It sound a bit cute, but it’s true: I’ve got Restless Life Syndrome.
As a youth, I was not particularly wiggly. I seem to remember sitting quietly and being good. I was definitely not bad. My mom says I was a happy baby, an easy one. I don’t know when it happened, but at some point I stopped being satisfied. I have been on the move ever since. Dammit!
From time to time, I read articles in magazines about some sad, harried woman’s magical transformation into a content, happy woman who stops working 24/7 and starts appreciating the beauty of the hummingbirds in her garden — the garden she now tends lovingly instead of stabbing at spreadsheets all day. One wonders if her perfect azaleas are stand-ins for her then-perfect quarterly reports, but to hear her talk she’s truly mellowed, is truly at peace because she stopped worrying about absolutely everything she used to worry about. She just “woke up.”
These articles do not inspire me. They make me nervous. Because I am not looking at hummingbirds. I am on a plane. I am trying to do something, here.
I don’t know what it feels like to check out. I can’t do it. I’ve tried. The people who do the hummingbird thing are mysterious to me. I do try hard to notice the world, but there can be no doubt I’m missing tracts of it right and left because I’m getting into another taxi in another city or making wheat-free bread that will supposedly save my health and so far is absolutely not doing that. My days are spent working; many nights too, because I feel workiness is next to worthiness (also because I’m lame in social situations involving more than two people.) To be fair, “working” to me means “making money to live on” but also “quilting” and “writing,” so no need to feel sorry for me. Besides, I make money doing (mostly) what I love to do. I’m grateful every day for that and will work hard to keep it that way.
Which brings me to the hummingbirds. I don’t think I’m “set.” I don’t take all this for granted. You want something big, you gotta do big things. You gotta hustle. There may not be as many diaphanous gowns in your life — or as many gardens — but there is beauty in the airplane. Beauty in the leather jacket you’ve got on.
Harvesting grapes, from a book created in the 14th century. These people have never heard of a pumpkin spice latte.
Q: What do autumn and a New York City fashion model have in common?
A: They real chilly.
Today feels like fall has arrived and also like my first day in one place in about a month; this is probably because fall has arrived and it is my first day in one place in about a month. My September saw Georgia, Iowa, South Carolina, and Florida; if you count the layovers, throw in Michigan and Tennessee, too.
My friend Bari said something the other day that made me laugh out loud. She said, “Your life seems kind of glamorous, Mar, jetting off here and there.” But glamour has something to do with someone carrying your luggage, I think, and cooking (or at least fetching) your food. As it happens, I am very much in charge of my own suitcase(es) and am the only person making myself almond meal cookies and broiled fish. But perception is everything and I love the idea that while I’m hauling my quilt-laden suitcase around the country, someone out there thinks I’m special enough to have “people” to do it for me.
Of course, the month contained disaster, too. “The Atlanta Incident,” as we might call it, didn’t just bring me low physically; it shook my confidence down, too. I don’t much like looking into the future and seeing it obscured by shadowy shapes of emergency rooms in faraway towns; I don’t like seeing blood in places it ought not to be (and I’ll let you figure that one out on your own.) Should I have cancelled September and come home? Should I have cancelled even my New York Adventure and gone home home, to Chicago, in the name of equilibrium? As my condo is presently rented, that would be difficult. No, stopping everything would be far more disruptive than just continuing; besides, my Midwestern work ethic is as stubborn as the cows so it’s no use to tell me to call in sick unless I’m half dead. Which is always possible.
I’m off to the Seattle area next week to lecture with Mom, then it’s back to Florida again. Yuri is peeved that I’m leaving again so soon, but I keep telling him that these trips are planned at least a year in advance, in most cases, and that there’s very little I can do. When I come back, I will commence the tests that my Chicago doctor recommended I have and Yuri will hold my hand through those. The only thing good about hospital tests is that I have to actually be in town for them.
Today it rained and the ground was soaked; In autumn, chill and sky are yoked And fall complaints of average kind: Ailing body, troubled mind.
You spend lots of time in air travel, you’re bound to amass air travel stories. I’ve promised this blog will never be about one thing, but I’d better watch it or it will become Paper(Airplane)Girl before our very eyes. Unfortunately, the plane-related tale tonight is hardly as lighthearted as yesterday’s baby-on-a-crime-spree.
Our flight from Midway landed safely at LaGuardia last night. A delay at the jetway meant that everyone had to sit tight for a few minutes. I’m sitting in my aisle seat and suddenly I hear a barking dog. Not a real dog; I was hearing the sound effect of a dog. The barking was coming from a cell phone — it was the phone’s ringer.
The phone was inside the pants pocket of stout businessman of about fifty. He was standing in the aisle, his belt buckle too close to my head. His hand brushed my shoulder as he stuck it into his pocket to get at the phone. It was 8:30pm and folks were quiet and tired and everyone was hearing this barking dog.
“The bitch is calling,” he said with a chortle and silenced the ringer.
It was clear as a bell, or a gunshot: His wife was calling.
He had set his ringer to sound a barking dog when his wife called him and he thought this was so clever that he’d toss it out to a plane-full of people for our amusement, too. Sure enough, several men around the man sniggered.
She could be awful. Yesterday might’ve been the worst day of his life. Maybe “bitch” is a term of endearment for those two. You don’t know what goes on between two people. But I was coming in to town with a lot of questions, confusions, hopes, and fears about what comes next in life and his “joke” seemed so needlessly mean. We’ve all been cruel, me included. It’s nothing to be proud of. You can try to curtail that stuff, improve. Anyone can try to do better.
Not ready to talk about the doctor just yet, so for now, a funny story.
A few weeks ago, I was at the airport (LaGuardia?), standing in line for coffee. In front of me was a woman holding a baby of about a year, I’d say. The kid wasn’t verbal yet, just very wiggly, very active. Nearby the woman was the rest of the family; they were from somewhere in the Mediterranean. Malta, maybe. There was Dad, Gramma and Grampa, two more small kids, and everyone needed something. The woman with the baby was trying to communicate to the staff behind the counter that she needed coffees and pastries, but things were not going well.
Dad called over to his wife from the center of the melee, apparently overhearing what she had said to the coffee gals. “No, honey, I need one more coffee — black, and no sugar in the other one,” he said, as the little boy tugged on his sleeve.
The wife turned her head over her shoulder and asked her husband, exasperated, “So that’s three coffees, then? Total? Or two?”
As they figured things out, I waited patiently and looked at the baby, who was reaching for the breakfast and candy bars piled in a nearby basket. She was attracted to the shiny, pretty colors and probably the sound of the wrapper when her tiny fingers made contact. She succeeded in grabbing a Special K bar. I was impressed. The mother turned back to tell the coffee girl what she needed, noticed the baby had grabbed a bar. She took it out of her hand, and put it back in the basket.
Once the coffee had been ordered (wrong again, I feared) there was an issue with a breakfast sandwich. The gal asked if the woman wanted egg and cheese or egg and bacon and cheese. The woman turned her head and called to her mother, this time in their native tongue. I’m pretty sure her question was something like, “Do you want egg and cheese or egg and bacon and cheese?”
And as she did this, she was looking away — and the baby grabbed a candy bar again.
The woman turned back to tell the clerk bacon and she saw that the baby had another candy bar. She took it out of her child’s hand and she said, “Stop it,” and replaced it again. It was pretty funny, this pattern, like a comedy routine. I was entertained enough to keep my annoyance at bay. This coffee was taking a long time.
Money finally changed hands and, naturally, wrong change was given. Dad got involved and the kids started fighting and everything was extra chaotic. When the woman and her husband had finished arguing with the staff about the change (not) given, the wife whirled around, annoyed, to walk away from the counter once and for all. And wouldn’t you know it, but that baby grabbed her Special K breakfast bar right at the last second — and the mother didn’t notice a thing. The baby just “swoop!” swiped that bar after all. I covered my mouth with my hand and turned my head to laugh. She did it! She got one!
In fact, I faced a moral dilemma. Should I have gone to the mother and tapped her on the shoulder to say, “Um, excuse me, but your baby just stole something.” That seemed a little much. Should I have told the clerks at the counter? Nah — I’m not into reporting babies. I decided to do nothing, figuring that maybe the mom would notice they had an extra treat, though it’s quite possible she never did; there was a lot going on for that family that morning.
While washing my hands in the bathroom of the Des Moines Airport, I overheard two girls of seventeen or eighteen having this conversation:
GIRL A: I’m 136 right now. Which isn’t too bad, I guess.
GIRL B: No…
GIRL A: But this summer —
GIRL B: What were you this summer?
GIRL A: 128? 127?
The anxiety was palpable. Both of the girls were pretty, even dressed as they were in sweatpants and UGG boots.
The weight conversation pained me for reasons that tangled up in my head as I lathered up at the sink. I felt first the Ms. Magazine stab, angry that young girls were wasting breath on an eight-pound fluctuation in weight while they’re clearly still forming. I felt a stab of nostalgia for an age I will never be again; seventeen was lousy in some ways (e.g., school, acne, etc.) but so great in others (e.g., inventing sex.) I’m ashamed to admit that there was a flicker of jealousy (or envy? I never know the difference) as I glanced at their tanned wrists and thick hair. I feel so poor today, so compromised — I had a pretty grim setback last night. Ah, but to be a young adult in good health is a beautiful thing — for a split second, I longed to change places with either of those kids.
The pair also reminded me of a promise I made to myself many years ago. At Mayo Clinic in 2008, in the darkest hour of that period, in a lucid moment — there were many moments I was not present for — I looked down at my infected ileostomy site, at the four different IR drains woven through my belly and rear, the IV, the PICC line, and all the bruises and my rapidly disappearing pounds of flesh and I said, “If I get through this, I will never hate on my body again. I promise. I will never complain that I feel fat, I will never say I look bad. I will love myself.”
I have not kept that promise. I still complain that my thighs aren’t toned enough. I worry about my hips. I try various Retinol treatments to improve the quality of my complexion, which is never satisfactory, ever. The desire to measure up to a beauty ideal has shown itself to be — at least in me — stronger than the memory of all that mortal devastation. And it’s about the saddest thing I can tell you.
It’s good to look your best. You’ve only got one life: Dress for it. And eat right because you’ll feel better if you do.
But girls, girls, girls. Ain’t nothing wrong with you.
I frequently google image search “kitten in a pocket” or “kitten in a sock.” And I can do that from anywhere.
1. Make Yuri dinner. Before I left for Atlanta, I made food for Yuri and packed it lovingly into labeled containers and stacked it all in the freezer. I’m sure he’s gone through it all by now and has moved onto Operation: Chipotle Every Day. (My darling!!)
2. Make Yuri breakfast.
When we first began living in sin, I wowed this man with my oatmeal-making skills. “Do you like oatmeal?” I asked him. He said that he didn’t, exactly, but that he knew how good it was for him, so he could choke it down. Not a ringing endorsement for oatmeal, but then, he had never had my oatmeal. When I served up piping hot organic oats with real cream, slivered almonds, dried blueberries and a scoop of soft brown sugar, well. Yuri likes oatmeal, now.
3. Make Yuri laugh.
4. Do an Aztec Mud Mask.
Yuri has this jar of weird “Aztec” clay powder that you mix with (smelly) vinegar and smear all over your face. It hardens in 15 minutes and when you wash it off, you have skin smooth as a baby’s for at least five minutes.
5. Get a glass of wine with my sister Nan at Bar Veloce.
Bar Veloce only serves wine and beer (and small sandwiches?? I can’t remember.) It’s kinda snobby but also kinda great, and you know all the wine is fresh. It better be, sister, at those prices!
6. See my NYC doctors and make sure they’re talking to my Chicago doctors.
7. Go to a live taping of an Intelligence Squared Debate!!
It’s not happening till November, but I am already wiggling. Google “Intelligence Squared Debates” and read all about it. Then look at the debate for November 13th. Andrew Solomon is of my favorite authors of all time and is possibly one of the smartest people alive and writing today — and he’s a freaking panelist that night. Live IQ2 and Andrew Solomon on the same night? The topic is less important than the event itself. Andrew Solomon could be debating whether quinoa is a seed or a grain and I’d be riveted. I will be in wannabe-intellectual, academiac heaven that night and I can’t wait.
10. Try to get my head around New York City. Because I haven’t, yet. Not really. Confession: Every plane trip I’ve taken since June, if I could avoid it, I’ve tried to not fly through Chicago. It’s too painful. I miss her terribly. I can’t bear to see Midway Airport because Midway Airport is so close to my home, my real home, in the South Loop. I ache for Chicago, I long for her shores. When I go back to New York, I must embrace New York again, go to the monolith differently; open up anew. There’s more than enough there for me, but if I don’t want it, I’ll be tossed nothing but scraps.
In NYC a few weeks back, I set about getting myself a Known Traveler Number.
A Known Traveler Number (KTN) is a number assigned to you if you have filled out a bunch of forms and passed identification tests set up by the National Security Administration. You have to be a felon-free citizen. You give your fingerprints. Your passport gets triple-checked and you pay eighty-five dollars and if you do all this and look okay to the gov’ment, you get your special number, which tells the NSA you’ve been pre-screened and can now keep your shoes on in airport security lines (a benefit worth far more than eighty-five dollars, in my view.) There’s a special “TSA PreCheck” lane reserved for people with KTNs and this is also desirable. For months and months I found myself in crummy, regular security lines, looking at the people whizzing through the TSA PreCheck lane, twisted up with envy and self-chastisement. Why, why had I not gotten on the TSA PreCheck train? When would I just march myself to one of the places where they do it and just do it??
I procrastinated because I feared a DOT-like experience — and I was in New York City! Images of day-long waits and bus station-like environs kept pushing the errand to the bottom of my list. As It turned out, the process was painless and quick and as of today, I have a Known Traveler Number! I feel that life can truly begin. Kids, get your shoes on! We’re goin’ to the Sizzler!
In celebration of this momentous occasion, a flashback post. Some PaperGirl readers will remember the story of Gracie, Hell on Flight #3282; I hope you can bear reliving her, Grandpa, and the rest of the family. For those of you newer to the blog, I think you’ll like this one. I suffered for your pleasure.
Click here to read about a special flight and the darling, enchanting…Gracie.
A still from television’s Little House on the Prairie. Kids these days!
Happy Labor Day.
The U.S. Department of Labor tells us that in 1887, there were five forward-thinking states that voted to observe a newfangled thing called “Labor Day.” Among those five states: New York. Perhaps that’s why everyone has been so crazy in the city this weekend; I’m sure everyone living here knows New York was an early adopter of Labor Day and the knowledge has made them drunk on power. And alcohol.
Before I get to the story about nearly stepping on two kids making out in my apartment building last night, a terrific quote from one Mr. Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners back in the early 1880s. McGuire was a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor and he is credited by many as being the first to suggest there oughtta be a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”
I think that’s pretty well-said, don’t you? “Who from rude nature” and “delved and carved” are downright snazzy, son. And he’s right, too: We do behold grandeur, all over the place, all the time. If you don’t see it, you should clean your glasses.
Now, about stepping on these kids.
Several of Yuri’s friends were in New York to attend the U.S. Open and we went out with them last night. It was very, very difficult for me to wrench myself away from my sewing machine (I’m working on entering a quilt in QuiltCon this year) but I delved and carved myself into a Roberto Cavalli dress that made me feel like a real kitten and I got into the mood. I checked my diet rulebook and, to my delight, found that tequila is allowed. I had two modest servings of Don Julio on the rocks last night and nothing horrifying occurred. Good news for my guts and my brain, which was starting to feel a little “all work, no play.”
We taxied to a place. We danced. We clinked glasses with friends. We moved to another place. There was revelry. But not surprisingly, I was ready to go home before Yuri was ready. There was no drama in this. We’re reasonable people and we have different thresholds and clocks and such.
“Honey, I think I’m gonna dip!” I shouted over the boots-cats-boots-cats music throbbing through the speakers somewhere deep in the Lower East Side.
“What?” Yuri turned his ear toward me. An extremely enthusiastic Puerto Rican girl who wasn’t an inch over five feet tall careened past us and slammed into a man I hoped was her boyfriend. Splash.
“I’m gonna take off! I’ve had fun! I’m good! You stay out!” Behind me, a hand rested lightly on my waist. I realized it was not Yuri and gave the man behind me a filthy look; he retreated.
Yuri gave me a look of “I don’t want you to leave” but, being a reasonable person who knows me by now, said, “Are you sure?” and when I nodded vigorously, hugged me tight and said, “Okay, baby. Let’s get you a cab.”
When I got home, I had a dickens of a time getting the front gate open. I was at it for 10 minutes and when I finally got in the door, I was elated. It was nearly two in the morning and I was in very high heels. I was so happy, I didn’t mind that I nearly stepped on two youngsters in flagrante on the floor. Right there, on the floor of the building, at the foot of the stairs, laying on top of each other and vigorously making out, was the son of my landlord and a cute little blond gal.
“Oh! Uh, sorry,” I said, and waited for them to sort of roll out of my way. I needed to go up the stairs.
“No, we’re sorry,” said the young man, and kind of smooshed his way over to the side. I can’t verify it, but I’m guessing they had been drinking. An iPhone fell out of the girl’s pocket and I barely missed stepping on that. I’m telling you, they were lying on the floor! The landlord’s kid! And some girl who looked like she just had her sweet sixteen! A Labor Day scandal!
“Watch your phone, there,” I said, and I couldn’t help but smile as I made my way up the stairs. I thought about those kids — they were maybe college freshman-age? younger? — and how different their lives are from mine. I mean, this apartment building is really pretty amazing and the young guy, his dad owns it. In New York City. It’s huge. It’s pre-war. It’s a stunning place, with art all over the walls and vaulted ceilings. No wonder the landlord’s kid can nab the cute blondes, you know? He’s got game. My make-out sessions in high school (which totaled about four, by the way) took place in cars or cornfields. Same planet — but you know what they say about the worlds.
Enjoy your four-day work week, you crazy New Yorkers. And me, and you. Let’s all enjoy the grandeur of the week however many bodies we have to step over as we labor.
The Sylvanian Families, shown here reenacting the Sgt. Pepper album cover.
I wish I had more cause to use the word “sylvan” on a regular basis. Sylvan means “of the forest” and it’s a well-formed adjective if you ask me, a real looker. I’m also fond of it because it’s the root word in the name Sylvanian, as in The Sylvanian Families, the line of woodland creature miniatures that experienced huge popularity in the US in the late 1980s. I was a child in the late 1980s and my sisters and I had a handful of Sylvanian Family characters. Did we love anything more than these toys? Maybe we loved our mother more.
Maybe.
The Sylvanian Family toys are achingly adorable. They defy the laws of cute. Somewhere, there toy designers responsible for these things are doing time for crimes against humanity. For one thing, Sylvanians are perfectly sized: around two to five inches tall, depending on the character. They all wear finely made clothes — pinafores, little overalls, kerchiefs. They’re plastic, but they’re soft. They have like, a soft little pelt of fur on them. They have little black eyes that are either glistening with love for you or sparkling with general jolliness, depending on the light in the play room.
Sylvanians are grouped first into species; in my day, that meant rabbits, squirrels, beaver, hedgehogs, bears, foxes, raccoons, deer, and mice. These days, the company who makes them** has more animals on offer, including freakingmeerkats. Within the species there are different families with the most wonderful names, e.g., The Timbertop Family (bears), The Dappledawn Family (rabbits), and The Thistlethorn Family (mice.) Within the families are the individuals (e.g., Brother Dexter Pepperwood, Sister Magdelena, Baby Aiden, etc.) and they all have their little character descriptions.
As it turns out, The Sylvanian Families toy line originated in Japan. When I read that, everything made sense. The Japanese do seem to have a lock on cute. The word “kawaii” means “cute” in that culture and even the word “kawaii” is cute. You can really take those double “ii’s” into a high register. It’s perfect for those moments when you see a figurine that is a tiny mouse baby with a diaper on and her own teensy baby bottle.
There t’wernt a lot of money in the ol’ Fons household back when we were kids playing with toys, but before the divorce came in and effectively closed the toy box, we scored a few rabbits and foxes and a couple mice, I think. My sister and I were reminiscing about the Sylvanian Families today and also about taking a trip together. We could use a little bonding time, a little one-on-one. We’re all grown up now and it takes planning to make plans.
We were thinking about locales when it came to me: “Wait a minute,” I said to my sister, clicking and clacking on my computer. “There’s a Sylvanian Families store in London.”
“Well,” said my sister, “Maybe we should go to London.”
We may just. If we do go, it will be in December and it won’t be a terribly long trip. London is expensive, I’m only able to eat hamburger patties for a year or so, and it’ll be chilly at the Thames that time of year. But I can sip tea with my sister. And we can talk about the blue shag rug at the farmhouse. And we can buy a few little mice while we’re in town.
**The story of the manufacture of these toys is long, long, long and complex and confusing. Many companies have owned the line and its knock-offs and licensed etcetera. Wikipedia is there for you if you seek the deets.
The Citbikes of New York. I’m like this chick! Only I’ve got heels on and she’s younger than me or uses excellent face cream. Photo: NY Transit Forums
A large man with a proportionately large afro shouted to me today that I was the most amazing thing he had seen in New York City.
Let me explain.
Some time ago, I spoke of my love of the Chicago Divvy bikeshare program in its infancy; the NYC version works just the same and upon arrival I became a key-carrying member. The bikeshare system has changed the way I relate to this city and I am most grateful for it.
In years past, I was a subway-taker, like everyone else in Manhattan who doesn’t have a driver. (This is most people, though in Manhattan, Those Who Are Chauffeured must be counted.) I had to admit to myself awhile back that even though the people-watching and the idea of the subway is cool to me, the actual subway makes me claustrophobic and neurotic. At least once per ride, I think of a skyscraper sighing down into the ground the moment I’m barreling underneath it and !squish! bye-bye Mary and everyone else who just wanted to go see a movie or whatever.
The other trouble with the subway in a city so intricate as New York is that I would descend into a hole and pop up out of another hole and miss the geography of the place. It’s hard for me to get the lay of the land that way; I need to knit together the streets, the blocks, the neighborhoods. As my main mode of transport is now the Citibike, this is solved. I am understanding this place in a way I never have before. And yes, I wear a helmet. You just have to wear one.
So back to Afro Man.
I like to wear heels. I’m the shortest in my family, so I took to wearing heels years ago and now it’s just a rule. I also like to be girly and fancy. I ride my bike in heels, too. Not all of my shoes are appropriate for this, but my knockin’ around town heels are. They even have little nubbly things for traction.
As I hopped onto a Citibike to go to the store for farmer’s cheese, I swung my leg up over the saddle of my horse-slash-bike, and my be-heeled feets began to push the pedals. I went about a half a block and slowed for a car to pass when the aforementioned large man with the aforementioned large afro called out to me from the sidewalk.
“High heels on a bike!” he whistled. “That’s the most amazing thing I’ve seen in New York City so far!” He laughed and shook his head.
I laughed, too. “You haven’t seen much yet,” I called after him, and rode away.
Of all the streets I’ve lived on in my life (are there ten? twelve?) St. Mark’s Place is the most colorful.
This is a street with a popular history. I’m sure 29th and 112th Street have their lore, and we all know about Broadway and Madison Ave., the hogs! But St. Mark’s hauls itself into the better-known of New York streets because of the now-famous punk scene that flourished here in the 70s. The American punk, an eye-catching animal, continues to slink around the neighborhood, reminding you of the history of the place. There has not been a real punk “scene” here for decades and decades, but some young punks (from Oregon, or Iowa, or maybe just Far Rockaway) come here just the same, still.
St. Mark’s Place is three blocks long. That’s it. The street starts (or ends, depending on which direction you’re walking) at 3rd Ave. and dead-ends at Thompkins Square Park, there at Avenue A. Manhattan streets are numbered going up after Houston St. in Lower Manhattan. If you’re walking north on, say, 3rd Ave., you cross Houston and hit 1st St., then 2nd St., and so on. If St. Mark’s were a number, it would be 8th St., followed by 9th, etc.
The street is named for nearby St. Mark’s Church In-The-Bowery (which makes me think of Stratford-Upon-Avon but is very far away from that place.) St. Mark’s Church is very old. The first incarnation of the church was a chapel built in 1660 by early New York City player Peter Stuyvesant and he is buried there, but we’re not here to talk about him. We’re here to talk about why there are so many kids with safety pins through their lips on my block. They would ask why I’m on their block, and I can appreciate that.
In 1967, Abbie Hoffman started the Youth International Party (they called themselves “yippies”) at a club on St. Mark’s and counterculture settled in (it has a tendency to do that quickly, much to the chagrin of all the counterculturists standing around.) The yippies and the hippies and their ilk needed places to hang out and party, so clubs like Electric Circus opened where Andy Warhol and Jimi Hendrix and The Velvet Underground all made art and did heroic amounts of drugs. But what to wear? A pair of shops called Trash & Vaudeville opened in the early 70s right in the middle of St. Mark’s. Debbie Harry shopped there and The Ramones, too, and the punk rock scene was really taking off because of bands like The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and Damned In London, who were all singing and screaming and making music which, at the time, was a person had to admit was really fresh and amazing and different, even if you hated it. Which most people did.
For true punk people, the music was only legit from like, 1976 to 1979. This is what I’ve learned in researching St. Mark’s. But boy, did it have an effect. The look of the musicians was hard, all spikes and leather and neon mohawks and pierced everything. It was a look that said, “Back off” and “I am pretty sure I don’t like you already.” Mean? Scary? Revolting? Maybe a little of all that, but a) they achieved what they wanted, perception-wise, so you gotta give the kids credit and b) I’m sure many of the punks (then and now) are roly-poly little bunny-shaped sweethearts when you get to know them. Isn’t that how it works?
There are so many punks hanging out on the street this summer. Several people have told me there are more than usual. Maybe because the weather hasn’t been too bad. Maybe because there are good punk bands playing here in NYC this summer and they’ve all made the pilgrimage. Many of them are painful to look at, with sores and things. I wonder if they do have a place to go and choose not to go there or if they are as homeless as their signs say. I could ask, but I’m not sure that would be appropriate. Sometimes I put change in the cups.
Perhaps I could tell them I went as a “punk rocker” like five times for Halloween when I was a kid. That could be a good conversation starter. Or not.
Woman on subway, NYC 1973. Photo: Erik Calonius, US National Archives.
My Big Apple bedazzlement continues.
In 2013, the Census Bureau reported 8,405,837 million people living in New York City. If nothing about that number has changed except that me and Yuri moved here, it’s now 8,405,839. If you count my sock monkey in the number, which you should, we can get to a nicer, roundish number of 8,405,840. I’m confident Yuri, Pendennis, and moi are not the only changes to the New York City population since last year, but this is why its funny.
All of these people. There’s one of everything.
I play a little game when I’m out and about. When I see someone totally one-of-a-kind, or outlandish, or remarkable in any way (and everyone is remarkable in some way) I note their characteristics and then try to imagine imagining them. Like:
“Could there be on this earth, at this moment, a person who is a nun, around fifty years old with pink socks, a guitar, and a suitcase with a Grateful Dead sticker on it? Could that person possibly exist in this wide, wide world?”
Then I answer myself that yes, there could plausibly be such a person because in that moment when I’m asking myself, that means I am looking at a person who matches that exact description. The nun was standing in front of Penn Station the other day, waiting for a bus, I assume. Then I play some more.
“Does a person exist who has a spiderweb tattooed on his face and wears corrective shoes?”
Yes, this person lives on my block. Yuri and I call him “Spiderman” and he is frightening to behold. He is acutely homeless.
“Could there be a 4’5 Asian-American girl with a panda backpack and a tattoo of a Pac Man ghost that covers her entire leg, who is screaming at her boyfriend that she wanted peanut butter froyo, not caramel froyo, dammit Reggie????”
Yes, that argument happened about an hour ago out on St. Mark’s Place.
“Is there a male model whose girlfriend is also a model, and are they both wearing large hats and are they both wearing all denim, and are they both Serbian?”
Yep, and yep. Just another piece of the crowd on any given day.
And consider what you’re wearing. Right now, look at your outfit. Someone in New York has that exact thing on, I’m telling you. I can’t say I’ve seen them in it because of course, I can’t see you in it. But someone has it on. They might even share your name.
There’s only one you, but New York gives that concept a run for its money.
Tulane cheerleaders, 2008. Image in the public domain.
The toughest thing about being in a new place is the lack of perspective.
I live in New York City and I have no perspective on this experience yet and won’t have it for some time, because that’s how perspective works.
I look back on my twelve-plus years in Chicago, I see eras. There were the First Years, the rough ones, with their questionable choices and misbehaviors (all with the best of intentions, of course.) Those years contained the Poetry Years, thank goodness, or I might not’ve survived at all. That era, with all its earnest youthful disregard gave way to a better time: the Affianced Years. That was pleasant. I had found someone I cared for deeply and was enough of an adult to pair up in a real way. My foolish choices were slashed down to (almost) nil. And I wasn’t a waitress anymore. Right before the Affianced Years began, I began to be able to make my living as a full-time writer-performer and I clung desperately to that fact. The proclamation was (and has remained) a cornerstone of my entire identity. It probably matters too much, but for me, I can’t do it any other way.
The Marriage Years immediately followed the Affianced ones (they’ll do that) and they overlapped entirely with the era known as When I Was Sick. (I was diagnosed less than a month after I walked down the aisle; surgery was a month later — to the day? — of my wedding.) But inside those years were the Best Theater Years I ever had, making art with the Neo-Futurists.
And then The Divorce. And then Downtown Me. And then I left.
Anyway, all this is to paint — mostly for myself, I have to admit — the picture of what happened back in Illinois. Broad strokes, yes, but it’s chronologically correct.
I’m in the First Years again.
And it’s great here, and I’m not the twenty-one-year-old girl (good grief!) that I was when I had my first round of First Years, but I know full well that I have a whole lot of perspective to make. I will get lost a dozen times. I will be mistaken about the character of this or that person. I will embarrass myself. I will not find my favorite shops for at least 6-12 months. There’s no way I can learn the shortcuts: I don’t even know the longcuts.
I’m not exactly bummed, but tonight, I know too much about not knowing anything at all.
This photo was filed in WikiCommons under “Sweaty” for the sweaty nose of the cow. Perfect!
I’m all up in my Bikram yoga now that I’m mostly settled, practicing with regularity at the small-but-mighty Bikram studio on the Lower East Side. What this means is that numerous times a week — every day if I have my way — I am packed like a sardine in a can of sardines, if sardines were naked and sweaty and practicing yoga on the Lower East Side. You know, sardines could aptly be described as both naked and sweaty; alas, being dead fish, they do not practice yoga, so my little simile must only go some of the distance for us.
When I say I’m naked and sweaty and Sardinian (?), I’m talking about my state post yoga class. During the yoga, we students wear clothes* in the hot room. (For the uninitiated: Bikram yoga is a 90-minute yoga series of 26 postures and two breathing exercises practiced in a room heated to 105-degrees. And yes, you pay for this on purpose.) After class, when the very will to live has been nearly wrung out of us and we drag our taut, glowy, and utterly eviscerated carcasses out of there, that’s when it gets real.
There is no space in Manhattan. None to spare. The women’s locker/shower/changing room in the yoga studio is maybe…500 feet square? It’s small. You’ve got a bank of lockers, two shower stalls, one bathroom, and a lot of sweaty, naked women attempting to change out of sopping wet yoga togs into normal street clothes, which is tough because a) there is nowhere to bend over to get your wet leg into your jeans and b) getting a wet leg into jeans in any room is like trying to give a sick cat ear infection medicine: extremely, extremely difficult and exasperating. You want someone else to do it for you really, really bad. But no one ever will. It’s your cat. It’s your leg.
I have bumped a bare bottom with my own bare bottom. Oh, it’s true! I’ve turned my head just as a gal was exiting the shower stall and whammo! the lass’s entire self, just hey-how-are-ya, right there in my letterbox. I’m pretty cool with bodies, so none of this exactly bothers me unless I think about the fact that we are all animals, because then I think about chicken coops and pig pens and cattle shoots and that’s bad. All those animals are naked, too, so I’ll be trying to pull denim up over a wet booty (mine) and suddenly I’m having the sixth existential crisis of the day — and I usually take the noon class!
The worst, though, is when there’s zydeco music playing.
The studio is great in the way they just hit “play” on some endless music mix in the sky/on the web and you never know what you’ll get. Sometimes, you’re headed into the hot room to the dulcet tones of jock rock; sometimes you get wailing house divas. Sometimes it’s all spa music in the changing room; other times you get hip-hop. I love the variety. But once, when the class that had just been tortured was changing to leave and the next class was arriving to go into the heat, when everyone was hopping around on one foot, boobies out, sweat flinging this way and that, effing zydecomusic came through the speakers and I thought I might die of shame. Surely, someone, somewhere (God?) was laughing hysterically at all this. It would be impossible to come up with a soundtrack less becoming to a roomful of naked, hopping women.
That day, I ran.
*”Clothes” is mostly right. You wears small slingshots of fabric to cover the bits and that goes for the men and the women alike. This state of underdress makes for excellent scenery or not-so-excellent scenery, depending on where you’re standing and what you’re into.
I love planes so much, I’d marry them. I’d marry planes and have plane babies. And those babieswould play with toy planes on planes. And they would be very well behaved, my children.
I like airports too, quite a lot. As a rule, I arrive at least two hours early to any flight I take just so that I can walk through the terminal a bit then find my gate and plop down to work. I get more done in airports than anywhere else. I’d wager there’s 15% increase in my overall productivity and a 10% spike in creativity. If I knew how to merge those numbers to yield some kind of work-probability number I could stick into a P&L, well, I wouldn’t be a content creator, I’d be doing something else and probably be flying first-class.*
People move through space in airports with a plan and a purpose and that is a comfort to me. I like the scale of airports, even the small ones. I like that I can buy stamps, newspapers, and hot coffee every fifteen feet; I like how airports are basically vast, continuous newsstands where planes drop down and scoop you up and deposit you someplace else.
It’s lucky I feel this kind of way, since I seem to be traveling by plane every other week right now. Maybe it’s because I fly so much that I’ve come to love planes and airports like I do; maybe it’s just the familiarity. After all, I have my rituals, like anyone else who travels all the time for work; everyone loves their rituals, travel or otherwise. (A few of mine: if I’m on a flight out of Midway before 10am I go see my friend Sam at Potbelly’s, who never charges me for extra cheese; I always bring my journal, a book, and and eyemask; I know where the secret bathroom is at LaGuardia; I visit the USO and donate money wherever there’s a USO and I have enough time. Stuff like that.)
I hear air travel used to be sort of glamorous, but I don’t know anything about that. I book my own flights. I schlep my own stuff. From time to (glorious) time there will be a car service waiting to pick me up and my name will be one of the names on signs when I come down the escalator, but that’s atypical. Usually, it’s a solo walk to a taxi line. Indeed, loving airports is loving them alone most of the time and in spite of the hiccups and the headaches that will forever occur.
But we can fly. And that’s the real reason I’ll always love being there.
Human beings can fly through the air. Airplanes, and the airports that facilitate their operation, are human ingenuity and effort, materialized. There were so many failures. It took so long. The Wright brothers were just one part of a really, really long process of creating viable air transportation — a process that has probably only begun, in the grand scheme of things. And to coordinate the hundreds of thousands of people who fly every day, to get their bodies and their belongings safely from one end of the earth to the other — it can’t possibly ever work. Of course it fails, sometimes, but more often, the system does not fail. And I love humans for that. I love what we make and that we know we need to make it better, now, so that air travel is gentler on the earth. (I don’t have a car, by the way, or a kid, or a TV, so I feel like I kind of offset my footprint in those ways.)
I love planes and airports so much, I would tattoo a plane on my body. Hypothetically.
*I am A-List on Southwest at this point! Glamour for days!!
Impossible, beautiful, dangerous to walk in — just like New York! Keith Haring shoe, Nicholas Kirkwood, 2012.
I had lunch with a born-and-raised, lifelong New Yorker yesterday. He asked me how I was getting along.
“You seem a little ambivalent in your blog,” he said. “I can’t tell if you’re warming to the city or not.”
We were eating sushi in a restaurant only a local would know about, one of the best sushi bars in Manhattan, as it turns out, tucked away deep in Soho. There might have been a sign on the heavy wooden door, but I didn’t see one when I pushed it open.
“Oh, I’m great! It’s great!” I chirped. “I love it here!” That’s the truth, too. In no way has my New York City life truly begun yet, but the hunk of molded clay has at least been dropped onto the wheel. It will begin to take shape, if you’ll tolerate me extending that lame clay metaphor.
But then my lunch date spooked me a little.
“But how are you doing really?” he asked, eyeing me as I put more edamame into my face. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe me when I said I was doing well, he just knew he was asking a serious question that deserved a thoughtful response.
“The pace of this place,” he said, “is not for everyone.”
Correct. I’ve known New York City to stomp, chomp, and otherwise flatten people. It does happen, absolutely, every day I’m sure, and even though there are plenty of folks who lament the glossification of New York, who say the city is a soulless shell of what it used to be, all Carrie Bradshaw and no Joe Strummer, those people probably didn’t grow up in rural Iowa like I did. Please. New York is still a killer whale. Have some imagination.
I chewed. I considered. Okay, how am I really doing? Because there are a thousand thoughts a day that pass through my brain and right now, directly related to moving here or not, all those thoughts are tagged “New York City.”
“There are moments when I feel overwhelmed,” I said, and a mini-monologue suddenly poured out, because one had been waiting, apparently.
“It’s like… So you’re on a street corner here, waiting for the light. And you look over and you see the most beautiful girl you have ever seen in your life. Right there, a supermodel, maybe the supermodel of the moment that you just saw on the cover of a magazine. And then the light changes and you’re crossing the street and you see the craziest person you have ever seen in your life. Like, in a wig, with a parakeet or something, screaming into a transistor radio. Then, an old Chinese man zips past on a bike and you smell his tobacco and it’s this wild smell, totally from another world. Then a black, mirrored car snakes through the street and you wonder, who’s in there? Jay-Z? A congressman? The Shah of Iran? Maybe all of them?
And in those moments, you realize the layers of existence here. It’s like shale. And all these people, they all have their own realities, they all have their own days, their own New York City. And the truth of that can feel like a comfort, because everyone is just like you, or you can lose your mind, because that’s too much input, too much to think about and still remember to blink.”
This answer seemed to satisfy my lunch date. That I could identify the complexity and consider it, that is maybe proof that I’m keeping my head above water. And maybe proof that I have a chance to thrive, too. We’ll see.
This was Anna Wintour’s first Vogue cover. It is credited with helping to launch the “high-low mix.”
It was only upon finding it again that I realized I had lost a sense of fun in regard to fashion.
I love clothes. Rather than expound on why fashion is not frivolous or how different clothes make me feel like completely different people (this can be great or a nightmare) I’ll give you three of my favorite quotes on the subject from people who say it all far better than I ever will:
“Fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life.”
— Bill Cunningham, New York Times fashion photographer since 1978, best known for his “street style” candid photos
“Why are people scandalized by spending money on clothes? I think there is something against fashion in the world. Everybody is so passionate about this, there’s a resistance to fashion, an idea that to love fashion is to be stupid. I think this is for two reasons. One is because clothes are very intimate. When you get dressed, you are making public your idea about yourself, and I think that embarrasses people. And two, I think that fashion is seen as women’s work. My conclusion is that because fashion touches your intimate life, it embarrasses people.”
— Miuccia Prada, from an interview in New York Magazine last year that I cut out and taped inside my closet.
“Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.”
— Jean Cocteau, 1936 and he probably wasn’t talking exactly about fashion but clearly.
In New York City, the very same sentiment that can make a person feel isolated and lonesome (“Nobody cares what I do!”) can also set her free (“Nobody cares what I do!”) That second take on it, when applied to fashion by a fashion lover, creates potential for extreme joy.
In my former downtown Chicago bachelorette life, I got pretty fancy. I knew just where to find fabulous, high-end designer clothes on the cheap. And find them I did. The tailored jacket, the well-turned high-heel, the lined, custom-fit trouser; I rocked that classy-sassy look because I wanted to, I could afford it, and I think in some small-but-probably-huge way, I needed to prove to the world that I was making good, that I had transcended my awkward, pasty Iowa self, that I was cultured and polished and that I gave a damn about art.
But in New York City, unless you live on the Upper East Side or in TriBeCa and have a record deal and/or a plastic surgery practice and/or a driver, etc., being fancy isn’t that big of a deal. It’s actually a bit outre, honestly. Here, and especially where I live in Lower Manhattan, it’s all about the high-low mix, or blending fancy pieces with vintage, super-cheap, or borrowed/begged/stolen items to create a kind of “yeah, whatever,” layered look that is exactly right. I mean, I can’t wear my Celine suit on the subway! Are you nuts?? I could sit in gum! Better to wear a pair of ripped jeans with just the Celine jacket! Ah, yes! And some bangles. And the real diamond earrings I have. And sneakers.
Discovering — remembering, perhaps — that I don’t have to search so hard for head-to-toe designer apparel has made fashion fun again. I’ve come back ’round to the truth that that a shirt from Target with pineapples on it (my new favorite shirt!) is totally acceptable and actually preferable to a discounted-but-still-pricey Alexander Wang tank top. I love pineapples! To eschew the pineapple shirt because Marni had nothing to do with it is madness.
New York, thanks. I’ll wear real Keds and fake pearls for you any day. Why, I’m wearing them now!
The view of my monitor on set today. Look closely and you’ll see a quilt reflected in the glass (and me taking the shot.) Outside of Denver.
Greetings from just outside of Denver, Colorado, the city that boasts 300 sunny days a year! It was raining when I arrived yesterday, but I’ll let go.
I was inside a production studio and very much on camera all day today, filming online courses for Craft University (I’ll share details soon; these will be cool) and I also filmed one of three lectures I’m doing for F+W Media, which will be available online when they’re all done in post-production. The how-to classes are awesome but I have to say: man, am I stoked about these lectures.
I’m calling the series the “While You Sew” lectures. You see, when I’m sewing at my machine, I like some audio/visual company — but I don’t want anything that requires me to pay close attention. I don’t want an actual plot. I tried watching Mad Men once when I was making patchwork. Two things happened: 1) I did not track what was happening on Mad Men; 2) I made lots of mistakes in my patchwork and therefore did not enjoy myself. Because you can’t actually do two things at once; this is what they tell us. Our brains switch back and forth and it’s lousy.
Instead of watching drama shows, I fire up YouTube and find interviews with interesting people (thanks, Charlie Rose!) or I find lectures (TEDTalks work) or I’ll really dig deep and find long CSPAN BookTV clips with intriguing authors. (Documentaries are good, too.) This kind of media is edifying and pleasant but I don’t have to watch as much as listen and if I miss something, I can go back and hear it again or simply not worry much about it because it’s not like someone really important to the storyline just got shot or maimed. I don’t want anyone to get shot whether or not I’m paying attention.
Well, being the quilt geek that I am, nothing would please me more than to sew while listening to interviews with quilters or find a series of lecture from quilt experts. There are a handful of good documentaries (I praise them in the lectures I’m taping) but they’re not online. Really, there’s very little in the way of quilter interviews, documentaries, lectures, talks — any of that. A sea of how-to, but no geek stuff.
What to do? Make some, I reckon.
And so I am. We are. It’s happening. The lectures are around 30-40 minutes each. The visuals are awesome. The lectures are funny, they’re packed with fascinating information about quiltmaking in America, they clip along. They’re casual, but boy, are they researched. Honestly, I have worked so hard on these things, it’s reminding me of writing the book.
As soon as I know when they’ll be available, you’ll know. I’ll be selling them through my site, here, sort of: you can click a link and be taken to the site where you watch/download them. A lot of the projects I’ve been working on are set up so that if you “click-through” my site to get to the purchase page, I make some money on that. It’s a bit gross to talk about it but I’ve decided I have to mention it because I am trying to earn a living for goodness’ sake. Again, more info coming later and I so hope this sounds like fun to you. It’s nearly killed me, getting them done during the move in order to be ready to record this week, but here on my hotel bed tonight, I am feeling slightly more like a human being and less like a law student the night before the bar.
I’m in St. Louis, attending a hosted event for a group of about 40 bloggers, designers, “sewlebrities,” industry folk, etc. to network, make stuff, and eat lots of snacks. In other words: I am surrounded by talented, hardworking, creative women, all of whom need snacks to keep going. It’s not a bad way to spend two-ish days, even with all that’s going on with work and (cough, cough) moving to Manhattan.
Did I really do that? Did I really move to Manhattan?
Okay!
The event is being hosted by BabyLock, a sewing machine company owned by the attractive, beneficent Tacony family. I like BabyLock a lot because they make really, really great sewing machines, but I also like them because they believed in me. Back in 2010, I had an idea for a show called Quilty and they were the first company to sign up to underwrite. You always remember your first sponsor. (They all real pretty n’ nice, too.)
There are activities and learning stations and all kinds of cool things going on here, but tonight the organizers outdid themselves: 15 minute massages. The two people they hired to come in and administer these complimentary massages were, I have deduced, actually Sent By An Angel Of The Lord. Who knew the best back-and-shoulder massage a gal can get is in a suburb of St. Louis in the back room of a sewing education center? This is why you travel.
My turn came. I heaved my aching body into the room and slumped, weary, weary, into the chair. Once I got my face comfortably smashed into the puffy donut, Dawn began to work me over.
“Oooo, waaaaow,” Dawn said, somewhere down at my lower back. “You are…waaaaaow, you are reeeeeally tight.” I got the impression Dawn doesn’t speak in elongated syllables as a rule, but that the state of my back was just that horrifying.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, muffled. “It’s been a rough couple of weeks.” But I didn’t go into the six work projects due Monday, the move to New York City, or that I’m putting at least two or three Southwest Airlines employees’ kids through college at this point. Because I don’t like to talk during these things. You can’t waste a second.
“Hooo-hoo! Hooo-weeeeee,” Dawn said, and whistled low. “Yap, yap. Yeeeah. That’s tight.” And then she said, “Ya poor thing,” and clucked her tongue.
At that I could’ve cried, partly because she had her thumb jammed into my shoulder blade and partly because whenever someone sincerely says, “poor thing,” I get sad. We’re all poor things, aren’t we. It’s hard work being alive.
The fifteen minutes galloped away and zap! Massage over, next person’s turn.
I have, at various times in my life and for various lengths of time, seen a psychiatrist. Results varied: I’ve been aided, I’ve been nonplussed, I’ve ended up more confused — and I’ve been poorer as a result, for sure. I hate to sound provincial, but I’m starting to think a regular massage is gonna do more for a person than a shrink — this person, anyway. Look: I have never, ever left a massage feeling worse than when I went in; it’s a hey of a lot cheaper, and when Dawn goes, “Hooo-hoo! That’s not good,” you know it’s fixable, whereas a shrink won’t even say that, even if he’s thinking it, and how’s he gonna fix it, anyway?
I’m doing a little meet n’ greet n’ shop talk talk at The Yarn Company, that lovely haven of color and fiber where I was able to sew this spring. From 4-5, I’ll be showing some quilts, talking patchwork, and generally hanging out to meet whomever feels like dropping by. Let’s do it!
I need a break from unpacking, so I will be in an EXCELLENT mood.
The Yarn Company is located at 2274 N. Broadway, upstairs. (That’s the corner of 82nd and Broadway.) Look for the totes adorbs sheep mascot, Keffi, on the sign above the door.
“You know New York, you need New York, you know you need unique New York.” (Tongue twister from a high school drama camp. )
I’m composing this on my phone. A first.
I’m writing this way because I made it, I’m in the new pad in New York (!!!) but I can’t get the Internet working. I can’t possibly go find a coffee shop to sit in, though: I’m too happy to be here, too blissed out to be half-horizontal on this couch in this glorious space.
I hadn’t seen the apartment Yuri picked out; only pictures…and it’s more wonderful here than I ever imagined.
It’s more spacious and fabulous than I dared hope for and there’s art all over the stairwell walls and secure mailboxes in the foyer and an umbrella stand in the hall and it’s quiet quiet up hereon thethird floor even though all of New York is right outside. When I walked in, I started smiling and haven’t stopped. It’s been the hours.
Yuri comes on Tuesday; he stayed behind to finish up in Chisago. We have one night here together, then I’m off to St. Louis. But soon, and for a good long while, this be the place; this is where love will grow and work will get done and cookys will be made.
If I weren’t tapping out these words on a touch screen with a stylus (excruciating, really) I’d say more about measuring my life, how I choked back a sob in the taxi to the airport today (we were on Lakeshore Drive and Chicago was impossibly beautiful and I was leaving it, leaving it), how being alone my first night here is actually just right; I might say something about how the spring night air is so sweet, coming in the window right now, it could kill me.
You still need to pack the Sharpie, though. And the tape. See what I mean?
Because I’m renting my condo furnished this summer, I falsely assumed the task of moving would be less arduous and there would be no need to hire professional movers. I was wrong, and thus have spent the last two days in hell.
Fundamental truth: I am ruthless when it comes to disposing of excess stuff. I claim no bric-a-brac. I keep no old shoe. Being a purger (??) is made easier because I live and die by the words of Arts and Crafts giant William Morris, who proclaimed in 1880:
“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
Yes, Willy, Yes!
I am the anti-hoarder. I keep nothing, buy nothing that is not useful/beautiful. If I need a can opener, for example, but can only find lame ones made of plastic, I will wait until I can find a basic metal one and go without canned things. A plastic can opener might be useful but it is not beautiful, so it’s out. A classic, metal can opener is timeless! an objet d’art! I’m 100% serious and I’d like to think my home is harmonious as a result.**
But for heaven’s sake, I’m a person with a home that doubles as an office and a sewing studio. I have so many objects. Harmonious or discordant, this move is gargantuan. Do it all myself? Or even just with Yuri? What planet was I living on? (No! Don’t answer that!)
The Russian and I got boxes, a storage unit, a cargo van. Horrible, all of it. Soul-crushing. I’ve been doing my Midwest-work-ethic best, packing, eliminating, Goodwill-ing, all while still answering emails and attending to work-related tasks! I also remembered to brush my teeth! What race am I running, here?? (No! Shush!!)
As one might imagine, my productivity and emotional fitness ebbed and flowed throughout yesterday and today. This morning, I was actually in a fetal position for a spell, curled up near my desk in a sea of paper, wailing at Yuri, who was in the other room:
“Help me! HELP! ME! I’m doing the work of ten men! TEN MEN, DO YOU HEAR ME! I hate you! I can’t do this! I HATE YOU AND I NEED HELP!”
One of the reasons I love Yuri is because in situations like these he does two things:
1) he lightens the mood by coming into the room with a grin, saying something like, “Aw, who’s on the struggle bus? Who’s lookin’ so fine, ridin’ that struggle bus?” and of course this makes me bust out laughing, still on the floor
2) he helps
But the hard part about moving is never the logistics.
The logistics suck all right. But the core of it, the real trouble in River City is that you’re kicking up deadly serious dust. The longer you live in a place, the deeper and more emotional that dust becomes; if you have a strong emotional connection to a place (like I have to this place) it’s a double whammy. In the past 48 hours, I’ve hit upon a lot of life — more than I really cared to hit right now, honestly. Books, pictures, fabric, dresses, quilts — what we own owns us. And when we move we’re at the mercy of it all, we’re possessed by those possessions, even when we think we don’t hang onto much.
We do.
I do.
I hang onto absolutely everything. I just store it differently.
I store it here.
**All this editing may be due in part to my peripatetic lifestyle. If I’m not harmonious, I’m sunk. I heard once that “every item or object in your home is a thought in your head,” which is to say that belongings take up valuable real estate in one’s brain. A cleaner home equals a clearer head; I need every advantage I can get.
My new street, St. Mark’s Place. East Village, NYC.
Have I said, explicitly, what’s happening? Does anyone know what’s going on? Am I just dashing off posts with no regard for my readers, kind, hard-working people who can’t possibly follow where I am in the world at any given time, why I’m there, or when it all might shore up? Would it be wise to debrief you and, in debriefing, might I find much needed answers for myself?
Is it ever good to lead off with a list of questions like that?
No?
I am moving to New York City.
I own a home in Chicago that is dear to me. Thus, I do not see this move to New York City as being permanent or even long-term, if you’re using my entire (hopefully long) life as the measure. But as you can’t be a little bit pregnant, you can’t slightly have three people that are not you move into your home or kinda move operations halfway across America into an apartment on St. Mark’s that you’re a little bit renting. As I write this, in view are boxes of belongings that will go into storage, go to Goodwill, or come with me to New York. There is no halfway, here, no semi-move, even if I see New York as a kind of interstitial thing. I am faced with a choice and I have chosen to relocate, at least for the next year. And why?
“Why not?” is an acceptable answer, as ever, but there’s more. Look:
1) Why not?
2) Yuri and I fell in love. Four months later, he got his dream job and moved to New York. Not being together is not an option. I’m mobile, he’s not. Look at it this way.
3) The safe choice (try long-distance, stay here, risk nothing) is rarely the most interesting one.
4) New York City, though it’s cool to hate it these days, is still New York $&@#! City and I wanna see.
Yuri came to Chicago day before yesterday to help me and he is helping, though he can’t pack up my fabric stash, exactly. Mostly, it’s moral support I’m getting — moral support and bear hugs so good I’m moving to $&@#! New York City.
We were at the big table yesterday, drinking miso soup from styrofoam cups, eating takeout sushi. There is no time to cook, no sense in making more work with pans or bowls or spoons. There’s so much to do here and so little time before work deadlines crush us both. It’s all happening at the same time. It always does.
“It is insane,” I said. “People will think I’m insane. I can hear it. ‘But she just lived through a renovation! She just did her kitchen and bathroom! That’s crazy!'”
Yuri opened his eyes wide. “Do you really think people will think that?”
I shrugged. “Probably some people will. But I’m not going to say no to love because I like my backsplash.”
And then my eyes opened wider because what had popped out of my mouth was the truth, and the truth gave me the ability to keep packing.
