Where does love go?

I didn't find out until yesterday, even though it had been a week and a half. And on Facebook, of all places. I just happened to leave a comment on Lindsay's page, and she sent me a message: Have you heard about Ronald? And my heart seized up, a tiny panic right in the center of my chest. I don't know how we know these things about the people that we love, but we do. I clicked over to your page, and there was your picture, you smiling just as I remember you--olive skin and white teeth, kind dark eyes touched with mischief. And I began to read the comments, one after another, eulogies to a man who was well-loved, and a note from your sister to say thank you for the thoughts and prayers, and to say good night to you and not good bye, that you were home now. I couldn't imagine what had happened--a car accident maybe? I assumed that something tragic and unanticipated had taken you too soon.

Lindsay wrote back that she had few details besides that you died of liver disease on November 6. I didn't even know you were sick. I didn't even know you were dead. And here I was at work, where I couldn't cry, let alone think about it properly. A work buddy called on my office phone to say that his girlfriend of a year had broken up with him. I told him that I just found out a good friend from college had died. We pretended to be less sad than we were, mourning two separate but similar passings. We hung up quickly, maybe finding our own fronts flimsy and transparent, unwilling to seem vulnerable with one another. Later, at a meeting, I sat far from him, where we couldn't make eye contact, but all I could think of what you, and him, and each of our sadnesses.

I tried to put it to the back of my mind until I could go home and think about it, about you. But I avoided thoughts of you all evening, making dinner, watching TV, reading, readying for bed. Your ether permeated my dreams that night, and my first thought when I woke was of you. The alarm woke me at ten to six--I wanted to get up early to think and write about you and us. I hit the snooze until seven and finally woke, looking out my new bedroom's windows to a gray and orange dawn. I sat up--you. Put on my glasses--you. Padded to the kitchen and filled the coffeepot with water from the Brita. And I began to cry, silently, tears running slowly down my face, and I had the gradual and overwhelming feeling that you were standing behind me, watching me as I ground the beans and spooned them into the filter. It was the same feeling as when anyone is standing near you and you feel their presence before you see them. Unable to stand it any longer, and feeling rude for having my back to you, I finally turned, leaning against the counter, tears on my cheeks. I didn't see you, but I didn't need to--you embraced me, and I felt that you wanted me to know that you were okay. The moment passed, I turned on the coffeemaker and got in the shower. I didn't feel you there, or while I was getting ready for work--I hadn't tried to summon you, I hadn't expected you, I wasn't asking God for comfort. I wish I had said, while you were there with me, that I love you. I wish I had asked if you were okay. But I feel like you know and you are. I don't understand how this happened, but I'm not surprised that you found me, that you came to me, or that I knew it was you. I know it sounds unbelievable or like I somehow made myself believe that something happened that didn't, but the closest thing to what happened this morning is having a friend drop by unexpectedly--the only difference is that you didn't bring your body with you. I wish I could have seen you once more, said goodbye, kissed you one last time, heard your voice say that something, anything, was fabulous. But somehow, I also feel as though none of that really matters--that, in a way, we can still give and receive love even though you aren't here in the same way, and that somehow--is it possible?--we are closer now than we were before. And so, a standing invitation. Come whenever you like, you will always be welcome. And if you are not able to come, then good night, sweet friend, until we meet again.

(written November 18, 2008)

The problem with adventures...

The problem with adventures is that while you're busy having them, you don't have time to write.

Hence the silence of late.

So much is going on right now that a short post feels necessary, yet I have so much to say. Maybe once my life dust settles, again, a little, I can tell you more, but for now, a quick update.

1. My novel in a month has morphed into a novel in however long it takes me to finish. I'm excited about the 22,000 or so words I've written. I love my stories and the characters and the themes I've seemed to fall into--tragedy, love, sadness, loss, the strength of the human spirit, relationships, faith. I'm excited to get back to it, as I've been busy the past two weeks, what with

2. MOVING INTO MY VERY OWN APARTMENT!!!!! Those of you who have been listening to me complain about my current living "situation" can now rest easy that I will no longer have an evil roommate to complain about, as I have found the most adorable, sun-filled, cozy little one bedroom there ever was, all to myself. Thanks to the new job, I am finally able to afford to live on my own, and God or fate or what (or who) have you sent this lovely gift my way. I can't wait to move on Friday and finally have some dedicated space for writing, and a quiet street outside my window, and freedom to come and go as i please without someone looking over my shoulder. The commute is longer, and I'm moving out of Manhattan into Brooklyn, but I'm excited to have more time to read on the train to and from work every day, and I can't wait to explore a part of New York that I'm so unfamiliar with.

3. My new job has been verrry busy lately, and I'm still learning the ropes, but my good friend Okie is just a few desks away, and he makes sure to keep me grounded with a morning reading of Rilke or a fun fact about Thomas Jefferson or to just check on me when he hears me screetching "Oh my God, you want WHAT? WHEN?" into my telephone. I'm also getting over the awkward "new girl" hump and am getting to know my coworkers, who, for the most part, are awesome. Especially the socially awkward editors. I feel right at home.

Did I mention that my new apartment will be within walking distance of at least 4 of my friends?!? How lucky am I?

Remind me to tell you about riding the Coney Island float in the Village Halloween Parade with Leslie and dressing as Bristol Palin for my friend Holly's Halloween party.

All my love and Autumn bliss,
Lizzie

NaNoWriMo 2

Last year, I wrote a novel in a month. You probably know that already. But in case you missed last year's crazy ridiculousness (on my part), it's all blogged on my "writing blog" which I've since kind of abandoned because everyone knows it and i didn't really want my grandma reading about who I fucked last night. Which was no one, btw, in case she's somehow honed her grandma skills to finding this blog. ANYWHO, all promiscuity aside, I am again going to be joining several friends in the National Novel Writing Month challenge, which is to write 50,000 words in 31 days. MOST people do NaNoWriMo in November, but we all think that's silly because it only has 30 days AND we most of us travel for Thanksgiving and can't write when we're in a turkey coma. Also, we are not most people, are we? No. I think not.

So, as this is the second time I've done this, I gotta admit, I'm going in a little cocky. I know this is not a good thing. I know that I'm going to crash and burn at some point. But I can't help it. I'm all like "Whatever, I did this last year. I can do it again." Ahhh, the mighty (me) are about to fall. I know it, and yet I'm doing nothing about it.

So, basically, me and 5 of my friends are all going to begin our own 50,000 word novel beginning at midnight tonight and ending at midnight on October 31. That boils down to about 1,667 words per day. We have all modified the original "rules" somewhat to fit our own goals, etc, but I'm a purist and a type-A anal retentive, so I'm basically doing it the way it was originally set up to be done. I'm starting with a new story, I'm going to write at least 50,000 words.

So, I may not have much to say here for the next month. If you want to follow my novel-writing progress, I will again be posting on my writing blog, The Naked Writer.

ONWARD!

WHAAAAA!

I'm reading "Brideshead Revisited" right now, by Evelyn Waugh (which I always pronounce in my head WHAAAAAAAA!, think the noise someone doing karate might make), and anyway, I came across a particularly beautiful sentence that I don't want to lose.

"That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty."

WWWHHHHAAAAAAA!

A Birthday Adventure

Not mine, mind you. My birthday (and impending doom! erm, my 27th birthday) is precisely 4 months and 13 days away. I think. Counting's not really my thing. ANYWAY, THIS adventure involves many people I love, but 3 especially, because their birthdays were last week, they all live in Pittsburgh, and I got to see each one!

Originally, I was going to catch a ride with some friends who were going to Pgh for the weekend on the cheap. Then I got a new job, and I couldn't take 2 days off work during my second week, so here I was sitting in my cubicle last Thursday, thinking "if only there was a way to go home this weekend...wait a second!" And I tromped over to travelocity to see if there were any last minute deals, which i haven't been successful with the last 10 or so times i've tried it, but lo and behold, my number was finally called, and lickety split, I had a flight AND a rental car for the weekend for around $200. I mentally patted myself on the back, taking all credit for so awesomely manipulating the situation in my favor.

After a jaunt over to the Museum of Modern Art to see a preview of the new Van Gogh exhibit (the exhibit is new, not the paintings, unfortunately. wouldn't THAT be awesome?) with my friend Bob, and probably the best dinner I've had all year (seriously, so so so good. he took me to the restaurant I've been living above for over a year and still hadn't been to), which included several cocktails, I drunkenly packed zero pairs of pants, 5 pairs of underwear, 2 toothbrushes, and an odd assortment of tops. Saturday morning, I awoke bright and early at 5 am to catch the train to JFK for my 8 am flight. I stopped at DD for coffee, and then got on the train around 5:30 am. Now, at 5:30 am, the few people who are riding the train are either a) up very early to go to work or b) up very late and going home from a bar/club/party. This is the kind of interesting mix you don't really get any other time of day. So, I'm sitting on the train, staring blankly at the ads across from me, sipping on my coffee in a half-awake daze when one of the latter kinds of people gets up from his seat down the car a ways from me, walks over to me and sits down next to me. He turns his body towards me and stares at me, waiting for me to look at him and/or say something. I am sleepy. I am annoyed. I have not had my coffee yet. I say, giving him a cursory slightly disgusted glance, "hi." Big mistake. I suppose that was all the encouragement he needed because he immediately told me that i was gorgeous, that he lived in brooklyn (obviously, that's the direction the train was headed) but was born in harlem (actually, he told me this three times) and then started asking me questions.

"I have a boyfriend," I said. Ah, the old standby. Although, I've found it only works about half the time.

"Oh, of course you do, baby, of course you do. You are a beautiful woman. Gorgeous. Did I tell you that I live in Brooklyn now, but I was born in Harlem? Where you from, baby?"

Damn.

So I told him that it was early and I didn't feel like talking and he finally (thank God!) got the hint, said he'd "catch me later" and went back to his seat down the train. I have to admit, I was momentarily flattered that I had gotten hit on at 5:45 in the morning, until I considered that a) he HAD to have been drunk, b) he had struck out at the club and I was his last ditch effort before getting home, and (worst of alll) c) I was the only female on the train. Also, he was ugly.

So, I got to the airport, had a lovely flight, picked up my rental car (a Mazda 6! SO FAST! SO SO FAST!) and surprised my Daddy and my cousin Keegan at the family birthday party, caught "The Dark Knight" again with my mom, grandma, and aunt (better the second time!), and expounded on the parallels between the Bible and Batman to grandma as I drove her home (I was trying to help her like the movie...I don't think it worked). Then on Sunday, we went out to breakfast before Mom and I hit the outlet mall , where i bought some kicky black knee boots from Nine West and a few things for work. Then, on to my final birthday, my friend Katie at her new house, where we hung out all afternoon and evening and watched the baby crawl around and petted the dog and discussed all of the decorating/renovating possibilities for her house (which seems HUGE, but probably only because i live in a bedroom the size of my cubicle). Then I drove the back roads home to sleep for a couple of hours before getting up at 3:15 am to fly back home.

All in all, a fantastic weekend.

And one of the reasons I love and hate New York. Because NOTHING RIDICULOUS HAPPENS when I'm anywhere but here, which was very relaxing and refreshing. Though, it's part of the reason I come back, too.

a brooklyn adventure

whilst walking to work this morning and letting my mind wander aimlessly across the desert that is the stretch of First Avenue between my apartment and the new job (Side note: I work a BLOCK from the UN and I had no idea until this morning! Security risk? Yes. Worth it for the possibility of meeting wealthy, well-dressed, and [fingers-crossed] dashingly handsome international diplomats? um, yeah, obvs.), and the thought floated across my consciousness like a nimbus cloud that though the blog is called "Adventures in LizzieLand", I don't often recall my actual adventures. I then surmised that could be due to the fact that I've been relatively hermitlike of late and haven't had many adventures, but then...well, nevermind. this has gone on long enough.

So, to give you a real-life ACTUAL adventure of the Lizzie and Sideshow variety, I give you..."Time Warp: Lizzie and Sideshow Enter an Alternate Universe."

It all started when Sideshow asked me if I wanted to hunt photo booths with her to take some candid shots for her NEW! website in development.

And then I found out about the Bullseye Bodegas that were in town "For a limited time only!"

And so the list grew until we had grandiose and very detailed plans for Saturday, including, but not limited to, the following:

1. Go to Bullseye Bodega and drool on things we don't need and so won't buy because our apartments can't possibly fit one more ounce of useless stuff.
2. Find photo booth. Take silly photos. Repeat.

And here's where it got crazy

3. Go to Brooklyn. Look at friend of friend's dad-owned apartment for rent.
4. Stop by Beacon's Closet: shop and drop off old clothes.
5. Use $15 pizza place gift certificate that will never be used otherwise because we never go to Brooklyn.
6. Maybe, if we have time, stop at a kitchy Polish bar I know for 32-ounce $3.50 beers.

Yes, friends, not only were Sideshow and I going to Brooklyn, we were going to WILLIAMSBURG, land of hipsters, ironic mustaches, and unhealthily skinny skinny jeans. And we had 4 good reasons for going there.

Oh, we had such lofty ideals. Oh, were we going to get so much done. Then SS texted at 11 am. "Late night last night, hung over, no photos, look like crap" (my paraphrase), to which I labored over an equally hung over response for the next 10 minutes. "Late night here too, look like crap, no photos okay." At which point, had we been smart, we would have just given up and gone back to sleep.

Our 2 pm meeting turned into 3:30, and we decided to tackle Brooklyn first. The guy whose dad owns the apartment I wanted to see called to say he didn't have the keys, so SS and I headed straight for Beacon's Closet, which turned out to be a hot, crowded, hipster mess. We lasted approximately 2.4 minutes before grabbing her bag of clothes (they told us to be back at 8! There was no way were staying IN BROOKLYN until 8 pm) and high-tailing it out of there. Several headache-inducing outfits later (that is, on the waifs we passed...Williamsburg must be having a severe food shortage, we surmised), we finally found the calm in the hipster storm...the Polish bar with a bartender older than my grandfather and the blessed, beautiful, cold, sparkling 32-ounce beer in a styrofoam cup. We lamented about how we don't want to move to Brooklyn and especially to Williamsburg, discussed our confusion about the skinny-jean phenomenon, and expressed our relief that no hipsters, apparently, could see this bar through their slatted fushia sunglasses.

Until, right after I received my second GIANT beer, 15 of the little buggers came stumbling and yelling through the door of the bar, beelined it to the jukebox, and began playing the MOST TYPICAL BAR SONGS EVER. Which caused an equal and opposite reaction in SS and I: to loudly make fun of them, their dress, their musical choices, and to say that we were having such a lovely time until they showed up. We were just drunk enough to be able to convince ourselves that we were being funny, not rude. Also, that we somehow were not on THEIR turf and so had some kind of right to not be invaded. Ah, retrospect.

So, as "Bohemian Rhapsody" blared in the background and I yelled to SS over the music, "God, wow! I love this song! This is such a great song! I can't believe they're playing THIS song! THey NEVER play this song in bars!" and the hipsters returned our annoyed and disparaging looks, a tall, skinny-jeaned, ironic-mustached, and flannel shirted young man bought two beers and set one in front of each of us.

"Calm down," he said, with a wry smile.

And then we felt like assholes and shut up, or at least quit yelling our obscenities.

We flirted with two brothers who were jerks but not hipsters before leaving the hipsters to the 60-year-old woman who reminded me of my grandmother and had taken over the bar from the ancient man who kind of reminded me of my grandfather. We traipsed to the pizza place, where the guy behind the counter said "Come back and spend some money next time" and the other one told us that his girlfriend was 4'11". The strange out-of-place feelings we had gave way to giggling about everyone and everything that seemed "different" and we got our sausage pizza to go, vowing never to return to this alternate universe where we didn't understand the dress code and the natives bought us beer to disarm us into thinking they were harmless and, could it even be?, nice.

Certain. Death. Maybe.

A cookie to the first person who can tell me what is wrong with the following sentence:

"Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single family one or two story homes may face certain death."

Also, and this may be morbid, or distasteful, or whatever, but they said this OUT LOUD on NPR this morning, and you would not believe how delighted i was to hear the words "certain death" on the radio. For a brief glimmer of a moment, I was in the Princess Bride. Or some other fairy tale involving a threat of certain death.

CERTAIN DEATH!!

but only maybe.

damn, i think i just gave it away.

also, I'm trying to work out a new budget based on my new salary AND I'm dreaming of the day when I can forever stop talking to, seeing, or listening to my heinous roommate, and I'm trying to remember whether "they" recommend housing costs to be 30% of before tax or after tax income. Do you know?

God, i just reread that last paragraph and i'm a little embarrassed to have you know the heighth, breadth, and depth of my nerdity.

oh well. you probably already know anyway.