just right

c and I went to a diner under an overpass in Greenpoint on thanksgiving. It was empty apart from the waitress, one guy behind the counter, and two other pairs of girls who looked a lot like us and left soon after we sat down. We ordered matzo ball soup, the turkey dinner, french toast, and a chocolate raspberry milkshake. Everything came at once. We took a few bites of the turkey that was smothered in gravy and then turned our attention to the french toast. We sucked down a few inches of our shake, and I topped it off with the peach vodka c had in her purse. 

The turkey grew cold and the gravy wrinkled. We drained the shake and got a little louder. 

The atmosphere was wildly depressing, but c and I being two romantics lapped it up. We paid the bill, went to two other bars where we talked about our taste in men, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and our mothers. And then to house of yes. c charmed an older guy whose coattails we rode at the door. I spoke with a German boy for a while who called me an angel because I got him a glass of water. It was a nice thing to be called so I kissed him.

I am so full of cautionary tales. I was loaded up by literature and film. of women who get married and then are tortured by the role of wife they are then asked to play. Who give birth and go mad because everything they once were had to be handed over to their sweet sweet baby. And I am equally, perhaps more so full of tales of women who resisted or strayed from these paths and lived free of such great responsibilities. But they, too, lacked. Just like me who thinks she is empty of any real—I refuse to say purpose because I don’t believe in such a thing. Weight it is, I guess. Babies and husbands are attractive weights, easy answers to the question. But what if it is all too light. Many cautionary tales present such cases. Kundera, you are right: The lightness of being is unbearable, but so too is weight. I am scared of weight because I fear I cannot bear it. I am so used to floating. That is Sabina’s dilemma, huh.

Cautionary tales go in every direction—liberal/conservative, moderate/extreme—but they really mean nothing. Cannot truly be believed. One doesn’t know unless they try. And one doesn’t know what to try until their gut points them in one direction or another and grumbles when it gets close. Even then, who knows. Sureness is illusory. Conviction, temporary. Every person is an explorer fumbling in the dark, because everything in front of them they have yet to try (Kundera). Even when it is alleged to be the same thing, it is a new set of conditions. All I know is that My life lacks weight. It's very light in many ways. And so I float and have grown quite used to this vantage point. 

Weight has never agreed with me. It tends to pull me into a pit. It is not because I am weak but because I take it too seriously and feel better off without it. I like to be full, yes, as I did after sitting with c for hours in booths and on bar stools, kissing the German boy who called me an angel, and as I do tonight after cooking rigatoni and watching the sopranos, but weight affects me differently. Everyone must negotiate with the amount of weight in their life. Some people take to it, others are forced upon it, but I doubt that anyone is ever really satisfied with the amount of weight they bear. I think what people try to do in life is negotiate what kind of weight they can manage, what is not too much or too little but just right, though so often the mark is missed. Or the weight turns out to be heavier than they could have ever imagined, and they are stuck (oh, Carmela, Priscilla, etc.). This is a particular fear of mine, this trap, because I was ensnared so young.

I dreamt last night of pink roses. The pink was pale, the petals nearly transparent as petals tend to be, but these especially so because of the shade of pink. One large one laid across the small pot from which it grew. I admired it, imagined plucking it and putting its single stem in a tall, thin vase with cold water. I lifted it up and found below it five or so more just like it, though smaller and slightly crushed. The pot held them like a nest would a crop of baby birds chirping for mother. I fixed each one up, fluffed them like pillows and smoothed their petals like I would a child's hair.

After that I dreamt that I dropped a carton of eggs on the sidewalk. I had been expecting to drop them so I wasn't too upset. I walked away and before getting too far turned around in time to see a man scoop one up off the pavement and suck the goo out of its shell. He then walked away. I wondered if I had made a mistake not doing the same. Had I wasted the perfectly good goo of a dozen shells?

My skin is dry. Last night: I eat family meal and walk from midtown to williamsburg while intermittently crying. I walk past a store front that is only a room with exposed brick walls painted entirely white. The only thing it contains is a glossy black salon chair. The lighting is florescent and stark. It feels fitting for me to see. I know I have a lot in my life, really beautiful friends and beauty and promise, but things transpired so that I am alone in the city for no reason at all. And it is dreadfully depressing. I long for my dearest friends and feel bad for myself. I am not proud but honest.

In the morning I sit with my dreams because there’s nothing else I want to do besides lay on my side and open a book. I dreamt of meeting a boy in a very large, grand house. We liked each other very fast. My smile charmed him and so his quiet intellect did me. All in one day we shared everything about each other, slept together, and then ate dinner with his family in the house’s great ballroom. It was obvious that this is where we would get married and that made me nervous. The table on which we ate was enormous in diameter, which it had to be to accommodate the thirty, maybe forty people who were eating on it, though its center was completely cut out. Everyone ate in silence, so we joked quietly. I recognized his mother, who walked within the center of the table like a hawk. I noticed my own toplessness and shimmied on a sweater. He laughed at me. The next day he came to Veselka and waited in the line. As I chipped away at the line, it started to pour and the wind began to whip and a tempest formed on E 9th. My boss proposed we close the restaurant. I argued with him and ran out the door and up a hill, apparently no longer in New York. I quickly realized I had to return so I started running back. I ran down my hometown’s main street, passed Margarita’s and the old candy shop. I turned where I thought Veselka would be but it wasn’t there. I was hopeless and soaked. I found a room that was decorated but empty of a person. I dumped my bag on the floor and ducked under the covers. The TV turned on and on it a trans skeleton started masturbating. I realized that I had to leave there, too. I gathered up my things, changed my clothes, and ran. I finally found my way back and hugged the boy tight and desperately, grateful that he was still in line. I brought him inside after that.

Now that that's off my chest I will lay on my side and open a book.

local delicacies

e visited this weekend and we walked around the city. It reminded me so much of when we were in eastern europe and filled our days with idle wandering. But this time this city was the city and I live here. While she more or less took the lead abroad because her phone had service I took the lead here, obviously. She wanted to shop so we started in soho at the paloma wool pop-up and then migrated to sephora where we blended in with the tweens. We spent twenty minutes picking out the things we wanted to buy and then concluded they weren’t worth the half hour we would spend in line. We both had to pee so we walked into the nearest restaurant. It was upsettingly Italian. Every piece of furniture was rustic and distressed and very shabby chic. Poperie stank up the place. The host was blonde and middle-aged and very obviously not Italian. I think this explains a lot of New York’s problem that hasn’t completely metastasized yet. It’s charm has been so co opted and doubled down on and shoved down your throat in areas like Soho that it can make you gag. It is much too self-aware and does not trust the taste and intellect of its viewer, like a Marvel movie. Therefore too many of its cafes and restaurants are tackless in their execution of a theme or culture or trend. And it becomes much too stylized and ugly and stinks too much of poperie. I think in less touristy and smarter areas of new york—which is most of it—its charm still shines. The grit hasn’t been scrubbed away. 

We found a bookstore run by an asian lady with a table of pornographic coffee books. We flipped through them and gasped. They made me wish I had a coffee table and nice sitting area where people, especially my mother, could do the same.

We sat down at mud, ordered drinks indulgently and food abstemiously: a bottle of orange wine to split, bowl of tomato soup for e, bagel and cream cheese for me. I talked and talked and talked in a way I only can with her, in a way I have a million times in Irish pubs and foreign cafes. We finished the wine, ate half of our servings, paid the bill, and walked to the west village. At w’s we made note of people who gave us goosebumps, mostly people from home. I posited that these people have bpd and that is what has aroused our skin, the intensity of their personality. I stand by this conclusion, since it has proved true on several separate occasions. At Satsko’s we ordered thirty dollars worth of food and one sixty dollar bottle of sake I could hardly stomach. We ate and drank outside so we were very, very cold, but it was likely a net good because we probably caused a raucous. We ran to Cornelia St. where the older doctor z is seeing lives, walked into his empty apartment and opened his safe. The apartment was predictably stark, very corporate killer besides the few very kitschy elements that signaled the existence of a gay guy—a chair with eyelashes, a wooden sign that read “p-town <3.” Besides that a framed collection of rorschach tests hung above the couch, the bathroom was entirely cement and marble, and the closet meticulously organized and obviously walkable. 

We ran home. I slept like a baby. Sat outside and looked over the crimson courtyard. Bouvette for brunch. Eggs, salmon, brioche, creme anglaise.

sobering

Soft music plays on my stereo. I wrote another letter I will never send. I am placid like a pond. My existence was laid bare because I have been forced to slow down and be conscious, something I don’t take naturally to. I am by nature rabid and frenzied, melodramatic and recklessly intuitive and fickle. I am resisting a great many things I’m addicted to, and in doing so I must be deliberate and disciplined like a good Protestant. I struggle of course but it feels good, to be in control, to not succumb, to muster a previously unforeseen strength. And it fills me with a refreshing pride. I find solace in my own steadfastness. I was reminded yesterday at work that I was in New York; it felt like I hadn’t been here for a long time. I don’t know how to account for this. But the East Village, which I am so in love with, Veselka, where I have such fun and which invites such quintessential New York characters, and a certain chaos combined to plunge me into this feeling of great admiration and belonging. Perhaps I’ve been too caught up in myself, oh so much ado about nothing. I walked to les, sold clothes, and watched a magnificent sunset from the J train. I sat in awe and accepted this as some kind of reward.

I spend money on train fare and few groceries and go to work and become close to my coworkers. I indulge in very little and act very rationally and all this has felt very satisfying. As I became summer, relishing debauchery and decadence, I become autumn and embrace my own Puritanism, like I'm paying off some kind of debt. I become careful and find control. I think of this favorably as very Carolyn Bassette, because she was so gracefully composed. I consider buying a very crisp, white button-down and camel skirt. Very seldomly I am bored by it because it is such a great challenge. 

My greatest recent indulgence: Monday night w and z met me at little poland for dinner after work. We were each exhausted and wanted only to sink into chairs and order a wonderfully dense meal. And so we did. Our sweet and blonde Polish waitress brought a cheap bottle of cabernet sauvignon, three glasses, a bowl of borscht, 8 pierogis, blintzes, and stuffed cabbage to our table by the window. The sky was impossibly black by 6pm. We ate and drank and I sniffed the rose they’d picked me on the way there in honor of my middle name. We talked about funeral conduct and gossip columnists. We laughed loudly because the wine went to our heads and concentrated in our cheeks. 

I think as a result of my existence being laid so bare, I am satisfied in very simple ways. Weekday dinners, the line cook remembering I like a cup of soup midshift, making an accomplished older couple laugh, a woman offering me her cart at the laundromat, being wished good morning. I find that in my mind being clear I am more open to others, and therefore very much at the mercy of others’ kindness. I could cry at any moment. I am deliberate and not so plagued by longing. I am plain, considered, and frank with myself. It is refreshing, this candor. I can't help but think, though, what this will give way to.

ghosts

Wednesday

20 mi bike ride: the city spelled something out for me. I rode fast to manhattan through greenpoint. a bird shit on my leg, which marks the third good omen 3 days in a row. Monday 11:11 lit up on my phone, tuesday I picked up a lucky penny, and now this. Perhaps I'm doing something right, perhaps not. I rode slow down 2nd, Madison, and 5th Ave. I kept my head up, admired the buildings, basked in their shadows, glided in and out of traffic. I rode up and down the island in search of the water that eluded me. I thought of how I always vowed to never give up good love, how silly I thought Meredith and Derek were for wasting all that time when they could have just been together, loving each other and building a life. I guess that was naive of me, the childish simplification of The most complicated dynamic that revolves around The most complex feeling known to man. because here I am, truly giving it up. letting it go. committing an act of what I once thought to be great hubris, with what I once considered a great lack of perspective. It is necessary for now though, which is a great tragedy, though one I believe in. I rode past the park where we kissed for the first time in New York, realized that it was that, and then pouted. 

Sunday

Finality is what I struggle with: clear and cut decisions with clear and cut consequences. My moods are so ridiculous and dramatic and they swing wildly from left to right. I am comically fickle, certainly feminine in my emotions and wiles, presumably innocent though effectively manipulative as most women are. This is why I struggle with irrefutability. Conclusion is much too sad and frankly I don't believe in it, not really. Even within death there’s some wiggle room. but for the sake of myself I must believe in this instance. For all intents and purposes, we are lost and to never to be had again, a glass shattered into a million tiny pieces, fragments so sharp they cannot be touched without bloodshed. So for now I sit with the mess of haunted debris. Loss stays with you one way or another.

Basement was boring. Halloween, too. everyone wore the same harness that was ultimately unflattering. the music was uninspired; I swear the democratization of djing is killing the form. I could see no one's face so I waited in the pool of gyrating bodies, mostly gay guys. the smoke that clouded the room made me lightheaded. At one point I felt like I couldn't breathe. I found a stone bench and scrolled through old messages. I figured that I might as well, while bored, indulge my sadness. someone leaned over and asked me to turn my brightness down. I thought this was rude. Don't you know the depths I have sunk to? how dare you pull me out. 

I walked home alone. a man told me that I looked sad. I didn't answer. He told me again and insisted. I kept walking. I slept three hours and went to work. It rained and was cold. I did my job the best I could. 15 minutes before I was to leave, h came in, a decrepit regular with gray skin. He reeked of piss and growled at me: Don't put me in a corner. We didn't have a free table so I pulled over a chair. He growled again: Don't forget about me, and then drifted in and out of sleep. He never usually growled, never seemed so close to death, so frustrated with his own limitations. I feared that in that chair, on my watch, he would die. his eyes would sink even lower into their sockets, his complexion would gray even further, his odor would worsen and shift, his limbs would become ultimately stiff. 

A table opened up. I helped him there. He clutched my arm, shuffled along painfully, twisted and bent into the seat. 

He shook tremendously before clutching my arm. his nails were long and thick and white like his hair. I felt hopelessly ill-equipped, devoid of grace, desperate to get him from one chair to the other. I had never been touched by a man so seized by death, so drained of life though still lurching, a true dead man walking. He came in the next three days. I held my breath and performed the same ritual each time. I watched him devour latkes and salmon and eggs. 

Wednesday

At my other job a woman walked in and sat at the end of the bar, ordered the whole tasting menu. She quietly wept as she ate and no one knew why. She scribbled on her check that she had eaten here with her late husband and then thanked us for a beautiful meal and meals past. I can't imagine what tastes evoked what feelings and which memories. how devastating a finality.

I insist nothing ends, though I find it hard to remember that this too shall pass. I tend to get caught up in my circumstances. I am very, very impatient. It's the short-sightedness of youth, naivety that longing makes more acute, the illusion of conclusion. Though I am convinced of it, I must remind myself that finality does not exist, not really nor truly. This, too, shall heal, change, evolve, bear fruit. I cannot question these facts, like a good Christian. Faith, oh yes, yes, I remember.