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Of course she did, of course he did. Of course they read each other. Of course they knew each other, understood each other, recognized each other, took one look and got each other, had to be with each other, saw the color drain out of what they saw when they were not looking at each other. They were the same person. They were equally remote.

"The Last Thing He Wanted" | Joan Didion

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“Anyway, it’s about old friends.”

The simplest way to summarize this year and all of the gushy feelings I have about it is to say that it has been a year of reunions. Over the course of these life-changing 12 months, I have reconnected with family, old friends, my hometown, my alma mater...and somewhere in all that, I reconnected with myself. Auld lang syne, indeed.

I don’t think I have ever felt as hopeful as I do now. 2015, old friend, it has been a pleasure. Cheers to all the wonder of 2016.

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Ammo

On Wednesday night I rushed home from work, hopped on the subway, and headed downtown in hopes of making the Tree Lighting Ceremony in Rockefeller Center. It was not exactly the experience I had hoped it would be for two reasons--first, I didn’t get there early enough at all and thus couldn’t get even within sight of the tree. Second, when I stepped off the train, I found myself amongst more cops than I have ever encountered in my life. Some of them were holding guns approximately the length of my calf.

In light of recent events, I expected the place to be crawling with NYPD, and I guess I knew somewhere in my mind that they would be toting some big-ass guns, but that didn’t stop my knees from quivering a little when I actually saw them. I’ve never seen weapons like that in real life before, and now I cannot un-see them. And here’s the thing--they didn’t make me feel safe. I think that was actually the most afraid I’ve been since I moved to the city.

At work when I have some downtime, I usually read news articles. I’m trying to stay more informed about the goings-on in the world. Just about everything I’ve read over the last week or so has been about how to be as prepared as possible in the event of a mass shooting which, turns out, is really not such an unlikely thing. And those instructional, matter-of-fact articles don’t make me feel safe, either.

I remember I took this random Peace, War, and Defense class in college and we spent some time discussing the “banality” of evil. I suppose this is how it happens. Broadcast the aftermath of enough massacres, fill the streets with enough police with big enough weapons, publish enough articles on how to triage victims, and there you go. It becomes routine, and it doesn’t even take that long.

I don’t understand why the second amendment warrants such vehement defense. Why, out of all the antiquated words in the Constitution, are those the ones people cling to and recite and shout over and over again? How can you talk about your rights being infringed upon when people are being slaughtered in offices and schools and movie theaters? I don’t understand it. What, after all, are you trying to protect yourself from--other people with guns?

And none of these words--my words--matter either, really. These are not new thoughts. But I also can’t quite bring myself to be someone who says, “Well, all we can do is put love into the world.” I agree with putting love into the world; I do not agree that is all we can do. The world needs love, but in situations such as these, it also needs outrage. It needs refusal to accept this as mundane, as the new norm. It needs action. It needs change. 

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In the late morning/early afternoon hours of this past Sunday, I was in my kitchen making cranberry sauce for a Thanksgiving party. I took this picture because, in those moments, I was a little overwhelmed by the beauty of the simmering cranberries and the quiet of my apartment. And also I remembered that at this time last year, I was making the same dish in a different apartment on the other side of the country. I was right on the brink of my decision to leave, and thinking how the holiday season would never feel right to me in Los Angeles. 

What a difference a year makes...!

I don’t think I will ever be able to articulate exactly how good it feels to return to a true version of myself. I want to put into words how happy I am now, in this new phase of life, and how thankful I am for every person and every twist of fate that brought me to this point, but really it is beyond my wordsmithing abilities. So here it all is--everything I’m feeling that makes my eyes well up, everything that makes my heart swell to the point of bursting, everything I am grateful for--summarized in one image of simple, natural, inexplicable beauty.

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It's funny about people. Just before something happens, you almost know what it is. You do know what it is, I believe. You just haven't had the time--and now you won't have the time--to say it to yourself.

"If Beale Street Could Talk" | James Baldwin

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Rabbit hole

I had this idea during the months I was home in North Carolina that once I got going in my new life, I would forget about everything that prompted my seeking out a new life.Turns out things don’t quite work that way. 

It’s different now--I am not consumed by those thoughts anymore. Often I go for hours without my presence here, in these moments, being interrupted by the memories of all that happened. They still do creep up on me, though. Sometimes the trigger is clear, like a song or Facebook’s god-awful new habit of being like “hey! Remember when you posted this thing two years ago today??!!” It’s easy enough to change the station or click “fuck you Facebook, don’t ever show me this bullshit again.” But sometimes I find myself falling down a rabbit hole of LA thoughts all of a sudden and I don’t know why. I don’t know what tripped me. Those are the times when I have to consciously pull myself out of that space in my head. I have to say, “We are not there anymore. That is past. We are ok now.” And then I pick up the LA files that have scattered themselves all over the floor of my mind and I pack them away again.

Sometimes I take out a couple on purpose to test myself--to see if it still stings when I look at them. Mostly it just feels strange. Distant. Like reading something I wrote years ago and then stuffed at the bottom of my closet. I don’t feel those emotions anymore, but I remember them. My whole body remembers them. My jaw and my shoulders and my hands, clenched so tight trying to bear it all...

I don’t like the word “regret.” It puts a bad taste in my mouth. But when asked if I regret going out to LA, I’m not sure how to answer. I think a lot about if I would trash those memories if I had the chance. If I could just snip those frames out of the film reel and tape it back together, would I do it? Truthfully, yes, I would--mostly because when I think about the person I was during that time, I don’t recognize her. I don’t know if I like her. She is an amalgamation of pieces of myself I didn’t know existed before that time in my life. Now that I know they’re in there, I can’t un-know it. I would prefer if they stayed dormant from here on out.

Since I started this new phase, I’ve been taking care to spend time with myself just to check in. I am making it a priority to look out for myself, because I didn’t do enough of that in LA. I am fiercely protective of my alone time now, because for a while I just gave it and gave it and gave it. And it’s nice, you know? Because now I am somebody I recognize--and like!--again. And because of this, I can forgive myself for being someone else there for a minute. Or at least, I am moving toward this forgiveness.

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...I didn't understand, when it came down to it, where that particular thing goes when it goes, and what is left behind, and what happened, how one person can become another, how the seeds are in us to be almost anything. Some of the seeds grow. What does that mean?

Patrick Somerville, “This Bright River”

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New (York) Love

I think this must be what it feels like to fall in love for the second time. After a while in a quiet place, you suddenly notice that colors are more vibrant again and your heart beats a bit more audibly. The same excitement from the first time is there, but it’s more subdued. It’s a little shy. It peeks at you sheepishly over its wine glass from over in the corner. And you are very much aware of its presence and you’re glad it’s there, but you don’t feel the urge to rush over to it. Or maybe you feel it, but this time you know better. This time, you’re going to take your time. You’re not so afraid that it will run off the second you look away from it. This time you’re going to let it meander over to you, or maybe you’ll meet somewhere in the middle.

Maybe the second time always feels more mature than the first, because it is. The first time was crazy and all-in and no plans, just going, and for a while it felt like the most freeing thing you’ve ever done because you didn’t question it, you just let it consume you. And then it burned out because it did consume you, so you’re not the same person for the second go. This time, you ask questions. You proceed with caution. You make concrete plans before you act. 

And I guess the first time serves its purpose, because how else would you arrive at this place of knowing that you have to take time to build something in order for it to last? How do you learn that haste doesn’t breed stability except by being hasty for a while? We tend to romanticize impulsiveness, and that also has its place; but I don’t think the second time loses any magic in being more solid. Building trust, indulging in peace of mind--these things are magical.

New York is my second time. I’ve been in the city for two weeks now. Sometimes I feel like I should be rushing out after work and site-seeing and seeing plays and exploring the endless restaurants, bars, shops, etc., but generally I feel ok about taking time to settle in. When you start over, you have to take time to lay a solid foundation. Even in a magical place, you have to do the everyday stuff like go to work and buy groceries and unpack your clothes. So that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing so far, and there is a kind of pleasure to be had in that. Maybe a huge part of adulthood is recognizing and appreciating the subtle delight of getting your shit together.

So New York and I are taking it slow. I’ve set my eyes and heart on it. I am happy to be in its company, and I don’t plan on looking anywhere else. But I’m taking a totally different approach than the way I plunged head-first and naive into LA. New York and I are taking our time. We’re getting to know each other. 

It’s a beautiful thing to feel inspired again. There are so many stories here. They live and breathe on the streets and in the river and the buildings and the parks and the alleys. What a thing it is just to sit on the subway, surrounded by people who are at once like you and completely different from you--heading off in endless directions, living their lives. What a thing it is to intersect with them, even if only for a few stops.

So you see, I can already tell that I have fallen deeply for this city. But I’m not so concerned that it’ll be gone if I’m not actively caught up in it every second of every day. I know it’s going to stick around. And I think that this time I’ll stick around, too.   

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A Small Space

There is music everywhere here. It comes from all around. It swirls around and blends together with the traffic and people’s shoes on the sidewalk and voices calling out in Spanish and the little clink! of dominoes being played on card tables. It’s hard to identify the specific sources of the music.

There are people everywhere. Kids on bikes and scooters and on foot, running with sticks in hand, making up rules for their games as they go. Parents and grandparents sitting on stoops and fold-out chairs, talking. Catching up. Enjoying each other’s company. Teenagers smacking gum and texting and soaking up the end of the summer.

Everything you could ever want or need, pretty much, is nestled in somewhere on these streets. Stores, restaurants, bars, coffee shops, banks, post offices, the library, parks, museums, historical remnants from the city’s beginning. It’s all here. 

And somewhere in the midst of all this, tucked away in a little sliver of this throbbing city, is me. After everything that’s happened, I (assisted by a fistful of kind, generous people) have managed to carve out a small space for myself here. And that’s all I’ve wanted, really--a small space. Big enough for a single bed and a small collection of books and movies. A gap between the proverbial door and threshold just big enough to wedge my foot in.

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These are my bits. My pieces I have dropped and thrown along the way. The pieces that were mine. Of me.

"A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing" | Eimear McBride

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The Big Reset

So earlier in the year, I went through this brief phase where I tried to like yoga. It was brief because, even though I can get on board with the stretching itself, I have a hard time taking seriously all the stuff about “energy” and “conscious blah blah” and “baby cobra pose.” Also, my balance leaves something to be desired and it frustrates me when I’m wobbling and tripping all over the place like a fool. But, I decided that I’m going to try to make myself like it again, for the sake of 1) varying my workout routine and 2) boredom. So the last couple of days I’ve locked myself away, rolled out the mat, and scrolled through a seemingly endless selection of YouTube videos to find one that isn’t too hokey. And actually, I did find one. And actually, the instructor said something that I keep thinking about. She talked about the importance of making a strong foundation, and creating balance by pushing away from the earth with the parts of your body that are touching the ground. I’m sure any respectable yogi reading this is thinking, “Uh, yeah, DUH!” but I guess I had never thought of it like that and IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE! I keep turning it over and over in my mind, thinking what a great mantra it makes and how relevant it feels at this point in my life. And I guess this is why people do yoga. File this under: EPIPHANIES.

[I think it’s time to get out of Asheville.]

Anyway, what I wanted to get at was balance and foundation. And recovery. I had high hopes for 2015 since its beginning, and it has surely delivered. It’s been a slow build--extended periods of quiet and rest sprinkled with spurts of travel and plan-making. I have realized over and over again how much I needed the quiet, the slow-going, the gradual build. 

I appreciate my hometown in a way I never have before. It has been the perfect place of refuge. I returned to it in a feral, almost rabid state, and it tucked me into a cool, hushed place so that my breathing could slow and my heart rate could return to normal. And I watched one season fold into another as I tore up the shaky few layers I had put down in LA and started to draw up new blueprints. I am grateful for this place. I am grateful for these old mountains that bolstered my childhood and adolescence long before they sheltered me in a broken phase of young adulthood. For all its faults, I will never be ashamed of my roots growing deep down into this Appalachian ground.

But, it’s almost time to be on my way again. I am in the process of laying a new foundation and, though I think a bit of wobbling should always be expected, I believe I am strong enough now at my core that I can make it work.

After more than a year of fruitless interviews, somebody has finally decided to let me in. I presented myself in the most honest way that I could (while remaining professional and not going into too much detail about the bedbugs and other terrors) and finally--FINALLY!!!--someone is saying, “Ok kid, you’re up! Let’s see whatcha got...!” I am hesitant, even now that official papers have been signed, to believe it. If I think about it in too much detail, my body tenses up and I want to grab my new boss by the lapels and shake him because “THANK YOU” just feels so vastly inadequate. I do not forget when somebody does me a good turn. I internalize it. I make a vow with myself to repay them in equal measure as soon as the opportunity arises. And this is an especially good turn.

I want to fully invest myself in every aspect of this new chapter of my life--my job, my creative endeavors, my social life, the endless opportunities that the city holds, everything. I want to put my whole self into all of it, down to the very last fibrous minutia. I want to make use of the (tough) lessons that LA taught me without allowing them to make me overly cautious. I want to meet new people and try new things. I want to see plays and write plays and map out the best bookstores and learn the trains and take a day trip out to Montauk. I want to suck the air in deep as the mornings start to turn chilly. I want to embrace the winter and let the cold seep heavy into my bones. I want to build a new wardrobe piece by piece. I want to take pride in my work and my city and myself. I want it to be a complete reset.

Who will I become there, I wonder? How will I evolve as I learn the geography of the city and the surrounding area? What new shape will I have when I emerge in the spring time from the most intense winter I have ever experienced? What new vocabulary will I need to describe it all...?

Cheers to stronger foundations and balance. Namaste.

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When I find you, I am going to turn the world inside out.

"Hunter's Moon - Eating the Bear" | Mary Oliver

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Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-- over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

"Wild Geese" - Mary Oliver

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Don’t You Want to Let Me In?

You’d think by now I’d have the whole job interviewing process down to a science. Probably if that were true, I’d have had a new job forever ago (duh). When I tell people about how long I’ve been on the hunt for a new position, when I try to enumerate the resumes I send out on a daily basis and the fruitless interviews I’ve been to, they just kind of look at me in disbelief. I don’t blame them--at this point it’s flown way past the realm of frustration and really, it’s just plain comical. Sometimes if they’re people who are a little bit removed from me, they try to offer suggestions. “Can’t you just _____?” “Why don’t you just ______?” “Oh, well it seems like all you’d have to do is _____.” I know that they’re (usually) just trying to be helpful, but if it was really that easy, I promise promise promise I wouldn’t still be a little post-grad salmon beating herself bloody swimming up the stream of Employment.

Real talk, it’s hard out here for an English major who has--and has never had and will never have--zero interest in teaching. It’s hard out here for anyone who just graduated with a degree in arts and humanities. And they don’t tell you when you graduate just how hard it’s going to be, but then, why would they? How could anyone possibly have foretold to me everything that has happened since I left Chapel Hill two years ago? And even if they could have, would it have influenced any of my decisions? Of course not. I would have done everything exactly the same. 

I leave almost every interview feeling conflicted. On one hand, I told them everything I could have possibly told them. I presented myself in the most boiled-down package of professional key words that I could come up with. On the other hand, what about everything else? What about the non-professional experiences? What about my abilities that cannot be ascribed to one neat bullet-pointed term? What about my skills that are not quantifiable? Maybe they don’t seem “relevant to this position,” but they matter! In some weird, indirect way, they brought me here and are therefor, in my opinion, relevant. But of course you can’t talk about all that in an interview--you’d probably sound like a loony and you’d be there for like two hours, and who wants that?

Maybe my problem is that I haven’t been assertive enough. Maybe I haven’t let potential employers see the teeth-grinding, fist-clenching way I want the opportunity they’re offering. Maybe I haven’t made it perfectly apparent just how hungry I am to move forward. Maybe they don’t quite understand how intent I am on achieving the goals I have set for myself, with or without them.

And maybe I need to find a way to say those things. “Look, bottom line? I’m strong. I’m smart. I’m stubborn. I am a good employee--you can ask anyone I’ve ever worked for. I’ll do whatever you ask. If there’s some magic word or phrase you want me to say, I’ll say it. But you have to help me out. I have goals and I’m going to see them through to fruition, with or without you. But you should believe me when I say I am worth investing in. If you pass on me, I’ll find another way eventually, but won’t it be much easier for both of us if you decide to take me on? All I need is one ‘yes,’ one little boost, one solid shove in the right direction. Don’t you want to be that for me? Don’t you want to let me in?”

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Core Work

Someone I used to know told me on multiple occasions that I was the most stubborn person he’d ever met. Is it wrong that I considered--and still do consider--that to be a compliment?

Once I’ve known people for long enough, I like to identify their one tell-all anecdote--the story, however minor, that perfectly exemplifies who they are at their core. Here’s mine:

When I was a freshman in college, I went to get my own cell phone plan. There was an AT&T kiosk in Student Stores, but it was closed on that day. Somebody told me that there was a store up on Franklin Street, so I looked up the street number at my dorm and set off walking, not bothering to check exactly how far down Franklin Street it was. Three miles later, I was still walking. Could I have taken a bus the rest of the way? Yes, but in my defense, this was before I had a smart phone and I wouldn’t have known what bus to take, and at that point it seemed foolish to turn around and go back. I had already gone too far. I walked for just under two hours (one way). But you know what? I got my new phone. And I’m not sorry.

This, I believe, is everything you need to know about me. This is me at my core. Stubborn past the point of reason and usually a few hops into the realm of entertainment. There is rarely any middle ground for me. Once I decide that I’m doing something, I’m fucking doing it. I’m going all in and I’m not coming out the other side until it’s done, one way or another. This behavior has gotten me to this point, and I don’t foresee it changing.

This is the behavior that kept me in a city that almost destroyed me, repeatedly draining my bank account and smashing away at my credit score just to make it another week because I couldn’t give up. This is the behavior that kept me in a job that sustained my life while simultaneously making it miserable. It’s also the behavior that got me out of this cycle with no other means of income immediately lined up. And you know what? I’m not sorry for any of it.

I know that this is also the behavior that will ultimately lead me to a new city, a new job, a new life, probably in an unconventional/seemingly irrational way. Any struggles that I experience in my next chapter will likely be results of my absolute unwillingness to surrender, of my need (where does this come from?) to fling my whole self into the belly of the beast until I am devoured, digested, and ultimately changed forever. And this inexplicable need will be what pulls me through. 

And I bet you I won’t be sorry.

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We drank a little longer and then we went to bed, but it wasn't the same, it never is--there was space between us, things had happened.

"The Post Office" - Charles Bukowski

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Currently on repeat.

“And we said, ‘These songs are true,

These days are ours,

These tears are free’”