to england where my heart lies...

i realized today that in all honesty, what brings out my romantic side most are places which i love. and i say love in the most deliberate sense. i am completely and unabashedly in love with so many places - cities, villages, hills, dales, all that and more. i love places the way we all love people too: for their inimitable flaws and eyesores as well as their charms and roses. like new york city for example. obviously not the most warm and fuzzy locale. but i am in a full-blown love affair with the place! even with it's scrapes and bumps.

and i've been thinking of all this because in just a week i will leave new york for nearly 3 months away. and i'm thrilled, because of course i'm simply transplanting myself to other places/lovers of mine.... (sundance!!! oh heavenly mountains and quietness!!!)

and i've also been thinking of this today because i came across a friend's blog. she was reminiscing about her time at grad school in england and my heart fluttered and leaped and sunk and broke all at the same moment. oh HUGE sigh how much i miss and love england's rolling hills and old stone and being a gown-wearing student in the midst of it all...

and so here is my full-blown wanderlust revealed. when i am in new york, i love it, but of course miss oxford, miss sundance, miss switzerland, paris, niamey, the list goes on! all the glorious places packed into my heart. and i get restless to want to visit them again, to feel their uniqueness surround me once more. but never for too long before i want to skip off and visit somewhere else. how is it possible to actually settle in a place? i love where i live, but is it abnormal to be so fluttery and emotional at the thought of another beloved place? and am i really so spoiled that 6 months "confined" in one location seems like a great feat to be applauded? (yes, i know the answer to that. WAY spoiled. believe me i'm fully aware of how lucky i've been to see all the places i've seen. for real.)

sigh. in any case the point is i go to sundance next week. and i will no doubt miss new york city the moment i'm away, despite loving the mountains of utah as much as i do, and despite the fact that today they are all i can think about. obviously since it is quite clearly distracting me from work, thus i blog. ha! i'm in a cubicle. it can't be helped :)

a short break from saving the world's children to air my woes

i am homeless in my apartment at the moment. my subletter and i are overlapped by 3 weeks, so i am squatting on an air mattress in the shared room with yet another subletter. both of these two new flatmates are sweet girls, but admittedly kinda crazy. as in loudly singing showtunes all night whilst playing the piano, or being absurdly chatty to the point of asking very personal questions that - hi, don't want to answer considering i just met you yesterday morning at 7am when i was eating granola + yogurt before heading out the door to work. i mean really. why are people so crazy? and why are they all now in my apartment so i have no privacy aside from bathroom-time?

and speaking of work, here in my cubicle my immediate company consists of 1. an uber-bored unpaid intern to my left 2. a russian/arabic/french speaking mystery woman on the other side of my cube wall. i still have yet to see her, but am impressed by all the languages she speaks in her incessant phone conversations all. day. long.* **

these are the people now most consistently surrounding me. sigh. is it too much to ask to be surrounded by people i love?***

3 weeks until alaska :)
4 weeks until berlin :)

*dad sent me loads of pictures of the fam (i.e. grandkids, duh) this week to make my cubicle more lovely and homey and inviting. this helps. a lot.

**this also reminds me of what tim says in the reunion special of the british office: "the people you work with are just people you were thrown together with. you know, you don't know them, it wasn't your choice. and yet you spend more time with them than you do your friends or your family. but all you've got in common is the fact that you walk round on the same bit of carpet for eight hours a day." brill.

***i do still have the city of new york as my ultimate lover. this also helps. a lot.

i told you i'd write again soon... HA!

yes. saw THIS doc tonight. (a librarian and postal worker in new york city who were insanely passionate about the art world and amassed a 4,000+piece art collection over the years on their meager salary in their tiny apartment that is now worth millions and has been donated to the national gallery.)

hi, amazing! !!!

and then while on the subway home i peeked over the shoulder of the scruffy-hoodlum-looking-young-guy next to me to read his opened book: "beauty is truth, truth beauty--that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." (i tell you this was the last person on earth you would imagine to be reading keats. LOVE it when this happens.)

and so these two things tied together: both represent an unabashed LIVING. life without meta-consciousness and hyper self-awareness. this idea of completely dedicating yourself to life. stop thinking and just living. beautiful and inspiring.

the end. (but more to come!)

note: i am at work

so this will be short. (HA! right. i tend to write very quickly and don't go back and read through - just type and post. genuine stream-of-consciousness indeed.)

so. i just had to take a quick sec between reading office emails and meeting with my boss to say that i am really happy and really love new york city with its absolute insanity and diversity and thriving pulse of life. i feel my blog has lacked quite a lot of late (or did it ever have anything? hm.) but i feel i leave out so much of my actual life and thoughts and experience in the blog because i don't know how to express them. last night i really wanted to write about my incredible early evening jaunt through central park and the motley collection of humanity i saw there existing side by side (a full-on bollywood dance troupe, multiple african drum circles, break dancing groups, violin-performance artists etc etc)... or to describe the sounds i hear from the opened windows of my apartment facing down onto broadway in all its upper manhattan glory...

but i can't seem to describe any of it sufficiently and so i just don't. i resort to routine blogging instead - even if there is actually so much else happening. my eyes are also tired of computer screens. there was a funny joke article in the onion last week "90% of waking hours spent staring at glowing rectangles." HA! so true. you have to glance at the article. the pictures and captions are awesome.

hm. i don't know the point of where this is going, but i'm feeling a lack of a former intellectual fervor and considerate contemplation in my life, and feel i'm becoming horribly dull. i feel i should only report back once conditions improve :)

and thank you to everyone who actually reads this bloody thing - how kind you all are! much love to everyone! i'll write again soon.

mopey-mopey-mopesville.

when toni and i left my apartment this afternoon for the airport, the skies were sunny and clear. when i emerged from the 145th street subway stop here in harlem 3 hours later - alone - there was a massive thunder/rainstorm. symbolic? totes. :( sigh. in case you didn't know, trans-continental/long-distance relationships = AWFUL.

i'm in need of mass amounts of encouragement and loving happy words right about now. and some lovely pictures from the last two weeks won't hurt either... [ones at the top taken at the met, then the two of us on the top of the empire state building and toni at coney island. huzzah!]

today

*photos taken here.

just a few things

1. i saw 2 very stylish men today in grand central station with newsie-style hats and (subtle) pinstripe suits. it was such an awesome change from the drab business wardrobe i see usually. i wish the sartorialist had been nearby! (though he would have been smashed in the mad rushing crowds that is the 7am midtown subway commute)

2. ever since summer struck the courtyard of my apartment building has been buzzing (literally) with air conditioners. when you're in my room there is an incredibly annoying undercurrent droning sound that seems to infiltrate your ears into your brain. it's sort of driving me crazy. (oh, and my shower drain stopped working AGAIN this morning. for the love of new york apartments!)

3. toni gets here tomorrow afternoon! (yes i know i mentioned this already) so today at work i cannot for the life of me concentrate for more than 2 minutes together. good thing i finished a heap-load of my assignments in the last 3 weeks, because honestly productivity today seems impossible :)

4. i had to re-post this picture of stella that steph posted a few days ago because honestly. it is so dang cute and the perfect distraction material for a day like today :)

the next 5 days

i'm really looking forward to this week for 3 reasons
(one a bit more than the others....)

1. the last 8 days of working at unicef i haven't had an official workspace because my contract was still being drawn up. i would go in for meetings, but then had to work in temporary locales. BUT my contract is now done and ready. so monday i can officially work at my own desk!

2. the weather report is 75 degrees and sunny for the whole week. GORGEOUS.



...........AND

3. toni makes his inaugural visit to the US on friday :) i hardly have words to express the excitement :)

what a beautiful week to be in new york, yes?

!!!

lunch today = newly reopened washington square park, a heaping pile of cherries, my camera! and some hannah arendt :)

(the only place in new york where passivity is encouraged)

.......................it was heavenly.

another green wall

i came home tonight just as the sun was setting, casting the most beautiful shadows over the piano in our apartment.

and the apartment was empty, so i indulged in a bit of de-compressing time by playing chopin.

[i only ever play when no one is home :) so i don't get to play too often :(]

but it was one of the most lovely evenings i've had in awhile, where i actually felt a bit of relaxation kick in. due to about a dozen different factors, i've been at the absolutely highest-level of nyc-frenetic mode for the last weeks especially and can't seem to find any calm. i can't even sleep when i want to, and it's really beginning to wear

me

down................


so it's now 9 pm, and i'm going to finish reading a few more reports for work and then be asleep by 10:30pm. this is my goal. if this happens i will be insanely grateful to the melatonin that i plan to take at 10pm sharp :) thanks mom!