The Great Divide Between On and Off: On

There is On, and there is Off.  But there is mostly: Neither.

It seems there are lots of different classifications for the highs: The Red-Letter Day, the Gold Star Day, the Five Star Day.  There are also names for the lows:  The Crappy Day, The Horrible Day, or, as my high school French teacher called it: The Blue Funk.   I’ve found only one name for the days in the middle, though, and that is simply: Everyday.

Everyday is neither here nor there. Everyday is the day that lets you wake up with nothing in particular to look forward to, and go to sleep having done nothing particularly exhausting.

But – Oh! – the joy when Everyday turns into an On Day, before our eyes and seemingly beyond our control.  On Days provide the fizzy bubbles to the otherwise Still Water of Everyday.  They create sparks and chemistry.  They make us sexy; they turn us into the people we always hoped we’d become, even if we did not know when, or how to do so.

On Days make us proud, they connect us with the past, with the people we used to be who dreamt that they would turn into an On Person, one who is magnetic and confident, one to whom the things they want come with ease and elegance.  One who likes what they see in the mirror, and more, importantly, likes how they feel when they are not looking in the mirror.

I’m on the fence as to whether or not it is cosmic intervention that can take an ordinary Tuesday evening and turn it into One Of Those Nights.  I’d like to think it is; to assume that it’s anything more temporal would be to imply that we have greater control over changing an Everyday to an On Day – which indicates a consistent and disappointing failure to actively do so.

So if Everyday, I relinquished that power back to the planets, now that they have seemed to align in such a way as to share it with me, I will take it and run with it.  I’ve been given a reminder, an excellent reminder, of how an On Day feels; of how Everyday can feel.   As a close friend encouraged me: “It’s fun, put on the bulletproof vest and jump in.”

So I will jump into the unknown and try to take – or share – the reigns with the celestial bodies that may or may not determine our fates, and make the effort to do those old dreams proud:  to be the self that feels true, the self that feels sexy and confident, the self that has faith in the known and unknown; to be, simply, my On-Self.

Inspiration from a sign on Carnaby Street, London.

Trippin’

Although I realize it may come across as laziness, I can identify the exact moment and reason when and why my writing began an unduly long haitus.

The start of February brought three traumatic and somewhat interrelated events: Firstly, I left my job at precisely the same moment that my job left me. Because of earlier trouble at said job, I was left with virtually no savings or safety net. Strike one against mental health (among other things). Secondly, my computer broke (likely because of having to lug it back and forth from newly ex-job). Although the warranty covered the repair, I still had to shell out $100 that I didn’t have for a loaner – all the more desperately needed for job searching and resume submittal. Thirdly, upon picking up the aforementioned loaner laptop on a particularly ugly, rainy evening, I took an unfortunate tumble down some subway stairs. My pride recovered relatively quickly, my right knee did not. Remember that lack-of-job part? So, too, was I left with a lack of health insurance. Thus I spent many, many hours on my couch, with an iced and elevated knee, thinking often of the uncanny correlation between the most literal trip I took, face first, down those stairs, and the rather lofty, mostly abstract concept of traveling and motion that I was writing about in this blog.

What’s the Cost of a Metaphysical Stamp?

I’m one of those happy skeptics who finds great comfort in a horoscope that tells me what I want to hear, and readily discredits astrology as bunk when it doesn’t. While I do believe there is a greater order to things, I am doubtful that it comes from the Star Consultants being commissioned for Yahoo. What is truly heartening for me is when these small signs, these bushels of what-I-want-to-hear (and-sometimes-don’t) find their way to me via some other means. An airmail system, if you will, that must exist somewhere between the literal and the metaphoric.

Last night was oddly frustrating for me, as long-unanswered questions that I should have stopped asking myself long ago refused to leave my head. I searched for a cathartic way to address the questions, doing almost anything except direct them at the person they were about… the one person who might be able to answer them. While I’m fairly used to thoughts of him occupying a comfy space between my conscious and subconscious, these nagging questions drilled themselves into the very forefront of my mind. I mentally shouted, I wrote, I drew, I read, I sang, I listened. The pervasiveness of the questions was relentless. Why, why, why? (note: most questions pointed at someone else that start with “why” are rarely answered, and unsatisfactorily at that.) I went to bed still frustrated, still stymied over both the impossibly unanswerable questions and the inappropriate large amount of time I was devoting to them.

T his morning, I arrived to work and was shocked to be greeted by an email – from none other than he, to whom all of my questions were directed. While his email was incredibly brief and simple and told me absolutely nothing of substance – the mere fact that it arrived – this morning of all mornings – gives me an odd faith in this metaphysical system of silent correspondence. How did my wishing and hoping and thinking and praying manifest itself into a guy thousands of miles away thinking about me. It’s like in Ghost – when the departed Patrick Swayze is desperate enough to get a message across, he has the ability to make people pay attention. Did my desperate frustration make a butterfly flutter its wings in Africa, which caused a monkey to sneeze, which caused an elephant stampede, which caused a nut to fall off a tree, which caused Transatlantic email-writing? I feel like there’s been a pinch in the time-space-continuum thing (of which I know nothing about except that its fun to say) that lead me to breathing a little easier tonight.

The sender of the email – to touch on a theme from my last post – is one whose plane I still believe will meet mine again in a far more significant way than a paltry email here and there. If the experiment from last night was any indication, these planes might just be headed in the same direction.

An Affine Space of Dimension Two*

A little over a year ago, I decided (as much as one can decide) to pursue a relationship (as much as one can pursue) with the most promising prospect to cross my path in years. Timing, it seemed, was against us. A few weeks after I realized that the crush was mutual (how thrilling!), this guy – we’ll call him Bert for shits & giggles – told me that he was leaving on a week-long work trip. Unfortunately, it was the week prior to my leaving New York for a three-week, soul-searching/soul-salvaging trip abroad. I was nervous about how a month-long separation would affect the still fragile flirtation we were building, but felt confident that we could keep up our playful banter via email, and that something fun and real would likely be waiting for me when I returned home. Except that by the time I came home (and jumped into a new worked project), dear Bert was out of town yet again – this time for a month. At least I was back in the States, though, where back-and-forth emails were complimented by hour-long phone calls, reminiscent of the rambling, twisting high-school calls with an equally lusted-after beau.

When we did see each other – roughly 3 months after last bidding each other goodbye – we had a proper date (I thought), and although I denied to my friends getting ahead of myself, I was clearly lying. That first date, sadly for me, turned out to be our only date, as future attempts to get together were devastatingly unfruitful. Months passed, and although we were finally in the same city at the same time, there was an unsettling distance in the space between us. About six months after my crush began, I decided (as much as one can decide) to give up and get over him.

I write this not as a maudlin tale of lust-lost. Instead, a recent reflection of the confusing and gap-ridden chain of events that began with smiles and flushed-cheeks led me to see the big picture of this Relationship That Never Was. Bert and I – regardless of our physical location – were always in two different places. We existed on two planes whose trajectories neared each other but I doubt every truly intersected. I don’t mean to metaphor-ize this concept to the stuff Chick Lit is made of… the different places I speak of were not those of maturity or readiness or social standing. The chemistry and likeness was there – otherwise Bert wouldn’t have been the promising prospect I swore he was. But with the wisdom and wistfulness with which I approach that chapter of the past year-or-so feels like a global one this afternoon, and I’m learning that we all kind of cosmically reside in one place. No matter how far we travel or where we settle down, we each occupy our own plane, stretching out forever into the vast unknown we call life. Inevitably, we’ll encounter some of the billions of other planes – sometimes crashing, sometimes grazing, sometimes perfectly meshing into an intersection. That’s when we are lucky.

I last saw Bert in a foreign city we were both in, and our planes once again magnetically pulled towards each other. But – as I knew they couldn’t, and as I know now they likely never will – the magnetism pulled only so far before that strange repellency turned us both away. He continued off on his plane, and I on mine. *

F is for STFU

I just read a Times article that said that the subway line I take to and from everywhere – Brooklyn’s pride and joy, the F train – stands out from the other MTA lines because on any given ride home, the passengers are quiet. It astounded me that I’ve never noticed this about the train I’ve been riding every day for 4+ years, but it shouldn’t have. We go to such lengths to block out the sounds of the city’s underworld: we snap on our headphones and do our best to ignore the squeaking and hissing of the wheels on the rails, the ding-dong of closing doors, the garbled announcements, and, especially, our fellow traveler’s mundane conversations and ramblings. It seems we’ve also blocked out something altogether unique: a rare quiet moment within our hectic day.

While “quiet” is naturally a relative term – my new apartment is “quiet” because there isn’t a bus-stop directly outside of it – enjoying it is a pleasure I think we forget exists. This morning, I was cursing the elevated train above DUMBO for causing daily damage to my eardrums as it rumbles over the Manhattan Bridge – but why is it so easy to find the noisy to be bad and the quiet to be… well, unnoticeable.

Just as we can let our eyes get used to the relative darkness of the city at night, I’m going to try to let my ears adjust to seeking out the odd and lonely quietness of the city’s soundscape.

Divided by a Common Language

“My being was condensed, and as the rays
Of thought were slowly gathered, I could hear
His voice, whose accents lingered ere they died
Like footsteps of far melody.” – Percy Bysshe Shelly, Prometheus Unbound, II, i

A few weeks ago, I heard a podcast interview with the lead singer/composer of a band I like. His English accent sounded uncannily like a friend of mine, a friend I wished lived closer so his accent, so-to-speak, would be come a more regular fixture in my everyday. Like most sensory triggers, this singer’s voice conjured up bizarre memories I thought were forgotten and a general sense of nostalgia, both for the homophonous (new word I just created!) friend of mine and the circumstances of our friendship: I was living in a town on the outskirts of London, attending the University for a term and learning how to be myself.

I was surprised to learn, during the podcast, that the guy they were interviewing wasn’t from the same part of England that my friend is. Perhaps its very American of me, but I was sure that the detailed intricacies I heard corresponded to a specific geographical spot. I consider myself savvy enough to pick out the locale of certain English accents, and practiced mimicking their inflections for fun, and considered these exercises as a means to bring myself closer to the shores across the pond. For some reason, I let this geographical inconsistency throw me for a huge loop. Of course, it ultimately led me to consider myself – having been told many times by many disappointed people that I “don’t have an accent” (my New York/New Jersey heritage is somehow undetectable in my voice), but also it begged the question: What does it mean to “know” a place?

It’s a question I’ve grappled with often when it comes to London. I don’t consider myself a tourist there, but I’m certainly not a local. I sometimes feel more at home there than I do in New York, but can’t shake the feeling of being an alien. I know to call the Tube the Tube, I know where to get a decent bite or pint, I can differentiate the myriad coins and give you proper change quickly. Still, London is in my blood as a destination, not a base. And England, to me, is still little more than the host country (which is not all different from America’s relationship to New York, to me). Is it worth it to challenge myself over an ambiguous accent? I want to say no. But I can’t shake the feeling that the integration I imagine will make me feel less like an outsider there doesn’t truly exist.

I endeavor and aspire to be a Global Citizen, but the truth is that my experience is limited, and can only claim membership to so many clubs. I suppose it’s better to come to terms with that than to fight it. And perhaps the next time I want to feel the comfort of a familiar accent, I will simply call my friend.

Red Eye

I’ve heard it said that “home is where you lay your head.”

As a single person living in this megalopolis, I can tell you this is not true. Head-laying is an almost arbitrary action, and, if you’re lucky enough to get – or share – a pillow, it acts as a constant reminder that it is not your own. It is an easy way to become a foreigner in your own city, in your own skin.

Address Unknown

Last night, I saw a brilliant play by The Civilians called “Gone Missing,” in which vignettes compiled from interviews with New Yorkers about things they have lost throughout their lives emphasize the perhaps not-so-opposite notions of “lost” and “found.” I learned, through a story about the Lost City of Atlantis, that the etymology of the word “nostaliga” comes from the Greek for “severe homesickness” (nostos meaning “homecoming” and algos “pain, grief, distress”). This fascinates me – that which we yearn for is that which causes us sadness. We knowingly engage in what is inevitably an endless cycle of want and pain, too little of one fueling too much of the other.

So I began an inward journey (which coincided with the subway ride home, on the F train I didn’t have to wait too long for), considering the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met, the sights I’ve seen, and the versions of myself I’ve left in each place – carbon copy prints that still roam the streets of cities I’ve loved. When I find myself missing a city or town, I’m forced to question what it is I truly miss – sweet smells, damp air, breathtaking sights – or something less tangible?

Often, its an ache for someone that I used to be, someone who existed in one of these places, saw things through fresh eyes, and experienced moments before they were memories. I am keeping this blog to communicate with these former-selves, growing from things I’ve seen years ago and teaching those other-mes about the life I have in front of me. An intercontinental chain of letters to an existential pen-pal, sent Par Avion.