Welcome to New York City
Welcome to New York City
You’ll know you’ve made it when you are sobbing in the middle of Times Square and you couldn’t even begin to think of why, how, or when the tears started happening. You try to imagine how it is possible that you are surrounded by literally a million people and not one of them notices or chooses not to talk to you – and, you don’t want them to talk to you because, hello that is a complete stranger!
But you know you’ve made it here, in New York City.
Welcome to New You City
Where drugs and therapy are provided but not typically at the same time. I don’t mean prescription drugs. I mean the good ones. The addictive ones. The drugs that are felt in every being of your body when you haven’t consumed anything.
Drugs like sitting at a bar until 4am when you have a 9am science class the next day when you go to art school. Who knows or cares if you are going to leave the bar and stumble home, because you don’t need science you’re an artist damn it.
Funny, the scientist doesn’t think they need art either.
You sit there, mixing alcohol, blowing off all the drinking rules you grew up pretending to know. Liquor before beer you’re in the clear.But you still have a hangover the next day even if you chose the wise choice of avoiding to mix.
My question is when does wine come into play? After the beer? Before the liquor? Or are you just supposed to simultaneously be drinking wine at all times?You’re addicted to the drug of wanting to be noticed in a sea of millions of drunk fish each one bigger and drunker than the next.
The drugs that are legal greens you smoke. To feel numb or cool. Or both. You got it free from your Caribbean landlord so you have to accept, and you already own that pipe so you gotta smoke it. The addictive free obligated drowsiness.
The drugs that are the people – meeting strangers to feel a high – a high that is different to each person you lock eyes with hoping to be one of the same souls.
Hoping your other half is out there and you will be the other half to your puzzle piece. But it turns out the pieces are all from different puzzles that happened to be in the wrong box, because let’s be real, no one really keeps all the puzzle pieces together when cleaning up – God just threw them into different cities amongst the world and expects us to bend and squeeze and twist the edges together until they are forced to fit – so the people are impossible, we’re all just stuck in the wrong puzzle.
Welcome to New York City
Where there is every food in the world yet you never know what to eat.
“Just smoke cigarettes to be skinny
No those kill you
No the $1 pizza kills you
No the skinny bitches on the build board kill you – “
It’s so unsettling to the point of humorous that we as a society are trying to be all equality and body conscious at the same time – Just glance at the poster on the construction wall and tell me skinny is out – The truth is people like skinny bitches. But now days people like big boobs and asses and guys with abs, but we have to pretend that those are ridiculous ideals to want because they are ridiculous things to achieve
So don’t smoke those cigarettes! Or eat that pizza! and maybe you won’t die from ash and grease but the self-hate will get ya in the end
Welcome to New York City
Where you can be an artist because you showed up.
Welcome to New York City
We’re all “broke”
We’re all “in debt”
We all have “student loans”
We all pretend to have no money but let me tell you That is not true my friend! because if you and I we’re broke we wouldn’t be sitting here we’d be on the street asking for money for drugs to feel better – not sitting here in our brand name shoes – or even knock off shoes whatever damn shoes you are wearing I can almost guarantee you didn’t steal or barter for them you bought them with money.
Now days middle class means broke.
Middle class is broken because we always want more than we already have.
We live at excess.
An excess most people around the world will call you rich and wish to be as broke as you and I.
Welcome to New York City
You’re not going to fall in love.
You’re going to hate yourself for hating all those people who appear in love holding hands down the street. You’re going to feel bitter and wonder how they met or if they had sex that morning. You’re going to pretend you’re here to be in love with yourself but in reality you just want to be warm for once in April. Warm like someone is holding you, or you know you are on the way to be held. Warm in April like you’re not sure if you like the arms around you but you accept the gesture of the open arm – because you know those arms can make you feel less cold and less alone.
It’s okay to be cold. It’s okay to be cold. But to be cold and alone is a feeling all too familiar for those of us hiding in our coats and earphones on the way to no one.
Welcome to New York City
You’ll forget to look up. You’ll spend most of your time looking at the ground trying not to step on shit or in rats. You won’t mind the trash, truly you won’t. You’ll wish everyone’s Friday night was yours. You’ll leave shit in cabs. You’ll throw up on the street. You’ll spend over $50 at a bar and feel more hung-over because of the guilt the next day. You will no longer be surprised by rich Indian princess who spend thousands on a night out. You will miss very person you have ever met. You’ll hate your roommate. You’ll hate your best friend. You will not care about seeing famous people on the street. You’ll never like Times Square. You will take the subway the wrong direction more times than you should. You will not be excited by random street performances. You will not give money to homeless people. You will for a split second be flattered by the catcall. You will be sweating in 30-degree weather. You will sleep at night imagining what your life would be like if you never moved to New York City, and sometimes you’ll like it.
But you will not leave here. Because the second you take a step as far as Jersey you’ll long for New York City, long for the bitterness and sadness it fills you with, because it’s better than feeling nothing.
Welcome to New York City
Baby Scares
Or I should say, The Thought of a Baby Scares Me. Sometimes I forget to take my birth control assuming my hormones are attacking my desire for a baby. Truthfully It’s easier to blame anything other than my sheer laziness of refusal to participate in the same mundane act I have been repeating every day for the past six years. (Granted, both factors of this profound act of defiance resonate inside my body, but hey I am a proud Gemini.)
For the past four weeks I have been working at a Jewish summer day camp to teach kids yoga. Ages 5-10 are a transformative five years, especially when the kid count is over hundred campers. The class are comprised of yoga adventures, yoga games, yoga songs, and of course yoga bubbles. So far this summer I’ve witnessed: stick throwing, kicking and screaming, scraped chins, and some of the most emotional tears I have ever encountered - all in a single yoga 45-minute class. (Did I mention there’s 7 a day!) All that being said... I still see a baby and immediately start imagining what brand of stroller I’d purchase.
How the fuck did this happen? I moved to New York City to be authentically my own person and want only things that have to do with me. (The same reason I imagine people drop their careers seven years in so that they can eat croissants in France.) What changed? A stable place to live? A boyfriend I actually like? My goddamn ever evolving hormones?
23 is not the time to have a baby. Let me clarify – 23 is not the time to have a baby for me. I get it, I really do, I’m from the south. I follow Instagrams dating back to high school consisting of diamond rings and toddlers. The babies started early. However, I can barely pay my rent, my student loans, or for a $15 salad. How am I supposed to buy my nonexistent baby lil Adidas shoes or daycare or literally anything?
I grew up with two working parents who waited until 35+ to have kids. (I am proud of this fact.) I never saw them as old, or not cool enough to be my mom and dad. I saw them as parents. The idea of living my life and figuring out my job has always been the goal, why does my body have to want something different?
Maybe it’s the boyfriend. I’m not saying we started dating with any sort of future in mind, but we like each other and I wonder if my body has started interpreting that as “He’s not a murderer so maybe settle down and have six kids?” He is, for the first time, a one hundred percent healthy relationship full of excitement, comfort, and desire. We get along and our lifestyles collide on so many levels it would seem only right we date, get married, have kids. I feel lucky to have found this kind of commitment at the age I am, yet I don’t want to love on the fear of it will end, or worse it will never happen again.
When the “married mom with a nice husband” concept of a potential future for myself pops up in my mind I violently suppress it down like an embarrassing sex dream. The taboo of a woman who wants a career and a baby is not new but to speak on it so “young” is. The life that made me want to vomit at age 17 suddenly doesn’t and that scares me. I used to not believe teenage girls wanted to raise a family in Oklahoma instead of being a poor unknown artist in New York City. Truthfully, I selfishly felt bad for those girls. I thought that they all secretly wanted what I openly wanted, all while the repeating mantra: it not that hard to just leave. I’m cutting both parties short. It was extremely challenging to uproot everything I thought of as ‘home’ and start over. While, I can’t even imagine the challenges of being a teen mom.
For now, my plan is birth control and safe sex. I’m not tricking myself or anyone else into an unwanted family. The plan is to take care of my needs and goals, while being able to express a desire for a baby eventually, someday, maybe. Ultimately, I’m not planning for a bay anytime soon, yet I’m not going to not wave and coo at subway babies and like all the prego mom Instas.
On Football
Every time I throw a football I miss my Dad. This is the point where I tell you he was a ride or die fan of some midwestern team and his dying words were “Go Sonners.” I have no idea if he even liked football, he was more into the idea of being a well rounded person who knew a little something about everything. Or should I say making, me a well rounded person who knew something about everything.
This idea wasn’t meant to be unique to a certain age group or gender. I was forced to spend hours in our front yard with him in order to learn to throw perfect spiral. A skill, that to this day, I mechanically have when I pick up a football. The reason being no other than to know how.
It is impressive about once a year, when I find myself in a setting usually around men, tossing the ball back and fourth with a couple of girls piled to the side to witness. The girls attempt to join but end up flinging the football in large unaimed circles, eventually falling yards short of the open hands at the other side. I timidly await my opportunity to pick up the ball as my hearts pumps at the thought of the joy it will bring me to throw it.
Finally it rolls to me, I pick it up and take my throwing position. Wow looks like someone should be teaching a different sport next year. The football coach shouts across the field at me, the camp yoga instructor. I threw a perfect spiral. Claimed a perfect catch on the return.
I imagine with this skill means. Contemplating if this could affect my current artistic career goals anyway. All while awaiting for my turn to retrieve the ball again before turning out three more perfect spirals perfectly arriving the distance I predestinated them.
A Poem
The Carolina Anole is an arboreal lizard found primarily in the southeastern United States (and some Caribbean islands.). This tree-living mistaken chameleon is famous for its ability to to lose its tail after being entangled by a predator.
Only to regrow it later in solidarity.
As kids we tend to become fascinated with anthropomorphic characters early on.
lizards and reptiles headlining the list
enthralled with the regrowth of their tail.
once the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’s mortal enemy slashed it off
- on a television show or video game -
The verb is in the name; “mutant”
So cool it’s like they can never die!
What is our obsession with this magical healing power?
As the idea of forever growth expands beyond our childhood,
We hold onto this obsession of healing:
For our country
Our relationships
Our horrific past
We will grow from it.
I have a horrible disgusting obsession with picking my skin. Scratching, pulling, carving into my flesh, once there is a blemish that naturally occurs. Whether it be from a scrape, or a pimple - most of the time the round bumps and spots appear as the result of mosquitos gnawing at my ankles.Every year like clockwork:
The bite. The redness. The inflammation. The scratch. The open wound. The blood. The scab.The picking open of the scab two or three, maybe even four or five times. The encrusted over scab. The white dusty skin. The dark brown scar that will last because of my own creation. The not-promised eventuality of my original skin color appearing again.
I am a reptile that regrows my own tail. Instead of being fascinated and appreciative of the process I hinder it. I shame healing for my own personal love of cutting.
I believe we want and need to heal.
It’s evolution after-all!
(Which by the way is the lamest excuse for everything. We are so damn obsessed with our own existence we consequently praise/devote/demean everything on good ol evolution.)
Some questions about healing
*Do we forget the past once we heal?
*No really, do we forget and move on from the horrific dirty shitty tearful meaningful past that we need to grow from in order to exist in the world on a daily I go to work and try to eat everyday basis?
*And what is forgetting? Is it not thinking about it every second of every day? Obsessing over what was said, and who did what, and who started it all to begin with?
*Or, is that holding a grudge is unattractive? Let’s face it, no one wants to be that person not being friends with that other person because of shit that was said when so and so was drunk in the past. Let’s just forget about it and move on.
Oh yeah, moving on.
*How do you move on from a tragedy that continues to be reality?
(See again, November 8th, 2016/check the date today)
*How are some moments more moments than others?
*More momentous?
*More important?
*More valued?
*Who decides which are which or what are what?
Because something that means a thing to you might mean nothing to me.So I must resume the cycle of healing for myself, to be better. Because I don’t want to be the reason you are learning to heal, trying to regrow your tail.
Some thoughts about New York
A Poem
It’s cold.
I am happy,
– Yet angry at strangers constantly – judging their lives and wondering what their negotiations are with themselves in the morning to wear a coat or not
or hat
or scarf
or matching socks
or kiss their lover goodbye
or say ‘I love you’ out of habit or meaning – and if they feel something when they say it – does their heart escape, do they feel like they are going to explode and crave to experience that moment of change right after they say it, and miss who they were before the
ife-changing-words-that-should-have-just-been-about-socksandcoats came out of their mouth?
But I judge them,
the strangers
I love them.
I judge them.
I wish I were them wishing to be me.
I believe in matching socks and words have meaning and could change a life, or a morning
“At the same time they’re just words and I was just angry. I was saying something out of anger because I wanted a reaction out of you and I knew exactly what to say to get it” (that’s what love is,right?)
I no longer think that’s what love is.
But I love strangers so so so much
Do they love me?
I don’t think New Yorkers talk about the train as much as people like to talk about New Yorkers talking about the train.
I love you