bird by bird

I wait for the train. I wait for the elevator. I wait for the light to turn green. And each waiting minute floats off into the sky like a birthday balloon gone rogue, never to return. I wish I could grab those minutes with my hands, or pick them carefully off of the sidewalk, and put them securely in my back pocket. I wish I could take those waiting minutes home where I would keep them sealed tightly in a bell jar. Then, preferably on Sunday afternoons after I have bought groceries for the week and put away my clean laundry, I wish that I could open up that jar and let those waiting minutes free. I wish I could look over my shoulder at my alarm clock and see the time go backward, the way that that scoreboards do, when something has happened in the game that's not fair. Waiting minutes aren't fair, and they can't be collected or stored in bell jars. But I really, really wish they could.

[Written in June, posted in August. Thought about all the time] I'm riding my bike on a Sunday night between two blond, free-spirited and open-hearted Brooklyn babes with an iPhone sitting in my bike basket blaring this song as we ride through Brooklyn. We are riding toward the Manhattan skyline with a pink sky illuminating in the background, and SS says the thing my dad always said about this kind of sky: "Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning." I smile. I feel home. I'm in the front seat of LS's red Pontiac Grand Prix with my outdated iPod in hand playing all of our old favorite jams. We are driving though new, yet familiar streets of Kansas City toward a beautiful Catholic church for a beautiful Catholic wedding. Though our seat belts restrict our dancing, our voices are loud and free and slightly off key. Drives and jams were always our thing. I feel home. I'm unpacking my suitcase on a Sunday night and picking ...

Last night I had a dream that I was riding a bicycle that was meant for two people, but I was riding it alone. It was made of steel and it was so cumbersome and unsteady and so, so hard to ride. The handlebars were too far away and my knees hit the metal basket when I tried to peddle. For a brief second, I dream-thought, "If only I had a partner to ride this bike with, it wouldn't be so hard," but then I immediately dream-realized that having a partner wouldn't solve the problem. The bike wasn't hard to ride because I was riding it alone; it was just a hard bike to ride. I realized that I feel that same way about living in New York.

I love Beyonce. I love this song and that I was re-introduced to it during the BEST work out class this week. I also love Grace Potter. I basically love everything about this video except the stupid Starburst graphic splashed across the bottom. Ignore that. Love the rest.

When I left South Dakota for New York City almost three years ago, I left behind two cats, a packed closet in my mom's basement, and almost every single person I have ever loved. I also left behind Sport, my Jeep Liberty. If things could be best friends, Sport was one of mine. I'm not a car person at all , and Sport was nothing to brag about when making small talk with people at the gas pump. She was a gas guzzler, and she had a crappy CD player that fell out when I hit bumps too hard. But she was mine, and she came into my life at a time when life wasn't feeling particularly kind. Suddenly there was this vehicle in my driveway calling me to drag myself out of bed and into the driver's seat. I could lock the doors and drive as fast as I wanted in whatever direction I wanted to go, and I could sing at the top of my lungs, or wail at the top of my lungs, or both. And I did a lot of both those first 6 months with Sport. Our first winter together was especially cold an...

I recently became OBSESSED with the show Orange is the New Black on Netflix, and I watched the whole season in record time. Even though it made me feel uncomfortable on so many levels (as was, I'm sure the point), it was written in a way that was brilliant, honest, subtle, funny, in-your-face, and just so complex. Color is such a theme of the show, but really it revealed how much grey there is in the justice system/life. Really powerful stuff.  I saw the following scene in the second to last episode, and though I can't really explain why, it resonated with me so much. It's a conversation between two inmates, one (Crazy Eyes) who, though semi-mentally unstable, had genuine feelings for the other inmate (Chapman) who did not reciprocate those feelings. They come into contact while both mopping the bathroom floor in the middle of the night. I love this scene and have never identified more with a daft, African American, lesbian inmate in a women's correctional facility. ...

I hope that I can explain this properly... My friend LJ was recently a bridesmaid in a wedding in California, and she and one of the groomsmen really hit it off. The groomsman had a girlfriend at the time, and he lived on the opposite side of the country as LJ, so their wedding time together was both platonic and short-lived. After the wedding, the groomsman broke up with his girlfriend, and he told a friend of his (the groom) that even though he knew a future with LJ wasn't in the cards, meeting her had made him realize what kind of person he really wanted to be with. Like, he hadn't known that a person with all the qualities he wanted really existed, and then there LJ was, just being her amazing self, and he had this grand realization that the kind of person he is looking for actually exists. Ah-ha! I loved when LJ told me this story (and in such a humble, 'here's what we can take from this' kind of way) because I totally have had that same experience. Thou...

And then suddenly, without willing it, he was thinking about Martha. The stresses and fractures, the quick collapse, the two of them buried alive under all that weight. Dense, crushing love. Kneeling, watching the hole, he tried to concentrate on Lee Strunk and the war, all the dangers, but his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a virgin and not a virgin, all at once. He wanted to know her. Intimate secrets: Why poetry? Why so sad? Why that grayness in her eyes? Why so alone? Not lonely, just alone-- riding her bike across campus or sitting off by herself in the cafeteria--even dancing, she danced alone--and it was the aloneness that filled him with love. He remembered telling her that one evening. How she nodded and looked away. And how, later, when he kissed her, she received the kiss without returning it, her eyes wide open, not afraid, not a virgin's eyes, just flat and un...

George Saunders gave the graduation speech at Syracuse University this year, and the New York Times recently published it. They read part of it at my hipster church on Sunday, and then I stumbled upon the exact same excerpt on a blog a friend just shared with me. I think it's fate, and now I'm sharing it with you: "Now, one useful thing you can do with an old person, in addition to borrowing money from them, or asking them to do one of their old-time “dances,” so you can watch, while laughing, is ask: “Looking back, what do you regret?” And they’ll tell you.... Here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it: What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly. Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable...

This is a few days late, but here's a video I made for the 1 year anniversary of the day I lost my dad. July 21st, 2008 was a very bad day, but every July 21st since has been sunny and comforting and all a part of the ever-healing process.  It's true, you know: Everything will be alright.