new york, new york

July 20, 2009 at 2:41 am | In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

“It’s New York,” they say shrugging when someone bumps into you. “Oh, well.”

They say that too when someone elbows you sharply in the stomach and you lose your breath for a second. Or when you miss the train right as you catch your breath. Or when someone steals your spot in the movie line or at the grocery store.

But when you’re having a bad day, nobody uses the excuse. Nobody says, “Well, of course you’re bound to have a bad day or two now and then … it IS New York after all!”

New Yorkers are many things: harworking, persistent, smart. But for all their greatness, one trait many also share is unhappiness. The danger? They don’t acknowledge it. They just live with it. Or rather, distract themselves from it. They drink, they smoke, get high off dissing each other. Then they shrug again, and they move on.

Of course, not everyone in New York is like that. But I do believe that unhappiness is one of the reasons for all these addictions that are so much more prevalent in this city than others.

Well, today I was that New Yorker. Not the addicted on, thank goodness, but the unhappy one. I spent most of my week unhappy, and today I reached my limit. I had a bunch of housework to do, some work work too and then some other random minor things. The to-do list seemed endless, and I didn’t want to deal with it. So I didn’t; I walked out of the house instead, leaving the keys to distraction (money, phone) behind. I walked for an hour and a half, quickly at first as if I had somewhere to be.

The plan was to get some air around the block and be back in five minutes. But something changed as I walked down the streets of my tree-lined block and watched people sitting back at coffee shops and taverns on this beautiful, lazy Sunday afternoon. I slowed down too, clearing my head. And then I started from scratch, delving into my “problems” in my head as I walked.

And slowly I came upon a bigger problem: I rarely ever stop to celebrate my accomplishments.

I’ve been stressing about an important decision I have to make at work soon, and this decision is something I’ve come to all on my own. My boss doesn’t even know it yet, but it’s  a great plan that will improve two departments at once. But in thinking and planning and trying to figure out whether I’m on the right path, I forgot that I’m on a really good path. All I could see was instability, wavering and a possibly grave mistake. It’s also a lot of what I’ve seen, and struggled with, for a year now.

But then I thought things out. And the thing is, there’s no reason to fret. Because whether I take route A or route B, I’m still gonna be on the wonderful path I’ve been lucky enough to have made it on. And then I realized: When did I ever stop to high-five myself for getting this job … or a year later, for getting a huge promotion … when did I treat myself to something nice or say “Good job, girl … I am SO proud of you.”

Sadly, never. When I got the job, I wondered if I’d oversold myself and whether they’d be disappointed. I said to myself, “Now you’ll have to work doubly hard to impress them.” So I did … and that’s how I got my promotion. But once I got the promotion, I said to myself, “Is bossman really happy with my work, or is he only giving me more money and a new title so I’ll get off his back and not ask for more?” And then I spent the next few months feeling guilty ….

What?! Why? That doesn’t even make sense!!

Which is what makes it even more beautiful when I realized … and I saw how wonderfully splendid I’ve done so for, and then I laughed. How silly, at this rate, I thought, nothing will ever be great in my eyes … I could be a millionaire and I’d call myself greedy. Or I could be the president of the United States, and then I’d tell myself, “Sorry, you got here by accident. You can’t do it.”

I kept walking after my realization, realizing that my current dilemma at work is a good problem to have. And then a roadblock was lifted, and I saw something I had missed all this time, something concrete about where I am right now — a huge opportunity. I saw my luck, lying ahead waiting to be seized.

So I kept walking and made a new house rule: a half-hour walk every night to clear my head and mull the day’s events over. And when I got home, I cracked open a bottle of wine I’d been saving for special occasions and poured myself a glass.

when live gives you lemons

July 17, 2009 at 12:12 am | In Uncategorized | 2 Comments
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Sometimes I feel like I’m disappearing in the space between the white of the computer screen and my window. The light leaves the room in the evenings. When I come back home, it’s almost gone. I stood on the train today, nose almost touching the window, for the last five stops. I said to myself, What are you upset about? And someone in me cried. It said, The marble is ruined. Daddy left the lemons on the floor for a week, and the marble is ruined. The thought of the lemons, brown, mushy, still on the marble floor. One of them rolling on the cold floor maybe, before reaching its final halt, where time covers it with its autumnal golden sheen.

I asked Dad to come visit me this weekend. I prepared for the question well in advance. I thought about it as I did the dishes, as I folded clothes, as I walked through the aisles, not minding the groceries. And finally, after church on Sunday morning, I cracked the question on the phone.

He said no. He’d much rather me go visit in Greece so we can all be together.

There are times when I think of those times we spent together, those few times. That summer really, when he lived in New York, and I came to stay with him for three months, doing an internship. We spent five hours at a time over coffee and loukoumades then. I’ve held on to those times, recited them over and over when talking to people about my relationship with my dad. But was it our time together I cherished so much, our conversations? Why do I remember trying to impress him so bad? Trying to get to know him better, asking him questions — that it seemed he answered for too long?

I wanted him to love me for who I am. To impress him with my knowledge. But “daddy” beat me up too when I was little sometimes. Like when he lost patience over history homework. Or that semester when I lied to them about my math grades for months. He tried to teach me … French, history, math. He knew everything, and I looked up to him. I didn’t really know him. I heard of him, listening to my mom gushing on the phone. But my mom had her own issues, was covering them up by bragging about things she’d later curse my dad about.

They’ve been married for 31 years. And now they barely talk. They live in a house together, and they barely talk. My dad reads a lot, I’m sure, comes home at 7, takes a seat and reads again. My mom cleans, dusts, watches television, cooks, looks out the same glass I do, sees things. Misses me. Then goes on with life, with me in her thoughts.

I hate the weekends. I hate it when we talk on the phone, and I’ve to pretend I’m doing great while I hear it in her voice that she’s miserable. I know that one day it will all be over, and we’ll be confronted with our big lie. But for now, we stand the weekends. I know she’s upset because she blames herself that we left and live on different continents. Whole worlds apart. People don’t know what that’s like. They think it’s OK because other than Thanksgivings and Christmases — and all those weekends here and there — they too are apart anyway. And it is OK, because you have work, movies and crossword puzzles to distract you.

But in the moments between these things, it’s there: They’re so far. They’ve always been so far, even when we lived in the same house. Mom taught me to be insecure about everything in life — at worst directly, when she’d tell me I knew nothing about nothing and hit me as if that was the way to learn it, at best when I watched her say things to people to cover up her own insecurity. Dad was never there. And when he was, he was either trying to save me from my mother’s claws or telling me that marriage was the biggest mistake in his life.

I shake my head as I talk about my childhood sometimes. I wonder how I came out so relatively “normal.” I guess normal isn’t crying on the train for no apparent reason, but you know what I mean. But there’s a lot of things they’ve damaged for me, and for my sisters too, thanks to their antics, and it didn’t have to be this way. For example, I will (most likely) never be that girl who’ll be able to have a full day of work without doubting herself. Neither that girl who’ll have plenty of friends or feel OK in a crowd of more than two. Not the girl without a million anxieties plaguing her all at once.

It didn’t have to be that way. Forgive your parents, Michael said once before he died. I have. But they’ve made me. You can forgive the potter’s hands, but the clay doesn’t change its texture. If he didn’t fire enough, or if he forgot the glaze or was remiss on days when he just wasn’t in the mood for art, the product remains misshapen. Love it and it can become the best in the world, the favorite piece in its uniqueness. But neglect it, and it’ll always be what it looks like: a misshapen, almost work of art. Almost. And if the pot could talk, sooner or later it would probably forgive the potter. But that wouldn’t change the fact that it’d continue living life fighting to convince itself that the reason it always got the lowest spot on the shelf and nobody ever wanted to look at it was not because it wasn’t beautiful.

Artists aren’t perfect and neither are parents. The cold hard truth? I don’t know my dad. I wanted to know him, and I wanted to impress him. But I’ve always felt that he wasn’t impressed. He said he was, but I feel that deep down he wasn’t because secretly, he was hoping that one of us would inherit his genes of greatness and nobody did. Or maybe he really just wants us to be happy as he says. In that case, he thinks I’m happy — which I am, most of the time. But even if I didn’t let him down, he let me down a little: I needed a father for guidance, the guidance I didn’t get from my mom. He said I didn’t get the guidance because she was crazy. Fine. But where was he? I pretended I had him, he was mine, I was like him, he was like me, but truth is, I didn’t have him. I still don’t know him. Today, I find out about the lemons. So I get a clue: He’s the guy who lets lemons rot on the floor every week and then lets mom clean the decaying marble while he returns to his reading.

And life goes on. To oil its wheel, turns out my sister chastised him about it — the benefits of getting to an age beyond grounding. And about an hour later, he’d cleaned the floor and juiced every single one of the 100 lemons. That’s my dad, my life’s “idol.”

And this, is our family. To round out the picture, my mom is depressed. My sister is angry deep down, and lonely, I’m sure, and that’s why she moved in so quickly with that new guy she’d been dating. Then there’s my little sister, growing up in that house — who knows in what condition. And then there’s me.

I like to think everything will be OK one day, and I believe it, I just don’t know how it’ll get there. I don’t see the path, but I feel at times the random, dispersed moments of comfort, like a collection of little stars lighting up the path to the moon. I guess that’s what keeps me going, fighting through the crap of daily life, trudging further and further into the darkness.

fate, love, Truth, life

July 1, 2009 at 2:55 am | In Uncategorized | 1 Comment

I read the headlines, and it’s still unbelievable. Who knew it would all come to a screeching halt on June 25?

That’s what I can’t get through my brain the most, the vision of the endless timeline. The logic of it: That day, the 25th of June 2009, was marked on the invisible calendar of death before Michael was even born. It was waiting for him, and as he lived and continued to achieve, he slowly drew closer. He was only years away, then one year, then one month, then a week, then day then hours. The day came and went, and we still go on, gliding silently on the invisible timeline without him. He isn’t anymore. He just isn’t, but he was just a regular weekend ago. He’s disappeared into thin air.

——

Thousands crowded Apollo theater today to pay their respects, lay flowers down and dance bittersweetly to his music. I heard the lines were as long as 10 blocks, people waited hours, and they let 600 people in at a time.

Poor Michael. It makes my heart so heavy to think about how loved he is. Did he know it? I don’t know. He sounded so thankful every time he thanked his fans, from beginning till end. The last acknowledgment of his love to his fans was just a few weeks ago, at his last appearance before the This Is It Tour that would never happen, since they had planned it after that fated invisible square beyond which Michael would never make it.

He looked frail then at that last appearance, out of it. Stumbling almost, he wore those big black aviator glasses, and his face was the face of death. He didn’t say much on that stage. Just that this is really it, “the last curtain call.” Kept emphasizing it, and how sad that seems now. But the way he said I love you to his fans, the way he said it and meant it, it was so personal, so emotional and heartfelt. He said it abruptly, longingly, as if he was saying farewell before even starting his concerts. Looking back now, he was whispering a secret that meant much more than anyone knew. A secret that he and fate were in on, both conspiring to reveal it in just a few days when they’d take flight, and fly to Neverland.

It’s like he knew he was going to die, and I think he did. He hinted once in an interview that he thought he was a bit psychic. That he was afraid he’d die, that he often felt a death coming and prayed that it wasn’t him. But when the death was finally his, he must have known.

——

I loved Michael, but ever since he died, I’ve loved him more. Why? Because I guess I never realized just how much more he needed to be loved. How all the crap — the gossip, the name-calling, the molestation charges — was like a big chip, chipping away at him slowly. Eating at his soul, especially the molestation charges. Why? Because he was a child at heart, a pure, sweet child. He was such a child that he didn’t see anything wrong with having a kid over to play.

He didn’t have much of a childhood. So when he grew up, he built his own fantasy: Neverland. And he loved “the way Jesus said we should…Love the children, imitate the children — not childish, but childlike.”

——

There is a little girl on the stock photography site I acquire images from for work, whose photographs I stumble upon now and then. She is young, about 6 years old, and there is something angelic about her. The way she laughs at the camera, facing it as she faces the world: straight on, candidly, fearlessly. The way she sleeps so innocently in some photos, concentrates completely on buttoning her shirt.

I’ve only used one shot of her for an article, but on my desktop, I have a folder with many of her pictures. Last year, while I was dealing with my own issues from childhood, I identified with her…I saw the same innocence I used to have in her, admired it. Now I don’t mourn lost innocence anymore, because I’m more well-adjusted in adulthood, but I still love looking at the girl. Children really are divine, closer to God than we, something I’ve believed ever since reading Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality.”

——

I’ll get over my mourning of Michael with time, I know. But sometimes, it’s good to stay here for a while, linger in the stillness, dive deep into the meaning of the life of another. And take from it what you may, because once they’re gone, it’s up for the taking.

I choose to take inspiration. Immortal is he who doesn’t cease to inspire, even after his life has ended. So I choose to be inspired by Michael’s life, Michael’s beliefs, Michael’s pure and endless love. The boundless love he felt for his fans, for children, animals, for every living thing. I don’t care that he was troubled — we all are. We are all flawed, and so was he, and instead of hating one another, calling one another names, we should love one another. Love each other well, and when one’s down, not kick him further, but love him, build him up with love, help him get up again.

Michael was kicked, beaten, had shit thrown all over him from people who feared him, feared what they didn’t understand, perhaps feared his power, the love his fans have for him. Or by the people who didn’t care to take a second and hear the story from both sides. Instead, they heard one side, the easy, bad, sensational side. And that’s why Michael isn’t with us anymore.

I choose to be inspired. Remember what I felt during my spiritual awakening in college, not just what I found in Wordsworth and Keats, but in Ravi Shankar too. That only when you stand at the corner and keep quiet for a bit are you able to feel compassion for the world, and only then will you be in touch with the truth, with the soul, the fibers of our Being.

I choose to ask God to give me the strength to keep this with me always, to help me embrace what I discovered then and rediscovered now since Michael passed away.

May God embrace him with all His love and comfort, and may He help me live with our ideals.

–

“Let us dream of tomorrow where we can truly love from the soul, and know love as the ultimate truth at the heart of all creation.” — Michael Jackson

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