Looking at Things From a Distance

The first time I met up with my friend Alex for lunch after I moved to New York City, we had a long discussion about making it through the first year. He told me the first year is the hardest, and after that you can handle anything.

Although I'd wanted to move to New York for years and although I felt prepared to live here, I took Alex's words to heart because I already knew New York wasn't going to be an easy place to live. So I mentally braced myself for a tough first year. 

That first year is a few weeks away from expiring and it's turned out to be much easier than I was anticipating. Even the long winter and the humidity this summer haven't completely gotten to me. It's been a bit of a dream, really. Perhaps that is all thanks to the fact that I never doubted my place here, or that I was supposed to be, meant to be in New York. In all honesty, the things that have been the hardest to deal with haven't had anything to do with New York, but happened elsewhere. Like Rosie being needlessly euthanized by my own cousin - a cousin who is now dead to me.

50 Things I'd Rather Do Than Watch "Fifty Shades of Grey"

Well gang, society is about to hit a new low. On Friday, Focus Features is releasing the film version of the terrible (or so I've heard. I don't read "erotic fiction") Fifty Shades of Grey book.

Here's some background on this book, which is sadly only the first in a trilogy: it was written as Twilight fan fiction. No, you did not just have a momentary hallucination. Fifty Shades of Grey was written as fan fiction for the second worst thing to happen to books in this century. I'll wait for you to recover from your rage stroke.

A Tribute

The heat in my building went out yesterday while I was at school. I arrived home to a chilly apartment, no hot water, and a cold radiator. Some of the apartments in my building lost electricity; mine was on and for that I am very grateful. I layered before bed and felt the cold on my face as I laid there wishing for heat and sleep.

This morning I awoke an hour before my alarm, too warm in my many layers and thinking gleefully that my heat and hot water had been restored. They had not, I'm just great at layering and have a top-notch down comforter. I laid in bed wondering how long this would last, where I'd shower tomorrow if my hot water wasn't restored by then, would ConEdison give me a sweet discount on my power bill next month? I fretted for awhile, tried to sleep, alternating between being too warm and too cold.

When my alarm sounded at 8, I got out of bed and turned on the left side of my bathroom faucet. The water ran rusty for half a minute and as soon as it ran clear I put my hand under it. It was warm.

Half-Life

Half my current lifetime ago, on a busy highway in the Mojave of California, my two eldest brothers died in a grey 1987 Honda Civic. Neither of them were wearing a seat belt, neither of them suffered more than a few seconds. A few seconds. Long enough to exhale a breath, for the heart to beat a few times, for a head to settle on the shoulder of the brother sitting in the driver's seat.

Half my life ago I was a sixteen year-old with a learners' permit and a crush on a boy named Zach. Naive and relatively unfettered, living in what had to be the whitest place in America, where autonomy was not being a member of the dominant religion, I had no idea about the horrors of humanity and that terrible things could happen to my family. We didn't even have to lock our doors at night. But in an instant, that sixteen year-old who wore overalls to high school during sophomore year in January 1999 was jolted from Utopia by a single-car accident in the desert.