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.