When It's Over

I don't want to do this any more. Any of it.

I want to meet a guy who works on a farm. No, owns a farm. Owns a farm, but looks like he lives in Brooklyn. Plaid shirt, sensible jeans. Maybe a beard, but a well-manicured one. He has a dog, and it's a mutt, with a human name and a white patch on its chest, and it does something cliche-amazing like bring you the paper or your slippers.

I'm exhausted.

I want to live in a little city - a cool one, one populated by post-hispsters, where concert venues host shows that begin at reasonable hours and play at reasonable decibels. Never on Tuesdays. It's a little city, so you have to leave your house to meet people. It isn't overwhelming out there, yet there's plenty to do. There are little dive bars and little coffee shops, and woods nearby, and it's way less twee and annoying than that all sounds.

I'm hollow.

I don't want to help rich people anymore. At least not like this. I don't want to soothe them, coddle them, sweet talk them out of making stupid, tasteless decisions with their stupid, tasteless money; console them for making poor decisions in the pursuit of getting richer.

I'm stuck.

I don't want to do this anymore. At least not like this. In Cobble Hill the other day, I saw the back of a brownstone next to the one I was photographing - 'protecting' - and this neighbor building had its back blown out, created this glassed-in Zen garden situation, and it was fantastic design, modern rear juxtaposed with historic street facade and it was lovely and amazing and inspiring and nothing I could ever allow based on guidelines I'm required to enforce. And just like that, my internal compass went Bermuda Triangle.

I know better.

I suppose it's okay, because I know what I'm supposed to be doing, and it's not this, anyway. This is a way to pay the bills, which became a way to stall, to keep an arms length from the things I most want, and am most frightened by. This is a necessary evil simply because I've made it necessary. I've been doing that my whole life.

So now what?

The guy on the farm (dude, I don't know) the little city, the early shows, getting paid for something that doesn't suddenly make my skin crawl - it's not like there's a door somewhere, I find the right key, and on the otherside: everything. Right? Or is there? It's not like I want to pretend the last four years never happened, but lately everything's become so heavy. Like it needs to be shed.

My move.

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.

Pay My Automo' Bills?

I talk with my friends about lots of things: love, family, books, other friends, music, food, dumb shit you've done, dive bars, vacations, and of course, money. Inevitably, someone says something like "I might have to dip into my savings," and I'm like "What the hell is that seven dollars going to save you from?" And then it's like, 'Oh, man, I am super fucking poor.'

I mean, no, of course I'm not actually poor, I realize what a great situation I do, in all reality, have, with my job and roof and groceries and health insurance. I also realize I got myself here all on my own: it's my swirly little signature on all those student loan papers, and it was 100% my own decision to walk away from any sort of stable, lucrative career path. So it's more like...luxury poor. Something I should feel bad complaining about.

I've never been good with money. I am an alarmingly impulsive person, which means that everything makes sense in the moment. I figured those two conditions would reverse themselves with time, but that does not appear to be the case. I've also always been of the opinion that faced with a choice between having fun, and not having fun, you should probably go ahead and see what's behind Door Number Fun, because we're not here for that long, man, and you could get hit by a bus tomorrow. You could! People get hit by buses every day. 

A few years ago, I was walking down Newbury Street, talking to my dad on the phone. It was January, and I'd just gotten out of work. It was dark, but warmer than I expected, and the lights along the sidewalks were on, and twinkling, and sometimes Boston at night in the winter is just exactly the way a city is supposed to look. I was on my way to see the Roots (and  ?uestlove DJ set!!!), and everything was perfectly right with my world, if just for that moment. And my dad said:.  "You know, it's something I've always admired about you. No matter what's happening in your life, you always manage to have a good time." Which seemed like an odd thing to say, but I get the juxtaposition now: I couldn't have afforded a meal in of any of those Back Bay restaurants that Tuesday night, because I'd spent all my money on concert tickets and a new dress. And I wasn't concerned in the slightest.

Because really, what should I have done that evening? Sat home and ate soup and watched television until a reasonable bedtime? I will always remember that show, that night, the music, my friends, and yes, the dress I wore. I have scores and scores of these memories: nights when I did not do the responsible thing, and in a thousand tiny ways that have all added up: I am so much better for it.

There's all kinds of odd happiness on this track: I don't get paid much, but my job is relatively easy and rather pleasant and I get to walk around and look at old buildings, which is one of my forms of therapy. I get to write all the time, and no one really cares how late I am in the mornings (a source of not-insignificant strife at my last job). My apartment is hilariously broke-down in a lot of ways, but there's a ton of space and a porch and Baylor likes it, and though I never would have guessed it, I've grown to love my neighborhood a little.

That's not to say there aren't days - LOTS of days - where I'm like 'this paycheck-to-paycheck nonsense needs to STOP, you need to get your shit together and get an adult-paying job and an apartment where the doorknobs aren't constantly falling off and maybe a car. At least a bed frame!' So then I look for jobs, and there either aren't any, or aren't any that pay substantially more. Or, like today, I find one that does pay really well, and I'm probably super qualified, but it's in Alexandria. I GoogledMapped that shit, and the trip takes over an hour and involves a bus AND a train. The tiny, rational adult part of me is like 'Come on, Katie, you could do --' then the part of me that inhabits my actual reality is like 'OH HELL THE FUCK NO' and I close the browser window in disgust.

Then I think 'maybe I should marry a rich old dude, or something, just to have someone take care of me'. And both the rational-adult and actual-reality parts of me take a pause to fully consider this, because I'm lazy and that sounds sort of cool. And maybe it would make my dad worry less. Then actual-reality points out that I'd be really unhappy, dependent on someone else like that. Also, that's gross. Rational-adult part chimes in 'plus, you're like, 31 now, so the dude would probably have to be REALLY OLD.' Double gross.

So I guess...luxury poor it is, for right now. Have as much fun as you can, make the best memories, and appreciate the freedoms you do have, how lucky you actually, truly are. Oh, and look both ways when you cross the street. Those city buses do not play.

ps: That said, anyone who knows a really awesome, non-gross rich old dude....we can talk, is all I'm saying.

Night Moves

I want to tell you about how it's different, but I don't know how to explain the difference, when so much of everything is still so entirely the same. I don't have the vocabulary yet, for this new strangeness.

At night, I walk by myself, twenty-nine blocks back to my hotel. I love walking at night, I love cities at night, the bigger the buildings the better I feel. So many faces looking out of so many windows all day, but night comes and they're empty. The same person will look out a window for years, then leave, and some other face will be there. The window: 'Who cares?'

I stop at dive bars, in tourist areas: places full of people escaping the crowds they've been dragged into by loved ones. People likely to understand your desire to be left the hell alone.

I wonder what I will hang on to, and what I will leave behind.

Yesterday: "How great would the city be without all these people?" and I chided, because that's my role sometimes, but in truth -- yes.

I would walk forever. It is dark and I don't want to talk. I could walk through Central Park for hours, lamps lighting water, moon shadows making alien formations from rocky outcroppings. But I can't, I know, I shudder to think of the Post-Apocalyptic possibilities of the park at night. Even if they told me it was safe. Nothing can ever be entirely empty.

Twenty-nine blocks, back to the hotel; at the end I walk along Fifth Avenue, hugging the park, coveting the shadows of those lamps across the ponds. It looks dangerous like a fairy tale. I've always liked fairy tales the best.

Carts wait for passengers. The smell of horses will always remind me of childhood, and I walk as close to the edge of the curb as I can, trying to get in the way of their breath. Everything is dark, and shiny, and the sidewalks are crowded, and people are together, and alone.

No, I Actually Have NO IDEA What Time It Is

I complain about Boston all the time. I mean, you can’t totally blame me – besides the weather (this summer has been an apocalyptic mash up of skin blistering heat and prolonged bring-on-the-malaria downpours. We’ve had like, four nice days.) and the assholes, and the tourists, and the college kids - it’s hard to be perennially cheery about a place where HAPPY HOUR IS ILLEGAL. (Silver lining – cigarettes now cost like, fifteen dollars a pack, so cutting down on random post-work boozing also probably reduces certain types of lung cancer, at least in those people who only smoke when drinking. WHICH ISN’T ME, MOM, I SWEAR.)

But all shittiness aside, there are some dope elements to Boston. Like – I hate the T, but it makes me laugh all the time. When I’m going all the way across the city on the Orange Line, sometimes I get off at New England Medical and walk all the way to Haymarket, just so I can cut through the Common. Seriously, you can walk everywhere downtown, and it’s all so pretty, even in the winter. Our sports teams have become pretty excellent over the last half decade, and being that I remember when we REALLY SUCKED ASS AT EVERYTHING, it’s been pretty awesome to witness the transformation. Plus, my father can die that much more happily now. Half the neighborhoods are like living museums and I’m not sure who I love more – people who love it, or the people who’ve lived here forever and don’t even notice. And there are a crapload of odd holidays celebrated nowhere else in the country (Bunker Hill Day, anyone?) which certain workplaces consistently recognize, and provide their employees with plenty of long weekends. And of course, there are piles and piles of ‘old shit’, as my brother so eloquently refers to our abundance of physical history. Graveyards, war sites, ships…and of course, the architecture. With which I am so insanely in love. The old shit, the new shit, I’m obsessed with all of it. That’s not to say, however, that I don’t have some complaints.

Today’s Major Damage: The Custom House Clock.

The Custom House itself I fucking love. My parents actually took advantage of one of those TimeShare scam-talks one time, so we could stay there for a weekend. So no, I don’t have a problem with the building. It’s just the goddamn clock – and not even all the time. I just hate the shit out of that clock at night. See, once it becomes dark, the clock face is illuminated. They’ve chosen a lovely palette of blues and an orange-yellow, so it’s visible without being neon, and sort of retro without being period-specific…that’s all fine. It’s just…why are the clock hands NOT ILLUMINATED??? Why would you spend thousands of dollars lighting up all the numbers on the clock, and then LEAVE THE HANDS COMPLETELY DARK? Seriously, this is the most retarded design flaw. Like, I know what numbers are on a clock. There are twelve of them. I even know what order they go on. So, considering I’m not a toddler, figuring out what numbers go where on the clock face isn’t actually the part I need the most help with. It’s that whole ‘what fucking time is it?’ part where I could actually use some fucking assistance. DOESN’T THIS BOTHER THE SHIT OUT OF ANYBODY ELSE??? It’s made me crazy for like, my entire life. If they reversed the lighting scheme – lit up the hands instead of the number – it would automatically become like, 85% more effective. (Ok, so I’m not really that good at telling time. People who run around with watches like that – just the hands – confuse the hell out of me. I’m in awe that they're not at least an hour off at all times. Then again, if I ever saw someone consult a watch that consisted of just numbers and no hands, I would SMACK THEM UPSIDE THIER FUCKING HEAD because that is not a WATCH it is a FUCKING BRACELET, you IMBECILE. Good Lord.)

I know this is totally irrational, misplaced rage. But I live in Boston people, I’m an asshole. I can’t really help it. Just fix the fucking clock. I bet the tourists will appreciate it, too.

Ooh, and just so I don’t end this on a totally sour note: another thing I love about Boston? Fenway Park. Which is the most delightful combination of old shit + sports + architecture +overpriced beer. It is also where I am headed in about one hour. Yay! Except I am wearing white pants, and will be sitting in the bleachers. Which is going to make enjoying my giant soft pretzel with gobs of mustard EXCEEDINGLY DIFFICULT. I’m going to need to bring like, a towel and spread it over my lap. Where the hell am I going to get a towel? You know what? Fuck it. What the hell am I doing wearing white pants after Labor Day anyway? Just a small sacrifice to the mustard gods.

In Whimsical Defense of 'Genius' Architecture

I like architecture. I like it a lot. And while I may be overly partial to European churches of the Romanesque and Gothic periods, I also really love American architecture. The Boston area isn't exactly a crappy place to live if you're similarly inclined - not just because we have the Charles Bulfinch stylings on Beacon Hill and the South End's Victorian Brownstones (although that's part of it), but also because we have delightful, whimsical, and apparently wholly problematic Strata Center at MIT.

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Plenty has been written about the disaster area that this building has become - it leaks, it molds, you can't get out the emergency exits, there's a lawsuit, Frank Gehry's firm was paid $15 million, you get the picture. A lot of people really hate the building, a lot of people really hate the notion that creative 'genius' (I don't like the term) has ruined, or significantly corrupted, what is, at it's core, a functional art.

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Me? I like federal rowhouses, I like churches with soaring steeples and ridiculous ornamentation and I really, really dig the Strata Center. Shock! It's so modern! It's so tippy and angular! The horror! Whatever. It's silly. It's loud. It might have a completely nonsensical interior. And it's fun. Bottom line - this building is just really fucking fun, and bless you, Frank Gehry, not for your crappy Tiffany's collection, and not so much for the Disney Concert Hall in LA, because that building creeps me out, but thank you for injecting a badly needed shot of whimsy into this buttoned up, stodgy, last-call-at-one-and-there-are-laws-against-happy-hour-young-lady town.

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Remember fun? Remember random doodles and coloring books and cartoons and juice boxes and Leggos that you accidentally left on the woodstove so they sort of melted a little but still work perfectly well? That's what this building reminds me of. On a much grander scale, obviously. But listen - right now, we're this deeply divided country embroiled in a tragically misguided war, actively flirting with what could be a really, really shitty economic downturn, and maybe what we need in the midst of all this might be a building that looks like it was plucked off the block of a Seussian neighborhood and plopped onto the nerdiest campus in America.

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Who cares if it's structurally sound? Let it be irrational. It's Dr. Seuss, it's Rahl Dahl, it's a fairy tale - albeit an edgy one for so-called grown-ups (although, read any Dr. Seuss again, that shit is crazy political.). Let us be juvenile, let this building function as a children's story, a dream-like belief that the world can be something very different than it is right now.

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Some people agree with me, entire books have been written by those who explicitly do not, who cares. It's excessive, it's ostentatious, but in the end, is it that far from what people initially thought (or would have initially thought, if they had time between milking cows and tending goats and making bread and otherwise supporting feudalism to think about contemporary architecture) about Amiens Cathedral? It had structural problems...and it took 16 years to mostly finish. No, the Strata Center is no Amiens, and they come from completely different contexts and serve totally different purposes...all I'm saying is - leave the geniuses alone. Let them make you happy.

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Well played, Frank.