The semester is slated to start on Tuesday and for once, I find myself unexcited. The thought of new books, new professors and the accompanying ideas encompassed by both, is somewhat uninspiring, a point that is quite unusual. I’ve been cuddled into New York for the past few weeks, going out, staying in, and partaking of happy hour…it’s been great and I don’t want it to change.

My friends are gearing up to graduate in May and I am worlds away, knowing I have at least another summer session to go in order to make up those credits I lost upon transferring into Gallatin. Perhaps such is why I’ve blissfully banished all thought of the post graduate career hunt.

I’m starting to get curious though, wondering what I’ll do when I’m done at NYU, wondering who will hire me and whether I can weather Manhattan’s job market. Part of me wants to give it a try and part of me wants to hunker down for another four weeks of hibernation. Maybe I’m so adverse to yet another semester of study because it’ll bring me that much closer to an entry into “the real world” or maybe I’m burnt out on theory and ready for practice.

Ever since our respective birthdays, my best friend and I have been relishing our “old age”
With every high school posse I pass or each fake id carting college kid, I feel myself somehow superior, in years at least. But lately, given the proximity of the colloquium, the diploma, the dates, the dog and their culmination in a continuing march towards maturity, I somehow feel myself more infantile than adult. It seems to me this insecurity shines through, although no one seems to notice…perhaps the truth of it is we all feel rather childish underneath it all. Perhaps that’s more a natural state than hyper maturity anyhow.

I won't grow up,
I don't want to wear a tie.
And a serious expression
In the middle of July.
And if it means I must prepare
To shoulder burdens with a worried air,

I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up
Not me,
Not I
~Peter Pan

Doubt
Fear
Fear of doubt

Trust
Lack of trust
Fear of lack of trust

Men
Sex
Wanting ache
Fear of ache makes for fear of men
Fear of men makes for fear of sex
Fear of sex makes for fear of self

Afloat on a sea of unknowing
Bobbing as a buoy in unsure waters
Expectation like an urchin
Suctioned to my mind

Unacknowledged
Undesired

Persistent barnacle on the back of my brain
Secreting doubt with each ring of his phone call
Each raise of his eyebrow
Each word from my mouth.

These perceptions of perfection,
Pieced together by memory,
Tied up with heart strings and laced by movie scenes-
Like loops of smoothly cut splices,
Knotted together to know what fits without seams-
They way ice cream is spooned in the smooth curve of a stainless steel scoop,
And just as a woman’s hand holds the face of a man, cupped perfectly in her palm,
Mirroring the fit each person finds,
In the bones of another’s face.

The one train has been crawling lately, dripping along its tracks and moving in slow motion from 50^th to 42^nd street as olive oil slides down the face of a wooden spoon. Where usually, train delays incite outrage and exasperated snorts from manhattans myriad of MTA patrons, through this particular passageway, there is little complaint. Along this line, there is an air of awestruck admiration seemingly inspired by the illuminated passageway that takes the train to times square after making its fiftieth street stop.

Once we’ve all stood clear of the closing doors, after the quiet has settled in the car and the train has lurched forward, the usual passage into darkness is unsettled by a series of white bubble-like lights that hang from the scaffolding to help construction workers repair the express train tracks. The effect is less perfunctory than magical however, and it transforms a habitual trip downtown into a near adventure. Perhaps that’s a bit of an extreme assertion but given a personal affinity for white lights and an adoration of all things New York, the combination of the two is enough to make me pause in admiration of the city that never fails to inspire a smile alongside a little bit of fairy tale tinted wonder.

What does cold feel like?

I thought about that a bit today, sitting in the 86^th street station, waiting for the one train and freezing my little tush off. Creating a definition provided a few minutes distraction from the prickling numbness in my fingers and toes and I settled upon the establishment of the feeling of cold as frustration. Yes, it's the annoyance that goes alongside the ability of an exterior force to touch below your skin and penetrate places that you yourself cannot. That’s what cold is to me anyways, a ripping through my external cells that I oftentimes find quite angering and inspiring of angry yells at oncoming winds, or a propensity to burrow beneath the many layers of scarves and shawls that I am prone to piling atop myself when winter weather strikes, showing only my eyeballs in an attempt to preserve the bare skin beneath from the forced caresses of oncoming wind

Addendum:
I am a firm believer in the power of intention and also believe that I wrote the below post in a spirit of authenticity and positive intent. As such, the next morning, I found myself the recipient of what is oftentimes referred to as the law of attraction, the reverberation of my positive energy out into the world and back to myself, a point evidenced by the two party invitations I received for New Years Eve as well as the Sunday night dinner date I was asked to by a charming person…and all that within a day of having wrote the below post, discussing loneliness and single life. And now, off I trot to put on a pretty dress, tie up my hair and strap on my favorite pair of high heels. Happy New Year.

I’m about to get really real here so brace yourselves.
I’m lonely. Maybe it’s just tonight that I am feeling so isolated, nevertheless it feels deeper seated and longer lived. I don’t know why, but I’ve often found feelings of loneliness particularly difficult to own, like they are some sort of failure. I pride myself on my independence and self sufficiency; I go to movies alone, I live alone, I walk into parties alone…and I’m ok with all that. But I won’t deny that it’s oftentimes difficult. New Years is fast approaching and I find myself, yet again, dateless and without dependable plans.
I know it’s not so simple, but I just want to pose this singular, self pitying question to the void – what is WRONG with me that I am dateless on New Years, and coming up on yet another Valentines Day spent on my own watching rom coms and eating popcorn?
Alright, I know it’s not so uncomplicated a situation…but it feels that way in my weaker moments. “It’s not you”, say my girlfriends, “it’s the plethora of retarded and indecisive guys out there”….or the fact that Manhattan houses an unlimited quantity of beautiful women and homosexual men, but few single, attractive and somewhat kind heterosexual men. Most of the time I believe this, but in this lonely late night moment, I feel like I’m the un-desirable actor here.

I’m not one for labels, or rushed commitments, but I do like to sleep beside another warm person’s body, or feel the pressing and reassuring weight of strong arms around my small shoulders. It saddens me how constantly I’ve ached for those things in my life and how simultaneously seldom I have been able to depend upon them with any consistency.

This all sounds rather “woe is me,” and it is to a certain extent, but pointed at the fact that, despite my adamant assertions of indifference towards the opposite sex, I care. And despite my course of study, so steeped in critical gender theory, I feel like a little piece of myself goes missing when I don’t have a date to get excited for or an interesting guy to sit next to in class. I resent the idea that a woman is completed by a man, and yet I subscribe to it on some unconscious level, I must or I wouldn’t be writing this.

Christmas in Connecticut~

I left my New York last night, finally finished with finals and free to trot off to the country for a double hitter holiday, first with my dad in New Hampshire and then in CT with mom. I’m sitting on the sofa now, twenty to twelve on a Tuesday night with nowhere to go and no homework to do, and trying to de-activate the critically conditioned lens that my course load last semester demanded of me. Normally such is easy, as this sofa is a judgment free zone, a place where I am wholly myself, at liberty to sit around in sweats and stuff my face. But not so much tonight as with the onset of Christmas comes the arrival of family...which is fine but also feels a little like a real life reflection of a semester full of the judgment I've read, responded to and yes, even made myself. Where the opinions and critiques I encounter in an educational environment are limited to the page, or contained by the classroom, the perceptions, comments or raised eyebrows of certain Christmastime company are less easily controlled.

It feels to me like the more criticism I am around, the more I apply to myself and that makes me uncomfortable. Last night, before I jetted out, I met my best friend for a quick cocktail at Coffee Shop. We laughed and swapped stories about final exams and the men who distracted our attention from them. The personal quality of our conversation was effortless and based on an unspoken trust that is rooted in freedom; the freedom to be oneself, to have independent thoughts, and to do things knowing that the other person will support you, regardless of whether they would do the same themselves. Not so at Christmas in Clinton CT where, “now why did you do it that way?” is a question commonly posed in accordance with a seemingly curious facial expression that belies the certitude of the inevitable explanation as to why whatever you are doing is being executed inefficiently, and is therefore proof positive of your utter incompetence.

If that last sentence sounded like a lot, it was meant as a mirror to the overwhelming nature that constant critique of one's actions, be they spoken or just implied, can incite in an otherwise relaxed person such as myself. Makes me miss New York, where everyone is their own little island, affixed to an Ipod and intent upon minding their own business.

I just saw the movie, “Waitress” and loved it. If you haven’t yet seen the film, watch it. The main character is, not surprisingly, a waitress. She has, however, a special talent for making spectacularly unique pie, creative expressions of her inner angst, joy or any combination of the two. Our waitress, Jenna, is married to a complete doorstop of a man who is narcissistic, jealous, and whose face resembles a giant potato. Jenna is therefore despondent when she discovers herself pregnant. Luckily, she meets and falls for her adorable pediatrician who is as earnest and sweet as her husband is a boob. He adores her and they begin a springtime affair.

At one point in the film, writing a letter to her child to be in reference to a particularly tender moment with her lover/doctor, Jenna writes,
“Dear Baby, I hope someday somebody wants to hold you for 20 minutes straight and that's all they do. They don't pull away. They don't look at your face. They don't try to kiss you. All they do is wrap you up in their arms without an ounce of selfishness in it.”
As she said that, I began to sob, slowly at first and then dramatically, so much so that I grabbed my notebook and wrote the following:

My heart is thawing now,
And it hurts like a dry sob.

Where before it had settled into a dull ache, frozen over and forgotten,
It’s crying now, deep tears I can’t stop.

I’m scared of this impossible heartache,
I’d rather the chill of indifference, I have so recently felt so close.

I’m afraid I’ll never fall in love,
That no one will love me, even if I do.
I’m afraid that no one will hold me,
That I won't feel peaceful in their arms, even if they do.

I'm afraid that my heart will be stuck forever in this fear,
half cooked and always in want of a warm skillet.

It’s cheesy but it’s true. I had a date last night, my second one with the same person. The entire process exhausts me, beginning with an anxious battle between my rational mind and emotive fears, all leading up to my walking out the door. It gets easier in the moment, when I'm actually sitting with the person. But I can't keep from looking for the spark? Did I feel it? Or was that just the rum and coke?
And when did this ever get so hard?
Somewhere between love, disappointment, and the illusion of both.

Baby don't you cry,
gonna make a pie,
gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle.
Baby don't be blue,
gonna make for you,
gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle.

Gonna make a pie from heaven above,
gonna be filled with strawberry love.
Baby don't you cry,
gonna make a pie,
and hold you forever in the middle of my heart.

Written on a pillar in an NYU classroom at 194 Mercer street:

1. PKE...are weenies
2. Ruben St. Awesome was here
3. Listen to Neil Young....he knows
4. Where can I go to get away from these ghosts inside my head?

All seemingly written at different times and by disparate pens...all having stuck out in my mind, bugging me until I wrote them, list like in my journal, and acknowledged them as a funny and oddly poignant combination.

The Cheese Stands Alone.

I’m sitting in Bobst, around 6pm on a rainy Monday afternoon, reading about Keith Harring and waiting for a friend. I’ve lucked out, landing myself a spot in one of those big blueish grey armchairs with a bonus round end table for a footrest.

I’ve barely noticed the girl sitting next to me, not until her seat is approached from behind and a big pair of hands clamps down upon her shoulders. It’s her boyfriend.

He asks how she is, about her exam and whether she’d been napping or reading before he arrived. In a moment, and quite surprisingly, I felt myself a little drained, deflated by their affection and my solitary spot beside it. Most times I think I am not the girlfriend type, particularly because, thus far, those who wanted to match me were not the men I hoped would try.

So maybe the right fit just hasn’t come along yet, or maybe he never will. Maybe it’s all just as much of an illusion as I’ve worked to convince myself it is. I’ve never played pessimistic for long in my life, but I’m feeling it now. Or just hopeless maybe.

My old flames have now all settled comfortably into facebook photographs of them with their significant other, while I, the cheese, still stand alone, with a foot on each side of the great optimism/pessimism divide.

This weather reminds my heart of so much. Like getting off the bus in Walpole at four o clock on a November afternoon, rushing into barn chores until 6:30 before getting gas for the black Volvo at the Texaco in Bellows Falls and picking up Chinese take out from Joy Wah on the hilltop. Heading home, smelling like horse, Dad in the drivers seat and darkness closing in over the valley. Rolling uphill, a long ascent to the big house on valley road, zipping fast around the road’s curves, the smell of Chinese food wafting from behind the passenger seat.

I wish I could remember arriving home but my memory stops on March Hill road, right at the dip in the asphalt where we speed up and for a moment, my breath catches in what dad calls a “thank you m’am”
After that, the screen goes blank, and like a poorly spliced reel of film, my memory skips ahead, passing over years, denying me the scenes of my mother in the kitchen, unpacking a paper bag of Chinese food as I know she must have done.

A Memory Found Amongst Red Leafs....

Tonight, chopping up a carrot, I found myself momentarily transported to my New Hampshire home circa 2003, when I would sit at the kitchen counter, working on my algebra homework and listening to my dad make one of his signature salads, a series of concentric clonks as his knife cut through veg and hit upon the wooden cutting board. He does this all the time, carelessly brandishing large bunches of carrots, red onion and celery, chucking them into a huge black bowl that will sit in the fridge full of red leaves and veggies and covered in saran wrap. We’re big on greens in my family and when I lived at home, every few days my dad would make a salad, sliding chunks of carrot my way while I home-worked, popping a few in his mouth, while he talked, chewed, worked on a beer and listened to XM radio.
Making my own salad tonight, I went to cut up some cheese to go on top and saw my daddy, lopping of lumps from a big chunk of cheddar effortlessly. I remember once, trying to do the same with similar ease and struggling against the resistance offered by the door stop sized wedge. Dad knowingly tilted his head and watched my progress from over his drug store brand reading glasses. “Cutting cheese is a delicate task” he said.

Here on the upper west side autumn has arrived in full force.
Night rolls in by seven, couching my evening time walk to the park in navy blue and lamplight, illuminating only the silhouettes of the people I pass by. It is cold and crisp and the neighborhood itself seems to have grown into a warm and amber orange, perhaps in place of the leaves that it lacks. I’ve never felt fall so deeply in the city, perhaps because there’s never been the space to. But there’s kids up here, and with them comes a mentality that refuses to take itself too seriously. As a result, I’ve slowed down considerably and feel like I am living my life in the moment, rather than in anticipation of it.

My body is taking a deep breath and re-booting, the change is in my skin, my blood cells, and my ability to find peaceful sleep. The change is also one of space and how my body occupies it, a transition that is accented each time I go downtown for class and am tossed about and rattled by flocks of people, all on an individual mission. I used to walk Calvin on 10th street and find myself plastered up against a building, pushed aside by a throng of speed walking hipsters, their skintight jeans pushing all the blood to their loins, and giving them a slouchy and determined walk in the direction of alphabet city.

Up here it’s kids who fills the streets. But they are wide streets, with room for Calvin to walk way out on the end of his 16 foot long leash, for me to run alongside him, and for the kiddos to pass us by, or stop us to ask for Calvin’s name. These youthful west siders are out each night in droves, skipping down the street or perched atop their parents shoulders, flocking to one of the many candy stores that litter Columbus Avenue, nestled in between chic little bistros strung with the white twinkle lights I so adore.
Somehow the kids really bring to attention, not only the availability of space and the change it has affected in me, but also the change in the seasons. Fall excites them with its newness and the promise of an onslaught of holidays to come: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas…all of which translate to candy, stuffing and presents respectively.

Despite a bit of baggage that keeps me from joyously bounding towards the holiday season in full out childish abandon, in my heart, I too associate the entry of autumn with the excitement of Halloween and the like. It has shifted a bit though, and this year, I find myself perfectly content just to watch the kids tear towards home on a chilly evening, brandishing a newly purchased light saber and laden with plastic bags full of the makings of Luke Skywalker’s garb.

This essay is rambling, but full of the feelings of warmth and belonging that the upper west side has settled into my soul. I passed this place tonight, Alice’s Tea Cup…if I were tea spot, this is what I would look like. A purple painted nook on the corner of Columbus and 73rd street, glittering with warm and welcoming juju and bedecked in little white Christmas lights.

Tomorrow I will go have a cup of tea there. And I will walk Calvin the three blocks over to central park where we’ll take the path we’ve made routine, crossing the wooden covered bridge and passing through a small crop of wood that opens up onto the horseback riding trail. From there we’ll head over to the turtle pond, where older women set on the grass and read novels and couples make out on the dusty rock that juts into the water and offers a fabulous view of the Manhattan skyline. I’ll stop many times along the way to let passing kiddos pet my dog. I’ll breath in the moment, and think it sharp and obscure all at once, like it was as a child, in a world where the only anticipation was directed towards the turn of the season and the next celebration.

(FYI- the images above are photographs of a series of collages created by my mom, artist Mary Fussell)

Where’s the inspiration?
I am wondering this, looking for this, and doing so actively from a passive place on my couch.
My creativity is often spurred into life by another artist’s work, but nothing I’ve seen of late has really lit my fire. Well, maybe Julie Taymor’s film, Across the Universe. Although it was certainly not core shaking, the music brought to the forefront of my mind a musical influence I’d deeply loved in my younger years and hold close to my heart in the present.
Or maybe Joni’s new album, which I got my hands on earlier today. It’s subtle, like the lady herself, and needs space and time to sink in.

Time and patience are pivotal to inspiration, but I’m trying to push myself into it. I feel like I am wasting time, that my nights should be filled with hours of painting or poetry instead of trying to read Freud and ending up making booklists on amazon.com instead.

My mom has found inspiration in nature, using it to piece together a series of collages that are understated, organic, and altogether beautiful (see above) She gets in the flow with them and the art just pours out of her. I write a sentence of my story a night, before leaving it to tomorrow and turning on E! news. It’s awful to own up to, perhaps it's my hope that by doing so, I'll help things to shift.

I’m not sure if I know how to write anymore. Somewhere deep in my body is buried a trove of words that the past five months have rendered inexpressible. I’ve been in survival mode, and as I begin my re entry into the world of personal time and space, I find myself a shell shocked shell of the self confident self I left behind at the end of spring semester. I’m afraid to write honestly about what happened and I’m not sure I even know how to…or if I even want to. In fact, all I seem to want to do is to sit at the end of a long boardwalk, where it meets a set of steep stairs that lead down to cold water. Just set out like a lump and staring, maybe with a cup of coffee in hand, for however long it takes to reel in the magnitude of what has come and gone and how it’s left me changed.

Everything happens for a reason- I believe that, but I wonder if everything happens to make us better, wiser, stronger than we were before. My optimistic side says unequivocally yes but then why do I feel less peaceful than ever before. I feel disconnected from myself, like the stormy gray sea that my body is watching from the top of a boardwalk set staircase. And I’m frightened. Everything has gone so far the opposite from what I pictured. If I pictured it at all, which at this point, I cannot recall. How do I trust myself again. Forget about trusting other people, forget about men. But me, myself, how do I trust? How does one trust a stormy sea? The water is all around, encircling, embracing, holding. So who supports the water?
All around me encouraging eyes speak of how much I’ve learned, how well I have done.
And all I can think is how cold that steel gray water was, when I plunged on in.

I dreamed I rode a blue bicycle,
Hair streaming out behind me,
I dreamed Apollo was flying above,
And that you were there beside me.

See me, feel me, touch me, heal me

It amazes me the extent to which my dog stands epitomizes the visceral need we living things have for physical contact. He would sooner sleep in my lap, or curled up in the small of my back than any other place. It honors me so when he displays this unfiltered and absolute desire to share space, sleep and dreams. Partly because I need it too.
My current life schedule sees me spending around two hours a day in transit and as such, I have sufficient opportunity to people watch. It’s one of my favorite things to do, watch people. But somehow, on the subway such observation can become disheartening. I guess that’s why so many New Yorkers seem permanently plugged into various and sundry electronic devices.
I love my Ipod, it is a treasure for its ability to inspire the choir of my mind. But its knack for connecting me to myself also results in a disconnection from those around me and I often find myself floating through the city, detached from the beautiful mess surrounding me…which can get rather dangerous.
Indeed, I’ve been so overwhelmed lately that I’ve opted to leave out the earphones. This conscious choice invites a degree of unwanted attention from people who can be sure that I can hear them. What’s most interesting however, are not the random comments (though they can get quite intricate) but the very real emotion that walking through my day without distraction can incite. Not only am I more vulnerable to the ideas of others, but I’m more receptive to my own as well. The more I ride the train, the more obvious the unnatural detachment of the average new Yorker becomes. I’m frightened to end up permanently cut off from everyone around me. I fought so hard today to keep from spontaneously hugging the man sitting next to me when just hours earlier I had been exasperatedly elbowing my way through the morning rush hour. So I’m either bi-polar….or the dualistic blessing/curse of New York City’s anonymity has caught up with me after the three plus years I’ve called myself a Manhattanite. Maybe it’s time for a break…or maybe it’s just time to throw in the towel and fucking hug the random dude perched beside me on the evening express train home.

Now, I don't think I've ever posted a link without sufficient essay-ing to go along with it.
But...I think this one stands on its own.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XIm6q4r4