when we lead with hope

Four more years. twitter.com/BarackObama/st…

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 7, 2012

random act of bravery

I spent the days of the hurricane in my apartment with the windows open. I weathered this one alone. It was difficult, honestly. But it was also okay. And all of my friends extended invitations to curl up into their couches or air mattresses. And that is a gift.  And there wasn't much for me to weather, compared to what has been wrought on other neighbourhoods. I live in some sort of triangle of mercy, apparently, where the winds blow gently and the rain falls all in a line, with order, with reserve. Waking up to images of the devastation on Tuesday was heartbreaking. I have grown to love this city and how much it gives to those of us who live here, and I have been fortified by my facebook news feed, which was one long string of invitations, offers of hot water, of internet, of baked goods. We all baked. A lot. That's how we prepared. I had gathered my supplies on my kitchen table: plastic jugs of water, headlamp, matches, batteries, Jane Austen's Persuasion on DVD, and ingredients for various loaves. The next morning it looked sort of foolish and pitiful. When I read stories about babies being swept from their mother's arms and whole houses being uprooted to land somewhere new, it seems darkly absurd, the idea that two aaa batteries could be a safety net.  

On one of the last days of this summer, I walked through Breezy Point on the way to The Boat for Singing Together. Did I tell you about that? A young couple built a tent from canvas and toggles on a piece of driftwood they found, and they've anchored it just off the coast. They shuttle you out there on a little motor boat and you sit in a circle with a bunch of strangers, dangling your feet in the water, singing. Literally singing. Walking to the harbour through the streets of Breezy Point, we were all amazed that a community like that could exist so close to the city - kids playing in the streets, parents with lawn chairs chatting with neighbours. It was a slice of suburbia against the Manhattan backdrop. It was a home. The couple who run The Boat told us that the community had been incredibly supportive. The teenagers kicked up their little sloops and rode around the tent, listening to the music. The night before we were there, one of the kids swam underneath the tent and came up in the center, grabbing one woman's legs and scaring everyone out of their minds. But in a kind way. You know. Anyway. This is what I've been thinking about. Those kids. That community. 

The storm ground campaigning to a halt for a few days. One man mobilized the National Guard, consoled victims, put the full weight of his office and his country behind salvaging what was left behind. Another man bought cans of soup so he could take photos of himself receiving the soup from his aides. He tried to swallow his words about privatizing FEMA and his pitiful, ceaseless dismissal of climate change. Some people say this is no time for politics. There is no better time for politics. 

I can't vote in this country. As ever, the election approaches and I am left with this immense feeling of fury and ineptitude. I read all the articles, re-tweet the horrifying soundbites about rape and rising oceans and the 47%, the same 47% who are now struggling to rebuild their homes and eat and just BREATHE. There is one man who believes the state is not responsible for caring for its citizens. That there is a big white house waiting for him where he can sit and grow richer and not do a whole lot, because that's what government should do: abandon those who can't help themselves, when "helping themselves" means working, caring for your family, staying healthy, loving who you love. To be as blunt as I can be: I do not understand, not even remotely, the sheer cruelty and ignorance and idiocy of anyone who casts their vote for that man. Not ever. Not now. You have to be better than that. We have to be better than that. We have to offer hot water and warm clothes to those who don't have them. We have to bake them some bread. We have to believe in compassion. It's so goddamn easy to care only for yourself, and so goddamn worthless. 

To be clear: what I'm doing is not brave. Yesterday I walked down to Red Hook and spent a few hours at the distribution centre, moving rolls of toilet paper from one place to another place. And again, and again. It was easy and it was nothing. The people who are trying to put a life back together out of ocean-beaten wood? They are brave. But all together, all the small movements from people all over this city, no matter how small, are monumental. They were overwhelmed by volunteers in Red Hook, so much so that they stopped accepting them. I know that not all communities have seen this sort of mobilization, but it was heartening, for a moment, to see everyone in that big room, just picking up things and moving them somewhere else, how such a small act can mean so much. It was easy and it was nothing. You take a small piece of paper or stand in front of a computer. You believe in compassion. It is easy and it is undeniably brave. And all together, it can be monumental. 

hurricane sandy

i know you want to run far away from one more / and that it's comin' at a bad time / some cold place heartless ways for all we know - 

two things

this dress

&

this poem (Several things occurred / that demanded my immediate attention.) 

today is dedicated to

- Chai lattes and corn & pear muffins
- Freedom
- Fall sun
- Duffel coats
- Foresight (ie. mine) (ie. hurrah for extended care and knowledgable young tattooed men at the Genius Bar) (ie. now that I'm tattooed too I feel like there's a language I haven't yet learned, like what do you call someone else's tattoo when you have one yourself? Tats? Ink? Art? I wanted to compliment his but I felt like such a jackass, someone must know the answer to this...)
- The Hudson River Greenway
- Murray's Cheese Shop
- The Cheesemonger at Murray's Cheese Shop who served me at least $10 worth of cheese samples topped with raisins soaked in balsamic, apple butter, fig spread, and for dessert, two blue cheeses showered by chocolate, until I had to ask him to stop -
- A Dance with Dragons (I cannot be shamed)
-  Fresh coats of paint.

gratitude

Oprah reminded me today of the import in keeping a gratitude journal. Oprah is always right (except when she really, really isn't, but those times are few and far between).

To wit, what I'm grateful for this weekend:

1. Pasta e Lenticchie, made vegetarian (added a parmesan rind and smoked paprika) and served with a swirl of basalmic; 
2. Zinnias from the market;

3. Brief Encounter at Film Forum with two beautiful women; 
4. Thick slices of chocolate walnut zucchini loaf; 
5. Season 2 of The Walking Dead instead of those stupid fitness classes because shut up, I'm PMSing; 
6. A plane ticket home for Christmas; 
7. The man who mixed the paint for my cabinets and told me the hints of green in the colour would help me accessorize my kitchen; 
8. Nathaniel, a new life, finally here, and whole; 
9. The Perfect Soft Boiled Egg; and
10. Lovely sofas, even if they won't ever be mine. 

Also I did laundry, wrote, made a major hack of mending a 70s paisley mini-dress, finally covered up the ill-advised patch of yellow on my bedroom door, installed a new doorknob, unpacked ONE WHOLE BOX, bought a friend some tea and listened hard, successfully teetered my way on my Rachel Comey's all the way to the West Village and back, napped, fended off a migraine, made boring but necessary purchases, and ate grapes. It boggles the mind how much more I would have gotten done had I not spent 13 hours with The Walking Dead, but no use crying over spilt zombies. 

(Monday!) 

namesake

Everyone is watching the VP debate right now but I don't have a TV and so instead I'm reading all the tweets and thinking about my grandfather.

We do this thing now where we Skype for half an hour each week, and I ask him about his life and record his answers. Later I'll transcribe all of these conversations, and later still I'll try to turn them into something that approximates even one iota of the grand, strange, epic life my grandfather has led. His story is the one that always lurks around the fringes of my authorial consciousness, my understanding of self. His is the lore I live with, the crib once struck by lightning, the coal mine, the piano in a church beside an ocean. He recently told me about the "call girl" in the small town in the interior of B.C. where he grew up. Not that he had personal knowledge of this, of course - it was all gossip and dirty imaginations. Still, hers is a story I'd like to know.

Today my grandfather and I talked about love. "You've been in love, so you know," he said, although it's hard to imagine that my experience bears any resemblance to his, to loving one woman from the age of 19 until she died, almost 50 years later, withered by dementia. "My love only grew," he said, this after telling me he'd had two girlfriends when he met my grandmother, two young girls waiting for him in different parts of the province, although he promised it was all very innocent, very tame. One of them remembered him years and years later, when, blindfolded at a reunion, she asked if she could hug the man before her, and upon putting her arms around him, cried out: "Oh, of course! It's Gene!"

"It's all changed," my grandfather said, not mournfully. He was musing on the nature of relationships, because I'd asked him how he could have dated my grandmother for so long, so chastely, biding his time before marriage. "It's all faster now, or slower maybe," he said, and both are true: that I can take someone to bed the night I meet them, that I can spend 8 years in a relationship without a ring. I'm guilty of romanticizing the past - I sometimes find myself longing for the days of the Renaissance - but there is something incredibly intoxicating about the simplicity that seemed to govern romance when my grandfather first met it. And yes, yes, I know, repressed sexuality and female disenfranchisement and blah blah blah, but my god, the ease of asking my parents to invite a nice boy to lunch, the one with the freshly pressed shirt and the clear tenor, the relative sanctuary of courtship and letters and Friday nights at the dance hall with a midnight curfew. His love only grew. His love only grew.

My grandfather made it back and forth down the hallway at the extended care facility on his walker in record time today, as his physical therapist urged him on. 22 minutes, he said, a personal best. It's such a sin, really, the way we live now, it's a sin, a sin, how careless we are. My grandfather is a giant, you see. That is what I know to be true.

west

Mornings when I wake up to the sound of rain, or just to the smell of it. The grey light. I love when someone asks me where I'm from, because I get to say the word. I get to name it. 

Lately I've been missing my home fiercely and actively, but also with a worrying logic: worrying because I don't feel ready to leave, but there's something more tangible and rational calling me back. It feels like an adult desire, counter to the things that keep me in New York - the energy, the potential, the unending surge of human life. There is a part of me that is starting to silently nudge at my collective here, to be less vehement in my protestations whenever one of them mentions leaving. They might have to go first. It's the most concrete reason I have for staying: my community is here. My people. And this is undeniably true, but there's a pull there, too, and I can't help but feel like I'm waiting for something to tip the scale. I've said I will wait out the three years of my visa in this city and then decide, but those three years suddenly seem - maybe - too long. And when I close my eyes at night I have started to conjure up a beat-up old car, the rain on the windshield, familiar green streets, the ocean, lights at the end of a driveway. It's a lucky problem to have, I know: so many places I might be happy. But for someone who has always had trouble being present, carrying the weight of a country on your shoulders isn't the best way to live a life. 

Vancouver, by Cat. 

i will miss your heart so tender / and i will love this love forever

the chestnut trees/the wishing well

Tonight I'm packing my small bag and drinking hot water with lemon and honey. My body is currently 98% zinc. I'm sick, which cannot be, because on Sunday I will put on my navy silk minidress with the gold sequins and stand next to two dear friends as they say their forevers. Tomorrow, Montana.

I'm considering the practice of radical vulnerability, considering these earrings (isn't there a thing with bloggers where they say, wow, these earrings, and then the next post is like, oh my, what kind and generous person sent me these earrings I loved so much? at what point of blogger success does that happen?), considering the playlists I'm compiling for this wedding. It's very daunting, being charged with making people dance.

It may not have been the best time for me to have lifted someone I love out of my life, right in the middle of these weddings, when it honestly becomes somewhat necessary to have someone with whom you can drink a few whiskeys, someone who you can marvel at, someone who marvels at you. At some point, after all of this is done, I'll write a bit about what a horribly selfish person I've turned out to be, or these weddings have shown me to be, and how truly difficult it is to be purely happy for the people you love without any of your own jealousy and sadness and loneliness and anger seeping through. But not yet.

For now, I'll listen to this song, and think about how I hope to sway gently to it, against it, in a barn in the foothills of Montana, thinking of my friends, and the love I have for them, and thinking, as always, of you.