Lighten Up

I've just been in California. I don't get there nearly enough and every time I visit I wonder why I don't just go ahead and vacation there. Why do I always feel I have to go abroad instead of packing up a Dodge Neon from Hertz and heading down the coast to sample tangerine olive oil and ride a bicycle barefoot in some funky yet upscale beach town?

Sadly, this was a work trip and I was stationed in the positively standard Hilton in Oakland. I found myself taking breakfast at that absurd business travel hour of the morning along with all the casual businessmen wearing cotton golf shirts, forced to listen to them talk about Body for Life over grapefruit.

I had some time to kill in the afternoon so I walked to Wal-Mart in hopes of finding beer to take back to my room. All I found was Red Bull and some diet tea with creatine that made me super edgy during an episode of Locked Up Abroad that I watched later from my flowered bedspread. If I were a real business traveler I'd be an alcoholic.

After a few hours trapped in depressive Hilton anonymity, I decided it was time to head for San Francisco. I arrived just as the sun was melting over the tops of the palms. I felt the familiar feeling I always have in California--slightly starstruck, oohhing and aahhing inside over the way the sun reflects off a particular window or a piece of fruit sits high in a tree.

From the moment the taxi picked me up at the airport and I scoffed at the driver's suggestion that I wait for the Hilton shuttle, I felt my east coast cliches slicing through that quality Cali air like a million little X-Acto knives. Hurry, hurry, gotta get to my supremely lonely hotel room so I can sit and watch crime television in the dark. As I walked up and down the gorgeous San Francisco streets carrying my unnecessarily large platinum patent purse I suddenly felt so...sullen. There I was, wearing all black in the middle of a shimmering San Francisco street. No light reflecting off of me, that's for sure. Proof of the sullen suspicion came when I reached Fisherman's Wharf and a "tourist sheriff" tried to arrest me for not smiling.

Since I've been back in the gritty city I've had this urge to shake off the darkness. It was pretty shocking to go somewhere else and act as wound up as people always say New Yorkers are. I do love me some edgy urban intensity, I do. But lately I'm finding myself fantasizing about Cate Blanchett's hair in The Talented Mr. Ripley--California crystal blonde. What if I just lightened up a bit?

(P.S. I got that little raise I asked for. It was little. And way more than a little late. But it might pay for a bleach job)

And Then We Came To...

So, I'm reading this novel, Then We Came To the End, by Joshua Ferris. A friend lent it to me about a month ago and I took to it immediately. To say it's about office culture wouldn't really do it justice, but it does embrace the intricacies of the office microcosm and explores them in squirm-worthy, knowing, lurid detail, all the while hinting at some sort of ending of magnitude. I'm not there yet, but I'm indulging in its many nods to the way functioning in an environment of unmemorable carpet and pressboard shelving can feel like a sort of robbery. Its cover is adorned, edge to edge, in blank yellow Post-It notes--a perfect homage to the empty confinement of spending our days sharing strange space with stranger people, and the surprising blankness of outrage.

I was engrossed last Tuesday night, as usual, when the following passage flew off the page and stopped my heart:

"There was so much unpleasantness in the workaday world. The last thing you ever wanted to do at night was go home and do the dishes. And just the idea that part of the weekend had to be dedicated to getting the oil changed and doing the laundry was enough to make any of us still full from lunch want to lie down and insist that all those who remained committed walk around us. It might not be so bad. They could drop food down to us, or if that was not possible, crumbs from their power bars and bags of microwave popcorn would surely end up within an arm's length sooner or later. The cleaning crews, needing to vacuum, would inevitably turn us on our sides, preventing bedsores, and we could make little toys out of any runs in the carpet, which, in moments of extreme regression, we might suck on for comfort. But enough daydreaming. Our desks were waiting, we had work to do. And work was everything. We liked to think it was family, it was God, it was following football on Sundays, it was shopping with the girls or a strong drink on Saturday night, that it was love, that it was sex, that it was keeping our eye on retirement. But at two in the afternoon with bills to pay and layoffs hovering over us, it was all about the work."

I read and re-read that chunk of text three times before closing the book and nodding off. As I slept it rattled around in my brain like a loose screw I could hear but couldn't locate--irritating, tinkling, eventually banging and demanding I notice it. It was still with me when I woke up. The bit about microwave popcorn (someone's always making that), the reference to runs in the carpet, the way Ferris reminds me how it's really the tiny details that become our undoing in an office rather than the major committments of sin by management against underling. In the end, it's never really the lack of recognition, the passing us over for a better position, the eternal underpaying and overworking. No, it's more the cumulative nothings, like the the fact that The Company didn't invite us to dinner with the huge client even though we scored her in the first place, the sudden end of summer Fridays, insistance that we not eat Chinese food in our offices because they don't like the way it smells, and interrupting our meetings to ask for their messages (of which there are none). It's those idiocies, minor in nature and major in number, that have combined in my work life to numb me nearly to death.

Wednesday morning after reading the above passage, I woke up. I sat in another meeting listening to another spiel about another "opportunity to be seized" and thought, 'I will no longer be someone's opportunity-seizer without real financial compensation for it.' There's just simply a limit to how much work I'll do for The Company for free. And we're way over capacity. Way, way over capacity. So in the afternoon, I walked into management's office and told them that we needed to re-examine my "compensation to contribution" ratio. I have no idea where I got that phrase, but I think the looming fear of falling asleep on a floor covered in microwave popcorn and carpet runs was beginning to unzip me. In response, The Company offered the requisite passive-aggressive reminder of what they've done for me, reminded me of how underpaid everyone in our office is (that's supposed to make it fine??) and ultimately said they'd do something.

The deal is this: I'm building myself a bridge over which to walk into a different life. This job has its term limit, and we're nearing it. It's the next big makeover on the Chrysalis plan and is perhaps the biggest steel anchor of all, weighting me to my old life. It's a place where I regularly allow myself to be undervalued, understimulated, unchallenged and undefined. I've got to insist, no, fucking demand that I save myself from suckling for safety on shreds of blue carpet.

I don't know what'll come of my request for better compensation. In the end, I think it's most important that I asked for it. That I knew to ask for it. I felt it the minute I left The Office--the deep sense that I'd set off a chain of events that couldn't be undone. I guess that was the point.

This Is Me

-"Your self-effacing charms are shot/

-Wake up now to what you are and what you're not/

-You can run, run, run/

-But you can't escape"

-- The Helio Sequence, You can Come to Me

I got dressed to these lyrics today in my empty bedroom. How appropriate. This whole experience of preparing to move has been like having one of those police highbeams shot straight into my center, forcing it to be exposed. I feel like my insides are a maze of closets. Every time I open one up and dust off the bag of postcards or box of shoes at the bottom, another door opens revealing more dust and denial. I've got a deeper closet than I thought--both in spirit and reality. But I'm emptying it slowly, learning a few things along the way and dammit, I can finally see the floor in there.

Cleaning out seven years' worth of me from the inside of our apartment has been one revelation after another. I've reaped the mini rewards of what I call "closet shopping"--browsing the racks in the back of your closet for items you haven't seen in years. In my case, I moved in in 2001 with items I hadn't seen since 1997. A single visit to the stacking cubes in the back of mine yielded the baddest-ass purse ever, featuring a comically huge zipper on the front, 2 pairs of jeans that actually fit, some strappy faux-snakeskin sandals, and a sexy granite colored Calivin Klein v-neck. I thought, 'whose clothes are these? She has really excellent taste. Score.' Lesson: I am in fact capable of picking out "timeless pieces". Nobody will know that purse is over a decade old.

On the very same closet-diving trip, however, I found another me lurking beneath the boxes of socks. Hiding in the racks was a girl who once went to high school in the suburbs and wasn't afraid to show it. I trashed the following: a pair of white overall shorts, a Gap cardigan from...wait...1994 (I know it's that old because I stumbled across a picture from my sister's junior high graduation in 1994 where I was wearing the hideous green button-up with a pair of plaid shorts), and a t-shirt displaying the following identifier: "bad attitude", in splashy type. Gone, all of it! I was ruthless, brutal. That entire section of my life is now at the bottom of a Staten Island landfill. Lesson: it's okay to let go--especially if "letting go" involves overalls of any kind.

Closet also being timeline, I spent awhile browsing the the mid-late '90s. Those were my moving-to-New-York years and they're really fun to revisit. I unearthed: one pair of steel blue vinyl platform heels from Halloween 1997 (relics from my Pamela Anderson costume), my three inch t-strap character shoes (the most elegant dance shoes ever made), and the real jackpot: a box of letters and postcards dated from the day I moved to New York, all through my two years in school and into life after. I took a couple of hours and re-read every one. Pulled from the wreckage were: my mother's written explanation for leaving my father, a greeting card from my grandmother for every single holiday (she was so good), letters of love and adoration of the kind you can only write when you're 20 and single, and postcards from my friends who all took show tours right after graduation through Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska. They saw the entire country while I was busy figuring out how to install my first air conditioner in the summer of '97. Lesson: People have made my New York life what it is.

I'm starting to feel emptied out, liberated. I've held on to many things way past their reasonable expiration dates. Some of them need to be burned on a big, 'ol ceremonial pyre (hello, leather pants), some need to be dusted off and reshaped so they can be part of my life again, and some things need to go with me into the next dot on the timeline. Moving is exactly like those lyrics: waking up to what you are and what you are not. I'm definitely not my suburban high school shorts but I might still be a little bit steel blue vinyl. Whatever I am, I'm emptying out so I can make room for more life.

Well We're Movin' On Up

...to a deluxe apartment on the gro-ow-0wnd floor. Mo-oo-vin' on u-up...I don't know any more of that song. But I can finally write my own lyrics. We've found our new home. In Astoria. At last. Phase one of The Chrysalis Year Extreme Makeover Home Edition is officially in effect. Details will follow but first, a few props:

Thanks to the cosmic apartment Gods--those heavenly, lawnmowing, benevolent beings responsible for the assignment of empty spaces to empty people. They finally put us in our place (literally and figuratively). Thanks to George, our celadon-Jag-driving broker, and his negotiation skills. Never before have I seen such an honest attempt at wheelin' and dealin' on behalf of owner and future hopeful tenants. For three days he believed our shtick, we believed his, and that was all anyone needed to know. He: honest purveyor of fine vacated apartments. Us: honest couple in search of an upgrade. He did his job. He broked. We did ours too. We signed our first lease in a decade. It's a milestone of milestones in so many ways. Thanks to our three-legged dog and her pink bandana for being the picture of low maintenance gentility so that the new owner would consider allowing her to prance around on newly refurbished hardwood floors. Thanks also to our current landlord for taking her foot off the insanity pedal for a day so we could plead our case about pro-rating June's rent. And now, to our friends and family: thank you for tolerating endless philosophizing on how much the rental market has changed (duh) in the last decade, being patient while we mused on notions of gentrification versus renovation and borough identity, and helping us (me) locate Prospect Heights on a map. If we hadn't been able to hold in our hearts the vision of breaking bread with you at a table that doesn't have screw-in legs, in a kitchen with a floor that actually touches the walls, I'm not sure we woulda survived signing that two-page, single-spaced lease.

I reserve my final thanks for 35-08 33rd Street. Thank you, beloved chicken shack, for being my first home in a house-shaped home in New York. Thank you for having the kitchen we called all our friends from at 3:30 a.m. the night we got engaged. Thank you for hosting our rehearsal dinner after-party, a crazy drunken holiday cookie exchange, and countless intimate Thanksgiving feasts. Thank you for having just enough space in your living room for a beautiful Christmas tree filled with hand painted wooden ornaments. Thank you for being a private house--a private forum for the noise of living. You were (are) the home I walked out of as a single woman and back into as a married woman. You were (are) my shelter during one of the most significant periods of my life.

Of all the changes I've pushed to introduce in MCY, it stands to reason that this needed to come first. A lovely conversation I had last weekend reminded me of something: outside is in. Inside is out. I talk a lot on this blog about changing the exterior to yield results on the interior. I don't think I ever could've realized how much of a metaphor our living space was becoming. The darkness of living on top of one another was starting to feel like every empty space inside of me was really just a small, dusty hall closet. I have these applications for school sitting in a bag on the living room floor. I haven't been able to touch them. It's because I've needed a clear, new, open space on the outside so that I can make that same space on the inside and actually create something.

It's funny sometimes when things finally shift. It seems like they happen all at once. To me it's a sign that needing to move was some sort of a block. Once it opened opportunities could finally push through. In the same week that we signed the lease, all my remaining transcripts came through so that I can formally apply for school, we started editing Off the Radar and I got my first freelance writing job.

So, I've officially sworn off Craigslist and its hotbed of apartment huting deception and am now knee-deep in modern furniture catalogs instead. I'm in the market for saffron-hued dining room chairs because orange is the color of gratitude.

Me? Me?

Omigosh, it's finally happened. I've been tagged for a Meme (the blogosphere's lengthy answer to the "truth" part of a truth or dare). I'm kinda psyched, actually. I love reading these on other blogs. They're sorta like those "getting to know you" emails where you're asked if you've ever been to Africa and if you prefer hugs or kisses and you roll your eyes but secretely love typing that your favorite food is Mexican. Thanks to the gamely Frantic Puppy I have the opportunity to honestly purge myself of the following wishes, pleasures and regrets. Feels good. Watch out, you're next.


I can't believe I have never...
Gotten on board with Obama. What's wrong with me? It seems such a good fit: the progressive values, eloquence, pro-green-women-gay platform, the saying-all-the-right-things schtick. The celebrity endorsements. The youth vote. The polish and shine. The magazine analyses. The hype. The opinions of so many people I respect. If I'd thought for one second in 2004 when I saw "the speech" that I'd be standing dry outside the big, ol' Obama swimming hole in 2008, I'da been shocked. But honestly, it's just not happening. He's not my guy. There, it's done. I've said it.


I wish I'd...when I had the chance...
This rates second only to wishing I'd gotten an academic education, which I really wish I'd done and I'm really gonna try to do. But that said, I wouldn't take back the education I did get and I'm not sorry I made the choices I made when I did. So, after that, I only wish I'd gone to visit the Liberian refugee camp in Ghana, West Africa when I was there in 2001. The group we traveled with had an opportunity to see firsthand how people at the camp were living after the civil war. Some folks went and some stayed behind. I stayed behind. I've regretted it for 7 years. I guess I was on overload. We were maybe a week or more into the trip and I'd reached maximum density. It was my first experience with the poverty of a developing nation and I was afraid of what I'd see and how I'd feel and I felt myself sort of going numb and no longer taking in the experience. So I didn't go. I missed an opportunity to see for myself the failures of the UN and the lives of people who were living in conditions beyond anything I could fathom. It would've given me an even greater perspective than I'd already been granted on that trip as well as a deeper connection to the people in the region, and I'm really, really sorry I missed it.


I've never felt so out of place as when I...
Last stood in a room full of actors at an audition about six years ago. Self-producing kept me nice and comfortable in the roles I cast myself in so on a lark I felt it was time to "get out there" and fire off an audition to keep the muscle exercised. The sides were on little slips of paper like the ones you write the name of your secret santa on and all the actors were standing around in a hallway prepping with these tiny strips in their hands. The breakdown called for "Freaks, pimps, glamour girls and Eurotrash". Now, don't ask me why but at the time I felt I could play Eurotrash. It must've been the "trash" that I connected to. And for some odd reason I wore silver satin pants. I guess I sorta felt they were Euro in a way. Flashy. I had some seriously contrasting blonde highlights at the time and I can still see myself walking up to the building in my disco pants, wearing a scarf (actorly!) and a pair of cheap pleather platforms ready to blow them away with my faux-Berlin persona. I knew immediately it wasn't my crowd. This was a room full of young, ingenue-y, waifish girls pulling off that wispy, tight-jeaned vulnerability with ease. And there I was, sparkling and cheap (but not Eurocheap) standing akwardly in plastic shoes. Insecure but not delicately vulnerable. I felt sorta like an Elvis impersonator in a performance of Swan Lake. I selected my sides (a poem about how my ass looked in jeans--another mistake) and tried to prep, at that point more as an exercise in pain tolerance than a genuine desire to play Eurotrash. When I went in to audition, I got about 2 lines in, uttered the word "orbs" in reference to my ass cheeks and from the dark came "thanks so much". I'm absolutely positive it was the pants.


My guilty pleasure is...
Oh, The Hills. I love it. It thrills with its urban Cali setting, jetting off to Crested Butte, drone-y boys and foolish control battles. I love its voiceovers and personal revelations. I love its megabitch and super-sweet, the flip flops, baby doll dresses, fashion internships and product endorsements. I love Heidi's fake tits storyline and her faux relationship with Spencer and Lauren's work trip to Paris. I love Audrina's ridiculous name. Audrina Patridge. Mostly I just love to put it on and listen to the monotonous voices of the young and lovely hash out the business of being beautiful and burdened with bad boyfriends. De-lish.


I hope...knows how grateful I am...
I think my husband knows how grateful I am that he's my cosmic twin. But he may not know how grateful I am that he's a hopeful person with great compassion. He might be unaware that I'm grateful he's profoundly dark and funny and imaginative. He probably has no idea how grateful I am that he eats my food, listens to Edie Brickell with me when I'm on a tear and calls me "ma'am" when I'm being naggy. What a man, what a man, what a mighty good man.


In my darkest hour I secretly blame...
God. Myself. We compete for first place. Though, I do thank God that I don't blame my parents anymore.


...changed my life forever...
In chronological order: The Michael Jackson Thriller concert, Prince, The Cure, Siouxsee Sioux, drugs, dropping out of high school, black hair dye, Morrissey, moving to New York, sleeping at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, Africa, This Woman's Work, getting married, losing my grandparents, finding our perfect dog, Gogol Bordello.


Every time I think about...I still cringe...
The first time I went on air on QVC in the U.S. I'm cringing so hard I can barely type. This also gets second place for the "I've never felt so out of place as when I" paragraph. I was replacing a former platinum blonde Mrs. America who'd repped our brand for a fucking decade, I had a severe updo and looked like the mistress at an orphanage circa 1935, I was under pressure to save our company financially in this one four minute spot and I was presenting cosmetics in a home show. I came just after the "mini aquarium" and just before the "car wash in a bottle". We sold 137 of 7200 items in stock. When I came off air there was no one to greet me. It's a "coffee is for closers" kinda environment. You only get an escort out of the studio if you sell mega product. I walked myself off the set and was greeted by a curt and hurried PA who pulled my mic quipment off in silence. Cringe.

So, now I gotta tag and keep the honesty comin'. Whatagoodguy, you're SO it.
Yours, OneKate

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.