The Things She Said Last Year

I was reluctant to do a year-end wrap thinking that I really hadn't been a very good blogger over the past several months. I was surprised when going through the entries of the past year to realize that, in fact, there were a few posts that were really quite good and which I really did love. Here, in collected goodness for your first day back at work reading pleasure, are six of my favorite posts of 2007:

"Just Five More Minutes"
To put it most ineloquently, saying goodbye to someone you care about, but will not see for a long time, sucks. It sucked last year, and (as I learned just a few days ago) it sucked this year. I understand now that it will continue to suck for another year or so until the good-byes are no longer necessary (at least not the kind that wrench you apart for months at a time).

"Eternity in an Hour"
I daydream on subway rides.

"Volcanoes"
Explosively dangerous personalities sometimes only seem so in hindsight.

"Kissing the Blarney Stone"
Sometimes I make up stories. At bars. For unsuspecting strangers.

"Just Another Day in Union Square"
I still have trouble walking by here without thinking about this day. A few months after I wrote this post, I received a comment from someone with the username "Zibblez." He said he had been best friends with the boy who died and his continued pain was still evident. It jarred me a little bit to realize that the things you write can sometimes touch people so directly.

"Forty-First Street Riffs"
Since moving into the city, I don't really miss the commute, but I do miss the inspiring stillness of this one-block stretch.

And finally...

I know you all love those giant motorized pink bunny slippers!!

Ladies & Gentlemen, Meet Pleo!

Some of you might remember back in June when I first mentioned my intention to get the incredible little robot dinosaur, Pleo.

Well...he's finally mine!

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a video of Pleo demonstrating his "holiday personality." (Which is a temporary personality that I downloaded from the Pleo website and installed using a Mini SD. The download is just a fun little feature that temporarily overrides his actual personality.) I'll probably post another video of "normal" Pleo pretty soon, but I thought this was too ridiculous not to share. Enjoy!

Not even the rain has such small hands...

I found myself quoting a line from this last night to a friend and haven't been able to get it out of my head since... I might have more to say about this later, but for now...

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

e.e. cummings

Hindsight

I ask him to join me outside for a cigarette and he obliges gallantly, unenthusiastically. We stand outside the rope and watch the cars and our breath mingling seductively with the smoke.

I note the slight step back he takes when I move closer, the way his muscles tense when I lay fingertips lightly on his chest. But he laughs at my stories and looks at me in that way... searchingly. (Quizzically?) I match his glance with my own, wondering if he can see the screams streaming out of my eyes. In my head they're like lightning bolts, razor-edged and fiery. In my head they knock him down hard. In reality, I'm the one that is falling.

In an hour or so he'll press me against a wall at the next bar; hands searching familiar territory, mouths pulling and devouring. We'll lose our friends and make our escape into the cold night, conspiratorial laughter and whispers echoing into the near-empty street. We'll sleep soundly, after, and in the morning will fall into each other once again without question.

In a few hours, this moment will seem irrelevant. This panic, unnecessary. But for now, I continue to talk too quickly. I bite my lip. I ash nervously. Because for now, he hesitates.

Past Tense Verbs

I've been writing a lot of drafts lately. Half-finished thoughts, bits and pieces jotted down randomly, then forgotten. I've been finding these notes everywhere lately. Sometimes it's just a subject line. A few weeks ago I sent my friend a message I'd found in my Gmail drafts box. It was empty except for the subject line, which only said "Moo."

"I have no idea what this was going to be about..." I told him.

This post is another one of these. Past Tense Verbs. I got the title down, but I have no idea what I meant to write next. I like the title though...maybe one of these days I'll figure out what I meant to say.

Published

I had a little piece I wrote published on an amazing website called Six Sentences. The site features little six-sentence vignettes from some pretty incredible writers. I'm proud to be featured among them.

My piece is called "Thirst" and it's taken from a longer story I wrote about a year ago, but which I've been tweaking ever since. I hope you enjoy it!

"Thirst," Six Sentences

Dread

Drowsiness hits me like a brick at thirty thousand feet and for the next four hours I drift in and out of consciousness, half suspended in reality while half-suspended somewhere above the Atlantic. I like this feeling. Thrust at the mercy of physics and a pilot named Evan who ends each of his updates with the word “Aloha.”

We are not flying to Hawaii.

I got the window seat that I asked for and am happy for the empty seat between me and the woman in 21D. Her friend is across the aisle in 21C and it seems like they’re on some kind of girls’ trip, doughy and giggly in stretchy velvet pants and zip-up hoodies. I look at them and my mind fast-forwards one week; I see their pink peeling noses, five extra pounds, a hickey from an almost-divorced businessman. D pulls a familiar magazine out of her carry-on. I look away but listen as she turns the pages too quickly, and continues to chats with her friend. I resist a strong urge to lean over and point my name out on the masthead.

The flight attendant is demanding our attention now. She does a half-hearted Macarena while her partner narrates in English and then again in heavily-accented Spanish. I know the dance by heart, but watch anyway, all the while trying to imagine scenarios in which a Delta leather-like seat cushion could actually save my life.

Safety instructions are followed by a special announcement; it seems they have mixed cocktails onboard now, specially designed by a celebrity “mixologist” (her word, not mine) whose name I sort-of recognize but can’t quite place. The special this month, our flight attendant announces, is a pink martini “in honor of breast cancer.” A pleased murmur spreads throughout the cabin and it seems that no one else has noticed she’s left off the word "awareness." The girls next to me are particularly excited and eagerly fork over five dollars each for the makings of the special drink: a can of Minute Maid Pink Lemonade and a very tiny bottle of Finlandia.

“Cindy Crawford’s husband,” I say to myself, finally remembering where I’d heard the name Gerber. The girl looks at me warily; I can tell she doesn’t like me. Right now, I don’t really like her.

I think that if I were flying with a friend maybe I, too, would be giggly and up for a drink at 9 AM. But I’m not with a friend; I’m alone and cranky because I was up all night packing and am not entirely looking forward to this weekend. This weekend, when my youngest cousin will marry and the rest of my family will ask me over and over again when I plan to do something about my perpetual state of singleness.

Perhaps I should order a cocktail...

Giggle

I've never really been one to embed videos, but this commercial makes me laugh so much that I couldn't resist. After much searching, I finally found a version of it online and so here, for your holiday viewing pleasure, is the best commercial of Christmas 2007 (lofty statement, I know...):


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