a return to silence

The daily deluge of blog posts, tweets, radio shows, even (gasp!) articles can leave me breathless and almost always doubting whether I’ve chosen the right field. I am almost always wondering if this constant feed of information, this constant connection to this little screen in front of me is helping out the world at all. Of course, ultimately, I believe journalism is crucial in the sense that the search for truth is essential, but I often feel we all wade through so many layers of murky words that it can be difficult to see what is real and what is not.

Living in New York is a bit like what I’ve said in the above paragraph – I’m constantly searching – for Cuban restaurants, for dive jazz bars, for Maya Angelou talks at the Brooklyn library, for the 7 subway stop, for for for. And then, when I arrive, I feel like I’m only still for minutes at a time, about to get up and search for the next destination. When I arrive home, covered in subway grime, I’m happy and exhausted and always thinking about what to do next, see next, read next.

We’re in New York for another year and a half, and in that time I can’t wait to explore more of the city that I know I’ll never fully get to see, but I’m so looking forward to getting to a place where I’m not always processing so much newness – where I won’t always be in corners, Brooklyn winter lager in hand, talking about what-would-it-have-been-like-to-see-Django-Reinhardt-in-New-York, I’ll just be quiet, listening to Django Reinhardt, looking out my window in Denver, hopefully at mountains, sipping wine and catching up on the unread books now glaring at me from the corners they’ve been stuffed into in our apartment.

I always feel the need to be quieter when there are big things to process, and I’ve been having an especially hard time processing the fact that one of my brother’s best friends recently committed suicide. I did not know him well; I left for college when my brother was just beginning high school and I knew most of my brother’s friends best when they were so young that I remember most of them as a blur of activity. I do remember one conversation I had with this friend, when I had gone to a local pizza shop where he had worked just after I had graduated from college and he told me he had been really happy to hear I went to Wisconsin for school because he had always wanted to live there. He took his break and sat with me while I ate my pizza, and I remember telling him about Wisconsin and chasing geese in the fields and sipping on chocolate milkshakes, watching the evening turn into night on little hills overlooking industrial sites next to the river at Beloit.

It’s overwhelming and haunting, wondering why anyone would commit suicide, especially when that someone is so bright, so young, so energetic and full of laughter.  I look at the photos my brother posted of him on facebook and in each one he is doubled over laughing, often in the center, making everyone else happier.

take heed, take heed of the western wind

I’m going to deviate a bit here and stray from life in New York.

Six years ago (six?!) I moved to a place that I lived in for only about half a year and yet it, and the people I met there, dug their way into my heart and made this incredible shift in my life.  One of those people, who I met almost exactly six years ago when he drove up from Texas to Wyoming, got married this weekend and I feel so lucky to have him and now his amazing, beautiful wife (who has the best taste in music!) in my life. There are few people I feel completely at home with, but he is one of them and to see him happier than I ever have really means the world to me.

Throughout the weekend, I thought so much about the three of us who were close to inseparable there, K, A and I, and all that we did – the hikes and drives around lakes and running into freezing, nearly heart-stoppingly cold water, and how many hours we would spend on rocks warm from the sun talking about the future. Now, the three of us are married, one of us has two insanely adorable children, and all of us seemed to have, somehow, navigated this life so that it not only makes sense, but makes us happy.

Here’s to friendship and how it makes everything in this super confusing world make a little more sense.

home

Yikes, it has almost been 10 days since I’ve written in here – but it has been a whirlwind of activity lately and I haven’t had much of a chance to sit down and reflect. Or do much more than drink a beer in a fatigued stupor!

My last day at my old job was Thursday, I flew to Chicago for one of my best friend’s baby shower Friday, arrived back in NYC late Sunday and started my new job today! Then on Thursday we fly to Texas so I’m a bit winded.

Whenever I go to new cities I always think about what it would be like to live in them. I’ve been to Chicago numerous times throughout my life since my grandparents always lived in the suburbs of Chi-town and my parents would often brings us to see jazz and eat pizza in down town Chicago, where they went to college. When we were in college, we’d try to make it down to Chicago at least a couple times a semester – for Ani Difranco concerts or an Air concert once and of course lots of amazing restaurants. It always seems like such a liveable city, far more laid back than New York, with big spacious restaurants that serve “beermosas” – beer and orange juice, which I drank at 10 a.m. on Sunday and was absolutely the saviour of my morning despite how disgusting it sounds. The city had been hit with some hardcore Bears fever and shouts of “da Bears” seemed more commonplace than typical greetings over the weekend.

I always made fun of my parents for saying midwesterners were nicer than people on the east coast, and of course there are exceptions, but I think I have finally sided with my parents. Even in a big city like Chicago, I find that everyone from the store clerks to people you accidentally trip on the street will stop to talk to you and I had an hour-long conversation with a woman from Chicago in the airport about knitting (she gasped at my lack of knowledge about said topic and proceeded to give me the titles of numerous helpful how-to-knit books), the Bears (again, disbelief at my ineptness when it comes to all things football), and David Sedaris (luckily I know his writing well).

I would definitely live in Chicago one of these days, but when my plane touched down at LaGuardia, I was so happy to see that New York City skyline. It’s taken a little while, but I am really beginning to feel at home here. And when I passed the Indian restaurant in Woodside on my way to the grocery store and the manager jumped out of the door to say hello and give me a samosa, all I could do was think clichedly, I love New York. And, perhaps best of all was coming back into my apartment, its soft light visible from the hallway, to the person who makes everywhere feel like home.

well the truth, it felt so heavy

It snowed again and it’s so gloriously, bone-crunching cold here in New York City and everywhere you look there are red earmuffs and children pressed to parents and couples forgetting any fights they’ve had so they can huddle together and walk down newly plowed streets, the pushed aside snow still so new it has not gone gray. I took the train into work today, and as I watched the towns pass me by – Woodside, Flushing, Auburndale, Bayside – I felt nostalgic, thinking about how limited my time at my current job is and how soon I will start all over, again.

I’m thrilled, of course, to start my new job – to work with people I already respect and admire, to write about a place that is truly amazing with people who have more stories to tell than I ever could in a lifetime – but I have been at my current job for two years and I will miss it. When I leave, all the tediousness melts away – the draining long nights and the conference calls with people spouting corporate jargon  - and in its place is the remembrance of why I started there in the first place. I am surrounded by people who I have grown to love and admire for their constant battle for that ever elusive truth. I am surrounded by people, who despite all their proclaimed cynicism, continue to believe in humanity so much that they won’t stop pushing for people to be better, more thoughtful, advocates for justice. Who remind people that we are all in this together – the convicts, the politicians (and sometimes the convicted politicians), the writers, the missionaries, the subway trumpet players, the lovers on Central Park benches. That we understand ourselves only because everyone else exists and perhaps that is why, on a crowded sidewalk, when the wind won’t stop blowing and your shoes are soaking from stepping into melting snow on the corner of 59th Street and 38th Avenue, your day is made when someone catches your eye and, for a second, smiles.

New York City books

As there are with songs, there are a million, give or take a few, books about (or that take place in – or are gloriously peripherally related to) New York City that I love. If you ever get a free moment, of which I know there are precious few, any of these would be worth your while:

History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell (an amazing book of essays about a long vanished New York – my favorite is “McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon.”)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg – this book was one of my all time favorite books as a child – I first read it in first grade and have re-read it a countless number of times since.

The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead

I’m sure there are so, so many I’m forgetting but my mind is drawing a blank now, so there you are for now.

Time for pomegranates, Bob Dylan and bourbon!

 

 

Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there. (Rumi)

I welcomed 2011 at a bar on the 14th floor of a hotel next to the Empire State Building, which cast a red and green glow onto the heated patio where we sat, drinking hot cider and bourbon far into the night. I never realized it was cold that night, in part because of the heaters they distributed around the porch, in part because of the endless amounts of cider and the champagne, in part because I didn’t stop laughing that night, sitting there atop some very tall building, watching an overcast sky in the middle of Manhattan with old and new friends. I looked around me, at the Australian girls in green sparkly dresses and the bartender with dreads from Minnesota and my friends from West Virginia and Pittsburgh and New York City and watched as we, with all our hopes and fears and missteps and tangos and gloriously perfected cartwheels, moved into another turn around the sun.

I don’t usually make resolutions but as I sat there, talking to friends, holding my husband’s hand, receiving texts (what a jarringly modern word)from friends around the country, I thought just how lucky I am . So, I hope this year to visit many more friends, to write many more letters, to let everyone in my life know just how amazing this universe is that I got a chance to know them at all.

p.s.  I must put more of the Rumi quote I used as my subject line because it’s one of my all time favorites:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Language, ideas, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make any sense.”

snow day!

So I know you Wyoming and Idaho folk are used to this, but it is a rare winter when we get a snowstorm that brings two feet of snow! I got to work from home today, so I finished up early and took a walk around my neighborhood:

We live on the second floor of this house:

Our street:

From a crazy house that blares holiday music:

A fallen awning:

From one of my favorite bars, Saints & Sinners:

Always go here for hot chocolate!

Cute bar with a fireplace:

For some reason I’ve always liked the barbershop…what are those things called? That spin?

Reminders of a warmer climate:

We always go here for curry fries:

Lots of Irish people live in our neighborhood:

The Stop Inn has been a diner in our neighborhood since the 30s

This taxi is going nowhere fast:

Tangent – the following photos are from my parents’ house in Pennsylvania:

My brother’s birthday is right before Christmas, hence the balloon:

The house where I spent the latter part of my teenage years. We moved here at the end of my sophomore year in high school:

My childhood best friend’s mom made this cute little guy: