So yeah, I sound like a broken record.  About not having friends.  I keep writing about it, returning to it.  If you’re reading my stuff you are probably tired of it.  But I find this time in my life confusing, confounding, it makes me sad sometimes, not as much as it used to though.  And I am definitely better about dealing with it than I was when I started writing two years ago. I have resigned myself to being alone a lot of the time and doing things and going places by myself.  And I do not by any means mind doing things alone.  In many cases I now prefer it.  I am definitely not the same person I was then.  I’ve come to terms with letting parts of my past go.  I’ve done a lot of work in terms of recognizing habits and patterns and things I learned and internalized from growing up and my parents.  I’ve jettisoned versions of me and frankly, when I look back at different parts of my life I can’t even believe that WAS my life.  I cannot even stomach the thought of going back and doing some of the things I did.  I think about my career in teaching and there’s very little I miss. It’s like it was a dream or an alternate universe, like did those things really happen?  It’s strange to me how that was me and that was my life and how my life now is nothing like that.  Not in any way., shape or form. I feel like such a different person.  

Recently I’ve lost a lot of weight.  I completely changed my diet and exercise routines and though those have a lot to do with weight loss, I know that what it really was me becoming….. new? Different? The real me? Who I always was underneath all the layers I wore?  I feel like the body I have now is what it is supposed to be.  I feel healthier.  Lighter.  In a lot of ways beyond just the physical.  I feel like this is the weight and body I am supposed to have.  I feel less puffy and poofy.  This is not a treatise on lifestyle and weight loss.  I think people are beautiful in all sorts of physical forms.  For me this is more about the inner, the mental, the thoughts and the soul.  In some ways I feel like I am in the process of freeing myself.  But I’m not completely free.  I’m still carrying around sadness and regret and what ifs and why didn’t I and why DID I…..

And for all of the work I’ve done I still feel like something is missing and I don’t know what that is.  Or where to find it. Sometimes I think I’ve found kindred souls who feel like I do, who are searching, and we are aligned in some way and the universe brought us together.  And then I realized I was making shit up again.  That is what I still have to work on.

OK- so all of that is bringing me to these ramblings.

Crying in MAD and MOMA

I recently took a trip to New York City by myself.  I’ve written about going to concerts by myself but I have never taken a trip or mini vacation by myself.  I’d been to NYC many, many times before, but always with either my mom or my mom and assorted friends, and a few times with just friends when my mom became unable to travel, and a couple of times with a group of 8th graders for school trips.  The twenty or so trips I took with my mom are some of my fondest memories.  Trips in the winter, a blizzard in 2003, the heatwave in the summer of 2003, on Amtrak or JetBlue, such fantastic memories.  I hadn’t been back to the city in four years and was really jonesing for some serious city vibes so I decided, kind of last-minute, to just do it.  It was exactly the trip I needed at exactly the time I needed it with exactly the person I needed to go; myself.  Although my yearning for a soul aligned friend is still strong, I have started to really enjoy going places by myself.  I don’t have to manage or arrange or please anyone else.  I can do and go where I want and when I want.  And I thoroughly enjoyed spending six days, originally supposed to be four days but a blizzard gave me an extra two, wandering, sitting, thinking, walking, shopping, eating, listening to music, all by my lonesome.  It was  interesting.  And I can’t wait to go again.

I was last in the city four years ago.  I went with a friend with whom I’d never traveled before.  It was the first time I’d been to the city with someone other than my previous travel companions.  It was fun.  I mean any time spent in the city is fun.  But it wasn’t the same and it really brought a few things home.  Mostly that I was never going to have the kind of experiences I had with my mom and other friends again.  Hours at the Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spa. Drinks at chi chi rooftop bars. Walking blocks and blocks, uptown, across town, downtown, literally from one end of the city to the other. Lunar New Year parades. Back, back, back, back door purse shopping in Chinatown. Our trans friend who danced with us outside Blue Smoke to some Tina Turner.  Jazz, jazz, and more jazz in all the famous jazz clubs: The Iridium, Dizzy’s, The Village Vanguard. Big Apple martinis that cost only $12, when they gave you the shaker that had an entire second martini in it.  The Whitney when it was uptown.  Christos’ beautiful crimson Gates in Central Park.  Those trips were unique, a blast, memorable, and over.  The over was a stunning epiphany.  And a huge part of me reconciled with putting the past in the past.  I knew in my heart and soul that something had ended and it made me wistful but I also knew it was time to let go. My mom died a few months after this trip.  She was such a good travel partner.  Maybe it’s better for me to go places by myself so I don’t compare what used to be.

So….to NYC I went.  Like I said it was almost a last minute trip.  I had been thinking a long while about going. But I am good at talking myself out of doing things. One of the things I am trying to do in my new timeline is take chances and opportunities and stop being so damn afraid. And when I travel, I always get anxious right before the trip.  So of course after I made my plans, and got myself all excited, I wondered what the fuck I was doing.  But the money was spent and the tickets were purchased so away I went on an early JetBlue flight.  

When I finally committed to going, I started looking at what was going on in the city that I could manage by myself.  I saw that Jason Isbell would be performing at Radio City Music Hall and even though I was not super familiar with his stuff I decided to just do it.  I was surprised that I was able to get a really good seat, like maybe fifteen or twenty rows from the stage.  Yeah, it was expensive, but- Radio City Music Hall!!!!!

Was. Totally. Blown. Away.   One of the all time best concerts I think I’ve ever been to.  And of course the neighbors in my row and the row in front and back formed a fun little cluster, chatting, dancing, and sharing stories.  I love that aspect of going to shows alone. 

I made the requisite trips (two) to Macy’s.  Can’t go to NYC and not go to Macy’s. Bought some things, of course.

On Sunday I made brunch reservations for one of my absolute favorite restaurants, Robert, at the top of the Museum of Art and Design.  The restaurant has the most spectacular view of Columbus Circle and Central Park.  I love that it’s not a tourist joint.  The food is fantastic, service outstanding, and a pianist plays during Sunday brunch.  Just so very urban and sophisticated.  The kind of experience I crave more of and don’t get very often living here on the edge of nothing except Lake Erie.  After brunch I toured the museum.  And that’s when things got, well, emotional.  

Jonathan Adler, if you are not familiar, is an artist who specializes in ceramics and home decor.  His husband is Simon Doonan, famous as the window dresser and creative director at Barney’s New York.  MAD is currently exhibiting the Mad MAD works of Jonathan Adler in a full circle kind of moment.  He first sold some of his pottery to the American Craft Museum, as MAD was known back in 1993.   Walking through the installations was emotional and moving in a way I did not expect.  I was not aware of his story. He is my age, having grown up in a decidedly unglamorous small town in southern New Jersey that he has described as rural and isolated.  He became interested in pottery at a summer camp he attended in 1978 when he was 12 years old.  What really struck me was how this immensely talented, and now very famous artist, grew up in an environment similar to the one in which I did.  He was kind of a loner, and eventually found his path after a series of misaligned jobs and experiences.  He “attended” Brown University- the school I really wanted to go to but was not nearly smart enough to get into, but really spent most of his time throwing clay at nearby RISD. What struck me emotionally was his meandering way to becoming the artist known today.  He moved to Manhattan after college, tried law school, worked in the entertainment industry, and once he committed to ceramics full time had to cold call buyers when he wanted to sell his pottery. What struck me, and made me cry was the story of how it took him a while, and a lot of blood, sweat and tears to finally create the career and life he wanted.  Twenty years from that pottery class at summer camp to opening his first store in SoHo.  I thought about how I had no idea what I wanted to do when I graduated from college, how I kind of meandered from one thing to another trying to figure things out. The difference is that I didn’t know how to follow my passions, or- as I am coming to grips with today- I was afraid to follow my passions.   I have a very good life, but I wonder almost daily where I would be if I hadn’t been afraid.  And that’s why I cry.  Because I am trying to forgive myself for being afraid.  And I cry because I am trying to tell myself that I didn’t do anything wrong.  The path I chose was OK.  It provided me with many blessings.  And then I cry some more because trying to forgive myself, to love myself is so damn fucking hard for me.  

Being “stuck” in the city a few extra days due to the snow storm. afforded me the opportunity to do some more fun city things. Seeing Skeleton Crewe at Sony Hall was pretty fucking cool- and yeah, I cried there too when they played Weather Report Suite.  I was able to change my flight without any fees or hassles.  I was in a nice hotel, a nice room with a view, so I was perfectly content.  The last day before heading to JFK I went to MOMA.  I absolutely love abstract expressionism.  I took a grad class on post-war literature and we talked a lot about the entire movement in art, film, literature and I was so intrigued. The post-war era has always been interesting to me- that Beat Generation.  Those precursors to the hippie  movement.  So seeing Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell in magnificent real-time moved me so much.  I’ve seen them before, but it had been a long time and I forgot how stunning, in the true meaning of the word, these works of art are.  And so I cried. I just felt so overwhelmed with emotion at the power of the paint and the canvas and the room and the power of the creative forces. I crave experiences like this and living where I do, they are few and far between.  They make me feel alive. I can literally feel waves of vibrations and energy from the works that touch me deep down in my soul.  And one of the reasons I cry when I see them is because…back to the root of the issue, I wish I had created a life in which these experiences were not few and far between.  And I know I am lucky to be able to have these experiences at all, even infrequently. 

So yeah, I was crying in some pretty public places. And ironically I just read an article about the best places to cry in New York City, lol.  All of them were public places.  Not necessarily art museums but places like Central Park.  If the weather had been better I may have cried there. 

To wrap up this interminable rambling, I have been crying here too.  Maybe it’s the energy coming at the end of the astrological year.  Maybe it’s because it’s been a long winter.  Maybe Mercury in retrograde.  Maybe I’m unsure of someone’s intentions.  Maybe I got too emotionally involved.  Maybe I’m just working through shit.  Maybe I’m just a lunatic.

Whatever it is, I’m trying to chalk it up to shedding past versions of my life in an attempt to find who I am authentically.  I’m crying to rid my psyche of old energy.  I’m going to plan another trip to the city and maybe I will cry at the Met or the Whitney.  Or maybe Central Park. 😉