flowers turn toward the sun.

"I don't!" cried Jo decidedly.

"Nor I," echoed the others.

"You think, then, that it is better to have a few duties and live a little for others, do you?"

"Lounging and larking doesn't pay," observed Jo, shaking her head. "I'm tired of it and mean to go to work at something right off."

Marmee's very good advice: "Have regular hours for work and play, make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life become a beautiful success, in spite of poverty."

- from Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

D.C.

It's nights like this - heavy rain, good theatre, and a wardrobe conundrum - that I miss you the most.

random act of bravery

I’ve been struggling lately to leap a mental hurdle that popped up sometime in the course of this strange year. It’s a sentiment I’ve tried to articulate to a few people in my life, a sentiment that has been met with crazy face (not that I blame them). The ugly: I’ve become convinced, over the past year, that no one actually cares about anyone else. Fine, more to the point: no man cares about any woman. This isn’t about love – I believe in love, I do. But I have somehow come to the conclusion that romantic love is based more on a desire for stability, or for a certain lifestyle, than on an accurate, clear, intimate, compassionate understanding of another person. Basically, I don’t think they – guys – give a shit about the wholeness of the person they are with.

It’s ugly, right? It’s the worst. It’s not meant to be a gendered attack – there isn’t anger behind this. It’s just a sort of slow, gutting resignation. I can't even think about it for longer than a few moments without becoming totally bewildered by how bitter and depressing it all seems. And yet I can't convince myself otherwise. This ugly thought has also made me, at times, debilitatingly uninteresting. Since I'm convinced no guys are interested in who I am, I become little more than a mirror, asking questions, endlessly spinning the conversation back to them. And since I tend to date other artists, this is easy for both of us, as I'm legitimately curious and male artists can talk about their own work until their overwrought, abstract, dubstepping cows come home. I've spent intimate time with guys this year who I can pretty much guarantee would not be able to rattle off a single personal fact about me even if held at gunpoint. Which is, like, criminally boring, and totally not their fault.

Coming out of my hiatus has been enlightening mostly because I've determined that that imaginary boyfriend whose absence I was lamenting would actually be super annoying to the life I already have and truly love. Which has given me a kind of freedom I didn't have before, the kind that says yes to anything engaging or new, like spur of the moment trips to Philadelphia. Sometimes this means I get stuck uncomfortably sexting minor celebrity activists, but it also results in wine-fueled bluegrass jams with adorable Midwesterner's. I'm online dating! It's actually fun, now that I don't really care. And even though it is painful, I've been trying to stop myself from asking the next question and the next question and the next question, and remember that it's difficult to be cared for if you don't give anyone the chance.

(This was sort of depressing. Here's a great video to make up for it.)

Philadelphia

Hey, Philly! You didn't look anything like this, but I am very happy I got to spend 24 hours with you this weekend. You like public art! And Italian food! And bluegrass jams! You had a whole store devoted to accordions, and a market with 16 kinds of kombucha! (I counted!) I could walk on your wide sidewalks without being slapped by a crazy man! (This happened! In Times Square!) Your public transportation uses adorably arcane tokens! These were actually very annoying, but no matter! I think we should spend some more time together.

i never said i was honest / but i am true

I've got a weakness for a) tiny men with guitars (see: Tallest Man on Earth) and b) big group sings (see: The Morning Benders). This is very, very satisfying.

i never thought about love when i thought about home

Sometimes I think I shouldn't love these kittens as much as I do, as soon we will give them to someone else and they won't be ours anymore. Then I think that this is true of everyone and everything you will ever love, and that makes me love them even harder.

Tonight I put on Lana Del Ray and The National and Josh Ritter and made a smoky minestrone soup and thought about Thanksgiving tomorrow. I'll be spending it in the city, a city that is emptying as I write this. I would feel more alone, I'm sure, if this were my holiday, but since it is only a borrowed one I feel like this is a gift, this time, this empty apartment, this night to pour wine and make soup and weigh onions in my hands, looking around at everyone else in the aisles, their carts and cellphones, their lists and traumas. Later I will prep the dishes I'm bringing to the potluck and maybe watch more Parks & Recreation or just lie in bed in my suddenly quiet apartment.

I get to thinking about this holiday, and how many places I have celebrated it since I moved to this country. To wit:

2002: Maryland
2003: New Hampshire
2004: London
2005: New York
2006: Chicago
2007: I was home, I didn't bother, maybe I made a quiche?
2008: Maryland
2009: New Hampshire
2010: Phoenix

It's a strange list. London was a sort of desperate affair, with lots of American beer. In New Hampshire, with Tom, we ate early at his grandparents' house, just across the lawn. His grandmother drinks vodka and chain smokes and sits in front of a jigsaw puzzle. His Honduran uncle says grace in Spanish. In New York I came down with the flu and passed out on the marble floor at the Palace Hotel. A guy I was seeing came into the city to eat pizza and watch me sleep. In Chicago, Liz's friends killed a turkey in their backyard and looped the death on a laptop during the potluck dinner where a guy in a kilt DJ'd. I think I spent most of 2010 crying into my kale chips.

Some Thanksgivings of yore. 

In a way, this makes me lucky. That I can go where I will. I like thinking of it that way. I like thinking that I can wake up tomorrow and go to the coffee shop on my street and order a chai and write. I like thinking that I can then paint my nails and eat dinner surrounded by people I barely know, all of whom are transplanted and lost in some way, all of whom are loving someone who is not at the table. There's a generosity in that. I'm one of the biggest holiday-whores I know, but this year I truly feel thankful that  I have no one to answer to.

That sounds like a disturbingly New York attitude, I know.

A smoky minestrone: Omit the bacon, add smoked paprika and a frozen parmesan rind. Use store-bought pesto and stock. I won't tell if you won't.
A kale salad: Use walnuts and cranberries in place of the pine nuts and golden raisins. Use hot sauce in place of the fish sauce.
Nanaimo bars: This will make you miss home, but it will be worth it.

Covet this dress, watch this video, read this book.