You two were all sex and philosophy...

My quarter life crisis hit in a relatively expectable way. It was early fall and I sat at my cubicle in an office that I had hoped to leave before the leaves had a chance to change their colors. The temptations of summer Fridays, a lax work load and the comfort of a weekly check deposited directly into my account were too much and here I sat as the temperature dropped as quickly as my determination. I was bored and therefore boring in the most exciting city in the world.

But this is what your 20s are all about, right? Finding who you are, shedding past skins and struggling to squeeze yourself into a new one that may be a size too small at first. Or maybe those are just my no longer size 4 jeans. I digress.

I went online searching. I wanted to be sure I wasn't the only one I knew going through this. The joy of the internet is that it puts classmates right at your fingertips. No need to wait for the reunion to outshine one another. I knew where the majority of my graduating class was, and weren't they primarily in the same boat as I was?

But then I googled Boy (see past posts for character reference) and all that changed.

Of course by 25 a handful of people I knew had begun to marry. In my few years as a New Yorker I had seen a couple weddings and even a birth. On Facebook I saw as classmates tied the knot and for the predictable reasons it made me feel old, but rarely off balance. When I googled Boy, I came across something that I could never have prepared myself for. There upon my screen, glaring at me, taunting, was Boy; my sexual first, my college addiction, the one who made me cry and taught me to heal; in his wedding photo.

At least 20 minutes must have past before I could tear my eyes away from the site. Like a gruesome car wreck I simply couldn't force myself to look away all the while knowing the nightmares I was condemning myself to by looking.

There he was with R, a girl that three years previously had embraced me enthusiastically at a bar, "I'm so happy to finally meet you! I have heard so much about you!" I had forced a smile. What could she possibly know about me. That I used to sleep with her boyfriend? That I had stayed devoted to him as he brushed me off time and again with fears of commitment and his inability to love? Did she know how we would see each other in secret because he didn't want to be in a relationship but he would start fights when other boys had the audacity to hit on me in front of him. "Why would he try to kiss you in front of me?" he reeled at my 21st birthday. "Because no one knows about you, your rule," I would sigh.

When I returned from London the second time, Boy and I met for coffee to catch up. I hoped he wouldn't kiss me. I was still in pain from leaving Ryan and too weak to fight off the temptation of Boy again. "I've started seeing someone," he told me and I relaxed. "I'm not really that into her but she's in law school with me and unfortunately once you sleep with one girl in class, the others all consider you off limit. Since I don't have time to meet anyone outside of class I suppose she'll have to do. I mean, she's cool enough..." What a lucky girl, I thought to myself, knowing Boy all too well to see this situation as one with a happy ending.

Three years later when I came across their beautiful wedding photo on a photographers site, I nearly became ill. I wrote to J frantic. Why was it that I was ok with the reality that I would probably never see Ry again and yet the mere idea that Boy and I would never again find ourselves naked between my sheets had me feverish? I had not even spoken to him in two years.

"You two were always all sex and philosophy," J replied. "That kind of strange chemical thing doesn't happen often."

I still have his number on my phone but I never contacted him. Instead I took J's words and created a blog. Then I quit my job in search of a new philosophy... and hopefully some sex while I'm at it.

Mama the angels

On a plain morning...

If you were to ask me right now why I left my publishing job, I could give you an array of answers in no specific order:
-I want to go to graduate school
-I plan to travel the world a bit
-I need to concentrate on my writing
-I am in search of my life passion

None of these would be lies per se, in fact I really do have the interest in doing all of the above. However, so far my actual actions have consisted of the following:
-Picking up waitressing shifts
-Playing grown-up as potential "vice president" of a friend's film company
-Pretending to manage a music career

All in all, the reality factor in my decision making precess is hardly relevent thus far.

And here I am, trying to write while my coffee gets cold and my mind flips over to art classes I may or may not want to take, a puppy I could possibly buy and a home office I think is necessary to create before any of the factors in the first list can actually happen.

But at least I get to stay below 14th St.

A song by any other name would not be mine

I love when songs use my name... There are really not enough of them. If you know others, please let me know! So far i have this one by Marc Broussard, there's one by Jewel and my favorite Sweet Emily by Leon Russell.

Now if only I could find a song entitled Emily Rae as right now the only songs directly about me personally are: She's a Senior and I'm a Freshman (So it Can Never Happen Again) and some song about me at a concert in a yellow tank-top when i was 16 which i cannot recall the name of... I love being a musical muse :) Bring them on musician friends!!!

Drunken ramble

Written circa summer 2003 (while drunk)

Video games at Gregor's
fucking drunk as fuck... and fuck is drunk
feels like the high school I never lived
but always wanted
The high school seen in movies
sitting at the cool guys house
getting pissed
while your boyfriend stares at the screen
in a trance of virtual technology
and all you can think about is ripping off
his clothing
-which would never have happened
in my high school memories
since i never had sex
or a real boyfriend-
Three years has made a world of difference
in my life
as I sit here in this flat
on the other side of the Atlantic
watching the only boy
I've ever loved
and feel like I'm in
the high school life
I never lived
but always wanted
deep down
If only I was still sixteen
I could be happy with this existence
but unfortunately I've aged
and must grow up
beyond sitting in this room
getting pissed
while he plays video games...
like still in high school

Quarter past conception

"I think i'm going through a quarter life crisis," i whined into my dirty martini. I had made it passed the underage ameretto sours, through the down it as fast as possible vodka cranberries and reached a martini age. And i still had no idea what i was doing with my life. Certainly i always thought by 25 i would have even the slightest idea... but i was lost, and at a loss.

Hal sighed, "That's what being in your mid-twenties is all about, kid." He continued on about how everyone goes through this at my age, trying to find love and starting your career, complicated bullshit like that. I wanted to know how long this so-called phase was going to last. Patience has never been my virtue.

Neil Young had assured me at 24 that there was still so much more. At 25 i think he lied.

La Vie en Rose

I have ceased to write in recent months, not for lack of words but merely the lack of motivation to spout them. I need inspiration however, and at the moment I know not where to find it.

I saw the most beautiful movie this past week called La Vie en Rose, about the life of iconic singer Edith Piaf. Please go see this immediately. I have a new appreciation for life and love after watching this... http://www.edithpiafmovie.com/

Now if only i could find where i lost my impulse to write.

the love of night

Bring me the sunset in a cup. Warm and smooth of yellows and fading pink. An enchantment unlike day, sweet with nectar from tomorrow's promise. Let it be silent. Please make sure it overflows with tranquility.

Pass me a glass of early morning dew. Cool in refreshing tones of blue and summer green. A champagne flute of possibility in the dawn.

Keep the day for yourself, I do not need it. I have no use for the harsh heat of a red afternoon. For it is evening alone that suits my mind and brings you softly back to me, nestled quietly on a bed made of midnight and a dream of requited fullfilment.

on the brink of something beautiful

My mind is an endless shambles of broken thoughts and shattered emotions. I feel and yet i don't. I understand yet think myself confused. I have found a piece of me in New York and lost a piece in London.

I am vintage. I am the soul of a flower with the mind of a bumble bee. If it doesnt make sense to you than you're not alone. I am. Or am i really constantly surrounded? Sharing my space. Devulging my thoughts. Giving away my cravings. Sacrificing my desires. All for what? A life that rarely supports me? A god i am not sure i believe in? A place that hurts? A person i cant seem to forget but has forgotten?

Over and over. Up and down. The mind flows and swirls and runs and breaks. It cries and bleeds. Strengthens and grows. What am i doing? What am i saying? Where am i going?

Why am i so bored of it all? When is it going to get exciting? Cause i'm starting to feel again but the feeling is desperate, desperate to feel.

its not about love, cause i am not in love...

..in fact i can't help falling out.

Time to take the pictures off my wall and pack them in my box of memories. I realized when I was there that this was the logical next step. I sat silently in a car, holding back the impending tears, trying desperately to convince myself that what i suddenly felt was wrong. But when it came down to it, there was nothing left of my love other than a scrapbook of momentos and a person who didnt exist anymore.

I still hope he'll show me how mistaken i may be... and for this once, I wouldn't mind his need to correct me...

A conversation on love

Sometimes i wish i could die so that he would love me, she whispers to me, her voice carried softly across the darkness. It was a small, childlike voice which implored me, questioned me. Did i understand that sort of pain?

Often i too believe only tragedy would make me lovable, i try to reassure her. But i am pretty fucked up myself, so i may not be the best to ask.

Currently listening to: Billie
Currently feeling: confused

A history amendment

The entry below (A History Lesson) was written in the winter of 2003 when I briefly wrote a dating column for a university website. Upon reading the piece, Boy immediately recognized himself and apologized for the unknown pain he had caused me over those three years. Despite it all, he was one of the closest people in my life and we continued our disfunctional relationship.

Several months later, as I was about to embark upon a move to London in an attempt to save another unhealthy relationship (one that at least was grounded on love and not merely infatuation), Boy and I sat silently on an Ann Arbor step sharing a cigarette. We had stopped being physically intimate the month prior and had finally reached a place where we were happily just friends.

"You know I love you, right?" he asked me. His intense eyes locked with mine. I nodded, knowing full well what he meant. He did love me, not in the way I had at one time wanted him to, but in his own way, the way one loves their best friend. Suddenly, it made sense why I had needed to maintain this paralyzing relationship for so long. Because in the end I got what I had wanted all along. He loved me and thats all that really mattered.

Currently feeling: relieved

A history lesson

Written circa January 2003

Why do we bother to learn history? It's in the past, right? What is done; is done. As much as we may wish sometimes for the ability to go back in time, we can never change what has already happened. So why take the time at all?

We learn history in an effort to understand the past to allow for a better future. We take away the hardships, mistakes, consequences and rewards to be used as tools of knowledge for situations to come. The past is merely a template to alter as necessary for the future.

But sometimes, when it comes to relationships we find ourselves on far too familiar stomping grounds. Unable to learn from the mistakes of the past, our dating patterns are often repetitive. It is as if there is a certain "déjà voodoo" curse at work here, bringing us back to the familiar battlefields of relationships past. And as human beings we are often damned to repeat the past due to an inherent longing for the recognizable in life. And until we take the time to finally learn, destiny forces us to make the same mistakes over and over.

A few years back I found myself in a particularly difficult relationship, a term I use lightly since technically we were never officially anything. Blinded by my own shockingly intense feeling for the Boy I took no notice to all the obvious signs that things were never going to work out the way I wanted them to.

I knew I was unhappy though. I knew I wanted more than a casual thing. Furthermore, when I stopped romanticizing long enough to take a look at my surroundings, I knew that where we were was nowhere near the destination I imagined us reaching. I was scared though. I was afraid of what I didn't know. Frightened that if I asked the questions that were haunting me, the truth would be an answer I was not ready to hear.

Deep down I knew all along that Boy and I were going to part on bitter terms. In fact, in retrospect I was hardly surprised the night he called things off. "Things between us have gotten far too intense," he told me in a matter of fact way that seemed inappropriate given the contradictory perception that I had of our time together. But with these words the vision of our one-day perfect relationship shattered, crashing down around me.

The right thing for me to do at that point was simply sweep up the pieces, throw them in the trash, and dispose of this unhealthy fantasy. I took the masochistic approach however as I continued to walk barefoot in the shards of glass, thriving on the pain, and believing that if I kept at it long enough eventually I would just grow numb.

Since then I have attempted on numerous occasions to unsuccessfully rekindle the flames of the past. And with each ego bruise I quickly conceal and cry of hurt I stifle, I cannot help but wonder whether I learned the right lessons. Blinded by the power of the déjà voodoo curse, I find myself caught in a cycle of reverting to the familiar with Boy. No matter how many emotional scars he leaves upon me, I allow myself to believe that eventually we will work out.

I have not walked away from this without some bits of knowledge, however. Through these trials, I admit that I have gained a greater understanding of Boy, what he wants and what scares him away. I comprehend his flightiness and I don't see his insincerity as calculated or intentionally hurtful. I have learned how to hold back what I want and how I feel in order to keep him in my life. But I'm beginning to wonder if learning how to act differently, to be someone else, was the wrong message to have taken from all of this.

In the end, it is perhaps not as important that we recognize the need to learn from the past but rather that we take the time to understand what to do with the information we have retained. For what we take away from relationships is often as important as the relationship itself.

Milan Kundera once wrote, "Human time does not turn in a circle, it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is a longing for repetition." Perhaps he was right. Perhaps man will remain unhappy while he is too weak to let go of what is familiar. To move ahead with life is a scary step but the important thing is to recognize what is worth trying again for and what needs to be left a distant memory.

Currently listening to: August and Everything After
Currently feeling: thoughtful

Masquerade

I once took a computer graphic course in high school, during the brief period when i desperately thought that working in advertising was my life calling (inspired by some romantic comedy starring Jennifer Aniston). With that in mind, the ability to create art on screen seemed relevant even if now I cannot even figure out how to make this webpage more interesting. We were given various artistic tasks like designing CD covers (my Counting Crows Live from Kalamazoo bootleg cover actually won me a Scholastic art award) and creating comic strips. One project stands out to me though, even afer all these years.

We were asked to create our own stationary set with an image representative of our selves. People plotted out their initials, designed floral patterns and celestrial images. I thought long and hard about how to artistically represent myself. For weeks I worked to develop the image that I thought spoke volumes about who I really was. And in the end I designed the type of mask that one would model to a masquerade ball.

I thought of myself and knew the real me was the one I delicately hid from the world.

Halloween was always my favorite holiday growing up and not only for the candy. Even now, I am intrigued by the allure of the night but not because I desperately want an excuse to wear my underwear in public while getting beligerantly intoxicated. I have always loved the idea that for one night of the year it is encouraged, if not downright socially demanded, that we become anyone other than ourselves. Its granting permission to forget the self that is lonely or the self that feels insecure. On Halloween I got to be someone other than myself. And that is magical.

But when I stop to think about it, am I really me on a regular basis anyway? Do I even know who "me" is? I am Emily. I am 25 years old. I live in New York. What does this mean? I hide my feelings, I create my own realities and believe only what I want to believe. I have successfully sculpted my world mentally into a fictional universe. And my character is merely who I want the world to see.

Maybe next Halloween I will go as myself, and it will be the greatest disguise I wear all year long...

Currently listening to: Nick Drake
Currently reading: On Beauty
Currently feeling: okay

It often begins so simply. A slight smile from a stranger is habitually as natural as a fresh cotton tee straight out of the dryer. Its unpretentious softness a comfort in a closet of tweed and starchy fabric. Something as careless as cotton is potentially all it takes to feel at home. But with the simplistic ease of cotton we often forget the long-term reality; the lack of durability; the way it stretches out when worn or shrinks when washed; the way in which the colors fade and it easily tears. One must never forget that the favorite cotton tee rarely lasts forever. Of course, when it does pass the unforgiving test of time, there is nothing in the world more valuable.

Take something small. Trivial. A single solitary shard of glass left on the floor that punctures the flesh. A soft breeze that lifts your hair across your eyes to briefly block your vision. A single spotlight, a staircase, the end of a song that leads to first love, than longing and finally heartbreak.

Love may rarely come easy, in truth, one must wonder if anything that comes too naturally could ever actually be love at all. Often simplicity is no more than lazy effort. In my case it was only simple in the very beginning. But of course it was never supposed to be love at all. It was a game. A rebellion. A one night stand.

When I think about that night its startling to realize how significance had sprung from the insignificant so quickly. How at one moment he didn..t even exist in my world and than suddenly it was as if he was the only thing that had ever existed at all.

I look at pictures. An Independence Day picnic at the park. There..s a group of us smiling brightly in front of Kensington Palace, drinking bottles of wine beneath a gray summer sky. I look closely at my face, stare into my eyes. Did I know I would fall in love that night? I smiled so innocently, so sincerely unaware.


It was crowded at the sports bar. Smoke engulfed the room, shading it in deep blue tones. One could almost reach out and touch the clouds, thick with scent and dirt. Underage Americans knocked into one another, spontaneously bursting into off-tune anthems of national pride in celebration of their independence from a country they were now spending their parents hard earned money to visit.

I stood silently on my own, chain-smoking my cigarettes in a pool of self-pity. Sucking in intoxicating breath as though giving my intensity head. The pounding music was ripe as autumn strawberries and equally pungent in its digression to rot. I should have been enjoying myself. I should have seen the possibilities in the evening. But the only thing that manifested within my hazy vision was the same annoyance I felt in social gatherings back home. A fear that others in the room might see me from the same angle in which my slanted view examined myself.

Dragged onto a dance floor, I pulled in my non-existent stomach and swayed to the beats, letting the tequila shots work their way slowly into my system, warming my insides and freeing my mind from its current state of negativity. Drunk boys grabbed at me but I pulled away, determined to remain in my bubble of solemnity. Alone.

As the music hit its climactic endnote the spotlight froze. On me. In the center of the floor surrounded by nothing but the heat of the iridescent glow and a pair of eyes peering down from the staircase above. Our gazes locked briefly and a smile crept slowly to his face. Embarrassed, I looked down quietly, demurely, unsure of his stare but relieved by it nonetheless.


I held on tightly to my stuffed lion as I tried desperately to drift off to sleep. In the seat beside me a man was snoring softly, somehow magically in rhythm with the music echoing through my headphones. I opened my weak eyes and gazed out the window into the endless sea of darkness surrounding me. Far below people were tucked neatly into bed. Maybe a baby was crying, a child was praying, a couple was making love. It was just another night. Was I the only one who understood why it was so different? Could someone else feel it too?

It had been as simple as a glass marble found at a toyshop. Something strangers had touched and held before. But yet it was only meant for us. It had waited patiently amongst the others, drawing little attention to its self, lost in a cool ocean of glass. We were the only ones that understood its significance. Or at least he did. Where crowds of people had seen no more than another marble, he recognized our lives.

We were at Hamley's on Regent Street. I had wanted to find a London teddy bear for my grandmother who was quickly spreading the word around the retirement community back home that her lovely grandchild was practically on the verge of marrying Prince William just by being within the same city as the royal heir. We wandered from floor to floor; shooting laser guns, playing video games, trying out our skills ala Tom Hanks on the giant piano floor mat. Suddenly he stopped, transfixed. ..Marbles!.. he exclaimed with a childlike enthusiasm that is typically lost by the tender age of seven. He was nineteen and in many ways far more mature than the irresponsible college boys I knew back home. Yet, he still exuded an innocence that I clung to, desperate to feel what seemed to come so natural to him.

And now, he insisted on buying me a marble at a toy store.

At first even I was lost to its importance. I wanted a prettier one. I wanted one that was a bit shinier, something that sparkled. It was just a marble after all. But he sought after a meaning behind it. He looked beyond the pure glass exterior and reached for something deeper.

It took him an hour to choose the perfect marble. Clear glass with a burst of color that ran swirling like a freshly lit firecracker throughout the interior. Two crisscrossing swirls of yellow, twisting and turning in every possible direction before settling softly, quietly in the tiniest air bubble and were still. Evidence of their chaotic path lay behind, a sprinkling of dust highlighting the journey. The marble cost him no more than a single pound coin yet proved to be worth far more.

There was a pureness to our love. A simplicity. And it was ours alone. It was as if no one in history had possibly experienced love before but rather it was a feeling we created, within a world that belonged to us alone. We could wrap ourselves in its elegant softness; caress the silk that engulfed our newly discovered existence. Later I carried the painful memory of its extinction tightly in my hand, my fingers wrapped around that marble as if it was the most precious artifact in the world.

I unbuckled the safety belt and carefully reached beneath my seat, cautious not to disturb the man asleep to my right. I pulled the marble carefully from my bag. Had he predicted our lives correctly? Were we to be given another chance after all? Or were we in truth forever destined to be no more than a modern day, geographically challenged Romeo and Juliet? Just another tragic love story; not the first and certainly not the last? Tracing my finger softly across the cool surface I let my eyes follow the swirling path backwards, to the beginning again, to where we were first caught in this brutal spider web.

Currently listening to: the sound of silence
Currently watching: the sleeping puppy
Currently feeling: artistic

cheater cheater pumpkin eater

The concept of cheating and its intrinsic badness has never affected me in the same way as it does most others who are as innocently naive as i. Perhaps its my disregard of the self conscious or the difficulty i have with emotion. Most likely its from my childhood.

I always hate when people want to blame their past for things but in this case there is no way around it. I was shown the ropes to cheating at an early age and now i live with the consequences. I was never witness to innapropriate behavior, neither of my parents were involved in an affair (at least not one i have ever been made aware of). My lesson in cheating was much more hands on. Direct. Truth be told, in my young impressionable years, my mother taught me how to cheat. At cards.

Its difficult to explain the game "Cheat" to someone outside the closeknit Garascia world. You would have had to spend summers at the lake cottage or Thanksgiving afternoons to truly understand the rules, or lack thereof. Even I have never been able to truly understand the childhood game of my mother and her sisters, but I embraced the cheating spirit wholeheartedly.

In high school it was clear that I was destined for a life of dishonesty, nominated my senior year for Class Scammer (securing the spot ironically by stuffing the ballot box). My fate was sealed.

I've never once cheated on a significant other however. While my issues with committment are fairly obvious (like a blaring sign tattood to my forhead reading "Cannot choose just one!") I have always managed to break off relationships before engaging in any activity with another (and a five minute rebound period does still count as being faithful).

But over the last several years, cheating and i have rediscovered one another in a new, unexpected way. While I may not be much of a cheater (when it came down to it the aggrevated combination of Jewish guilt and Catholic guilt is far too potenent for my own discrepencies), it seems that I have an unparalled talent for inspiring the desire to cheat in men. And I unfortunately find that my conscience hardly minds this challenge to my morals.

On the down side its truly bad news when you continue to fall for the ones someone else already has...


Currently listening to: Portions for Foxes by Rilo Kiley
Currently feeling: lonely

The tragedy of morning

I've often, in my more delusional moments, fancied myself a writer. Maybe not to the degree to which i aspire, but i no doubt understand basic sentance structure, diction, verbiage and all that other fascinating stuff that four years of an english major (and a basic primary foundation) aims to teach... When i was released from the sanctimonious walls of higher education, the tools to create my future were metriculously hidden in the magical power of words.

now, if only i could properly find my voice, that life i am aimlessly searching for may finally unfold before me. where to begin the quest for my own holy grail is perhaps the hardest question of all, and one that words are proving to fail me in answering.

i hope you'll read, i hope you'll love, i hope i hope i hope...


Currently listening to: Muddy Waters
Currently reading: emails
Currently watching: my phone ring
Currently feeling: artistic

hmmm...

so i keep trying to add a post and it won't work. i feel slightly devestated (which is kind of an oxymoron considering the act of devestation is an exagerrated feeling and therefore not slightly anything)...

on a wednesday morning

I never understood why certain people claimed that curse words make you sound uneducated, as if the alternatives were so much more sophisticated. Yesterday morning I felt like shit and I don't think this little detail would benefit my tale in anyway were I to choose to describe said morning feeling as crap or poop. I felt like shit. I think that sums things up quite nicely.

Getting on the subway at ten to nine it was already clear that I would be late to the office. It hardly mattered. All I had the energy to concentrate on was the pounding headache which under other far more entertaining circumstnces could have been justified as a hangover. In my case, I had spent Tuesday evening in bed with my roommate, the dog, and a new Veronica Mars (yet not in the kinky sense). At around 4am my roommate showed up in my room, tears streaming down her face, shaking like a damn chiuhaha (in this case I just really wanted to add the curse word, sue me). Sick, sick, sick she was and back to sleep I never really managed to get after finding her some meds and a cold compress for her aching head.

So now here I was with an aching head of my own, on my way to yet another long day behind this computer screen which I knew from experience would only make the pain far more severe. Across from me on the train, a cute boy in sunglasses sat tapping his pen to the beat of imaginary music, pausing occasionally to scribble down words in his nearly filled notebook.

I felt jealous. I felt anger. Why don't I write anymore? Why don't I create? Once I had talent, I am quite sure of it but somewhere along the way my creative soul was swiftly opressed as the corporate career girl declared a dictatorship.

Perhaps I stared at him too blatantly, desperately longing for my own notebook and the words to fill it with. When I got up at my midtown stop I felt a tap on my side. Looking over the boy tore out the page he was working on and handed it to me. Demurely smiling, I exited the train and joined the swelling crowd on our ascent from below ground.

The words read:

"Taken from a restless sleep to a discourse on routines, As the venom is spread the angst loses its charm and leaves my self and others cold, listless. Sour tastes left over from nights before, This morning she's late but I'll still wait cuz she took awhile to get her look straight.

Accursed street level but its cold underground. I cant ever settle In love with the sounds. The sound of her voice, I can see in her eyes Reflection shown like a ghost whose waiting to die. The boots on her legs look happy and snug. The skirt on her thighs her hips it does hug. I like you hair that way, you should do it more often."

If I knew how, I may have cried. Instead, I was inspired to write.