weekends below zero

I'm heading to Providence this weekend, where I plan to drink margaritas, cuddle a wiggly noodle of a dog, and walk along the beach to see if the ocean freezes where it meets the shore.

You should read this essay, although maybe wait until Sunday night, since it will rough you up a bit.

I've been complaining about the cold, but I don't really mind it. I like the way it attacks. It's energizing, always playing defense.

Happy weekend, all.

and one more (more of this)

Jenny Holzer 

on being hungry

I've hesitated over writing the customary round-up post, hashing out all that happened last year, ruminating over what the new will bring. I was absurdly excited for 2012. I felt almost prophetic about the whole thing. Like a full-body goosebump. And it's not that 2012 was bad, per se, but it was not...great. I mean, hush. It was wonderful, in so many ways. It was great! Great things. I don't want to list them. They were there. They existed. It's not that I believe in tempting fate, but - almost right out of the gate, 2012 threw a few curveballs, sort of alarmingly in proportion to how sure I was that it would be the best yet. So it was a year. It happened. Maybe that's what I can say about the year: it happened. It also happened FAST. Did anyone else feel that? That it was just the speediest year ever? It was January, I was making resolutions, I made some tea, and then I blinked and it was 2013.

So I don't know. I'm feeling more cautious about what is to come. Not pessimistic or bitter (I'm leaving bitterness behind), but just - less concerned. Or less...like, what is a new year, really? It's just switching the calendar on my wall, changing out the pages of my datebook. It is nothing more or less than yesterday or tomorrow. We make some tea, we blink, we pick up a book. We wake up, we turn the page.

I have made some resolutions for 2013, although I'm not sure I want to call them that. I didn't really accomplish the things I set out to last year - I didn't find a perfect strapless bra (newsflash: such a thing does not exist), I didn't finish War & Peace. So this year, it's less what I want to accomplish and more...what I want to enact. Just what I am already doing that I would like to do more of. I would like to move more. I would like to indulge more. I would like to collaborate more. I would like to love more.

And this is going to sound antithetical, but I think it actually makes sense: I would like to stop setting goals for myself. I make more lists than most anyone I know, and I LOVE them. I enjoy nothing more than a carefully plotted list of the day, week, season, year, tasks aching to be crossed off. It offers such an intense feeling of control over my life - which is, of course, a fallacy. I struggle with my need to control. You'll know this if you've ever lived with me, and found me adjusting a stack of mail on the kitchen counter, the placement of a chair that was two inches to the left when I woke up and has mysteriously moved two inches to the right and IF IT DOES NOT MOVE BACK I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO FUNCTION.

I believe in accomplishment bestowing contentment. I believe in forward motion. But the real problem with my incessant list making is my belief that if I accomplish all the items on my list, if I'm able to place a careful check beside each item, I'll achieve some previously unmet level of happiness. It is just the list standing between me and where I'm meant to be, the frequency at which I should be vibrating to live my best life. So I'm forever staring at these unfinished lists ("Write 50 pages of novel this week; visit 12 museums this month") and berating myself for how I'm sabotaging my own happiness; when, in reality, there is no magical pinnacle of achievement that will be the permanent solution to my feeling unfulfilled. Even if I were to finish my novel tomorrow, I'd be staring down the fact that I haven't seen the humpback migration, and by god I won't be complete until I do.

So. Let's focus on what the lists are really about, which is my desire to move towards happiness. Rather than a litany of uncompleted tasks, I'm going to just try to do more of what I know fills me up. I'll continue turning my apartment into more of a home. I'll continue writing, maybe a little more each day, if that's what feels right. I'll continue seeing my friends, making them more of a priority, allotting them the time they deserve. And I'll make more friends. I'll travel more. More New York. More Broadway Bodies. I'll take more classes and learn more and try more new things. And I'll do less of what makes me unhappy, like watching Law & Order: SVU on Netflix for 6 hours straight, except for when that would really make me happy, in which case it's just fine.

Can "more" be the theme for the year? A slow, steady more-ing. Fill it up. Start now.

question

Is there any more depressing feeling than waking up from a dream in which something you desperately want to happen is happening and then forcing yourself back to sleep to see if you can recapture the dream because you know this thing will never happen in real life?

No. I'm answering my own question. No. There isn't.

random act of bravery

I spend a lot of time thinking about alternative careers I might have. Some of these are vaguely legitimate (management consulting seems like a thing I could do, as I very much enjoy figuring out what is wrong with other people), while others are even more legitimate, such as "spy" or "saving whales woman." The lost life I mourn most, however, is "Broadway Star," which was my plan until it became abundantly clear that I could neither sing nor dance. Sometimes I still think that maybe I could be an actress who is accidentally cast in a Broadway show, or one on a crime drama who plays a cop who has to go undercover in a Broadway show, and then I'd have to spend 6 weeks learning how to be a "Broadway Star" without actually having to be on Broadway.

No matter. Point being. Last night my coworker and I went to our first Broadway Bodies class, and as you can imagine, I. WAS. AWESOMELY. TERRIBLE. and also, it was the most fun ever.



There's some biological thing that allows you to move your arms and legs at the same time but in different directions. I didn't get that thing. When I was younger (ie. until two years ago), this meant that the general self-consciousness that fuels me would fly into overdrive when I was forced to move while other people were watching and my limbs would seize up as though I were having some sort of 16th century fit. Growing up, apparently, means not caring as much that the 8 other semi-awkward 20- and 30-something women and 2 delightful gay men in the class can see your desperate flailing that is meant to resemble a jaunty Charleston step. I laughed when I screwed up (all the time), threw my hips out in attempting a body roll, and sang along under my breath, and I loved it.

the titles

There is a corner in my apartment where my books snake perilously up the wall. They're waiting to be shelved, which really means they're waiting for me to purchase bookshelves, and it is likely they'll wait quite a while, since I recently decided that I had to have shelves worthy of their contents, and now everything seems paltry and less than. It's a sort of Jenga-like endeavour to sneak one out of a stack, which I actually appreciate - it forces me to pull books based on placement, rather than what title I want to read next. It's a surprise.

I read a lot in 2012. All hail the morning commute. Here's a list, not including poetry or web content or facetumbletweet.

If I liked you a lot, you get a star! 

*Bring Up the Bodies (Hilary Mantel)

Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn)

*Threats (Amelia Gray) (I can't say I thought this was perfect by any means, but it has wormed its way in.) 

American Gods (Neil Gaiman) 

The Light Between Oceans (M.L. Steadman) (This one gets a negative star. It was inane, predictable, manipulative, and had some of the clunkiest dialogue I've ever encountered. Never again will I trust a lighthouse.) 

*The Sense of an Ending (Julian Barnes) 

*The Hare with Amber Eyes (Edmund de Waal) (I wept.) 

*My Traitor's Heart (Rian Malan) (The stuff of scorched earth.)  

*A Song of Ice and Fire, Books I - V (George M. M. Martin) (aka Game of Thrones) (aka leave off, I loved these)

Aurorarama (Jean-Christophe Valtat) 

*Tiny Beautiful Things (Sugar) (Someone else put it best - I prefer Strayed as Sugar to Strayed as Strayed.)  

Dark Star Safari (Paul Theroux)

*Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (Wells Tower) (The vikings! The vikings.) 

State of Wonder (Ann Patchett) 

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Aimee Bender) 

Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee) 

*Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell) (a reread, still a champion) 

*number9dream (David Mitchell) 

A Field Guide to Getting Lost (Rebecca Solnit) (I was really into these essays at the time, and now it's all a wash of canyon and Joni Mitchell and I couldn't even tell you what the thesis is here.) 

Open City (Teju Cole) 

Mr. Fox (Helen Oyeyemi) 

Wild (Cheryl Strayed) 

Let the Great World Spin (Colum McCann) 

*Wolf Hall (Mantel) (Mantel is the most muscled writer I know. Her writing could kick the shit out of your writing. It has thighs the size of tree trunks.)  

The Imperfectionists (Tom Rachman) 

The Marriage Plot (Jeffrey Eugenides) 

*The Known World (Edward P. Jones) (Might take the cake. This book is a masterpiece. ) 

*Swamplandia (Karen Russell) (I found the gumption charming.)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) 

*The Light Princess (George MacDonald) 

When God Was a Rabbit (Sarah Winman) 

The Buddha in the Attic (Julie Otsuka) 

There's a little too much filler on this list. I might undertake something a bit weightier this year. 

I'd love to talk more about any of these, or hear what you loved most this year, what you clutched at your heart. 

recently

Wherein I explain how money can buy you love (kinda sorta), over here.

love a little more / treat my friends better

i want to be / at least as alive as the vulgar.

My Heart

I'm not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don't prefer one "strain" to another.
I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar. And if
some aficionado of my mess says "That's
not like Frank!", all to the good! I
don't wear brown and grey suits all the time,
do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart--
you can't plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open. 

- Frank O'Hara. 

we'll have to muddle through

The thing that makes this song so heartbreaking, so unendingly melancholy, is that she knows - Judy knows - that she's lying. "Next year all our troubles will be miles away." Even as she's singing it, she understands that it's not true, can't be true. There will always be troubles. But there's something about Christmas that you cling to with this maddening hope, the possibility that bringing a tree into your tiny apartment and stringing it with the lights over which you had to fight with Jerry at the hardware store down the street and delicate glass ornaments you bought with your best friends at the flea market will correct something, or create something, a balm over all that went wrong, is still going wrong. I play this song and sit on the floor beside Fred and cry because I am so happy and sad all at once, just like Judy, alive with the immensity of knowing that no amount of tinsel and handholding and long tables set with the good dishes can solve everything, but also that it can solve - or soothe - something, and that can be enough. It has to be enough.