It feels like I've entered publishing during a civil war. The just-familiar world of words and books is shaking and crumbling at my feet. Tho new is seceding form the old.

This morning at work I was sent to retrieve as many copies as I could of Crain, a magazine that had published an article about the company.

The article was front, center, and large. The graphic displayed a Kindle with great, sharp, teeth attacking and consuming a hardcover book. Although it was a drawing, it may as well have been a photograph, because that is literally what's happening.

Some have advised me not to enter the world of publishing, because it is a dying field. As each new mac invention and digital-portable-whatever gets thrown onto the market, another newspaper, or paperback book gets bulldozed by its modernized counterpart. It's like Fahrenheit 451, without the burning of books, of course.

The ipad is now selling children's books that are interactive and whose pages you physical turn with your hand. Of course, physically turning really means finger gliding across the screen. Our children will be inept page-turners.

In Alice in Wonderland, the clock ticks, the cat talks, and you literally follow Alice through the rabbit hole.

I can't imagine growing up without real books, ruined book covers that I drew on with a crayon, or bindings, tattered and frayed from constant and relentless reading.

The Magic Skates was one of my favorites. The pictures were bright, and I could hold the sweet smelling, shiny pages right up to my nose as my mom read aloud. Can you imagine a parent putting their child to bed with an ipad? How cold.

My mom says that she felt the same way about the transition from records to CD's. She couldn't imagine choosing the modern version and foregoing the aesthetic appeal and bold sound of a record. But it happened. Will it happen to books and newspapers?

I feel like I'm setting myself up for heartbreak. Why enter an industry that is being pruned of all the things I love most? Just the other week, and editor at Open Road yelled at one of the techies because at a publishing company, we have no machines with word processing applications.

It is a luxury to be in the business of reading.

I feel that way despite having spent all day organizing book shelves.

It wasn't so bad. I bagged 5 books. Among them: A guide to happiness, Paul Newman's biography, a book about werewolves, and a new Gleick to add to my collection.

Today was also the last day for my fellow interns. We spent our lunch hour eating pizza and sharing thoughts in a circle. The topics discussed included favorite or least favorite person in the office. And, of course, office crush. We were gossiping to such an extent, that we closed to door to the small conference room, lest anyone overheard us.

It's harder to write when you're down, why is that?

Yesterday was a dark day. I left work with a toxic inferiority complex, generated by the growing knowledge that my fabulous internships are direct results of my very well connected grandparents, and not necessarily my own merit.

Many of my family members have thrown in an encouraging, slightly anecdotal word to the contrary.

The only person who has been successful in bolstering my confidence is my grandfather. In typical Ash style, he reminded me of his reputation, something he values dearly. And comforted me by saying that he would not have used his connections had he lacked faith in my ability to uphold is reputation.

This was on speakerphone while my mom cut his hair. I am still beaming.

I'd never walked up Madison at 7PM.

At 3PM, I find a variable assortment of runners, mothers with perfectly dressed children, small outfitted dogs, and, of course, normal people. But yesterday, as I perused the east side of the street, I found and felt something very different.

On 71st street, between a Prada and Ralph Lauren is a church. A few blocks up between more fancy boutiques, another church. Around the corner of a stiletto, spinning on a swarovski crystal pedestal, a trickle of a line is forming for the soup kitchen. Cardboard boxes, umbrellas and blankets are building forts like the ones my brother and I would make in the living room.

For me, it was the collision of real and fake, idealized and actual. The doors of Ralph Lauren opened, and fragrant, freezing air poured out. It smelled materialized, rich, luxurious. The homeless man wreaked of urine, tobacco and sweat.

I feel like I'm caught in a world where nothing is real.

4 Danish boys came over tonight for pizza and lots of beer. It was nice to be around people my age, boys was just an added bonus.

Neglect, neglect, neglect.

No matter, today was fantastic.

It began with the secretary informing me that I would be shadowing her for the morning. While secretarial duties may seem lowly and uninteresting, for me they are thrilling. Ever since I can remember, I've desired to answer a multi-lined phone.

I spent the morning doing just that.

James Gleick called.

Yes, that James Gleick, author of Genius.

I just finished reading Faster, the third of his books I've read this summer.

I told him to please hold, pushed the transfer key, but hesitated before dialing the extension.

I wanted, more than anything, to tell him how much I appreciated his books. How he taught me physics, chaos and chemistry through wonder and colorful characters.

Alas, I dialed 213 and Gleick left my life, or at least his voice did.

Tony Bourdain also called me. Somehow, in retrospect, that feels less exciting.

I was given the wisest words I've heard thus far. I'm tempted to cherish them for myself, they feel like insider, trade secrets.

We had an intern lunch with agents and partners today. One of the partners said that if you have an interview in publishing you need only prepare yourself in one, simple way.

Obtain the New York best seller list, draw a line through the center of the listed books, read all the books above your drawn line.

This, he told us, is all you need for preparation. Publishers know that you've read Shakespeare, but that doesn't matter today. Prove that you know what's happening now.

To men in NYC, and all over the world, I ask you this:

Why must you sit with your legs spread as though they being pried apart using one of those dentist's clamps? It began in 6th grade carpool, when I was squished into the door by your this ridiculous and incessant phenomena. It has followed me through life, today manifesting itself on an over-crowded train during rush hour.

Don't tell me it's just a comfort thing, either. I have seen men sitting, legs crossed tightly.

Men, you take twice the space you need, and look utterly foolish. Stop spreading you legs like your straddling the worlds largest pumpkin.

and

To the man with the fruit stand outside my apartment:

Where art thou?

You sell me my morning banana for only 25 cents, it makes my day, everyday.

You don't placate me with a smile I'm only paying you a quarter after all.

You speedily deliver a yellow pocket of creamy, sweet, fruit into my hands.

I don't think you sleep, because you're dutifully on the corner every time I walk past.

But today, my dear fruit man, you were a no-show.

I went work with nothing more than a smelly coin in my hand.

Please come back.

I've been sick, and it has been raining.

To make myself feel better, I took the 6 downtown. When the doors opened at 42nd street, music poured in, it beckoned me out, despite the unpleasantly warm draft that accompanied it.

I cried. Like one of the eccentric characters I spend so much time studying and thinking about, I couldn't help myself.

The City, especially during the summer, is accustomed to street performances, but this music was more than a well-rehearsed act. It was sound so rich and cultural that it flooded my body, nourishing the sick, apartment-bound person I've been reduced to recently.

I think I cried because I felt that these men and their music were an act of generosity, unintentional perhaps, but generous just the same. Plenty of songs are catchy, even trashy ones. This music was more that catchy, it was captivating; the direct product of culture, irreplaceable, impossible to replicate, impossible to ignore. It filled ever terminal of the dank, hot New York subway station. Even as people rushed past en route to their busy lives, I knew it touched them all. It was truly generous, and that's why I cried.

This is them in times square:

Why is follow-through such an issue?

I make promises to myself, I set goals, I have good intentions, but sometimes my lack of follow-through is crippling.

I reassure myself with the anecdotal theory that it's my age. The last 14 years of my life have been somewhat rigidly structured with homework and school. Therefore, it must be only natural that I rebel against certain goals, even if I've set them for myself.

I do want to blog daily, but it's work, so I avoid it.

I reject the structure of deadlines, which manifests in unavoidable and unreasonable procrastination.

If gawking at Grand Central makes me a tourist, then so be it. As I entered the main terminal this morning, I felt like I had stepped into the great hall of Hogwarts. It lifted my spirits and my sour stomach. Grand Central is majestic, magical in a way that blows an air of adventure. It's another world, where food, travel, business and sheer architectural wonder, collide.

A bright conversation on the phone with a friend reminded me of the quote from a manuscript that I meant to mention long ago. It's about clarity, a woman says to a man:

"You know mostly I think that life is a terrible blur. But there are these moments of clarity when it all swims into focus and it's then that we need to act, because in these moments and by these moments perhaps we are defined."

I come across words that speak to my soul and others to my logic. This speaks to the latter. If only the moments of clarity were more frequent, they wouldn't be saturated by pressure. Sometimes moments of clarity are so intense, they're immobilizing, rendering them a blur just the same.

What do we do with our moments of clarity? Jot ideas down onto a notepad? Run around and

set about changing the world? Do some have more clarity than others, or are we all swimming in the same vortex of haze?

In my living room at home, my mom has hung great panels of butcher paper that she spray painted. The images are of trees and brush in a fast motion blur, meant to simulate passing something quickly as though in the window of a car or a train.

That's how life feels.

Yesterday was the final game of the 2010 World Cup. 4 years ago, I could hardly fathom that in 2010 I would be 19. Today, I wonder what life will be like when I'm 23. It feels like a blur, I wait for the clarity.

I'm being delinquent and writing at work, I can't help myself.

Broken Vessels, Essays by Andre Dubus, so complex and saturated with meaning that I could literally cry.

The first story is about a year he spent renting a house for cheap, with came with the consequence of tending sheep. He writes:

"This was my first encounter with sheep. When I was a boy, sheep had certain meanings: in the Western movies, sheep herders interfered with the hero's cattle; or the hero's struggle to raise his sheep. And Christ had called us his flock, his sheep; there were pictures of him holding a lamb in his arms. His face was tender and loving, and I grew up with a sense of those feelings, of being a source of them: we were sweet and lovable sheep. But after a few weeks in that New Hampshire house, I saw that Christ's analogy meant something entirely different. We were stupid helpless brutes, and without constant watching we would foolishly destroy ourselves."

Wisdom for today:

"Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people."

Today, without shyness and in front of the other interns, I announced that the murder novel I had been reading was simply too scary for me to handle. Thank god I did. Dubus is a pleasure in which I will indulge for the rest of the day.

This weekend I decided to commit myself more fully to this blog. Katharine Weymouth critically said that some people wake up, write about how they feel, and call it a blog.

I do not want to do that.

I think a good entry should be through provoking, but not overwhelming. My goal is to write more often and more freely. I aspire to meet the standards of Katharine.

Cooking in the oven that is New York City.

Only yesterday, Nans and I were in stark contrast as we sat atop a rock and dipped our feet into cold, salty water. I understand why some leave the city in the summer. It is much more pleasant to feel the breeze of ocean air, eating clams on the half shell, than it is to be blasted with stewed urine and garbage air, hot and enveloping. All those things said, I would still rather be in the city. I love it so.

Roasted peanuts and iced coffee from Dean and Deluca for lunch.

Stonington Connecticut, watching C-SPAN with my grandparents. Ash reads a manuscript and Betsy strokes princess Pearl. We sit in a pool of newspapers.

Katharine Weymouth, Washington Post Media Chief Executive is being interviewed.

Her wisdom: If you admire someone, take them to coffee and ask for their advice. People are always thrilled to know they're admired.

Who would you ask to coffee?

I came to New York to network. Unfortunately, changing coasts has not assuaged my constipation in doing so.

Traditionally speaking, if a man is interested in a woman, he pursues a relationship with her, he courts her. The same strategy is used for networking in the professional world. They should really call networking, professional dating. For some reason, however, I cannot apply the practices of dating to non-romantic relationship, it feels wrong. Why is that?

If I'm at a party and I meet someone who I'm interesting in and I ask for their number, am I hitting on them? Outside of the thematic confines of this conversation, I believe the general answer would be yes.

Much of networking has to be done at a grass roots level. You can't jump the gun and ask an executive to have coffee. I want to connect with some of the other interns I work with. So how do I network with them, while avoiding the awkward implications of professional dating? Do I preface myself by establishing that I want their number for strictly non-romantic purposes? Wouldn't that make the conversation more awkward?

I feel like everyone else has taken social networking 101, and I skipped class that day

Subways are a cesspool of curiosity. They're like a zoo, but without the guilt, and best of all, you're inside of the cage.

I've adopted a couple of habits during my journey aboard the train.

I observe how many passengers are married, as determined by the presence, or lack thereof, a ring. Engagements count as marriages. Why I do this, is beyond me. Perhaps marital status gives me some sort of insight into their life. Or maybe I merely enjoy scouting shiny, diamond rings. Then again, hands are unavoidable on the subway, they clench metal bars just above my eyes, hold newspapers across the isle, or fold neatly into laps beside me.

The practice I indulge on the train is to notice business men, note their attire. In Olympia Washington, all men look the same to me. Business, sport and casual are each their own genre, so men subscribe to one and then blend into the pack.

Such is not the case in New York.

For businessmen alone, there are pin striped suits, purple ties, tight pants, high pants, pointed shoes, shoes with ruffles, the list goes on. I saw five red headed men in pink shirts today. I'm not sure which feature was more surprising to me.

I wonder if others think about their train-mates. I can't help myself. I spent 25 minutes next to a man reading Hebrew today. He is now forever imprinted in my life, signified by this blog entry. I will never see him again, we did not exchange a single word, and I don't know his name.

It's strange that on the subway we spend time in close proximity to strangers we will never see again.

What if I had met him?

The other day I was taking the 1 Train uptown to pick up a manuscript for work. Across from me was sitting a man who bore a striking resemblance to Ian McKellen. He was wearing a well pressed grey suit, with black orthopedic shoes, and very round reading glasses. He was casually swishing a lollipop in his mouth.

After midtown, the train was quite full. I could no longer see Sir Ian McKellen through the sea of passengers, but I could hear him. It's astonishing that in a mob of 50 people sausaged into a car together, there is very little conversation.

I heard crunching. I didn't have to see, to know that Ian had finished his lollipop.

I will be neglectful no longer.

Wisdom from my aunt, truly one of the wisest people I know:

"It takes work to build a life for oneself. This is true again and again in life. You are brave to be out on your own in a big city such as this."

3 short sentences with profound meaning.

I neglected my blog because I felt there was nothing worthy of writing. Suddenly, and rather unexpectedly, New York City became quite scary. Not dangerous scary - although it was terrifying that a man name Angel, muscles tattoos and all, broke into the apartment to deliver mail while I was in a bath towel - but expansive scary; endless. This weekend, I abruptly realized that I am on my own 'in a big city such as this.'

I cannot comprehend how, in a city with so many people, one can feel so alone. The past three days, I've taken to walking up and down Madison Ave, and I've found, rather ironically, that in being alone, I'm not alone. Unlike on my college campus, or even at home, in New York, many people walk alone, why is this?

My loneliness proved to be an illusion, broken quickly, as my aunt and uncle pulled up curbside in their Toyota Puis, cargo of 2 cousins in the back seat.

Although lonely fled just as quickly as it had come, I can't stop thinking about it. Before last nights outing, which included: the hockey store, Pavan's 1st grade yearbook, several quizzes of guess that president, sushi a tour of my uncles work, and a great amount of laughter, I don't think I was aware that loneliness was the culprit of my newfound fear.

I wonder what it is to be lonely, and how many people really are. It surprised me how quickly mine dissolved, and instead of leaving me where I had been before, the short company from last night has left me feeling even better.

I didn't mean for today's entry to manifest quite like this, but I'm interested that it has. Off I go to walk Madison Ave, alone, but no longer lonely.

Interns are grunts. We are not novice students, or apprentices. We are newbies, bottom of the food-chain, measly, interns.

Before you roll your eyes at me for being naive, I would like to say that I knew this already.

Something I did not know, however, was that even amongst the lowly, last-kids-picked-for-the-dodgeball-team, there still exists a hierarchy.

There are several types of interns. There are the seasoned vets: those who have been interns for 3 years and counting, those who are assertive, accomplished, bitchy, and strangely trendy, those who are only there because someone is making them, and perhaps a tiny portion of those who are genuine, nice and interesting.

I'm the newest intern, and I'm from Washington, "State!" I have to interject before they give me the approving, East Coast nod and assume I mean D.C.

Thank you mom and dad.

Guess where credentials like those put me in the power strata of New York City interns?

The best part of my day today, was fetching coffee for a secretary.

I pondered this on the subway ride home and came to a conclusion. There are no real net benefits to most of life. Example: either I take the local 6 train up Lexington, a roughly 30 minute ride. Or, I take the Lexington Ave shuttle, which stops less frequently, cutting at least 15 minutes off my commute time.

The efficient choice seems obvious, but now, account for rush hour human traffic.

Take the express train, and for the cost of 15 extra minutes, I'm liable to be pressed up, very snugly, against a rather large woman in a fascinatingly small shirt.

Allow me to correct myself. Perhaps it's not that there are no net benefits in life, but instead that the net benefits from comparable situations are so marginal, that they should instead be compared as net detriments.

In other words, would taking the 6 express be more detrimental than taking the local? I think so.

Today's conclusion: Everyone has to start somewhere. It must be these years of bottom-feeding that allow one to really relish the future.

Things I learned today:

1. Some people in New York aren't very nice and yell.

2. Im going to spend most of my summer hot, sweaty, sticky and feeling dirty.

3. Coco helado is heaven on 95th and Lexington. It helps that there's also one on 96 and Lex.

4. New Yorkers are always plugged into their ipods, not merely because they're grumpy isolationists, but in order to escape the giggling shrieks and squeals or middle school girls on the subway.

5. Men should immediately cease wearing high-waisted pants, they do not put the ass in asset.

6. If you don't have an iphone or a blackberry, consider yourself inept, and scroll through the measly apps your lesser phone has to offer, alone. Someone actually told me to BBM them today.

Today was a long day, and I apologize if my bitterness has seeped into today's entry.

First day of work. I spent the morning researching Jack Higgins, an unpleasantly difficult task, considering the man writes under five separate names. His reasoning - to write more books, sell more books, and make more money per year. I immediately disliked him.

Quality over quantity? Someone ought to remind him of the 30 failed novels he wrote before his first best-selling hit.

Next, a final cut pro workshop with the media department. I was awed by the flashing fingers of the instructor as he clicked, double clicked, and shortcut keyed, spitting out file type names that sounded foreign. He kept asking me if I had any questions, I could hardly even respond.

I'm slightly embarrassed to announce that the highlight of my day was organizing the storage room. The job came with a label-maker. I was vested the task of organizing all the excess office supplies, neatly stacking them on the newly built shelves, and clearly labeling each as I went. It was beyond satisfying, and the label-maker was significantly more empowering than my boss knew it would be.

Speaking of bosses, the execs of the company are angelic, literally. I swear they are bigger, taller and more beautiful than ordinary people. White light follows them as they walk. Their perfectly ironed, bright colored shirts and shiny, snappy shoes make us interns, and even the secretaries, look like gremlins. Their voices are boisterous and boom across the office, announcing their preeminence. This sounds like a gross exaggeration, but is not, they are god-like.

Last night was my first social outing in The City. I met Ty and his cashmere-wearing, j crew clad, Middlebury friends, who proved to be very nice and fun. We spiked our dinner waters with vodka someone had brought in water bottles. I thought it was quite clever. I drank too much, what exactly that entailed, I will leave to the imagination. I do have suspicious bruises and a cut on my knee, and absolutely no memory of where or how they happened.

Needless to say, I'm fairly embarrassed and I threw up most of my dignity in the toilet of Ty's bathroom. I may never drink Vodka again, I gaged over the mere smell of my nail-polish remover this morning.

Not to worry, a small cup of rainbow flavored italian ice is soothing my hangover, and my nostalgia.

I read Genius to Betsy yesterday while she slept. I like reading aloud and feeling the different places in your mouth where sounds and tones and textures are produced. The book is great, it's a biography of physicist Richard Feynman, but it's really about what it is to be a genius. Who, what and how are geniuses?

"There are two kinds of geniuses, the 'ordinary' and the 'magicians.' An ordinary genius is a fellow that you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they have done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. They are, to use mathematical jargon, in the orthogonal complement of where we are and the working of their minds is for all intents and purposes incomprehensible. Even after we understand what they have done, the process by which they have done it is completely dark."

The book is written deliciously, colorfully and with a lovely, endearing tone. It is an ode to the eccentricities of Feynman, and all geniuses probably.

"He taught himself how to train dogs to do counterintuitive tricks-for example, to pick up a nearby sock not by the direct route but by the long way round, circling through the garden, in the porch door and back out again. (He did the training in stages, breaking the problem down until after a while it was perfectly obvious to the dog that one did not go directly to the sock.) Then he taught himself how to find people bloodhound-style, sensing the track of their body warmth and scent. He taught himself how to mimic foreign languages, mostly a matter of confidence, he found, combined with a relaxed willingness to let lips and tongue make silly sounds. He made islands of practical knowledge in the oceans of personal ignorance that remained."

I could quote the entire book, and probably would, were it not a copyright infringement. The best thing of all, Richard Feynman all his life "could never quite teach himself to feel a difference between right and left."

Procrastination.
For fear of not writing it well, I have woefully procrastinated beginning this blog.
Its purpose: to document my summer in New York City, as well as collect insight

and tips (wisdom) from those around me whom I admire.
The first comes from my father who told me: "don't be perfect, just be present."
So here I go, imperfectly present, atop my green, fern printed bedspread. Let the blog begin.


I've been in The City for three days.


Wednesday was an intern meeting for Open Road Media, the first of my two internships.

There are 25 of us interns. Everyone is Jewish. I'm not sure why that is.

Jane Friedman hugged and kissed me, to my surprise
and everyone else's. I’ve been assigned to read a book called Genius.


Thursday, interview at Inkwell Management, the second internship. I sat nervously in the waiting room,

while my hands clammed mercilessly. Clammy hands are an awful ailment. Unpleasantly warm, sticky,

and damp hands must be off-putting, especially when asking a complete stranger to shake them.

I kept rubbing my hands on the suede armchairs, like big absorbent pads. The secretary watched.


Yesterday I accompanied my Grandmother Betsy to the doctor, I watched her echo, and felt exhausted

on behalf of her heart for its ceaseless pumping.

On the walk home, Betsy bought a chocolate sorbet ice cream cone and I fell in love with a long, regal, Oscar de la Renta skirt in a shop window.

We went to my cousin Pavan’s end-of-school party in Central Park.

A 5-year-old girl lost her cookies, literally, right beside me as I took my first bite of vegetarian chili.

It made me regret not buying my other options at the deli, neither of which so closely resembled her vomit.


Betsy’s tip of the day was: “don’t wear casual shorts in midtown.”

She told me this as we exited the apartment elevator.