Part One: {Bits and Pieces} 2004 - 2010
Things have changed. After recently returning from a trip home to San Diego and then to my other, slightly less permanent home in New York, I realised that indeed, things have changed quite a bit. And not just in those ways where change is physically visible, like noticing a new building or street sign, but more like pockets of my own memory have evolved.
It’s true. Distance really does make the heart grow fonder. I returned to a New York that hadn’t always been so kind to me, and perhaps I to it, but what I saw on this most recent return was something reminiscent of the very first time I fell in love with the city that never sleeps.
I was 16 and on a flight with my mom to scope out potential colleges to which I would apply the following year. I had already decided that I was going to love NYU. Much like other decisions I have made in my life, I knew before actually knowing or experiencing anything to help guide me. To put it lightly, I was much more black-and-white then than I am now. It was all or nothing and I loved everything about NYU while knowing absolutely nothing about it. Foolish, probably, but that decision gave me great strength and continues to remind me that sometimes, we really do just know.
Either way, knowing or not knowing, my mom and I landed in a city covered in white. It was so beautiful then. A New York dressed in a blanket of snow that was the result of a three-week storm that brought silence and stillness to a city that almost always knows no bounds. It was magical. I wanted so badly to be a part, a member, of this angelic island. And now, when I look back on it, I really think that first time was the last time that I saw New York in that gasping for air, wide-eyed, can’t get enough of this city kind of way. Because the way I saw it for the years I lived there and even now, when I return, is a tapestry of layers and layers and layers. Cities on top of cities on top of cities. Quite fitting then that New York really was a white, clean, pure, empty canvas when I first met her.
Now, because of the areas I lived in over six years and the friends I had, the guys I dated, the jobs I held and the museums, galleries, cafes and parks that made up my life for so long, I have a hard time walking more than a few blocks without remembering something of substance. Like the time some asshole asked me to break his dollar for four quarters and when I placed four quarters on the coffee table, he took my four quarters and walked away and I was too dumbfounded to realise what had just happened. I was a little naïve, but that too would change. Then there was the time my freshman year roommate stopped taking her medication for being bi-polar and manic-depressive and decided to burn cigarette holes in my clothing, and throw our collective furniture out of our 9th story window. I didn’t know that five years later, I’d come face to face with her at a co-worker’s birthday party in Brooklyn. But that too, I’ll explain.
I suppose our lives are defined by the moments we want to remember as well as the ones we hoped we could forget. After college, there was the time I landed my dream job at Sotheby’s and then the time I was laid off three days before my 23rd birthday and ended the night with drinking too much, passing out on the Q train and waking up all alone in Coney Island. See, it was a true story that happened to a real girl before we all saw it happen on the season finale of HBO’s GIRLS last year. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, Youtube it.
In between the big moments, like when I never thought I’d ever interview for a job at a grocery store called Trader Joes, I tried my best to live my life and live it well. My dad, ever a man with mantras, likes to say that if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person. So, I kept busy. For my last two years in New York, I worked full time for Trader Joe’s, while I assisted the manager of an artist’s studio and did a fair amount of Upper West Side nannying. When I look back, I don’t ever really remember taking the time to decide whether I should stay or leave New York. I wanted to stay, no matter what, so I did.
At that point, in the beginning of the winter of 2008, most friends I knew had either lost their jobs, or were about to lose their jobs and there seemed to be two choices—stay and make it work or leave and (most likely) go home. I didn’t want to go home. I wasn’t ready. At least not then. I didn’t want my time in New York to be something I could talk about as if I’d just checked it off some list of cool places to live in the world. I wanted it to be more than a bullet point, which meant giving it everything I had, and at the time, that meant dealing with and embracing change, however inconvenient it may have been.
So I traded in my stilettos and pinstriped trousers for a pair of ripped jeans, converse and a pocketknife and spent the first four months of my new job working shifts from 4 am till noon or 6 pm till 2 am. I saw a New York that I had never seen before. When I was really motivated, I’d go running with all the other psychos at the crack of dawn and I’d love watching the whole city wake up. My vocabulary changed from talking about art, sales, and auction results to asking why milk sweats and providing a customer with a satisfactory answer to why the unsalted crunchy peanut butter didn’t arrive as scheduled. Oh, the joys.
I’m sure I was just so happy to have a job and a fun one to boot, that I let go of my pride pretty quickly and told myself that sometimes, we have to do what we have to do so that eventually, we can do what we want to do. I survived those first few months of living a completely different life by laughing about what went down at work that day. Like the time a customer refused to get in the back of a fairly long line towards the checkout and another customer, who was not at all in harm’s way, threw her basket down in a furry which held 12 dozen boxes of eggs and simply walked away. I was shocked as I stared down the remnants of 144 broken eggs and then I grabbed a bucket and a mop to clean it all up. We really did have some total nut jobs enter that store.
There was the dude who was forever buying and then returning half eaten boxes of cherry tomatoes. I have no idea, I really don’t. And the mom who refused to let her daughter eat any piece of chocolate that had less than 70% cacao. I had customers who had memorised the entire schedule of when our trucks were meant to arrive and then asked, in only the way a born and bred New Yorker can, where the goddamn truck was. There were customers who made me love my job as much as those who made me hate it. And there was one man, who was deaf and blind, that would let me sign his fingers so we could find the same seven items he bought every week and on his way out of the store, he’d smile and mouth ‘Thank you, Claudia’. He was a gem and a half. For 14 months, I people-watched while I worked and when it came to leave a store that took me in and made me a part of its family, I knew I’d never forget the day a nice girl from California told me to apply for a job.
Life had thrown me for a few loops. My parents kept telling me that if losing my job at 23 with no one to be responsible for except myself was the worst thing to happen to me, I should consider myself pretty lucky. But I didn’t feel lucky at all. I spent my days carrying cartons of milk and boxes of bananas to living my nights in some sort of fucked up diluted version of reality where I hit the bars hard and wondered what the hell I was going to do with my life. Sure, I enjoyed a schedule that fit in time for yoga and the gym and endless mornings of free coffees and standing breakfast dates but for a girl who went to college at 18 knowing exactly what she wanted, I was now 23 and had no clue. I guess like anything worth doing, I had to learn to give into the process. I’ve always had a hard time with ‘the process.’ So often, I wish I could just fast track my life to where I feel better and I’ve learned my lessons and I’ll do it better next time. But the reality is that there is no way out of the process; at least not a way out where the end result isn’t something amazing and always something that can never be predicted or better yet, planned.
This life in limbo brought out each insecurity I had to the surface. I remember the day I was helping a lovely woman check out her groceries when she told me that at least her daughter would never have to work at a grocery store because she had, what turned out to be, the same degree that I held from the same university. I stood there a bit shocked, though worse things had been said to me, and didn’t really respond except to say that I wished her daughter luck and told myself to remember that we are never too good for any job.
It must have been soon after that where I decided to embrace my largely less idealised version of life in New York after the glory days of college. And it was that same summer of 2009 where my horror of a roommate came back for one finale of a goodbye. Turned out, while I thought she’d sent herself home for a much needed drug and therapy combo, she’d stayed in the city and eventually moved in with her best friend who I had coincidentally befriended as another employee of TJ’s. Small fucking world.
And there you have it. I showed up to a party for who I thought was a friend from work, only to find out that it gave her best friend/my former roommate, let’s call her J, a moment to let out everything she had always wanted to tell me. Poor sod. I stood there shaking from nervousness while J ripped into me and when she was done, I walked away and told her not to worry because I’d never come back. She was so angry. She felt that I’d messed up her college experience, her life, her…everything. And what’s worse is that she had held onto that anger for so long and for that reason alone, all I felt walking away that night was compassion with a side of pity. I realised that things really do come full circle, eventually. We can’t rush the process. However frustrating it is, we have to give time, time to work.
We often speak of the importance of time. When things inevitably don’t go our way, what do our friends tell us?
‘Don’t worry, give it time. Everything will be alright.’
But rarely, I find, do we acknowledge that time itself needs time to work. We have to learn that while time will naturally pass, as will emotion and memory, there is no prescribed order or method for how long we must wait for time to do its thing and heal our pain.
After a fast and furious romantic fling with my store manager and debating leaving a city I had learned to call home, I applied for a fellowship that changed everything.
I loved my years at NYU and as a result, I remained close with my professors who I considered both mentors and friends. They’re the same people who are blessed with an uncanny ability to tell you that your work is shit but it’s ok because you’ll get it right one day. They took me out for dinners and coffees and made college feel exactly how it should feel: Like a place where anything is possible and you can be whoever you want as long as you own it, defend it, and stand by it. I learned what it was to appreciate this thing called photography and even though I had nightmares fearing dreaded slide exams, I know that I loved explaining the similarities and differences between two pictures. It was about looking again and again and again. They asked us to experiment, take chances, deal with failure and keep going. And now, nine years after the beginning of that experience, I work as a Picture Editor for Getty Images where all those words of wisdom come creeping back into my memory, as if I’m still sitting in class trying to figure out what my place in all of this is.
And so, when I was without a job in the arts, hanging out in limbo, these same professors did their best to get me up and running again. I was advised to apply for a fellowship at the Studio Museum in Harlem. It had everything. It was one year to work alongside the Chief Curator with a small team who would organise exhibitions. At the time, I convinced myself that it was my ticket out of nowhere land, but in the end, after making it to a short list of three, I flew back to San Diego for a visit and told my parents that I didn’t get the fellowship, I was going to move back home, apply to Graduate School and travel the world. And for someone who was so lost with no idea of what to do, I finally had a plan. And even though I advocate a life of travel, risk and adventure, underneath it all, I really love a good plan and a nice list.
Some of my friends at the time asked me how I could ever leave New York. To them, there really wasn’t anything else except this place where we had lived during the most formative years of our lives. Never mind leaving New York, most of them saw it unfit to go above 14th street. But I had left, once before, to travel on what became a life-altering journey to India and I wanted more. I’m a firm believer that you either love to travel or you don’t. (I know, there’s that black and white in me again.) But really, either you crave it like it’s the best burger you’ve ever had and you want it all the time or you don’t. And if you don’t, you will enjoy the idea of traveling, the thought of going somewhere completely new and different but you might never actually take the jump.
When I returned from India the first time, the change I felt within me was so physically visible that my professors advised me to take a writing class and finally write down everything I was feeling on paper. They are the reason I’m still writing today. The very act of putting words on a page became synonymous to taking a deep breath and exhaling one of those big lion breaths that yogis often speak about. Writing quite simply became another layer to my work, and another way to tell a story. And when I put those words on a page, I was able to gain perspective and understanding on things that had taken a rather large toll on my life. Like being rushed to the hospital in New Delhi just minutes after landing or contracting Typhoid in India’s holiest city or seeing the Taj Mahal with my mom in the middle of May with almost no one else in sight. These are the moments I remember now and they were the same ones that convinced me to leave New York in June of 2010.
After throwing two epic goodbye parties, because for some reason we didn’t finish all the alcohol the first time around, I packed up my life of six years into box after box. I made what seemed like never ending trips to FedEx, and spent my last few days doing all of my favourite things. I ate cookies from Levain bakery, took strolls on the Highline, read my book in the sculpture gardens of the Met and the MoMA and drank coffee at MUD. These activities may seem somewhat mundane but they were the places I went to for solace and some peace and quiet in such a noisy city.
For the year and a half before I left, I had an almost always-standing breakfast date with Emersbean. Around town she is known affectionately as the Godfather—truth—because chances are, she’s fixed up most of the East Village residents with super-cool-cheap-ish-housing. Upon graduating from NYU, I was referred to her company where she set me up with a great place but it took another nine months or so, when my bathroom ceiling collapsed (so maybe not such a great place?), for us to actually meet up again. And then, well, we kept meeting up.
We liked to meet on Thursdays, at 10:30 at MUD and I’m pretty sure we usually ordered the same things, week after week. It was our joint, though some weeks we’d agree to change it up, but inevitably we’d go back to MUD because it just worked.
E likes to joke that she is like Europe and I’m like America because she believes most people are guilty until proven innocent and I am the other way around. It’s true. She’s a cynic. And while for so long she had me down as a hopeless romantic who believed that people were inherently good, I know she knows that has changed too. And not to say I have covered my heart with bars of steel, but her words over the years serve as simple reminders to take a step back, ‘slow my roll’ and remember that when people disappoint us, it’s ok and life goes on. If anything, I hope that we allow each other to see things differently while still holding on to who we are inside.
E was the last person I saw before I left New York and as I recall, she wouldn’t even say ‘goodbye’ because she said it was more like I was taking a leave of absence than leaving for good. The jury is still out on that one.
And then I went home. I moved into a new room in a new house because my parents had recently sold the one I had mostly grown up in. This time, everything had changed. Absolutely everything. We lived in a new neighborhood, with new types of people and I really had no idea what I was doing. The plan was to apply for Graduate School and, while I did follow through on that one, everything else seemed a bit fuzzy. As someone who is terrified of becoming complacent, I feared that I might have left one of the greatest cities in the world and would become stuck in a place that looks like fantasyland. I immediately missed everything about New York.
In the office of the Student Travel Association in Pacific Beach, there’s a sign that reads ‘Home is not where you’re from but where they understand you.’ I read it the day I walked into the office in August of that same summer to start planning my big adventure, and I’ve never forgotten it. I suppose the words are fitting to my life and, thinking back to those months at home, I don’t think I felt at home at all. Even when I met another friend of great substance, PMason, I still felt like I was between things. Not really here and not really there. I clung to P because she too had spent time in New York, four years more than me in fact. But, for all the times I had decided to shake things up, I just wasn’t ready to accept the physical change I had voluntarily decided to make.
But P and I sorted through it together. She knew what I felt because she felt it too and, as the story goes, we learned to see a place where we had both grown up in a new way. Neither P nor I had spent a significant amount of time at home in the years we lived in New York and now was our chance to give our new home what we had given our old one: a chance to view it as a home. And that, in the end, was how my new-old home really began to feel like a place where I was understood. It didn’t happen overnight. These things never do. But sometimes things change so subtlety that we don’t even notice and that’s exactly what happened.
As the weeks passed, and my friendship with P grew deeper, I realised that I had to leave New York to really see what had changed within me. In a most fitting way, I had to come home to put it all together. I did miss the hustle and bustle of a big city, but my new-old home was so beautiful that it almost took care of everything else it lacked. That’s the thing I realised about New York once I left…it is so many things, but it isn’t beautiful. It’s rough and exciting and dominant and dirty and loud and soft and eerie and epic, but it’s not beautiful. It’s not beautiful in that serene, lovely, fantasyland type of way and that summer, when I was home, I just wanted to feel calm and at ease in ways I never could while living in New York.
Part Two: {In Retrospect} September 2011 – January 2014
When I eventually moved to London in September 2011, I wrote an email to a friend expressing my concern that I felt my luck had run out. This friend, soon to become my first real pen pal since the fourth grade, has been something reminiscent of the older sister I never had more than anything else. The truth is we never really met…not physically speaking, at least. She, Xxn, got a ho ld of my travel letters from my eldest brother whilst I was traveling around the world and contacted me to tell me her thoughts and how much she appreciated and loved reading what I had to say. I remember feeling overwhelmingly flattered and I guess the rest is history. We continue to write to one another, to see each other when I visit New York and perhaps just to know that no matter the distance, we would always be available to share our thoughts with each other.
In this letter, just one of many to follow, I told Xxn that I worried about doing well in school and in life in London. After all, I’d been out of school for quite a few years and basically wasn’t completely convinced that I had what it took to succeed. After traveling around the world and being accepted into multiple programs, I had this awful writhing fear that everything was just going to fall apart. That maybe my life was too good to be true.
I laid it all bare and confessed that I felt like I’d always gotten everything I ever wanted. Because…well, I had. I was privileged with a seemingly sublime upbringing where my parents valued education above and beyond everything else, sending me to schools that I hope I will be fortunate enough to send my own children to one day. These schools promoted individuality, independence and an appreciation for knowledge. It’s a cliché but it’s the truth. Knowledge is power. And of course, these are the schools where I fell in love with painting, ceramics, photography and history. Good teachers are a blessing, man. They’re like really well dressed men or that couple who are as equally whacky as they are sane. They are a gift from society because they make our lives better and more interesting and for that, I will always be grateful. It’s the same reason why I love talking to people. The whole thing is a surprise and I guess the way I see it is that I’ll most likely be better off for having met them or at the very least, knowing what I don’t like in other people. Process of elimination. God bless it.
Anyways, back to things falling apart. After my adolescence growing up on the beach, I was accepted into my dream University, followed by my dream job, my dream city and what if I’d reached the end of the line. In response, xxn told me about her fears in an all too familiar story. That people around her just assumed she’d slapped on some gorgeous red lipstick , thrown on a hot pink blazer and somehow been accepted to and then graduated from Law school. What she ended up reminding me was that we forget how hard we worked for the great things in our lives. We so easily forget all the nights without sleep, all the edits and revisions and all the insecurities that come with having to wait for someone else to tell you that you are good enough to proceed to the next level. Yes, xxn agreed that of course luck has a little bit to do with it…right place, right time type of thing. But our achievements are due to the effort we made and the sacrifices we made and the choices we ran towards because of that totally guttural nod telling us to persevere. Xxn was right.
I wrote my applications for Graduate School the same way I’d written my applications for Undergraduate School. And to that end, the way I’ve done anything that’s been worth doing. I made list after list after list, slowly crossing things off and then replacing them with other things that needed doing. Those applications were an exercise in patience and beyond. They were a lesson in letting go of lines I had written that I’d become emotionally attached to but just didn’t work anymore. The question with any sort of Post-graduate education is a test of how badly you really want it. And—of course I only see this now—it was a sneak peek of what was to come for the next two years.
London was a bitch. It really was. Even now, when I tell people how much I miss it and how badly I want to visit, I can tell that even as they nod in complacency, what they’re really thinking is, “You do? You miss it? What…exactly…do you miss?” And for the most part, the counter argument is a good one. I spent a solid portion of my first year making fun of all things English and found it quite difficult to get passed the reserved, traditional, quietness that was so different to everything I had felt about New York. Foolishly, I thought I was going from one metropolitan city to another. But, no. It was more like I moved to a place where the letters were all the same but the words didn’t make sense and they definitely didn’t sound right and most often it felt like I wasn’t really here or there. Limbo.
I wanted to feel at home (a recurring theme, I know). I wanted to make my flat completely mine and I wanted to make friends that would become my family. What I learned—in retrospect—is that I have very little patience for things to come together. While I am indeed an advocate of the idea of patience, it took a year in London and a few months of traveling to really start to settle in a bit. It took a while to realize that as much as I loved being at school and being part of an academic environment, my Graduate school experience would never touch sides with my experience at NYU. Everything about Graduate school was different—it wasn’t as much about growth as it was about finesse. It wasn’t about hand holding as much as it was about throwing students into the very deep end of a freezing ocean (I wish I was kidding) and seeing how well they could swim.
I definitely felt like I was drowning during that first year. Michelle, a born and bred American who had gone to NYU also and was at Goldsmiths for her second doctorate (I love her but she is an overachiever) provided some very comfortable floaties when my arms and legs grew tired from trying to tread water. She broke down a system that felt so foreign and helped instil a confidence that I’d lost somewhere along the way. She showed me the ropes, she edited my work, and she became an academic advisor, a tutor, a friend and then a confidant. In a world that at times seemed so very prim and proper, she seemed just like another friend from home and what a gift she was.
We spent my second year in London discovering the city together. We brought our addiction of New York Sunday brunch to London and succeeded in finding something pretty close to something so traditionally New York. We discussed our research, we geeked out on things we’d read in science magazines and we made London our own. And that’s when it happened…that’s when my opinion of London changed and everything kind of got pretty good. I had a nice circle of friends at school and I had accepted the fact that they would most likely never become anything close to the friends I had in New York and I was OK with that. Maybe one or two would or maybe not. But the adage is true – friends are for reasons, seasons or lifetimes.
Friends at school were great for coffee dates and library buddies and trips to museums and galleries and venting sessions. But I knew I wanted something a bit more close to home and so, in my second year, I got my Jew on and realized how much I’d missed it. I grew up going to Shul and having Shabbat dinners and I wanted it all back. I started walking to Shul on Saturdays because it was actually faster than taking the bus – go figure – and I helped to plan a few events through the local Shul youth group. It was fantastic. Sure, they were London Jews and the hat situation at Shul was kind of out of control (I’m talking Doctor Seuss style here) but they offered a sense of community that I hadn’t really found up until then.
At the same time as all of this was going on, my cousin Dave and I developed a friendship that stuck like crazy glue. For a writer who is rarely short of things to say, I’m not sure how to go about this one. He’s special. Sure, he’s family – the grandson of my granny’s sister – but as time went on, it felt less like obligatory love and more like…non-obligatory love (Dave, don’t argue here). It helped that we enjoy doing the same things, find similar things hilarious and are an ear to each other for all of life’s annoyingly little first world problems. He helped me buy my bike the day after I moved to London and came running with the speed of a gazelle the night I called – frantic – that I’d been mugged. It sucked to tell him that I was leaving London when things had just gotten so good. Come to think of it, he didn’t want to say ‘goodbye’ either. It is such a win that he’s family and awesome and even though I wish I saw him more, I feel so blessed that we got two years together.
I like moving quickly. And when I want something, safe to say, I want it yesterday. I like walking quickly and can become rather competitive on the sidewalks, trying to see if I can indeed pass people who are much farther ahead of me. What can I say, simple things amuse me (like personal speed walking competitions against myself). And this obsession for speed enters every part of my life. I have almost no patience for Email replies that reach my inbox after my ‘3 day rule’—god forbid—after I’ve sent a message. And don’t even get me started on late text messages. Blame my father for this one, guys. He’s wonderful, but he’s particular and, like my father, we are one and the same when it comes to communication. We are diligent, fast and big believers that at the core, communication is everything. I have a constant urge to be there and available. But the flipside is that when I didn’t hear back from people in my specified timeline—which of course they were not privy to—I had to learn to s-l-o-w-d-o-w-n and reevaluate my approach to life. But it was more than that. I was constantly attaching myself to people for absolute fear of what would happen if I let go.
Call it a lack of trust in myself or just overall insecurity but it wasn’t long before I realised that if I kept grabbing and gnawing at people the way I had been, I would ruin any sort of budding relationship with friends both past and present. I love being around people and almost always feel the more the better. But I was so set on making sure that my friendships survived while I kept moving around the world that when they inevitably hit a speed bump, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I craved constant confirmation from everyone around me that everything was OK and would always be OK. And so, when things started to change so quickly and so subtly, I just couldn’t keep up.
In another conversation with xxn, she told me about a book that ended up changing the entire way I saw everything around and within me. Like a bible for first world problems, this text outlined how and why we grab and gnaw and attach to almost anything-be more specific without even knowing it. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying poignantly discusses the common problems that accompany our fast paced world: Wanting to control, to know, to bypass the process…it is a book dedicated to helping us save us from ourselves.
Timing really is everything, and this book arrived perfectly on time. I enjoy asking questions and for me, it wasn’t enough to just accept the fact that people are busy and life happens. I wanted to get to the root of the issue. I wanted to release myself from all prior expectations of people.
Easier said than done, obviously. Letting go of expectations…understanding that people constantly come in and out of our lives as long we let them…these are life pursuits. But they are good pursuits. They are life lessons that remind us not to grab and gnaw at the things we want because as all self-fulfilling prophecies explain, the more we want the more we grab and then when we inevitably lose what we were holding onto so tightly, all we have left are the scars of our attachment. Sometimes, we just need to do what xxn’s Asian yoga teacher says and ‘leeeeewaaaax’.
At a time when I was in Master’s Dissertation Denial, this text opened up a world of awareness to try and better understand the pressure I was placing on myself to keep everything around me at equilibrium. And when I came face to face with the blinding lack of control I had, I had no choice but to accept things for what they were at that moment and keep going. I wrote lists of what I was thankful for, I kept two or three simple goals in mind and when Emails arrived later than expected or text messages went unanswered, I tried my best to remember xxn and the book that helped me walk the talk.
I met Jlove a few months before I left New York. I remember thinking she must be pretty legit because she was wearing Keds shoes way before the 80’s circled back into fashion with white socks folded over twice. Respect. And she’s just awesome. We share a mutual affection for all things nerdy, classic, vintage and well…certifiably Grandma. And when it came to what seemed like the never ending dark and grey months of February and March and well, parts of April and May (and sometimes June), J was there to talk about what to do when the stuff we tell ourselves to keep going kind of melts away and we’re left quaking in the gaze of reality and it’s all horribly unnerving. What would I do with my degree…what did I really want to do…where did I want to live, etc. etc.
I had started working for Getty Images as an intern at the beginning of my second year in London. I loved it. I loved every single minute of it. On my second day at work, I confessed to my boss that I had found my dream job. He looked at me sweetly and in a very English tone said, “It’s only your second day, love.” That was true, it was my second day. But that feeling never subsided and even now, when I have a different job at a different company, I still think of those Getty days.
I worked in the Archive, surrounded by pictures and film and it was perfect. I love history and my job at Getty let me play the role of romantic historian with other researchers and editors and retouchers who shared my passion for this rare and unique thing. The Archive was a funny place full of quirky people – most of who had worked there for at least 20 years. Sometimes on my lunch break, I’d find old albums of LIFE magazines or I’d sit and look at some of the very first pictures taken of the Queen and Princess Margaret. It sounds so silly now as I type it out but that place is special and I feel very privileged to have had a job that made me feel like I was contributing to archiving a moment. What’s more is that it opened up exactly what I wanted to do.
Sure, I enjoyed my experience in school but the theory actually drove me kind of nuts. It so happened that when I was up in theory la la land, I ended up feeling pretty detached from the ground beneath my feet. There was so much speculation and even though it was fun and exciting at times to try and decipher and relate to someone else’s thoughts, I missed being actively involved in the process of physically making something. I suppose that the more theory I read, the more critical I became of what I saw and in the end, I missed being able to just look at something and appreciate it for what it was, not what it wasn’t. Grad school was fantastic in the way it helped to strengthen my opinions and arguments but it also stripped away a bit of the idealistic, romantic opinion I had always had towards the value of art. For all the papers I’d ever written and all the tutorials I had ever lead, there was a part of me that just wanted to see something beautiful, appreciate the fact that someone else made it and then walk away knowing that I’d just seen something really special. The paradox of Grad school is that it exacerbated my natural inclination to overthink and analyse everything, which was fantastic for Academia but absolutely terrible for most other parts of my life.
Fortunately, at the same time I was in Grad school, I started an internship at Getty Images as a Picture Editor. I loved going to work every day. This must not be understated. I absolutely loved going to work. It was a privilege. I worked at the Hulton Archive which is where a large portion of the 90 million images that Getty Images owns are stored. They exist on slides, film, glass, paper, in albums, books, magazines and oversized flat drawers. Images are everywhere, catalogued like you are in a library full of books, but there are still boxes that have never been touched, cases that have not yet been looked through. There are surprises everywhere. I used to spend my lunch going through old LIFE Magazines or gently thumbing through prints from WWII. The history lover in me loved the closeness I had to such a plethora of documentation on so many different subjects. I was asked to edit a collection of travel photography from an amateur photographer who traveled the world over the course of 60 years. Of course I related to this woman, someone who I had never met and would never meet. We’d traveled to many of the same places, her and I. We’d taken similar photos or stood in similar places. That’s when you really think cities on top of cities on top of cities. I edited her work and then I cleaned up slides that were decades old, scanned them, retouched them and put them up for sale on Getty’s site. Now, as I write this sitting in my apartment in New York, I am confident that even if I never work for Getty again, I will always have the time I spent with a wonderful collection of images. Just her work and me. And when my eyes got sore or I needed a cuppa tea, I went upstairs at the Archive to say hello to the best boss I have ever had, Matthew Butson.
Like everyone at the Archive, Matt and I shared a deep passion and dare I say – an emotional connection – to the work we studied and edited every day. When people ask me what it was like to work there, I say it was so unique to be able to go to work every day with people who share the same rare passions as you do. Matt had that, and then some. He has worked for Getty for almost ever and even though so many days can be mundane and feel like nothing special at all, there is always one picture that keeps you coming back for more. Matt was a great boss but beyond that, he remains a mentor, a friend and a confidant. Matt had a saying he’d pull out if I were having a bad day or worrying about something I could not control.
“It’s never as bad as you think it’s going to be,” he’d tell me with a little smile lighting up across his face. To that I say, you’re right. Life is pretty damn good, Matt. Don’t you think?
…
I left London with a BANG. It had to be done this way. I saved up some pounds and planned one of my most epic adventures yet. This is a first world problem if there ever was one but there aren’t too many places in and around Europe that my brother Jonathan and I have not visited. He had done some rather insane traveling himself back when he was studying abroad in London in 2005 and so in the end, we had to decide between Iceland and Finland. The answer, of course, is that we didn’t think Finland had a blue lagoon so Iceland it was!
ICELAND IS INSANE IN THE MEMBRANE. I honestly have no idea how else to put it. It hasn’t even been a year since I saw those jaw dropping landscapes but when I think about it and look at pictures I just can’t believe it actually happened. I was there? We were there? Wait. What? It makes me think of the time I was with B and we were riding bikes along the river in Paris and shouting back and forth to each other saying WHAT IS OUR LIFE? Yeah, it was kinda like that. Iceland is everything in one day. Rainstorms, sunshine, rainbows, double rainbows, one a half rainbows, every kind of rainbow ever, thunderstorms, light drizzle, medium drizzle, drizzle and sunshine, volcanoes, geysers, waterfalls which are more like everything ever falling down at once with a sound so loud you can hear it from miles away before your eyes even catch a glimpse. It was nature at her absolute finest. There was nothing she couldn’t do, to the point at which I used to enjoy looking up at the sky and shouting ‘OH YEAH? IS THIS THE BEST YOU CAN DO? HUH? IS THIS ALL YOU GOT?!’
Obviously, it wasn’t all she got. She had lagoons and molten lava and ice and sheep and ponies – special Icelandic Ponies – and more sheep and cliffs and mini waterfalls everywhere and very few people – almost no people – and driving for hours, and whales and blowholes and FISH – basically the best fish ever – and more whales and men who looked a lot like Vikings. Iceland was a trip, man.
…
I returned to London to a guy I was seeing at the time and we had a blast during those last few days. We did some of my most favourite things and even though I wasn’t really sure what would become of me or him or us, I knew that leaving London and going home was a good idea. It wasn’t even about New York then. The truth is that I wasn’t so sure that leaving London was what I wanted but I knew it was a good idea. It seemed sound and whenever I worried that I was making a huge mistake, my dad would gently remind me that nothing is forever, that I could always come back. So I left. I had a goodbye party at a pub just down the street from my box of a flat and when I landed in San Diego, dazed and confused, I felt my mom standing behind me in baggage claim, turned around to hug her and then proceeded to cry oceanic-sized tears all the way home.
I was kind of a mess. It felt like I had just started to get things on track only to leave and have to start all over. But the change was good. I needed to be home and it felt like my family needed me home, too. Amidst the worries about what to do next and where to live and what job would I have, I knew in the back of my head that this would probably be the last time I’d stay at home for a while. And the reality is that when something is rare, it is beautiful and you should bask in it. So I did. At least I tried to. I helped my mom and I took drives with my dad (one of my favourite things). I napped in my parent’s bed and fell asleep watching the television when they went out on a Saturday night. It felt like I had regressed to being a teenager but without the all the attitude – well, maybe not all of it. Wink.
We went on walks and bought frozen yogurt and went to Whole Foods to comment on the aesthetic they seem to create so effortlessly. We hung out at home and read the papers – oogling over Tyler Brûlé latest piece – and argued here and there because that is what families do. We dealt with each other and learned from each other and laughed and cried and joked together. When figurative shit hit the figurative fan with the guy I had been seeing in London, my mom was physically present to help guide me out of the past and into a more present present tense. What a gift. No offense to all the moms out there but mine really is the best. She is the best because she is mine and I get to call her mom. She will always be my mother and that is perfection.
When I really think about it, I know the best part of her is that she lets me fall. She knows that if I fall, I’ll learn how to get up on my own. She trusts me and even though we battle it out over what to say to each other and how to say it, I know that she believes in me and that she tries her best to help me find my way back to me whenever I feel like I’ve gotten a little lost.
Home had its ups and downs. While I was busy freelancing and traveling to New York for work and play, things continued to change even when I didn’t want them to. Change is a constant, indeed. My friendship with P disintegrated and in time, my friendship with E would change as well. My dad wasn’t kidding when he said that nothing is forever. Impermanence, however scary, reminds us to take things for what they are when we have them and appreciate them as much as we can. I will say that as upset and offended as I was when P confronted me, it was the first time that I was able to mentally acknowledge that this might be something I simply cannot fix. I had to let go. It wasn’t even about not wanting to fight for someone or something but more about realizing that some friendships don’t last forever – this, of course, making the ones that do even more spectacular. Of course it sucks when I think about it from time to time. Losing anything sucks. But how you deal with that, how you move on and how you chose to spend your time, that’s what it’s all about it.
…
I know I am my father’s daughter. I know I can rag on him about why I deal with communication the somewhat incessant, overactive way I do, but the longer I stayed at home, the more I saw my dad in me. Not in everything, not in every way, but he is there. He’s there in the way I approach people, in the way I absolutely love to get a rise out of someone and put a smile on a face, any face. He’s there when I ask my friends if they’re doing OK and when I keep asking just to be sure, to be sure. He’s there when I find myself feeling overly positive, that life really is a wonderful blessing and that everything will always be amazing. He’s there in my desire to do, to make, to get shit done. Perhaps above it all, he’s there to remind me to take risks because, well…you just never know.
So one night I did. I had grown pretty frustrated with applying for jobs in New York without actually being IN New York and I suppose as the adage goes, the more I couldn’t get it, the more I wanted it…oh, so badly I wanted to be back in New York. It’s funny how time changes things. I left London and I was convinced I’d made a mistake and then I went to visit New York a few months later, and I was so sure that I was ready to give it another shot. Maybe the lesson there is that we can live in so many different places, for so many different reasons, but at the end of the day, I wanted to come home to New York. I wanted to be back in the buzz, the light, the sound, the smell of it all. I knew it might not be forever, but it seemed good for right now and I wanted to do what was best for me for right now, for this moment.
On a Thursday night in the middle of January, I booked a one-way ticket to New York. I’m so happy I took the risk. I’m so happy I came back. I spent the first few weeks running around for introductions, meetings and interviews – living out of a suitcase, hopping from one couch to another – but eventually, I settled down. It was a bit turbulent during those first few weeks back in one of the coldest winters on record. But for lack of a better phrase, I felt incredibly productive. And there isn’t much I disdain more than feeling unproductive. It took a while, but as the days and weeks and months went by, my life has slowly started to come together, with a few good old fashioned life curveballs, obviously. Even as I write this, things are changing, always changing. But I know I enjoy it. I like a bit of a bumpy ride – not in a masochistic sense but I like the comfort of feeling uncomfortable. I am so fearful of becoming complacent and having time just pass me by. So I fill my days up with work and writing and yoga and friends and mini projects. There’s always something to do, to write, to see…motivated not as much by a fear of missing out as a fear of doing nothing. B reminds me that we must also just enjoy the time we have when we don’t feel like doing anything. You know, crawling up into a ball on the couch and watching endless hours of Law and Order. Yeah, that works too. It’s a balance. That’s the goal.
Part Three: {The Recent Past} January 2014 – October 2014
It has been said that there are two constants in life: death and change. But even through two years of intense theoretical discussions re: the above…amidst papers going back and forth, I’m still not convinced that change is constant – or if it is, that it is not enough to just acknowledge change. We must become acutely aware of change. We must be open enough to let change happen all the time, all around us. If you want to get crazy, you can even think of change as the body changing constantly heartbeat after heartbeat. And so, things have changed quite a bit indeed.
I moved to London convinced that I wanted to work in museums or galleries and left two years later with the desire to do something much more process-based. I worked in an archive and fell in love with editing, looking, analysis and research. I loved making a story come alive. I arrived in a city where I wasn’t so sure I belonged but left knowing that London will forever hold a very special place in my heart – for what happened there, for the people I met, for the conversations I had and still have and for the lessons I learned.
The strange thing about change is that even when things change when we don’t want them to, when it sucks and it’s hard and we just want things to go back to ‘the way they were’ change can prove to be quite comforting. Change reminds us that nothing is forever. So, when I wasn’t sure moving away from London was the best decision, my dad’s words of wisdom kept me going.
“Nothing is forever,” he’d say.
Now, my dad is one of the most positive people I have ever known. So this line isn’t coming from a cynical mind. This line is coming from someone who has always persevered and fought for what he wants to achieve in life. If it’s not working, change it up, reboot, and figure out another way. There’s always a way. Embrace impermanence. Never give up, keep going. These little bits are all part of the same mantra. It reminds me not to get stuck, to keep moving, to always look around and be mindful of what is happening. Nothing is forever. So take it while you’ve got it. Hug it and squeeze it and take mental pictures because one day, things will change. They always do.
This is my 7th year in New York and man, some days it feels like I just arrived while others feel like I’ve been here forever. So much has changed. I used to live downtown and now I live uptown. I used to feel like the life I was living was lacking a bit in direction and now, four years after leaving this city, I look around and know that this is exactly where I’m supposed to be. I’ve come to love my routine, to love the constancy of it, instead of fearing that something constant, something routine, was boring. I wake up and I go to work at a job where I’m able to use what I know and love about photography and that really is a gift in and of itself. No, I never thought I’d be working in a photography studio and I never really pictured myself working with kids either, but all that changed when I came back to New York. After a few awesome-not awesome job situations, I found a passion for working with kids within a passion for taking pictures and making something beautiful. It’s been a year since the end of Grad school and now, instead of writing papers on theories and dissecting exhibitions, I get to spend my day laughing, making others laugh and then, of course, selling the whole narrative to Upper West Side parents. It’s not always awesome. I have rough days just like everyone else and even while I continue to contemplate my next move, I know that right now, this is a good place for me and it feels good to just be and hang out here for a while. And, you know, it’s not such a bad thing to work at a place where good listeners get prizes – wink.
After work, I practice yoga or meet friends and yes, it is routine, and there is plenty of ‘the same’ but there is also comfort in that and it’s a comfort that – for me – has always been challenging to accept. The uncomfortable has always been more attractive for me and all of a sudden, I find myself trying to navigate the routine, the normal, and the everyday.
About a month after I moved back to the city, I had a job and an apartment and I was meeting up with the friends I’d known since college for dinners and drinks. Life was good. I spent my Friday nights celebrating Shabbat at a friend’s apartment – something we’d been doing since we graduated and on Saturday mornings, I’d meet another friend for an early coffee and then we’d catch the last bits of Shul just before Kiddush when throngs of Upper West Side Jews would unite over sugar cookies and scotch. Back then it was absolutely freezing and so the rest of Saturday was spent indoors, catching up with friends who I’d forgotten how much I’d missed while I was away. The amazing thing is that I never wanted to participate in anything ‘Upper West Side’ when I used to live downtown. My mom would call and mention the idea of going to Shul and the truth is that it just didn’t fit with what I wanted back then. But, of course, it’s four years later and what I wanted has changed. I’m so glad that even now, when I have to work on Saturdays, I can still go to Shul on Friday nights and have Shabbat dinner and be with my friends who feel like family.
For all the times I was totally freaked out by the idea of settling down, I am so happy that I came back to New York. Even if it’s not forever, even if I move again or something or someone takes me away from this place, New York has changed me, it has reminded me of what I love so much, and replaced my fear of settling down with other thoughts and concerns. I know that it is October, which means that it has been a little over seven months since I last heard from E. I know that November is just around the corner, which means that in just a little while, I’ll be another year older. I know that sometimes, I feel like it took me way too long to get where I am but that I wouldn’t change any of it for anything different. I know that sometimes I wonder when I’ll have the luxury to travel again and I just think about where I’d go for fun and make lists on my phone so that I know it will come true, in time. I know that I used to joke that I’d love to save the world while wearing PRADA but the truth within that ridiculous statement is that I’ve always wanted to feel like I was helping someone else, or making someone else’s life better and now, without PRADA, I know that I am lucky enough to make kids feel beautiful, wonderful and unique. And even if it’s just one kid, that’s good too.
My mom doesn’t call me anymore to talk about going to Shul. Now, the conversations have changed. We talk about the everyday and the family. We talk about work; we talk about how important it is to just enjoy, to just take it in. We are each other’s reminders to slow down, take a walk, read a book, or just do absolutely nothing because that’s important too. It’s a constant back and forth. It’s about going one day at a time. It’s about believing that at the end of the day, it’s about accepting change, understanding perception and being down with the choices I’ve made.