on surviving a hurricane

I'll cop to feeling pretty let down today. There's Chef Boyardee and a rainbow candle on my counter. There's a tree down two streets away but we all admit it might have always looked like that.

Here's what hurricanes are good for: wandering the streets of Brooklyn in your pyjamas, letting other people cook you dinner (pasta with olives, tomatoes, something with chocolate, I think) as you struggle through a crossword and a bottle or two of wine, pop r&b hits, spooning, sleeping in.

I filled my sink with water but it drained out overnight. I wish I felt more inclined to go out and seize this world. I survived! Mostly I just feel like going back to bed. It's exhausting, being this disillusioned.

guess what?

I'm not going to think about you even once this weekend.

random act of bravery

Bravery is playing this song STONED OUT OF YOUR MIND in front of thousands, on video, for posterity.

I survived an earthquake this week, which should count for something. There's a hurricane bearing down on us. But I don't feel very brave.

I can't be the only person who looks at herself in the mirror and questions every decision she's ever made, right?

(I love the pure joy and surprise on Neil's face as they all crowd that one microphone. Maybe it's the mountains of cocaine, but he really does look like a child.)

It will be nice to stand on the roof this weekend, to be lashed by a storm. Not in a self-destructive way, not at all, but just to get wet, blown off centre. To feel the force of something that huge. I'll wear my thinnest coat. Mercury is in retrograde. The earth's crust shifted. A storm 510 miles in diameter is about to show her face. It's a wake up call.

dating in new york: ethical dilemmas

Is it wrong to not want to date someone just because he lives in the Bronx?

(That's really, really far away.)

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.