Dear Brooklyn

The following is a long time coming and I know it. Before I move either out of Astoria or to Astoria...again, it's necessary. It's a love letter of sorts and also a formal acknowlegment that I'm a stupid-ass and need to eat a Thanksgiving dinner's full of words. So, with that:

Dear Brooklyn,
I'm full of shit. You are really are a great borough.

See, I've been passing judgments based on those kids who look like Carol Brady infiltrating my little Queens nabe for the last two years. The fact is, I'm intimidated by white belts, spray denim and vintage glasses. I can't find those things at Target and that makes me anxious. And, I dunno, I just feel like those kids aren't coming to Queens for our great spanakopita. They want our cheap(ish) apartments. Nothing wrong with that, but they're the ones who made their own borough too expensive in the first place.

Really, though, I think I'm just jealous that sweater cardigans don't suit me and I can't rock that easy, edgy urban style. And maybe I feel like our borough lacks the kind of identity I wish it had. But the truth is, I never really knew you. I only knew your slopes and expressways and that's just not enough to sum a borough up. Besides, every borough has a "haircut". Boy, do I know that. I live in Queens.

While shopping for apartments, we've also shopped for neighborhoods. We've tried on Bed-Stuy (too up-and-coming), Bay Ridge (lush and bustling), and our dreamy Greenpoint. Oh, Greenpoint. You're so us. Just edgy enough. We'll never stop dreaming about living in you, you sweet little artsy, northernmost 'hood. We've scoped Brooklyn College's antique-y campus (charming) and enjoyed a sunny brunch in Ft. Greene (we know, not a chance in hell). And everywhere we've been, we've indulged in the color of Brooklyn, its hospitable variety and sense of self.

Brooklyn, you're glorious, you absolute destination. I was wrong, I was wrong. You are a wonder of grit and gray and gutters, a loud and luxurious urban paradise. I've spent the last month frolicking in all of your offerings and you're...ahem...um...twelve years in...a find.

Mine is a tale of isolation. New York has a way of making one insular in the most un-insular place in the world. But the shackles have come off, Brooklyn. My New York territory has gotten a whole lot bigger. I can't wait to crawl further inside you and see what else I've been missing.

I'm at the foot of your magnificent bridge.
I humbly admit defeat.
SWAK,
OneKate

Reality, Chrysalis Style

Hiya Chrysalis Camp,
There comes a day in every chrysalis journey when one must examine the full breadth of the tasks at hand (as well as the relative progress) and make some sort of big generalization about just what is being achieved, exactly. In other words, I need a reality check.

I think today is an excellent day for this. I'm sorta losing my nut. I've got my cell phone no further than six inches from my right wrist as I type, awaiting a call--any call--from a broker--any broker--regarding an apartment--any apartment. I've got two separate email accounts open in addition to my Blogger screen in the event that any one of fifty landlords/brokers/building owners I've contacted in the last few hours should happen to take a five minute break from walking people through empty, painted-over, poorly-lit, slightly aging apartments to sit down at a computer and compose a return email. I jump every time I hear the "new mail" alert and race to the little yellow envelope with my mouse only to find it's yet another "keep this flame going" email from a woman I worked with five years ago.

I've got each and every communication from Federal Application For Student Aid sitting in my email box acknowleding receipt of my application for the $3.50 they'll likely qualify me for but can't tell me about until after I've been accepted at a school I haven't decided on yet. Better than that, I have the auto-response from New York state's Tuition Assistance Program, which tells me its contribution is based solely on FAFSA's. Right on.

On the subway escalator this morning I was thinking about what all of this year's hanging about, flailing, faltering, hoping, sucking it up, letting go, accepting, resisting and resolving has amounted to thus far. And I decided that the measure of movement, however resembling of an iceberg, is the answer you get when you ask yourself where you are in comparison with this time last year. Asking myself that question is like dropping a big hit of Xanax (or binge drinking at a bar crawl--but that's another post). It slows me way down.

Last year there was no chrysalis. It wasn't even a concept. There were no empty apartments, financial aid forms, dream schools or polished up resumes. There was only the desire to be different in spirit and form and me, frozen solid under a lake of complacency.

So, five months in, what's my big generalization? The truth about change is that it's all relative. Timelines are abstract. Nothing ever takes as long as I think it will. Nobody else's timeline is the same as mine. Phone calls get returned at will, opportunities come and go more frequently than I have time to notice, my urgency is not necessarily anyone else's, and life is just simply not linear. If absolutely nothing else, the chrysalis concept has given me that big reality check.

I'm trying to learn that getting insane over stupid shit isn't necessarily the mark of regression but rather, growing pains. Part of the expansion process. Waiting for broker phone calls is a weird sort of blessing. Because, I suppose, they mean something is happening.

Away Message

Hiya Chrysalis Crew,
I'm writing a few hours before I depart for London to hawk red lipstick on television. Many of you know of my deep, abiding love for those creamy, crimson crayons. I've been wearing the stuff since I was just old enough not to look like a Denver version of Jodi Foster in Taxi Driver. I used to wear it with dance tights and sweat pants when I first moved to New York. Now I wear it in the daytime with flip flops and hoop earrings. I leave it, like a signature, on the rims of glasses, on linen napkins and smeared at the bottom of cheap purses. All I have to do is convince fifty thousand British women that they, too, can experience the surge of confidence and perplexing blend of retro and modern glamour that comes from leaving your lip print on the rim of a coffee cup. Easy. easy. easy.

Before I go I want to honor the month of April 2008 (the official anniversary of the best music year of my life) with a few links 'n' notes about what I'm taking with me and looking forward to upon my return. Now, I'm nobody's music blogger. I'm not a cutting-edge insider, music geek or go-to trendwatcher. But in April of last year I was in a dank apartment in Nantes with my brother doing one of those music-share marathons ("okay, now you go", "oh my God, I HAVE to play you this!", "where can I find that?") and it shaped my entire year. As I finish packing today I'm thinking of that gray, salty Nantes afternoon and am feeling a similar excitment about the coming summer of music and all the memories waiting to be made to its soundtrack. This post is my 2008 music-share. Some new, some older. From my dank New York apartment to you, with love.

Lest you should think there is any formality to this list, see disclaimers below:

1.) I totally know that some of these selections are not from 2008.
2.) I totally know that some of these albums have been out for awhile.
3.) I totally know that many of these bands have like, 3-5 albums out and that this is not their "pivotal" album nor have I "discovered" anything.

Alright, with all that business out of the way, let's delve.

The following accompanies me over the Atlantic:
-Elvis Perkins, Ash Wednesday
*a stunningly heartfelt, lyrical gem with some of the most complex singer-songwriter melodies I've heard.
**Standouts: All the Night Without Love, While You Were Sleeping, Sleep Sandwich, Good Friday.

-Blue Scholars, Bayani
*rich, intelligent Seattle-based indie-hop with memorable hooks and everyman quality.
**Standouts: Opening Salvo, North by Northwest, Still Got Love.

-Balkan Beat Box, Balkan Beat Box :
*sweet world dance with gypsy vibe and sexy, trippy vocals accompanied by mindblowing horns.
**Standouts: Bulgarian Chicks, Shushan, Hassan, 9/4 Ladies.

-Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago:
*heartachingly gentle falsetto vocals layered over acoustic and percussion with lyrics of love and loss.
**Standouts: Skinny Love, Flume, The Wolves (Act I and II).

-M.I.A., Kala
*bracing, ass-kicking Sri Lankan (via London) lady-rap with insane production.
**Standouts: Bamboo Banga, Paper Planes, XR2.


What Sends Me Back Home:
-Gogol Bordello, live, McCarren Pool, June 20. If you haven't seen them live, you're missing a piece of the human experience.
-Elbow releases The Seldom Seen Kid, April 22nd. How can they get better?
-Firewater (the best travel music ever) releases The Golden Hour in April and plays The Bowery May 26.
-The Black Keys have released Attack and Release. Just good. Just period.
-The Raconteurs have released Consolers of the Lonely. Richer, deeper, more complex.
-Ghostland Observatory has released Robotique Majestique. Insane techno-glam-rock with a frontman to rival Mick Jagger.

Okay, now you go...

Size 142

It's beautiful in New York today. It's finally the April we've been yearning for: crystalline, warm and glistening with spring's familiar clarity of purpose.

As the weather shifts I launch into my quarterly practice of trying to make seasonally inappropriate clothing thrive out of their element. In that weird post-winter, pre-spring transition period for instance, I often try to make flip flops work as regular shoes even though the chill April wind cuts across my bare toes like swift swipes with a shard of glass. I'm also guilty of wearing slinky summer dresses with a pair of tights in mid-winter, justifying them sheepishly with a scarf and blazer in hopes no one will remember they saw me in the same dress at a barbeque in July.

Today I'm especially uncomfortable. I walked out of the house in my cheap Target chain link print summer dress made smarter (I thought, at 7:30 a.m.) topped by a velvet blazer. But the dress is flimsy and too big on top and I made it work with a mini safety pin covered in cat hair that I found in a jewelry bowl on my dresser. As I walked to the subway holding the bottom part of the dress closed against the wind, my mother's words came at me from the recesses of a Penney's fitting room when I was 10: "ill-fitting", "unbecoming", "pulling around your middle". I've spent the morning tugging the front of the chain link dress closed, pulling at my boot tops to meet its hem, buttoning and unbuttoning my blazer. And the simple truth is it doesn't fit. It doesn't matter how expertly I hid my mini pin, my bra is still nearly in full view when I sit at my desk, which further confirms my image as part-time office worker/summer intern at a brothel.

It's all got me thinking about trying to make things fit when they don't. I'm doing that outside my closet too.

As part of the "chrysalis curriculum", we've decided it's time to move. Now, I'm not going to bore you with tales of rental woe, broker shenanigans or apartment atrocities. It's pretty obvious that moving in New York is no joke. The entire cosmos has to be in line (as does your bank statement, w-2, employment history and at least 6 months' worth of pay stubs) in order to even begin the search. But I'm finding that the desperate need I feel to keep my hot summer moments in heart and hand by walking around in a sundress in December is similar to the desperation that has me trying to make our perfect apartment out of what is very often just a mini bar with a bathroom. It's a stick of dynamite created by two polar opposites: needing to move forward and wanting to hold on.

The clawing insanity that accompanies hours spent on Craigslist browsing listings intensifies, hour by hour, making each and every little ridiculous blue link look more and more possible. "One bedroom studio". Okay, what is that? If it has a room, it sounds like it could work. A "one bedroom studio". Sounds painterly. Sounds artistic. Done. It's our apartment. "New walk-in apartment". You can walk in it? Well, thank God. That's what we want! To be able to walk in it. Done. It's our apartment.

And on I go, just like that, trying to make things fit. Pulling, tugging, hiking. Convertible 2 room? Junior 1 bedroom but on the Upper East Side? Bushwick? Flatbush? Give it to me, lemme see it, wrap it around me, try to fit us inside it, inside the neighborhood, bedroom, bathroom. Make us, it. Pretty soon, I think, I'm gonna realize I can put it on and zip it up but I might not be able to breathe in it. And that's not progress, that's just a filmsy chain link dress on a chilly April day.

So there's this little red building at 142 Franklin Street in Greenpoint. We're kinda hoping for it. We don't know enough about it yet. It might be a chain link dress, it might be a fuckin' Versace. Either way, this post is my vow not to pull and tug so hard but to instead a.) wear seasonally appropriate shoes and b.) shop around, look for the best fit, then move ahead.

Look Out, You Rock-n-Rollers

Oh, Ziggy Stardust, inhabit me! I need a new persona. I need a rock and roll genie, a lean and lanky British God with jagged teeth and two mismatched marbles for eyes to sweep me up in a twisted tulle tornado and ch-ch-ch-ch-change me. In my fantasy, I'll rocket past dusk in a polished, hollow, shining bullet loaded with gleaming pastel potions, be made over by a drunk transvestite in platforms and return to Madison Avenue at sunrise to wander the streets in a vinyl raincoat -- a newer, more certain version of myself.

When one reaches a particular level of gerbil-wheel-turning madness, regardless of effort toward personal evolution, career progress or just plain forward movement without desired result, one must do something to push change from concept into reality. And at this point, I'm no longer referring to the kind of change that comes from an hour spent wandering the "Self Help" section of Borders, a pilates session, two pieces of expensive dark chocolate or three hours binge drinking at a place called Crime Scene Pub. No, I'm talking like, transformative change. The kind of change rock and roll genies write songs about. The thing is, sometimes all the "change" talk just becomes overwhelming in the abstract. It needs a physical manifestation. It needs a model.

Enter David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust. Ziggy's my pilot. Periodically, I have to pull him out, dust him off and slip into his blazing, manic-tron glory for a moment. He's the perfect icon for right this minute; for all this stagnant dust I need to blow off and turn into glitter. He's gonna represent my new philosophy: if you don't feel it, fucking paint it on.

I'm now working from the outside, in. Spackle up the exterior, put a brave face on, make myself look like the change I want to feel. I'm gonna airbrush every bit of doubt out of the creases of my face and polish up my platforms. Time to step it up a bit and build a beautiful beast who can go out there and do all my singing.

In honor of Ziggy, we'll start with the hair. I'm gonna make myself a redhead tonight. Well, really, Lana, my militant Russian hairdresser is going to make me a redhead. Let's see if a little fire on the head sparks a little fire in the heart. I need to see some change. I'll begin outside, head blazing, and see if I can start a wildfire.

"Just gonna have to be a different (wo)man". -- DB/ZS

I (Don't) Have a Dream

Lately, I'm finding the treadmill and its running-to-nowhere metaphor a little too close to home.

For two weeks now I've stepped onto the belt, located Inside Edition, TMZ or another high-quality celebrity news show, increased the speed to my new target, dialed up On-the-Go playlist 10 (a choice blend of hardcore, classic rap, thrash metal and Brit rock) and attempted to hit the shit out of it. And every night, the same thing happens. About fifteen minutes in I decrease the speed and start walking. It happens before my mind even begins to waiver and the usual emotional walls pile up, brick on brick, burying me beneath them. Body trumps mind. Suddenly, I'm just walking. To nowhere.

I spent a lot of last week in a self-loathing stupor. After each workout I'd go a few rounds with my inner dominatrix and her humiliation stick, trying to figure out why I'm such an unaccomplished candy-ass. Emotional S & M always seems to work for me. After a bit of thrashing and trashing, I actually dug up a notion of value down there in the self-flaggelation swamp: I don't have any reason to run. Not really. Now, don't get me wrong, running feels good. In a bad way. And my secret Mistress Midnight loves that. Its payoff is so concrete -- the hurt to reward ratio a fine, exquisite line I'm constantly walking across on tiptoe. And for a time, its reliable drone and incessant pounding was good enough to keep me fighting the throb and ache. But I needed a carrot to chase. In November I found and trained for a race and that effort, the idea of finishing something in motion, became bigger than me. Seeing it loom there in distance made me want it in my hands to hold and feel the weight of and pocket forever. That image, the finish line, got me into running pants in the middle of a hoarde of healthy runners headed to the end.

I had a thing. A dream. I had a dream. Now I don't and I'm running to run. Well, really, I'm walking. And I'm not getting anywhere.

I think this might be what's happening in my off-the-belt life too. I haven't been able to figure out why I feel so plagued by sameness. There's plenty of change afoot but I can't shake the weight of routine. My mom asked me recently what my dream was. It feels cheeseball just writing a thing like that. But truthfully? I couldn't really answer with any authority. I told her I just wanted to eek out a living doing something I like, maybe raise a few kids and that's it.

What has happened that I don't have a dream? That's a disaster. Everyone wants to make a living doing something they like. That's not a dream. That's lowballing it because I a.) think I can't ask for more b.) don't think I'm up to it or c.) don't think it'll really happen so what's the fucking point? A dream is way bigger than making a living doing something I like. That's why it's called a dream instead of a potential outcome. A dream is what got me out of bed every day while I was washing dishes at Taco Bell in 1994. I saw New York City ablaze in my mind every minute of every day and I dreamed of being here. Hard.

I want to go one step further, though. I think it's important to posess a dream but a dream in and of itself is not enough. I think we should all be dreaming extravagantly. Otherwise, what's the incentive, really? Why fight for a potential outcome? Fights, like running, are only worth the throb and ache if the payoff is sensational. Even just the idea of extravagant dreaming teems with life and intensity. An extravagant dream is something you can adorn yourself with, touch and smell and hold like the estate jewel it is.

I'm not sure what my extravagant dream is yet because I've become too good at undoing dreams before they begin to float. But I'm sure when it starts to well up inside me it'll be ruby encrusted, fluid in organza and silk, shimmering like sunlight on rippling waves. Extravagant. And you can bet when I finally know it, I'll run my ass off to grab it.

Tiffany Blue Nail Polish Sparks Massive Internal Age Controversy

I hereby admit to an absurd nail polish color addiction. I love the milky, opaque Laffy Taffy purple on shelf 3 at the manicure salon. I'm insane for glinting, swirling green pearls and shimmering yellow liquid in square bottles. Gunmetal? Slap it on me. Black? Did it 20 years ago and did it again last year. 1985 Pontiac purple? A signature color. But blue? Blue's my weakness. If blue were a girl she'd be the one I smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey with in the backseats of cars after I dropped out of high school. That color's like a haze of everything dreamy, sexy and wistful to me and it screams rock and roll. So when I walked into a nail salon last night and spotted my crown jewel -- a bottle of genteel, sophisticated, starkly contemporary Tiffany blue polish awaiting my ragged square fingertips -- little tattoo swallows took flight above my head.

And there ends the fairytale. Even though the cosmo I sipped was delightful and my celebrity trash magazine appropriately devoid of humanity, I still ended up flat on my ass.

My nail technician raved about the color all through the pedicure. We shared fits of flighty laughter over its flirty hue. I let the therapeutic vibe carry me all the way to the manicure chair and then...she said it.

"Beautiful color. Younger girl." And there it was. Of course she meant for a younger girl. And naturally I did what I always do when people embarass me in public. I pretended she hadn't. I even took the time to craft a good humored reply: "I am a younger girl. In my heart." There I went again, overcompensating for my own discomfort by accomodating someone else's faux pas.

'And so,' I thought, 'here we are. I've arrived now at a time when people are going to talk about my age. In front of other people. Like it's something I'm fine with and everybody's in on. Like back in the day when everyone wanted to talk about my body as if we all shared the same fucking feelings about it.' I think I knew we were headed for this day last year when my boss reminded me that I'm just "not that young, you know." Or even four years ago when a dermatologist told me that "twenty eight is absolutely not too young for Botox."

So, I'm curious, do people say this kind of stuff to men? I mean, when my husband went to buy his skull and crossbones socks at H&M did the clerk say "funky cool socks, man...for a younger boy." Absolutely. Fucking. Not.

All the usual cliches have come surging forward. "You're only as old as you feel." "Age is just a number." And then I think of what my grandmother always said and I like it best: "growing old is not for sissies."

I really love the concept of aging with grace and a sense of humor. And I find that with each passing year I certainly grow into myself with greater ease. But I'll admit I'm shocked to find that I'm doing a fair bit more thrashing about than I expected to. I'm apparently not fine with a number of the things that accompany "getting on in years."

But let me be abundantly clear about one thing: that is not why I wear blue nail polish. For that matter, it's not why I wear red lipstick, red glasses, silver eyeshadow or an ever-changing array of hair colors. I'm not longing for my younger self or trying to capture a feeling I used to have. Nope. I wouldn't go back there. I wouldn't want the feelings I used to have ever again. My life is about now.

I'm looking at the color this afternoon thinking its a pretty righteous badge of the current me. It's not the angry blue black of my past or the hopeful, billowy blue my granddaughter might ask to borrow. It's just what I wear. Without apology. For the girl I was, the girl I am, and the girl I'll always be.