When you receive exactly what you needed in the mail.
Currently my mood is very “Days” by Philip Larkin:
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields
At any given moment you can be 100 percent certain that what’s going on in my head is just the constant recitation of that first line, “What are days for?”
At least it’s not the Mambo No. 5. (Or would that be better?)
2. I love the weather.
Besides that, I’m juggling staying positive with two jobs and school and the nearing end of my undergraduate career. This is helped by things like reading in the bath, notes sent from friends, museums, the color pink, and that hot-vicar-detective show, “Grantchester.”
3. Two displaced cousins have a new ritual: brunch & the museum of the moving image.
4. Working in the flower district
5. Estrogen Empire Strikes Back
Another thing that is keeping me positive is activism: huddles of women all over the world plotting to destroy patriarchy, capitalism, racism, etc. In fact, inspired by a huddle I went to recently I decided to make a list of things anyone can do to help the world in this current moment. Let me know if there’s anything I should add.
“It’s 2021, and our movement has won,” Ulli Hussein Barta told a group of people gathered in a muted East Village basement last week. Thursday’s snowstorm, which had shut down public schools and closed businesses, had slowed to flurries as darkness fell. Inside Planeta, a community arts space on East Eighth Street near Avenue B, melted ice dripped down a pile of coats and scarves sitting atop a wooden table. “Close your eyes and imagine what that’s like.”
I found this post hiding in my “drafts” folder from two years ago. Not sure what Past Lily intended to do with it, but it is sound (if a tad too honest) advice.
Little Life Lessons:
–You can definitely see pink underwear under a white skirt.
–When dining with your mother’s friends be prepared to dine with the mentally insane.
–If someone offers you part of their dessert, take it!
Dinner at Judy’s. From left to right: Aaron, Noah, Judy, Leo, Ana, moi, Matthew, Lucy, & Matthew II. (Behind the camera lens is Judy’s mom, Wendy.)
I live my life on social media these days. Scrolling through Twitter during the week leading up to Thanksgiving, in between all the articles about our uncertain future, I found a host of poorly written How-To’s, or rather How-Not-To’s, on bringing up politics at the Thanksgiving dinner table.
Like with most things happening online and in real life, I ignored. And when chatting with my sister a couple weeks ago I encouraged her not to start those hard conversations with family, even though I knew she really wanted to.
“Let’s tag team it at Christmas time,” I said, but what I really meant was, “Confrontation makes me uncomfortable.”
Then I got the chance to ignore the current state of America even more. I changed my phone background to a picture of Justin Trudeau and headed to Toronto, CA to spend a blissful four days with my friends at Judy’s house.
Judy and her city.
It snowed a little. We went swimming in her pool, did face masks, drank Canadian and Chinese beer. At the Christmas market we went on a carousel ride and then chatted with Canadian taxi drivers. We took a trip to Niagara Falls and rode the Maid of the Mist into the mist, getting pretty soaked.
We went on that little boat into that giant cloud of water spray.les chutes
For our Thanksgiving meal at Judy’s house, we had hot pot, a Chinese dish that has been around for centuries in which a pot of hot broth simmers in the center of the table surrounded by plates of meat, vegetables, noodles and tofu just waiting to be cooked in the broth and eaten. It’s warm and steamy and delicious.
Blurry because I was so excited to eat.
The way we ate, with everyone grabbing food with their chopsticks out of the hot pot (or by being served by their friends), warmed me up inside. The food was fantastic because Judy’s mom is an amazing cook (and the kind of lovely person who makes a Thanksgiving feast for a bunch of Americans even though it wasn’t even Thanksgiving in Canada). It was participatory eating; not just a plate of food, but an act to share. There was so much food to try and time in between to talk and drink and enjoy each other’s company.
Ready to go into the hot pot!Toronto specialty: surf clams
I’m not saying my family’s normal Thanksgiving buffet is lame or anything. But this was so wonderful because it helped me to realize that when I’m away from my family, sans turkey & sans mashed potatoes, the little circle of friends I’ve found will be there, sharing food and thoughts. It was heart warming.
And delicious. I’m still full from all that food.
The thing is, we did end up talking a little bit about politics during that meal. But I realized that maybe that’s what meals are for. What better time to open up then when you’re sharing food? It’s a safe space.
On the tail end of a week of disappointment, my professor declared it to be story day. In the library of the journalism building, where the tall windows showed the sprawling East Village and let the setting sun fall on our heads, each one of my classmates stood up and told a true story about themselves. Most were funny anecdotes, some horrifying in their hilarity, others touching and sweet.
Actually, all were touching because they made me laugh, or smile, or gasp in shock. They distracted me with reality. Because they were so real. Like the way my professor always says: “You can’t make this stuff up.”
What felt really good was that space of trust that we created. To tell a story, you are becoming vulnerable, offering up a piece of yourself. And, at least according to my professor, that helps you to become a good writer. If you offer something, so will other people. That’s when you get those gems, the ones you stick in your story that show humanity the way it really is. Without shame.
One of the first assignments for this class: Play cards under the Manhattan bridge.
When commuters come into Manhattan for work, its population of 1.6 million people doubles to about 3 million. During the weekday work hours, the other boroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Staten Island) empty out. Queens loses about 353,000 people.
353,001 if you count me, a recent addition to the Queens commuter population.
At the Socrates Sculpture Park.
When I’m done with my classes for the day, I go underground and get on the N train with everyone else. I fight for a seat and pull out my book. The train heads North, speeding underneath the city just to the southwest edge of Central Park, where it takes a sharp right across town and goes in super-speed underneath the East River. Finally, the train emerges onto an above-ground platform, winding its way through the taller buildings in Long Island City, the Manhattan skyline in the background. It feels like coming up for air.
Upper Manhattan skyline.
These days, the sun is always just starting to set when I get up and out of the city. The interior of the subway car, which seems oppressively lit with fluorescent lights when it’s underground, takes on the purples and blues with the sunset as a backdrop. Sometimes I do my school reading, but lately I’ve been using the commute time to read for fun.
At the Socrates Sculpture Park.
I’ve heard that Astoria, the neighborhood in Queens where I live, has the largest Greek population outside of Greece. I feel some of the Mediterranean vibes when I get off the subway. Down the street from my apartment, people sit outside at a cafe for hours ordering more coffee when they run out, smoking cigarettes, speaking English, Greek, Turkish, Spanish, other languages I can’t recognize.
At the edge of Astoria, by the riverside, is Socrates Sculpture Park. It’s a good place to watch the sunset and think about stuff.
Yesterday I was walking home from the subway and I thought to myself, “I had a really good day today.” It’s not that having a good day is unusual for me, but that moment of acknowledgment made me appreciate it more.
I also realized that when I’m feeling good I don’t walk in a straight line. I look around at trees, cars, people and sometimes try to find stars in the sky (not as easy in New York). I zig zag, stepping on leaves, hopping over cracks in the pavement, being silly in small ways.
This massive sunflower, reminding us that it’s not quite scarf season yet. Calm down.
Sunset views from the Queens subway line.
When the sun wakes me up slowly & warmly. Also the health of my plants.
Carmilla.
(If you don’t watch this show about lesbian vampires then are we really friends?)
Friday night Judy and I were having a slumber party. Yes, it is possible to have a slumber party with someone you already live with. Just add: face masks, wine, deep talks. Eventually we ended up sprawled on Judy’s bed, reading through our old journals which were both hilarious and illuminating.
Things are different since the year Judy and I met in Paris and since the year we shared a tiny dorm room on 14th Street. The world, and our place in the world, has changed rapidly, a nicer way of saying we’re seniors now and are freaking out about it. But as I read through my Bridget Jones-esque writing from the last couple years, it became clear that some of the qualities that make me into the person I am have so far stayed the same.
Take this story that I wrote sophomore year as example:
Tuesday May 5th, 2015
Truth-telling, witchcraft, bread-and-butter
I stole Judy’s pen. I am writing with said stolen pen right now. The thing is this pen is exactly like a pen I had a few months ago. So really… whose pen is it? Maybe we just switched pens? Maybe she didn’t notice her number 1 pen was missing? Maybe she did notice and just didn’t say anything? I used this very stolen pen while sitting right next to her and she said nothing.
Maybe this pen has become shared property kind of like the little pile of hair ties that sits on the edge of the sink in the bathroom. Truthfully, I never intended for those hair ties to become shared property. They’re Judy’s hair ties. I only use them occasionally and only because my hair tie — which was blue so it had a distinction from the others which are black — went missing. Much like Judy’s pen has “gone missing.” Only I don’t think that Judy is now in possession of my hair tie because I asked her about it and she said she didn’t know where it was, so obviously somebody who isn’t Judy has stolen it and is using it. That same somebody probably switched our pens too.
I bet that somebody is a leprechaun or a small pixie. It’s my fault really. Everyone knows that small pixies eat warm-ish butter and yet I still leave our butter to sit out in the cupboard instead of in the fridge.
The thing is, I love toast. And putting hard, unspreadable butter on a piece of bread is literally the worst thing ever. So I leave it in the cupboard to get to room temperature spreadability. And before you start to think about possible unsanitariness I will tell you that you are wrong and that leaving the butter out is perfectly safe, thank you very much. Except for the possibility of a butter-eating pixie infestation.
—
I will never not desire room temperature butter. And it makes me happy that Judy and I are still friends, roommates, excessive tea-drinkers. That we still learn from each other, inspire creativity in each other. And that our new apartment in Queens always smells like lemon and toast.
Lily Haight 