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[21 Oct 2009|11:40pm] |
there's one scene from jane campion's bright star that i keep going back to when i try to rationalize just what drew me into the whole thing in the first place. it is the one right after the moment in which keats and fanny fall in love. it's hard to convey falling in love in a new way on film any more, so what campion does is she focuses instead on the aftermath of that moment (the moment in which everything changes). in the scene, the room is blindingly white—there is sunlight everywhere; it absolutely floods and overtakes the room. the window is open and the curtains are white. fanny is wearing this flowing, airy, long white dress, and when she falls back into her (white) bed the dress billows up at the same time that the wind sweeps in from the open window and the curtains float toward the ceiling—and we, as viewers, in turn, are lifted. the entire scene is one singular upward motion: a sweeping gestalt of new love. fanny's room has become an all-white heaven and the sunshine suggests pure, unadulterated happiness. then campion quickly cuts to another scene, and it is a long shot of a sprawling green field shot through with lavender (an aphrodisiac, as we all know). one gets the sense that what we are seeing is the world as viewed through fanny's eyes—a world viewed through the lens of somebody in love. and it is fantastically, brilliantly, unbelievably radiant—it is absolutely alive in technicolor. it is as if we are seeing something for the first time, life in its newness, the sharp green and lilting lilac dripping with beauty.
i saw bright star towards the beginning of the end, but the moment in which everything changed was still fresh in my mind. that moment as i remembered it: we were walking out of the art school in all its pristine white-glass-glory, down those neat white steps on a gorgeously sunny day. this is the scene in which everything lifts. this is the scene in which the whiteness of those steps seemed to suggest an opening up into something beyond, an expansiveness that reached from the first step to the final landing to the sidewalk to a world in which love could happen, or did, or is. imagine tunnel vision. imagine walking down those steps as if you were viewing your own life through a camera lens as it slowly pans out into the great big open. at the end of all this possibility is his figure, tall and lanky and unsure in daylight. he leans in, kisses me, and says, 'so i'll call you when i get back.' 'okay,' i say. i watch him turn his back for one second before i turn mine. something clicks. curiosity gives way to something greater. did my knees buckle then or a moment later, when, right there, at the intersection of chapel, i realized with startled shock that the world had changed, that ugly new haven had become beautiful, that the honking of the cars and the bleating of someone's radio had become trumpets sounding from the arteries of the streets, that the green of the 'starbucks' sign looked like the tops of new leaves, all shiny and glistening shoots in the midday glory? had i been asleep these whole weeks before, i wondered? had i just opened my eyes? had the world suddenly dropped into place right before me?
so there. scene 1. scene 2. the moment when everything changed. the climax.
and the rest, as they all say, is just a quiet plotting toward the end.
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| note from new haven (the restatement) |
[16 Oct 2009|07:18pm] |
every time i sit down to type an entry that could adequately describe my first few (four...five...six) weeks here, i end up deleting it and giving up. maybe because i'm not quite sure what to say. maybe because no matter what i say, it could never encompass how i'm feeling. maybe because these days i don't even find myself thinking of st. marks place or ludlow street or bleecker anymore, as if those places had only existed somewhere far away and a long time ago, had happened to a girl who had been a better me then. a girl who was endlessly idealistic and full of wonder at the way a woman's coat moved as she stood on the corner buying a newspaper, reaching into her coat pocket, or the way a coke can would lie empty on a sidewalk square, crushed and shivering in the wind. i can't even seem to remember the way lit smelled (crisp and clean like someone was repeatedly pouring vodka over freshly-minted ice cubes), the way a certain bartender's jeans would look as he turned around to tuck a cigarette into his back pocket, ring up (or not ring up) my drink, turn back around, click his tongue, and say, 'well, i knew there was a reason you moved across the street.' i don't even remember the feeling of the openness and possibility every night held, like i could meet anyone anywhere at anytime, like i could be surprised, or taken aback, or swept off my feet. like i could run into someone from two years ago and all of a sudden it would be like we'd never been apart. or he could be different, and better, or i would be older, and more morose.
i think it's something about the brutal honesty of it all—ugly or refreshing or beautiful or disgusting—that i miss. and in less than 24 hours, i'm going to be back there, for longer than 2 days this time, and i feel so relieved and enthralled and ecstatic that it seems as if someone had come and ripped off this old skin of mine and glossed it over in rembrandt's oils, all glowing and new. so because i have failed with every other prior attempt to describe this new life i somehow landed myself in, i suppose this excerpt from a story i had written a bit ago perfectly sums it up.
"There was no real reason she had to tell me about Kidd being back at all, and then she could’ve just gone on home to her dinner, no interruptions. In New York people weren’t like that: if they didn’t want to be bothered they would just ignore you flat-out. I would know. I’ve dated a few like that since I got there. There was the guy who figured out where the stash of money underneath my mattress was and stole a little bit from the pile every time he left in the middle of the night, thinking I wouldn’t notice. I always did, of course—I counted those bills like they were my life. But I never said anything, kept on seeing him, because I always figured he needed the money more than me, and I needed him more than the money. There was something about the way he would hold me, like he was cradling something very close and dear to him, like I was somebody who might break if he dropped me. He did, eventually, after he’d stolen 300 dollars and gotten himself a one-way ticket to Los Angeles to “make it.” I started seeing somebody else shortly afterwards, a recovering junkie who only snorted skag before and during sex. I wasn’t sure if I should’ve been offended, or concerned. I decided, anyway, that I wasn’t."
anyway. starting tomorrow: one of my favorite boys has flown back in town and another one has, i presume, ridden in on some bus. i am going to see both of them. plus everyone else i'd been missing and dreaming of.
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| new york: an ode |
[05 Sep 2009|11:46am] |
“….Quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean ‘love’ in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone quite that way again.” –Joan Didion, Goodbye to All That
I have never been a fan of minimalism, which is perhaps a big part of the reason I moved to New York. You see, back in those days, in the days when I was still two years away from 20 and thus still a teenager, back in the days when I still took to the street names like a poet to his muses (Orchard, Ludlow, Delancey…the syllables rolled off my tongue like magic, like somebody had spoonfed me diamonds and I was letting the sweetness roll around in my mouth for a bit all rich and new), back in the days when every face on the street was still a new face and every guy I met still filled with promises of “What if” or “Is this it,” anyway…back in those days, I was Humbert Humbert in Lolita’s lair—spiraling, lustful, frenzied in my attempts to get at life and every inch of it. I filled dorm rooms with stuff, closets with shoes and bags and new “city” clothes to cover up the old “suburban” clothes (and believe me, there was a big difference), filled my phone book with new contacts, my weekends with parties and parties and then some more after parties. It wasn’t until later, much later, when I filled a tiny East Village apartment with 4 wardrobes worth of clothes and 40 shoeboxes (not counting the ones stuffed underneath my bed), that all the people passing in the street became people I knew or thought I knew and embarrased myself by stopping, that parties stopped being exhilerating things to dress up for but simply an addiction (silly, I know) that I couldn’t seem to ween myself away from if I tried. By then, I had run out of places—nooks, corners, an inch of drawer space—to put my new purchases, and the last time I assessed my closet space I was suddenly 22 and older and tearing my hair out, and I threw the last dress I bought (in London, a smart little yellow number that I had to own because I simply did not own another yellow like it) onto the floor and then fell down in my bed and cried, cried, cried. I suppose that explains, at any rate, why I am now sitting in a devestatingly white and plain large room in New Haven, but does not seem to explain, at least to my wine-addled mind, why all this space suddenly feels a bit like suffocating.
Let me go back a bit. Of course, complaining about how New York got to be too much fun or how my closet became too full seems a bit of a terrible and even trite thing to do, because hell, everybody’s done it. I can’t tell you how many parties I’ve been at where the conversation inevitably turns to how much we all hate New York and yet how we all can’t seem to get away. The analogies are the same—comparisons to drug problems, heroin addiction, an abused wife leaving the love of her life, the one who happens to beat her up a bit and throw her around. The last few days I was in New York, I was eating at my favorite French diner with a good friend of mine and he was complaining about the state of his life, urban inertia if you will, and the temperature outside was 90 degrees plus at least another 10 for humidity and smog, and I swear I had to keep myself from jumping straight out of my chair and yelping, “I’m leaving! I’m leaving!” Because of course, I was leaving, I had an excuse and an engagement that made it impossible for me to not go—and what could be better than that?
( But let me frank now—really frank... )
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| people and places: new york (a timeline in songs) |
[18 Aug 2009|09:58am] |
"every song a landmark, a memory, an etching onto a place i can only now say i knew back then."
songs are funny things. they have a distinct beginning (the first time i heard 'bizarre love triangle' i was 16 and at jacob's mom's place and david had put it on—my introduction to new order; the first time i heard 'daylight' we were driving in jeff's car to the hamptons with all the windows open and summer and weed in the air), but no discernible endings. they're sort of like people, that way. you'll always remember just how exactly you met them (standing by the bar, atlantic city, hair all aglow underneath the blue of the bar lights), but you'll never know just exactly how or when the attraction began to fade away. or, maybe you will, but there's no guarauntee they won't just show back up in your life, eyes on fire and looking better than ever, and it'll be like they never left. it's sort of like some of these songs here. or, at least, i like to think about people that way. it gives everything some sort of morbid hope. because when you think about it that way, nobody ever really leaves, nothing really ends. or, according to kate hudson, anyway.
'i always tell the girls, never take it seriously. if you never take it seriously, you never get hurt. if you never get hurt, you always have fun. and if you ever get lonley, you can just go to the record store and visit your friends.'
1. interpol - next exit: this song, i'm pretty sure, was designed for people who were just arriving. 'we ain't goin' to the town...we're goin' to the city,' is what paul banks sings, and i remember we were pulling up to the lincoln tunnel with all the lights and billboards and street magic going around us. i had the song on repeat. i felt that something was starting, or that life, in a sense, could not have begun from before this moment in time.
2. stars - elevator love letter: christ, would this list be complete without this song? did we really use livejournal as a form of exchange with each other (so 2005)? am i going to recount the bed, the room with the view onto ruggles (we were freshmen then, so excited in all our undertakings), the stairway (three flights) that i climbed or re-climbed or descended or paused mid-way in terrified anxiousness—the stairway that felt like some sort of ending or beginning or ascent to heaven, the sundays that i spent hopelessly playing this on repeat with the sunshine streaming into my room and my own mood in absolute despair? maybe not.
3. knife - heartbeats: i'm not sure when i discovered this, but needless to say it was the song of '06. at the annex, at misshapes, at luke and leroys or donhills, i was seeing someone for real back then, no more of the 'elevator love letter' bullshit—the someone who introduced me to everything and everybody—when this would come on i would squeal in joy and he, in characteristic jaded new york manner, would just laugh. he introduced me to just about all my bad habits now: vodka sodas, sway sundays, disaffected discontent.
4. justice - we are your friends: maybe my darkest period, and maybe the brightest. what did i say about the one who introduced me to all my bad habits? to add to that list: door policies, timed entrances, planned exits, soullessness. kidding on the last one. .... but who remembers that winter where i walked around with this song on my ipod thinking that just because some new york DJ picked me up, i would never be alone? yeah, not me.
5. peter bjorn and john - young folks: i spent my 20th birthday at schillers with about 15 of my closest friends. we had drank copious amounts of wine at dinner, and then jeff drove us to don hills for misshapes and geordan pummeled me with vodka. so of course, when this came on, i don't think there could've been another girl in another time as happy as the girl i was then.
6. new order - perfect kiss: to regurgitate what has already been said about this song, 'that one perfect record of a perfect kiss which i used to beg him to play over and over again for me, hearing every single synth chord in its highs and lows, wondering how out of all the songs in all of the world this boy could discover this one like he was some deranged genius who spun magic out of vinyl.' it happened like this: we were sitting in his room, all the boys were about, and he said: hey xi, what's your favorite new order song? 'age of consent,' clearly, i said (that song had more than one meaning at the time, still does). really? he asked. he put this on. everything changed after that.
7. the virgins - rich girls: the song of summer '08, you couldn't escape it: uptown, downtown, whitney art gala or the slummy recesses of lit, 3am beatrice with my favorite boy behind the decks or 6am afterparty where i would drag my feet to go home until this song ended. once, i remember i was dancing at b and tim came up to me and says, 'you know, whenever i hear this song, i think about you.' i think i thought about that when we were up on the roof of paul's penthouse later that august. those were the days.
8. ladyhawke - paris is burning: that october i took my LSATs and right after i did so, i saw him. we drove around in his car, ran into an old friend on the street (that's the thing i love about new york). 'fuck this,' i said. 'let's go to paris.' paris paris paris. we could've hopped on the 3am from JFK but instead he sent me this song as a consolation prize. tried not to think about regine's, or even about downtown, or how in limbo i felt. the last time i heard this song, it was about 8 months later—after he had been the first visitor in my brand-new apartment, after the curiosity had grown into full-on infatuation—and we were standing in a crowded room in williamsburg and his eyes were on someone else. i needed one last prod to walk out that door and never turn back. and then this song came on.
9. matt and kim - daylight: well of course this had to sneak its way into here somehow. going to this concert on the piers reminded me of all warped tours of summers and ages past, steaming hot july sun with kids glued to concrete and cheap beer in plastic cups. he lifted me up onto his shoulders right when they launched into this. he was ungodly tall and i had spent most of my night soaking up sweat stench at ground level. it was like a whole different world up there. the air, the way the music sounded, the feeling muscles trembling beneath me. i think i was reminded of everything i'd lost since i moved here, since i turned 19 in a different city and found new gods and new idols, and hell, was i desperate to get the old me back.
10. talking heads - this must be the place: the placement of this song is slightly anachronistic but appropriate. we were standing at norwood, i was watching something far off in the distance when i said this to avoid sounding maudlin or melodramatic (but when am i not any of those things?): 'this is the song that i always think i'll be listening to months from now, when i've moved away and have started that new life, and i'm thinking about new york, home sweet home.' 'oh yeah?' he asked. 'are you going to listen to it and think about this moment, right here, me, 10 minutes til my birthday, playing this song for you?' christ, why do people sentimentalize things for me? only i'm allowed to do the sentimentalizing. but you know what? he was right. the only part he forgot to mention is whether i would think back on that moment, or on him, or on this city, and miss it at all.
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| the end of an era (actually). |
[09 Aug 2009|07:03pm] |
one of these days, i will stop fearing change like i fear death (or stop fearing death, but that's a different story), stop doubting my ability to behave like a normal, functioning adult, and stop clinging on to the past as if i were viewing every memory through a movie lens, rendered in breathtaking multicolor and made infinitely more romantic than it needs to be. lately, because i know death is coming, the days have taken on this maudlin, melodramatic note, and the one thing i can't stop thinking about, other than the obvious, is that warm, sunny, steaming day joey left for L.A. back in may (god, have the months really passed that quickly already?). we were standing on the turning of seventh avenue south, that little patch of road where the streets curve in mindless confusion and the grid system stops making sense. 'hey, so i won't see you for a while,' he said, standing a few feet away from me, one foot already ready to walk off. 'so, snapshot,' he says, puts his fingers together in a rectangle, seemingly capturing my face in its most cinematic, and then laughs. the moment was perfect, of course, something you could only expect from a film kid aware of his own painful clichés, someone who'd read too much jameson or rorty and was rendered incapable of having real experience by them but then in turn has the most 'real' experiences of anyone imaginable. i thought about all those things when i was walking down a particular stretch of my neighborhood yesterday evening, where i looked up at the architecture for the first time in seemingly forever and was taken aback by its beauty. i made a perfect snapshot in my mind of the fire escapes and the brick fronts and the curls of cloud in the sky. i wanted to eat new york city alive.
i'd just had my last weekend in the city and spent it in true new york style—picnic on the highline, a rooftop party in the east village, sunday brunch at gemma, shopping at barneys. just slept a three hour sleep, sitting here in my underwear and the 'save bea' tee paul had dug up for me in his basement after that one evening when i bumped into him at billy's on houston (that's the perfect thing about the city—seeing everyone you know everywhere at all times). maybe serious damage tonight—one of our favorite boys is back in town and there will be many drinks to be had.
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[04 Aug 2009|10:24pm] |
i'm leaving in 3 weeks.
i'm leaving in 3 weeks.
i'm...leaving in 3 weeks?
today i got my first assignment from yale and it involved writing a letter to yourself, which will be sealed and then given back to you at the end of your first semester. 'should i write about how scared i am?' i asked drew. 'i'm so fucking terrified that i feel like crying in this bewildered, devastated, exhilarated, liberated' kind of way. i think i had written in my real journal (the one nobody sees) that when i dropped off that deposit (no one year deferral, no nothing), it was like putting an entire life filled with amazing and awful things behind me, and cashing in the promise of a better one.
but one can't complain too much. the past month involved: birthday festivities. london. berlin. a homecoming. me saying every chance i get, 'but new york is like cheers! the city where everyone knows your name.' so true. europe was amazing but nothing beats manhattan—still the best goddamn city in the whole fucking world, shitty men and people and all. because every encounter is like an opening up of sorts, like walker percy confronting the creature in what you assume to be the original habitat—except, of course, nothing is original anymore, there are no more auras or myths or religions to be had—just living.
been listening to too much passion pit and matt and kim. nothing insightful to say—think excessive alcohol consumption is killing off all my brain cells. in 3 weeks i'll be saving both my soul and my liver.
i can't think about it too much now, been passing time moving between work to party to after party. but when it hits me it will hit me hard. can't say i'm prepared for the onslaught.
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| site seeing: monday-wednesday in 6 items or less |
[18 Jun 2009|10:13pm] |
the jane: this place is only special to me because a couple months ago a certain someone had asked me if i'd heard of it and i'd said no. he always hears of everything first, but turns out it's not what he thought it was, the hotel bar just opened last week, and this past monday played host to the cfda post-party. i describe it to people as a mix between rose bar and socialista: tacky-luxe. i really quite prefer it to either of the above, though. at some point in the night everyone was there and i lost track, but mostly i sat upstairs in the balcony area chain-smoking with carlos and talking about how attractive lazaro of proenza is.
minetta tavern: one of those annoying new york places where you call and they pretend like they have no open reservations through the end of the month, and you walk in and they seat you right away. the food was nothing to write home about despite the glowing review from the new york times food critic. but i did see martha stewart, which is like seeing big foot or something, so that was funny, i suppose. it was drew's first big night back in town, and i, characteristically, was both unbearably exhausted yet antsy.
gates: i'm going to start referring to this as the gaytes. we went to see e DJ, he was without his heels and a little morose. it barely just opened and already has become one of my least favorite spots.
avenue: apparently an ex of mine works here but i didn't catch him. they have a b night on tuesdays, apparently, now (christ, i'm gone for 2 weeks and miss so much). one of the only places i'd been to in recent history where they will light your cig for you instead of telling you to put it out. k is a fantastic dj. and in margiela, no less!
skylight: last year i was sitting on the couch with chinese take-out during the whitney party. i had the same plan this year, but things don't always pan out. instead i lurked near the kitchen at the whitney party to grab at every possible hors d'oeuvre that sailed by (dinner). mostly i liked the blinking sign that went from 'art' to 'party' (get it, there's an art to partying). i met that lead singer of phantom planet, didn't realize it, shook his hand and dashed out into the rain. it was too dark to make out anyone. or to make out with anyone.
sleep please. the weekend is almost here. time to catch up on shut-eye.
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| making lists, or, the weekend in review |
[26 May 2009|09:48pm] |
1. i wrote the first e-mail i've liked in ages.
2. got a little star struck watching alexa chung peel at her fingernails next to me when we were sitting pow-wow style at bevan's housewarming party in williamsburg. i think i made the all-time girl cliche move by saying i liked her shoes. but, studded gladiator sandals, can't go wrong with that.
3. was like the rest of the annoying manhattan crowd by running away to the hamptons.
4. well, montauk sunday and southampton monday.
5. but unlike the rest of the annoying manhattan crowd, did not sit stuck in traffic on the way home. it was chilly on the platform while we waited for the train so i pulled on tights right then and there over an alex wang dress so short you could probably see my bum hanging out of it. but i was still in a beach town state of mind, despite the train coming that would suggest otherwise.
6. while the boys played tennis at the southampton estate, i text on my phone and avoided the beer.
7. can't believe i'm sitting in my room with absolutely nothing to do for the first time in seemingly ages right now. absolute perfection.
8. waiting for a text back. this all goes back to my master thesis in progress, 'how text messaging has changed the landscape of modern love.' still waiting to write that 50 page epic.
9. tomorrow will be the second time i get hooked up with sergio rossi heels--to trek uptown in.
10. i thought of high school when we were driving in spm's suv down 27 in the steaming sunshine (i was sandwiched between 3 boys, also can't go wrong with that, one of which had apparently gotten conked over the head with a water bottle the night before) and jimmy eat world came on. those were the days.
11. leaving town in t minus one week.
12. i've developed a smoker's cough and voice. it's that bad. why oh why at the bodega when i bought mango sorbet yesterday did i also pick up a double pack of camels instead of those tortilla chips i wanted? i think because they remind me of drinking iced coffee while walking from east village to west on a radiantly beautiful day.
13. oh wait! that's right--before i left town for the weekend i bought these amazing tom binns studded cuffs from the newly-opened perry street boutique.
14. 'you love the unavailable ones.'
15. obviously.
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[16 May 2009|08:59pm] |
i had this thought today that the real tragedy of existence is the impossibility of true experience, of events or people or moments to be concrete rather than fleeting, so that, like the inhabitants of plato's cave, we are forever relegated to knowing experience—and, in turn, life, that wicked and elusive thing that cannot be pinpointed or explained—as flickering shadows on the wall. we trace events rather than be in them, and those drawings on the wall of the cave are thus our memories, indelible and etched, of moments that are only available to us as reflections of the "true" experience, which we will never know because we will never re-live any specific moment in time again. so how to prevent ourselves from being confined to plato's metaphorical cave, or to convince ourselves that life is this real tangible thing that can be grasped and known and thus, well, lived? we move from event to event, person to person, experience to experience, so that time seems both fluid and present, and in our hunger to seek out the next thing, the next "step," the next natural "progression" in this life that moves from grade school to college to jobs and marriage and family, we forget that everything is slipping us by constantly, second by second, moment by moment, and the things that we work so hard to obtain minute-to-minute is already disappearing before our eyes, because nothing stays, we move through time ruthlessly on our way to death. or is it the other way around?
the weather was 70 degrees today so james and i took a walk through the west village. we talked about the end of an era. later, when i was home and falling asleep mid-evening, i woke up with a start at the turning of dusk with the same sort of fear that used to grip me nightly when i was younger and impossibly afraid of death, because all of a sudden it occurred to me that in three months, i will be leaving new york, and the fear of that was like death, in that the whole reason why dying used to scare me was because it would be leaving the realms of something we'd always known (life) and going somewhere new, but of course it's irrelevant that death is "new" because, well, you're not conscious when you die. but is that the point? the point always seemed to me that life, this thing that we take for granted because we are in it every day, seemingly endlessly and sometimes wholly against our will, could be taken away from us, and for eternity, nonetheless, and we will never return if just for a day or a second or a glimpse of a moment, to simply observe the people passing by on a street corner or just be in a place, thinking and breathing and feeling the air move about in the day. and that to me was endlessly terrifying, one because i don't think humans could ever grasp the idea of eternity since our life spans are limited, and two because in death and only in death will i be wholly alone, forgotten, and erased.
but what was i saying? new york. why is leaving new york like death? because i think that, like life, i have begun to take new york for granted, and i don't just mean the city—which, stoic, and, unlike people, will always be here for me to return or come back to—but i mean the new york that represents youth and freedom and endless possibilities for me, will be over, gone, a painting on the cave wall. never again will i return and know the same people and go the same places and do the same things, never again will i feel the same liberty that i once did, when, at 19 years old with absolutely not a hell of an expectation of grandeur for myself, i thought nothing of the days to come or growing old, thought only of what party to get dressed up for next and what boy i wanted to see. of course there's something absolutely shallow in that but also—don't you get it?—something incredible, because really, you're only going to be this young and in the best city in the world at the best time in your life for this moment, right now, with not a care in the world and nothing to look after.
christ, i'm graduating in 3 days. i need to say nothing about how much that absolutely pains me than when, sitting in my living room today, my phone rang and it was a perfect kiss, that one track that he had played for me back when we were still teenagers technically, and i had said, 'remember this song? those were the good 'ol days, weren't they?' and apparently as i was saying it, his girlfriend of the moment was sitting right there, and i had no idea, and god, how quickly things change.
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[01 May 2009|07:23pm] |
two things happened last night. one being that someone i work with came over to me and amidst the people and the music and the impeccably attractive young lords DJing behind us, he asked what the hell was up with law school, why i didn't do what i wanted to do, because i could do anything i wanted to and be really successful. the second being that later i was at dinner discussing this with somebody else, and he seemed to be of the same consensus, that did i really want to confine myself to the straight and narrow when there seemed to be so much else i could be doing "creatively." he said this very reassuredly while spooning into his lasagna, and all i could think was, 'christ, could you really expect me to stay here for even another year, or six months, dealing with the same fake friends and the same bad men, men like you?' i mean, isn't that the reason i'm leaving, because of men like him? the idea of having to go through each day as if i were waging some sort of personal, emotional war from within this shell of mine that, all my life, had wanted nothing but to just float along complacently, maybe meet a band member and run away with him, and instead got placed into all these scenarios, none of which i imagined myself in, all of which just sort of happened. 'that's the thing about me,' i was saying at yale last weekend in a roomful of people who, for the first time in a long time, felt genuine, 'everything just sort of happens, but there's nothing i could say i actually wanted.' 'you must want something,' one of them was saying. 'nope,' i said. and that was all i could say.
and while i'm waxing poetic on that, i'm in a sort of date debacle tonight with more bad men. off to the nest foundation benefit at bowery hotel. more later.
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| roman holiday. |
[19 Apr 2009|12:45pm] |
a brief respite from the rain and cold this weekend. yesterday was insanely gorgeous, walked around the columbia campus all day with my favorite boys. pretty much spent all day eating, from brunch with james to drinks with the boys to dinner in john jay for the first time since freshman year. it was just the way i remembered it being—like the high school cafeteria, inordinately warm, terrible food, little cliques. then back downtown and over to brooklyn for a barbeque at the yoko devereaux pad/studio/shop-in-one, a pretty little place in east williamsburg with high ceilings and wonderful clothes. andy of yoko d knows how to make a killer spread—there were petit fours and massive olives and cheese and burgers and french onion dip and chocolate cake and vanilla cupcakes with pink icing. then frank tell, who was my date for the evening, disappeared, so me and hector ran over to the east village for a party at this model martin's apartment. i had been told that martin likes to play dress up sometimes but i swear i thought it was a woman when he opened the door. a very gorgeous one. it was dark and they were playing crystal castles and everyone had glow sticks so it was very much like a rave (they were also receiving drug orders like it was one, so.). there, i ran into an 'old friend.' after we watched the champagne pop, we walked home together along the liquid noise and neon of third avenue, watching cars as they drove past. he pointed out cars he'd like to own someday. i couldn't resist a nightcap at lit. you know it's summer when you see your fave doorboy shedding the big parka for a tee. yeah, he looked good.
now it's 12:45pm on a 60 degree day, what could be better than that? about to go to sunday brunch. tonight: one of my best brits is in town, and we are going to do some damage.
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| 8 items or less : site seeing |
[14 Apr 2009|09:07pm] |
1. le french diner: reni introduced me to this place and now it is my favorite. it's so close to my new apartment, too. i remember sitting there across from her at dinner that night and suddenly i felt like she was so smart and so much older than me. i also just finished writing her bio, too.
2. above allen: across from le french diner. there is a beautiful terrace with a view. ann and i went to a party there a few weeks ago, i had met her there after p scooped me from a street corner in his car. it was raining. i'm going for a ronson party this thursday...
3. cooper hotel: i'd never heard of this place until the save bea party, and now it's everywhere. there are panoramic windows and a sort-of unfinished roof that all the b kids, drunk from the open bar, poured onto at 2am any way. it was misting that day and matt k had asked who my boyfriend was. but i loved when those elevator doors opened and we saw everyone we knew.
4. lil frankie's : i like living in this neighborhood because things like this can happen—you can walk into a restaurant and meet somebody's sister and the sister's boyfriend and really feel like you are on some sort of awkward meet-the-family date even though you've had so many dinners with said person and never felt like it was a date.
5. lit: i know i don't technically live here, but i do.
6. greenhouse: when we walked in for the blackbook party, we didn't see anyone we knew. then i said, 'hipsters like basements, right?' so we walked downstairs. and there.
7. south africa: this is not in new york but this is where i will be going, on an all-expenses paid trip, for refinery. this is also where coetzee's disgrace takes place.
8. 18th & 2nd: i walked out onto the sidewalk at 7am watching him take a package from the postman on the steps in just his shorts. the postman had said his name and i think i blushed a little just hearing it. the dawn was just blooming, i was wearing ann's marc jacobs parka, it was very cold. crossing the blocks to my apartment made me realize it's farther than i thought. there were few thoughts in my head, just some yelle lines and ladyhawke lyrics. all i could think was, i cannot be the girl who falls in love with her friend, because then where would i be? i cannot be the girl. i am not the girl.
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| i've got the spirit, lose the feeling. |
[02 Apr 2009|08:52am] |
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i feel like i'm drowning in this. there is a part of me that doesn't want out because 'out' means so many things. i often think, 'but if i left, what will happen to all that beauty? what will happen to all that life?' what will happen when i am not skipping from tribeca office to soho grand to thompson on the lower east side to beast on the lower-lower-east-side to ray's pizza/east village at 3am where, apparently, he had caught me eating a slice of pepperoni and picked me out immediately, torn jeans, asymmetric black coat, fringe scarf and all. and he had said this at lit on saturday night in between sips of vodka soda and that inexplicable scent he carried, the london accent, the fact that when 'disorder' came on i thought of so many things—how i used to sit around my sweaty hot mess of a room in july watching control and thinking of running away from it all and now here is britain coming to me and fucking with my life and creating a rift in a space that i used to consider home. and now it is 9am and i am sitting in the office because that is the only place these days i can seem to think (sad, ain't it?). i'm thinking many things, namely how i need to stop confusing lust with love, sex with affection, moments of intimacy with moments of kindness. last night at 5am they had stumbled home and all i could think was, here you are, again, dear, when just four nights ago we had been picking songs out at bars (that's my favorite thing to do these days), moving between pulp and ian curtis and the smiths with seamless ease, and now for the life of me i cannot get this heart inside me to start moving properly. i remember once p had something to say about working days, how some days are just easier than others, and that's all she could say. i think what it is for me is that all days are equally thrilling, all days filled with all this promise and questions of why i should be the one to have such nice things happen to. i mean there is nothing more i could ask for, is there? remember when i was describing this dream i had a month ago, about having to choose between conde and all these law schools that wanted me? i mean, in a way, that's happened, hasn't it? five for five and associate editor, there isn't anything better than that. but there are moments, and i think this happens with everyone who lives in the city, where you experience some sort of disorientation from too many late nights or too many people or too much back talk. i think come august i will be both the saddest i've ever been and also the sanest.
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[29 Mar 2009|11:04am] |
sometimes people ask me what it is about girls i am so averse to. i think in the end it comes down to how the stabbing can come so quickly and ruthlessly, with seemingly no precedent, no reason, and plenty of inevitable, unavoidable jealousy and hypocrisy. some girls i have met, the really silly ones, are of the virginia woolf path of mind, in somehow believing that through the mere double x chromosome, there is an entire universe of sisterhood to be found, a universe they so lovingly convince themselves are built on opposition to the male sex and female solidarity, of providing warm shoulders to lean on, of being caring and nurturing and motherly and all that because goddamnit the men sure don't know what it's like to be a woman in this world, and the only people who will ever adequetly get that is each other.
but what i have found in my experience is that all relationships between females eventually prove themselves to be just as volatile, fleeting, and transient as relationships with anybody else. aside from the usual insecurities and hypocrisies and the fact that when it comes down to it, you will wreck your entire wall of females just to get what you want from this one specific male, and that all warm shoulders to cry on always come with some sort of self-congratulatory, satisfactory, 'thank god it's my best friend and not me' tinge of subconscious guilt that the girl providing said shoulder does not want to feel but does, helplessly, any way (god i have always found that idea repulsive, girls holding out shoulders for each other, there is something so goddamn self-defeating about that), aside from that—there is also the fact that if you really found yourself looking forward into the future, or even truly sitting down and thinking about it—how many people in this world can you say will really be there for you? you'd be lucky to name one or two. and if you fool yourself into thinking that you have any more than that, and i mean really, if you fool yourself into thinking there is an entire circle of friends who will be there for you, unconditionally, irrevocably, through life and death and hell and high water and in five years or ten, then i ask why it is that people even bother seeking marriage or love if not as a gravitating pole through which to rid themselves of loneliness, which would never exist had you honestly an entire loving, nurturing, 4-or-5-or-even-6-or-7 circle of friends.
david foster wallace had often said that his writing was an attempt to get at the loneliness between people, that the project of his literature was to close the gap on loneliness, that unavoidable and deathly tragic condition of modern life, the microscopic gulf which cannot be crossed between one human hand reaching out for another if for no other reason than the fact that atoms will never truly touch (there, in that tiny space, is loneliness literalized, the inability to truly and ever fully make contact). and because i am used to moving from place to place and from people to people, because i am used to people coming and going, i am going to argue that there is nothing different from a (girl)friend of three years who drops you flat in one day without word or explanation, or of a (girl)friend who you are standing outside your own goddamn apartment one night hearing the most awful things said about you, words you would never imagine coming out of anybody's mouth let alone that of someone who claims to care about you or nurture you, and the male who is nice to you for six months because they like you or are attracted to you or are charmed by you, and then drop you once that attraction fades. in the end, it's all leaving, isn't it? does it matter if you are dropped in three years versus six months, if the dropping of one comes so terribly and brutally, and the other as a simple fact of life? i opt for the latter. in fact, i remember once julio having said to me upon walking into b, 'but you're here now, with people who love you,' and my only thought was 'how silly, really, to imply that anyone working at a bar you frequent could really love you,' but i am thinking now of all those instances of love—right after the fight, 5am, i called somebody and he offered to meet me in the rain, and now here it is 11:30am and i am having coffee in the hotel where one of my favorite boys works and he is taking care of me—crying on d's shoulder in the middle of lit with the crowds swirling around us, those flowers j sent me on a day sunny and bright—and it's true that there is nothing about an extra x chromosome that sparks sensitivity.
well, that was long.
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[09 Mar 2009|07:42pm] |
of course everything comes into focus when you feel it about to slip away. things like walking into a place and knowing everyone there, or seeing somebody you feel like you haven't seen in ages even though it's only been a week. saturday when it first got beautiful i call d and the minute he picks up he says, 'i know, bike ride.' so we go. down bowery past all the hum-colored cabs and buses turning their blinkers on, down the lonely stretches of stuytown and then chinatown with the pathmark where we buy sunkist by the pack and chocolate-covered pretzels for me. sunday i woke up and it was sunny and i made g coffee and we drank it sitting on the window sill with the sunlight everywhere in his gold hair on my lips. walking down unbelievably gorgeous bleecker at the turning of spring is like getting sight for the first time. rojas and i eat truffled eggs, walk through central park. it's raining so he buys an umbrella for us and when we get to the met the newman catches me dead--'like man confronting god for the first time, on all fours, without the crutches of myth or religion or love to guide us.' (something like that). on the museum steps we share a popsicle and i watch all the people coming and going in their gray coats and long hair that catches the mist as it blankets 5th avenue. later that night i'm skipping up to jeremy at the door and he says, 'where've you been? haven't seen you since last week' and then inside of course it's the whole world, the end of the armory show, that yelle song i love that reminds me of a certain person on new year's eve when he came bearing champagne, stella, and a kiss (he was wearing a clean-pressed button-down then, i now remember, and when ce jeu came on i danced through my then empty apartment like a little girl or someone in love).
people ask me if i could leave this behind, and the obvious answer is no. truth is i could stay and do this all my life and meet everyone there ever is to meet and be editor and everything could be fine. but harvard and yale--who would've expected it? certainly not me. certainly not the me of 16 who thought only about boys in bands and running away to go on the road, who had no expectations for herself, life, the who-what-wear-whens. and now it's like something has opened, an endlessness strange and mysterious, a life i could've never imagined for myself. would you believe me if i said it seems, to me, any way, a girl at 21 with no delusions and no illusions but certainly little hope for anything in the future (there is no hope, just living), that those two places represent some strange, magical sector of life that i thought was not meant for me, could not be meant for me. and now here it is, and new york in springtime is beautiful, and this time next year i'll be gone.
you know, like that movielife song.
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| the past week. |
[25 Feb 2009|08:52pm] |
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cold went from bad to worse from no sleep. indochine for vladimir restoin-roitfeld exhibit afterparty a clusterfuck. justin timberlake sighting. i skip seeing the virgins with my two best girls on valentine's day (free ticket, sold out show) and go to le baron instead with my best boy. at 3am we eat pizza at ray's and he is taking photos across the table. skipping down second avenue early morning with all the streetlamps on talking libertine and trovata makes me think i can never leave this town, and sometimes i still think maybe i never will (but let's be honest, come september this is all history). mischa barton two nights in a row. i develop a crush on jimmy fallon. no michelle o at jason wu. preen is so good it sends shivers down my spine. kanye stalks me around fashion week. during y-3 timo and i are benched on the bleachers (no kidding, really). missed leighton at the erin wasson x rvca presentation, probably because i was 7 jello shots in. phillip lim is a rock concert. got a job offer. oh, and yale called. chloe tonight and then sleep all weekend. too tired to post pictures even though i'd meant to. hello d.c.
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| fashion week. |
[14 Feb 2009|09:34pm] |
ok, so i almost never do this. meaning, i like to keep my journal in a bubble that runs somewhere between fantasy and fiction, so other than writing romance into bad love stories or love into seedy beach towns, i'm no good at blogging. but, it's my last fashion week before cambridge in the fall, i'm addicted to twitter, and--why not?
follow my/refinery29's twittering at:
www.twitter.com/refinery29
today was: patrik ervell, vena cava, alexander wang, frank tell, threeasfour, elise overland. in that order.
at patrick ervell: mcginley models, somebody from columbia, a new crush, lots of cute boys, terrence koh in amazing sunglasses.
more later..
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| alright harvard, you and me. we'll make a place. |
[11 Jan 2009|01:58am] |
lately i've been on the fence, tossing around options, trying to decide. and i think i've decided. i need to leave this city. not for me, not for cambridge, not for harvard. for my sanity.
but knowing me, psychopaths have a way of finding me. does something about me scream, 'if you're a jerk, please, come to me. please'?
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| last night, at an opening at the team gallery. |
[09 Jan 2009|11:21pm] |
we are standing in front of some perhaps-hipster-downtown-cool-kid-concocted piece (which makes what i'm about to say all the more ridiculous, but perhaps the artist wasn't a hipster, well, at least i'm hoping not), a giant thing of yellow and black. one part yellow. one part black. diagonal. i'm not sure what made me react this way, what made me decide to say it.
'it's kind of devastating, don't you think?'
he stares. 'are you kidding?'
'no, i mean only slightly devastating. but nonetheless.'
later we're walking around looking at everyone instead of everything and i say, 'well perhaps i should do all my new pick-ups in art galleries.'
'yeah, sure, you should stand in front of a mcginley and say, it's kind of devastating, don't you think?'
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| i'm great at simulating instances of intimacy. |
[09 Jan 2009|11:15pm] |
rarely do i think about how little meaning everything holds until i start to pack my things. i do this often because i am always moving from place to place. packing is a process because i own many things, two closets worth of dresses, 36 boxes of shoes, a suitcase full of purses. i am careful with my possessions because i have been told that i do not treasure things enough. sometimes with my parents i will do a show-and-tell in the middle of packing, 'this is a vintage balenciaga, here is a fall '08 herve leger that i purchased for a grand at the boutique on madison.'
i remember i had been at a party once and somebody had come up and said, 'i know about you.' just like that, no hello, nothing, just i know about you.
'what do you mean?' i had asked.
'you are the kind of girl who defines herself by the clothing she wears and the places she goes and the men she’s slept with. what you don’t realize is that one day you will lose all that beauty and nobody will want to sleep with you anymore, and then what will you do?'
i think i walked away then and left the party and hailed a cab and went home and crawled into bed and cried for a while. then i searched my room for traces of self-definition: a movie stub from a first date, a plaid men’s button-down from a brief fling, a belt from my first high school boyfriend. i thought about throwing them away. instead i tucked them into a box and marked it EMPTY. that box does not ever come out during show-and-tell. i do not like to think about it as i pack and unpack.
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blinkmexo's journal