Beautiful writing

From Thought Catalog, on How You Know:

You want to travel with them. You want to see what they’re like going
through airport security, on planes, in strange countries. You want to
meet their families and charm them to pieces. You want to nestle into
their childhood beds and look around in the dark at all their old
posters. You want to see all the embarrassing photos of them with braces
and socks pulled up mid-calf. You want to hear all the stories about
their drunken nights under the bleachers and their best friend’s jokes.
You want to read all their journals, see how they took notes in high
school. Did they use pen or pencil? What color highlighter? You want to
work with them, just to see them work. You want to go out with them. You
want to make out with them in the bathroom. You always want to touch
them; you want them to always want to touch you.

You find reasons to disentangle yourself from them; it’s only going
to hurt later, you can tell already. You stay up way past your bedtime
for them. You look at the clock and know their schedule. You neglect
other people and other things, and beat yourself up about it. But it’s
like they have a hold of your hands and your voice, and you don’t mind.
It’s like you’re trapped in an hourglass; you know your lungs might fill
with sand, but there’s something sensual and comforting about the
grains sliding down glass walls and pooling around your ankles, your
knees, your waist.

You like things about their appearance that the rest of the world may
cringe at and call strange, less than perfect. Their broken, reshaped
noses; their little teeth or the gaps in between them; the way they pull
their hair; their narrow hips; their wide shoulders; the depth of their
pores. You can laugh when funny things happen in bed. You usually want
to be in bed with them.

You think they’re smarter, better, friendlier, fitter, happier, more
productive than you are. You strive to be as much as they are, as good
as they are. You try to cheat and figure out what it is they’re going to
teach you, if they’re going to fall from grace, if you’re going to play
a part for them that you never thought you’d play before. You try and
pull patterns and threads of meaning from the conversation or the way
they looked at you the first time you met; what they did, what they
offered. An apple stolen from the bar. Notes from a guitar. Pitchers of
free beer. Pieces of bark with writing on them.

You cherish snippets of them; paste them up in your memories like old
faded scrapbooks clutched to chests for generations. Their skin glows
black and white in your head. They star in the little short films of
your life that sneak up on you when you’re not looking. Like the walk to
the South End for dinner on a quiet corner. The feel of the sun beating
down on you both at an outdoor concert. The way they ordered wine on
your first date. The slow swing of a hammock near a lake. The back seat
of their car.

You can see yourself with them in the future you can’t quite see. You
build apartments outfitted with all the right kitchen supplies and the
perfect bed with two nightstands, each piled with books and magazines.
You wait for them patiently while they chase their dreams; they wait for
you patiently as you chase yours. You sit in bed eating dinner late at
night, drinking tea and wine and whiskey as you tell each other all
about the chasing. You create adopted dogs and cats; you have awkward
conversations about money; you put up with each other’s crap. You see
what they look like standing at the end of a candle-lit aisle in your
grassy front yard and wonder if you’ll make it to the other end to meet
them or if they’ll just end up in the scrapbook clutched to your chest
or flickering on the screen in your brain.

She (For Liz) by Parachute

Something about this song is so appealing and so ... 90s.

All I Want for Christmas...

...and I swoon.

Bring the beat back

So proud that they represent USC/UCLA. Performance give ms chills. CHILLS.

Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight

Hold on

Just because this makes me smile. (:

The Beat of New York

"Sometimes it really takes a visitor to capture the essence of home."

THE BEAT OF NEW YORK from tim hahne on Vimeo.

Just for now.

Seriously, such an amazing show. Let it be known, I did NOT film this, but thinking back on the experience, this is a smidgen of what it was like to be there that night. (:

Imogen Heap -- Just for Now

Amazing

I don't wanna grow up...

Come on, love

Gives me chills every time. Wait for the chorus and drum beats to kick in.

EATS, up!

After much delay, I've finally posted and will continue to regularly:

http://manhattaneater.wordpress.com/

Enjoy!

Also, if you're in the City and have a place you'd like to try out...let me know. (:

Free fallin'

Dance much?

Get the tissues ready...

Because this montage still gets me every time.

Love love love

Old friends in new places make me smile. (:

Big jumps.

She is love.

Dang homes. Where can I bottle up your voice?

Family & familiarity

This might sound really trite and dumb of me, but I hadn't realized how much I had underestimated the value of family until this past weekend. I spent the better part of yesterday out on Staten Island, visiting the extended family - people I haven't seen in nearly 10 years, all of whom still remember me in pigtails or jumpers or both.

My aunt and uncle (Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul, my closest relatives back in LA) flew out to New York for a weekend of reunions and meals and reminiscing. They're both just past 70, but are as active and social as ever (this is a common thread in my family, the longevity and the activeness). They've never had children and therefore take on any kids - that is to say, anyone in a generation past theirs - as their own.

My cousins and I all have fond memories of spending summers and weekends at their house, watching cartoons (theirs was the first house to get cable, and later, the first to have AOL back in the dial-up days), eating lots of candy and essentially having free reign over our days. They were the aunt and uncle who would say "yes" to extended bedtimes and "no" to homework, and we loved them for it.

What we didn't realize was that, along the way, they were building the kind of trust and bond between their generation and ours that would prove essential as we all began to grow up.

I got a phone call from my uncle on Thursday when he and my aunt landed in the City, and he insisted that I make the trek out to Staten Island with them yesterday, that it was important that I reacquaint myself with that side of the family. They all want to see you, he said. You've grown up a lot since they last saw you.

So I went. My aunt (recovering from some pretty intense physical therapy post-surgery), my uncle (exclaiming every two seconds about how much New York has changed), my cousin (just about to start his senior year at NYU) and I boarded a ferry in the early afternoon. Destination: memory lane, Staten Island.

A ferry and train ride later, we were in the heart of Staten Island, surrounded by trees and homes with dusty white picket fences and cars that hummed down small tarred roads. The aunt and uncle we were visiting were actually old college friends of Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul, a wonderful couple that might as well have been family, if not by blood.

I hadn't seen either of them in ages, and sure enough, they made comments about how tall I've gotten, how much I've changed, how glad they were that I've decided to move out to the east coast (But don't tell your mother I said that). It was eye-opening to see the age in their eyes, the wrinkles that crept up around their smiles, the grey that shone in their hair at certain angles.

Clearly, we had all changed.

It wasn't until their daughters, Susan and Linda (my adopted cousins of sorts), joined us, that I really felt the weight of the change. I finally met Susan's 5-year-old son Michael, autistic and so charismatic (half-Chinese and half-Irish is a beautiful mix, his dad Kevin pointed out), and Linda's fiancé Chris (she had had a different boyfriend last time we met).

Knowing that these cousins had built a life for themselves in the interim between now and when I had last visited was an unexpected shock. Usually, visiting relatives means seeing physical signs of aging, but not complete lifestyle restructuring.

From their perspective, they couldn't believe that I had already shorn my pigtails and glasses, let alone graduated from college. It boggled their minds that I was old enough to drink, when the last time they had seen me I was still disgusted by the bitter taste of coffee.

We all went out to dinner, and I just couldn't wrap my mind around the generational shift that had taken place. Michael was calling me Auntie. Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul were now Grandma Jane and Grandpa Paul. My cousins, one nearing 30 and the other nearing 40, weren't the young, flighty girls I had remembered them to be. They had something solid, something established. They were creating their own sense of home and family.

But though the change was startling, it wasn't scary. Because honestly, seeing all the interactions at the dinner table - Linda dumping grape leaves on Susan's plate, Kevin talking football with Chris, a long-lost uncle catching up with Aunt Jane - made me see just how important those initial bonds still were.

In the middle of all the craziness of moving to New York and trying to find a foothold in the journalism industry, I had forgotten what it felt like just to spend an afternoon with family. And just...be.

I've always contended that if you have your family and your health, then nothing else really matters. Things fall into place, problems work themselves out, and the world keeps turning. This weekend confirmed that. At the end of the day, what I decide to do in the coming years and where I ultimately end up will be more than fine no matter what. I've been blessed with a loving family (and an intricate network of extended family), and that support is immeasurable.

Having that knowledge is invigorating, inspiring. From a solid base like that you can really go anywhere. Like I'd been taught by the great Sumi back at USC, roots before branches.

Roots before branches.

Red cape

Captures current mood perfectly: