How To Hold On To Moving Parts
the end of year scramble
When the 6 train pulled into Grand Central and the doors slid open, Sam was already there. It was early June. This was how summer began.
“So you did move!” I said.
“49th street. I was gonna tell you at dinner.”
“Sure, sure.”
A girl asked what perfume I was wearing on the subway and I felt grown up. After dinner, we sat on Isean’s fire escape and drank red wine. Moisture from the upstairs air conditioner dripped onto our shoulders every few minutes like rain. It went on like that for a while, most of June, in fact.
There were a couple of summer parties, a couple of goodbyes. One in the Hamptons and one in suburban Philadelphia. There was a birthday party on the rooftop of a church in Port Authority. When I went back to New Jersey, I ate quiet dinners with my parents on the back porch, grilled chicken and pasta salad. I slowed down a lot. I stared at my computer screen and wrote lots of awful pop culture journalism. I made a list and another list and then one more list for good measure. Most of them went unfinished, unfulfilled.
My younger brother stumbled into the kitchen while I made tea.
“You’re still here? I thought you went back to New York.”
“Nope, I’ve been here for three days. You picked me up from the train, remember?”
“Oh cool.”
At the beach, I ate cold hoagies for lunch in the sand. My cousins tracked down the biggest inflatable raft that the boardwalk could offer: the Explorer 300, a larger version of the one we had as kids. “That’s the real deal,” the cashier said when we checked out. We put on our wetsuits and swam down the island, getting beat up by waves until the raft filled with so much water and sand that we had to lug it to shore, knees buckling from laughter and the weight of the raft.
Lindsey and I went to the Met Cloisters. A big storm hit, so we sat undercover in the courtyard and watched the rain. When it stopped, we skipped around the slippery terrace facing the Hudson River and sang “I Could’ve Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady. “This is what it feels like to have a crush,” we whispered, pointing to several paintings of saints.
In July, I was going to outdoor concerts most weekends and sometimes on Tuesday nights too. The air smelled of grass and bug spray and hotdogs. My back turned pink. I went to The Stone Pony. The first time I went to a show at The Stone Pony, I was watching my brother’s band play in high school. I remember thinking that they had already achieved the biggest dream you could have. I was right.
By the time I went to Idaho, I hadn’t been able to pick up my journal for months. The mountains didn’t help. I felt very uprooted in so much open space. The mountains were so much taller than everything else. It was a view that I found infinitely more intimidating than skyscrapers.
The scale of everything was massive. The silence was bigger, heavier than I was used to. I always thought I wanted to live in the middle of nowhere until I was actually in it. I could never possibly wake up every day and be so far away, surrounded by all of my grass, knowing that even then, my favorite baby goat might die. I, perhaps selfishly, prefer New York, where death feels like a character in a comic book because everyone behaves like they will live forever, like there are no consequences.
The consequences of a city life make themselves known quietly, in the in-between moments. How many times have you been late to dinner because someone jumped in front of the subway you were on? If it hasn’t happened yet, it will. It has happened to me more than once. I’ve received the same text a few times: “I’m gonna be a few minutes late to class bc someone got hit by the train.” Sitting in silence in a dark train car for ten minutes. Explaining it away when you rush into class in the middle of a conversation. Sympathetic nods. “We’ve all been there.” Heading to Brooklyn in late September, I found myself on a stagnant L train wondering what was happening a few cars up. Wondering about the logistics of swiftly removing a body from the tracks.
My favorite time to ride the subway is usually a little after 8pm on Tuesday nights. I am on my way home, usually carrying still-warm leftovers. This is my perfect ride: about four people that inexplicably annoy me, two young ballerinas, a middle-aged business woman, and a PDA-heavy couple seated beside me. He is trying to get her attention by waving his hand in her face. This means that he is waving his hand in my face, too. She is pretending to ignore him. I am glaring at him. One of the young ballerinas gossips to her friend over texts on her phone, wearing pink tights with an almost unnoticeable hole behind the left knee. A commuter is changing her shoes from loafers to flip flops for her LIRR train home. She takes off her socks and puts them into a plastic bag. It makes the train car smell vaguely of feet. Her unusual comfort in this very public space makes everyone else relax.
“Mass hysteria is a terrible force, yet New Yorkers seem always to escape it by some tiny margin: they sit in stalled subways without claustrophobia, they extricate themselves from panic situations by some lucky wisecrack, they meet confusion and congestion with patience and grit—a sort of perpetual muddling through…All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself, and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority.”—E.B. White, Here is New York
By the time the first inklings of Autumn began, I was far away from myself and all of my lists. I was even further away from my journal. I woke up early on a Wednesday to get breakfast with Lindsey at Newsbar, desperate to talk about our weekends. I stumbled into a Meg Ryan movie that I wasn’t properly dressed for: the table behind us was a group of middle aged friends with great hair laughing about a New Years party in South Africa. I decided to invite conversation into my life. Normal, neighborly conversation.
At Lovers of Today, the bouncer squinted at my I.D. in the dark. “Eliana. Four syllables. Good name.” I talked to the Trader Joe’s cashier about her life in Rhode Island. I talked to the security guard in the English department about the time his mother made it onto the Oprah show. I talked to a plant delivery man through the window of Joe Jr.’s. He offered me a free tree and then an ear of corn when I declined the tree. I was back in New York at last, falling into familiarity after living out of my suitcase all summer, feeling close to humanity again.
Familiarity doesn’t imply routine for me anymore. I haven’t been to Caffe Reggio in a long time; I am getting used to the transience of things. Something will be steady for about three months and anything longer than that is luck. More than once, I have fallen in love with a restaurant for a year and then accidentally sat down to my last meal there. It is not possible to hold things so tightly in New York. This is a good lesson to learn, but I hate it.
The work piles up. I keep writing very formal emails and then brushing my teeth and thinking, When did you become someone who writes very formal emails? And the journal remains untouched on my desk. With a weary sigh, I’ve come to the conclusion that I will set up a life for myself. It will be simple and I will always harbor a tiny resentment towards myself like an open wound.
The truth is that I enjoy my nature exactly as it is, but I wish that I didn’t. Or perhaps I think things would be easier if I didn’t, if I had some desire to be different. To try on a new personality, to be a little bit more unpredictable. But I don’t mind that I get emotional looking at horse-themed wall calendars at Staples. I make myself laugh all the time. “Fate dealt me a blow,” I joke to my friends. But this makes it sound like I have no power in the matter. Like I’ve totally resigned myself to the way things are.
When I came home for Thanksgiving, I realized how little I got done this year. I suppose I’ve accomplished enough, but I’m talking about small things. There are posters I left on the bay window in my bedroom that I meant to hang up last Christmas but I never did. I read fewer books this year than I did in the last four years. I turn twenty two in nine days. I have let the days happen to me. Last Thanksgiving, I told myself that I would buy new leggings and journal more. This Thanksgiving, I told myself the same thing.
I have been having a major fashion crisis recently. Everything is bad, bad, very bad. I want to get rid of everything, in theory, but then I open my closet doors and I see the absurd asymmetrical green chiffon dress, which makes me think about my high school graduation party. To try and motivate myself to do something about this crisis, or maybe just to wallow, I’ve been looking to a few style newsletters for unattainable inspiration. I appreciated Heather’s take in her recent post: “Beware the fantasy that the coat itself will save you. Successful style is a confluence of the perspective of a piece plus the perspective of your story.”
Intermezzo: Devoured Sally Rooney’s latest. Wrote about it for MEUF Magazine. (“Am I insane how to tell. Online free insanity test multiple choice. Does she mean it, he wonders.”)
Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico: An absolutely wonderful short story, and the first thing I’ve ever read by Javier Marías. Captivating and funny and imaginative.
The Clever Woman of the Family: I love Victorian women writers! I have also only been reading Victorian novels this semester, since that is the concentration of my senior seminar.
My playlists for the season:
“Last Time We Never Meet Again” by Sarah Kinsley“If You’re Gonna Break My Heart” by Inhaler“Kentucky Rain” by Elvis Presley“A Mistake” by Fiona Apple“1979” by The Smashing Pumpkins“Who’s Your Money On? (Plastic House)” by Inhaler“Son of a Preacher Man” by Dusty Springfield“Your House” by Inhaler“Losing You” by Solange“Nonchalant” by Suki Waterhouse“Old Songs” by Betty Wright & The Roots“Better” by Alice Phoebe Lou“Eau D’bedroom Dancing” by Le Tigre“You Never Know” by HAIM“24 Hours” by Sky Ferreira“ROCKMAN” by Mk.gee“She’s Leaving You” by MJ Lenderman“Headlock” by Imogen Heap
“Knowledge” by Kamasi Washington“The Whole of the Moon” by The Waterboys“A Dream Goes on Forever” by Vegyn & John Glacier“Duk Koo Kim” by Sun Kil Moon“Sweet Thang” by Shuggie Otis“The First Taste” by Fiona Apple“Sublime” by Sarah Kinsley“The Blonde” by TV Girl“The Bomb” by Florence + the Machine“Lovesong” by The Cure“Everybody Here Wants You” by Jeff Buckley“Unknown/Nth” by Hozier“Sparrow” by Big Thief“Andromeda” by Weyes Blood“Rain Down” by a.s.o“On Some Faraway Beach” by Brian Eno“Don’t Be Cruel” by Billy Swan“Hold onto Me” by YULLOLA“Our House” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young“Drown” by Mk.gee“Future Perfect” by The Durutti Column“People, I’ve been sad” by Christine and the Queens“cz” by Mk.gee“Never Known” by The Durutti Column“Someone Get the Grill Out of the Rain” by MJ Lenderman
My “Summer O’ Fun” Montage:
You can find me in the following places:
Well that montage is a dream. Please use that music for a montage at my funeral one day! But I guess real life sometimes feels more like forgotten lists and blank journal pages. But it's still life happening! It can be hard to stay awake to it when a stalled train holds the weight of a life lost. I wasn't there when my mom died but I know there was an ambulance blaring. Now whenever I hear one the thought crosses my mind that someone's life just dramatically changed. But then I go on with my errand. I love the Loïe Fuller painting! I still have the dress you wore inspired by her dance in the hall closet.