we went wild

I love everything about this image; gorgeous leopard, frantic baboon, light hot pink to pale yellow gradient, cool typography, tension, contrast, the wildness. via the always rad miss moss.

Electronic Death

My yahoo email was hacked last week. But chances are you already knew that. Everyone I have known received an urgent message from me saying I was beaten up and robbed. That day I received reply messages from friends I haven’t spoken to in months, even years. I heard from professional acquaintances, former students and my Mom. Some knew it was fake, others thought it may be real, others just wanted to alert me. Because my life is so tethered to my email, it was like electronic death. I greatly value my privacy and it was a nightmare of great proportions that I had emailed my whole life in one click, from Nigeria. 

But, like the Who’s down in Whoville who had Christmas spirit even when the Grinch stole their gifts and roast beast; the hackers reminded me that there are some caring and lovely humans out there on the end of those clicks, some who I should really reach out to more often, probably via my gmail address. 

This is a post from the archives that I wrote about my dear yahoo mail.

I have lived two lives. One, an occasionally joyous although sometimes inexplicably melancholy, living, breathing, face to face life. And the other, a life of silent expressions that confess, console, question, quit, explain, swear and repent. My other life is my yahoo email.

I have had my yahoo email address for 15 years. Its getting to the point that the address gives me an air of unprofessionalism, immaturity and overall un-tech-savvyness. None of which are ok for me to have. I am going to be 34 this year. I might be a professor one day. I live in New York. I just got an iPhone. I desperately need to move on. These days the '@yahoo.com' makes even the most dignified names, tacky:

jacquelinebouvierkennedyonassis@yahoo.com or gustaveflaubert@yahoo.com.

I have a gmail account and a school address. I never use them. Every day, several obsessive times a day, for 15 years I have signed in and signed out. I check. I check again. I write messages with tears streaming down my face. I write messages in love and in haste. I re-read. I feel powerful and honest. I pour over words and how they sound against one another. I press send. I regret. I wait. I regret. I check.

I don’t like to talk on the phone. So many of my professional contacts and dearest friends are only reached via this email address. If I had to call them, I would be absolutely nowhere. I explain myself far better when I don’t have to speak. I know this can be accomplished on any email server. And this glorious digital age is laden with opportunities to sit at a computer and spill your uncensored guts to an abstract someone (i.e. this blog).

But my whole life is there, on yahoo. Its a dense and unpoetic chronicle. I keep every message. I say too much.

A Home Without a House

I grew up in the suburbs in a big white house. My parents were city kids. Most of their lives were spent on grassless streets, in laundromats and staying inside on Halloween. They moved for us. And as a first-generation suburbanite, it was my birthright to ignore the sacrifices they made to afford our comfortable home. I climbed trees, collected fireflies and worked at the mall. I was safe and lucky and oblivious.

I neglected to understand what our house represented for our family, but I still deeply appreciated living there. I am a stalwart homebody. A continuous theme in my young life was that when I went away—either for the weekend or to college—I would miss the house. Not always the people in it, but the house itself; the sun that hit the floor behind the living room couch, the velvety moss covered stones lining the driveway, the cold attic treasures. All of it.

My friends laughed at me for this. No one admires a homebody, it’s the opposite of cool. But it’s something I have always been sure of, even when I wasn’t sure I was sure of anything. I knew I loved being in that house.

Until I didn’t. After a brief period of moving back in with my parents after college, I had to get out. The feeling was fiery red. It was time.

My brother helped me drive my belongings to my first apartment in the city.

The hot and cold water were on backwards in the kitchen sink. I can’t say I never saw a roach. The toilet leaked. The super never arrived when he said he would. It was unbearably hot in the summer.

I had regressed. I was back where they came from. Was I supposed to repeat this pattern? This is not what I pictured for myself. Its also not what they pictured for me. My very old-fashioned father refused to visit me. He didn’t want to see me like that. Stripped of everything he wanted for me; my privilege dismembered.

This March will mark ten years that I have lived in the same apartment. The apartment which I initially hated then painted, IKEAed, tolerated and now appreciate with a new kind of wise and understanding love. Its pre-war, rent-stabilized and well outside of the flood zone. Some days my suburban upbringing wells up and I snap at the constant horn-honking, the injustices in the laudromat or the oppressive summer heat that lingers on the 4th floor. I know that these are scarcely hardships compared to what others in the world face and mostly, I am thankful for the peaceful sliver of ground I can come home to.

And after ten years, we have a veritable encyclopedia of memories in this place: parties, Thanksgivings, building things, hanging Christmas lights, drinking wine in the evening and coffee in the morning, and relaxing together in our little railroaded place in the wild city. My husband has built almost every piece of furniture that we own. Each drawer, countertop, bookshelf and cabinet fit perfectly in these imperfect swervy old walls. This is where we grew together, our lives intertwining more and more as we sat at the kitchen table looking out at the most beautiful Manhattan Mini Storage sign we had ever laid eyes on. We have done all anyone can do. We manage. We are houseless, grassless and mortgageless.

My husband and I will never be able to afford a house like my parents have until we are in our 50’s, if at all. So much has changed since my parents were young, especially mortgage rates and age at first reproduction. By my age my mother was already living in our house and planting pink impatients in the garden. She also had 4 kids. I don’t have any of those things.

My parents still live in the house, the mossy stones are still in place and we go back on holidays and birthday weekends. But at some painful point I know we will have to pack boxes, sell the oversized furniture and say goodbye. Then, I will be absorbed back into the gritty city—the same city my parents left—with no trace of the big white house or the grass that they worked so hard to let grow under my feet. I will miss it.  

Christmas Rapping

It came at 12:21 AM on Christmas day. We had just had the perfect, cozy Christmas Eve. We decorated the tree. We pooled our mutual creativity to make a tree-topper; one we hope to have for years. Hell, I even had a thimble full of egg nog. The night felt warm and twinkly and silent. We were brushing our teeth.

I thought I heard something. I peered out of the bathroom to listen closer. I heard it again. Someone was knocking at our door. Not once. but twice. then thrice. getting slightly more frantic each time.

Our apartment is small. You can hear all creatures stirring. We shut off the light and I tip-toed away from the door. Whoever it was, we were not answering. Joe got out a sharp implement and put it in arms reach.

We waited. It kept going. Each knock ruined another part of that wonderful evening. I began to fill with dread. I whispered “either someone we know is in trouble, or someone we don’t know, is.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses? Not at this hour. And on Christmas? Our neighbor friend was most likely out of town. My mind raced. Maybe our car was on fire downstairs (which happened on our block to someone one Thanksgiving) and someone was coming to tell us? Who would be so bold as to knock at this hour. And on Christmas? In our neighborhood, I knew it was not carolers.

As I fell asleep, I obsessed over it. My half-awake mind thought it would make a nice story about Santa. But then I doubted Santa would walk up 4 flights. WHAT was I thinking? Lucid dream craziness.

I woke up the next day still thinking about it. This time with a clearer head. And it scared me even more. I am still thinking about it. I am so conclusion-jumpy I know. And its always the worst. The city does that to you. I cant help it. Maybe someone just had the wrong apartment or maybe they needed a cup of confectioners sugar. Maybe we could have helped. But it certainly was not fucking Santa.

raison d’ etre

Honey, you are just a Christmas ornament on the tree of life.

This is not my quote. It was said to a family member of mine. But, it could have been said to me. In fact, I am saying it to me.

In the wake of the storm, I have been thinking a lot about non-essential jobs. Most jobs are just massive whirring machines of distraction. Just a way to keep us busy, thinking, making, getting people together, meetings, initiatives, ideas. Generating a raison d' etre and the pensive, satiated exhale that accompanies it. Its why we wake up. Its why I wake up. Although, non-essentialism is essential. I am not a Gradgrind. I am the furthest thing from it. There are too many people in the world for everyone to be a key member of society working to help save lives. And its a good, virtuous decision for certain people not to save or help anyone in particular.

I feel guilty being useless. But being useless is my best use. I would be a terrible nurse, emergency worker or even waitress. I am just going to try to be the best ornament I can be; shiny, steadfast and sometimes joyful.

So sad about all the loss in the wake of the storm. My heart goes out to those who lost loved ones, houses, cars, beautiful old trees, power and light. Stay warm New York.

It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness

“I knew those were the best times” my mother told me once, describing the moment where her four children were in and out of the kitchen, talking, whining, grabbing at the cheese and bread she was slicing and walking in and out of the back door to the sun-filled, overgrown backyard.

I am afraid that my {best of times} might be now. In graduate school, collecting data, in autumn in New York, working at the museum, walking across the park on these exquisite days, stressing about the future, lucky to have something to look forward to, not slogging away at the same old boring job, stressors, surprises, loneliness, i-love-what-i-am-doing days followed by what-am-i-doing days... under 35 not sick or elderly. this may actually be it. trying to enjoy it, difficult to do with my personality, hunting for trouble or ennui that i can relate to.

Elegance, Bounty, Bread and Dead Birds

We recently went to the exhibit at the National Gallery of Art Entitled Elegance and Refinement: The Still-Life Paintings of Willem van Aelst. Oh how I adore 16th-17th Century Dutch still lives. Especially the ones with deep, dark backgrounds and shimmering fruits, oysters, bread and flowers in the foreground. I like the disorderly ones the best of all, with peeled fruit, scattered crumbs, glasses of wine knocked over, and blood running down the mouths of birds and rabbits.

The Larder by Antonio Maria Vassallo, 1650

Still life with Figs and Bread by Luis Meléndez, Spanish, 1760

Breakfast Items by Pierer Claesz, 1646

and some lovely modern renditions, photographs by Justine Reyes:

Still Life with Banana, Purse and Change, 2009

Still Life with Pomegranate and Birds, 2009