building this life

sunday night, picture box.

kitchen


every once and again when the apartment is filled with cool air rolling in off the hudson, and all the lights are off, i pass by the doorless kitchen and have the thought, yes, that's the life i'd like to live one day. followed quickly by, yes, that's the life i'm living.

and then there's the hanging realization that life is full, already terribly full. and pregnant with possibility. and it feels like it's all getting a bit closer. the space between the now and all that i've ever dreamed of.

the gap is closing. and i'm simply along for the ride. and as long as i live fearlessly, it will arrive.

(easier said than done, of course. but the pursuit sure is a hell of a good time).

illumination.

i went out with a friend recently, one i haven't seen in ages--and by ages i mean years. it had been years. whole lives had passed between our last meeting. we went to a posh restaurant in the meat-packing district--one of those places that people say you simply must go when in manhattan. the girl who sat us wore a black dress, red lipstick, and a pill-box hat. the waiter spoke with a heavy french accent. we sat outside, at a tiny slip of a table. my dress tugged on my neck as i tried to find a comfortable (and modest) way to sit in the small folding chair. there was a garden across the street--with a large wooden table and sunflowers atop it. and the way the sun hit the stones of the patio caught my breath in my mouth.

there is always the moment, with old friends, when i must explain what i'm doing in this life.

no acting? why not? what then? writing? what kind of writing? and my answers become tedious and often vague because to answer them all well and truthfully and fully would be a whole (and pardon the language that's about to come) shit-storm of information. and some things are best unraveled slowly and carefully. so i gave some sort of (or i thought so) coy look and said, i've been learning how to be happy. i've figured out happiness for myself. and he looked at me incredulously and said, really, you figured that out? 


it's a bold statement. to say i've figured it out. i know. but i think in a lot of ways, i have.

i smiled, looked down at my latte (what else) and said, yeah, sort of, it starts with this (the latte). and a clean room--a clean room is essential to my happiness. 


i have a whole list of things. red lipstick. hoop earrings. a camera around my neck. live music. late-night conversations with my father. riding in the car beside my mother. trips to boston. sitting next to strangers on a bus. girlfriends that refuse to deal with nonsense. photo albums. any book by pat conroy (with the exception of south of broad--not mr. conroy's finest). living through fear. doing what i once thought impossible. the list is endless. or at least, that's the hope, that it should be never-ending.

but the list is only a sliver. i think what i've figured out is this: everything passes. and sadness does not negate happiness--it sometimes eclipses it, sometimes not. the two can live side-by-side. they can co-exist. there is a sadness in me this morning, as i write this, but that is not to say i'm not happy.

it's just that happiness is ever-moving and ever-changing and all i can do is be open to the possibility that every-once-in-a-while when i least expect it, i'll be so lucky to have it move through me and around me--to fill me and live there before it continues on.

do i have happiness figured out? as much as i can, right now. yes, i think so.

i've been feeling weary of my upcoming 26th birthday because i feel i've accomplished so little. i'm so near a number and so far away from any expectations i had for my life at this point. but realizing this last saturday morning that a little piece of happiness is mine, knowing i've just a wee of a handle on it? well, that's not so bad for a twenty-five year old nearing twenty-six, is it?

visiting chicago.


















funny how you don't always know just how much you need a little vacation until the moment is upon you.

i've done a bit of traveling this summer--quick trips to boston and connecticut, even taking on the city as a tourist upon the visit of my mother.

but there is something about this vacation--these few days in chicago--that is entirely selfish. entirely for me. {and sometimes that's important}.

it all happened because at a family dinner just days before christmas last year i mentioned a band. and my brother mentioned liking them. so i bought tickets--got him a christmas gift. and we saw a show. and it was love. and i was in love with live music.

so i saw another show. and another. became that person always in search of the next great harmonic high. and then i got a ticket for lollapalooza. by myself. and a year ago this never would have happened.

and that's kinda what this trip is about: vacation and rest and really great music, but also that i'm doing what i couldn't have done one year ago.

life changes and it gets better.

and you wake one morning and the oatmeal you've ordered with blueberries and toasted almonds and brown sugar is better than any donut you've ever had in your life.

{well, okay, almost better}.

what cannot.

when i think back on the many years i spent acting my mind gravitates to the space just off-stage. to the countless moments just before an entrance. the great gaping mouth of that threshold between reality and make-believe. the cool, dark nooks ringing-round the edge of light. the sacred space in which fear and potential mingled, lived-side-by-side, drew breaths one from the other.

and then onto the stage. into the space. into the light.

i was never aware of being watched. never aware of even thinking up there. it was...it just was. perhaps the purest, most authentic form of myself. but cloaked under the pretense of...pretend.

(and under the pretense of pretend everything is a bit more real).

i don't miss acting. i don't think i do. if i'm really honest, i don't. and then i feel tremendously guilty for the not. the not missing. the not wanting. the non-pursuit.

but maybe i do. maybe the not is really the non-remembrance. perhaps if i found myself in those wings once more i might suddenly become aware that i have lived the past three years without ever once breathing.

i don't think so. because there is this, this writing. and there are lungs to these words.

but the thing about writing--at least in this domain--is there is an immediacy and a lack of anonymity that i am suddenly finding all-together-terrifying.

i find myself. center stage. staring out. breaking down that fourth-wall. aware of all those eyes. 

and i am, for the first time, more aware of what cannot be written than what can.

of how i cannot write of the boy i met on the bus from boston. or the one who took me to a wine bar in the west village. i cannot write about the man who's face i've conjured up so many times i can't remember what he looks like.

point of fact, i cannot write about men at all. except the imagined. always the imagined. only the imagined.

i cannot write about loneliness or the holes in faith that pepper most mornings.

i can't write about the new scented soap that lives in my bathroom and makes me utterly sick to my stomach. how the scent creeps out into the hallway, into the living. room. how i hate that soap. hate what it stands for.

i cannot write about any of these things because these things--these thoughts--are tethered to people. and these people deserve their anonymity, if anyone.

i cannot write about the monotony of the days now abutting one.into.theother. nor how i am suddenly aware that a thinner frame doesn't make any of this easier. i mean i knew that, but now i know that. there's always someone skinnier, blonder, more vibrant.

how it's apathy i find most dangerous. most unnerving. how i take in deep breaths and am met with no air.

i cannot write about how i just want someone to go grocery shopping with. how i went to make dinner for them. do their laundry. it all sounds so terribly un-feminist. so not-of-the-moment.

and if these things are to be written, to be read--if they are to be read would the words lose their air?

life, as of now.


there is this consistent, persistent feeling that i'm being pulled under by the tow. 


not that i'm drowning--i've felt that before and this is certainly not that--but that i'm running out of air. and gasps are getting harder to come by.

it's getting harder to pack my life--lives, really--into two bags each morning. to carry those (three?) lives outside of me--toting them from one location to the next--zigzagging across a city that is unforgiving of such things. tennis shoes, computer and camera, black dress and high heels.

i find myself arriving home late at night. too late. crouching on my knees, spilling the contents of my bags--my lives--onto the floor in search of my keys. my keys, please, just let me find the keys. i empty out everything i own, tossing books and cards and all the receipts that need to be sorted, and there they are--bottom of the bag--fallen into some hole in the lining. and before i can pick up the now scattered content, i desperately thrust that single metal stick into the lock, and it breathes air into me. it is a gasp for air that thrust. just in time. coming home breathes in new air. and i stand there. chest heaving. alight with the panic that comes from feeling like you won't get that next breath in time. and when the lungs are just full enough and the heat of fear lines only my extremities i sink to the floor once more. pick up the contents of my life for the last time that day and cross the threshold. 

and just as this true. so is the feeling that i am buoyant. and good. and so very happy. so very lived in. 

so very in love with waking each morning to begin again. so very in love with my coffee on the windowsill and the way the sun slices through my flat, wood blinds. in love with the new stack of books piled under my makeshift bed-side table. in love with the scent and feel of a spring long-overdue in this cobbled, fragmented city.

it is always an interesting experience to operate on both ends of the spectrum. to hold two opposing ideas next to each other and say, yes, both are true. for me, these two opposing notions are true. right now. at the same time. it is electric. creates more space, actually--you know, for that air to get in.

i don't hate new york. i thought i did. turns out i'm just not entirely keen on the life i've built here. and so slowly, ever-so slowly i'm making changes. 

if there is frustration--and yes, of course there is--it comes from feeling the need to justify those changes. from feeling like i must contain this life that is desperate to barrel forward, tumble out. from having to pause and wait while every inch of me screams to continue on. 

the good news is, before long this shall pass. there may be a few meltdowns along the way. but it shall pass.