hipster hymnal

Apparently God is on Facebook. If I friend him, will he friend me back? When I post this blog post to my status post, will he "like" it? These are the questions I ask myself as I fall asleep.

Last night was part two of Zac's going away party, part one being a total shit show at St. Jerome's on Rivington where Luc Carl served us beers and I pondered how he used to fuck (and apparently maybe still does?!!) Lady Gaga before she was Lady Gaga. I don't even know if I've written about it here, but he is moving to New Orleans. Zac, not Luc Carl. Just for a bit is the plan and unlike most people his just for a bit usually means just for a bit. Not like when people say, I hate this job, but I'm gonna stay here just for a bit until I find something better, and then they work there until they're 60 and they retire and suddenly they wonder where their lives went and then they die of cancer or a heart attack or something caused by sitting at a desk for forty years while they were getting ready to quit to find something better. No, not like that. Just for a bit, then it's off with the winds.

Last night, Jenny showed us an amazing film she made about our friends and our lives in New York. I teared up once and stayed teared up for a few minutes. Then I laughed and felt OK, but just OK, and today I have an OK hangover, which is sort of worse than a whiskey hangover. When you're reading a book, finishing a chapter isn't nearly as painful as finishing the book itself. When you finish a chapter, it's on to the next one, but when you finish the book you put it down and just cry cry cry because now that book is gone forever and you can never see it again the way you saw it the first time you read it. At least that's what I do. I read books slowly.

Last night, I played guitar in front of people for the first time ever outside of my guitar class. I played guitar by myself in front of people for the first time ever. I was scared shitless, and it was only 7 people, my friends sitting in my apartment on my floor listening to my voice. It's possible that I have never been that scared in my entire life. Turns out, playing guitar in front of people is absolutely nothing like playing guitar alone in one's bedroom. You have to deal with a lot of things that just aren't  concerns when you're alone in your bedroom. I was emotional, and I was nervous, and I was a little drunk and tired, so I forgot lyrics and I flubbed up chords. But two months after the very first time I picked up a guitar, I played a whole song, and I sang, and everyone applauded and told me I did a good job. I felt bad that I messed up so much, but I was touched by everyone's support. I thought about how I could have done better, then realized I didn't remember a damn thing I had done, right or wrong. The only thing to do better is to keep playing guitar.

Last night, after everyone left, I watched Zac and Jenny re-enact a scene from that movie Salt with Angelina Jolie, which I haven't seen, in his almost but not quite empty bedroom. They were upside-down and sideways and their hands were in the air and tied behind their backs with invisible chains. They described a couple scenes in which Angelina's character kills the bad guys, and they laughed and I thought about violence in films. How sometimes, and perhaps more often than not, we suspend reality so that we can feel a certain way, because we want to feel that way, because we need to feel that way.

Like sometimes on my way to work I stop at the bodega on the corner right outside the 6 stop at 103rd street, to get a juice or a coffee or a water pumped with vitamins. Each time I go in, I do a delicate dance with the gaggle of folks gathered at the counter using their pennies to scratch off their cards promising them the opportunity to win their millions. They suspend everything about reality to focus on this one little hope, some double digits strewn across perforated cardboard, nothing but ink on cardboard, but it's everything to them. Most of them will never win, and they know it. They have to know it, somewhere. I fish a dollar out of my wallet to pay for my drink. A dollar a drink, a dollar a dream.

Sometimes long songs seem short, and sometimes short songs seem really long. I haven't decided which is better. I guess it depends on how we want to feel, how we need to feel, what we are willing to suspend on that particular day in that particular moment. My pause and play buttons for suspension, and I suppose thereby for reality, aren't working very well recently.

They're worn out.

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

No-Post Friday

So normally I like to write my posts ahead of time so I can have them ready to go and up bright and early each morning. But last night, instead of writing, I laid (lay? lain? lied? fuck it) in bed with my two besties and ate homemade fried chicken and cookies. THAT'S RIGHT, HOMEMADE. There might have also been mac and cheese, mashed potatoes and sweet potato casserole (or as you Yankees like to call it, "candied yams"... amateurs), but I'll never tell. We watched The Big Bang Theory, a show I had never even heard of until a few weeks ago, when J started tweeting about it like a mad woman talks to her cats. It's really funny, and a pretty brilliant show, due in no small part to Jim Parsons, a good ole Texas boy who plays a socially awkward, near-Aspergers, adorable, lovable 20something who is also from Texas. I basically want to marry him.

Anyway, here is a photo illustration of what I did last night in lieu of writing an actual post. You're welcome.

Well, they say that every day is an opportunity to learn something new, and today I took that opportunity and learned something new about myself. And that thing is that I am fucking terrible at Photoshop. Oh, and in case it's not really obvious, that is what I look like when I am sighing contentedly. This could also be interpreted as me sleeping, while visions of fried chicken, cold milk and chocolate chip cookies dance in my head. So then J and Z are watching me sleep, which is creepy, and they are apparently some combination of suspicious and completely apathetic about it.

Fin.

Everything is a gift from the universe

Well, it's Thanksgiving*. I've never written a blog post about Thanksgiving. At this time last year, this blog had not yet been born - though its first birthday is coming up very, very soon! -making this my inaugural happy Thanksgiving post. Bawk bawk, y'all.

Firstly, I should say that this is my first Thanksgiving ever away from my family. (Insert frowny face here.) I decided a couple months ago to visit my BFF C in Chicago instead. My parents were surprisingly receptive to the idea -- they made reservations for themselves and a couple good friends at a fancy restaurant in downtown Birmingham that serves three-course meals on Thanksgiving. I'm kind of jealous, to be honest. I miss my parents, I miss tha Queen B., and I miss the South. But I will be home for Xmas in just under a month for like ten days, so I'm really excited about that.

Life in New York has been such an adjustment for me, and not always an easy one. It's really easy to get caught up in the glamor of being young in New York - going out all the time, sipping on (often free) cocktails, just generally being jaded - and to forget what's really important in life. It seems that the longer I live here, the faster life happens and the less time I have to devote to really important stuff, like thanking the universe for all the amazing things I've been blessed with. So here goes. An open, sincere, unabridged letter to the universe about all the things for which I'm thankful.

1. My family. Although they are far away, which is really hard, I still feel their presence everyday. Were it not for their support, I could never have achieved the things I have, and they are a constant reminder of who I am and where I come from. Life in New York is complicated, and my parents' lives are so simple in comparison - and I don't mean that in a degrading or bad way at all. I mean they just enjoy being where they are, and for them life has always been - at least since I was born - about giving me all the tools I needed to do well in life. So far, they've done an amazing job. In addition, they constantly remind me that I am very loved.

2. My friends. Were it not for my close group of amazing, inspirational, talented, hilarious, brilliant friends in New York, I would have literally gone insane already. They give me a home away from home, a family away from my family. They inspire me to work and create and do amazing things. Along with C in Chicago, they've been there for me through some hard stuff this year, and I am so thankful.

3. My health. My health has been off and on this year, and as of late I've not been feeling too well - but having said that, I am very thankful for my body and all the amazing things it does. Being healthy all the time is kind of a curse, I think, because it's virtually impossible, when healthy, to remember what it feels like not to be healthy. I'm kind of thankful that I've felt sick at times, because when I start to feel better, I appreciate it more. Is that weird? Whatever. I'm thankful for life, period.

4. Love. I experienced my first real heartbreak this year. In less than two months, I went from dating someone I really thought might be the love of my life to hearing him tell me he no longer felt the same way about me. I've lost sleep because of it. There were days that I would go in the bathroom stall at work just so I could cry and get it over with. Other days, I was so depressed that I wasn't sure that I could even go on enjoying life. But in the end, it made me stronger, and all I can honestly say is that I'm thankful I experienced that kind of love at all. It was my first grown-up love, and it was fucking hard at times, but I learned a lot, and at least I know - without a doubt - that I experienced something a lot of people never do. And I have hope that I will experience an even greater love in the future.

5. Hope. I remember hearing someone say once that hope was a meaningless word. They said that because it's not an actionable verb - because saying you "hope" for something is not the expression of any specific action - it's essentially devoid of any real meaning. I am thankful that I don't feel that way. Through everything I've been through this year, heartbreak included, I still cling to my hope for the future. I have high hopes for myself and my career, as well as my personal life. I still have hope that if I believe in them hard enough, and make every effort to live my life humbly and authentically, I will be able to make my dreams real. I have hope that I will find another great love in my life, and that I will one day get married and have brilliant children. I have hope that I will make myself a successful career writer - whether it's writing books or magazine articles or plays or TV shows. I have hope that I continue to be surrounded by great people. For these hopes I am thankful.

6. My blog. I really poured myself into my blog in September, and I've been making a sincere effort to write at least five days a week. I'm so thankful there are actually people out there who want to read my writing, and who give me such positive feedback. Thank you thank you thank you. It's been such an outlet for me - and without it, I honestly don't even know who I would be. It's become such a big part of my life that it's hard to imagine how I could be happy without it.

7. New York. The experiences I have had in New York have helped me grow. I can honestly say that I have matured more in the past 11 months than in my entire life before I moved to the city. In some ways, I'm a completely different person than I was when I moved up here. Some things will never change - you know, like my unending love for Beyoncé and Lady Gaga and terrible rap music - but in other aspects, change is the only constant. Since moving to New York, I've experienced more love, sorrow, confusion, anger, hurt, joy and exhilaration than ever before in my life. For all these emotions, I am thankful, because in every case - even the most painful ones - New York has made me feel more alive than ever before.

So thank you, universe, for giving me a year of dreams, both good and bad. Thank you for the beauty that surrounds me. Thank you for helping me grow. Thank you for keeping me in check with what's really important in life. Thank you for occasionally reminding me of who I am, and helping me to keep sight of it. Now, just help me to live my life with as much outward love in my heart as you've shown to me, and I'll do my part by showing others as much compassion as possible and always trying to stay positive.

Oh - and I can't believe I almost forgot this - thanks for Weezy.

*Recently dubbed Wanksgiving by my friend M; I'm not exactly sure why or what that means, but it sounds street as shit so I'm keeping it.