For the past three days in a row my mom and I have frequented the local Megaplex, smuggling in our contraband sodas and snacks, standing in line, resolved to spend the holiday break soaking up a series of cinematic blockbusters.
Usually, I plan to arrive at a movie precisely on time, not so early that I end up sitting in a empty theater waiting for the screen to alight and not so late that I miss the coming attractions (I confess to loving them as they appeal to my slightly ADD sensibilities)
My mom, however, enjoys arriving early…very early, early enough to give me plenty of opportunity to observe native Connecticut High Schoolers in their natural habitat. The result was a veritable parade of Abercrombie mini skirts, Ugg boots, polar fleece, straight hair and glittery lip-gloss. Needless to say, I found myself out of place.
I spent the majority of my high school years shuttling myself back and forth between Northfield Mount Hermon and the barn, with occasional stops at my mom and dad’s respective residences. Sitting in the Branford movie theater, watching high schoolers do what I presume “normal” teenagers do, I found myself wondering: had my family and I stayed in Connecticut so many years ago, rather than move to New Hampshire, would I myself have been a typical teenager? Would the Saturday nights I spent cooling out horses have been replaced by straightening my hair, applying glittery eye shadow and scheming a “coincidental” bump into my crush at the seven o’clock movie?
I don’t really mean to paint my teenage self as abnormal, I wasn’t, nor was I an inordinate nerd. But I also wasn’t one of the crowd. I didn’t date in high school, nor did I spend any measure of time online, on AIM, at the mall and so forth. I read a lot, worked hard and took AP courses. But mostly, I rode. I suppose some people’s mall is another’s barn…and such is a matter of one’s nature, not their location. So although it seems that every high school student in Branford Connecticut is out and contributing to the sexual tension existent at the theater on any given Saturday, there are also kids at the local barn, hot walking their best friend after an evening of training, or seated around a circular table at Game World, painting their pieces and preparing for battle…or even curled up in the classics section at the local Barnes and Noble, spending long hours reading ahead just because they feel like it. In my younger years, I was pretty embarrassed by my nerdy sensibilities. But upon surveying the social scene of typical high school life with older, wiser eyes, I find the knowledge of dissimilarity refreshing. In a world supplied endlessly with jean mini skirts, cell phones and hair straighteners, all of which have been branded normal and desirable, a little variation is refreshing.

For My Dad~

In a moment
Her layers are stripped away and she faces his stroke stricken form.
She, fearful and frantic-
A shrieking skin surrounding a body

From an outsider’s stance
This is life-
And there is no time to waste

Sirens are muted
Shrieking ceased
Life is afloat in a sea of happenstance
A hysterical twist of too little time
And nobody gives a damn about misplaced brake pads

“How is your heart”, you ask me,
And I wonder, how is yours?
Peaceful warriors, you and I,
Living our lives by the contents of our collective hearts

And the shrieking, stroking, pounding pulse of this life.

I soaked last night in a good tub,
Joni Mitchell singing For Free,
And I, looking out the window at a white light lit Christmas tree,
Standing alone in somebody else’s yard.

It was there, amongst the suds and in between bubbles,
That I found myself changed,
Felt myself fully a well-timed woman,
Something I had never been before.

And it came to me then,
Amongst the suds, and in between bars, thighs, and folded skin,
Where I could find my ever-elusive heart.

Before I knew, I had looked for it there, in the tub,
As one searches for a lost bar of soap,
Finding it, only to feel it slip through my fingers.
Elusive heart.
Amongst soap suds.
And Joni Mitchell’s songs.

Perhaps,
It is not so lost as I had thought it.

This morning came earlier than I had anticipated, ushered in by the familiar clack of a dog’s toenails against the hardwood floor and the cold, attic air upon my nose and ears. With a rainy drizzle steadily dripping along outside my bedroom window, the circumstances were ideal for sleep long into the early afternoon hours.

I recall being a little girl and waking up in the middle of the night, sick to my stomach and scared. Clad in a little blue nightgown and clutching a stuffed animal, I would totter into my parent’s room awakening their sleeping lumps with an apologetic whine for help. This morning, it was my mother who approached my slumbering self with news of unease.

Where her stomach had been quite upset the day before, today the situation had worsened and she had received orders from her doctor to visit our local emergency room. “It must have been the almonds I ate” she theorized as I maneuvered her Prius onto 1-95 towards the shoreline emergency center, memories of a more menacing sickness brewing in both our minds.

About seven hours later, after an all to familiar foray into the world of MRIs, Morphine, EKGs, Catscans, and waiting rooms, here I sit, processing it all. My mom’s border collie, Spin-o is asking me to take him out for a walk, a lengthy one at that as he has waited so patiently all day long.

I am no stranger to responsibility…nor should I be, I am twenty years old and every day more of a woman of heart and mind than ever before. I have seen my share of hospitals, of heartache and of victory and have taken it all in stride. Yet, sometimes I feel like I am once again a timid, nightgown clad, little girl, looking for someone to hold her hand, and whisper reassuringly, that it’s all going to be ok.

Sex and the City~

My radiant roommate and I went and sat in the basement of bobst (you know, in one of those little private rooms) for almost four hours today. After a short stop at Upstein for chick fil a salads, we returned home. Since then, I have been stapled to my desk, studying law and society, natural science, language and society, and my aim buddy list. I am going mad and it's a Saturday night.
Somebody get me a cocktail.

Here I am, lying on my bed (which this year stands several feet off the ground) watching Seabiscut and attempting to conclude this paper on controversies amongst women within the first and second waves of feminism. Of course, I can’t. I am so absorbed in the movie that my soul aches more and more with each passing scene.

Sometimes I think my heart may break with want of my Ham, yearning for the familiar feeling of swinging my leg up over a horse’s back, settling back into my saddle, its seat imprinted to my butt and legs, a perfect fit and silence but for the measured breaths of my horse beneath me and the beating of my own heart. There is only a little more than a week left before I am free of finals and homeward bound, but in this moment, a week feels like forever.

Home is where you find yourself more complete than anywhere else. For me, I am more myself on the back of a horse than anywhere else in this wide world. As an artist draws her brush against canvas, moving paint over paper in fluid waves, I have been moved to move in union with another animal. Each movement, an expression of unified intention.

I am ready to go home.

Cold blue steel…
And silence, save for the measurement of your shotty breaths;
In and out, your voiceless calls for love against the ticking of a black handed clock.

I find myself standing in an empty space filled with folding metal chairs and sharp edged desks.
Thinking of a strangled blue blanket that always leaves you shivering.

Bare foot on a blue tiled floor, cold and incrusted with soap scum memories of
You, lonely and faceless.

Resurrection~

Today, when riffling beneath my bed in search of a certain pair of winter snow boots, I came across one of my most treasured possessions; a neglected tool whose weather-beaten body has served as a medium through which I express myself.
I first purchased my Canon A-1 mechanical camera in high school, a time in my life when the darkroom served as a sanctuary, offering refuge from the stormy twist and tangle that was my life.
With college came the distraction of friends and classes to an extent that somewhat elbowed out my photographic pursuits. For the past year in particular I have been excavating other areas of my life and have left my camera lying dormant, collecting dust beneath my bed, replaced by its spiffier and speedier digital counterpart.
Given the somewhat revelatory nature of the past few days, it seems only fitting that today I finally took my camera out from beneath my bed and separated it from the wealth of dust that had gathered about its carrying case. The Canon's body felt like an old friend in my hands, and I smiled at the familiarity its sturdy mechanics struck beneath my fingers. In that moment I recalled why the sensual and graceful nature of a mechanical device, despite being slower to produce than its digital counterparts, is timeless and to be treasured. There is something grounding in the nature of an instrument whose form represents the fitting together of interlocking parts through a process of manual assembly; a means of construction that is increasingly rare in this world of superfluous speed. Our fast paced world brands a mechanical approach to just about anything “out dated” and “sluggish”…I wonder if such is why I value it so. Perhaps I am craving constancy, a metered way of moving through life. I drive a standard transmission, shoot a mechanical camera, watch old movies, ride a horse…yet I live in a city considered to be one of the most hectic urban jungles. Indeed, I find peace in solidity, in cause and effect, in the weight of my camera, and the mechanics of cogs, each piece fitting together with fluidity. Perhaps the old balances out the new and the sturdiness I favor in certain areas of my life allows the inconsistency of others.
My appreciation of mechanics and manmade devices must be, in part, hereditary. I think of my grandfather, a great sportsman and a manufacturer of firearms; I picture him holding in his small hands weaponized works of art, guns of finished wood and inlaid hand tooled silver, each piece representative of one individual’s dedication and devotion to the instrument he was building. I then think of my father and his life long love of the automobile, his understanding of the way each piece of an engine unites and connects to motivate motion. Or my mother, the artist whose pastels painted fingers can trace form over paper, weaving women’s bodies into existence with ease, how the reins fit into my hands, interlaced with my fingers ability to subtly signal…I could go on and on, in short, my family finds ourselves in manual, palpable forms. Our hands and our touch, interacting with other physical forms yields emotion and inspires us to explore.

Inspiration is created by connection; this afternoon, holding my heavy bodied camera, feeling its parts move beneath the surface of its metallic exterior as I advanced the film or clicked past stops on the way to a fitting aperture, I felt as if I held a little part of myself, a part of my potential not yet recognized and a unifying actor along my ever winding way to self knowledge.

Turn a cartwheel,
Feet over hands over feet.
Turn the world upside down.

The shaking of my perception,
Changed the way I looked at life,
And low the life I looked at changed,

Correlating into a continual cartwheel,
Tumbling through tumult,
Cycling through calm,
Lacing life together,
Feet over hands over feet.

At times it seems that if I don’t write, my core will burst in a silent explosion contained within a white-washed face and vacant expression. Inside me, tension builds into a boiling blister in want of a voice, whose instrument of burst is my pen, my keyboard and the freedom they allow me.
Yet, in light of my aforementioned recent bout of writer’s block, I find myself worried that a lack of literary fluidity will take a toll on my sense of balance. As a result, I am much less concerned by the fact that any writings I have produce of late have been rambling. If sprawling sentences and disconnected discourse is what it takes to get words out and onto the page, so be it.
Thus, for the meantime, tight thesis papers shall be sacrificed for erratic sixty-second sketches drawn by my mind’s eye and thinly sewn into a scattered semblance of my state of mind.

Out the window of a second floor Silver center lecture hall I watch and old man sitting on a park bench in Washington Square Park, his navy blue crewneck clashes against the deadened yellow leaves left littered about, piled up against green trash bins, and gathered about the legs of benches. My navy sweatered subject holds his balding head in his hands, leaning forward and to his side, body propped upon the bench’s armrest. I wonder if he is cold – his picture is so pleasing from my place in this college classroom so far removed and I must remind myself of my own freedom, the fact that, should I so desire, I could leave this class to sit beside my balding man, whiling away long hours amongst carelessly discarded coffee cups, squirrels, and pigeons, all within a frame of falling yellow leaves.

Of Choice, Passion, and Potential Sacrifice~

Home for any reason automatically means Ham. When given the opportunity to spend any time whatsoever in the country, I immediately prioritize the visitation of my dearest friend, a horse named Ham who just so happens to be my soul mate. Not once have I returned home to see him that I have not proclaimed my intentions to take a break from city life, move out to the country and once again, throw myself into horses with complete abandon.

My high school years were so horse crazy that I basically sacrificed all semblance of a social life in order to train with complete focus. It may not have been the most balanced of approaches but it certainly served a purpose and allowed Ham and I to achieve our greatest goals. Yet as with most intense undertakings, I experienced a bit of burn out which led me to place NYU at the top of my desired colleges list. It was one of the best decisions I have made to date as my beloved New York City has enabled me to open my conception of self above and beyond that of a self contained and single minded barn rat.

Three years down the road, still loving NYU yet missing Ham and my horse girl identity, I find myself at a crossroads. Two proverbial paths stretch out before me, one in the direction of horses, New England weather, my little blue car, long days at horse shows, and giving riding lessons. Down the other way I see myself embraced by Manhattan, walking fast and full of life, finding excitement around each corner. In my heart, I wish I could do both and wonder how such a dualistic scheme could be implemented. I cannot be in two places at the same time and to try and split my time evenly would surely result in a reverberating fragmentation throughout all areas of my life. Yesterday a dear friend said to me, “I know what I am doing, but not where I am going”; I recall thinking that, with purpose, location does not matter and will surely fall into place. As of now, however, it seems that, location does in a way dictate what it is I will be doing…and I wonder which path I will chose to wander, knowing that is it implausible to travel down diverging roads at the same time. Will choice automatically mean sacrifice?

Lately I have had such writer’s block. The only words that I can seem to produce in any synchronistic fashion, are through poetry, a medium I admit to being a bit unsure of. My inability to feel inspired by any essays that I begin is perhaps rooted in confusion…lately I don’t seem to know where to focus my attention.

Energy is moving in my world, and with so much action comes hesitation and some fear. There are times when I am so sure of who I am and others when I feel at a complete loss as to the true nature of my character. At these times I genuinely wonder if I am the same person on the outside as within? It seems that people look at me without seeing me whatsoever. Perhaps I am completely binary and only truly myself when alone and free to be bare, ugly, sloppy, tired, and strange. Or perhaps everyone feels this way?

Dear wind,
Slip me over your shoulder and carry me.
Hold me like a hammock.
Cradle and cook for me.

I’ll put my hands in your hair at the nape of your neck,
And smile in your ear.

What does it mean to be vulnerable?

Stripped of all armor I walk naked to the street.
Fully permeable.

Pliable.
Like a dollop of paint in want of a brush.
Like soup in want of a spoon.

If you swallow me whole, you may spit me out.
If I tumble into light, will I find my entirety,
Or will I discover my downfall?

New York City, for its metamorphic nature is also quite dependable. Like an old friend, there are certain things about this city that are never going to change. For instance, no matter what, when it rains, the city streets will transform into a sea of black umbrellas. Taxi cabs will become impossible to find, and people will scramble about frantically, pushing, shoving and inadvertently stabbing one another with their umbrellas. It is a fact of the city, and something that can be depended on.

Similarly, there are people in this city who are fixtures of certain places so much so that they become representative in one’s mind of their specific hangout and by extension, of the city as a whole. Case in point: there is a woman who whiles away every day in the Starbucks on Astor place. There she sits, soaking up the sunlight, and applying excessive amounts of bright pink blush. I can always expect to see her there, surrounded by suitcases and newspapers, plastering on her color. She is a strange and somewhat sad character, one that fits well with the quirky and creepy aura of the neighborhood surrounding St. Marks Place. She is old, effusive, frightening and harmless, all at once…and she is just like New York.

Sanctuary
"Wherever we are content, that is our home.
There is no greater curse than the lack of contentment.
Do not open your heart to the grim silent one, guard your tongue before the garrulous fool.
When a man finds no peace within himself it is useless to seek it elsewhere. "
~ L. A. Rouchefoliocauld

I have found that difficult and intense emotions oftentimes manifest as a general overwhelmed feeling and a suffocation of sorts. This happened today and I found myself flying uptown on the number four train, moving full chat boogie up Fifth Avenue, bobbing and weaving in and out of the mass of humanity, their shopping bags and umbrellas making my movements listless, like wading through water.
Almost there, I was telling myself, almost there.
And then, I arrived. My feet hit the familiar stone steps and I walked in a diagonal line upwards, grasping the big door handle, and pulling myself into sanctuary.

Saint Patrick’s Cathedral has stood like a sigh of relief on Fifth Avenue for over a hundred years, existing today just beneath the superficial veil created by cigarette smoke and Feraud furs. Once inside there is grand stillness…except at Christmas time of course when it is just as much of a madhouse inside the chapel walls as out on the street. But on any old day, much like this past afternoon, it is relatively quiet, a steady, candle lit quiet, like a deep breath in or like shutting your eyes. There is always a pew to sit in, always a candle to be lit.This Cathedral, a sanctified spot, is seemingly out of place nestled in between Saks Fifth Ave and Cartier, places that in my mind represent symbolic capitals of decadence and surrealism. But then again, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change and I can imagine that those grand old stores are themselves places for peace for many people.

Following my midterm today and after the second day in a row running on too little sleep and too much caffeine, I had something that I rarely achieve but often lust after…

The perfect nap.

From 5:45 to 7:45 I slept, cuddled amongst my sheets and with the velvety caress of my green velour comforter whispering against my cheek. Light from the setting sun peeked at me in streaks through the blinds, throwing warm kisses across my pillow.
Someone had cranked the heat and a luxurious laze had settled throughout the entire apartment. I awoke slowly, turning over and slipping back into sleep a few times before actually opening my eyes. When I finally pulled open the blinds it was to a night sky and my own nap creased face reflected in the windowpane.

"Booya Skidaddi",
Thoughts of my Dad:

When your summer days come tumbling down
And you find yourself alone
Then you can come back and be with me
Just close your eyes and I'll be there
Listen to the sound
Of this old heart beating for you
~Neil Young

I have never liked the phrase, “daddy’s little girl”, despite the extent to which it has been used to describe me in relation to my father. We are, in a nutshell, incredibly close…but our relationship is one of respect and equality, one in which I have never felt small, there is far too much love for that.

When I think of my daddy, I picture him in his office, a room which has fit in different houses over the years (most memorably, an old chicken coop), but where he can oftentimes be found sitting in the world’s oldest three wheeled desk chair amongst piles of papers.

In this moment, my mind drifts back to the February of my freshman year of high school. Spring break loomed on the horizon and ominously so, as it had been a long, cold winter full of awkward transition. On this particular evening I padded up the stairs to my dad’s office, hearing the creak of his chair as he wheeled around to face my approaching footsteps. With a glint in his eye he asked, “hey sport, what do you think about driving to Ohio?”
A week later, one unlicensed high schooler, one well intentioned dad, one beloved golden dog and one Volvo station wagon set off on an adventure to Cleveland, a quest whose completion would yield a competent automobile operator (me) and our arrival at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.

You know, sometimes, I don’t know why,
But this old town just seems so hopeless
I aint really sure, but it seems I remember the good times
Were just a little bit more in focus ~Tom Petty

A few years later, when I was visiting colleges, my dad and I took several similar trips into the woods of upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and California, creating adventures littered with countless Red Roof Inns, campus tour guides (and our shotty impressions of them), Bob Evans pancake houses, Tom Petty albums, and conversations that I will forever hold in my heart.

So where am I going with all this? I don’t quite know.
I do know that I am supposed to be studying for a midterm but can’t seem to focus upon doing so until I get this down on paper.
For some time now, certain things have been hard for my dad and I…and to be quite honest, that is an understatement. For whatever reason, a beautiful gift has been wrapped up in years of hardship, devistation and extreme feelings of loss. How often have I felt my father’s inner struggle deeply within my own heart, heard him ask for the answer, wondering why the fathers of his daughter’s friends are so different, why his path seems so far from normal.
To those questions I will answer this:
We are not normal, my dad and I. In fact, we are quite out there. But by God we will choose to see our difference as a gift. My daddy, from the moment I came into this world, has been my soul mate, my life guide, my angel.
And I am his.
I could not ask for more.

I just want to thank you for all of the things you've done
I'm thinkin about you,
Just want to send my love
I send my best to you that's my messge of love
For all the things you did, I can never thank you enough
~Neil Young

As I write this, my eyes drift up from the page, falling upon the photographs that are pasted to my desk. There in one in particular in which I sit upon my dad’s shoulders. He is holding me up, keeping me balanced. I would like to think that in a way, despite being a little girl, in that moment, I was doing the same for him.

Tomorrow morning my dad will embark on a new adventure, one he takes on with some trepidation, some sadness, and some fear. Recently having done the same thing in my own life, I understand his feelings. Our paths are intertwined so that his adventure feeds into mine and mine feeds into his. I am not there to see him off, to drive into the day with him as I have in the past, or to sit with him and talk about it face to face when he comes home at night. It almost doesn’t matter though, I’ll be there with him all day just like he is here with me. It sounds so incredibly cornball, but it’s the honest truth.
And that’s all I have to say about that. Guess I'll let Mr. Seger take us home:

Well those drifters’ days are past me now
I've got so much more to think about
Deadlines and commitments
What to leave in, what to leave out
Against the wind
I'm still runnin' against the wind
Well, I'm older now and still runnin'
Against the wind
~Bob Seger

In Praise of My Mommy:

Life is so funny; how we grow and evolve…it sounds so hoidy but change is really the only constant thing in this world and often one of the most difficult things to wrap our minds around. My relationship with my mom has changed in accordance with the aforementioned universal law, yet it was until just recently that I realized that maybe it hasn’t changed as much as I had previously posited.
When I was a little girl, my mom and I would walk into town from our beautiful yellow house at 201 Water Street. Along the way, we would pass by the various and assorted flower beds which lined the picketed yards of many of our neighbors. There was one house in particular whose fences were lined with an assortment of tulips as bright and blossoming my six year old self. My mom would bend down, cup the blossom of a tulip in her palm and pretend that it was speaking, saying beautiful and encouraging things to me, and prompting me to giggle out a response. Even though I knew it was my mom who was doing the speaking, I truly believed in the flower’s voice.

To me, my mother a vehicle through which beauty blossomed. I would watch her make art, piecing together panes of glass, or effortlessly guiding fluid and unpredictable water-colors with but a wisp of brush. She approached nature as art and art was her nature. From her I came to understand and expect the limitless possibility that creativity entails.

Yet there was a time when creativity waned, when tulips blossoms clammed up and crammed shut, when nothing seemed to flow. Was it a lack of creativity? A shift of focus from the natural to the force and pain that is a purely man made construction? I cannot be completely sure. I do know that for some time my mother lost herself and disappeared…without her, I did the same.

But not for us a wintry end, the sun is shining again and the tulips are in bloom, my mommy will coax them into connection, and I will respond again with smiles, with laughter, and even, perhaps, with tears of joy.

Oklahoma, Ok? Feeling Far Away from the Arena I Love:

It is a strange thing to come to terms with the fact that things are so seemingly an intrinsic part of your being continue on without you. This New York Saturday night, cold, blustery and quite uninviting, I am sitting at my dear old desk watching a live streaming of the final night of competition at the Grand National and World Championship Morgan Horse Show in Oklahoma City. How can I not be there? It is almost easier to feel as though it has ceased to exist, been put on hold because my ability to attend has been temporarily suspended. My trainer is jogging by, vying for the world title she wants with all her heart and I am not on the rail offering words of encouragement. Rather, I am saying those helpful things and they are going unheard. It’s a surreal experience to say the least and I have to be ok with it.

It seems so long ago that I was last there but in many ways, the familiarity of the Oklahoma state fairgrounds, the sweet smelling bark mulch, the cold mornings and warm afternoons, is as near to my heart as if I were there yesterday. And yet, for all my words of woe and feelings of exclusion, when I do return, I will find the people and horses quite unchanged. As with all good things, there is a fluxuation and a fluidity to the Morgan horse show industry. Young stars, both equine and human are brought in, not to replace the old ones, but to challenge them. It’s a beautiful thing really, but surely a struggle to let go of, for as I watch the miniaturized form of my trainer Judy jog across my computer screen aboard one of my favorite friends, I wish so fully that I were there in person to cheer her on.