word doodle number two, for you

dear you

i am moving
away
away
away
yesterday i started
packing
sitting on the hardwood
of my first
new york
apartment
filtering through
my nightstand
recycling
keeping
throwing
away away away
surrounded by cardboard
half-empty
half-full?
i found this mixtape
you made for me
"ultimate road trip mix"
ha
i had forgotten it
the track list tucked inside
i bet you forgot too
tears welled
i laughed
how can something i forgot make me cry?
stupid 
the radiator fills with
steaming hot water
trickle trickle trickle
i try to decide
keep
throw
keep
throw
away away away
play?
play

--

he had a black eye
now i have two
they're healing (i guess)
i don't even miss you
is the crazy part
i thought you were gone
from 118
i put you in an envelope
letters, notes, cards
taped it up
and shipped you
away
away
away
through the dead branches
of winter
every moment together
an answered prayer
child, have you gone crazy?
(yes and no and maybe)
i was
dancing in the birmingham jail
when i met you
(we were so young)
there's no rap on this goddamn mix
any
way
way
way
tuesday
ruby
goodbye
love me

2010: The Year of (The Birth of) The Commune

The lucky ones amongst this group of organisms we call the human race occasionally have moments that reveal to them the purpose and direction of all their past experiences. These moments are like the flash of headlights you see as a car makes a turn toward you and then away at the far end of a long road; fleeting, flashing, and unmistakable, they simultaneously illuminate everything down the road and everything that came before. At the risk of losing it all, I have to say: certain recent events provide evidence that I might be one of the lucky ones.

For the past few months, I've been feeling very inspired and artistically anxious; like I knew I wanted to create something but I wasn't sure just what that thing was supposed to be. I've felt inspired by the era of New York embodied by Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe: the New York of the true artist. Even though I had barely even heard those two names before this year, I felt an undeniable pull toward them and their story. I had daydream fantasies of quitting my job and moving into a big empty loft with my two best friends, getting a job at Starbucks or something, working to make just enough money to pay the bills, and using all my new free time to make art and love.

I dreamed about this so many times, knowing in the back of my mind that I would probably never actually do it, because the great value of responsibility instilled in me by my parents pulses through me too prominently. This pulse bugged me. I wanted to be one of those people: one of those people who just drops everything for art and love and beauty, who takes risks in the name of creation. I saw myself crouched on the floor over scraps of paper, my hair long and messy, or maybe short and messy, surrounded by paint smears and word doodles, with my two best friends on either side taking photos and editing film or painting or talking about art. I emblazoned this image on the back of my eyelids, labeled it "desire," and went on with my normal, responsible adult life. But not even the responsible side of me could make me stop wanting it. And once I want something, that's usually just it. I just don't forget things I desperately want. I don't even think I can.

I've always been a quality over quantity kind of girl. Given the choice, I would rather have one amazing steak than lots of mediocre ones. I prefer the experience of one incredibly inspiring piece of theater over a large number of ones that are just sorta inspiring. I would rather have mind-blowing sex once every few months than so-so sex on a regular basis. And the same basic principal applies to my history with relationships: I would rather have a small number of nurturing, enriching, encouraging relationships than a large number of relationships that do nothing but keep me entertained. I've always been like that, so it's maybe no surprise that the universe blessed me with Zachary and Jenny nearly three years ago - and that, now, the universe seems to be aligning, for whatever unknown future purpose, to bring us closer and closer together.

At the end of January, inspired by a particularly exhausting roommate situation, I decided that I needed to move out by the beginning of March. I put feelers out on Twitter and had a magazine acquaintance contact me telling me her friend was looking to move around the same time. Said girl emailed me, we met for brunch, I liked her and we decided to move forward with the moving process. We started emailing Craigslist links back and forth and going to see apartments. I liked a couple places but nothing overwhelmingly called to me. On Tuesday of this week, she sent me an email that changed everything.

She said we had an appointment that night to see an apartment on 104th street. I stopped and stared at the address, reading it over and over again to make sure I was seeing the numbers in the right order. Then I started laughing. It was the upstairs apartment in Zachary's building.

Aside: I don't really believe in coincidences. If anything, I tend to fall on the other end of the spectrum, seeing meaning where there probably is none. But sometimes, stuff happens that is just too strange - too uncanny, too serendipitous, and too fucking unlikely - to be anything but meaningful. And I really believe this is one of those things. I mean seriously: of all the buildings in all of Manhattan, his literally lands in my lap via a person I just met one month ago. It's not like I hunted it out. It came to me.

Even before the apartment came to me, when I was talking to him about my hunt for a new home, Zac told me that when he first walked into his apartment, it felt exactly like when he first walked onto the Ole Miss campus: he just knew it was right. He could feel it. He said he had actually been sort of reluctant to feel as good about the apartment as he did, because at the time he didn't want to live in Harlem - but he couldn't deny just how right it felt. I have to believe that there's a reason he felt the same way on both occasions: he's been pulled in a certain direction for years - first to Oxford, then to Ole Miss, then to journalism, then to New York, then to Harlem, then to East 104th - for a specific reason. And now I'm being pulled there too. And if everything goes as planned, Jenny will move into Zac's apartment at some point this year. And then we will all be there together, being each other's home and family and hub of artistic inspiration and creation. We will be The Commune.

I'm not getting the loft and the unemployment and the Bohemian freedom of Patti and Robert, but in a way, I'm getting an opportunity to create exactly what they had, on the terms of the lease of new youth.

I'm lucky - the universe saw the back of my eyelids. And I am so thankful.

 

April 2007

My grown-up Christmas list

Turns out, it's not that different from the shit I wanted as a child.





















I still want toys (iPhone) and extra toys to make those toys even better (earbuds), along with cute furry animals. And in case you don't know what a Maine Coon cat is, I'm here to enlighten you.

They're kind of expensive and I do have a small fear that I will turn into a crazy cat lady, but I can't help myself. They're so cool! They grow to like four times the size of a normal domestic cat. When I move into my new apartment - which I'm planning to do at the end of the year - it can protect me! Rawr.

Oh God. I just used far too many exclamation points when talking about getting a fucking cat. Help me.

COLD

With the help of my good friend Jenny - and her superior upper body strength - I have achieved air conditioner success. Behold.























A thing of beauty, isn't she? This really is going to greatly improve my quality of life in NYC, for a few reasons.

1. She's cold.
2. She blocks out 95% of the street noise.
3. She has a remote and a sleep timer!

The guy also sold me a 2-year warranty plan for half price, so this bitch is gonna be in my life for a while. Boys may come and go, but AC Sasha (this is what I have decided to name her, just now) is here to stay.

Life is good right now. I feel happy. My job is going well - I'm starting to really like and appreciate what I do - and New York, once again, is proving to never get old. There's always something new to discover, new to learn, new to love. I've been to a lot of cities in this country, and nowhere feels like home like New York does.

Speaking of traveling, I have decided I will travel out of the country by the time I am 25. I never have, which is completely insane. Jenny was telling me at dinner tonight about a couple of her friends who are enrolled in a "life abroad" program where you basically set aside $5,000 and this company hooks you up with a job and a place to live and all that stuff in a foreign country. It's like study abroad for adults. I want to do it. I would love to pack my bags and leave the country for six months - maybe even a year - and live somewhere totally foreign to me. I would love to blog about it, and be a real journalist for a year, writing about all the new things I would discover. Maybe it will be my 25th birthday present to myself.

Another thing I've decided, in one of my brilliant shower epiphanies: if and when I ever decide to get married, I want my hubby-to-be to call me his "beyoncé." I mean, it rhymes with fiancée, and I bet in everyday conversation - "my beyoncé and I went to a movie this weekend," "my beyoncé makes badass salads," "my beyoncé made me put a ring on it" - it sounds *just like fiancée. Like I bet people wouldn't even notice. Anyway, the man I deem worthy of marriage will have no problem doing this, and he will do it willingly, because he will find it hilarious. Because it is.

Sigh. Until next time.

HOT

This is what the surface of the sun looks like.
















Pretty, right? Well it's also how my room felt last night. As a result, I tossed and turned all night, totaling what I approximate to be about two hours of sleep. Because I am a total g'maw and I need at *least 6 hours of sleep every night to function well, I have made the decision every New Yorker eventually makes, no matter how much they insist they "really don't need one."

Tonight, I will venture uptown and buy an air conditioner. Of course I made this decision on the one day a week I also wanted to wear heels to work. So I'll be in PC Richard's in my kitten heels and cocktail dress, lugging around a box that will probs be huge, and praying that somehow I can get it into my apartment by myself.

That's pretty quintessential single girl in Manhattan though, right? I am also gonna have to figure out how to get it in my window, like approximately now, because it's 90 degrees outside right now and my apt is going to be so hot when I get home that I might get the vapors (pronounced: vay-puhs).

Wish me luck. Updates to come later.

Until next time.

New Yorkers aren't assholes

Ha! It's my second post of the day, just in case you suspected my devotion had wavered. It has not. Plus, I had something blogworthy to write about.

As I was walking home from work-->train-->grocery store, I passed an old man on my block, just a few buildings down from mine. I had my headphones in, and as is the norm, I was just looking straight ahead, trying to avoid eye contact. (In New York, this is The Way. It's not because people are rude, it's just The Way it is.) But I could feel this man pause, and I could feel his eyes following me as I walked by. Not in a creepy way, but in a sweet old-man-wants-to-say-hello way. Something inside me stopped me and told me to take out my damn headphones and actually talk to the man. So I did.

He said, "You watching the parade today?" Never the biggest fan of St. Patrick's Day, I said, no, I'm not, and smiled.

He said, "Oh, well you look like you could pass as being Irish. Are you Irish?" I was charmed at this point.

"No, unfortunately, I'm not; not that I know of, anyway," I told him.

He said, "Oh, well you look like a beautiful Irish girl. I mean, you're a beautiful girl, of any nationality." Then he smiled and waved and we said our goodbyes.

It seems that every time I actually stop to talk to someone in New York, they're actually really friendly. True, most guys eyeballing me as I walk by are total creepsters, but this man lives a few buildings down from me and now we sort of know each other. I wish I had gotten his name and all that, but oh well. I'm sure I'll see him again.

Sigh, NYC. Just when I think I might be over you for good, you go and win my heart back. It's true what they say about living in and loving New York: it really is like a relationship. There are ebbs and flows, moments of love and moments of hate. But for those of us who truly love this city, it's an undying love, a marriage. For better or for worse.

Until next time.

To your chair from my chair

It's here, y'all. I'm lounging in my new huge chair, and it's super comfortable, and the entire move, from E 10th to E 118th, took exactly an hour. Also I didn't have to do anything. I paid the mover, who I found randomly on Craigslist, $45. And the guy I bought the chair from was super helpful and helped the guy move it into my apt, so I gave him some extra cash too. All together, chair + move = $122. Not bad.

As promised, a photo.

Iz big

Right now the chair seems a little big for the space, but I'm sure I will get used to it. Next project: a television/DVD player and a dresser.

I'm still waiting to hear back from the interviews I had last week. I'm still hopeful. Hope with me!

Until next time.

The chair as a symbol, part 2

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a chair.

Well, I mean, I made a down payment of $17 on a $60 chair. I talked him down from $100! Here is the chair, in all its unimpressive glory, turned on its side and wrapped in plastic.

Plz to take me home and unwrap me? Twhs

Last night was a really hard night for me. I went to bed after midnight, then woke up again at around 1:30, then again around 3:30, then 4:30, and I didn't go back to sleep again. I just decided to get up around 7:20, instead of my normal rising time of about 8:10. I was having a bunch of stress dreams about the job hunt and continually being rejected. I went to work exhausted, then there was no cream for the office coffee. Sad day.

Then toward the end of the day, after I wrote a story and went to an edit meeting, both with about the same lackadaisical (OMGz that word is so hard to spell) attitude, I decided to change my mind and be positive. In the edit meeting one of my bosses was like, 'So, Meghan, do you have anything? Anything to add?' I was embarrassed to say no, except some viral videos I had found and was going to send to her as ideas for the site.

Since I started the internship, I've had the wrong attitude. Oh, it's only part-time. Oh, it doesn't pay, so why should I make an effort? The answer is I should make an effort because: what else have I got to do? Yes, I'm unemployed. But half-assing my internship certainly isn't going to change that. So this afternoon I had a change of mind and decided to give it my all, despite the lack of pay. I typed up the notes I had taken at the edit meeting and sent them to the editors, without having to be asked. It's a small thing but it seemed like they appreciated it.

So the picture above is just the chairy on top of my ice cream sunday. OMGGGG I'm too good. Or bad. You decide.

I still have to schedule movers some time this week, and get the thing from E 10th to E 118th st, but I have high hopes. I will certainly upload after pics, and I fully expect them to be more impressive than the before pic above.

Until next time.

The chair as a symbol

I jumped the gun on the chair. I got up this morning and measured my doorway and it's only 29 inches across; the chair is 32 inches at its narrowest point, so I can't even get it in my room. It's the little stuff like that, stuff that doesn't even really matter (there will be other chairs), that I find really getting me down. But it's about more than just the chair. It's hard to do things in the city.

I've been here a month now. I knew moving to the city would be hard. I knew it would be hard to get all my shit up here, find a place to live, find a job, get settled, and all that stuff. But I didn't realize, at least not fully, what an emotional strain it was going to be. Since I got up here, my emotions have been all over the place. It's a daily, sometimes hourly, thing; I never really know how I'm going to feel when I wake up in the morning. Sometimes I wake up feeling productive and like, despite being unemployed and alone in one of the biggest cities in the world, I might actually be able to accomplish what I want to do. Then by the afternoon, I might feel really depressed and lonely and like no matter what I do, I won't be able to get the job I want because the jobs simply aren't there.

And the city is just hard. It's a hard place. Not just physically, but figuratively. It's difficult to do anything, to get anything done. Last night on the way home from going to the gym and going to look at the chair, I took the bus, and we sat in traffic and got stopped at literally every single red light between 91st and 118th. Sometimes the city is just against you. It's hard to do things; at home, in the South, you can just get in a car and go anywhere you want at any time you want. Up here, you rely on others to transport you, which sometimes works out really well, and sometimes makes you want to cry because it's so frustrating.

Also, I have an interview tomorrow at the gym I told y'all I applied to. On the one hand, I'm like, "YAY! A job interview that might actually lead to something substantive and a little bit of income." Then on the other hand, I'm like, "Really? Four years of college and this is what I'm doing with my life? Hoping to get a menial desk job at a gym so I can pay the bills and afford a (discounted) gym membership? This is what it's come to?"

It's not that I'm ashamed. I have a lot of respect for people who work in service industries; I've done it before and it's one of the hardest jobs out there, at least in terms of stress levels. But I just know I can do so much more. I realize that a month is not a long time, and that in the longer scheme of things, it's essentially nothing. And I have accomplished some things since I got here--my internship at the Web site being one of them. I spent the morning applying to temp agencies and some more jobs on Craigslist. I'm trying, I really am, and I don't want to sound too whiney.

I just wonder when I will feel settled. I mean, really settled. I can't wait until that moment when I can sit down in my room--maybe in a chair?-- or sit down to dinner with friends and think to myself, "This is it. This is the moment. I have a job I love, wonderful friends, a home that I feel at home in, and I live in New York City. This is it." I feel like a leaf blowing around in the wind after a bad storm. I just want a nice place to land.

I know I can't rush these things, but I have to ask myself.
What if that moment never comes?

Until next time.

Chocolate cake, at long last, and a chair

A few days after I first arrived in the city, back when C was in town visiting, we went to dinner at a barbecue place in Brooklyn. After we finished, I remember walking around and saying, 'I really want some cake. Like seriously I want some cake, let's get some.'

Of course we didn't get some, which is fine, but my craving didn't go away. It hung on. It gnawed at me for weeks. It was a very specific craving. It had needs: chocolate cake, chocolate icing, lots of chocolate, extra chocolate plz. I had a birthday cake in DC that A got for me, which was quite good, but it wasn't exactly what I had been craving, so the beast remained, calculating the perfect time to nom. Tonight, that time came.

Siiiiiiiiiiigh.

I made this cake with my bare hands. And a fork. Z and I decided to take the evening to finish season one of our Mad Men Marathon (M3), eat dinner, and make cake. If I have two weaknesses in life, it's chocolate/cake and beautiful men in beautiful suits. Check and check; done and done.

Don Draper plz to have babiez wif me

In other news, I got a chair today! Well, I went and looked at a chair and made a commitment to buy it. It's a big oversized arm chair, light green with red pillows (to match my room!). I'm paying $100 for the chair + the two pillows + the moving truck and two guys to move it into my apartment. I think it's a pretty good deal. Here's a pic:

Courtesy of Craigslist = terrible quality

It's almost four feet wide. That's a big chair. I'm going to put it in the corner of my room where my radiator is (in front of my window), and maybe some time in the future I'll add a little TV stand with a TV and a DVD player. It will be my own personal living room. I'm so excited. This chair is basically perfect for wrapping up in a blanket, sinking down, and watching DVDs or reading a book. More pics to come after it actually arrives.

Until next time.

PS. Avenue Q was lolllllz.

Candlies?

It's been a productive four hours. I found a microwave for $20 on Craigslist and ventured downtown to take a look at it. On the way I stopped by the laundromat and dropped off my clothes. After seeing it, I decided to take the microwave, but because of the shitty shitty shitty weather today (read: rain/snow/grey sludge mix) I decided to wait to pick it up until tomorrow. Then I headed even further downtown to go to K-mart where I got: a full-length wall mirror (YES! at long last), some frames, two pretty pillows for mah bed, a wall clock, and some other small things. My room feels a little bit more complete. This makes me very happy.

Also: J got two free tickets to see Avenue Q tonight, but she has another show to go to, so Z and I are going together. I'm pretty much thrilled. I've been wanting to see this show for a long time, and now I get to go for free. UHMAZING.

Oh, and while I was in K-Mart, I saw these:

Candlies?

They're candles that smell like (obvs) various candies. The Almond Joy one even had little "candy bar chunks" on top. I was like mmmmmmmm, then I was like, oh wait, this is made of wax. I don't want something in my house that looks like delicious candy unless I can eat it.

So on my way out of the store I bought some Valentine's Day candy. Nom nom.

Until next time.

Hello from NYC(home)

Hi faithful readers. I am coming to you tonight from the delicious comfort of my king-size bed in Manhattan/East Harlem. I started an unpaid internship at a .com yesterday; it was a very busy day! My supervisor kept me busy from 10 to 6:15--I posted content to the site, wrote a post, and put together a couple of blog entries. I am really excited to get some Web experience, even if it's unpaid. Some of you may know, but most of you don't, that one of my dream jobs is to work for Jezebel. It's a snarky feminist blog that comments on news, politics, and pop culture. Basically, loves it.

So the inauguration was insane. All in all, I am glad to say that I was there for such an historical event, but there's a reason it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity--because most people in their right minds would never do it more than once. As some of you may have heard (there are groups on Facebook too!), lots of people with purple, blue, and silver tickets were left out in the cold (literally) that day. The whole event was so poorly organized that some ticketholders could not find their way inside the gate.

A and I were among the purple ticket holders who were confused and angry; when we got off the metro to walk to the gate/entry point, we found that a bus was blocking the way in. A police officer told us that someone had been injured/gotten stuck under the bus (probs a lie), so they couldn't move it yet. Anyway, eventually the mass of people in which we were standing started moving forward, and we went along. When we got closer to the bus, however, it was clear we had two directions we could go, and neither was toward the gate. We asked some police officers which way to go, and each one gave us a different anwer. None of the cops had megaphones or bullhorns or any method of being loud at all. We eventually wound our way around to another purple gate, and by sheer force of will, found our way in. Now I know we were among the lucky few. Had we walked a different way, we probably would not have made our way in.

The event itself was great. At first we were standing behind a group of really tall people who also happened to be on an incline, so I literally could not see anything except the backs of their heads. I was so frustrated at this point that I almost started crying. I was cold, hungry (we didn't eat breakfast that morning), distraught, frustrated, and I couldn't see. So we moved back a little bit, away from the Capitol, and it was like opening a window or something. I could see everything, and it was officially amazing. His speech was great, I actually really liked Rick Warren's prayer, and the music was beautiful (though pre-recorded).

The whole (really long) weekend was kind of overshadowed, however, by some major drama that went down with A and me. I won't go into details here, because frankly it's nonnayobiz, but I will say that he and I are taking some time apart. I mean, we're always apart because of distance, but like apart-apart. I just got to a point where I felt more unhappy than happy, and that is never a good sign. So now I'm alone, living in New York City, unemployed, and feeling kind of low. I mean, my life is great; I have a warm bed, a place to call home, great friends, a supportive family. But everything is still not settled. My room still feels bare and empty. It's also kind of dirty from the girl who lived here before me, so I need to remedy that. I still don't have a microwave. It's hot in herr and my window is stuck shut. In all honesty, I'm terrified of being alone in this city. I know it's what's right for me right now, but it's still scary, you know?

Ah well, I need to go do some shopping for apt stuff.
Majorly yours.

I can't believe I live in New York

I've been in New York for 10 days now. A week plus three. In those 10 days I have: visited the MOMA, gone to the Met, rode the Staten Island ferry (which is free, BTdubs), had an HR interview at a huge mag company, interviewed for a style internship at a huge mag, and gotten an apartment.

What? Oh yeah, I got an apartment. It happened really fast. I found this posting on Craigslist for a "huge room with two windows" in East Harlem, and I responded on a whim. Craigslist is so shady and you never know what to expect, so I tend to think of replying to any post as replying on a whim, but whatevz. The girl e-mailed me back the next day explaining that she was moving out and needed someone to move in her room ASAP, so I went uptown with Z and C to check it out. I walked in the room and immediately knew I wanted to live there. The room is, indeed, HUGE, and the girl is also selling me her king size bed for $150. Basically, uhmazing. And the rent is $790 plus utilities. I'll be living with two other girls (the living room space is converted to a bedroom), but for the price I can deal with that. The neighborhood is cute--despite what you may have heard about Harlem--and it's a brownstone walk-up.

Mah front door and one of the windows of my room.

I love the outside of the apt, I love the room, it has a really nice kitchen, and there's a pretty good-sized bathroom for NYC. And it's in Manhattan, so the commute is not too bad. Yeah, it's way uptown, but it's only three bus stops (about ten minutes) up from where Z lives, which will be super nice for going out and hanging out and stuff.

I've been walking around the city a lot, and sometimes I look up and feel the cold wind on my face and see the glow of the city reflecting off the sky at night and I really can't believe I live here. I don't understand when people say they don't like New York, or even when people don't choose the place they start their lives based on how that place affects them. I can't imagine starting my life somewhere I don't absolutely love, or anywhere but New York actually. Everything cheesy New York lovers say about the city is absolutely true for me. It makes my heart beat faster and sometimes I feel like crying because it makes me so happy to be here. I first came to the city when I was 18, and as soon as I stepped off the bus I knew I was meant to be here. And here I am, starting my life and making and watching my dreams come true. How many people can say they have done the same? I really am just so thankful that I have people in my life who love me enough to help me and support me in this.

I love life.
Majorly yours.