bird by bird

2015 has been like a visiting house guest, wonderfully welcome at first followed by an inevitable relational conflict, and ending with a warm hug but an under-the-breath "get the fuck out of here." 2015 came, she hurt, she healed, and now I want her to get the fuck out of here. But first, let's recap. I spent the first half of 2015 with a tall, bearded man who taught me how to properly mince a scallion, how to play chess (kinda), and most significantly how it felt to be really loved. In the months that followed, we shared so much with each other: entrées, stories, blankets, bottles of wine. I had someone to say good night to every night, and I was devastated when those "good nights" ended so abruptly. A lot of bad nights followed, but the people I love most in life swooped in, and quite frankly, saved me. My mom came to stay for a long weekend to help me pack, and my Brooklyn lady tribe helped me, literally and figuratively, move on. On July 1st, I moved back

“As I got older, I got craftier and less obvious, but I’ve always put a lot of energy and effort into people liking me. That’s why I’ve never understood the compliment “effortless.” People love to say: “She just walked into the party, charming people with her effortless beauty.” I don’t understand that at all. What’s so wrong with effort, anyway? It means you care. What about the girl who “walked into the party, her determination to please apparent on her eager face”? Sure, she might seem a little crazy, and, yes, maybe everything she says sounds like conversation starters she found on a website, but at least she’s trying. Let’s give her a shot!” ― Mindy Kaling, Why Not Me?

Coffee, more specifically the large cup of goodness that I get every morning from the coffee cart outside the hospital. It's the best coffee I've ever had ( no exaggeration) and it's $1.50. My IUD! Man, that baby hurt when she was put in, but she's given me such freedom and most importantly a headache-free life. Gchat and the ability to talk so frequently to my BFF + librarian who lives thousands of miles away. My nephew pup Rufus for providing me so much Snapchat entertainment When things I love go on sale (looking at you, Anthropologie) My mandolin and all who supported my music making endeavor, most notably CS for letting me borrow her mandy, AM for buying me a brand new one when CS's ended up being damaged, and Domino the dog (or rather his owners) for paying me the exact amount of mandy lessons to dogsit for a week in September. You'll all be included in my Grammy's speech.  Black olives--the perfect snack! All of the new emojis! I don't eve

Beauty and mess go hand in hand. The Good can look like a sunrise, or like the winner in an Ugliest Dog contest, all Dr. Seuss spots of hair, and buck teeth. This goodness is the only thing that can ever save us. It is what grace looks like, this unmerited, freely given spiritual WD-40. Grace means that love is bigger than any dark weird shit life can throw at you, or even that we can throw at our nutty, tender, worried, exuberant, baby selves. All truth is paradox. For instance, I miss my mom; and she is also right here. AL

I love when kids get on the subway and they immediately go to an open seat and sit up on their knees so they can look out the window. They stare out the plexiglas with sincere curiosity and are surrounded by adults who hardly look up from the personal device in hand. I smile every time I see a child do this. It makes me feel less sorry for those kids who never get to experience a train the way that I did as a kid, running up a hill at the sound of a grain train coming so I could count the cars with my cousins and cheer for the caboose. That's what it meant to see a train as a kid in South Dakota. As an adult in NYC, now I ride a train every day. I hardly ever glance up from the personal device in my hand, but every once in a while, I look out the window and see the train like a child.

Getting over a broken heart is a lot like growing out your hair. There is no way to speed it up, no miracle solution or process. There are stages. Things get ugly. You just have to live your life while you wait, and just when it seems like you've been waiting forever and ever with no progress, you look back at a picture of yourself that someone took 1 year ago, and you realize: "Oh, it did grow." It was a nice thing to realize this weekend, that without really noticing it, my hair grew and so did I.

I'm learning a new song on my mandolin! It's so lovely, and you can hear how it's supposed to sound at the very end of "Oh Brother Where Art Thou." Those dolls..

"She says I do not care if you believe me or not, it is the truth, go on and believe what you want to. So it is for sure that she is lying, when it is the truth she will go crazy trying to get you to believe her. So I feel like I know. She lights up and looks off away from me, looking sly with her cigarette in light through a wet window, and I can not feel what to say. I say Mayfly I can not feel what to do or say or believe you any more. But there is things I know. I know I am older and you are not. And I give to you all I got to give you, with my hands and my heart both. Every thing that is inside me I have gave you. I have been keeping it together and working steady every day. I have made you the reason I got for what I always do. I have tried to make a home to give to you, for you to be in, and for it to be nice." --David Foster Wallace

See, I've been having me a real hard time But it feels so nice to know I'm gonna be alright

Last week I took a 1-day memoir writing intensive course through the Gotham Writing Workshop, and it was the best. bday. gift. ever. (thanks, EM!) I walked into the workshop hoping for some help with an essay I've been working on about My Big Heartbreak. I was looking for advice to follow and tools to use to give my piece cohesiveness and a reflective conclusion. I imagined running out of the class at the end of the day, promptly opening my laptop, and filling in all the holes of my story with all the perfect missing pieces. I walked in with the story of My Big Heartbreak and nothing else, but as we talked about writing, and I heard other stories, and we worked on writing prompts, I realized that I didn't want to talk about that story anymore. I realized I wanted to write about the first time I ate an artichoke, when my grandpa let me drive his truck. I wanted to write about my dad and when I first learned that being a writer was a real job. I wanted to write about all of those

“There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course. But I was pretty certain as I sat there that night that if it hadn't been for Eddie, I wouldn't have found myself on the PCT. And though it was true that everything I felt for him sat like a boulder in my throat, this realization made the boulder sit ever so much lighter. He hadn't loved me well in the end, but he'd loved me well when it mattered.” ― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

This past week I dogsat a dog named Domino. He is a dachshund, a rescue dog, an oldie and a fatty. He barks a lot and does not get along with other dogs we encounter on our walks together. Domino's owners told me, "We're the kind of people who cross the street when we see another dog coming." I get it now. I cross the street with Domino, too. Domino's main dog attributes are not... traditionally valued, shall we say. He's needy, not playful, and his belly is so fat that it drags on the floor like a pot belly piglet. His snout is almost entirely gray, and it's pretty clear that even in non-dog years, he's very, very old. Still, after the first couple of hours with Domino, I was uncharacteristically smitten. I just love this obese, barking little beast, and I can tell Domino loves me, too. At nighttime I let him sleep in bed with me, though he needs some assistance because it's too high up for him to jump. The bed is not that high up at all, but

Last night at a party off the Church stop on the G train, I wore red lipstick a shade or two too bright and a dress with a gold pineapple on it. I met a tall-tall man with a beard who had a hand that felt like a paw when I shook it. We stood and talked in a group on the roof of an old Brooklyn apartment building, discussing the stars, animals in captivity, and looking in at neighbors with open windows. I made some jokes and he laughed at some of them. BYOT. Bring your own telescope. A girl I deemed my only competition for the tall-tall man's attention started talking about her job as a neuroscientist, about how she does experiments on fruit flies--stimulates them and studies their reactions. "You basically just fuck with fruit flies all day," someone in the group said. We all laughed. She did not laugh. She talked science and neurons and carbon reactors, but I couldn't stop thinking about those poor fucked with fruit flies and how much luckier the ones that live in

What can I say? It happens..

“My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to find peace with exactly who and what I am. To take pride in my thoughts, my appearance, my talents, my flaws and to stop this incessant worrying that I can’t be loved as I am.” ― Anaïs Nin

[Drafted in May] We watched Annie Hall one Sunday afternoon. He brought his laundry over to do because I had a washer/dryer in my building. We pooled our quarters, took breaks in the film to change loads, and once dry, we dumped the warm, fresh clothes on my bed and folded together. I loved that day and I loved that movie. "After that it got pretty late, and we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again. I... I realized what a terrific person she was, and... and how much fun it was just knowing her; and I... I, I thought of that old joke, y'know, the, this... this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and... but, uh, I guess

I am obsessed with every single word in this song. I listen approximately 14 times a day. It is everything.

*but you probably were not A few weeks ago my college girlfriends came to visit, and it was, as they say, the tits. And I don't just mean because three times a day, new mama KT had to pump and dump her alcohol tainted breast milk. It was so great because all 6 of us got to spend real quality time completely uninterrupted by children/spouses/work. We just got to hang. It was the breast. I mean the best. I turned 29 since the last time I wrote. I'm a new number now! The end of 28 was hard and hurtful and heavy, so I was happy to usher in a fresh new year, even if it does bring me closer to 30. I celebrated by doing the following of my favorite BK activities: Dough donuts in the AM on a stranger's stoop, bike ride past the Williamsburg waterfront, a fresh tattoo (more on that later), and a lovely outside dinner at Saraghina with some of my most beloved lady friends. Year 28 had some of my highest highs and lowest lows, so I'm hoping year 29 evens out a bit (but I know

“I still love you,” he says, “but I have to go my own way.” “So you want to break up?” I ask, trembling. “I guess so,” he says. I fall to the floor, like a woman in the twelfth century fainting at the sight of a hanging in her town square. Later, my mother comes home from a party and finds me catatonic, lying across the bed, surrounded by pictures of him and me, the mittens he bought me at Christmas folded beneath my cheek. I am crippled by what feels like sadness but what I will later diagnose as embarrassment. She tells me this is a great excuse: to take time for myself, to cry a bunch, to eat only carbohydrates slathered in cheese. “You will find,” she says, “that there’s a certain grace to having your heart broken.” I will use this line many times in the years to come, giving it as a gift to anyone who needs it. From Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham

I just had the best weekend, and I'm so grateful for it! I ate quickly melting Ample Hills ice cream cones with some best friends at the beach. I bar hopped while linking arms with a friend walking down Franklin Ave singing Shania Twain tunes. I cried at the Amy Winehouse documentary and then toasted her at a German beer garden after the film. With friends, I walked through the park, sat outside, ate tacos. I laughed so much and danced and spent too much money. I got a few more freckles and felt like myself more than I have in a while. Things are looking up .

I am in love and I am lost But I'd rather be Broken than empty Oh, I'd rather be Shattered than hollow Oh, I'd rather be By your side

June was gray. It was cold and wet and gray and hot and wet and gray. It was truly miserable, inside and out. One rainy Sunday I went by myself to Bam to see "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" because hey, why not? When you're sad and it's gloomy, there is something comforting about being in a dark room with strangers watching a movie about a kid with cancer. I'm serious! It was so comforting! The film was lovely and quirky, and I sat in the very middle of the theater wrapped up in my cozy grandpa sweater. It was hot and muggy outside, but I've made that movie theater mistake before, and the sweater was needed for both heat and security. I snuggled into it with Kleenexes in one hand and a diet soda in the other. Things have not been going well lately. Big things like life plans and small things like spilling strawberries all over the grocery store floor. One night while I was sleeping, a rainstorm blew through Brooklyn, and due to a reason that my landlord e

by Freya Manfred                                    When you’re young, and in good health, you can imagine living in New York City, or Nepal, or in a tree beyond the moon, and who knows who you’ll marry: a millionaire, a monkey, a sea captain, a clown. But the best imaginers are the old and wounded, who swim through ever narrowing choices, dedicating their hearts to peace, a stray cat, a bowl of homemade vegetable soup, or red Mountain Ash berries in the snow. Imagine this: only one leg and lucky to have it, a jig-jagged jaunt with a cane along the shore, leaning on a walker to get from grocery to car, smoothing down the sidewalk on a magic moving chair, teaching every child you meet the true story of this sad, sweet, tragic, Fourth of July world.

"Welcome to the monkey house. This is a hard planet, and we are a vulnerable species" KV

The fight this weekend reminded me of Pulp Fiction and thinking about Pulp Fiction reminded me of this scene. Fabienne : I was looking at myself in the mirror. Butch : Uh-huh? Fabienne : I wish I had a pot. Butch : You were lookin' in the mirror and you wish you had some pot? Fabienne : A pot. A pot belly. Pot bellies are sexy. Butch : Well you should be happy, 'cause you do. Fabienne : Shut up, Fatso! I don't have a pot! I have a bit of a tummy, like Madonna when she did "Lucky Star," it's not the same thing. Butch : I didn't realize there was a difference between a tummy and a pot belly. Fabienne : The difference is huge. Butch : You want me to have a pot? Fabienne : No. Pot bellies make a man look either oafish, or like a gorilla. But on a woman, a pot belly is very sexy. The rest of you is normal. Normal face, normal legs, normal hips, normal ass, but with a big, perfectly round pot belly. If I had one, I'd wear a

Last night I had a dream that I was laying in bed and a fax machine started beeping in the corner of my room. A long roll of paper started coming out of the fax, and it wrapped itself around the four walls of my room. The text was coded in giant Wingdings font and emojis. I didn't know what it meant. I still don't.

Winter walking to work. My room with this view. March 5th--His Birthday!

“There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman. As hard as we have worked and as far as we have come, there are still so many forces conspiring to tell women that our concerns are petty, our opinions aren’t needed, that we lack the gravitas necessary for our stories to matter. That personal writing by women is no more than an exercise in vanity and that we should appreciate this new world for women, sit down, and shut up.” ― Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"     

We met at space camp when we were 14, or was it on a panel at the National Braille Association Conference? Oh, it doesn't really matter. He lives a block away from me, and when we meet up, we each leave our respective apartments and meet halfway. I like to think that our whole relationship is that way; we meet each other halfway. We have some things in common. We are both tall. We both studied English in college. We are both from the Midwest and thereby pronounce "coyote" properly (/ kɔɪˈəʊt/) . And there are parts of our lives, our histories, our interests that are very different.  This, I love. We get to introduce each other to new ideas, and we get to teach each other about the things we love. He has taught me about fencing and football and food. I've introduced him to books and different spots in our neighborhood. Some things we discover together. In the past two seasons, I've learned so much, about fencing and football and food, but also about myself. I&

I'm alive! I'm alive!! I know, this poor baby blog has been gathering cobwebs the past month or so, and I'm so sorry [mom, my one reader]. I really hope to pick this back up, and drop by more regularly to scribble down some quotes, lessons, laughs, and stories. December stuff that I remember: In December I went back to South Dakota for a week for Christmas celebrating and family/friend reuniting. I had a cold most of the time I was home, but it was a great excuse to stay snuggled inside my mom's cozy home with cats and Christmas treats. My mom, sister, and I watched movies on the couch almost every single night, and cats Simon and Garfunkel made themselves at home on piles of thick blankets on our laps. It was perfect. One South Dakota Friday night, I packed up and drove a couple of hours in a snow storm to Sioux Falls, SD for a night with my college crew (most, but not all of college crew). It was so great to see, squeeze, and sip with so many old, good friends