Books I've Never Read

Hi. 
I realize that I have not updated this in several months. Formal complaints have been lodged*. And you have my sincerest apologies, Seven People Who Honestly Care**, but I just haven't been struck by the bloggiest thoughts of late. Which is probably a good thing, considering the archival abundance of sad-blogging. 
I am super not-sad right now. 

But never fear! This one's totally got sad. Even if it's not totally true. Parts are completely true in that they happened. Parts are completely true in that I just re-read about them in an old dream journal***.  And parts are completely made up. 

Anyway, I might do more of this. Stories about books I've never read. We'll see.

*******

I've never ready any Jane Austen.

I told that to someone I thought I loved once, and they whispered 'me, neither', and I thought that meant something. 

There's a cultural assumption that women love Jane Austen, and that's probably why I never bothered. Besides, plucky heroines aggravate, pining is a bore, matchmaking is gruesome. I gave Bridget Jones a shot, but watching someone whimper their way between a snooze and a sleazeball tries the nerves. Of course no one likes the singles table.

At a reception I regretted attending as soon as I arrived, a woman spent twenty minutes complaining: “I am so hungry. I might literally faint. Do you think they have any bread? Honey?”

Because of course there was a Honey, a dead-eyed hunk starting into his beer, counting the seconds until he could have another without her asking if he shouldn’t slow it down some. She pawed at his elbow. “Honey? Can you ask if there’s bread?”

I signaled the waiter for another and told them about my morning: While emptying the bathroom wastebasket into a larger bag, a roach tumbled out. A giant roach, with what looked like a second roach emerging from its rear end. By the time I realized what it was: a giant egg sac, engorged with a billion little pre-roaches - it had maneuvered its way to the outside of the metal basket, which I tapped against the toilet until it fell into the bowl, and I flushed it away.

Hungry Woman was silent for a gorgeous moment before she asked why I would tell a story like that. I finished my wine. It was really good wine. The waiter appeared at my shoulder. Honey got up to get another beer.

I said: “I bet you’re not as hungry now.”

Do you want me to tell you that’s where I met the man I thought I loved? Of course it wasn’t. I didn’t make a single new friend that night. I don't live in a very Austen world.

One night, I told the man I thought I loved that I loved him. He'd said it first. I thought that meant something, too.

But then I started having these dreams.

In the dreams, we: myself, the man I thought I loved, and my dog, ran through absurd, Dali-esque airports, everything melting or turning into mountains. We were trying to find something: the gate, the plane, help. In the end, someone had to choose: the flight, my dog, each other - the situations varied. But every time, he left on his own.  

It is probably unreasonable to hold someone accountable for things they did in your subconscious. But he left us, every time. So maybe I got a little cold after that. Maybe I let things get a little strange.

He moved. Not far, but far enough.  

A friend told me, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

I said: “Bullshit. Absence only abstracts.”

I wondered if any of Ms. Austen’s characters understood that love can exist, yet mean absolutely nothing at the same time.

A few months after I was pretty sure it was over - mostly over, at least - I started having a different dream. We’d be in a classroom, or a prairie house: me, some other people, and my dog. We’d pass a lovely afternoon until funnel clouds appeared on the horizon. Everyone scattered. Some took off through the fields, some went in search of a basement. Other people stayed in the classroom, the prairie house. My dog and I always stayed. We hid under a table, he laid across my chest and I covered his head with my arms, his eyes with my hands. When it was over, we crawled out through the wreckage together, to see who else we could find.

There’s a lot of love in a life, in a person. I don’t think we’ll always know what to do with it all. You might have to let some of it pass. Like books you’ll never read. Pining’s such a waste of time.

*Seriously. Three people have lodged sincere, formal complaints.

** I really really do appreciate anyone who reads this, ever. Even if you only hate-read it just to be able to tell me to shut up in your head, that is still totally cool and I recognize it is a legitimate vital brain function and am honored by your selection.

***Of course I did.

Lent

I miss midnight after Mardi Gras, the hours everything shuts down.

I don't remember why I was out that night, the first time I ever saw it; in New England snow plows clear the streets after storms, in New Orleans they pushed beads to the sides of the roads, pulled from the trees what they could.

There's a clarity that comes when something is over, the initial quiet after the storm, before the real pain, the real work. The hours when you heave off what was, make room for what will be.

There are beads in the trees year round, though.
You can't ever clean everything away.

Recycling for the Reluctant Adult

Do you ever think about the new people in your old spaces?

I do. Mostly in the fall. Winter, too. Mostly at night. Mostly in regard to boys I used to love - some of them I still love, but differently; will always love, but differently.

Their roofs, their balconies, their fire escapes. Stoops, backyards. Private outdoor spaces, places that make the universe seem like maybe it belongs to you. Walls covered in graffiti. Tree tops. Twinkly blankets of stars overhead; skies so clouded with people and their lights, it's all a dappled purple above. Radios playing, rain falling, sirens squealing. Or quiet. So quiet you can hear the breath move through your lungs.

Places you will never go again. Places that would never look the same, even if you could. Perspectives shift, they do not play.

New people on those balconies now, occupying those barely-outside spaces; drinking wine, smoking cigarettes, considering the bricks across the alley. Hearts breaking out of their chests, bored out of their minds. Lost to everything, desperate for anything. Falling in love, falling out of love, hiding from love entirely. Always feeling like they are on the verge of something.

Just like you, just like you, just like you. Just like you.

Girls you will never meet. You're all connected, though, right through. Through the railings you've held, the stairs you've climbed. The tears you've shed in bathrooms; the smiles that come when there's not even a reason, the moment just takes you, it's too perfect, it's fleeting, and you know it. We miss those moments all the time, sometimes just seconds after it's too late. But when you manage to catch one....I don't surf, of course, but I imagine it must be something like catching a wave. I can see how they might be transcendental the same way.

Memory is a double edged sword. It can be sharp on one side, dull on the other. It cannot be trusted. But it is infinitely valuable. A moment you couldn't wait to get out of ends up being one you return to over and over again. The lessons you didn't enjoy learning: how to admit to yourself that you're wrong, how to recognize you're making a mistake in the middle of it. That's probably the shit that makes us better able to jump up and catch the next one. To see it coming, to appreciate it while it's happening. Metaphorically speaking.

I don't know what even made me think of all this. Other than it's winter, and I started writing this at night, and I'm thinking of people I've loved.

Mr. Jackson If You're Nasty

The summer before my 2L year, I walked into the New Orleans LSPCA a little after 4:00 in the afternoon, looking for a puppy.

My roommates were still gone, and would be until right before classes started in a few weeks. I was lonely. (I've never denied being emotionally impulsive.) Besides, I'd wanted a dog all last year anyway, I lived a five minute walk from school, in a big, wonderful house with a little backyard - it might never be a more perfect time for a puppy. And it didn't feel right, living in a house without a dog. I'd always had dogs, I was a dog person.

That's what I was looking for: a dog, some charming mutt of unknown provenance, a puppy that would grow into a hefty canine, one that would take up space in my car, on the couch, in my life. There had always been a dog. My parents adopted Onyx, their pointer/lab mix three years before I was born. She guarded me when I crawled around on my baby blanket, wouldn't let strangers too near without my parent's permission. Simon, the massive Rhodesian we adopted the summer before ninth grade, slept outside my mother's bedroom door nights my father was working in Boston, keeping an eye on all of us, on the street outside, from the top of the stairs. We had our own special thing, too - he protected the hell out of that house, but never blew up my spot when I snuck home late. That's what I was looking for.

But it's not what I found, those puppies were a mess, either sickly-looking, oddly-tempered, or like they'd grow up to be about purse-sized. No, no, no. That wouldn't do at all. So I turned around and started back. You can try again in a few weeks.

The puppies were at the back of the building, so I had to walk through a full row of the adult dogs to get to the door.  I kind of said hi to them all, but didn't pay them much mind - I wanted a puppy, someone I could know from their start. I was three-quarters of the way down the line of kennels when, on my left side, a stocky brown dog who'd been sitting patiently, stood up on his hind legs, and pounded the cage with his front paws. Not aggressively, just a 'Hey! Over here!' Then he sat back down, and looked at me.

He was adorable. Chocolate brown with a white streak down his chest, big liquid eyes, a face shaped like something between a heart and a square. He didn't bark, he didn't pace. He just looked at me. I read the card pinned to the cage. His name was Hershey, he was about a year old. He was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier mix. I'd never even heard of that before.

The staff starting coming out through the kennels - it was almost dinner, time for everyone to go. One woman saw me standing where I was and stopped. Her face lit up, slowly, almost cautious. 'He is a great dog,' she said. 'Great.' I nodded. 'We're closing now, but come back tomorrow, take him out.' I said I would, said goodbye to the dog, and left. I don't think I'd planned on coming back, but the next afternoon there I was.

I took him outside, and he was friendly and sweet and all, but kind of...aloof. He wasn't fawning all over me just because I happened to be there. It was cool to meet me, but let's all be reasonable. It was weird, but I kind of respected the hell out of that. And, let's be honest - there's nothing I love quite like an emotionally unavailable man.

The staff was thrilled. They were all in love with him. He'd been there for months, after being left in the parking lot with a chain around his neck. They'd put him in a children's camp program, brought him around as a breed ambassador dog. They could not figure out why no one had taken him home.

And that's the story of how I met the dog we now call Baylor Jackson, canine homie extraordinaire, the oldest soul I think I've ever encountered, and every single thing I was looking for the day I walked into that animal shelter. We had to spend too many months apart that next year, because I went a little crazy, and then nature went very crazy, but otherwise, we've been together ever since. I picked him up in Houston, after Katrina - a friend's aunt had taken him in, one of the greatest kindnesses I've ever experienced, for which I am eternally grateful. She fell in love with him too, of course. When I showed up that night he was fat as a pig, she'd been cooking him his own dinners, full plates of food. She gave me a gallon-bag of frozen turkey on our way out the door: 'he loves my turkey.' He sat on my lap the whole drive home. My legs lost feeling somewhere outside of Lake Charles, but I didn't care.

In the end, it didn't matter that we didn't know each other from the beginning. I'll never know what happened to him that first year. There are clues - he still has scars on his ears, and one on his head if you know where to look. He's not a big fan of tall men, and he hates it when people give daps. HATES it. There's something about knuckles-hitting-knuckles that upsets him deeply. So no, I don't know, exactly, but I have an idea. And it doesn't matter. The day we met was it's own kind of beginning, for both of us. You can start over anytime.

We made his birthday August 12 - exactly a month between my brother's and mine. Which means he will be ten this year. Ten. He's grown in a grizzled bit of old-man beard, but otherwise he's largely the same. People on the street regularly ask if he's a puppy, actually don't believe me when I tell them, which is hilarious to me, that would be the weirdest thing to lie about. And now, nine years down the line, I think about that puppy lesson all the time. You can have the grandest plans, you always think you know what's right for you. But you probably don't. There's probably someone who knows better than you. And it's okay to trust them.

Happy Birthday, Baylor Jackson. Thanks for picking me.

A Post Apocalyptic Year In Review

"That's all right. I like to have my heart broken." - Kurt Vonnegut

***

"Getting my heart broken was one of the best things that ever happened to me."

I said that to a friend last night. We were standing in the kitchen, talking about boys*. Technically, I was crouching in front of the fridge, trying to find a spot to shove the broccoli, so she didn't see my face. I'd had the thought before, but I'd never said it out loud. And I'm glad it was a weirdly semi-private moment of revelation, just me staring down some hummus and a giant rogue beet, because it almost bowled me over, how true it was. I didn't say it to comfort, or provide perspective. I said it because it was goddamn true. I don't think I could have made it through the last twelve months otherwise.

It's a storm at first, of course, and you're just one tiny person alone on the open ocean, in a terribly leaky raft. In the dark. Shit looks pretty dire. It's like all the scary parts of 'The Odyssey', but with cheaper wine. It's fine, though. You'll get through it. Because you can get through anything, you know. And once the sky clears, and the churning stops, there's a gratitude: I didn't know I could do that. A clarity: you can see again. It looks different, everything's been rearranged, this new landscape is totally unfamiliar, but all these new things: caves and craters, majestic gnarly trees along the shoreline, sea boulders baked in the sun - they've been there all along. All this upheaval has simply allowed them to reveal themselves. Get acquainted. Explore it all. You'll only get better for it.
Here's what I found:

Tardy Hardy: Sometime in April, while scrambling to make an early morning appointment in Brooklyn, I realized my perpetual lateness (understand that I am referring to not only PERPETUAL tardiness, but also, in many cases, extremely exaggerated tardiness. Sometimes I show up literally hours late for shit, and no one is surprised) was a primarily a twisted attempt at keeping a stranglehold on youth. Via staggering immaturity. That it was sort of complete bullshit to be all 'Oh, I just don't understand how clocks work' (WHAT? I know! I SERIOUSLY SAY SHIT LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME) while actually never having missed a flight in my life**. Including morning flights. And those early morning appointments in Brooklyn. Because I apparently do understand levels of consequences, and if I can navigate those, I can probably figure out rudimentary time management, right? All this dallying to way-beyond-the-last-minute, followed by tizzies and scrambling was just ME creating unnecessary hoops to jump through, with the sole purpose of making myself crazy, because youthful people are harried and crazy, and old people are calm and boring. Then I was like 'LOOK AT THAT CRAZY TRAIN OF ILLOGIC, YOU PROBABLY DON'T HAVE TO PUT MUCH EXTRA EFFORT INTO KEEPING THINGS NUTTY AROUND HERE, ALSO, WHY ARE YOU YELLING, THERE IS NO REASON TO YELL. CALM DOWN.'

Then I remembered that I like being really calm and I sort of hate young people. That a hundred times in the last six months I've said "You could not pay me to relive my twenties" and meant it all the way down to my core***. That my constant commitment to unreliability is not proving anything to anyone. That it's actually pretty selfish. Not that I've actually done anything about this, but it was a new perspective to consider: I can hang on to my immaturity as long as I'd like****. It will leave my youth in the dust. And I get to be completely calm about it.

Puff Puff Pass: Related, I quit smoking. Considering I will basically hold you down and slather you in sunscreen if you so much as think about exposing your bare face to a UV ray, it started feeling hypocritical to be so actively contributing to my own dermal wrinkling*. It's the same misguided immaturity bullshit. Again, my rampant disrespect for my own little lung sacs is not proving anything to anyone. No one cares. Why does this need to be part of my identity? Because when I got down to it, that was the whole attachment: 'This is something I do'. That's an ivy-and-vines way of thinking: such a nice contrast at first, a highlight to the whole, some lovely organic decoration that will, if left unchecked, eventually obscure everything underneath. That will, eventually, tear apart the very thing it's anchored to. Cut it off, man. There's nothing to be scared of. You're still you under there. So, yeah. I quit smoking. Cigarettes**.

V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N, In the Summertime: That was my mother's personal jingle for summer vacations when I was a kid. She'd start singing it before we even pulled out of the driveway, before we'd even packed up the car. She was so excited. My mother is not exactly the emotionally effusive sort, so it just kind of radiated out of her, this sincere joy. On the highway, my brother and I would cast semi-withering glances at each other across the backseat: Calm down, lady. We are not even close to there yet.

It wasn't until this year, this grindy year of work travel, emotional mountain climbing, coupled with the steadily amplifying atmospheric DC grime, and the undeniable reality that I am getting fucking OLD and all this shit tires me out in ways no one adequately prepares you for... Of course we did not understand my mother's elation back then, I'm pretty sure I only have the most basic comprehension of it now, considering she was like, a full-time nurse with two full-time children and car payments and shit, and I take pictures of pretty houses, and am responsible for solely my astonishingly well-behaved dog. I have a SmarTrip card. That like, never has money on it. And yet - the weeks leading up to vacation were like the first three weeks of December when you still believe in Santa. I might be old now, but I can still recognize that sort of anticipation, the kind that oozes all through you, drips over your heart like honey.

And goddamn if it wasn't one of the best vacations I've ever had. I have a habit of tempering my expectations, lest I be disappointed by the end result, but I didn't here, and I'm glad - because I wasn't. Fuck man, Maine. That whole 'Vacationland' motto is NOT hyperbole. I've been to Maine before, I've loved Maine before, but not like this. This was like a balm. In the kayak, collecting mussels off the rocks, water so blue it was black in places, cold like only ancient things can be, I told Kyle: "Whatever is wrong with me, this makes better." It is a simple thing to say, a tremendous thing to realize. And it's inside me now, I can go back any time I want.

Later that week, after midnight, sitting around a table with two of my favorite people in the world, I laughed so hard I cried (for a variety of reasons), so hard I had to get up and leave the table. I walked the five steps to the bathroom, slid my spine down along the door frame until I was laughing and crying on the linoleum, sitting and rocking and laughing and crying and eventually just straight up crying, these pure love tears, straight from this well of joy I can't always get to on my own. I wish I'd thought to taste them at the time - I know it's impossible, but part of me believes they wouldn't even have been salty. Then I pulled myself together and rejoined the boys at the table. We went outside and sat on the dock and watched for fireworks - there were fireworks almost every night that week, like exclamation points, like confetti, like even the sky was as happy as we were and had to let us know. We were quiet, and we sat in a row, and looked up at the stars until we almost fell asleep.

So I get it, Momma. I get the song now.

Love you guys.



*'Standing in Kitchens, Talking About Boys' is an alternate working subtitle for 'The Katie Neuner Story'.
** ...because I got there too late. I've never missed a flight because I got there too late. I have missed two flights due to distractions in the airport bar. Statistically, this is sort of amazing.
***Unless we're talking about a LOT of money, and only my late twenties. What? I've got loans, bitches.
****Boom Pow Surprise! That probably wasn't the conclusion you were hoping for. Whatever, it's honest. 

* Remember that early 90s PSA where these girls get their friend to quit by appealing to her vanity and crumpling up a photo of her face? That works, PSA people! It just takes like, 16 years.
**The caveat to this being: if I lose any of this hard-earned smoky vocal seasoning, I will suck down packs of Parliaments until it returns. I mean, duh, it was sort of the whole point. That, and being able to duck out of any social interaction whenever I got bored.

Happy Mother's Day

My boss and I had a meeting at our lawyer's office the other day. We met with my favorite one - she's smart, and funny, and warm, and genuine, and a whole lot of other qualities you look for in a human being, generally, and I think are undervalued in lawyers, specifically. Walking us to the elevator bank after the meeting, she mentioned she'd just finished 'Lean In': 'It's pretty universally applicable'. She and my boss - both professionals and mothers - discussed the working mom balance, that maybe the tides are finally really turning, equitable division of responsibilities in households is more and more the norm...I fell back a little. Not because my only contribution would have been along the lines of 'My dog is amazing at cleaning up food I drop on the floor, and he can tell if someone has evil in their soul, both come in handy.' Well, not only because of that. But because, also, I was thinking: 'How strange that any of this would be a foreign concept. No one had to suggest any of this to me. I just watched my mother.'

Four years old, leaving a department store in the rain, sulking and whining because I didn't get something I wanted. Stomping: "It's not fair!" My mother did not break stride. "Life's not fair, honey," she said. "Get used to it." Oh, that ALL PARENTS were this honest from the gate. Because it isn't, is it?

Thirteen years old, the first time I wore foundation, I put on entirely too much. Probably everyone is terrible at makeup in the beginning, you get better. And now people are surprised, given my near religious devotion to mascaras and sparkly eyeshadows and tinted moisturizers, that my mother doesn't wear any makeup at all. She doesn't. I say: 'I figured this shit out on my own'. But that's not entirely true. That night, she took me into the bathroom. As I washed it off, she told me 'it should look like you're not wearing anything'. The second most important thing you can tell a girl about her face. She didn't have to say a thing about the most important part, I learned by example. Her facial care routine has always been on point.

Sixteen years old, in the hospital, feeling the worst and saddest and most unloveable, like a garbage wretch of a child, like I deserved anything awful she, anyone, everyone felt about me. In the depths of that, my mother sent me a stuffed lamb, the softest, loveliest thing, it fit in the crook of my elbow. In the card attached, in her gorgeous, delicate cursive - my mother's handwriting looks like it belongs in a Jane Austen novel - she told me how much she loved me, the way she loved me, in a way that made everything seem, if not immediately better, then hopeful - like there were wonderful things ahead that I couldn't imagine yet, but she had ultimate confidence in. Hope is the purest gift. And, she was right. I kept the lamb; she helps me remember.

Twenty-one years old, melting down over something impossible, some insurmountable challenge. My mother: "You know, human beings can't remember pain accurately," she turned a page, considered a point in the distance. "Otherwise, no one would ever have a second child." It is the most brilliant advice I've ever received. This seems so bad right now, but pain ends. Eventually it's not even a memory. It is amazing what we can get through, what we are capable of becoming next.

Twenty-two years old, my mother takes me on a tour of HHC's new heath care center. She started there when I was in high school, an organization scattered across two offices, now consolidated into a spectacular renovated factory building downtown. It was of course an effort of many, but walking through the building, Sally introducing me to contractors and architects and administrators and doctors, I kept thinking 'my mother did this. My mother did this.' There are people with giant hearts, and then there are the people with giant hearts in action, who do things that help innumerable people that they will never meet, will never thank them, and who don't care about that. Lean in? My mother hoisted that shit over her head and ran with it.

Twenty-four years old, I'd spent the summer having a slow-burn of a breakdown in my parent's house, they barely got me back to law school. Barely. I'd been back in New Orleans a week when my mother called me. Hurricane Katrina was still all speculation and hypothetical disaster. It was a Friday night. "I'm buying you a ticket," she said. "No," I told her. "No, it'll be nothing. We'll go to Houston if we need to, like for Ivan. I just got back." (What a fucking brat.) "I'm buying you the ticket," she said. "You're coming home tomorrow morning." And I did. And everyone knows what happened next.

Twenty-nine years old, sitting on the back porch in Scituate with my mother and KH#1, drinking red wine out of sparkly little glasses in the sun, my mother tells us the story of how she and my father met. I'd never heard it before. Later, when I get a little too emotional at dinner, stand up and cry-toast KH#1, my mother pats the seat next to her, suggests 'No more wine' and pats my leg. It occurs to me that there might not be an ounce of judgment in this woman.

Thirty years old, days from thirty-one, I call my parents and my dad picks up. I ask 'Is Mom there?' and he pauses. "Is everything okay?" It has been an historical rarity, an issue I can bring to one of them and not the other. I take a weird little half breath. "I need to talk about boys." The most insanely reasonable, comforting conversation about matters of the heart follows. I think: 'is there anything she doesn't know?'

Momma, thank you. For being you, showing me everything you've shown me, teaching me everything you've taught me, and mostly, for letting me be myself, for believing in me and always knowing when I need a boost the most, for surprising me into believing in myself. You can ask anyone, I say it all the time: "If Sally thinks it's good, if Sally believes in it..." Thank you for showing me that there isn't a thing I can't do. Thank you for being my mother, and thank you for being my friend. I love you so much.

Happy Mother's Day,
kk

I was waking up from a nap when I heard. S texted me something about bombs in Boston, and I rolled over, bleary eyed, put the phone back on the night stand. Then I sat up. Wait.

I cried in my hotel room, big, hot, little kid tears that surprised me with their pure sadness. I suppose it was a grief some parts of me recognized before others: Marathon Monday can never be the same. How many of us woke up yesterday and thought 'Aw, Patriot's Day'? My brother and I, each three years since living there, three-quarters of a country between us, thought the same thing. It is a holiday that means nothing to most people. It is something very special. "How could you?" I said, to no one. "It's just so fucking mean." I had to get up and go to an appointment. I sent out messages, everyone was fine. I got to tell a lot of people I loved them, some I hadn't told in a long time, so there was at least that.

Boston is provincial and insane. It's strange and windy and grumpy. And I am so, so lucky that so many of my memories, the backdrop to so much of my life is that beautiful, charming, storied city. I may never move back, but it is half of my heart.

At dinner last night, A told me: "When you see those videos from now on, I want you to think of the people that ran towards the blast, all the people who went to help." That helped.

I care very little about who did it. I don't have much of a palate for revenge, it's just not in my constitution. I think we get what we give in this life, and others, if that's a thing, and the responsible parties will face something terrible. I assume they have already, you must be rotted to the core, infected with something deep and awful that haunts you permanently, to do something like this. That does not explain or excuse or comfort. It probably just is.

There is a part of me, of so many of us, that feels utterly violated. So I am thinking of all the people that ran to help. I am thinking of everyone I love, wherever they are. I am thinking of bricks and flowers and sunlight on water, Fenway at night, old men in undershirts playing Bocce on those courts off Commercial Street. I am remembering the insanity of the wind whipping across City Hall Plaza in the winter, the Baylor-faces of the seals outside the aquarium, sitting on rocks in the Public Garden as the sun goes down, tripping down sidewalks on Beacon Hill.

I am remembering that IM Pei designed the Hancock as a tower of glass to reflect its surroundings in Copley Square, because he couldn't make anything more beautiful.

Alive and Well

"Chivalry Is Dead." - Ladies, all the time, everywhere

"I was never really much of a romantic. I could never take the intimacy." - Kanye West

"It's insulting to give someone dead things." - Pops, on flowers

"Speaking of Ghost, I'm going to see him on 5/9 at the Wang.  Olson and I are going.  If I get kicked out, I'm taking him with me.  No chivalry when there are no ladies to protect." - Mitch

***

I started my second Real Grown Up Job in January of 2009. As is my custom, I was generally unfriendly to everyone for approximately the first four months. It's primarily a defense mechanism. There are just too many social anxiety tripwires in Office World: navigating elevator small talk, sharing just-the-right personal details to appear engaging and normal, remembering children's names and activities, bringing in baked goods to share - I just can't. I'm not interested in the weather unless we can talk about the Apocalypse and I don't watch the right TV shows. My life is weird, and seems even weirder in tiny snippets. I cannot bring myself to care about the World Cup, so Tommy's soccer game iszzzzzzz. I can't bake, and even if I could, why would I whip up an extra batch of whatever to haul into an office full of people who'll scarf them all immediately?  Wait until the afternoon! Brownies in the morning upset me!

So I'm skittish and standoffish the vast majority of the time, save the rare instances I can't keep something to myself and I engage fully, before I remember where I am. Half surly toddler, half shelter dog: you have your moments, but no one really wants to take you home. It's a pretty effective system.

A person like this turns a lot of things down. What you don't know is complicated, so stick to what you do. So why, on that Friday afternoon in May, after spending months as the least adoptable pet, did I accept M's invitation to join everyone for a beer after work? Maybe I was bored. Maybe I was thirsty. Maybe I was curious. Maybe even the toughest Pound Puppy has their weaknesses. So I went inside the bar. 

You make a thousand decisions every day, and most of them will never matter. If I'd left when I first thought to, after the first beer, that might have been one of them. But someone bought me a second beer, and I stayed for a third, and then we went outside to smoke. It was that perfect part of late spring in Boston, the leaves the greenest they'll be all year, the sky the bluest, all offset by the ruddy brick in the courtyard outside Sweetwater. Even the late afternoon sunlight is brilliant. The bar had been so dark, I was still squinting when I stubbed out my Parliament and realized these were my friends. By the time we made our way to the Common, I wondered where they'd been all this time, how I hadn't noticed before. 

There was something in the air that spring, something different about me, like I'd grown all these new branches. I started the year scowling from the corner of my playpen, and ended it with all these new people in my life, people I realized almost immediately would be there forever, now, people I love so ferociously sometimes I wonder where they end and I begin, scattered as we've become, there are these titanium heartstrings connecting us. 

That sounds a lot like being in love, doesn't it? I can get there, despite the fact that I largely eschew romantic love, the person who refuses to 'date', the whole concept absurd, those tiny job interviews all shot through with the vaguely concealed motives of sex and high expectations*. But I do, believe in love, and in a certain type of romance, even, although it skews to the non-traditional. And there's chivalry everywhere, if you pay attention, those two concepts are alive and well. Thriving, actually. You find them watching terrible television on a rainy afternoon, doing the tiny thing you wanted without having to ask, without having to even think it on your own. It's a lingering dinner in a divey New Orleans burger joint, when the tables beside you have turned over twice already, but the waiter knows better than to say anything at all. A glint of sunlight, a smile meant only for you. It's a moment inside a cone, everything else is outside. Like the pyramid in that episode of Six Feet Under when they go to Claire's art show. Like sitting on a bench by Crystal Lake with J and S, watching the reflections of trains in the water, souls totally bare. We were the only three people in the world. Those are the moments to write poetry about.

And chivalry is not a jacket over a puddle, or opening a door, or flowers to mark a date on a calendar. Chivalry is the little boy on the bus who worms off his mother's lap, tugs her hand, offers the seat to newer mother who just got on. It's the stranger who can see something is wrong, and gives you the cab at the end of the night. Chivalry is November, 2009, the Ghostface show at the Paradise. Mitch was nice enough to provide party favors**, and when a disapproving security guard came over, he took the whole fall. When the security guard asked him if he knew me, a confused and generally unhelpful me with whom he was clearly acquainted, he denied it. Mitch spent the rest of the show in a grimy Allston Chinese joint next door, texted me a photo of the black 'x' marks Sharpied on the back of his hands. He waited until it was over. We joke about it now, but it was, to this day, the most chivalrous act I've ever witnessed. Maybe you had to be there. It was a really good show. 

Thanks for taking me home, everyone.


^I did a Google Image Seach for 'Pound Puppies Ghostface' and was rewarded with this AMAZING picture of Usher and this adorable puppy. So, enjoy that.

*Of course, 'not dating' is equally ludicrous, confusing on all levels, from the person who made an effort at what you predetermined to be a carefree hangout, to the years I've spent 'technically single' without being able to remember the last time I was actually, completely all on my own. It's a habit I'm trying to break.
** Sorry, Mom! This detail is kind of integral to the story. Also, it was a fucking Ghostface show, come on.

Dive Bars and Door Handles

A hundred years ago, I dated a guy who worked at my favorite dive bar.

I met him on Easter Sunday, in the afternoon. I was with M and F, we'd come from brunch to kill time before a movie. Or maybe to stretch out the day. I don't really remember. We just wanted someplace dark and cheap.

Inside it was empty, save a scatter of professional drinkers who'd been there so long you took them in like the wallpaper, or the pool table, all part of the whole. This place opens at 8:00 in the morning; aside from vending machine snacks sporting last-generation packaging, it never serves food.

The Wire was playing on the television behind the bar. I can talk about The Wire all day, and that's what I did, or would have done, if it wasn't time for the movie before I knew it*. He told me to come back for trivia night and I did. Sometimes it doesn't take much.

He was smart and funny and weird and probably not quite as outstandingly handsome as I remember. And best of all: he was wholly, resoundingly, viscerally damaged. The first night we hung out, he told me, on the way to buy papers, about his terrible adoption, concluding with "so I really can't trust anyone". At 31, I'm yelling 'Oh, honey, NO' at the computer. At 25...you might as well draw in cartoon hearts for my eyes in whatever mental picture you're painting.

Our schedules were entirely incompatible. We'd meet for breakfast dates in the middle of the week, lovely suspended early mornings in fancy restaurants, playing pretend, baby grown-ups in leather booths surrounded by people on real business.

On weekend nights I went over to his place after the bar closed. We'd lie in bed smoking, watching the clouds float silvery across a navy ceiling. I'd think about the ocean at night, trace the outlines of tattoos on his arm while he told me things that made me sad, made me feel bad that inside my head all I saw was a glorious sleeping ocean. We could do this for a very, very long time. He'd talk over the movie playing as background noise, some 80s romantic comedy he'd act offended I hadn't seen, before putting it on purely for pretense. I've seen Lover Boy half a dozen times; I have no idea what that movie's about**.

In the mornings, I'd walk him to the bar, where there'd already be at least one greasy-haired man in a rough cloth army jacket leaning against the wall outside. It felt weird to kiss goodbye in front of them, we'd both laugh and he'd get his keys. I'd walk home, across the Common, picking my way over the loose bricks in City Hall Plaza. I'd go home to get Bay and we'd wander North End side streets, and I wouldn't feel happy, exactly, but like I'd helped someone else be less sad, and maybe that was important.

There were some red flags. I mean, in addition to the four paragraphs of red flags preceding this one. I didn't even notice. It's almost charming, in a nostalgic, Horror Home Movies sort of way. In the end, I learned some important things about myself, about life. I learned that any conversation beginning with the words "Baby, I have a third job I haven't told you about" is not ending any place good.

It really didn't last long. One weird thing happened, then another. We both acted like children. Like I said, it was a hundred years ago - we practically were. It was over by the summer, and I never saw him again.

The job I started a few months later involved a new commute, one that required me to walk by that bar. (Of course, it wasn't a requirement, just the simplest way to get from the T to the office.) It was three months before I took the direct route in the morning, six months before I'd walk by at night. I'd duck my head, scurry by the green door, try to steal a peek through the window. It was almost a full year before I worked up the courage to go inside. Of course, once I finally did, he wasn't there.

It's been a long time. I still go back to that bar when I'm in town, it's still one of my favorites. The same woman owns it, and she's always behind the bar. Every time I'm there, at least a little part of me wants to ask 'whatever happened to...' I'll never ask, though. He's vanished, essentially, the kind of person you can't even find on the internet. Who's nowhere on the internet? It doesn't seem like a great sign. I've made up my own ending to that story, and I hope it's close enough to the truth.

I don't have a lot of regrets, but I do think about that green door sometimes. The one I skittered past in the evenings. I think about what would have happened if I'd opened the door earlier, if he'd still been there. I've had the conversation in my head a hundred times, a hundred different ways, but the core is still the same. Nothing changes - there was nothing to fix, and no way to fix it, it was just the end. But we both say 'I'm sorry' and we hug. Then we laugh about something, and he makes fun of me and I swat at his arm, and then we're both quiet for a second, and then we smile. And then I say 'I have to go', and I go. And it's better than it is now, and it's better than the other way it ended.

Q: Wherever you are, I hope it's wonderful.

Everyone else: Open those green doors.


*I remember now, it was before the movie. We saw 'No Country for Old Men'.
**Patrick Dempsey's a teenage gigilo, right? I'm pretty sure that's what it's about.

Fuck You February Part Eleven Million

A big part of achieving my goal of 'not falling apart in the face of every fucking thing in my life' this year has been 'being uncomfortably honest about some personal shit on the Internets'. My parents seem to be okay with it, and the only person whose real name I use is Kyle's (dude, I don't know why I have like, no concern for your privacy? I'm so sorry. Love you!) so I suppose I'll just continue in this vein.

Most of my time in the next 30 days will be consumed by The February Project. The February Project consists of 'not getting completely, utterly, soul-crushingly depressed in the month of February'. Which is REALLY HARD, guys. I know, 'self-fulfilling prophecy'...but the dread leading up to this month is unreal. Stuff REALLY DOES GO TO SHIT. In the last 90 hours I've had fights with two of my closest friends, and another is MIA, when I really need them not to be. Another one flipped our shit completely. My computer keeps threatening to die. I don't fight with friends! Friends don't disappear on me! (I disappear on them...recognizing a taste of your own medicine makes it no less bitter going down.) Flipped shit makes me cry a whole bunch. And computer, I need you. I need you to watch television shows I steal with my brother's HBO.GO password when I literally cannot work up the mental strength to do anything else.

Two of the hardest things to describe to people who've never experienced them are depression and anxiety. Normal people get sad, and normal people get nervous, but they don't seem to get the cloud that penetrates every pore, all the way into your bones, pumps through your blood, chanting; 'don't, don't, don't' when you should, should, should; 'it's not worth it' when it most definitely is; 'why bother', when there are so many reasons; and 'you are, forever, undeniably, a piece of shit', when that is certainly deniable, and nothing is forever.

Depression is a heaviness that settles into every crevice of you, your body, your brain. It makes everything simple seem impossible: getting out of bed, getting in the shower. You actually congratulate yourself for walking the dog, and this makes you feel worse, although he seems to appreciate it. Food loses its taste in your mouth. You think 'maybe seeing people will make me feel better' but then you don't want to see anyone, anyway, because you are just a little grey cloud personified, and there's a yogurt stain on these sweatpants, and oh my goodness, just the idea of finding other, relatively clean sweatpants is too much, please can I just hide in bed and find a marathon of some HBO programming that I've already watched twice? Yes? Okay.

In no way is this relaxing. Because the entire time you're submerged in your little foxhole of dread, currents of anxiety zap you at irregular, unpredictable moments. And anxiety demons are judgmental as shit. Anxiety is like a spider. She spins webs all through your body, settling wherever she sees fit. She never commits, never announces. She likes to make sure you're as uncomfortable as possible, always, right in your own skin.

The worst part is knowing not everyone feels this way. Lots of people do, but not enough so you can call in: 'I can't come into the office today because the world is too awful'. So you take a lot of deep breaths, and try not to cry at the bus when it's late. Try not to cry in the bathroom at work when you can't find a file. Try not to cry on the walk home for no reason at all.

I always want to go back to New Orleans when I'm like this. Isn't that strange? Maybe it's not strange at all. I suppose it's a place I associate with being crazy, and a place where being not-quite-right is okay. A lot more okay than it is here. Here: 'there's medication for that'. I know there is. Meds are a good thing - a great thing, the best thing - for a lot of people with wacko brain chemistry, but they aren't for me. So instead I'll peruse Craig's List every day, finding all the adorable apartments I could rent for so much cheaper than anything here. I'll watch Treme and cry a bunch, because they're always in my favorite bars (but why is no one ever in the park?) and David Simon can make you miss a place like you miss a person, the heart, the soul, the good parts, the terrible bits.

And for perspective, I'll read 'The Awakening' again, because as long as I don't feel like my only option is walking into the ocean forever, I must be doing something okay.

A Neuner Christmas Carol

I've been accused of being something of a Grinch in the past. I suppose it's not entirely untrue: I really don't care about Christmas. It's not that I want to ruin everyone's good time - despite my staunch opposition to holiday mandated gift-giving, I'm not trying to take toys from kids or cancel the celebrations. I love toys, and encourage festivities.

I like the lights - the lights are my favorite part - although I do abhor Christmas music. Lately I've been keeping my headphones on in Whole Foods because if I hear Zooey Deschanel's version of 'Baby It's Cold Outside' one more time I am going to straight up throttle the next person who stands in front of the cheese samples for half a second too long. And it's cool that everyone's happy and charitable and shit, but I hate receiving Christmas cards from the whole office. I'm the only person that doesn't send any back, and it's super awkward. I just don't do Christmas cards. Because I don't care about Christmas. I'm sorry! I just don't.

And this isn't a war on the Magic of the Holiday Season. Guys, I love magic. I believe in ghosts for goodness sake. When unexplainable shit happens to me, I usually think 'Irish Voodoo' and that is seriously an explanation I'm satisfied with. When I was four, I swear I heard Santa and the Reindeer on the roof. I have never been so convinced of anything*.  So it was a mega goddamn bummer when my parents let me in on the truth about Santa. (It created some trust issues. Most of which I've worked through.) And although I really like Christmas movies (repeated viewings of 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' have convinced me that Charles Schulz shared many of my utopian humanist dreams) most of the real-life celebratory aspects just seem a little...ridiculous, to me.

My parents' interest in the holiday waned around the time we stopped asking for cool toys. As we got older, the whole tree rigamarole became such a hassle**, they downgraded to a small, relatively festive Christmas plant. It totally worked for us. Around then,my brother and I realized we could get each other much better presents if we just waited to buy them with our Christmas money. And so began the grand tradition of Sibling Christmas. In Amherst, it was held at Goten. In Boston, Chinatown. One year, we didn't even leave the apartment. And it was just so much nicer this way, without stress about gifts and travel, no exorbitant price tags, no one-upping a prior year's performance. Just a day off, man. With festive lighting.

All of this serves to explain why I figured spending Christmas alone would be no big deal.

I moved to DC in October of 2010. My parents made their final trip from PEI to Florida over Thanksgiving, and stopped here along the way. We ate Lebanese takeout in their hotel room, and it was awesome. When Christmas rolled around...I don't know. It didn't make sense to go to Florida. My brother was still in Vermont then, and Sibling Christmas can happen whenever, so that wasn't really a concern. And I thought: 'the city will be empty, just how I like it.'

I took myself to museums. I went to the National Gallery two days in a row. I got my super nerd on. It was awesome. The cold made my hands sting, but I took a walk along the mall, which is blessedly quiet at 4:30pm on December 23rd. The lights started coming on just as I was ready to head home, and I thought: 'I'm really glad I moved here.' It was perfect. Who cares about Christmas?

The next day, I decided on the Natural History Museum. I don't know why, but it seemed like an exceptionally charming thing to do for Christmas Eve. I was really excited about the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs! (Seriously, I love dinosaurs. If you want to hang out and talk about your favorite dinosaur, this is something I'm into.) It was cold again, and the creepy silence of my empty house was gnawing at my edges a little, but I'd bought myself some ill new boots as a Christmas present, so there was plenty to be positive about. I got to the museum around 2:30 - lateish, but enough time for some thorough exploration, followed by happy hour in a part of town I never went out in. Maybe I could even find a fire to read by. And a burnished leather chair to sit in! Visions of hot toddies danced in my head.

I assumed the museum would be mostly empty. I wanted something tomb-like, intimidatingly quiet. Just myself and people like me, nerds alone on Christmas, and totally cool about it. As it turns out? The Natural History Museum on Christmas Eve is pretty much ENTIRELY THE OPPOSITE OF THOSE THINGS. The joint was full of families. All kinds of families. Moms and Dads and kids, Aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews. Grandparents and grandchildren. Foreign students goofing around, tourists unabashedly snapping the most touristy of pictures: ‘One with my arm in the shark’s mouth!’; ‘One where it looks like the mammoth is going to step on me!’; ‘One where it looks like I’m about to do this Neanderthal lady from behind!’. Couples, friends, people all in love, one way or another, with their companions. The museum was bursting with love. I'd made a mistake, coming here.

Back when we were roommates, F and I spent a frigid November afternoon at Harvard’s deliciously vintage Natural History Museum. We spent an hour looking at the gems and stones, at least twice as long in the Great Mammal Hall, browsing the animals behind the 70s-era glass cases, noting the expressions taxidermied onto their faces: alarmed, bemused, stoned. We took pictures of at least a dozen examples of 'stuffed balls' with our phones and sent them to my brother. We laughed all afternoon.

I snapped out of the memory, back to myself: alone, standing in front of a Triceratops. The corners of my eyes and the sides of my throat got a little sore, felt a little full. I got out of there before the tears came. 

Outside, I didn't feel like drinking in the company of strangers anymore, so I went home, and tortured myself with the Ghosts of Christmases Past: watched 'A Muppet Christmas Carol' and thought of the one present we'd been allowed to open on Christmas Eve as kids, the one we fretted over for a week beforehand, poking the wrapped packages and weighing them in our hands. Thought about my Dad grabbing up our discarded wrapping paper and stuffing it in the trashbag before it had a chance to hit the floor. Thought about the year Beetle and I selected 'Avatar' as our Christmas movie, the silent moment when he leaned over and whispered: "How come only the male avatars have nipples?" I laughed so hard I almost had to leave the theater. 

You see what I'm getting at here. No, I don't care about Christmas. But it's not about the holiday. It's about love. And maybe it should be just a day off, but it's not. It's not like I was loved any less because I wasn't with my family. But the presence of love is a powerful thing. And it's even more powerful in the remove. 

This year, I'm going to Florida. I'm meeting my brother and his lady in Miami on Christmas day, and then we're spending the rest of the week with our parents in their adorably weird little golf course community, places that exist by the hundreds in Florida - and seemingly only in Florida, although I bet Arizona has a bounty of these joints, too. I haven't bought presents for anyone, and I'm sure no one's got presents for me. I'll spend the majority of my holiday flying, I'll be late to meet everyone, I'll annoy at least one person by repeatedly asking where the dive bars are in this town. My dad will have trouble finding the hotel the next day when he comes to pick us up, and someone will yell at me for dawdling/getting us lost/being generally unhelpful. I cannot wait, I could not want anything more. 

Merry Christmas, everyone.

*I did hear something that night. My adult explanation? Irish Voodoo. Or raccoons, whatever.
** Putting up the Christmas tree is pretty much the only time I've ever seen my parents really hate each other. They didn't like, say it or anything, but the air was pretty thick with an 'If this tree falls on you, I hope you die' vibe.

Failures in Existential Homecomings

I went home for Thanksgiving this year. It was wonderful. It was weird. It was interesting.

Home is a strange concept for me, given that I don't really have one. Not in a tragic way, of course, but in a way that makes 'the Holidays' somewhat emotionally complicated. Especially as I get older and messier. And wiser. (Somewhat wiser.)

Amherst is one home, certainly, It's where I grew up, the place that exists in a dozen dimensions stacked on each other, perspectives of my world at 8, 12, 16, 20, 25, 30...But I've left, and my brother's left, and our parents left. So it's still home, in a way, still the place I started, but all my time there is woven through with this faint, constant anxiety. It's a whimpering, underlying loneliness, a mild love panic - whatever it means, it's a specific kind of emptiness that I don't feel anywhere else: This was home. But I have to leave soon. This is not my base anymore.

Every place has had it's moments. In New Orleans, I felt like a kindred with an entire city, its whole spirit, like everything strange and terrible that I was was true, and real, but also beautiful and fascinating, and that all that twisted chaos was probably just fine.

Then Boston, the strange little second adolescence I threw myself into because I apparently never tire of late nights and melodrama, excessive introspection and cheap wine, skating along the poverty line between champagne brunches. And I love it there still, I have family by blood, and families we made up just with our hearts, and being back there is the best mirror, of how much has changed and how much is the same and how much we can love each other, and how much of that is forever. But it's not home anymore, either. There's no place that is just mine, all the way through.

My parents live in Florida, my brother lives in Colorado. When I'm with them, I'm home, because that's my team, but underneath all the best parts is the same low-level hum that buzzes through the base of my brain when I'm in Amherst: This was home. But I have to leave soon. There's nothing permanent for me here.

I used to hate the expression 'Home Is Where the Heart Is', because fuck you, my heart is everywhere.

Baylor and I got back late last night, to an empty apartment that smelled like roses and sandalwood from the incense burning when Kyle picked us up on Wednesday. I spent half an hour in the shower steaming the car-ride stiffness out of my muscles and rubbing my sides where they were still sore from the night before, when F and I stayed up belly-laughing over a decade's worth of memories, photos and videos capturing hundreds of stupid, tiny, wonderful moments, dozens we'd forgotten about, all of them we were so happy to have remembered. And it occurred to me that was home, too, inside those images were my parents, and my brother, my friends, place we've been, things we've seen, the people we were, a whole record that doesn't register any less deeply simply because it's not a physical place.

Earlier that day, I sat in the basement of Bartlett Hall with two of my favorite people on the planet, people I didn't get to meet until well into my Boston days. One of them is at UMass now, teaching classes in the building where I spent days of my undergraduate life, books spread out across beat up wooden desks tucked into the second floor landing, baking in the greenhouse heat cooked up by window panes and winter sunlight. I hadn't been inside in the better part of a decade, but here I was again, for the simple reason that two of my worlds happened to bump into each other on the same day. There was a time when that would have upset me greatly, a time when I favored strict compartmentalization to all other life-love organizational systems, but I'm not really like that anymore. Now I like it when my edges blur.

This ended differently than I intended. This morning, I thought I was going to write about how I sort of understand some things that terrify me - commitment, responsibility, regularity, maturity - much better when I think about them in the context of Home. Someplace to go back to. Some place that is all yours. But it was going to be something of a backhanded compliment, and I don't want to do that now. Now I just want to say that I think maybe we spend our whole lives coming home, and that's not nearly as depressing as it sounds. It gives us something to aspire to.

When I got out of the shower last night, I put on an old Temptation's album I stole from my brother and emailed my parents to let them know we got back safely, albeit without my phone charger (hence the email). Baylor was passed out beside me, purring in that way unique to Staffies, exhausted in that way unique to small children and animals after long days of travelling. When I got into bed, that humming was still there, the one that never lets me forget that this good thing will end, too. They all will! But maybe that's not the best way to think about it.

That hum tells us that things will pass, yes. But it's sure there a lot. So maybe it's not there to bum me out. Maybe it's there to keep my eyes open. Like an appreciation alert. Like there are too many good things wherever I go, and I'm never going to get to them all. And that's probably just fine.

Make Your Dreams Come True

I have strange dreams. Strange enough that my father asked me to stop telling him about them, which seems like a waste of a perfectly good in-house therapist, but I get it. My subconscious can be a rather psychotic place, and it can't be entirely pleasant to know exactly how crazy your daughter is. So now I just write them all down in a notebook I keep next to my bed.

They've been really vivid lately, incredibly real. And very clear when I wake up, which is fairly common when I don't sleep in my own bed, but it's been happening regardless of where I find myself at the end of the night. Like, last night, where I fell asleep in my own bed watching 'Sons of Anarchy', with Baylor tucked into the crook behind my knees (he insists he can fit there). Overnight I dreamt about taking pictures of a multi-colored house in JP (a house that actually exists, albeit with a calmer palette) and coming home to read 'The Bippolo Seed', a collection of lost Dr. Seuss stories (that is real, and that I own). The only part of the book I read in the dream was the dedication, on the back cover page.

It was so real, that when I woke up, I checked the back of the book to see if that was, in fact, the actual dedication. Of course it wasn't, this book isn't dedicated to anyone, it's a posthumous collection of lost stories, silly faces, but I liked it so much, I wrote it in anyways. It went like this:

"This book is for Sandy and Paul, who love each other very much. Or would have, had they ever met. I knew Paul for years and years and years; everytime I saw him, I told him how much I loved how much he loved Sandy. Or would love, were they ever to meet. But then Sandy got sick. So they never met. But this is still for Sandy and Paul. Who love each other very much."

And it made me want to say: for anyone reading, now, or in the future, to anyone reading: I love you very much. If we haven't talked in years, if we talked yesterday, if we haven't met yet, if we'll never meet: I love you very much.

Ms. Darling If You're Nasty

Saturday morning, I woke up with two other people in my bed.

No, not like that. Like this: G's housemates were gone for the weekend, the house has mice. She didn't want to stay alone. She came over around 1.30 on Friday, and as we were getting into bed, girl-talking about the night, her phone rang.

"I always get nervous when the phone rings this late," she said. "What if it's an emergency?" (Note: she is a far better friend than me, the girl who routinely turns her phone to 'silent' on weekend nights, lest I be disturbed for a moment once my head hits the pillow.)

She answered. It was H. And it was an emergency, sort of. He'd left his keys in New York, his car at the airport, his credit card at the bar. His roommate was nowhere to be found, and his doorman's keys weren't working. Or something.

So he came over and the three - four, if you count Baylor at the foot of the bed - of us had an impromptu sleepover, complete with the best kind of giggles, the ones that slip out just as everyone's trying their hardest to fall asleep. It was fairly pleasant rest, considering the crowd, considering that I sleep on a queen-sized box-spring-and-mattress-on-the-floor situation. The next morning we woke up around 10, laughed about our nights, looked for socks.  It was pretty lovely. Here's the thing, though: G is 27. H and I are both 31. Baylor, though none of it was his doing, is 60-something, in dog years.

When my parents were 31, I'd already been around for a while. They'd had another kid. They'd bought and sold a house. They owned a car. They knew how to take small children on a vacation. They could balance checkbooks back when that was a thing that people literally did. (Everyone just uses the computer now, right?)

I count myself among the ranks of friends who still aren't sure what they want to do when they grow up. Who thinks about going back to school frequently - which is a perfectly fine endeavor to take on at 31, there's no age limit to learning, but it's perhaps an interesting sideways move for people who have already gone to so much school. I am frequently only able to locate one shoe of the pair. I have nothing saved. I am physically unable to leave the house at the same time every morning, I swear I see a different group of people on the bus every day. My parents still pay my cell phone bill. (Which I appreciate the hell out of, guys.)

I was running through all of this this morning - waiting for the bus, late to work as usual - and thought: what the hell happened? There are so many of us, grown children pretending at adulthood, like if you could see our inner selves we'd all be tousle-haired six-year-olds playing dress-up in our parent's closets, swallowed up in suit jackets, clomping around in Mommy's heels with lipstick drawn outside the corners of our mouths. I certainly have friends with spouses and houses and cars and babies who've arrived, or with storks on the horizon, but I am still solidly attending Camp 'A Positive Would Be A Negative'. At a certain point, it's easy to start feeling...if not 'bad', then 'less than'.

I've commented on it before, this generational dilemma: the path of our myriad opportunities led us right to a post-adolescent inertia. In the face of so much everything, you pick nothing. Or one thing, but only for a minute, because there are so many other things! My parents didn't have the same options: they had to do something, so they just did it. Is there a sort of freedom in that? Or is this just another freedom that I'm not appreciating: this ability to do what I want, when I want, to still have all these options on the table. Is that 'less than' feeling just the product of a little fear, a little nervousness, because there's no real template for this kind of life? What you were 'supposed to do' was, for so long, really what you 'had to do'. So of course that's the Normal. But now...

There don't seem to be immediate answers to a lot of my questions. Which makes me think maybe it's not about answers, maybe it's more about perspectives, and enjoying all the things you do have, and forgetting for a minute about all the things you should have done.

On Sunday morning, G and I were in her kitchen, making egg scrambles and mimosas, dodging new mousetraps, when she said: "I would think some people would actually be jealous of our lives." I popped a piece of avocado in my mouth, she stirred the egg whites. The bird squawked from his perch, Baylor sniffed at my feet for dropped morsels of goat cheese. Outside it was beautiful, blue skies and fall sunlight warming treetops that have just started to turn orange.

"You know?" She asked. "Because this is so much fun?"

And she's right about that much: this has been so much fun.

The Middle

I've told you about the beginning.

Now we're in the middle.

The middle is okay.

The middle is the part where you write new things. You re-write old things. You find new songs. You find new meaning in old songs. You see new people. Otis and Aretha have never been more relevant. You still drink too much and eat too little. You wear old, stolen shirts to walk the dog at 1:00 in the morning, asking him if he has too much energy to sleep. It's all you, though. You know.

The middle is when you have days you wake up smiling, so full of life even when it's raining, especially when it's raining. Your life is full of more love than you ever could have believed.

The middle is when you have days of sadness that knock you out so hard, you can barely leave your room.

The middle is when those sad days have you calling people you love, and they fill you in ways you couldn't have imagined. You call crying, you hang up smiling.

Maybe the middle is what it's all about. I have dozens of unfinished stories: perfect beginnings, heartbreaking endings, but they're empty because I've never figured out the middle.

The middle. The middle is the hardest part.

On Commitment, Or: Why Thresholds are Kind of My Jam

Today was a bit of a ride. My birthday dresses were delivered by UPS in theory, but not in practice. Missing packages! I worked myself up into a bit of a tizzy. By the time I acknowledged there was nothing I could do right then, I was later than usual, and I had to take a cab. Wisconsin was a dead zone, and it started to rain, the kind that doesn't quite validate your umbrella. I was grouchy all over. But then I had this amazing cab driver - he knew all this history about the Circles in DC. He told me Dupont has eleven traffic lights. I opened the window a smidge and let the water sprinkle in. It was cooling things down. Later that afternoon I lost my wallet, but someone called me to give it back before I even noticed it was gone. I had to stay late at work, but a friend texted to tell me they'd taken Baylor on a walk, and dropped a present off at my house. And even that was bittersweet - that friend is moving away this weekend. 

Last night, he had a goodbye happy hour in Georgetown. I came from work, recovering-from-frazzled - I was far less sweaty-looking than I'd feared. We talked about his move, and then he asked me "So how much longer are you staying here?" It was a smirk, but a fair one. I've been talking about leaving since I got here. 

I left Boston because I panicked. That's literally all there is to it. My friends lives were changing in all these profound, mature ways, and I suddenly felt light years from everyone, pitched overboard in outerspace, watching their rocketship tail lights speed away. I'd wave, floating, in the dark. 

DC was close enough, people I loved lived there. I ran right to the edge and jumped: It was time to go, and now. Boston was All Wrong. Once you find the first reason to leave, a hundred others line up right behind it. 

How long after I got here before I decided it was time to find another place? This one wasn't perfect enough, either? Two months? Four? This happens to me a lot. 

I've always been more comfortable with one foot out the door.  I am never in a job, a class, a house, a city, a party before I start looking for the next new to jump into. I love knowing that I'm going somewhere, that whatever's next, I can't even imagine yet. I like being in control of my own surprises. 

That's the romantic take on it, anyway. There's other ways to analyze the situation: I cannot handle commitment. In the face of so many choices (what we might call 'life') I freeze. I am afraid of making the wrong decision. I'm afraid of making the right decision, and have it not feel like enough. In an earthquake, they tell you to stand in a doorway. Sometimes I feel like I've lived my life under a doorframe, I have never trusted the earth not to open up and swallow me whole. 

Except...life just happens to you anyway. The threshold is not a safety net, that framing will not protect you. And that's a good thing.

I know that those last few months were filled with fear, and dread, and anxiety. Burning everything to the ground and starting from ash is not without it's discomforts. But what I really remember are the last weeks in East Somerville, those enchanted nights before spring rolls over for summer, sitting out on the stoop with cheap booze, staying up too late making each other laugh, watching cop car lights flash across Broadway, playing rock-paper-scissors in our socks for no prize at all. 

I remember summer in Quincy, every night on the back porch with the dogs, walking home from someone's house down the middle of an empty street, night bugs humming, feeling more like 16 than I maybe ever had - that sense that the world is giant, but can wrap itself so small around you, that there are a million ways to be protected. 

I was saying goodbye to people I loved more than anything, and I know I cried, and took long walks by myself through places I'd want to remember: Goodbye Beacon Hill, Goodbye Bay Village, Goodbye Fort Point, goodbye to all of these spaces, these buildings that had never failed to calm me down, that had always been there when I needed them. 

I was so sad, but that's not the place I go to first. I go to Maine, the beach at night, us all deciding that the sky looked like velvet shot through with stars. I go to the Common, on Friday evening, a little circle of us spread out on sweaters and suitcoats, buzzed after Sweetwater, watching the sun go down behind the Hancock Building, the sky turning purple, then indigo. 

Was it because I was leaving, because I was already straddling the threshold...did I appreciate it more? These memories come easy, a tide of love I can feel in my chest. Because I've had one foot out the door on DC for so long, will I remember it like that, too? The nights on stoops, up too late with too much wine, talking about boys and playing with lighters. Blackout parties, (legitimate!) happy hours, the sweet strangeness of living in a neighborhood, a place where I stop and talk to people I know on the street, the oddity of living in a place I feel safe walking the dog late at night. 

This is not to justify my fear of commitment. I recognize there is tremendous value in regularity, responsibility, attachment. Maybe this is just to say: there's a silver lining to everything. Even structurally compromised door frames. 

So a Girl Walks Onto a Beach...

That week I spent at my aunt and uncle's place on the beach this spring meant more than I realized at the time. But I guess that's true for everything lately.

I've been staying in Scituate since before I was born. It's where my mother was living when she met my father. It's where I learned I was hopeless at driving a boat. It's where my parents stayed when they were shuttling between PEI and Florida, those few magic years. It's the only place in the world where my brother and I have our heights measured along a wall, inside the closet door of one of the upstairs bedrooms. It's the last place I saw my aunt Clare. 

But this spring was the first time I'd ever stayed there alone. I have a tricky relationship with staying alone as is, even more so in a place infused with family, memories from every year of my life flooding around every corner. Not that I felt completely 'alone'...although 'haunted' is a bad word for what it was. More like someone else was there when I was not, checking in to make sure things were going alright, sitting up, keeping watch downstairs at night when I slept. Not in a creepy way. In a 'smoking cigarettes at the dining room table and contemplating the night' kind of way. I don't know. Irish voodoo. I also don't know why my ghosts smoke cigarettes, or why I find this comforting. Probably more voodoo. 

I didn't plan to be there by myself much. The week before my stay, my mother remembered that there would be no cable, no internet. That part of town would be half-empty, all those dark shuttered houses along the water. And me all by myself. I made contingency plans for sleepovers in Quincy, Boston, Groton; felt lucky to be welcome so many places. 

Though when I got there, the strangest thing happened: I liked it. I didn't want to be gone. I wanted to be there with the memories and the smells and the sounds. I wanted to be an adult in this childhood place, to have to remember to bring keys for doors that had never been locked to me, to come home in the dark to a place that has been lit for me for so long, that first night, I didn't even know where to find the switches. 

I thought I would be scared. I wasn't scared. 

The moon was moving towards full that week, and it rained most days. At night, I would zip myself into a pile of hoodies and walk Bay along the beach, me with my blue plastic Solo cup of boxed wine, feeling like the coolest mom in the world - 'Welcome to the end of the Earth and all its smells! You may have it all to yourself, puppydog'. The moon lit up the water and I could watch Bay run all the way to where the sand meets the rocks, becomes impassable, without losing sight of him. He'd wait for me to meet him out there, then we'd turn and walk back along the packed sand, him trotting a few paces ahead of me, stopping occasionally to root through small piles of rubbery seaweed with his nose. 

On one of our last mornings, the sun finally came out, but it was windy and the beach was still empty. I was wearing a heavy jacket I didn't need, but my leggings were too thin. I was convincing my body to call it a draw on this one, stop being so cold, when I was distracted by something lying in the sand a few feet ahead. (Distracted by Shiny Things, the Katie Neuner Story) It was a rock. Just a rock, sure, somewhat tear-shaped, small enough to fit inside my hand. But it was also a beautiful rock, the most beautiful rock: opaque, purely white, what magic clouds look like when you ride on them, I'm sure. It was, without a doubt, the specialest rock on that beach. It made me remember being a little girl, caring so much about seashells. So I picked it up, and put in my pocket. For good luck. I figured it had to be good luck. 

This was all a few months ago, but I've kept the rock with me, even transferring it from purse to purse, just to have it nearby. Good luck, you know. Every so often I want to show it to someone, but as soon as I'm halfway into it, I realize I'm a crazy lady pulling fucking rocks out of my purse and talking at people about them, and that's not a gun I need to jump. Also, it just never seemed as...special, as it did the moment I picked it up. I swear, when I saw it on that beach - it was like a magnet. 

I came across the rock again this morning, digging through my purse in search of...who knows, I always forget what I'm looking for as soon as I start. But there it was, the rock, and I took it out and turned it over in my hands. It's dingy, now, from being buried in the traumatic chaos of my purse for four months, covered in ink and pencil, gummy with spilled lip gloss, tiny flecks of tobacco rubbed into its sides. And I thought: I probably need to bring this rock back to the beach. 

It's not that this rock has lost its magic. It is not less special than that morning in April when I found it. It just wasn't supposed to leave. It was not intended to live in a dark sac of cloth, banged up against Altoid tins, rolling around and scratching up the ipod. A rock is not designed to conform to your life. It's a fucking rock. And it belongs somewhere. I guess it's our job to figure out how to live amongst the rocks, in between those places where they belong. 

There are lessons in here I haven't quite learned yet.