The Decisive Element (and Farewell)

People say that time is the great healer.  In my limited experience, I've found that to be true.  With time, broken hearts are mended, ruptured bonds replaced, and our many selves accepted.  But, the healing (and the growing and learning) processes are not achieved through the passage of time alone.  The true healers are ourselves.  Whether we discover the strength within ourselves, the value of friends and family, the power of love, or the joy of the unknown, we do so only by our own effort, our own decision to explore, to change, to bloom.  As Goethe put it (in the full quotation included below), we are the decisive element.  Each one of us moves forward, onward, and upward only by our own resolve to do so. 

The perfect lotus flower floating on top of the pond exists as it is only because it first rooted itself in the muck beneath.  Life, at times, seems muddy and rotten, the lowest of the low.  But it is these times that present us with the opportunity to anchor ourselves in the nutrient-rich mire of life, and with time, to blossom.  So, time is certainly also an element of change, because the passage of time marks the patience that is required, of ourselves and of others, for the process of growth.  We are the decisive element, and our decision is the seed.  But, making that decision, living it over and over again through weeks and months and years, is what carries the seed through germination into maturity.  And for that, time is the only necessity. 

As I look back over my blog entries of the past year, I see my own evolution.  Any reader can see the shifts in topic, the changes in frequency, the adjustment of tone.  I alone also know the underlying struggles and revelations that have transformed me along the way.  Over time, I have not run out of things to think and write about, but whatever it was in me that required the sort of healing provided by this blog feels whole again.  The questions and hurdles of my current relationship feel too intimate for a public forum.  And they should -- it is by sharing both the troubled and calm waters of a relationship that two people develop depth and connection between them.  It is the shared secrets of partnership that bond people across space and time and the quiet, gentle understanding of love that opens us as lotus petals. 

So, this will be my last blog post for the foreseeable future.  Over time, I hope to continue to evolve as an individual and to nurture the growth of the new energetic force of love in my life.  And I will, because I am the decisive element. 

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"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration; I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming."


Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

The Root of the Root

I have been doing a lot of thinking, talking, listening, and writing lately -- which has necessarily entailed a lot of observation on how people act and react and speculation on why we do what we do.  I have also been looking through the lens of the Psychology of Selves, about which I have been learning more over the last few months.   It is based on the premise that we each have an inner, vulnerable child that possesses very basic vulnerabilities -- which lead to fears -- that make us feel exposed to the world, defenseless, weak.  We develop certain "selves" and use them to protect those vulnerabilities like a forcefield. 

These selves act and react to the world; they dictate our behavior and our thoughts about,and feelings towards, others.  They are the parts of us that hate, love, judge, anticipate, push people away and draw them in, drive us forward and stop us in our tracks.  They allow us to achieve our goals, whatever those may be.  They let us live in a world that takes little responsibility for protecting the most tender, most pithy part of our humanity.  They are what we identify as our personality, our "traits." 

Often we forget that there is something beneath our selves -- the reason they exist, the core that they grow around as a shell -- our vulnerabilities.  Vulnerabilities wear many faces -- they are our fears: of failure, of being alone, of being ordinary, of being wrong.  They drive the development of our selves, which in turn drive our outward behaviors.  But I think that the most basic fear, our most basic vulnerability as humans, is the same across the board -- the fear that we are unloved or, worse, unlovable.  It is the reason that we hang on for dear life to relationships that don’t work, why we strive to be interesting, why we yearn to find “the one,”  why we invent religions, why we want to accomplish great things, why we tear one another down, why we lie and cheat and steal -- because we must prove to ourselves and to others over and over again that we are smarter, prettier, stronger, cleverer, more able, more special and unique, more worthy of the praise and admiration of others -- more worthy of love. 

All of these different behaviors that seem to be motivated by love or hate or greed or desperation or insecurity or arrogance are, at their core, all truly motivated by the same one fear, the same vulnerability -- that we will be unloved.  It makes sense.  From an evolutionary perspective, love is what kept us together in the cave and in clans -- it is why we felt a compulsion to provide for our own, what bonded us together as a tribe, a race, a species.  It is what drove us to cooperate, to provide so others could thrive, to sacrifice for evolution and advancement.  In a way, it is responsible for the entire path forward of the human species. 

The desire, the yearning, to love and be loved, is primal; it equates with the desire, the yearning, to survive, to thrive, and to perpetuate humanity.  After all, what could be a more basic purpose of existence on this Earth than to continue existing.  And so, the most basic vulnerability that we all have – whether we are the artist, the intellectual, the murderer, the philanthropist, the saint, the wife-beater, the control freak, the pleaser, the achiever – boils down to the fear that that we will find ourselves to be unlovable and will cease to exist.  In that way, love is the closest to a pure state of “being” that we can achieve. 

The connection that we feel with the people around us, the love that brings and bonds us together, is the most essential impulse we possess.  It makes us vulnerable.  Our dependence on it makes us feel weak.  But, it is also what makes us, as people, strong.  To acknowledge our individual needs for love -- to recognize how it drives our behavior -- empowers us and allows us to choose the selves we use to protect our vulnerability.  It allows us to choose who and what we want to be and to, hopefully, find ourselves worthy of our own love.  And, it allows us to recognize the same need in others -- to forgive them for the selves they use to protect their vulnerabilities and to reach out in love to embrace their weakness along with our own. 

On Karma and the Collective Unconscious

The prodigal daughter has returned a weary traveler.  I will take my failure to blog for the last month as a sign that I have been too occupied with living to focus on any one thing for too long -- which is true.  Parts of my life have changed a lot since I last sat down to crank out a blog entry.  So, it was difficult coming up with just one thing about which to write.  The obvious choice, however, is to write about the one thing which is everything.  By that, I mean the overlaying (or underlying? or ubiquitous?) connection between and among all people.  If life has taught me anything over the past month it is that our experiences, our feelings, our small tragedies and victories are never ours alone, but belong to a universal (un)consciousness through which we communicate with one another in the form of inspiration, energy, and emotion.

Between every two people who meet, a connection of some sort is formed, like a thread in a spider's web.  The thread may be substantial, may grow stronger and thicker over time, or may remain merely a thin wisp of connectivity.  As we meet people and befriend them, make enemies, hate them, or love them, our web grows.  And, the the events of our lives, our experiences and the resulting emotions, and our shifts in energy send out intangible vibrations along the lines that can be felt by the collective unconscious of everyone else in our web, and on a more amorphous level, by the universal unconscious at large.  It is this phenomenon that allows us to share our experiences with one another as a human race and build a universal understanding(the evidence of which can be found in archetypes that span eras, civilizations, and cultures).   And, just as it is a process of sending energy out, it is also the process that allows the universe to give back to us exactly what we need when we need it -- sort of a Karmic reverb.

There are some ascetic religious sects that believe that exile is the natural state of the human psyche, that the only way to move closer to God is to, by physical and mental deprivation and self-abuse, remove oneself as far from the human experience and enjoyment of the material, timebound world as possible.  To disconnect with humanity is to connect with God.  As hard as I try to reconcile this mode of thinking with my experience and understanding of the world, I cannot.

For example, in the last month, a relationship that I value highly and in which I had invested a lot of my emotional being shifted from romantic to platonic (for most intents and purposes, it was a "break up").  A lot of thoughts and feelings ran through my conscious mind in connection with breaking up -- a hope that something would reignite, a despair that I'd never find something as special and unique again, a rejection of couple-hood and dating in general, a pessimism about the human capacity to love consistently.  For a while, these things took up a lot of space in my brain and my heart, and I am sure that I was sending strong energetic vibrations out into my connective web and into the collective unconscious.  And, while my mind struggled (somewhat fruitlessly) with how to explain what was happening to me, how to reconcile the things I was learning with the things that I already knew, and how to move on, the universe was quietly and methodically sending back to me the things I needed to heal and regain perspective (whether I knew it or not).  One by one, people I had not seen in months began resurfacing.  New friends came along who offered insight and reassurance.  I was also granted free days alone, moments of creativity, and time for reflection -- whether I sought them out or not.  And, through the mysterious workings of the universe, I woke up one day to find myself in a entirely different emotional place.

Quite the opposite of exile, I would describe my interaction with the collective unconscious as symbiotic -- a process of giving my energetic impulses to the network and accepting those that it sent back to me in return, whether they took the form of people and conversations or time and space.  And, more than help me cope with the events in my life (which could also be described as a pattern of acceptance and exile -- which may be what makes living so painful), the inspiration and energy the universe bestowed upon me opened my eyes to truths about myself, about human interaction, about emotions, intentions, and love.  I don't know what God these ascetics hope to access by their sort of severe detachment, but the divinity of a humanity so connected that it feeds us, heals us, and helps us grow simply by simultaneously tapping into it and remaining open to it is God enough for me.

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Let me get back to you on restaurant/bar reviews...I've been to a lot of new places lately and need to sort through them!

Film Review: Last Night

I like movies.  But, I rarely love them.  This week, Massy Tadjedin's Last Night became one of the precious few movies that have truly and deeply moved me.  I have had the good fortune of having seen almost a dozen movies during this year's TriBeCa Film Festival.  And true to festival form, they have run the gamut from flatly mediocre to dazzling-in-every-respect.  When it comes to Last Night, I can honestly say that I am in love.  (Watch a trailer here.)

The film is set in New York City, which is entirely fitting given both its U.S. premier venue (TFF) and its complexity.  Tedjedin said in an interview before the festival that the original setting was Los Angeles (and New Mexico), but that the film migrated naturally to New York (and Philadelphia) as it developed.  In my eyes, this story could not have carried the emotional load it did had it been set in any other city.  For a variety of reasons, the massiveness of the city and its resulting propensity for unexpected incidences being one of them, this movie is not a mere love story, but a New York love story.

Tadjedin keeps the plot simple:  an otherwise happily married husband and wife are separated for a night during which each faces sexual and emotional temptation -- a sexy co-worker for him, an ex-lover for her.  Each must decide how the evening will play out, balance their conflicting desires, and temper their ideas of what is right with their knowledge of what is true.  And, by creating sympathetic characters, Tadjedin and the cast force the audience to do the same.  But Last Night is about so much more than the crust of its plot. 



2010(c) Miramax

 It touches on everything from the co-existence of two romantic loves within one soul to the simultaneous separation and intermingling of devotion and desire, connection and loneliness, and passion and regret to the relativity of love.  It explores the aspects of love most essential to men versus women, highlighting the difference between the two alongside the undercurrent of commonality.  It comments upon the motivations that drive business people versus artists.  It questions the associations between love and fidelity, sex and emotion, the past and the future, and choice and consequence.  It digs deep, deeper than some audience members may even detect, at the reasons we choose as we do, deconstructing the linear mode of thinking that we tend to impose on love.



2010(c) Miramax

The evocative representation of these themes inevitably will interject doubt into societal assumptions and judgments about humanity and romantic love that most people (to the extent they can accept such dogmatic challenges) will carry with them out of the theatre and into the street.  And, when they really think about it, I am convinced that many will feel slightly uncomfortable with how much they identify with the characters in the movie.  I certainly saw myself in every single one of them.  In a world where we strive to make truth a black and white issue, the grayness of reality might just feel like a real punch to the gut.

Even beyond the thematic and emotional underpinnings of the film, it shines in just about every other respect as well.  The aesthetic is perfect moody NYC.  The acting (especially on the part of Kiera Knightly, whose performance is raw and real) is phenomenal.  The cinematography and musical composition are seamless.  And the writing, especially with respect to dialogue, is deep and spot-on.  I could literally discuss the nuances of certain scenes for days.  Actually, forget "could" -- I am.  And, while I know I'll eventually stop talking about it and gravitate towards new art, I am also sure that some bits of Last Night will still be with me years from now.



2010(c) Miramax



Hello, My Name Is: Love.

A while ago, I read a book called Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love by Dr. Helen Fisher.   It looks at the existence of love from a completely biological, evolutionary standpoint.  We feel love to compel us to mate and stay physically together to raise and support the growth of the next generation, blah blah blah.  It's not the first and certainly not the last pseudo-scientific study to completely take the love out of love (see Time magazine article at right --->).

And, I suppose that's one way to deal with it.  But, in the context of relationships, a scientific explanation doesn't do much to alleviate our confusion over the inevitable (and sometimes plaguing) question:  What is love (and am I in it)?  Proclaiming love the key to survival of the species doesn't do much good if no one tells us what the stupid key looks like.

So, the answer to one question (Why do we love?) sent me in search of the answer to another (What is love?).  Through a very scientific poll of friends, song lyrics, and the internet I was able to amass a pretty substantial list of things that love is and isn't.  I figure if I add all of these together and take the average, I'll come pretty close to approximating a definition of love:

Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment.  Love is patient, love is kind.  Love is lonely without you.  Love is real-life porn, minus all the stuff that makes porn cool.  Love is the greatest feeling.  Love is a decision.  Love is not simply another step up.  Love is like a play.  Love is not a game.  Love is a battlefield.  Love is not a crime.  Love is not love that is not also madness.  Love is louder.  Love is all.  Love is not all.  Love is enough.  Love is not enough.  Love is spelled T-I-M-E.  Love is to give without expecting anything in return.  Love is not a one way street.  Love is good and wise but not always easy going.  Love is a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.  Love is the highest form of energy and generates feelings of joy and happiness in both the receiver and the giver, and it can heal the body.  Love is the tool, and more love is the end product.  Love is not singular except in syllable.  Love is deep.  Love is funny.  Love is not this way.  Love is this.

Um, ok.  That's vague.  And contradictory.  And sort of logically impossible.  And, at the end of it all, I am still left with the same question I started with:  What is love?
 
Maybe the answer is that the question is unanswerable.  Love looks different between every two people that are in it.  It is everything and nothing in particular at the same time.  To label a feeling "love" or not is completely arbitrary.  Calling something love is like calling it "blue"; it could be periwinkle, sky, cerulean, cyan, azure, sapphire, denim or any other of a number of different shades.  Yet, to call any of those colors "blue" is not necessarily inaccurate.  Blue is many things, and so is love.
 

Determining whether the combination of feelings, connections, and actions between two people constitutes love is not as important as the fact that such a combination exists and affects our state of being.  Who is to say what precise proportions of compulsion, joy, pain, anxiety, desire, jealousy, concern and tenderness equal love?  The way that combination of emotions influences your treatment of another person, your ordering of priorities, and your sense of yourself is much more important than how you name it.  In fact, often, the effect of emotion transcends mere identification. 
 
This transcendence can be a problem for us because the ability to name a thing is what gives us a feeling of control -- and the consequent ability to set expectations and measure performance.  If it is love, it is higher than lust, which is higher than like, which is higher than loathe.  We are driven to order our feelings like we order society, priorities, and the world at large.  To allow a feeling to simply exist without naming it is to surrender that control.  To let the thing pulse and breathe on its own.  To watch it grow into whatever it is meant to be.  Too often we strangle the most beautiful, complicated emotions we have simply because we can't fit them into the emotional landscape we have painted for ourselves.  But, ultimately the feelings exist outside of a name, and more important than labeling them is simply letting them live.  
 
So, what is love?  I haven't a clue.  But, I have a hunch that the feeling itself won't just come out and tell you what to call it, so anything's love if you want it be.  (Of course, it may also be blue.)
 

Love is all around New York City, in one way or another.  Here's where I've been finding it recently...

 
Beauty Bar
East 14th St. between 2nd and 3rd Aves.

Love is all over the dance floor at 2 a.m.  Beauty Bar looks small and iffy from the outside, but is a hipster dance haven inside.  It is just what it appears to be:  an old hair salon converted into a bar come dance club.  In the front room, a sometimes-nice bartender serves a small selection of beers on tap and your basic mixed drinks, while a manicurist offers $10 martini-cures (martini + manicure) for a few hours every night.  The back room, which opens to the public at 11 p.m., is a wide open dance floor lined with barber chairs and a second bar.  The music on the nights I've been there hits the classics from 80s hair bands through Lady Gaga.  And, on a full moon, the dancing can get pretty rowdy.
 

Cowgirl Cupcakes
East 10th St. between 1st Ave and Ave A
Love (of animals) is the only real reason to come here.  This bakery opened up a couple of months ago, offering a variety of baked goods from cupcakes to knishes as well as some savory snacks.  It's cute, clean, and convenient (to my apt in the East Village, anyway).  The animal-lover owners named the place after one of their cats.  The bonus is they're all vegan all the time.  The problem is that, while they're probably good for vegan sweets, they aren't that good over all.  But, then again, I've only had the baked goods -- so, the verdict is still out on everything else. 
 
 
má pêche
West 56th St. between 5th and 6th Aves.

Love is a decent, affordable dinner spot near Lincoln Center.  má pêche (which is French for something about fish) is a Momofuku (which means lucky peach) restaurant in Midtown, which makes it a great option if you're in the neighborhood for a Broadway show or an Opera.  It's one of the few not terribly expensive restaurants (ahem, Per Se) in the area, but the food is still beautiful and tasty.  We had the oysters, which were just as good if not better than those at the John Dory (West 29th and Broadway), and a variety of small plates and fish courses.  Everything is sort of a French-Asian fusion, which means there's ginger in everything, and it really works.  The restaurant is also home to one of the two Momofuku Milk Bars in the city, which is exciting if you like the crack pie (which apparently everybody does).  We did have some questions about the use of vertical space in the restaurant, as the ceilings are at least 25 feel high, and no real use is made of the open air space -- practical, artistic, or otherwise -- which we found odd for an NYC establishment.  Here's to thinking outside of the (very large) box!

The Whole Truth and Nothing Like the Truth (So, Help Me, God!)

"The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels:  it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant."  ~Salvador Dali

New York City is in the throes of Winter's final days.  And, as Winter lies thrashing upon the table, churning up snow and sleet in its final battle against the warmth of Spring, it has also agitated the sediment of our lives that settled during our long hibernation.  In an attempt to get through the darkest days of the year, both literally and figuratively, it seems that we might have let questions go unanswered and doubts go unexplored.  It is the only explanation I can think of for the sudden emotional upheaval so many of my friends (myself included) have been experiencing in the last couple of weeks -- like our psyches are vomiting the rotten ends of winter doldrums so that they might feast on Spring.


In the course of this "Spring cleaning" of sorts, we've all gone a few rounds with sorting back over the events of the last few months, trying to make sense of the fragments of moments that we remember.  And, as we sit around trying to sort out who said what (and how) and where we are now, the problem that I see occurring is one that I recognize well: the speciousness of human memory.  In fact, the (un)reliability of eyewitness memory recall is the bane of every trial lawyer's existence at one time or another.  Extensive studies have been conducted (like the one summarized here) showing the tendency of eyewitnesses to a crime (empirically, one of the most heavily relied upon sources of truth) to distort their own perceptions and memories of events based on internally- and externally-introduced biases, otherwise known as "confirmation bias." (For a less-legal-y discourse on confirmation bias, check out the article link to the right --->)

Basically, the study shows that, once the witness assumes an ending, his memory and his interpretation of remembered facts is colored by that narrative.  If he identifies a person as the perpetrator, all of his memories will be interpreted in such a way as to support that conclusion, even if the original identification was wrong.  On top of that, the memory may already have been compromised by pre-exiting assumptions about the course of events.  For instance, if a witness to an altercation between a Latino teen and an old white man has a pre-existing bias against young Latinos that they tend to be criminals, then that witness's memory of the altercation is colored by that assumption even as the memory is formed.  As the witness takes information in, he sorts it into those bits that support his bias and those that do not.  Guess which ones he actually retains?  Those that don't confirm his assumptions about Latino youths are either modified to fit or discarded entirely. 


Eventually, in making a positive identification for the police, his assumption will shift from "Latinos are criminals," to "that Latino is a criminal."  And, upon every re-telling -- to the prosecutor, to the judge, to the jury, to the defense attorney, to friends and family, to the media -- the story will be subtly altered to fit the expectation of the audience and to bolster the credibility of the witness himself, so that each reiteration adds yet another layer of distortion.  Worse yet, we actually believe that what we are saying is true.

It gives me goosebumps to think about how heavily juries rely upon "credible" witness testimony in convicting defendants.  In fact, I think it unsettles the justice system itself -- hence the secrecy surrounding jury deliberations.  A decision concerning guilt or innocence must be made, but if it is to be based on dubious human memory no one really wants to know.  In our personal lives however, we don't have the luxury of closing the doors on a jury and accepting our fate.  We are our own judge and jury; we play both witness and deliberator.  And, for better or worse, we are privy to every judgment we make about what happened and what it meant.


Like eyewitnesses to a crime, we often have our own personal narratives and assumptions about ourselves and others, which can lead us each to cling to certain facts and ignore others -- to interpret events in a certain way.  For instance, if my personal narrative is that men are interested in me intensely at first but fizzle out before anything real can materialize, then I will expect that pattern to recur and look for signals that support my narrative.  No matter what the truth is, I color every interaction with the assumption that admiration is only temporary and that disinterest is inevitable.  In my recounting of events to friends or family, I will tell the tale on a slant, maybe even leaving out facts, with the assumed end in mind, so that they can give me the advice I need to hear in order to justify my narrative.  And, looking back over a course of events, I will even remember them in such a way that I end up saying, "Ah, yes, of course I should have known.  See there?  That's where it shifted.  (Sigh.) This happens every time."   

Given this phenomenon, it is easy to see how we can get drawn into cycles and patterns of behavior.  Approaching each new relationship as though it will meet the same end as the ones before it may very well guarantee it does.  If we assume that men have commitment issues, then we will see every action as an indication of impending flight.  If we assume that we ourselves have commitment issues, then we will introduce doubt into every genuinely connected interaction.  And, if something happens that we are unable to reconcile with our personal narrative and its attendant assumptions, it can throw us into utter turmoil.  Case in point:  Back in 2007, as my wedding approached, I received all kind of signs that something was amiss in the relationship, but my assumption that I would fall in love and build the ideal suburban dream was so strong that to deal with the panic that ensued, I convinced myself that I just had cold feet -- I fit even these things (so incongruous with marital bliss) into my narrative to spare myself the agony of departing from it.  Now that I know the true ending (i.e. we were incompatible, hence the divorce), I can look back over the facts and re-interpret them to fit a different version of the truth.  The truth is, however, that there is no truth in memory but the one we construct.

The solution to the issue of personal narratives, I guess, is to be more open to alternate endings.  To identify our assumptions about ourselves and others and re-invent our interpretations in contradiction of them.  Of course, we stand to feel foolish should the story unfold as we originally expected despite our machinations against it.  But, I have a feeling that the very exercise of cross-examining of our unconscious biases will yield enough truth to make a difference. 


In the courtroom, where truth is measured in shades of gray, defense attorneys pounce on any scrap of favorable testimony made by a prosecutorial witness.  The premise is that a witness for the prosecution is relating the facts (probably unconsciously) on a pro-prosecution slant, assuming guilt, playing to his primary audience -- the prosecutor.  Therefore, anything that that witness might say that tends to exonerate the accused carries more weight than anything he said that tends to incriminate, if only because it is said against bias, despite an assumed ending, and in contraction of the established narrative.  These things conspire to make it more true than the competing truths.  In the same vein, while re-interpreting our feelings and the actions of others against the grain of our assumptions may throw into question the truths we thought we knew, we can also be doubly sure of any truth that remains the same despite the reversal of the narrative.


Life is a big unwieldy and unavoidable mess.  The thing about personal narratives is that, even though they may be painful or frustrating or unfulfilling, they are familiar and comfortable.  They give us a sense of control over the course of our lives.  Letting go of them can be a struggle, and we will probably need to forgive ourselves for the push and pull of grappling with the gravity of our ingrained assumptions.  But, little by little, we may actually be able to re-color our bits of perception and memory, build a new concept of the truth, and, in so doing, re-write our entire story.


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As Spring shakes the last bits of snow off its shoes, so does the rest of New York City.  Time to re-enter the world and remember what we love about this place.  No matter who you are or what your version of the truth may be, the following testimony would hold up in any court:

Risotteria
Bleeker St. between Cornelia and Morton
Risotteria's claim to fame is that it is one of only a handful of totally gluten-free Italian places in the city.  But don't read into that too much.  If I hadn't already heard the virtues of this place extolled ad nauseum by my gluten-free BFF, I'd never have known the difference.  Perhaps ironically, these were the BEST bread sticks I have ever had.  In my entire life.  Period.  No, not kidding.  Serious.  We had oven baked pizza and seafood risotto, which were both done exactly as they should be (which everyone knows is not always easy to do with risotto).  And, the gluten-free tiramisu may have been some of the best I have ever had, gluten or no.  It's small, squished, and hard to get in to (the don't take reservations).  But it is worth it.


Kashkaval

9th Ave between West 55th and west 56th Sts.
Found this place totally by accident on one of those long Sunday afternoon walks where you get so lost in Manhattan that you end up ducking in wherever you can for food because you realize you've been wandering for four hours and are nowhere near where you started.  This place is a market in front, restaurant in back.  On the menu are wines, cheeses, tapas, fondue, and middle eastern treats of all kinds.  But, to really sum it all up, this is a DIP place.  And, I am a DIP person.  What luck!  A stack of toasted pita and a plate full of strange and colorful dips paired with a basic but tasty glass of wine more than made up for the fact that we still had to walk back to the East Village afterwards.  It's cozy.  People were friendly.  And the Brussels sprouts were addictive.

Terroir
East 12th St. between East 12th St. and Ave. A
(This is the East Village location of Terroir -- there is also one in Tribeca, I think.)  Before Terroir, I thought mead was just something characters drank in fanciful, timeless tales like Harry Potter and Robin Hood.  But no!  Mead is real, and it's delicious.  Fermented honey water, highly alcoholic -- truly the stuff of legends.  JK and I had a great time at Terroir, not only because of the mead.  The wine list is more like a book -- a scrap book, really, with illustrations and sarcastic notes written in.  The book and the bartenders are a wealth of knowledge on all things wine.  On top of that, they're interesting and friendly and more than willing to share tastes of the best bottles for nothing more than a smile.  True to it's word, Terroir definitely is "The Elitist Wine Bar for EVERYBODY!"

Guest Post: JK on Foregoing Tradition

My friend JK lightens my load in life in a lot of ways.  Writing guest posts for my blog might just be one of my favorite ways.  Who doesn't love someone else doing all the work every once in a while??  That being said, welcome to JK's second guest post on The Manhattanite...does that make it a tradition, yet?  Speaking of tradition, thanks to the lovely and talented JK for reaching out from the land of traditional American dreams (i.e. Ohio) to share her personal analysis of non-traditional relationships and her spot-on taste in mood-altering music.  Enjoy...
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As my friends and I enter our late 20s and early 30s, some of us who have struggled with traditional relationships begin to consider what is going wrong: is it me, them, or the fundamental structure of traditional relationships? Lately, I’ve thought more about the last possibility, and I’ve heard more people suggesting non-traditional options. I discuss a couple of the more interesting ones below with the following caveat: Although I firmly believe that these options could be a path to happiness for some people, I don’t think that they are the solution for everyone because they involve two very unique people who are willing to be deeply introspective and completely honest about their feelings, needs, and wants. (Note: I’m not considering poly-amorous or asexual relationships here because they tread into even more complicated territory. And, friends-with-benefits has already been addressed in a previous post.)

The Relationship Lease

In a recent episode of “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” (don’t act like this isn’t one of the most satisfying guilty pleasures ever) Gretchen discussed how she is uncomfortable with the idea of marrying again. Gretchen’s first marriage ended in divorce and then, just a few years later, she lost her fiancé to cancer. Her solution was a relationship lease. Similar to a car lease, two people would enter into an agreement to be completely committed to each other for a period of years at the end of which they would reevaluate and decide whether to remain together.

Gretchen commented that, shortly after they were married, her husband “let himself go” because he had what he wanted and didn’t think he had to work to keep it. But, a relationship lease could motivate people to continue to work at themselves and their relationship. I think that this is a valid point. I often wonder whether some people are in such a rush to be in a relationship because it means they can stop working so much on wooing/courting/paying attention to the other person. Once you’ve decided to commit to one person and take yourself off the market, to invest time and emotion, it becomes harder and harder to walk away.

Although I’m very attracted to this option, I am not sure it would work in reality. I had to stop naming my cars because I get weirdly emotional when my car lease ends, and my car can’t even argue with me about whether or not to keep it! Ending an emotional lease could be incredibly messy and painful.

The Open Relationship

This was widely discussed after Monique was nominated for an Oscar and revealed that she is in a happy open marriage. In an open relationship, as I understand it, both people are emotionally committed to each other and devoted to building a life with each other but occasionally have purely physical relationships with other people. I think that if it was used to explore emotional and physical relationships with others, it could quickly become complicated, messy, and painful. For the right couple, an open relationship can provide a loving relationship without giving up the opportunity for new sexual experiences and partners. If both partners are truly comfortable with the idea and willing to be honest with themselves and each other, this can satisfy those who are only being held back from a relationship by their reluctance to give up seducing or being seduced by other people.

An “open relationship” is not a euphemism for casual dating, the traditional path that many people hope will lead to a traditional, committed, monogamous relationship. When casually dating, each individual prioritizes themselves and focuses on what they need and want. There are few compromises or sacrifices. You might have to sit through an awful concert, eat a bland meal, or pretend to love walking for hours in 3” heels, but if the other person calls on a Saturday night and wants company, you’re free to say no, even if your only plans are eating cheese and doing crossword puzzles. You don’t have to meet anyone’s parents, siblings, or friends. You can even maintain your profile on as many dating sites as you can stand. And the relationship can end at any time, for any reason with little or (in the case of many people) no explanation. Casual dating can be fun, painful, exhilarating, and frustrating.

The problem with casual dating is that there is societal pressure to stop doing it at some point. Around this point in life, many people are settling down into devoted relationships and contemplating children. When they were my age, my parents were married with two kids. Should I have figured out who I was going to be with by this point? Am I somehow behind? How will I know when to stop looking or can I ever stop? Do you just pick someone and settle down or is there a sign, a feeling, an indication that the hunt is over? If I can’t decide whether or not to have red and green peppers or just green, how can I decide who to live with forever? What if the person is right but the timing is wrong? Is the timing ever wrong if the person is right? The flurry of questions that are not calmed by casual dating can be troubling and frustrating. And, when you see friends settle down happily, you begin to wonder if you’re doing something wrong.

Choosing an open relationship is not a way to end these questions. It is not a bridge between what you are ready for and what you think you should be ready for. It is not a way to “try out” a real relationship without the fear of missing out on other options. As I stated earlier, the other encounters in an open relationship are purely physical and do not include the type of emotional exploration that dating entails. An open relationship is not a “back up” relationship that fills the void while you look for something better. The only difference between an open relationship and a traditional one is sexual monogamy. You can't be in an emotionally committed relationship if you’re actively exploring emotional connections with other people.

When casually dating, both people are pursuing a relationship but may also explore physical and emotional connections with other people. The relationship and the other person are not a priority as they should be in an open relationship. An open relationship is, first and foremost, a relationship. Both people are willing to prioritize the other person, to make compromises and sacrifices for the other person, and to focus on the relationship.

I think that there are people who can make an open relationship work. And I don’t think that I’m not one of them. I know that I would be uncomfortable with my significant other having a physical relationship with someone else because physical contact, from kissing to sex, is very emotional for me. I know that I would not be able to regularly have a purely physical relationship with anyone else because, with a few exceptions, my physical attraction is tied to my emotional attraction. I know that this is not true of everyone. To have a working open relationship, both people have to be able to honestly reflect on what they need from a relationship and how they connect with other people.

If, after reflection and discussion, you realize that an open relationship could work for you, congratulations and best wishes. If not, you can join me back in the confused and questioning pool. You’ll be in good company.

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Breaking with tradition, I am not offering restaurant/bar suggestions, but I am suggesting music to listen to while pondering if you’re made for an open relationship. Here’s what I listen to while struggling with what I need and want in life:

The Quarter Life Crisis Playlist

1. King of Anything – Sara Bareilles – Someone once said they thought this was my theme song, and I was very flattered.

2. Pumpkin Soup – Kate Nash – Sometimes, it’s the woman who wants to keep things simple and physical.

3. Rolling in the Deep – Adele – Gorgeous voice, gorgeous song. If you aren’t tempted to try and belt it out yourself, you may be a robot.

4. I’m Good, I’m Gone – Lykke Li – For the ambitious, independent people who’ve been rejected for being just that.

5. Such Great Heights – The Postal Service – This constantly gets stuck in my head, and I don’t even mind it.

6. You Wouldn’t Like Me – Tegan and Sara – “I feel like I wouldn’t like me if I met me.”

7. Trouble Sleeping – The Perishers – One of my favorite songs since college.

8. This Boy is Exhausted – Wrens – Just pure honesty about how the fight to do what you want is … exhausting.

9. I’m Scared – Duffy – Beautiful and moving -- I’ve been brought to tears listening to this.

10. Merry Happy – Kate Nash – Try not to move along to the bouncing beat of this song about a girl who’s been rejected and learned she can be alone.

11. Dog Days are Over – Florence + The Machine – This song has been everywhere, and I still don’t think it’s overplayed.

12. Long Distance Call – Phoenix – I normally favor female singer-songwriters who do pop/alternative, but I love everything Phoenix has ever done.

13. Après Moi – Regina Spektor – Haunting, strong song with some strange lyrics (“I am now afraid of the old”).

14. You Got Me All Wrong – Dios Malos – So simple; so tempting to send to exes.

15. Love Like a Sunset, Part I – Phoenix – A wonderful, absorbing, emotional instrumental piece.

16. Love Like a Sunset, Part II – Phoenix – Since I’m not very knowledgeable about music, I have no idea why this in two pieces, but they are both perfect.

A Portion of Pathos: My Personal Plea

I try to stick to the purpose of this blog for the most part, whether that means bending ideas to fit the blog or bending the blog to fit the ideas.  But, this entry's message cannot be contorted into one about dating, nor should it be.  This entry is not about dating or romance or sex.  But, it is about love.  Above all things, it is about love.

I love my little brother.  Like my father, he grew up to be tall and handsome.  His sharp intelligence comes off as unassuming.  His smile comes easily.  He has a sweet disposition.  He is bad at telling jokes but a master at slapstick.  He is one of those people who seems to be good at everything.  And, when he is not the best, you always have the feeling that it might be because he wants to let others win once in a while.  He values where he came from, but has never been afraid to strike out in his own direction.  Sometimes, in fact, it seems like he has never been afraid of anything.  He loves his wife intensely and lives, first and foremost, to protect her vulnerabilities.  He believes in the existence something larger than himself that demands of him equal parts humility and service.  He is noble and strong.  And, he is brave.  He is also being deployed by the U.S. Navy.

It is easy as we debate the institution no-fly zones over Libya, haggle over the merits of attacks by air and by sea, gasp as Gaddafi rails against our impertinence with equal vigor, and grind the issue down to who said what to whom and who that makes a liar, to forget that decisions mean orders and orders mean deployments and deployments mean goodbyes -- goodbyes without the guarantee of hellos again.  The sacrifice of fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, and siblings has been a part of every war since the beginning of time.  It underlies every decision, every order.  It is present in every report from the war zone.  Yet, we so easily forget (or maybe we ignore) what it means, on this very basic human level, to go to war.  The battles we fight are across oceans, against unfamiliar ideologies, in cities we've never seen.  Most of us do not have a loved one in the military or even know someone who does.  So, yes, I can see how it is easy to forget...how it is possible to ignore.

In reality, today only 1% of the United States shoulders the burden of fighting on behalf of our country in times of war.  Yet, we make more noise over the 1% who pay a higher price in taxes than we do over this 1% who pay a heavier price with their lives, their health, or, at the very least, their hearts.  And unlike the top
1% paying all those taxes, this 1% is neither the richest, nor the strongest, nor the fastest, nor the ablest.  They do not have more life to give than any of the rest of us.  And, yet, they give what they have -- willingly, quietly, and without complaint.  People like my brother risk their own lives.  People like my sister-in-law and my family risk the loss of their husbands, sons, and brothers.  And, all the while, the rest of us, angrily angling for or against this or that policy decision, this or that broken election promise, this or that humanitarian objective, really risk only being wrong. 

It is easy to jump on a bandwagon or be swept away by righteous indignation arguing for a "justice" for which we will never have to personally chip in.  In the business world, the people running a company are inherently distrusted if they will not throw some "skin in the game" (buy stock in their own company).  No one wants to invest in an enterprise in which the guys in charge are afraid to risk their own security.  Yet, we feel entitled to pontificate about committing our troops to a war in which we stand to suffer no personal loss.  If we enter the war, maybe it will be over in days, maybe it will reinforce the power and influence of the U.S., maybe it will win Obama another election -- and maybe it won't.  If we happened to preach the wrong side, the only thing that might be injured is our pride.  At times, we can fall so in love with the personal puffery surrounding political rhetoric that we become blind to the fact that, while saving the citizens of an African nation means we get to be the international hero, it means indescribable suffering to the person who will lose a loved one in the fight.  And that person may be the one sitting there enduring our tirades, biting his or her tongue, adrift in a sea of fear and pain that we could not begin to comprehend.

And, yes, I know:  joining the Navy was my brother's choice.  Months before my brother left for the Naval Academy, al Qaeda ran hijacked planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.  And, in the horror and grief that ensued, my mother asked him if he was reconsidering his choice to go fly planes for the Navy.  He told her very simply: "Yes.  Now I want to go even more."  In the wake of death and terror, people like my brother chose to join the league of protectors rather than protected.  His was a choice that each of us counted on someone else making.  Each one of us who did not choose that life assumed that someone else would.  We took for granted that he and those like him would choose to train and fight and sacrifice so that we could choose otherwise.   This does not now entitle us to disregard that sacrifice in order to defend our self-centered expostulations on impending war.  The deaths of military troops are just as agonizing as the deaths of civilians.  On the other side of each one is a weeping parent, spouse, or child who did not choose that loss, who bears their grief quietly as the cost of love.  My brother did not become expendable because he chose to protect us.  He became invaluable.

There is no thanks that can be given in equal exchange for the service and sacrifice of military members and their families.  I am not asking that more people join the military, nor am I asking that we never enter another war.  All I am asking is that, in our heated debates over who to help and who to bomb, who to support and who to destroy, we remember the obligation inherent to being a citizen of the United States to protect those that protect us.  Today, as we argue and make decisions about who to defend and who to overthrow, I am pleading with each of you to consider the people who will be footing the bill for our righteous indignation and global heroics with their families and their lives.  Rather than lamenting the loss of young glorious men like my brother in the weeks and months that follow, weigh the cost of their loss today.  Among policy and reputation and transparency and politics, let them matter.  Let them matter today as much, if not more, than what the world will think of us tomorrow.

Stories Without Endings

I miss Sex and the City.  I miss it especially now that I live in New York.  Yes, the show can be cartoonish at times.  But, there is also something comforting about knowing that the follies, disappointments, and neuroses of our daily lives are shared among a sisterhood.  It allows us to laugh at ourselves.  And, within our own little families of girlfriends, we compare ourselves to those singular characters, identifying the bits of them in each of us.  Rather than being adrift in the seas of our own troubles, we are connected to a universal experience.

Plus, there are things to be learned from Sex and the City:  that your most valuable asset is your adopted family of friends, that money is nice but it isn't everything, that adaptability is key to happiness, and on and on.  One SATC lesson that occurred to me lately isn't what I would call an overt theme in the show, but more of a latent truth about life that translates to the SATC story line.  Over the course of the show's six seasons, I noticed that (with the exception of Samantha), the girls tend to date just one person at a time -- all for various periods of time and with varying levels of success, to be sure.  But, really, it is rare that any one of them is jumping from man to man or dating multiple men at once (again, with the exception of Samantha, who even settles into her own monogamous relationship by the final seasons). 

This particular dynamic of the show seems to me to be the most inaccurate with regard to the normal dating patterns of Manhattanites.  Most single women I know in New York have a much more sporadic, overlapping, and frenzied parade of lovers than is depicted on the show.  Let's face it, at times, we go through men like New Yorkers do umbrellas in a rainstorm.  In fact, considering the volume, variety, and vulnerability of dating in New York, the romantic lives of a lot of Manhattan women end up being comedic in their own respect.  So, why downplay this reality when it is so humor-ripe?

At first, they didn't.  Very early episodes (beginning with the pilot) seem to embrace the skittishness of dating in NYC, and even some later ones throw in a random one-off or two.  But, as the seasons wore on and the show moved from the attract-viewership mode to the keep-viewership mode, the dating MO of the characters shifted.  My theory on why:  because aside from the obvious joke presented by the A.D.D. method of dating, there really is no story there.  Viewers need to be drawn into the drama, get to know and connect with the characters, and feel that the plot of the series goes someplace meaningful. 

And, we crave in our own lives the same sense of story we crave in SATC.  Each person you date is special and unique in one way or another, but individual connection loses some of its impact when it is just a drop in a pond during a monsoon.  The fate of the expanding ripples created by that single raindrop is lost to the fury of the storm.  The business of dating is just like learning a skill, starting a career, or taking on a hobby -- most of the satisfaction comes from getting better at it and seeing where it takes you.  In dating, yes, you've got to run the gamut a bit to sort through your options, but that is only a meaningful process if it leads somewhere.  If it doesn't, eventually, it starts to feel a little hollow (leaving a lot of room for malcontentment).

I recently met up with my friend B, who began talking about his girlfriend, who he had been dating for about a month.  What??  A month and you're already calling her your girlfriend?  In a world where two people can casually date for years on end, I had to know -- what was it about this girl that made him switch into girlfriend mode so quickly?  His answer: nothing.  Nothing that he couldn't eventually find in someone else, anyway. 

"I'll meet tons of girls," he explained to me, "who will all turn out to be some variation on awesome.  And, I could go from one kind of awesome to another forever like that.  So, I realized that, if I wanted something of substance, I would just have to choose."  So, choose he did.  And, now, despite all of the other flavors of awesome he encounters, B focuses on appreciating the awesome that is his girlfriend.  And, by his own admission, he is happy.  One day, if all goes well, I have a suspicion that he will be so sold on her brand of awesome, that all of the other awesomes will start to seem a little less awesome.

It's just as true in real life as it is on Sex and the City:  Dating a parade of suitors can be an adventure.  It's what attracts people to singlehood in New York.  But, it is a cycle that becomes familiar after a while, and then wearisome, and then numbing.  At that point, instead of losing viewers, however, we begin to lose ourselves. 

So, maybe traveling down just one road becomes the new adventure.  Investing in one person becomes the new uncharted territory.  We have the forward momentum, we just have to choose the direction.  Choose a path, choose a partner, choose to put ourselves out there in a way that is unfamiliar (or even frightening). 

Great.  Now that we've figured that out, the question becomes: how exactly does one decide to choose?  That one is going to take a little more figuring out for me.  It's been so long since I actually made that choice (or since anyone made it in regard to me) that I sometimes forget what it feels like.  But, I can objectively see that it happens.  So, it can't be impossible.

Even then, there is no guarantee that the path (or person) you choose will get you anywhere that you want to go.  But, avoiding failure is also avoiding success.  As a writer, I know that I'll start a hundred stories or blog posts or poems that I am bound to never finish.  But, I sit down to write them anyway, knowing that, in terms of endings, all I really need is just one.

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In the meantime, here are some places that the girls didn't go in Sex and the City that they probably should have:

The Pink Pony

Ludlow St. between Stanton and E. Houston Sts.
It's a coffee shop.  No, it's a diner.  No, it's a bar.  Ok, so it has sort of an identity crisis.  Actually, according to the staff, it's "transitioning it's image."  Whatever.  It's cute in a French-countryside-meets-hipster-cool kind of way.  The vibe is relaxed, the pace is slow, and the place is generally inviting.  The food is just ok (my goat cheese and beet salad had way too many beets and not enough cheese to match) and the coffee was middle of the road but flowed freely. 

The Roebling Tearoom
Roebling St. at Metropolitan St. (Brooklyn)
Picture a warehouse made over just enough to be functional as a gathering place, and there you go.  Another place that has simply decided to change with the times...of day.  Coffee and tea in the morning to a substantial food menu during the day to a bar with the basics and some decent beers on tap in the evening.  It's in Williamsburgh, so the atmosphere leans towards hip rather than trendy, which is a distinction rarely made, but worth noting.

Cowgirl (Hall of Fame)
Hudson St. between W. 10th and Charles Sts.
Formerly known by its full name: the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, Cowgirl is Tex-Mex with a feminine twist.  It's true they have a fair amount of memorabilia, cow print, and things made out of animal horns, but it's more of a restaurant/bar than a legit museum (just in case you had gotten your hopes up).  I came here for the food months ago -- and it was good, especially if you like things made with corn.  But, I came here for the margaritas only recently, and found myself wishing that I had sampled them the first time around.  I might have come back sooner.