packing

and packing and packing.

vacation in a few days!

petite treat

petite treat
sweetie pie
greenwich avenue & tenth street
west village

hola

tortilla soup
delicioso!
yuca bar
seventh street and avenue a

rooftop

the joy of summer
if you're lucky, you have access to your apartment's roof.
i don't, but most of my friends do.

june 27, 2010
east village

flights of fancy

darci

i was lucky, lucky, lucky enough to go to darci kistler's farewell performance today. darci was the last of the balanchine ballerinas. she was also the youngest to become a principal dancer in nyc ballet's history. i bought my ticket months ago. as soon as i found out she was retiring and as soon as tickets went on sale, i knew i could not miss this performance. she danced several excerpts from balanchine's monumentum pro gesualdo, movements for piano and orchestra, a midsummer's nights dream and ended with the final act of swan lake. it was perfection. 

and then for her farewell bow! it was absolutely indescribable. bouquet after bouquet was brought out to darci from those involved in the ballet, from those who love her. the entire theater was filled with emotion. wild admiration. the confetti fell and the audience threw their bouquets on stage. by the end of it, she must have received a thousand flowers. at least. it was incredible and i even had tears in my eyes! i can't really describe how completely adored she is or how this performance felt. it was magical.

a sunday afternoon performance and a completely full house. pictures are not allowed during performances. but during her final bow, that rule was clearly ignored. flashes were going off from everywhere. wish i didn't only have the camera on my phone with me, but i'm glad i was able to capture a bit of it. look how the flowers cover the stage! 

farewell, darci!

ballet slippers

a new pair of ballet slippers
trusty ol' blochs.
classes start in two weeks
(for the first time in eight years!)

oodles

if i had it my way, all news stories would be similar to this.

oh grandma, what long nails you have!

wouldn't it be fun to have a custom neon sign?
so many possibilities.
what would yours say?
chinatown

pizza

i promise you that artichoke is the best pizza in manhattan (must get a slice of the artichoke) and that you probably haven't tasted anything like it before (as much as it looks like a typical slice of pizza).

all in the golden afternoon

farmers market zinnias
june 19, 2010
milford, connecticut

dear heart of mine

i've been getting a lot of spam in my office-email inbox lately. and really romantical spam, at that. here is a poem i've composed from their subject lines.

hi darling,
i know it when
you light up my heart,
beyond the stars.
irreplaceable.
i love you, sani
all you,
i love you.
the only one for me, owner of my heart.

voila.

wilder

i was going to skip around the city tonight.

but then i took a nap. thunderstorm.

stayed in my bedroom. listened to records.

organized my drawers.

wrote in my diary, ate beef jerky.

new york.

new york.

some nights, the lack of thrill means more.

oscar

oscar
june 20, 2010
orange, connecticut

smarmy

airlie

my cute friend airlie (i've known her since my freshman year of college!) just moved to nyc a week and a half ago. and over lemonades and lentil salad last night at veselka, she pulled out a foldable city map for reference. see, isn't that cute?

there really isn't anything like the first month of living in manhattan...

re-inspired

i went home for father's day weekend (happy father's day, dad!!!) and had such a pleasant time. i think pleasant is the only/best way to describe the weekend. the weather was gorgeous and i spent 80% of my time outside. my mom and i went to the farmer's market, i picked up new craft supplies (including tons of feathers!) and we bbq'ed. yum. jenna and i laid out on my deck and jumped in the (new!) pool. i read through time out, russh, and lula (i can't say enough how absolutely obsessed i am with this magazine! it is such a treasure!)

and i now feel completely inspired, my creativity has been rekindled.

oh and we saw toy story in 3-d! which i thought was surprisingly sad?

(jenna, please move here)

missing pets

it's really not funny when a pet is missing. ever and at all. but, this sign in my hallway this morning was slightly amusing.


i hope they find mystic before someone in my apartment building steps on her. yikes.

shades

new carrera shades. and i actually really like them.

hello, summer. 

the red shoes

me and beatrice. lunch break in bryant park.

after several unfortunate days of being caught in the rain last spring, which caused slight tatter, i have designated my darling ferragamo wedges as my "rain shoes". i don't have the heart to throw them away and the sky is looking awfully cloudy today. le sigh.

sleeping beauty

last night was ABT's sleeping beauty performance. this is my favorite ballet. by far. i would see it just for the glittering costumes. or just to listen to the exquisiteness of tchaikovsky. i could watch hours of the winsome, flitting fairies. and the wedding scene! everything about this performance was spectacular. the gorgeous and graceful veronika part was the lilac fairy and gillian murphy was aurora. i love learning about the dancers. reading their interviews. their journeys to becoming the best in the world, where they find inspiration. ballerinas are my 'movie stars', they are the true celebrities in my life. monday nights at the ballet are my favorite. being at lincoln center instantly makes me lovely and whole. i can't think of anything that gets me nearly as excited as the orchestra beginning to play and the curtain rising.

i know i always say it, but, i feel so lucky to live in this wonderful city, where such loveliness is so accessible.

figment

i really appreciate my friends. especially the ones who are always up for anything. they make me terribly happy and keep things fun. last week, brooke said "let's go to figment!", an annual event dedicated to creativity and happiness. i knew i just had to go. mary and tucker felt the same way. like every lovely weekend day, it began with brunch (chris joined in for food, but stayed behind for soccer) and then we were off on the ferry to governors island!

the ferry to the island was a quick, ten minute trip and brought us to a whole new world. the sun was shining and everyone just wanted to enjoy the day. there were activities scattered throughout the island. numerous dance parties, a (very serious) wish-making station, a gnome adoption center, a dome filled with rose petals (to throw like confetti!), etc. it was magical. and it was all for free. and free, we felt. it felt like vermont.

on the ferry

mary and the rose petals

my favorite activity was called sparkle. a sandbox filled with silver glitter. i (obviously) had to jump right in. and i even let brookey pour buckets of glitter over me. when else would i ever be able to do this? i was covered in sparkles the rest of the day and even after three showers, it is still in my hair. (and all over my apartment, in my bed..)

love, love, love

one of the best days that i have had all year.

ya ya

those new sneakers that promise to tone your thighs/calves/butt (skechers shape-ups, reebok easyTone, etc) have absolutely nothing on my 4.5 inch clogs. try sauntering around the city in these. ya, you'll feel the burn. 

 

can't stop

i can not stop making friendship bracelets. i carry embroidery floss with me wherever i go. i google different patterns to make. i think about different beads and gems to weave into bracelets. i imagine moving to a tourist-y island and braceleting all day to make a living. i spend lunch breaks with my friend geoff (equally as passionate!) gallivanting through the fashion district going to string stores. i bought twenty seven skeins last week. i am going bananas. obviously.

welp

• the ballet i saw on monday, lady of the camellias, is tragic because the beautiful courtesan (marguerite) has tuberculosis and is going to die. she keeps it a secret and can not be with the man whom she loves because of this. she dances! and then she coughs. (moulin rouge! is based on la traviata which is based on lady of the camellias) but, with the weather constantly changing (hot sun, cold rain, hot sun..) it seems as if everyone in nyc is sick, as well. and the entire audience was coughing and coughing during the performance, right along with our girl, marg. life imitating art? art imitating life?
  
• i went to dinner last night, it was raining so i brought my umbrella. i checked the umbrella before i went to my table at the coat check. when i went to retrieve my umbrella after the meal - it had vanished! the restaurant gave me a replacement to take home. but! the umbrella i had brought had already been a replacement umbrella! several months ago, emily and emily went to dinner and emily (not my roommate) took my umbrella to dinner by mistake and when she ended her meal, she took someone else's accidentally. emily (roommate) felt bad and bought me a new one (really nice of her and unnecessary!) to replace my old favorite. so this replacement umbrella has now just been replaced (and downgraded - as the original replacement was extremely sturdy/non-folding, as was the original) and now i'm left with this dinky fold-up one. yikes.
  
• for the past week, the water in my shower goes from very hot to very cold - every few minutes. this makes showering very unpleasant. but it also makes me think of when there wasn't the advancement yet of running/hot water. and then i feel like a pioneer and don't complain!
• jenna is my oldest friend and sometimes we get into terribly petty fights and we won't talk for months. and then out-of-the-blue we'll both say "i miss you! i love you!" and laugh and then things go back to normal. but she's been away on a cruise with her lovely boyfriend this week and i haven't spoken to her since sunday and it makes me so very sad! come back, boo boo!
• i went to my old office building this morning (across the street from our new building) to visit my old doorman and we hugged and talked about summer and his love of soccer. good to know there is still some heart in midtown.

emily's shadow and emily's cane's shadow. a past yoga injury haunts her resulting in occasional need of a cane:

to do

right around christmastime, a little old lady came up to talk to me as i was shopping in sephora. and we had a very pleasant twenty minute conversation, but because of her heavy accent, i wasn't sure if we were talking about the loveliness of manhattan or about recruiting me for a religion. it was all very fuzzy. but it was about the loveliness of manhattan! and at the end of our conversation she gave me a sheet of paper that she wrote on both sides of. it had the details of wonderful events and museums to attend to in the city, complete with her commentary ("fabulous!", "grand!", "excellent!"). it's written in the most beautiful cursive, states the addresses, hours of operation, which exhibits are not to be missed. and she drew a heart around it all. i don't believe she had any association with these places and just wrote it out of the goodness of her heart.


it really makes me smile.

lady of the camellias

last night, i attended to ABT's performance of lady of the camellias. a terribly romantic and sad story. as always, the ballet was lovely. the music (chopin), the costumes. i have a season seat and it just makes me happy to be there. i go by myself and it really is a few hours of my week to just completely enjoy myself. when i can just sit down and be in the midst of everything beautiful. and it makes me just feel lovely being at lincoln center. especially after the performance, walking out with the audience at night and to think that we all just enjoyed the same thing, all at once. and how we can all say how beautiful our evenings were!

fest

yesterday was the egg rolls and egg creams festival down the street. a celebration of the chinese and jewish cultures of the lower east side. we ate fortune cookies and pickles and emily said she never felt so much at home!

momix

last night, emily and i went to see MOMIX perform at the joyce theater. if you ever have a chance to see them, GO. MOMIX is a troupe of modern dancers/illusionists and they are just phenomenal. i don't think i can really find the words to express this. i kept thinking "this can't get any better" and it always did. our seats were pretty close to the stage and yet there were so many times when i thought "how did they just do that?!". their use of their bodies/costumes/props was astounding. and they were smiling the entire performance, you could tell that they loved what they were doing.


as emily and i walked (partially) home from chelsea to the LES, we couldn't stop chattering about how incredible it was. and how fortunate we are to live here. it really is wonderful. every night, there are a gazillion brilliant things happening all around this city. anything and everything you would ever want is at your fingertips and it's always the best of. this month, i have tickets to five ballet performances (for ABT and NYCB) and it just makes me giddy. along with festivals, book readings, concerts, etc. delight!

and i feel really lucky that my friends want to explore just as much as i do.

hail!

i like how some out-of-towners get a thrill from hailing a cab in manhattan.

a gesture that i often overlook in a rush to get to wherever i am going next. but when i think about it, it really is a romantical-sentimental-new york-ish thing to do.

friendship bracelets! and such

hard to believe (as i write this from my LES apartment) that yesterday morning i was lounging on jenna's porch in cut-off shorts (that i would never wear in the city), getting a sunburn and making friendship bracelets. and that last night for dinner, my parents barbecued and we sat out on our deck to eat. i love going home for a few days but it really makes me miss being there and being with my family. it makes me miss summers in connecticut and nature, in general. jenna and i talked about the great outdoors and the wonderfulness of returning to connecticut after being in manhattan for a while and the thought that parks are nice for city folk who don't have lovely backyards. and i must say, the community garden on avenue c/9th street is rather idyllic and may be the best green space in downtown manhattan. but really, nothing beats actually being in nature.


in any case, i made countless friendship bracelets this weekend (in tompkins square park with brooke and richard, on the train to connecticut, with jenna, on the deck while my mom read/meditated, on the train back to manhattan, etc) and i've become quite the pro! so i'm taking requests from now until i run out of string!

years ago, jenna and i went to summer camp together in maine and yesterday we went through her camp autograph/address book. we wondered where some of our old friends are now and then wondered about this loopy advice from our counselor:

and then we had cones!

love jenna's formal living room.

pippin-kate olsen.

then i dashed back to the city late last night, quickly caught a cab downtown and made it back just in time to see emily's brother's band, a locomotive, perform. ideal.


oh and a very happy birthday to molly! a beautiful and wise friend (and my freshman year roommate!) whom i love, love, love!

teevee

after living in the city for almost a year and a half, emily and i have not had television. some people like to boast that they don't own one. it's lowbrow and they have far better things to do than watch it. but not us, we love television! but a) we didn't have a living room until we moved out of the west village and b) now that we do have living space (and a tv!) cable is so expensive, man. we'd rather use our monies for other joys. so after a few months of having a tv in the living room (which only the dvd player had been used), dad suggested and bought us an antenna and, to our delight setting it up last night, we receive twenty one channels. free!

curious/scared to see how this changes life. will we watch it for hours each night? will we never turn it on? we've gotten along just fine without it but now...