Morning- sunrise over the Queensboro bridge. Skyline coming into view. City wakes, or persists, one of the two. Or both.

breakfast, because it's never too early for pie.

Or Dark and Stormys.

Tonight, musical whimsy. Staying up to work, and taking dancing breaks in between.

I fall in love every time we meet

Sam Smith



Queen B. 7/11



never drop that alcohol!

movement and breath,

caramelizing and red wine and Puerto Rico and lemon bars for his mom and frothing and whipping (the eggs, of course) and Xiomara and Dickens and Herbie Hancock and other such activities.

"stop being restless"

gratitude before the day dedicated to it. 

There is risk in connection 

notes from the weekend.

---

12 string guitars and music becoming faith itself, becoming a dimension we could stand on, and oxygen we could breathe. (more on this later)

kendrick lamar on the subway and secret smiles. tap dancers and hope.

cold hands, shaking in his arms, or maybe i was just shivering at the smell of cigarettes between lips.
throwing credit cards in the air, birthdays being the excuse.

real targets don't exist, but hearts do. so aim there, please.

deepest chocolate cake, coconut milk, claiming you don't like it but eating it anyway
and memorizing rap lyrics on the long way home.
dancing downstairs in restaurant kitchens (dear health inspectors, grade THIS).
all black everything.

creme brulee in white paper bags, plastic spoons.
sneaking bites of butternut squash straight out of the oven.
racks on racks on racks
burning my mouth,
it's worth it anyway.

the winter brings a deep feeling of isolation, even when i'm surrounded by people.
solitary
solitude
solidify
sojourn
and you are not around to hold me when the cold settles on my skin

i talk about brass and woodwind
we make jokes about things we can blow on.
lately i haven't been able to breathe enough to blow.
carry on.

the bartender breaks a glass while making the drink he bragged about. the air smells like orange slices and white teeth.

i worry about him touching my back when it is moist with the sweat from running to get to where he is. to get there faster. to see the smile in his eyes faster. life is too short to walk.

"i'm nervous to dance with someone who dances so well."
"how do you know i dance?"
"i've never seen you walk anywhere. you never walk, you dance across the room and down sidewalks."

late night concerts and hands on waists. beer spilled on my jeans. he bought us a round to apologize.
the crowd throbbed and smiled together.
long train rides. legs on legs on legs. looking into eyes. breaking rules.

arguing about the existence of wild turkeys in Taiwan.
time is relative. 
early morning runs. long, lazy afternoons. looking in the direction of the world where i know you may be. wondering if you see me too.

love as a dimension
love transcending time and space
perhaps the past is a canyon you can walk into.

i cannot believe in love. i need to walk farther into the canyon to find it again.


Do not go gentle into that good night

“The best thing about time passing is the privilege of running out of it, of watching the wave of mortality break over me and everyone I know. No more time, no more potential. The privilege of ruling things out. Finishing. Knowing I’m finished. And knowing that time will go on without me.

Often I believe I’m working toward a result, but always, once I reach the result, I realize that all the pleasure was in planning and executing the path to it.
It comforts me that endings are thus formally unappealing to me — that more than beginning or ending, I enjoy continuing.”

Oh geez. I found my Christmas playlist  from last year already.

Today, the cold came. Though it did so with warning and fanfare, still I found myself unprepared.
I could not feel my lips.

yet, I smiled anyway.

J instructed me on the difference between chives and jiu cai. 
We sampled apple cider home-brewed with cloves. And pondered the sugar content.

Then, R came over and we roasted some acorn squash together.
Then he casually sharpened my knife with the bottom of a ceramic bowl.
It was sexy.

He told me I am one of the most deceptively guarded people he knows. I slowly realized that perhaps this is true.
It's been a while since my face has appeared here, and I don't let anyone see my room.
I pretend my heart is a fortress and stand forlornly wondering what to do when someone tries to scale its walls.
Mostly, I adore mystery, so perhaps I preserve it in myself.

I lost all of my spices and my teapot and tea leaves during the last move, but I vowed to rebuild my collection.

"The lack of height made me kiss your neck."

Recently, I've been listening to many songs about falling asleep- coincidentally during a time when I find it impossible to do just that.

- san francisco (by om). my quiet little version of lost in translation. 

Only now, after midnight, do I find peace to sit down and write.
Only now, after midnight, do I feel warm.

Muriel Rukeyser, on the root of our resistance to poetry

“However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.”

One sweltering New York afternoon some years ago, I was sitting across from a dear friend several decades my senior as I mentioned, with the matter-of-factly, arrogant naiveté of someone who does that sort of thing, that I didn’t care for poetry. Without missing a beat, she began reciting e.e. cummings in the middle of that bustling Manhattan café. And just like that, everything changed — this was the beginning.

But even though Joseph Brodsky believed that poetry is the key to developing our taste in culture and James Dickey wrote that it “makes possible the deepest kind of personal possession of the world,” my reaction that summer Tuesday was far from uncommon — as a society, we seem to harbor a strange resistance to poetry, a stubborn refusal to recognize that it contains what Wordsworth called “the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge.”

It’s a resistance that “has the qualities of fear.” So argues the magnificent Muriel Rukeyser in the 1949 treasure The Life of Poetry (public library) — a wise and wonderful exploration of all the ways in which we keep ourselves from the gift of an art so elemental yet so transcendent, so infinitely soul-stretching, so capable of Truth.




- via brainpickings

"The journey is my home." - Muriel Rukeyser

Notes to remember by- the epic NYC food and drink adventures of me and ML:

- Random Japanese Curry that made the top of his head sweat (Curry-Ya)
- Japanese barbecue (Gyu-Kaku)
- David Chang's culinary greatness. Twice so far. (Momofuku Noodle Bar)
- Flushing Dim Sum with the best name (Asian Jewels)
- Pretty amazing pate with figs. Dim light, wine, pear salads, flickering candles. (YN)
- My favorite neighborhood speakeasy cocktail bar (Dutch Kills)
- My favorite neighborhood restaurant all around-  with hands down the best servers (none of whom are native New Yorkers) (LIC Market)
- Mediocre Midtown tanmen where tipping is not mandatory (Riki)
- French food paired with the best wine. Escargot and amazing bread. (Amelie)
- Charcuterie, bourbon, live jazz. and hush-hush rendezvous. (Analogue)
- No one can officially say they reside in NYC without having tried these. (Doughnut Plant)
- Overrated but immensely popular, partially due to proximity to the Highline. (Cookshop)
- Of course, my very own. (Ellary's Greens)
- Rustic, underground, and the best pear almond upside-down cake. with vanilla gelato. (The Smile)
- The onion rings are to die for. Oh, yeah, and there are burgers. (Bareburger)

"I have rarely desired an end

to my desires."

—  Kathleen Graber

Geez.

“So if you want to argue for an alternate interpretation, you have to do the real work. You can’t just drop a quote and say, “I think this means X.” You have to acknowledge, “Many listeners might think this means Y; I think it means X and here’s why.” If you ignore the context in which listeners encountered the moment, you lose your authority (because your readers are gonna be like, Um, did you not hear the rest of the episode?). Arguing for a non-status-quo interpretation is basically the core, central move of critical writing. I love it. You just have to actually do it.”

—

Jaime Green: The Problem With the Problems With Serial 

it rained and poured today. so like any normal person would, we went to get noodles and coffee / pomegranate white tea. 

Everyone should live in China at least once.

tonight after my real restaurant shift, i had a lovely french dinner and the server tipped me after i broke a champagne flute and offered to clean it up. oh, life.

MUSIC!
These are a few songs from my running playlist for my first 4 mile run since the accident. it was along the San Francisco shoreline (of course, now that it is 34 degrees in NYC, no more running). huzzah!

- We Own it - 2 Chainz, Wiz Khalifa
- Wagon Wheel- Darius Rucker
- Trumpets- Jason Derulo
- Timber- Pitbull, Ke$sha
- This is Gospel - Panic! At The Disco
- Sonsick- San Fermin
- Holy Roller- Thao & the Get Down Stay Down
- Best Thing I Never Had- Beyonce
- All About That Bass- Meghan Trainor (OF COURSE)


and, guys, I am (still) in love with these:

- Countdown- Beyonce
- Take Me To Church- Hozier
- Stolen Dance- Milky Chance
- I Choose You- Sara Bareilles
- Ride- Lana del Rey
- Sweet Jane- Cowboy Junkies


You can see the whole list on Spotify. In the future, I will try using Jog.fm to figure out some beats-per-minute-optimized songs. but until then, I will be that girl bounding down the Embarcadero mouthing "Killing me sooooooftly" to Beyonce. Don't stop, get it get it.

good remedies for broken hearts are hard to come by. as i learned last night, follow any or all of these instructions for a recipe to success:

1. hug her. longer than it feels like she wants to be hugged.
2. feed her homemade white bean stew with pork
3. promise a massage but when you run out of time then give her something better (conversation, you dirty mind!)
4. put a bear hat on her head, first because it's warm, and second because it's silly
5. make her laugh
6. tell her she should cry if she needs to
7. hold her when she does
8. make her laugh again
9. take her to the grocery store
10. look for dried persimmons, because b*tches love persimmons
11. buy beer instead when you can't find dried persimmons
12. drive her home and kiss her on the cheek

chilly sunlight and then a 30 minute train ride. sitting with the soreness in my eyes from sleepless nights, filled with something inarticulate and larger than what can be described by the spoken languages of this particular world.

Relevant lyrics blasting in my ears. Other lyrics being written in my heart.

nuance.
onion.
sightglass.
how did you get to be so smart at such a young age?

my day with sunrise, sweating it out with udon, a walk in pacific heights lusting after house furnishings i never knew i needed, green smoothies, and a visit to four barrels.

my night with avedon and penn. hot tea. blankets. sweatshirt. 

"We seem to reserve a special rage in this world for those whose ability to be unafraid in pursuit of something new extends beyond our own. We begrudge them their strange friends and strange experiences under the guise that we find those things to be dangerous or unclean. But really we resent those people because their courage reminds us of how common and terrified we feel inside. Bravery is a virtue people revere in dead soldiers and then turn to disparage in someone extending her hand to a weirdo." - On Kindness, via medium

There is this moment after you've spent the last thirty minutes on the Q train underground thst suddenly it feels like you come up for this beautiful gasp of air, with a breathtaking view of the bridge. Seriously never gets old.

via cass