It’s 65 degrees in New York today. My soul, once broken by the cold weather, is fully healed. And I remembered that I love life, living, and things that are alive.
I also found a hoard of notes on my phone with quotes from friends, family and passerby. Here are some of my favorites:
“My least favorite part about the warm weather is that everyone will make posts that say Spring Has Sprung….. Sprung the f*ck off of my feed.”
“Before I even got to know him I was like, ‘His name is Brad.’”
“Our cats name is Colonel Chesapeake Beauregard Butane the Third.” “He was probably at the battle of Antigua.”
“If you get a baby dog you’ll be very sorry.”
“I look sporty but it’s a lie, I just ate half a chicken.”
(Matthew said one of those quotes but you have to guess which one.)
And the best one, a joke told by an old man in a coffee shop:
Old man: Seagulls don’t exist.
Coffee shop owner: Well what are they?
Old man: We call them seagulls because they’re by the sea, but if they were by the bay they’d be…
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.
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.
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.
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.
Judy’s kitchen has a max capacity of 2 people. But that’s okay because it was just the two of us on a stifling hot Saturday when we thought we couldn’t go to the beach because it was going to rain so instead we made desserts.
Lots of desserts.
Photo credit: Judy Gu
Our initial plan was to make a bunch of pastries and sell them at our own lemonade stand like we were kids. Well, actually our initial, initial plan was to go to the beach. But there was the possibility of thunderstorm, so instead we decided on four recipes: a strawberry cake, lemon bars, showgirl cupcakes and an orange syrup cake.
None of our recipes had radishes, they just looked so tempting at the farmer’s market.
So it turns out that baking non stop for 5-6 hours is pretty tiring. By the end, it was too dark to go sell the pastries at our homemade lemonade stand, so suddenly Judy and I had a lot of dessert for just two people.
But there was something about having the product of a hard day’s work be as tangible as a variety of baked goods that made the work worthwhile.
So far, my summer is a lot like that day. Working hard, but feeling good about it. Soaking up the warmth, riding my NYU bike, smelling the trash that is marinating on the hot sidewalk, reading books, hanging out with my new roommates Holly & Carolyn (who are really cool & nice & fun & wanted me to write about them on here).
And now, I have a week left in the Trash City before I head out for my Real Vacation.
As my junior year finished, I realized that when I try to envision the summers of my future, all I see is a giant black hole of nothingness. Maybe a trip to the Grand Canyon. But mostly void.
Me, before and after finals.
My current summer does not have any void-like qualities to it. I have been spending my days peacefully, reading books, eating peaches, getting ice cream every time I see a Mr. Softee truck. Etc.
(Also been going to work – how else am I going to afford all that luxury?)
Summer treats.
Let me be clear: I’m not about to have a Carpe Diem, live-like-the-world-ends-tomorrow (or live-like-you’re-going-to-enter-into-the-capitalist-work-force-pit-of-despair-in-order-to-pay-off-your-loans-tomorrow) kind of summer. Thinking like that only stresses me out.
However, Judy and I have been throwing out “we should do [insert activity] this summer” ideas for the last couple of months, so we put together a list (on a shared google doc because we are Millennial Trash™) of summer plans.
Making the list reminded me a lot of my summers when I was a kid. My mom used to have Lois and I plan a lot of summer activities, like going on one hike a week, going for a picnic on Jetty Island, or visiting family.
Look how perfect this peony is.
Since the future is void, I thought I might as well spend this summer like childhood me.
A few items that are on our list:
Beach party
Going to the beach
Eating watermelon at the beach
etc.
Of course, I’ll only be in New York until my internship at Democracy Now! ends in July, and then I’ll be returning home to the island, where my usual summer routine is: wake up, ride motorcycle to beach, lie on beach, ride motorcycle home, spend evening playing badminton with my dad, and repeat.
(I will sacrifice this extremely relaxing routine should any of my home friends/family want to hang out with me. I’ll be home July & August. Hint hint!)
Lily Haight 