It finally happened.
Walking across 6th Ave after work yesterday to meet my mom who had just arrived to GCS, I saw him.

Bill Cunningham casually rode past me, even more handsome in person, with his electric blue coat.

I peeled my sunglasses off the bridge of my nose, and said instinctively, "hi Bill!"

He turned his head towards me, slowly, inquisitively, and then said, "oh, hello" with a big, toothy grin.

I have hoped for this moment all summer.

I was wearing wedges, Anne Taylor patterned shorts, a brown belt, and a black scoop neck T.

I read letters from Truman Capote.

"i love new york, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because i belong to it."

A thick swarm of muggy, hot air made today a New York summer day.
I sit on the windowsill and sing, "At Last". Traffic, dripping air conditioners, and funneled air render my insecurities anonymous. It's a marvelous thing that we can be someone and yet no one in the same stroke.
My best friend is in flight on a brave adventure. Religulous-ly, I pray for her.

I wait for the rain. I wait for tomorrow.



What are you waiting for?



A long drive home from the country last night, from my uncle: in being lost, you find yourself.

Let's write a field guide to getting lost.

House as Home

As I prepare my ego for an unsuspected retreat --moving back home to Olympia with my parents-- I reflect on the concept of "home".

What is home? Is a house a home?

I'm reading a book called Life Would be Perfect if I Lived in That House, in which the author says, "if there's anything I've learned over the many years and many moves, it's this: a house is not the same as a home. Despite certain Muzak-sounding catchphrases of the real estate world -- "home buyer," "home sales," "home loans" -- the words "house" and "home" are not interchangeable. Your buy a house, but you make a home. You do not shop for a "home" anymore than you'd shop for a life."

I've always quarreled with my house. Like siblings, we irritate each other, a sentiment laced with unconditional love and affection. I used to wish my house were one of those new, pale-colored fixtures with white trim, plush carpets, pergo floors, and a perfectly manicured 4x4 backyard.

Our house is a litany of never-ending DIY projects. It conjures dust faster than the inside of a Dirt Devil, the windows are never clean, strange stale odors linger from pets past, and the furniture is anything but coordinated. To me, our expansive backyard only meant the chore of lawn-mowing, and the likely probability of stepping in sneaky, hidden dog shit.

I suspect that many, like myself, began to appreciate their childhood home as soon as they left it, either willfully or not. Thanksgiving break of my Freshman year, the familiar living room satisfied my pangs of homesickness and lulled my criticisms. For the time being.

My house is home.
One year, Olympia experienced a week-long power outage. Since our house runs primarily on propane, gathered on blankets near the fireplace, my mom gave myself and my two best girlfriends a most memorable and entertaining sex-talk.
Two years ago this fall, my parents were re-married at the head of our dining room table in an intimate ceremony.
That was the second wedding our home has housed. Not to mention the various parties and potlucks and annual dinner parties that I myself began to host for a few close friends.

And I am teeming with memories and smells from houses of friends. Houses are such intimate portals into family culture, the real innards of a family's dynamic. The magnetic decor on a refrigerator alone can give you extensive insight into a family's values. Houses have discernible smells, usually consisting of a combination of laundry detergent mixed with one parent's prevailing hobby, like skiing or painting.
When I was younger, I loved how if I sniffed an item left in my room, I could almost always discern its rightful owner.

Houses are also not homes. We manicure our lawns, obsessively clean, we decorate and re-decorate. We see our house as a reflections of us, and we want our reflection to be spotless. It's like in those episodes of Hoarders, when the house looks perfectly normal from the outside, but upon opening the door, viewers are exposed to a chaotic and often disgusting mess. Houses allow us to live inside a facade that we can prune or manicure or leave well alone.

Exiting my apartment this morning, the door to my left was slightly ajar, and I couldn't resist the temptation to look inside. Every day, I come home to a short hallway of closed, black doors. I suppose I had assumed that nothing existed beyond the doors. To my surprise there was bright green and yellow wall paper, carpet, tile, and a strong foul smell of cigarettes.

Houses are homes, and so much more. We have evolved to live a domesticated life, inside these structures.

I wonder what a homeless person would say about a house.

Ever tried.
Ever failed.

No matter.

Try again.
Fail again.

Fail better.


-- Samuel Beckett

Bill Cunningham

I finally saw Bill Cunningham New York with my mother and our good friend Molly.



Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8kINiFhplc&feature=grec_index

I have spent many mornings on 5th Ave at 9AM, hoping to catch the man in action.
My face was soggy with tears during the whole film. I really love him.

There is a generation of wonderful people I've come to appreciate and love who are beginning to die, and there are generations already dead who I will never know. Brilliant, eccentric, timeless characters who do not live through myth or text alone. We are so afraid of death that we marginalize the old, but they're the wisest, and the most beautiful.

I'm sad that the generation of holocaust survivors is fleeting, that Bill Cunningham will soon be too old for his bike, that my grandfather can no longer plays tennis, that my father is losing hair. I feel for friends of my grandparents who in their youth were social dynamos and now appear disconnected from the world. Youth is a commodity.Those that age are left behind to fend for themselves in orthopedic shoes, entertaining crazy anecdotal stories from back in the day.

No wonder we're all afraid of getting old. Let's celebrate the wise, the old, the eccentric, dandruff-ed, disconnect and wrinkles. How fortunate we are to live amongst vessels of history.

Foggy Friday

The sky is gray, I am anything but.

I am pleased to announce that I will be spending the spring in France!
Despite my resistance, I have succumb to my inevitable fate of being a 4evergreen grad.

Yes, that's right, I'm moving home and going to Evergreen. One might think I was joking.

I found a perfect program called, "Forbidden Metaphors: Rewriting the Real in 20th Century France". The past week I've been exhaustively finagling connections and contacts in a desperate last-minute attempt to get into this program. And I just received word that I'm in!

Here's a link to the course description:
http://www.evergreen.edu/catalog/2011-12/program s /forbiddenmetaphorsrewritingtherealin20thcenturyfrance-1407

Technically, I'm participating in an exchange program through my current college. This way, I can return to Western in a year if I so choose.

I'm over the moon with delight and excitement. Judith Jones and Julia Child loved Paris, and so will I.

I'm meeting my best friend Rachel in the summer of 2012. We will connect on the tail end of her year-long trek in Africa. We will be picnic-ing in Paris for the summer. Feel free to join.

My mother, my pal, finally arrived yesterday afternoon. After she exercised several outfit changes to get the right look, (light purple converse, mother?) we crossed the park, traversing Broadway for dinner. We settled into the cozy restaurant atop Fairway Market. If you've never been, I highly recommend it. Mom couldn't help but watch the old, bearded man behind us, eating solo, and neatly fastening a napkin bib to his shirt. In fact, many diners ate as alone. It was fabulous. They hardly looked lonely, accompanied by misted cold glasses of white wine, and finger-food appetizers, dates enough in my opinion.

My mom and I ordered two glasses of Pinot. We shared a butter lettuce salad dressed in lemon vinaigrette, with wafer thin slices of smoked salmon, pink like lox. Smoky, but delicate. The salad came with slices of pumpernickel bread and butter. We fashioned perfect-bite sandwiches with the bread, lettuce, salmon, an haricot vert or two for crunch, and plenty of pepper. We also shared two crab cakes. For dessert, a tangy Pinkberry ice cream with blueberries, strawberries, mangoes and raspberries.

We walked home in sweltering heat, arm-in-arm, past ruckus taverns and bars on Amsterdam. Delirious with happiness, I felt I could have skated across the purple water of the Central Park Reservoir.

Day or night, New York is my city.



"Sometimes when I'm with you, I feel I could burst," my mom lovingly said to me at dinner.

Fabulous Food Trucks

We have entered an age of food trucks.

Throughout midtown, these fanciful wagons crank out some delectable and interesting treats. Froyo, fried chicken, báhm mi sandwiches, fresh juices, dumplings, crêpes, and outside of Random House this afternoon: lobster rolls!

Each truck is designed with logos or gizmos to attract attention. But the wonderful thing about them is their complete lack of pretentiousness. Unlike in a restaurant, or a Whole Foods, there's no atmosphere or culture to be created. One simply walks up to the window, places an order, and then finds an awkward place to stand on the sidewalk to enjoy their meal. I imagine a food truck would be a wonderful place to pick up a date.

My aunt offered me wisdom today. She is the wisest woman I know.
In grappling with my inability to distinguish between the appropriate time to full force pursue my desire, or hold back lest I be an irritating kiss-ass, my aunt had this to say:

To succeed in life, u need all 3.
Education/skills
Contacts
Life skills to recognize opportunity
(not in any order)
Don't worry about nepotism
xx

I foolishly view my life as some sort of clock. I criticize myself for being an inert spectator, watching others fulfill their dreams while I continually worry over some benign idea that I'm running out of time.

Time is not uncontrollably elapsing, it is merely unfolding as we await prime opportunities to arise. To put it in words that would resonate with a man, it's like crabbing; you lure the crab in with all your tricks; (your skills/education), which in this case are a slab of dead chicken, a piece of twine, and a bent metal hook.
Unlike fishing, the hunter hasn't won when prey bites. When the string runs taught, the crabbing game is just beginning. You must romance a crab into your net, seduce it to shore with small nibbles of mealy, raw chicken. Your netter, (contact!) is the person who helps you seal the deal.

So you see, life is like crabbing, you wade through muddy, bracken swamps that smell like sewage. Occasionally you fall into the shit. But when you find something you want --your prey-- you can seduce it in and reap the rewards.

Just make sure to share your bounty, because eating crab alone is not nearly as fun as it is with family. Especially if your Grandfather accidentally says, "pass the Oil of Olay," instead of "pass the old bay" (seasoning).

Kindness is a mighty force.

Today's post is in homage to Ira Glass and will be present in three acts.

Act I.
Wednesday night, I was en route to carelessly and recklessly spend money, when a homeless man on the corner of Madison politely asked me for some. Sitting on an orange crate box, with brimming, brown eyes and a few teeth, I offered to buy him dinner. He chose 6 Dunkin' Donuts which he selected meticulously, and a cherry slurpee. The man behind the counter eyed me suspiciously. I didn't have the courage to join him for his meal. My head was racing and pulsating with anxiety and heavy thoughts.
I returned to my luxurious Upper East Side apartment and cried, for all that I have and for how seldom I take the time to recognize it.
The next day, my friend recognized me as I walked by, and he said "Good day Miss."

Act II.
I spent the long holiday weekend with family in Stonington, CT. Sunday afternoon, alone on the highway, my right front tire popped. Panicking, I pulled into an adjacent parking lot and tried to calm my nerves before proceeding. A woman in a Toyota 4-runner pulled up next to me and offered to help. Michelle had just come from a yoga class, and was about to walk her dog in the nature preserve when she saw me pull in. She had long dark brown hair with some feathers wrapped in. Her legs resembled those of my father in hair quantity. She had just moved back to Stonington from Nothern California on account of her family, "getting older one me."
Michelle taught me how to change a tire, how to jack the car using a solid piece of the car frame (the closer the jack is to the tire, the less high you'll have to go). She taught me to secure the car from rolling on me by wedging pieces of wood behind each back tire. Michelle taught me to reattach the bolts on the tire in a star pattern so as to prevent any lopsidedness.
I've watched others change tires before, and I've certainly heard that anyone is capable of doing the job. I loved that Michelle taught me to change mine. She instructed, I did. Afterward, I took her out for coffee and muffins.

Act III.
The journey home from CT involves two trains. One to New Haven, which is comfortable, well air-conditioned, and seldom full. And one from New Haven to Grand Central, uncomfortable, hot, and always teeming with commuters. A woman boarded the New Haven train, wearing jean shorts, two gray shirts, blonde hair up in a ponytail, and dark sunglasses. She was clearly distressed. She asked the man standing beside us where we were. 5 minutes later, she asked again, 30 seconds later, again. When the man asked if she was alright, she said that her husband had left her aboard the train and disappeared. All of the passengers on the car had watched the woman board the train, no husband in sight. The woman to my right used her hand to motion drinking, and then circled her index finger around her ear, insinuating that the woman was drunk or crazy. The blonde woman asked the man when we'd be in Manhattan, he responded 40 minutes, she asked why it would take so long, and replied that it was because we don't live in france, and trains don't travel 90 Mph. Everyone on the car laughed. At which time the blonde woman began to panic even more. From my peripheral perspective of her face, I could see her eyes squinting and welling with tears. I asked if there was anything I could do, she asked to make a call, first to her husband, who did not pick up, and then to her father, who did. After 5 minutes of repeating the same story of being left in an imaginary chair by her boyfriend, the pantomiming woman took the phone out of the blonde's hands and began speaking to her father. She assured him that his daughter was on a real train, that she was fine, but that someone ought to meet in her Grand Central.
That's what I love about New Yorkers, they're direct and they don't patronize. They'll help you, but they're not going to be fluffy about it.
Pretty soon, a ticket-taker was doing rounds to collect fares for the train. The blonde woman turned to face the window, and pretended not to hear him as he asked for her fare. The six of us around her contributed a dollar to pay for her. As we all dug in our wallets, and passed bills about, I recognized a profound and powerful contrast; the frivolity of paper money, in the face of human kindness.
The blonde woman never thanked or acknowledged how we had helped her, but that was never the point anyway.

There is endless wisdom in kindness.

Grappling to overcome first love

What makes us such prisoners to the grip of first love?
Or is it just me?

I have a theory that we fear never being as close to someone (non-familial) again, and it is this fear that magnifies the pain of letting a first love go.
I'm fairly certain that some of my most embarrassing moments occurred with my first boyfriend, and vice-versa. The next time around, in a new relationship, things won't be as new or awkward, I won't be as green or young. I'm not just talking about sex either, I'm talking about every portion of first love. The incessant feeling of butterflies -- really just a kinder word for nausea -- that accompanies the first month of the relationship. The I-can't-believe-you-just-said/did-that, moments. The terror of meeting the family. The family dinners in which one parent spots a hickey and then brings it to the attention of everyone at the table. The "accidental" sleepovers. The first big fight.

There is nothing quite like first love.

When Judith Jones' husband Evan died, she wrote, "I doubted that I would ever find pleasure in making a nice meal for myself and sitting down to eat it alone. I was wrong. Instead, I realized that the ritual we had shared together for almost fifty years was a part of the rhythm of my life, and by honoring it I kept alive something that was deeply engrained in our relationship."

Evan may not have been Judith's first love, but he was certainly her greatest. And my ex-boyfriend may not be dead, but sometimes I feel I've lost a loved one.

How do we find pleasure in relationships past? Is it possible to maintain rituals, to celebrate what was, to cook with first love?

Is it healthy?