I first fell in love with The Lumineers about two years ago, long before their absolutely staggering rise. And it was about a year and a half ago that I got to see them at The Mercury Lounge, an absolutely tiny venue, here in NY. Of all the bands I've now seen, and all the shows, they are far from my favorite--they are certainly not the group I would have predicted to skyrocket over the next year. And yet, I totally get it. I myself still am still enthralled by their catchy tunes and nostalgic lyrics. I find this song absolutely delicious in every possible way.
WHAT I'M LISTENING TO | A TAKE AWAY SHOW {The Lumineers}
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MY NEW YORK | at home in brooklyn
the ebullient and ever-charming Molly Yeh
came yesterday to help me try to capture
just why it is that i love this particular
corner of brooklyn with every part of me.
red doors, bikes, and home of my own...
she hit the nail on the head.
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Disclaimer | part four
pitted olives freak me out. they absolutely, freak. me. out.
i like hitting the pit with my teeth--having to sort of chew around it and then spit it out.
i am an excellent finger snapper. get me in the shower grooving to some music that's piping through the apartment and with that little bit of water between my fingers, my snap is a thing to behold.
it is my belief that momofuku milk bar makes the best latte in town. there is no evidence for this, just my own personal-overwhelming-experiential-evidence. in other words, personal preference.
i feel more myself with shorter hair. i just do. and i know some will say it makes me less pretty. but i think they're wrong. it just makes me look less obviously pretty and frankly, i've never been interested in the obvious. i want to be a slow-burn-sort-of-beautiful. a second-glance-kind-of-pretty. i want the kind of beauty that unravels with time and a little patience.
i've gotten really good at crying. the kind of big and soft and wet tears that roll out the eye slowly before careening down the cheek. and everything makes me cry now. everything. a good book, a good show, a simple kindness--anything small and true. thing is, i do believe myself to be far more rational than i used to be. i even sleep on the side of the bed reserved for rational people (which happened naturally, before i knew it was a thing. an actual thing. look it up).
i believe saturday mornings are for drinking lattes and reading books and falling apart when falling apart is what's called for.
i've only ever had one full beer in my life. it was lambic. framboise. of the raspberry persuasion. it was delicious. i don't like the taste of regular beer, i blame my college experience. i didn't go to a college with fraternities and sororities and house parties with red solo cups. my campus was new york city and i was raised on colorful martinis with a clear liquor and a lot of sugar.
i've never owned a pair of uggs. i take a lot of pride in this. no pants with nonsense words emblazoned across the buttocks. and lord help me if i have a daughter who's interested in such things.
i'd much rather read a magazine with smiling women than with thin women. which is not to say that the two are mutually exclusive, but rather that i place more emphasis on the former than the latter and i wish print media would do the same.
i feel sexiest in oversized white oxfords and jeans.
i'm do not believe there is a more perfect food than the croissant.
i don't believe in puffy winter coats. i think if you live in a place where jackets are a staple than they should be warm and absolutely above-board-classy. that being said, i've never lived in chicago, michigan, or any part of canada.
i loathe the sound of chewing gum. i find it an affront to my feminine sensibilities.
i can make an entree out of any meat and cheese plate. try me. (though i prefer vinegar hill house and buttermilk channel, so if you accept the challenge, can we go there?).
i think everything is in transition now. which i find utterly terrifying and a little thrilling. but mostly terrifying. but it's movement and chaos and i recognize both as good. big-picture-sort-of-good. but big-picture-sort-of-good isn't always easy, is it?
well... anyway, this was just to say.
so that you know.
love, love,
you-know-who
similar posts you might have missed...
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ROUND THESE PARTS
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"If for a while the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived."
Jeffrey R. Holland
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WHAT TO DO IN NYC | stumptown coffee @ the ace hotel
if i were ever to leave new york and visit i would stay at the ace. the hotel is cool to the point that it's almost disconcerting--they leave sheet music by the side of the bed. you know, in case you wake up in the middle of the night and feel inclined to jot down a tune. and the men who work there are impeccably dressed in that portland-imported-way that tends to buckles a ladies knees.
oh yes, and the coffee is damn fine, too.
all photos by sam shorey
taken with laura meyers.
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25 THINGS BEFORE 25. two years past and i'm still figuring some of this out...
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"I know
you and I
are not about poems or
other sentimental bullshit
but I have to tell you
even the way
you drink your coffee
knocks me the fuck out."
Clementine von Radics
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MY NEW YORK | the one where i start to take out my camera more often...
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"Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final."
Rainer Maria Rilke
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WHERE TO EAT IN NYC | prime meats {carroll gardens, brooklyn}
(first and last photos by Molly Yeh)
we ate a late lunch in prime meats, nestled in the far back of the first section of the restaurant. i ordered a latte and eggs and my dad had a coke with a ham and cheese sandwich. and we sat there, quietly, taking it all in. i don't feel like i'm in new york, my father said, looking out the window. i feel like i'm in some small pub in london.
and that was that.
carroll gardens has turned me into something of a food snob. because there are so many restaurants here and because they are all so very good, my expectation of what good food is has shifted--the bar has been raised.
and prime meats was a big part of that. they have the best burger around. hands down, the best burger. and yes, the spatzle really is as good as one fears it might be. in fact, at the very end of the day my best friend ashlea refers to as one of the-best-worst-days-ever (otherwise known as the day i loaded all of my stuff into a u-haul and moved to brooklyn)--we got drunk off of prime meats cocktails and a heaping plate of spatzle. which is to say, their spatzle isn't just good, it has sentimental value. for me, it has sentimental value.
so should you find yourself in my neck of the woods, do come here, won't you. you'll fall instantly for the dark wood and bare tables and old-school bar. and that's all before you even taste the food.
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Infinities.
"I am not a mathematician, but I know this: there are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities."
The Fault in Our Stars | John Green
I don't know how to write about the end of it. Now that it's ended, I don't know how to write about the end of it other than to say that it's ended.
It was a quiet thing. A silently-slipping-out-sort-of-thing.
I can't tell you how it happened, only that it did.
And only that I've just now realized it did. Only now, some weeks or months or some unknown amount of time after.
I wrote recently that the opposite of love is not hate. It is simply the absence of it.
The opposite of an eating disorder is not health. It is simply the absence of it.
It will last forever. It will be a forever-sort-of-battle. How many times people said that to me. Smart people, wise people, people with degrees in how-to-fight-the-thing.
How many people say that still, day after day.
I think often on why people say that. And why we accept it.
It was always clear to me that I would not accept those words. I would not accept that notion. And if it was true than I would go in search of a different truth. And if that different truth was not anywhere to be found then I would write my own.
An infinity. An unlimited extent of time, space, or quantity. There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. And even more between 0 and 2. And how can that be? How can one infinity be greater than another?
There was a timeline of events:
At nineteen I stood in front of a mirror and convinced myself I was fat. Five minutes it took me to rewire a small bit of the brain that perceived weight and shape. Five minutes. An infinity.
At twenty I starved myself for two months. That was it, just two small and insignificant months. An infinity.
And for the next three years I binged. And my body ballooned. And every bit of who I was as a person shrank in direct proportion. Three years in which an eating disorder hijacked my every thought and my every action and I felt as though I was drowning at all times and everywhere, above ground and in plain site and without air. And it was an infinity somehow greater than those before.
And then slowly breath and breadth restored some sort of life. And inch by inch ground was gained. And then some. And things got better. And I got better. But there was always more to go. There was always an infinity stretching before me. And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
Five years trudging towards recovery. An infinity.
I remember having a conversation with one of my dearest friends about a year and a half ago. I was not feeling well--I was blue and low and bruised and I told her so and she said to me, Meg, we all have those moments. We all live through stretches in which we think we're not doing so well--in which we're not in a tremendously good place. And I remember listening to her as she was saying this and feeling a distance much greater than the small, marble table between us. I remember being aware that we were using similar words to describe two totally different experiences. That's not what this is, I wanted to say. We're not talking about the same thing. But instead I sipped my coffee and smiled and nodded, because, much as we don't always want them to be, some battles are private.
But just the other day I was walking east on 49th street and I though, I'm not doing so well. I'm having a rough time. And quick on the heels of that thought came another, This must be the not-so-good that everyone always told me about. I'm right now, at this very moment, going through a totally normal rough patch. And heaven was that thought--heaven was that notion of normal. My not good now is different. Shallower, more bearable, not so overwhelming. A little bit lighter, if you will. There are still plenty of tears and it feels like its own infinity, but it only feels that way, it never is.
I knew that one of the last steps on the timeline would be to divorce guilt-about-what-I'd-just-eaten from eating-more. I didn't know how to do it other than to create awareness around that intention and let it live in me, but not force it--to create enough space for healthier thoughts to grow.
I think about the notion of divorce a lot. About why people get divorced. Of all of the unknown forces at work. Of how impossible and traumatic it must be. And how it is not for someone like me to comment on it, ever. And yet, I think of myself at twenty-one and twenty-two and how at such a young age I'd already been doing battle with myself for so long. And I imagine that had I been in a marriage--if I was married to myself, I mean--then everyone around me would have said, with great love, maybe it's time that you think about divorce. Maybe it's time you leave this person. Because you are not good for each other. And it is not as though you haven't tried. For years you've tried.
And the thing is, they would've been right. Divorce would have been the best option. But it wasn't an option--and that lack-of-an-option proved to be the blessing of my life. Because I had to stick it out. Because I learned about love by loving myself. And I'm so much richer and so much better and so much kinder for that period in which the best option was not optional and the infinity before me felt impossible.
This is where words fail. In explaining the end and explaining why I'm thankful and explaining why I wouldn't change the thing. This is where I get overwhelmed by just how much there is to say--and how many of the the things I want to say are consistently failed by the limits of language.
So I will say this, I will try with these words:
I remember being a little girl and going to school with another little girl. And I remember the moment that someone else said to me, she's fat. And I said, she is not. She is not fat. How can you say that she is fat? Truth it, I don't know if she was fat or not. I can't tell you anything about the shape of her body other than that she was tall.
As a little girl I didn't look at others as fat or not. My eyes didn't register that as a thing to take note of.
Sitting in Tom's office, years ago, I said, I want to go back to that place. I want to not know if someone is fat or not because I simply haven't noticed. Because it's not part of my visual vocabulary. But I don't think it's possible. Because once you see something, how do you un-see it?
And he said, you can, you can return to that place.
And here I am, returned. To that place. To myself. I am well and whole. In this way, at least, I am well and whole. And this is a whole new infinity. This is the infinity that will dwarf all those that came before.
Now if I lie in bed next to a sweet boy I'm so busy thinking about his long eyelashes that I never once think about my body--whether it is thin or not--whether he thinks it is thin or not. Because it is my body. And it is healthy. And it is remarkably free of the notion of fat or not. It just is.
And this will be the infinity that will dwarf all those that came before.
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"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living, I want to know what you ache for. It doesn't interest me how old you are, I want to know if you are willing to risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine. It doesn't interest me where you live or how rich you are, I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and be sweet to the ones you love. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and truly like the company you keep in the empty moments of your life."
Jon Blais
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PROM!!
So, I'm totally going to prom this weekend.
Which isn't so much prom as a junior league charity event in Boston.
But my brother and his group of friends have taken to calling it prom, and since I never had prom in high school (strange Southern traditions of cotillion and all that nonsense), I'm seizing this moment and declaring that yes, indeed, this will be the weekend of my first ever prom!!
I got my dress at a vintage shop here in Brooklyn for a ridiculously low price and yesterday my mother took me shopping for some gold-heeled-shoes. My girlfriend Kim told me that the heel is entirely too low for any event masquerading as a prom, but since that it was my first real foray into heeldom, they would suffice.
My brother, being the organizer that he is, began an email chain which quickly devolved into prom do's and don'ts, followed by an extremely detailed email correspondence between one of my brother's friends and his girlfriend Lennay Kekua (does that name sound familiar? google it). The whole thing was genius and if I wasn't before excited to meet Connor's friends, I am now.
But I do want to get back to the subject at hand: PROM!!
What does one do at prom? What did you all do and wear at your first prom?! Tell me everything, bring me into the circle of girl-talk.
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I don't think it was really like prom at all...it was better.
Just the other day I said to someone, I didn't make a lot of mistakes when I was young, I've got some free passes I need to cash in.
Which isn't true of course, I made big mistakes. Life-altering mistakes. The sort of mistakes that when someone asks you how you came to figure this-or-that out and you say the school of hard knocks and they say no, that can't be right, you're too young, they are both right and wrong--age being a funny and deceptive thing--not nearly as linear as we'd like to believe.
It's just that, when I was young, I didn't drink too much or stay out too late or follow the wrong men home. I didn't do what others would perceive as foolish and messy.
My mess was a private sort of thing.
But with age and a little knowledge there is some real joy to be found in making those mistakes now.
I doubt my Saturday night was anything like a typical prom. I got ready sitting in front of my brother's microwave and doing my hair in its reflection (of all the places in his apartment it was the best mirror, with the best lighting). We went to dinner early, followed by drinks and pictures in a friend's apartment before heading to the Fairmont.
I got drunk very early in the night. Which, I must tell you, while not calculated, worked brilliantly. While everyone still had their wits about them, I seemed very fun. It also meant, I drank mostly water 10 pm and on and so awoke without a hangover.
There was much dancing and laughing and a fair amount of shenanigans at the ball (prom)--we may very well have been the only group with a to-do list that included icing people, getting rejected by better looking members of the opposite sex (more attractive as voted on by 70% of the group), and making it rain $2 bills (this sadly did not happen...something for next time).
It was at two-thirty in the morning when I found myself trailing behind my brother and his group of friends up a steep hill at the back end of Beacon Hill, four boxes of large pizzas, our finest dress clothes in various stages of disarray, and I had the thought: this is youth. This is something like youth.
It was one of those moments where the image is so clear: a group of friends trekking up a hill as the night lightly sifts out snow, and the only sound are heels on cobblestone and the sort of laughter born of comfortable friendships and too much wine. An image of youth. A tableau of youth. One of those moments that as it's happening you find yourself mentally crossing it off life's to-do list, not even knowing it was on there until you stumbled into it.
Youth and follies and time. And none of it linear.
Stumbling home through the snow, too late, and with a group of near-strangers-now-friends--god, I can only hope more of life unfolds with as much mess and grace as that moment.
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BOSTON | in love with color
I am utterly in love with Boston--helpless against its many charms. Mostly the color.
The city is knee-deep in color. Vibrant and rich hues--red brick everywhere and copper pipes. And every time I visit the city woos me just a bit more and I leave ever more reluctantly.
instagram.
and last time I was in Boston...
i saw my brother taste Ben & Jerry's
for the very first time.
and had a heart to heart on a park bench
about my romantic bent.
and last time I was in Boston...
i saw my brother taste Ben & Jerry's
for the very first time.
and had a heart to heart on a park bench
about my romantic bent.
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TED TALKS | dan barber
one of those talks that i wish would imprint itself on the masses immediately. ideas that would revolutionize our very notion of quality of life. not to mention, treating the earth as it deserves to be treated.
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WHAT I'M LISTENING TO | the lumineers (cover of Boots of Spanish Leather)
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On what to give up for Lent...
last night i found myself at a small downtown club listening to some really fine new orleans tunes--dueling trumpets, rich and broken voices. organized, beautiful chaos.
and there was a moment when la cucaracha came spitting out of one of the horns and i had this very clear memory of how as i child my father would pull me from the shower and towel me off as he sang that ridiculous song. and i'd forgotten. and how could i forget that? and what other memories have too long sat on a shelf somewhere?
standing in the too crowded space just before the stage i turned to this lovely man who i'm just now friends with--this person who barely knows me--and i said, if this tuesday is already fat tuesday then i must think of something to give up for lent immediately.
and before the words were even out of my mouth, he looked right at me and said, how about self-doubt?
and god how that question literally took the air from my body. few times in my life have such simple and elegant and wholly true things been said. and he barely knows me. and so how did he know that?
i thought i'd gotten good at faking it, you know?
i felt so exposed in that moment. so seen and not, all at once.
self-doubt.
how about self-doubt?
divinity mostly arrives in unusual forms.
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