I watch, speedwalking 20 feet behind her, as her leopard print ballet slippers plod one after the other, slightly awkward with the angle at which they turn in. And though I have known this for quiet sometime, it does not stop me from feeling mildly surprising each time I see her. It plays against my idea of the moneyed Upper Eastide women, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing.

I’m not quite sure if its the way the sun is warming up the air, the extra half hour of sleep I stole in bed, some mild form of Stockholm syndrome, or my own forced cheerfulness taking hold of me, but I feel particularly fond of her today. The way she aggressively asks confused strangers whether or not they’re lost, then gives them very clear and slow directions, pointing out landmarks that they may pass along the way. She makes small talk better than anyone my own age and has a knack for making friends on the street.

I’ve caught up to her and we make small talk. As we near the building, she drops a bit of personal information, the subject matter of which is so startling that I regret for the first time, that we are going our separate ways. In order to satiate my own tabloidistic curiousity, I consider detouring just beyond the revolving doors to listen for another minute longer. That it took four months to get to just this one casual mention of gossip, reminds me that people didn’t always update their statuses on facebook, people had a sense of privacy and of things that went unspoken.

It’s a different world.

Some of the women, the ones I see most often, are nice. They learn your name, and greet you warmly when they arrive. They’ll grab your arm and lean close to whisper some aside. They have kind eyes and ask what you want to be when you grow up. They’re all older. Grandmotherly and soft around the edges. They assume that you are worth more than whatever it is you happen to be doing.

It’s the ones with pinched faces that give attitude and everyone in the kitchen makes faces behind their backs. It is not an overstatement to say that if a plate of food dropped, it might be gathered back up and served to those women, with their tight smiles.

To the young ones, the ones just barely older than us, mostly we are invisible. Nonexistent. They look through you but rarely, unless something is needed, at you. I wonder if they’ll grow up to be soft and grandmotherly, to smile more naturally and less self aware. They mostly wear wedding rings but all have long hair.

We come from different stratospheres.

Her eyes are wide and a little manic. Her grin big, welcoming. Large teeth. A face both youthful in its exuberance but weathered. Its often easy despite the wrinkles and the sagging skin to forget her age when she addresses you. I imagine its the abundance of money that causes this, not that she is the type of person who would ever cosmetically alter her appearance, but that its tough to really grow up when you’ve rarely paid a bill alone or cleaned a toilet or raised your children without constant help. She speaks loudly, so that even when she whispers it seems like a dramatic aside more than a lowering of tone. Everything said with either excitement or hurriedness, since there is never a time when she is not busy. She is constantly juggling two or three phone calls. Putting you on hold so she can tell this friend or that friend about a party she is holding.

When I call her, as planned she says, loudly, “I am at a dinner with 30 people. What do you want?” Because she always answers the phone. And because she can never say, “I’m busy now can you call a little later.” All of the details of her life have to be shared, and I can’t help but think that its a shame that she is too old and too disconnected from technology to be able to enjoy something like twitter. Her updates would read, “Private museum tour and then dinner with 30 of my closest friends!!!!!!! XX.” (Which is how she signs out of her emails, ten X’s. Exclamation points.)

Her hands move a lot. Usually fingers splayed. Waving. The way the skin puckers around each knuckle, the occasional show of exaggerated daintiness, reminds me of my grandmother’s. Each finger is punctuated with chipped tomato red nail polish.  I don’t recall ever seeing them not painted, but rarely fully. The tips always worn down just a bit, like a teenager.

Whenever she writes anything, which is often, she always looks in full concentration. Mouth open, her thick pink tongue moves slowly back and forth across the top of her bottom lip. Or else she is saying the words, just under her breath.  “Deeeeaaaaar…. Gail…. pleaaaaasssseeeee…. seeee….the…attaaaaaached… in-viiiii-taaaaaa-tion.”

It is strange to watch someone so closely. To sit and wait in anticipation for the next task, watching them when it feels like you should be looking elsewhere. Noticing the white of  their scalp, the way they cross one foot on top of the other when they stand or with their legs wide open, feet turned outward when they sit. Its an odd sort of intimacy.

It isn’t exhibitionism that drives me,
I simply don’t know other ways of being.

Those without stories are preordained to repeat them,
I saw once in the stars.
. . . . . . . . . . Unclear who underwrote that,
But since then I’ve seen it everywhere
I’ve looked, staggering
Noon light and night’s meridian wandering wide and the single sky.
And here it is in the meadow grass, a brutish script.

We tend to repeat what we don’t know
Instead of the other way around -
. . . . . . . . . . thus mojo, thus misericordia,
Old cross-work and signature, the catechism in the wind.
We tend to repeat what hurts us, things, and ghosts of things,
The actual green of summer, and summer’s half-truth.
We tend to repeat ourselves.

- Charles Wright
A Short History of the Shadow

(via whiskey river)

* I blame the excessive amount of last nights champagne for the typo.

Maybe it was all the recent life changes that made me as impressionable as an adolescent school girl (all the more reason to not fraternize with people under the age of four), but I’m looking forward to not waking up to feed children and change diapers (thought it was nice and nice to give the broheim a break.) 

I’m thinking now about the realistic future. At least the future as realistic as after the New Year and resolution making. I’ve got one concrete so far and it entails not making the same mistakes I’ve made in the past. Looking forward instead of constantly looking back, a seemingly difficult feat for someone who loves ruminating and being introspective as much as I. There are some ruts that are a little more difficult to spot than others.  

I’m still a bit discombobulated from the flight and the commute home. So all of my other 2009 thoughts will have to wait, but I have to say, I love this time of year, if only because a lot of people are all trying to figure out ways to make this year better than the one before. And even if they don’t succeed that collective feeling of go-to-do-betterness is fairly fantastic in and of itself. 

The children, especially though, are the big difference. I have a neice, with my eyes, my head and my name. I have a nephew, the literal replica of my brother. It makes the upcoming Christmas morning so special.

I’ve been through out my life, ridiculously anti-children. I say ridiculously because it’s a stance I’ve held as long as I can remember in my young life, and of course is one of those things that everyone knows (or hopes) will eventually change with age. So hello 25. I still feel like it’s much to early to have these thoughts, but suddenly…

I was sitting on the bed, Ann crawling and cooing across me, my nephew at my feet watching PBS, and suddenly I thought… I could do this…soon. It seemed a rather errant and irresponsible thought. Of course, I can’t. Not now.

These moods, this biological thing, sometimes you realize how deeply it’s engraned. Deeper than logical thought, it lodges itself into your brain. Maybe it means everything. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe it just means the most at Christmas time, when children rule the day, when their greatest gift is simply showing up, their tiny faces a glow, the day only once again loaded with meaning (and let’s not forget Santa.)

I’m rambling here.

What I mean is Merry Christmas. Slowly back away from your neices and nephews.

Get back to your single city life, quick like.

The first thing that my mind called to the forefront was the ice rink in Central Park. I can’t remember the ride to the park or renting the skates. Only that we were standing in the center of the rink, Brian and I, and it was just before Christmas. Maybe it was snowing. Maybe tiny snowflakes were drifting around us (it snowed more in New York not-so-long-ago). And he had, in his hands a small crudely wrapped, duct taped and glued package.

We had broken up a little over a month beforehand and were both dating other people, which we talked fairly openly about, but I’d gotten him a gift anyway. I remember he smiled so hard I thought the edges of his cheeks would grow extra dimples and crevices in them. I remember that he looked at me in a way I can only recall having seen once or twice since, like someone falling in love and he kissed me hard before opening it. What I can’t recall is how I felt exactly at that moment: excited about the watch which had cost me eighty dollars, a severe price on a student budget and excited about the moment which felt at the time so perfectly story book that we were both swept away in it. I skated small circles around him, helping him pull away the tape, nearly half a ridiculous roll, both of us giggling. We pulled and pulled and laughed, and maybe there was snow in our hair, maybe not, till finally he had to cut the box with a pocket knife I’d smuggled onto the ice. He pulled the watch out and turned it over in his hands, both of us still half laughing. And we kissed and our friends gave a small clap and it was one of those moments.

Times like these are as cherished as your first adolescent love letters. Tucked in a keepsake box.

I wonder what it must be like to create work that most people think of as compleletly ornamental.

Maybe it’s the same for all art.