Archive | City Matters

The Future as February

For as long as I can remember, I have known that staying wedded to the past denies the magic of the future.

It’s why I’ve always stayed open to what movies, music, fashion, technology, ideas, humans, nature have brought in next. It’s also why I love reading for people. I can see the whole of their stories; I can see them shine.

But this month—this bleak, rainy February—I’ve been realizing that I like my future best when it’s rolling in front of me like a red carpet or a yellow brick road, glittering as a promise rather than a manifestation.

In other words, I don’t dream of sowing my dreams. I dream of my dreams themselves– glorious sunrises forever igniting the horizon. Continue Reading →

Finish Lines: Double Toil, Trouble, Entendre

Cute Cat’s Curls

Where to start, where to start?

It hasn’t been that long since I blogged, but it’s been a while since I deposited the kind of long, rambling essay that I feel inclined to deposit right now. Consider yourself warned.

The universe is encouraging me to do so. For one thing, I hiked all the way into the West Village to write the thank-yous I so desperately need—and want!—to write, only to discover I’d remembered everything but the beautiful notecards I’d purchased for this purpose. It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m here at Oslo West, with my long-lost friend, barista Cat, who has new curls—or maybe curls she just let off the leash. Either way, they’re fetching.

So far it’s been that kind of year: everything off the leash. Exhibit A: our democracy. Correction: Our former democracy.

Anyway, all of the West Village is fetching, sometimes I forget. Once upon a time I lived here with the Architect, and as much as it’s changed it’s also the same: the oddest mix of brittle and cozy, bohemian and haughty. Continue Reading →

Permissions Denied, Pigeons Assigned

Piccione, this morning you left your house without a bra?

This was yesterday, when everyone had begun drifting back from wherever people go when they leave NYC over the holidays. I was nursing an americano, waiting for some friends visiting from out of town.

For a full week, the coffee shop next door—the ones run by the wily Italians—had been closed. In fact, the whole neighborhood had been closed because all of the planet had been magically out of time.

I’d gotten a lot done.

But, I am sorry to report, my unconscious also had erected one last roadblock before this wretched, wonderful year could draw to a close.

This roadblock was a doozy.

It began a few days before Christmas, when my Macbook Pro’s operating system began devouring itself, which impacted everything connected to my Apple ID across all my devices, everything that required–and o the irony is rich if not sweet–permissions.

Essentially, I was being denied access to my own identity. At first I was only blocked from features that were convenient but unessential: Apple calendars, reminders, and notes that I accessed across all my devices. Then passwords stored in my iCloud keychain began to disappear, which is when I realized that all these years I’d thought I was being smart and responsible by using Apple-suggested passwords, I was really being stupid as a heart attack. Because these passwords were so complex that I had no way to resuscitate them using anything as pedestrian as, say, human memory. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy