(i'm not obsessed with) the darker mind

nostalgia

2012-01-30T08:58:00.004-05:00

An old college friend came all the way uptown to the Columbia neighborhood after work one evening last week to meet me for dinner. It turns out she hadn't been up here since graduating more than a decade ago, and we talked a little about the weirdness of coming back. It didn't really strike me until later how odd it is to live in a city so big, so sprawling, that one can be nostalgic for it, or fragments of it, without ever leaving.

crocheted chuppah

2012-01-20T19:47:00.000-05:00

It took the better part of the living room, but turned out beautifully. Old-fashioned and delicate and elegant (not that I'm biased or anything). Crocheted from silk, merino wool, and alpaca laceweight yarns, with clear silver-foil lined beads and pearly white beads along the edges.

crocheted chuppah, now available in my Etsy shop

notes on a cold january morning

2012-01-19T08:09:00.005-05:00

When it is 20 degrees outside not as many people wait for the bus and then the trip goes unusually fast and then one arrives at work even earlier than usual. Which is not a bad thing, necessarily (those quiet minutes before the library opens and the lights come on and the world comes crashing in are some of the best library moments of all), but makes for a long day when one still has to stay until 5 o'clock.

Also, on days when it is 20 degrees outside it is not ideal to dash out the door sans gloves or scarf. Luckily I at least remembered my hat, for which my ears are very, very grateful. The hat that Ken recently thought was a slice of pizza perched jauntily on the corner of my desk when caught in passing out of the corner of his eye. Yes, pizza. And yet I continue to wear said hat.

Last week I finally worked up the nerve to tell my coffee stand man* that I want only one sugar in my coffee. He's been teasing me in increments ever since. "What, half a sugar?" or "And today? Five sixths?" This morning it was a cheerful, "Alright, alright, seven eighths of one sugar! I got it!" I am wondering when this will grow old for one or the other or both of us, but for this morning at least it continued to send me smiling across campus to work, gloveless fingers curled tightly around hot paper cup, breath exhaling in icy laughing gusts.

*This would actually be my OLD coffee stand man, who sold the cart to my new(ish) coffee stand man awhile back, but who is covering while my new(ish) coffee stand man is visiting his family somewhere far, far away. My new(ish) coffee stand man would never forget how much sugar I take in my coffee.

going home, 1.15.12

2012-01-16T00:04:00.002-05:00

winter holiday knits

2012-01-04T21:51:00.001-05:00

sage-green leaves shawl
white lace shawl

a-town walk, new year's day

2012-01-04T21:21:00.000-05:00

going home, 1.3.12

2012-01-03T19:15:00.000-05:00

welcome, harlem

2011-12-21T21:17:00.000-05:00

going home, 12.22.11

2011-12-21T12:34:00.006-05:00

I got home from a lovely dinner last night with friends Courtney & Matt, flipped open my cell phone, and found this rather cryptic text message from an unknown number: "Hey, this is your e."

Visions started dancing through my head of disappointed teenagers frantically looking for little bags of ecstasy, not knowing that a friend had it thanks to messaging gone awry.

Evan, being oh so pragmatic and recognizing the area code for a Seattle number, said it was probably Stepbrother Erik just wanting to make sure I had his number since he'll be picking us up at SeaTac tomorrow afternoon.

Hours later, and from the same number, a follow-up text message clarifying that indeed e was he, Erik, my brother, and that he will see us tomorrow.

It made me smile so, the simplicity of his first message, and it made me think of Pooh and Piglet and one of my favorite moments in literature ever.

And I suppose, in the reciprocal way these things go, that I must be his e, too. And am so very, very glad of it.

in which emma enters the modern age

2011-12-19T21:44:00.003-05:00

I was rambling to Nick at a friend's party the other night about recently making a mix, and about how it involved compressing songs into a zipfile and then uploading said zipfile to Dropbox and then sending people the URL so they could listen to this mix I'd been so arduously putting together. I was very pleased with myself over my grasp of this alien vocabulary, but as I rambled on I noticed Nick beginning to look at me rather oddly. Finally, after I'd run out of words, he just said, "Yes, that's how it's done these days. Why are you talking as if every word is underlined?"

I, abashed, went in search of another round of drinks.

bridge, 12.17.11

2011-12-17T12:24:00.000-05:00

'observing her mother...'

2011-12-17T10:02:00.000-05:00

"Observing her mother with her adopted daughter at the beach one day, the author muses: 'It made me think of girls -- little girls, teenage girls, even old girls like me -- who at one point or another discover, like all girls do, their sadness.'"
(Hilton Als, New Yorker, on Diane Keaton's new book Then Again)

going home, 12.9.11

2011-12-10T14:01:00.004-05:00

(This did not bode well for 11:30pm on a Friday, though we lucked
out and the A came within five minutes.)

'pokey the tortoise rings the bell on the transom...'

2011-12-09T12:46:00.000-05:00

Some Cats I know

Pokey the tortoise

Rings the bell on the transom

Runs away laughing.

Nora the buzz

Nail in the coffin of love

Under cover in a ball.

Ernest the tub

Knocks over a jar of water

Steps daintily in broken glass.

Olive the small

Asleep, face in food dish

Wakes up for a homemade racecar.

Zora the elemental

Observes bubbles rising

As the dishwasher hums below.

Adelaide, minicat

Head cocked always,

Vietnamese or simply thoughtful?

Milo the stretch

Peeks out the window

But he wasn’t looking for me.

Zeke the kitten

Held up by a gauzy curtain

Gnawing at its threads.

Duncan the elder

Died at 21, was replaced

By a strapping tabby.

Llama causes trouble

Only when the knits come out,

Lying on the blocked yarn.

Ericat is me,

Cat with thumbs and

Restless sleepy spirit.

(Erica Sklar, 2011)

woolish things

2011-12-08T18:03:00.002-05:00

Firstly, two new pieces finished and available in my Etsy shop:

beaded burgundy lace shawl

ruby red lace wrap

Lastly, and most excitingly, I was chosen as a featured artist today on Misanthropy Creations!

spotify, or, yet another stick in the craw of romance

2011-12-07T13:28:00.030-05:00

Evan asked me over dinner last night what I was smiling about, and I had to confess that I'd been writing a blog post in my head. I had been thinking about what a lovely evening we were having, and what a treat it was to come home to the smell of bread baking in the oven, a glass of home-fermented hard cider, and Gillian Welch playing on the radio.

Except of course she wasn't playing on the radio, and somehow the thought of writing about the loveliness of her dulcet tones playing on Spotify just didn't have the same ring to it.

And this is what was making me smile as I munched on the most delicious grilled cheese sandwich ever.

"and the radio is counting down the top 20 country songs..."

"like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays..."

meeting molly, or, what's in a name (take II)

2011-12-05T19:11:00.002-05:00

An old friend of mine recently relocated once again to New York City, this time hopefully for good (or at least for more than a month or two). He asked if we'd like to meet him and his friend Molly for dinner yesterday evening, and we said yes, we would like to very much.

After making these dinner arrangements it occurred to me that I have known two Mollies in my life, and that they have both been incredible women, and that I was ridiculously excited at the thought of meeting a brand new person at least in part because of her name.

Well, my excitement was well-founded, as it turns out, and clearly Mollies are just inherently interesting people. It didn't hurt that this particular Molly loves the Muppets, plays the fiddle, and practically crawled under the table to admire my new boots, about which I was rhapsodizing.

Also, she and Gary really seem to like each other, and that's enough to make anyone happy.

what's in a name

2011-11-29T12:57:00.011-05:00

Years ago, late one night and most likely aided by a glass or two of wine, Nathan and I got into an odd and lilting conversation about baby names. We both wanted "William." I argued that as the firstborn child, I should get dibs on the name. Nathan, ever the logical one, argued that which ever of us had a son first should get the name.

Eventually, in our intoxicated and intoxicating sentimentality, we decided that maybe we could both lay claim to the name, and that it wouldn't be the end of the world for two cousins to answer to Bill.

I remember the conversation feeling very abstract, in that particular way that conversations about not entirely impossible but definitely far-off and hard-to-imagine things feel.

Nathan called me in early September to tell me that Shanna is pregnant, and that come next April they will be parents.

I was surprised at how sad I felt at first, upon getting this phone call. I got off the phone that night and sobbed myself to sleep, which seemed such a shameful and horrible way to greet such lovely news that I've tried not to think about it too much.

Cousin Eric sent me a couple old pictures last week, from a sailing trip on his parents' boat that happened a quarter of a century ago. I wasn't expecting these pictures, and had to catch my breath after opening his email. And it struck me then, in that moment of not being able to breathe, where this initial sadness had come from.

I am so very happy for Nathan, adored baby-brother-mine, and his lovely Shanna and their impending parenthood, and I am so very happy at the thought of being aunt to their child. But also there is the realization that our father will never know this child, will never be known by this child, and will never watch his own child become a father -- something I know he would have watched with boundless joy.

And so I find myself crying for them: for these two wonderful and beautiful men and the loss of an experience that they should have shared, had things gone a little differently with the world.

I imagine, if Nathan and Shanna should have a son, that he will be impish and curly-haired and glowing, as his father and grandfather have been before him, and that perhaps he will carry with him his grandpa's exuberant grin if not his grandpa's name.

november music (fragments)

2011-11-28T19:45:00.006-05:00

Jill and Evan and I went to Brooklyn Bowl last week to see Mike Doughty. They were surprised, I think, at how middle-aged he is, or how similar all of his songs are, or something. They are not wrong in this assessment (as Jill so concisely put it, after hearing some of his old stuff, "I guess weird dissipates with age?"). Weirdness also dissipates, sometimes, with being sober, and with being content, and maybe with being happy, and I still can't help but love him, even if half his songs sound like they might be the intro to Circles. (Here is some old Mike, and here is a some new(er) Mike, and here is an actual music video off his latest record!)

I recently discovered this little gem (and am apparently one of the last people on the planet to do so, given its YouTube views), and pretty much want to listen to it all the time:

Nathan recently sent me a mix (by which I mean, in this amazing modern age, that he sent me a URL and I went to said URL and downloaded a zipfile, then unzipped said zipfile and imported it into my itunes -- with Evan's tutelage because I am technologically phobic and sadly ill-informed). One particular song, this weird and gorgeous thing, is currently my commuting music of choice. I put my headphones on, turn up the volume, and stare aggressively out the train windows (preferably the front-most window, out of which one can stare at the oncoming tracks, and which is closest to the door most convenient for my subway stop).

I am slowly putting together a birthday mix for a recently reconnected old friend. I find myself wanting to somehow capture in it the twelve years of our silence, but I've been working at narrowing things down. Just because these new-fangled technologies don't have the built-in limitations of TDK cassette tapes doesn't necessarily mean anyone wants three hours of your favorite tunes, after all. Some of the things that aren't making the cut: Singuila's Mektoubi, from my French/African hiphop phase; Tricky's take on the Cure (mostly because the studio version isn't nearly as creepy or as gorgeous as this); a nearly 20-minute long live recording of Built to Spill's Broken Chairs, because though it captures a certain early-20s angst, who wants to hear twenty minutes of someone else's rage, elegantly and heartbreakingly jagged as it might be?

bridge, 11.26.11

2011-11-26T16:37:00.000-05:00

'someone i loved once...'

2011-11-23T07:26:00.001-05:00

The Uses of Sorrow
(In my sleep, I dreamed this poem.)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

(Mary Oliver)

waiting for m. doughty

2011-11-22T21:54:00.002-05:00

that particular glowing yellow

2011-11-21T21:40:00.001-05:00

bridge, 11.20.11

2011-11-20T17:02:00.001-05:00

bridge, 11.19.11

2011-11-20T16:12:00.000-05:00

from the brooklyn bridge, 11.17.11

2011-11-17T22:52:00.000-05:00

Occupy's "Day of Action"

little green man, or, the view from our lobby (11.15.11)

2011-11-15T12:37:00.001-05:00

(Taken by Evan)

all in a row (187th St.)

2011-11-14T08:52:00.000-05:00

(non)essential learnings

2011-11-13T23:44:00.000-05:00

geek graffiti

2011-11-13T23:41:00.000-05:00

one boot, fort washington ave.

2011-11-07T22:05:00.001-05:00

students for sale

2011-11-07T18:30:00.000-05:00

loss, and growing out of it (a partial chronology)

2011-11-06T16:03:00.009-05:00

Little Yehuda, one of the neighborhood kids I regularly watched over when I was lifeguarding back in high school, asked me once if I was more like my mother or more like my father. I, trying to make light of it instead of sobbing, told him I'd inherited my mom's good looks and my dad's bad memory. He thought about this for a minute and then said, all serious-like, "Well that's okay, then." When I asked him what he meant, he replied, "Maybe you'll forget he died."

Two years ago I was complaining about all the spam clogging up my inbox reminding me to get the perfect Father's Day gift. A friend who had lost her mother when she was a teenager said that Mother's Day is a lot easier for her now that she herself has children, but acknowledged that I (what with being of the female persuasion and having nary a chance of becoming a father) would never have the opportunity to re-appropriate Father's Day in similar fashion, and that this was sad.

Now that I am thirty-five, people are no longer so shocked to learn that my father is dead. I take strange comfort in this, and in the fact that I can almost always say without tears, "It was a really long time ago."

I was having dinner recently with a friend who lost her brother some years back, and I found myself explaining this to her: the double-edged relief that I've felt these last few years about finally being old enough for my cohorts to have also begun losing parents, for my own loss to have become less shocking.

It occurred to me even as I spoke that this generational relief, this growing in to an age where such a loss is normal, would still be a long time coming for her, and will never come to parents who have lost their children. It seems odd to feel lucky about the way one loses someone dear, but in so many ways, I was. Lucky, I think, that it happened so quickly. Lucky that the chronology at least was right, even if several decades too soon. Lucky that this loss, having happened so early, has finally receded into being merely one facet, if still and always a huge facet, of who I am now.

where once there was a news stand

2011-11-03T14:57:00.000-04:00

yarnish & etsyish things

2011-11-02T08:29:00.018-04:00

It must have been the fact that it snowed this past Saturday here in New York, several inches in the city and much more than that elsewhere, that got me to thinking about winter and putting together this winter Etsy collection (which has some lovely stuff in it if I do say so myself -- there are just so many talented craftfolk in the world!).

More personally, here are some of my more recent additions to Etsy:

A new hats & scarves section in my shop

And this gigantic bright pink shawl!

occupy new york (signs, gardening, tent city), 10.28.11

2011-10-30T07:17:00.001-04:00

harlem, late october

2011-10-28T07:23:00.002-04:00

student workers, or, a moment in the life of a library supervisor

2011-10-27T16:50:00.001-04:00

One of our favorite former student workers stopped by this afternoon for a quick hello, in town on a business trip from sunny California. We joked about how far he's come since his first job here in the library, and how much he likes San Francisco, and how Oakland across the bay is where he goes to party and, these days, to practice not getting arrested. He said, though, that he misses this city, its un-Bay Area urban grittiness, and is keeping his fingers crossed for a transfer to the New York offices.

Karen turned to me, grinning, after he left and said, "Doesn't that just make you feel a little bit like a proud mother?"

Strangely enough, it does.

bridge, 10.25.11

2011-10-25T20:28:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday, GWB!

the last drop

2011-10-24T12:53:00.000-04:00

harvest festival

2011-10-23T07:41:00.000-04:00

occupy new york (general assembly, people's library), 10.21.11

2011-10-22T20:05:00.003-04:00

One of the things that struck me last night, as we wandered through and around Zuccotti Park, was how peaceful it felt, and how strong in its simplicity. The few minutes of the nightly General Assembly that we listened to, shouted in stilted phrases from one round of voices to the next because the NYPD has forbidden the use of megaphones and speakers, was about how to deal with the laundry. A woman was frosting cupcakes with chocolate frosting for a group of children in the designated children's area. Two men, one with an accordion, wandered the square like minstrels of old, singing The Occupy Wall Street Song. The ground was swept clean, and people's belongings were safely tucked away under tarps and roped off from pedestrian traffic. Most of the milling, massing people -- scruffy teenagers, seemingly homeless folks, mothers and fathers and toddlers, well-dressed elderly Upper West Side dames, and everything in between -- were polite and friendly and smiled back whenever I smiled at them.

I wished, in those moments of grinning with pride for these people, for this city, that my father were here to see this, to wander Liberty Square with me, to perhaps lend his oh so powerful voice to the goings-on of the General Assemblies. It might have assuaged some of his anger, calmed his percolating dissatisfaction with his government, with his country.

bridge, 10.22.11

2011-10-22T18:43:00.000-04:00

sneakers, one pair

2011-10-22T18:35:00.000-04:00

a walk in cochection

2011-10-20T21:41:00.000-04:00

the antithesis of agreement

2011-10-18T12:49:00.003-04:00

EM: You are the antithesis of agreement.
ES: What?!? On this one topic, maybe, but generally you're the antithesis of agreement.
EM: Fuck that!

And so it goes...
(too late at night, 10/17/11)

inner monologues

2011-10-17T08:25:00.085-04:00

A friend of mine was talking on our drive up to the New York State Sheep & Wool Festival this past Saturday about different modes of talking. Now mother to two young daughters, she's had to learn to navigate between adult-speech and kid-speech. While she's gotten better at curbing her occasionally curse-prone tongue, she explained, she now finds herself letting loose sometimes with a wrathful "Oh heck!" even when the kiddies are well out of range.

"But," she made sure to point out, "in my head, every other word is fuck."*

This just did me in for the rest of the drive north and in my head her voice, usually so reserved, kept up a running commentary: Fucking stoplight. Fuck those pedestrians. Fucking traffic. Oh fuck! A horse!

At which point I burst out laughing, prompting an imagined, "Fucking crazy Emma," which just made me laugh all the more. Luckily the other women in the car seemed to find this amusing too, and "Fucking horses!" became a bit of a thing for the rest of the afternoon.

I've had good fortune lately with things making me laugh intermittently for hours, or even days, on end -- sometimes at inopportune moments (while brushing my teeth, just for example, or riding the train, or, you know, other things). Or maybe I'm just in a laughing kind of mood. Either way, it's been nice. Even now the thought of eyeglasses is enough to send me into gales of laughter. And now, "Fuck this, and fuck that!" has been added to the laughing lexicon, much to Evan's amusement and, quite possibly, dismay.

*Just for the record, I love the word "fuck."

going home, 10.15.11

2011-10-15T22:25:00.000-04:00

glasses

2011-10-13T20:10:00.001-04:00

Nick and I were walking back to work this afternoon after our weekly lunch (our usual Chinese again after last week's Bombay Frankie takeout and impromptu picnic in the park next to St. John the Divine due to a water-main break at Columbia Cottage) and I was regaling him with a silly story about yesterday's evening out. It involved one of those ubiquitous moments when you're trying to be calm and collected and cool in a perhaps misguided desire to impress someone, and inevitably end up making an ass of yourself.

This particular moment involved a misty evening walk up and down the High Line abruptly interrupted (and this is where I started gesturing wildly on our post-lunch walk) by a gust of wind blowing hair in my mouth, more hair somehow getting caught in the hinge of my glasses, a moment of gagging on said hair in the mouth, and the aforementioned glasses nearly flying off into the air but for my hair, still caught in them.

It was not, to put it mildly, one of my finer moments. (So much for being impressive.)

But Nick, in the midst of my maniacal gesturing, turned to me and said, straightfaced, "And then did you swallow your glasses?"

My momentary stunned silence eventually became a very eloquent "Huh?," to which he replied, "I'm really hoping this story ends in you swallowing your glasses."

Somehow I completely forgot about this exchange until I got off the train and was walking home. And then somehow it jumped back into my head as I walked up Fort Washington Avenue in a light October drizzle, and found myself giggling, and giggled the rest of the way home (probably much to my fellow commuters' consternation).

I walked in the door and my boy came over to give me a kiss and I just stood there, straightfaced, until I couldn't hold it anymore, and burst out with a laughingly hysterical, "And then did you swallow your glasses???"

Luckily my boy's patience knows no bounds, and luckily he finds humor (can it possibly be contagious?) in the things I find humorous, and laughed uproariously with me until I was able to calm myself.

cochecton, 10.7.11

2011-10-13T19:39:00.001-04:00

walking the high line

2011-10-12T21:26:00.001-04:00

One of the funny and wonderful things about walking the High Line is the abrupt way you come to its edges. No fanciful rock walls or discreet borders to this decidedly urban park, but rather a walking and a walking and then a chainlink fence. No pretensions, no fuss and no muss. Just that: the end.

going home, 10.10.11

2011-10-11T22:06:00.006-04:00

'we're fasting and think you should too...'

2011-10-11T21:51:00.002-04:00

bridgewalking

2011-10-11T12:51:00.008-04:00

We left home last Friday morning (such a gorgeous and sun-lit morning) a little past eleven to walk down to 178th Street and then over the bridge to pick up our cheap New Jersey rental car.

It wasn't until we got to the entrance to the pedestrian walkway and started seeing these signs -- some old and faded; some, like this one, new and I imagine a result of last fall's bridge tragedy -- that the thought of walking across the Hudson suddenly made me want to cry.

Fourteen years ago last Friday a particularly lovely and loving boy jumped from the Bear Mountain Bridge into this same river. There's not much more to say, really. (Is there ever much more to say?)

We walked across the bridge and over the river, and looked south to the Manhattan skyline and towards the sea, and it was beautiful. We picked up our car and headed north and spent a couple idyllic days meandering along back roads and through small towns with funny names and looking at beautiful flame-red trees and squawking at the chickens roaming the lawn of our bed & breakfast. Then yesterday we drove south and dropped off the car and walked back across the bridge and over the river and home again.

Today, fourteen years since hearing about Matt, I've been a little bit pre-occupied with thoughts of him, and have it in my head to make a habit of walking across the Hudson and back every October. It felt good to do it, and to remember him this way, even if at first unintentionally: to stand in the middle of that vast expanse with the sun in my face and the wind in my hair and my arms held wide and goosebumped with sadness and light.

our animal friends

2011-10-11T07:40:00.000-04:00

(at the Golden Guernsey Bed & Breakfast)

goss & subby?

2011-10-10T22:49:00.002-04:00

george washington bridge, southwalk

2011-10-10T22:24:00.000-04:00

outdated

2011-10-10T20:15:00.000-04:00

bridge, 10.7.11

2011-10-10T15:56:00.001-04:00

bridge, 10.7.11

2011-10-10T15:53:00.000-04:00

disconnect

2011-10-02T14:46:00.000-04:00

I feel, much of the time, like I'm still a kid, or at least certainly not an adult, not a grown-up. This morning we were brunching (because this is something grown-ups do) with neighborhood friends at our favorite neighborhood spot. We hadn't seen each other in a month or more, and there were lots of things to catch up about. But there was a moment about halfway through the meal when I realized the topic had been health insurance, or doctors, or medical issues, for nearly half an hour. And I sat back in shock and just started laughing, much to everyone's consternation and eventual amusement.

When exactly did we get this old?

confession (again)

2011-09-27T12:46:00.002-04:00

I bought a pack of cigarettes last Friday. In the midst of a torrential downpour, I found myself wading through ankle-deep water across College Walk just to go to the news stand where I've always bought my cigarettes, or almost always. Rose looked surprised when I asked for a pack of Camel lights, looked a little sad as she broke my twenty and gave me back a mere eight dollars. Usually when I stop by her stand these days, I am just picking up the daily papers for the library.

I've written about my on again off again love affair with smoking before, or mentioned it in passing in ways that make me remember all over again how integrated it was into certain periods of my life. Its role in keeping a single freshman year after my roommate moved out. The fact that nearly everyone in BG smoked. (A lot.)

It's been awhile since I last bought a pack of cigarettes (one year, one month, two weeks, six days, if the little quitting-smoking thing Evan set up on my computer last year is to be believed, which I believe it is), and even that was a one-off in the midst of another year of not smoking (or at least not buying) cigarettes. I've never given it up entirely (with two good friends who still smoke, and with whom I go out for drinks after work on a semi-regular basis, it's been hard to give it up entirely), but it's been a couple years since I thought of myself as a smoker.

Today I am trying to remember that feeling: the feeling of not feeling like I want a cigarette. Oh how I enjoyed my weekend of smoking, despite the noxious smell, the slight ache in the lungs, the constant hand-washing, the sore throat. But it will come back (that feeling, I mean), and in the meantime I fear I am eating instead. Pizza for lunch. A mid-afternoon chocolate break. Something delicious for dinner from the boy tonight. And there is some sort of Ben & Jerry's ice cream in the freezer, I'm almost certain. S'mores, I think. S'mores are way better than cigarettes, right?

mystery woman

2011-09-25T23:28:00.012-04:00

I was looking through an old journal the other day and found this passage, written sometime in the spring of 2007. It's odd, because I have absolutely no idea about whom I was writing:

"There's this woman I know, a woman with a particular talent. She has a knack, should you run in to her on the street, for keeping you tied up in her conversation while somehow giving the impression that you're keeping her there."

pomegranate shawl

2011-09-24T09:26:00.000-04:00

Now available in my Etsy shop.

november leaves shawl

2011-09-24T09:24:00.000-04:00

Now available in my Etsy shop.

olympic rainforest shawl

2011-09-24T09:22:00.000-04:00

Now available in my Etsy shop.

bridge, 9.23.11

2011-09-23T23:29:00.000-04:00

(courtesy of nwm)

it's funny

2011-09-22T12:52:00.001-04:00

It's funny how sometimes a person can reappear unexpectedly in your life, take center stage all over again for a little while, and make you realize both how much and how little things change.

Today I find myself at home, a surprise day off from work because of having to work this Sunday, and so far it's been a productive day. Laundry washed, dishes done, floors swept, red shawl washed and blocking in the bedroom, turquoise shawl worked on for a bit. But somehow in between these things, in those quiet moments between one breath and the next, something catches.

It feels, strangely, a little bit like grief.

'there is no stillness, only change...'

2011-09-20T20:20:00.002-04:00

"There is no stillness, only change. Yesterday's here is not today's here. Yesterday's here is somewhere in Russia, in a wilderness in Canada, a deep blue nowhere out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It's behind the sun, it's deep in space, hundreds of thousands, millions of miles left behind. We can never wake up in the same place we went to sleep in. Our place in the universe, the universe itself, it all changes faster and faster by the second. Every one of us is standing on this planet, we're all moving forwards and we're never ever coming back. The truth is, stillness is an idea, a dream. It's the thought of friendly, welcoming lights still shining in all the places we've been forced to abandon."
(Steven Hall, The Raw Shark Texts)

boots (2 pair), Walker St.

2011-09-18T17:49:00.000-04:00

oysters & new yorkers

2011-09-14T20:43:00.003-04:00

What you definitely don't want to be? The guy throwing up on the subway platform at the end of the night. Alas I was that guy last night, after what was otherwise a lovely evening of raw oysters and expensive drinks in some fancy schmancy oyster & absinthe bar in Williamsburg. But New Yorkers are nice! Several good folk stopped to ask if I needed help, one woman patted me on the back and asked if my apartment was close by, one little old lady offered to call 911 (please, God, as if this weren't humiliating enough already) and the most practical: a man came running back down the stairs with a handful of paper towels. (Where he got paper towels in the subway station I have no idea -- perhaps the toll booth workers keep cleaning supplies on hand?)

Anyway, I made my way home and took a long hot shower and went to sleep and today am feeling much refreshed. (If also ready to go to bed despite its being only half past eight, and slightly squeamish at the thought of oysters, and also expensive drinks).

the muppets take washington heights

2011-09-12T18:38:00.000-04:00

bridge, 9.11.11

2011-09-11T17:15:00.005-04:00

I've been trying to ignore as much of the media coverage as possible of this tenth anniversary of 9/11, but late last night found me caught up in reading the New York Times' collection of readers' memories of the day. And later still I watched this haunting video put together by the Columbia Center for Oral History.

One of the memories that jumped out at me was this: I most remember the quiet and stillness that fell over NYC in the days that followed. It was the saddest quiet.

I remember that quiet too, in the days and weeks following that Tuesday morning. I lived half a block away from the George Washington Bridge back then, and late at night when I couldn't sleep I would sometimes go stand on the corner and just look at it. At the traffic, and how at first there was so little of it, but within days it was back to normal; at the lights and the noise and the dirtiness of it, all of which felt eerily comforting, somehow.

But the strange truth of it is that I was just beginning to fall in love the day that we were attacked, and the days and weeks following that Tuesday morning were amongst the happiest days and weeks of my life. There was that sad, sad quiet, but the quiet also seemed, to me, to be suffused with golden light, with a collective breath of love, and those months of autumn that year glowed.

This discrepancy is an odd feeling to harbor, especially today in the midst of this national orgy of public grief. A decade on and that particular love is long gone, but I am grateful to it for making those heartbreaking and terrifying days for so many seem, to me, to be so strangely beautiful and true.

The city is still here, and the bridge is still here, and we are still here. The other comment that jumped out at me last night was this, from someone also living here in Manhattan: I was where I always was - and hope to stay.

september rain, take two

2011-09-08T12:09:00.010-04:00

It rained a lot last night (the splatter and crash of it making for hours of restless sleep), and it was raining this morning when I left my apartment, and as I stood waiting for the bus, and as I got my coffee and walked across campus and squeaked through IAB in wet sneakers across wet floors all the way down to the library.

I try to come in to work early on rainy mornings, especially rainy mornings following rainy nights. I come in early and I stand in the quiet of the lobby -- in that particular wonderful stillness of a vast and empty space -- and I listen for water.

Today there were already two bins catching water when I got in. I scrounged up three more and placed them as strategically as possible, and then there was more standing still, and then minute adjustments, and eventually the hushed noises of water hitting carpet and the staccato noises of water hitting floor tile were gone entirely.

I stood there a bit longer, head cocked, listening to the rhythm of water hitting my five bins, some more full with run-off than others, and found myself thinking about water glasses lined up across a table and the little-kid magic of playing them with spoons.

Today the rain made me smile.

september rain

2011-09-07T08:49:00.012-04:00

It's been wet the last few days, and fall-like, and sad. Or maybe that's just my usual autumn moodiness settling in for a little visit: it's hard sometimes to be sure of these things, or to read the differences between them.

Yesterday it was pouring when I left work at five but for some reason I decided to walk up to 125th Street to catch the train anyway, and of course got drenched. My slightly embarrassing Columbia umbrella (because who really wants to advertise where one works, but still, it was free -- a practical thank you for ten years of service to balance out the inanity of a crown-shaped lapel pin) is coming unmoored from its wires and was no match for the wind and rain. I had been so pleased in the morning that the air was cool enough for my new corduroy pants (soft and black and already comfortable despite not yet being broken in), and that I finally matched the season, but there's nothing nice about walking around in soaked cords. When I got home I had to peel them off and dry myself and curl up with a cup of tea before I could do anything else.

Eventually I made some dinner and pulled out one of my knitting projects and watched Let Me In, and then dreamt all night about frozen branches and glass cracking and eyes.

This morning it's still raining but a different kind of rain. The kind of misting rain that seems almost to not be there, at least as long as you are perfectly still. The kind that collects on the surfaces of things -- clothes, hair, eyebrows, skin -- and takes so long to sink in that you don't quite realize how cold and damp and miserable you are until much later.

'and if you hate me, then hate me so good that you can let me out...'

2011-09-06T22:14:00.001-04:00

(Damien Rice, Rootless Tree)
It feels like fall today, and I've had this running through my head this evening.

tell me a story (about when i was little)

2011-09-04T20:08:00.006-04:00

The happiest kid I think I've ever seen was in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens yesterday afternoon. We first saw him ahead of us on the path, grinning and waving at us over his father's shoulder -- first wildly with one hand and then, presumably when that hand got tired, with the other.

We couldn't help but grin and wave back.

Later, as we sprawled in the grass under a tree, we watched him toddle down another path only to get caught up by his father, who swung him high in the air and on to his shoulders. Even from across the lawn we could hear him cackling with glee.

We wondered what it might be like to be parent to such a happy child, to have strangers be drawn in to your world the way we'd been drawn in, and whether the child's joy was a reflection of his parents or something all his own. I speculated that any kid of mine, if the former, would probably just be cranky. Hers, in that scenario, quietly pensive.

I mentioned that I'd been happy like that too, at the ripe old age of four or so. She was surprised that I could remember that far back, though I insisted that I could.

But later, while daydreaming contentedly on the train ride home after my afternoon in the sun, I realized that I don't really have any idea what I remember from so long ago. What I know for sure is that every night when one or the other or both of my parents tucked me in, I would demand a story "about when I was little." So at two I heard stories about my mom biking around Oakland with me strapped in the baby seat on her bicycle, and when I was three I heard stories about our apartment in Ippendorf where I was befriended by two horses and my "Oma" gave me too much Kinder Shokolade and I got sick. When I was six and we moved to Westchester I heard stories about my friends in California and our European travels the summer after kindergarten in the Bronx.

These stories continued through elementary school and were told so many times that they couldn't possibly have remained the same over the years, and yet still somehow remain true.

I got a birthday card in the mail earlier this week from my aunt Ellen. Not a birthday card for me, but rather a birthday card that my parents had sent her back in 1993, and which she has kept safe all these years, and which she's now bequeathed to me. In it my father jokes about what a piss-ant Ellen was as a kid, and how unsympathetic and unsupportive his wife must be to doubt for a second that he was anything but the perfect, supportive brother. He also writes about how he and I had recently begun our lifeguard training class, and that though we were not the best in the group we were doing fine, and that I was particularly pleased because this meant I would earn a lot of money at the lake that summer for not much work.

I don't always know the difference between what I actually remember and what I learned later and merely absorbed through those nightly bedtime stories, but sometimes I'm not sure it really makes much of a difference.

The first night that we were back in Riverdale after our months-long jaunt through Europe the summer that I was six, it was August and sticky with heat and we were jetlagged and cranky and couldn't sleep. I remember walking in the wee hours of that morning (two o'clock? four?), just us kids and Dad, up and over the highway to the park by the school, where we played on the swings and basked in the cooler night air, and then went home before dawn, contentedly sleepy and finally ready for a few hours in bed.

This memory, at least, I am almost positive is real, and is all mine.

The excitement about the lifeguarding job I'm not so sure of, despite being older then and theoretically capable of remembering. I don't remember being all that excited about it ($7/hour was a lot of money back then, no doubt, but what sixteen year old wants to work seven days a week all summer?), but I think he was excited about us taking this class together, and I can give him that at least. And so, once I can stop reading it every night and stop running my fingers over what I can only imagine are tears smearing the ink, I will slip Ellen's birthday card into the dad-box, still tucked safely away in my closet after all these years.

caution

2011-09-01T18:00:00.000-04:00

walking while oblivious, or, the facilities guys & me

2011-08-31T08:26:00.002-04:00

I've been walking around even more oblivious than usual lately, and that's saying a lot. (Once I got a phone call from my best friend, laughing uproariously, because her husband had just walked in the door concerned that somehow he'd pissed me off -- apparently I'd walked right by him on the street without acknowledgment despite his repeated hellos and it took her a long time to convince him that's just how I am.)

Anyway, I've been walking around lately happily staring up at the trees or something, I don't know what. And I keep running in to the same guy from Facilities. Now, I like the Facilities guys and they like me, which means that when I call them at 4:50pm on a Friday because water is pouring down from the ceiling over one of the tables in the computer lab, they come running. And I like it like that.

But this one guy, a very nice guy, has begun to just chuckle when he sees me walking anywhere, and starts waving his arms around like a windmill from afar just to get my attention. I suppose at least it's become something of a running joke between us -- lord knows that's preferable to him thinking I'm ignoring him or mad or just being bitchy. Because next time the entrance doors to the library come slightly off their hinges, or it rains, or there is a strange padlock on the exit doors when I get to work in the morning, I want him to still come running when I call.

hurricane condition

2011-08-30T16:20:00.000-04:00

fuschia bike, one year later

2011-08-29T17:55:00.001-04:00

Still there, if less upright.

sky & moving in day

2011-08-29T08:38:00.002-04:00

I spent the commute to work this morning staring in awe out the window up at this amazing sky -- a deep rich, almost purplish blue, washed clear of everything -- and the air and the streets and the entire city felt clean.

And then I got off the bus and realized that particularly gorgeous deep blue was merely a construct of tinted windows. But still, the sky is beautiful today if not quite as brilliant as I thought for awhile. And there is a crispness in the air, a freshness, that reeks of the coming fall.

All the little incoming Barnard girls are lined up along Broadway this morning, surrounded by boxes and bins and bags and hovering relatives, waiting their turns for elevators and carts. It's a good day for being introduced to their next four years.

august college walk

2011-08-28T20:53:00.002-04:00

gloria

2011-08-28T16:01:00.004-04:00

4th grade was an eventful year.

It was the year the Challenger blew up -- live on televisions dragged into classrooms all over the country, including mine. (I ran into my 4th grade teacher, the incomparable Mrs. Owens, years later at some school function and we were reminiscing about that year. She mentioned that she'd applied to be the teacher on board and how disappointed she'd been to never hear back about it, only to get the official NASA rejection letter later that February, weeks after the explosion.)

It was my year of antibiotics. (Wasn't there some silly book called "My Year of Meats"? Maybe I've got my first book title.)

It was the last time I was in or near a hurricane. Gloria. Other than being sick that year, my most vivid memory is walking with my father in the wind and rain, water swirling over our boots and down the street, tugging us down the hill to the lake which of course had overflown its banks and was creeping up towards the road.

I remember feeling so brave and strong, standing there in the onslaught and looking out over all that water, holding my father's hand. I haven't gone out much in this Irene storm, and I wonder a little bit where my sense of adventure went.

new etsy items

2011-08-26T12:34:00.000-04:00

deep forest shawl
wool & silk wrap
purple lace shawl

bridge, 8.25.11

2011-08-25T20:58:00.000-04:00

the price of happiness

2011-08-25T08:25:00.000-04:00

Luckily I only had a ten dollar bill this morning and didn't try to hand over my usual dollar and a quarter, because as my dear deli guy gave me back my change there was an awkward pause, and then he said that the price of coffee had gone up by a quarter.

I must have looked somewhat stunned for a second because he actually began apologizing profusely, but my moment of feeling stunned was more embarrassment and wondering when had that happened, and how many mornings have I unwittingly been underpaying them, and them too embarrassed to demand another quarter.

Finally I laughed and said it's actually about time. I've been paying $1.25 for my morning coffee for probably ten years, after all, and it seems only fair that they get to raise their prices once a decade.

not yet fall but longing for it

2011-08-24T20:41:00.005-04:00

I've been knitting on my lunch breaks this week, which you may be surprised to learn is not something I often do. I'm working on a stole in a particularly soft and wonderful chunky wool, and it's such a pleasing change from all this thin and overly delicate lace stuff I've been knitting all summer. It's thick and soft and vibrant in cozy browns and warm beiges and pinkish burgundies and a pleasingly slubby white silk peeping out here and there. It's thick and warm and soft and makes me long for late October, early November, and having this thing wrapped around my shoulders or curled up against my neck.

I've been perching on benches overlooking Morningside Park and it's been cool enough to wish I had long sleeves, and a smattering of dried leaves have caught in my hair and swirled up against my feet.

Two nights ago -- Monday night I guess -- I woke up in the wee hours and couldn't figure out what was wrong. Eventually I realized I was cold, for the first time in three months, and went routing through the closet for a blanket to crawl under.

So many people seem to be sad at the waning of yet another summer, but I am ready for crisp afternoons and cold nights and hot cider and sweaters. That isn't really so weird, is it?

one of those things

2011-08-23T23:27:00.004-04:00

I went down to the park by the river after work today to meet up with a woman I hadn't seen in over ten years. For all the weight she's carried all this time, it's odd to think that we were actually only a part of each others lives for a year or so, much of that intermittently. We met over the summer of '98, I left New York in January of '99, and by the time I moved back to the city six months later we weren't really talking to each other much.

And now here we are (gifted or cursed with the ubiquitousness that is Facebook) getting together for a walk & talk down by the river, a decade after the fact.

I was feeling pretty anxious about the whole thing, to be honest, though I figured the worst that could happen was we'd look at each other funny and make awkward small talk until it was polite to go. The best, maybe, was that we'd remember why we liked each other so much in the first place, before all the drama kicked in. And that, which I'm hoping may have been the case, would be really nice.

Can it be this simple? The possibility of someone so long lost slipping back into your life, the possibility of being found?

by the river, 8.20.11

2011-08-21T22:50:00.000-04:00

tall dave & the little door

2011-08-17T21:01:00.002-04:00

that cat

2011-08-17T08:48:00.019-04:00

The cat's been on a roll these last few days.

Sunday morning just before six o'clock, in the midst of our deluge, I woke up to her perched on the windowsill next to the bed caterwauling at the top of her lungs into the vent of the not-even-turned-on air conditioner, apparently undone by the noise of the rain on the metal outside.

Last night at half past one she had a run-in with a full glass of water on the night table, sending glass and water and ice cube remnants crashing to the floor and under the bed. I jumped out of bed, heart racing, and promptly stepped on broken glass and started shrieking as she tore around the room yowling like a crazy thing. (I guess we both were yowling like crazy things by that point.)

So the next twenty minutes were spent looking for band aids and crawling around the floor, armed with paper towels and collecting dust bunnies and bruises from the underside of the bed, salvaging cardboard boxes full of nothing but crap from college anyway.

Needless to say, this all makes for a sore-footed and rather cranky Emma on what otherwise is a beautiful Wednesday morning.

'i know some day you'll have a beautiful life...'

2011-08-14T19:28:00.011-04:00

I had a quiet evening at home last night contemplating a new project, munching on CSA tomatoes and sweet corn accompanied by a glass of lovely New Zealand sauvignon blanc, and listening to random Itunes songs. A song from the Into the Wild soundtrack came on and I found myself not moving, almost not breathing, for its duration. I'd forgotten how much I love Eddie Vedder, and how his voice has been moving me to tears ever since a nondescript 10th-grade night except that I heard Black for the first time, back when Pearl Jam was just making the scene and everyone was obsessed with (the kind of over-rated, in my opinion) Jeremy.

There's something about his voice that can still get to me: the same deep resonance that brought such comfort to my sixteen-year-old self. And I love that he made such beautiful music with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (whose Longing I listened to incessantly in 1996, and whose contributions to Peter Gabriel's Last Temptation of Christ helped make it such a lush, glorious album). And I love that Anacortes' very own Jacob Navarro (of Spoonshine fame) plays the mandolin on Vedder's Better Days. And I still love Smile -- there's just something about his plaintive, "I miss you already, I miss you always..." And Off He Goes, from that same album. And I still love State of Love & Trust, even if not with quite the same passion as in 1993.

I don't know. I find it strangely comforting that Eddie Vedder grew up, grew out of that early '90s flannel shirt angsty thing, outlived Kurt Cobain and Andrew Wood and Layne Staley and is still around, recording eccentric ukelele albums with an Anacortes boy and writing gorgeous music that's been making some already pretty amazing movies that much more beautiful.

the small things that make unexpectedly working on beautiful saturdays not so bad

2011-08-13T11:05:00.010-04:00

Last Saturday was supposed to be my last working Saturday, at least for a few months, and I had plans to go check out the Museum of Arts & Design with friend Courtney today, followed by a late lunch and a bit of a wander. But a coworker's mother was hospitalized yesterday afternoon and I offered to take her shift today, and so here I am in the office staring at a computer screen instead of skipping around midtown. (Not that I'm really complaining at all -- as much as it sucks to work in a subterranean lair on nice days, it sucks way more to be in the hospital with one's mother.)

I don't often work on Saturdays, though I have been for the last month or so. As always, I duck into Hamilton Deli for a cup of coffee before heading in to the library, but unlike on weekday mornings I rarely recognize the guys working there on Saturdays.

Today, though, my guy was there! He looked as surprised to see me come traipsing in as I looked to see him grinning behind the counter, and then he refused my money. Because anyone forced to work on a day like this, he said, deserves at the very least a coffee on the house.

And besides, who am I kidding? I hate being in the summer sunshine.

faceplant

2011-08-12T18:14:00.002-04:00

nick & the big city

2011-08-11T22:05:00.000-04:00

'thought i had an answer once, but your random ways swept me along...'

2011-08-10T22:34:00.000-04:00

best fortunes

2011-08-09T20:26:00.007-04:00

Back in my Philly days I once got a fortune cookie that saw fit to tell me, "Your next romantic night out is going to be a disaster." Apparently that particular fortune had an expiration date, and the key to avoiding said disaster was just to not have a romantic night out for a very, very, very long time.

One of my other favorite fortunes ever was this: "It's going to get even weirder." (No expiration date on this one, at least so far.)

And then there was the one Nick pulled out of his cookie after our last-minute lunch this afternoon. The one over which he chuckled and then promptly handed over to me: "One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory."

I can't tell you what our conversation up to that point had been about, but I can tell you that the fortune was apt, and that I found myself chuckling too.

washingon square park, 7.30.11

2011-08-05T17:52:00.002-04:00

public seating

2011-08-05T12:18:00.001-04:00

This chair has been locked to this sign post for at least the last year. I go by it every morning on my way to work. Often there is someone sitting in it. Older men usually, with a cigarette or a pipe dangling in one hand and one of the free morning papers in the other.