Hello. My Name Is...

Simon.

Which was the name I gave him the moment I met him. And I tried to pick him up -- this regal, orange tabby cat with light green eyes and, it turns out, a flair for mischief. And when I tried to pick him up, he tried to bite and scratch me at the same time.

"Too soon..." the volunteer said, reaching to take him away. 

But of all the cats that had tried to, or succeeded in, biting me that day at the ASPCA in Manhattan, this was the only one whose bite didn't bother me. He was still purring. Purring when I put him down and he kept his distance, but still leaned his head toward me so that I could scratch. One. Two. Ouch! There come the teeth.

And his teeth don't bite. They just touch my skin. Even now when he's acclimated enough to want to jump onto the bed when I'm going to sleep (he still leaves) and when he springs up when I wake and he wants me to scratch his head (yet not moving my body... once I do he bolts.) He reminds me we're new. He throws down the boundaries with the human in the only way he can. Nibble nibble.

He has peed on my couch twice and my bed once. (Thank God for water-proof mattress covers.) His poo is the stinkiest as he has some kind of... issue. And he does still bite me after a handful of pets, and nearly took my eyes out when I went to trim his front claws. Lordy.

But I had forgotten how an animal unwinds around his human. I remembered the best parts of Harold taking to me. Not the way he would sit behind me and stare at the wall. Not the scars on my arms and chest from trying to clip his nails so that he would stop ruining my sofa, my rug, my legs. Because once you're in love with your pet, you take what it gives you and you shrug and hope its not afraid. At least I think that's how you feel if you take in shelter animals.

The shelters are overflowing. And all these little critters want is a safe place to sleep. A clean place. A few hugs and to forget that it's possible to be hungry. Everything that we take in deserves that. Animals in the wild starve. Suffer. But some animals we humans have chosen to take in and make our own. To use our skills to make them depend on us. To love us. To be our family.

But they are still animals and take their time trusting. Simon (who Alyce and I dubbed Pee-Cat for his talent for peeing in inappropriate places...) ventures closer to me every day. I reprimand him when he does something "bad" but I still am affectionate. I try to make him feel safe, but to know that "behind the television" or "on the windowsill past the pots near the screen" are not good places to be.

So, a new little man lives in my house. We are learning each others edges. We're approaching two weeks together. It's like an entire high school relationship. And I find myself sometimes angry and wanting to give him back. And at other times just melt in his wee presence. And I know that with time, we'll be buddies.

I can't replace Harold, my beloved departed cat, and that relationship. So I am trying not to hold it against Simon... not being Harold. Not being like Harold. And I'm learning to accept him for who he is, and to enjoy that. I am having to let go of my expectations and just see who he is. And do my best to make him as happy and as comfortable as he can be. I took him in. His safety, his life... is my responsibility now. I choose him. I owe him.

Welcome Home, new kid.

Magnets, Magazines and Gentleness

I have a special place in my heart for the cheesy and sentimental, and on my refrigerator I have one of those "quotable" magnets -- the kind that make hipsters and self-styled artsy-types cringe.

Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. - Max Ehrmann

When I open the door to refill my water bottle or take out the half-and-half when I make coffee, I read it and I smile, and I try to heed its advice.

Make choices, but do not be hasty, it says to me. Trees don't grow overnight. Neither must I.

I don't know if I've recounted this story before, but I was on the subway in Cambridge once - the red line to Harvard Square - when a kid came up to me. He was maybe 16, and obviously stoned. His eyes were red, but he looked at me with a suddenly alert compassion.

"What happened to you," he asked, looking up at my forehead.

I told him.

He exhaled, mumbled something, and said to me,"You better spend the rest of your life taking it easy."

When I have told that story to people, they bristled. "Don't let that make you think you can be lazy."

At those times, I would stammer that of course not. I was a hard worker. I was responsible. I was what I was supposed to be. I follow the rules. Yes, sir. Why people in my life have been so convinced that on the inside I'm somehow deeply lazy is a topic for another day, but what I should have said was more akin to "fuck off."

Because I think I finally understand what that boy was telling me. Be gentle with yourself.

When people ask what I'm going to do next, I tell them I am freelancing. And I am. I will. I fully intend to make it happen. But then they ask how its going, and really. I've been back in the country for three weeks and lost my pet to cancer. I'm not exactly trying to pitch anyone right now. I'm mostly trying to feel like this life I've thrust myself into is in some way my own.

Which I confess involves a lot of sitting around looking at the spines of books, half-reading New York Times columns and watching episodes of Criminal Minds. I make stacks of things I intend to read. Herodotus. Henry Miller. The new Oprah magazine. I wonder for the thousandth time if Netflix is worth it. I make protein shakes with berries because I can't be bothered to think about actually making food. I wonder how the hell I'm supposed to figure out what to charge people for taking pictures of their kids or their weddings. I wonder if I have any idea what I'm doing.

Today I came across an article in that Oprah magazine by Anne Lamott, a writer whose book "Bird by Bird" -- about life and writing -- was a staple in grad school feature writing. Her article was about finding out who you really are... and it somehow reminded me of that gentleness I had decided to show myself to choose deliberately, without panic.

"I can't tell you what your next action will be, but mine involved a full stop. I had to stop living unconsciously, as if I had all the time in the world. The love and good and the wild and the peace and creation that are you will reveal themselves, but it is harder when they have to catch up to you in roadrunner mode. So one day I did stop. I began consciously to break the rules I learned in childhood: I wasted more time, as a radical act. I stared off into space more, into the middle distance, like a cat. This is when I have my best ideas, my deepest insights," Lamott writes.

I smiled at her words. I've had bosses sigh with exasperation as I've gone shoe shopping while on deadline. When I've flipped through photographs, stared off into space, gone walking around Newburyport and come back with a 42oz. Diet Coke because I didn't have my story nailed down in my head yet -- I'd done all the work except the writing, but the writing -- the figuring out of structure, tone, cadence, nuance... Those things happen when you're not thinking about writing. Some other part of the brain shifts through the information and then poof.

It's time to begin. Thankfully, when on deadline, you can make yourself move faster, but for me it has always involved that seeming waste of time...

So here I sit, on a cool autumn afternoon, listening to the Decemberists. I have vacuumed my apartment. I have done some laundry. I have made lists in my head of all of the things I need to organize, to throw away, to create. And I will do those things. Even a cup of coffee can't be forced into being before its done brewing.

And I will write that damned book I have had in my head all this time, so maybe someday I will get to sit and read my own words in Oprah magazine talking about how sometimes stepping forward means stepping away.

Harold (??? - Oct. 15, 2009)

I remember the day I brought him home from the ASPCA shelter on E. 92nd St. in Manhattan, way back in September 2004. I had moved to New York in August, and then I went on vacation in Turkey -- boat trip again -- and when I came back, I was going to get a cat.

So, I poked around on the Interwebs, looking at who was available at the shelter. I thought this orange cat Felix looked like a good choice. He was playful, from his description, frisky... But then I went to the shelter. I filled out the forms. Julie came with me, so my dad was my character reference... who reassured them everything was fine even though at the time I worried I was allergic to cats (I am not).

I walked through the shelter, meeting all the little ones in their cages. Then I went into the "Diva Room," which had scratching posts, lounging pads and a tiered area where the cats could sprawl, all with a window out onto 92nd St.

That's where I found Harold.

He was skinny. Mangy. His hair was matted and greasy. He had a stuffy nose, a scrawny face and the moment his bright green eyes met mine, I fell in love. He began purring as I scratched his head. He did his little head-butt thing, moving my hand to where he wanted it.

He wasn't the cleanest cat, nor was he the prettiest. But I can express it no other way than to say that he picked me. I went to see the rest of the cats, and when the volunteer asked who I liked, I said Harold... She was surprised. "Really?"

"Yeah. I'll take him..."

And so we finished the paperwork and they put him in a cardboard carrier. Julie and I walked him home down First Avenue. I had gotten litter, a box and some food the day before. I was ready.

I carried him up to my fifth-floor walk-up and put down the box. I opened its flaps and he jumped out. The cat book said to let them meet their space slowly -- I figured my entire 320 square-foot apartment was probably small enough to warrant giving him free reign.

He walked from end to end, jumped on my bed, and found the brown cat bed I had put on the windowsill. He turned around in it once. Looked at me. Lay down. Closed his eyes. He was home.

And he was happy there. Sleeping in bed with me, his butt always touching my back... at minimum. As long as he was touching me, he was happy. I could fall asleep with my hand resting on him, or he could be nuzzled against me from behind. That's all he ever asked of me. To sleep by my side.

We moved to Brooklyn. We had some roommates who loved him and gave him good head scratches. They were won over by his persistent affection and his oddly old-man savoir faire. He had style, that kitten.

We moved to our own place, and he took to it immediately. Our home. Mine and the beast. Because when you live with an animal, you really don't live alone. You share your space, your time and your heart with another living, breathing creature who depends on you and who loves you. And who you grow to love like he's your family. Because he is. Because the sun rises and sets in his world when you walk into the room. And because no matter what's wrong, when you scratch his head and he purrs, reassuring you that he's there... you know you'll be okay.

And most of the time you just hang out. I pet him. I brush him. He taps my mouth to let me know he's hungry. He swings around to roll over, but still wants to be touching my back with his... I woke up one night on my side, with a man pressed against my front and Harold stretched out, pressed against my back. He was having none of this intruder stealing me away. I just smiled and felt loved.

And today, after what must have been a long, long sickness, which only alarmed me in the past few weeks, Harold passed away.

The vet did an autopsy on him this evening and found out he had very advanced liver cancer -- incurable and un-survivable. A tumor had burst and he was bleeding internally. It probably all happened in the 15 minute panic between his first alarmed meows and me taking his limp, struggling body and running through the rain to the vet's office five blocks away. I saw him and I knew he was dying.

He was tired all day. But he purred when I pet him. I sat right next to him all morning. I slept next to him on the sofa all week. I was trying to love him better. But you can't beat cancer when it really takes hold. We all know that.

When I got him in 2004, the ASPCA thought Harold was about 5. So, I told the vet he was around 9. They told me he was at least 12. So, much older... had lived much longer before I got him than I had known. But I did what I could to make his last years happy years. And, for better or for worse, I haven't really had any work to do this week, so I spent the chilly gray days sitting here on the sofa with Harold. Reading, watching movies, petting him. Trying to make him comfortable, I thought, as he recovered from an infection.

I believed, until yesterday, he was getting better. And today, his tiny body finally gave up its fight. The vet was shocked that a cat with that much cancer was still alive... but he was alive, alert and purring this morning. So I know he had a happy life here with me.

The vet left me the nicest message. He is a good man. He kept telling me not to blame myself. And I don't. I can't. Animals, like people, die. It's the dark, cold truth that comes with being alive. But... oh God... what I wouldn't do to actually feel his warm little furry body in my arms, all tense because he hated being picked up, and just nuzzle his cheek and tell him I love him... Just one more time. The little sounds he made that let me know he felt safe and happy.

But I can't. I just wiped his stray hairs from my keyboard. They're all over my home. I put his litter box, his brown cat bed, other things too into the trash tonight. The scratching post he never scratched (it was where I was to dump the cat nip so he could rub his face in it...) The post is still in the corner. I had to keep something. But I had to make it one thing. There will be enough I stumble on to break my heart in the coming days and weeks.

So, I toast with the very expensive special-occasion wine I opened tonight in honor of Harold. Because he existed, was wonderful and I loved him.

Famous Last Words

Tomorrow/tonight (the drawback of the night shift is that evening to you is the middle of the night to respectable society...) Anyway...

She told me I came and sprinkled fairy dust on her... And Tom told me my laugh was contagious. I am sorry to leave them. I do so like them all.

The first night we really worked together I made her listen to a random song I'd fallen in love with on monkey speakers (Ruchi again!) plugged into my iPhone. "Snails" by The Format, a total indie rock band. Apparently she was wigged out by the old lady who played 'country music' for her on stuffed-monkey speakers on their Sunday night shift.

That damned song was stuck in my head for days. Days I say!

But as the months passed, and we were isolated from our lives on the night shift together, we got to know each other very well... And I'm blessed to have her in my life. Taryn. And Avinash. My snarky comerade in late-night banter. They kept me sane as the sun set, reflected against Manhattan office towers, as I sat and wondered what more...

And I could say so much, but what I want to do most is leave a little shard of... both wisdom and advice seem arrogant... but perhaps I leave ideas to ponder as you pursue your careers, life, love, happiness and fulfillment.

1) Always do your best. No matter what your task, even as a lame duck, do the best you can do despite unfairness, others not pulling their own weight or feeling inadequate. Show that you are putting 100% in, and you can't fail. You will always know that you gave it your all, and that is invaluable.

2) Life is not fair, but never tolerate abuse. Sometimes you will find yourself being taken advantage of, or you will realize that someone has drawn a longer stick than you in the lottery of... Yes. That sucks. It's shit. But life is not fair. Priviledge and inheritence and just straight up luck exist. But never let anyone cross the line and manipulate you. Tolerate unfair until you can either rectify it or move on, but don't tolerate anyone taking advantage of you. That you control.

3) You control your own life. We have our parents, friends, bosses, lovers. But the only person whose head you will ever have to occupy or whose life you will really experience is your own. Fight like hell to make it what you want to experience. If what you do is not fulfilling, change it. If how you are isn't making you happy, change it. The universe is essentially flexible. Shit happens that we must endure, but how you handle that is always your own choice.

4) Respect your own ideas. Throw them out there. Some will be shit. Some will be stellar. But who knows if they only live in your head? Don't be afraid to be shot down.

5) Fucking laugh all the time. Things might suck, but embrace any moment of joy you can. It makes things way more fun.

I will miss you guys. Spending our nights shooting the shit and dreaming bigger. But I promise to push you to make "bigger" your reality. You will, of course. Change is inevitable. But I wish for you purposeful change when it can be achieved. Sometimes it cannot. Sometimes it is thrust upon us.

But when we get to have -- and exercise -- our ability to choose...

We can walk into the unknown without fear.

Trust yourselves. Always. You do know. You do.

The Tipping Point

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

I read those words at my high school graduation, during a speech about living without regret. At the time, it was mostly a speech to myself, about how I was going to not dwell on the things I'd suffered in the years before. I was going to college. I was being reborn.

But as my high school English teacher Linda Prady told us as we read "Their Eyes Were Watching God," by Zora Neale Hurston... as you move through life things change meaning based on who you become when you experience them.

When I was in Italy last month I re-read "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," and was surprised to find it a bit flat. Uninspiring. In my memory, it was an astounding novel. Having read more. Written more. Lived more... Its revelations were the revelations of my youth. Maybe in the 20 years since it was written our ideas about time, love, sex and history are different. Or perhaps in the 10 since I last read it my own have changed.

Perhaps both are true.

Two road diverged... diverge... At times we stand on a precipice, and we are forced to decide which path we will chose.

In three days I will turn in my ID badge and my Blackberry and I will have officially chosen to walk away from a very safe, very comfortable, very respectable job with a national cable news network, having been given sole responsibility for the contests of its web site two nights a week and written dozens of articles... I am walking away from something thousands would fight for... Forgive me.

But I will walk away to see what it is that I've been so furiously trying to make.

I am a cynical scientist, but I am also vulnerable to belief in something... greater? To call it that seems naive. But I believe I know when we've done right by ourselves. By others. By the world. I know something more exists than myself and that which I can see.

I want to make a gallery of double-exposure Holga photographs. I want to learn all about The Blues. I want to read Herodotus. I want to absorb everything. I want to let myself believe...

I lay on the sofa in my grandmother's sunroom, sleeping, before my grandfather's funeral. And at 3:33 a.m., the lights and television turned themselves on. They did. I had turned them off. It was a funeral. I had not been drinking. I had fallen asleep in the dark, after turning the television off.

They came back on. They woke me. At 3:33 a.m. the lights and television turned on in a dark room and woke me. Me. The skeptic.

I mentioned it at brunch, uneasy... maybe I was wrong? But even if I were wrong, it had happened. My mother told me it was him. My grandfather. His favorite number was 333.

I don't know if I can accept that. This ghost story. All I know is that the lights and television went on just then. And nowhere else in the house.

My mother swears its a sign. From him -- the man who believed I'd be an actor until he saw me sing at my graduation from Dartmouth -- I was one of the performers in the tavern the night before graduation. Singing and playing my guitar. Then he thought I'd play music. Until I went to India... When he shoved a National Geographic in my face to show me how they were having a drought, it wasn't safe...

I promised I'd be safe. I was going with the chief of pediactric infectious diseases from NYU, or some such title (Ruchi?), and they were not going to let anything happen to me... I was taking photographs.

I took photographs of strangers going through the motions of their lives. I had studied photojournalism, and I was fresh from my internship with Washingtonpost.com... I was a maniac. I think I shot 25 rolls? Back when people took pictures with film. That shit cost money.

But I let it go... I let it go for a man and a dream and a life that never came to be, and followed my writing down another path, because it came with both easier acceptance and less threat. I can craft a paragraph like nobody's business.

I have just torn my apartment apart looking for a photograph from Istanbul that I wanted to scan... What could I have done with it?

When I find it, I will post it.

But I digress.

Two roads diverged, and I gave myself a deadline. I gave myself until August 6 to jump, or else who knows how long I would have waited. But I did it.

Fly.

What Matters to You?

Tell me.

I want to know what you think before I go on... What forces are the strongest when you make a choice that will change things? Because I am wondering if I have been following the right ones, the wrong ones or if right and wrong don't actually even matter at the end of the day.

(Not in an "I am a criminal way".. more of an "Is this me, or is this me being afraid" way.)

I could have turned in so many ways, but I turned in the directions I did. Wound up with the things I have. The choices and the consequences. Am I unhappy? With some of them. In the grand scheme???

I would have imagined a different set of things, but I don't have those things. But what I do have was never a choice I would have known I would have...

I don't know if I make sense. I am swimming in ideas. Regrets. A half-baked state of affairs. I usually wait longer to write, until I have set something in motion.

But right now, am recently off my first break from the place of business -- a vacation in Italy with dear friends -- the first that had been on the horizon in a long time. My last was in New Jersey. Before that, the Spainish Inquisition. (God bless my lawyer.)

I again saw New Jersey -- down the shore. And I saw it as I had never seen it before. As a place I belonged. As a place that was meant to be a part of me, not a place I had to flee to make myself important.

Who could flee such a thing?

Surely not a woman who spent most of her life dreaming about the ocean, the sea, lapping waves.

The most soothing sound will always be that of the ocean. The best smell the salt marshes when you finally hit the right spot on the Garden State Parkway. Ocean, salt, sand. Coconut-laced sunscreen. Sweat and tennis practice. Bathing suits and the crunch between your teeth of a beach-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

How far we come, to go back home.

La Vie Boheme

I come from a line of artists. My mother paints, photographs and creates jewelry, among other things. Her passion for creating things -- above and beyond creating four lovely daughters -- is almost insatiable.

My father, a surgeon, apparently dreams of both fishing and painting -- making paintings. I had seen a small painting in his closet, when I was a child, of a... was it an old mill on a river? I just remember its colors.

But they share that thing.

My father's father was an artist. He designed cars. Planes. Machines. Created.

And my mother's father told me before he died that he thought I'd be a musician, but for some reason that art has always intimidated me more than the others. I can sing. I can play. I can feel my way through a song. But I never had the training one needs to do it for real. I resent that a little. My piano lessons fell by the wayside when my teacher moved when I was 11. I want to learn classical guitar. I think I shall.

I almost went to art school. Instead, I went to Dartmouth.

And now -- now I find myself wondering how to leverage these eyes. The hazel/olive/golden-green eyes that, I think, maybe, can see things. I pushed myself to study photojournalism. I claimed writing came easier... but it comes the same. In fact, the pictures -- framing, seeing, making art -- comes more easily than the words. I can make pictures every day. The writing must fester in this over-wrought brain. I feel self indulgent tonight. I'm certain to annoy. Solipsistic. Je suis l'etat.

We sometimes make choices because we think we need to prove ourselves. To whom, when we really get down to business, often exposes our insecurities.

I do what I do because I needed to show everyone -- to show myself -- that I could. That I can. But it is not enough.

It is far, far from enough.

My circumstances have given me the gift of choice, but I have always chosen the safe, mainstream, "right-for-my-career" path. But I have never chosen the path that was right for my heart and soul. For the things that long for release. Sharing the things I see.

Thinking about my last post, it echoes the same hesitancy to feel superior/important/listen-to-me that I shun.

We carry our parents burdens. My own feel a class disparity that I fall on the wrong side of, to some in my family. I was picking up a low-budget purple chenille sofa from a discount furniture store with my parents, in the Jeep SUV that I would eventually trade for the cost of "towing it off the lot because the cabin filled with fumes... thanks parents..."

My father turned to my mother and all I remember was "and your family were the workers..."

Not even the exact words, but I remember. And she was furious. It was the first time I had seen him breach that divide. Iron and steelworkers. Wonderful, talented people.But the teams were not the same. My grandfather never went to college, yet he built Temple University's stadium. But my father's father was also Ivy League. Got a degree from Penn. In 1929.

If I could meet one person... I would choose him. I am certain we would know each other.

I think he could unlock so many of my secrets that I ache to know what that man -- that man who Alma, my grandmother, stole from his girlfriend because she "set her hat on him," according to my mother's grandmother. Immigrant Polish Philadelphia was incestuous. Love? If not, at least a premonition.

And by some mercy, my father's parents made my father at the same time my mother's parents made my mother... Although they were more than half a generation apart in age.

And knowing the love I feel for my niece, my next-sister's daughter, our only offspring -- of course last weekend when I joked about moving into the house next door to my parents' to stay hear -- and my father turned and told me that I already had a dock and a boat and a home. Theirs was mine. I never assumed so.

Even now, how much my father loves me can crush me.

And seeing how much I love Diana, my precious, gorgeous, perfect niece, I fear crushing my own children with the weight of my love, seeing how tightly I just want to squeeze her. (I don't.) I would give her anything I could even remotely lay a claim to.

Which brings me back to the title of this essay: La Vie Boheme.

I -- for the first time -- am seeing my choices through the eyes of someone who will judge me, and I get to choose what she/he/they/our family's babies see as "Jennifer." I am a writer/photographer/artist/firecracker or I am the woman-who-makes-safe-choices....

(Yes, they are going to Dartmouth regardless. All of them. If I have to buy every admission with donations. Get used to it.)

What I am choosing requires tremendous faith in myself. And I think I have always lacked that -- and I think may of you will be surprised by that. Several of you will say "yeah, dork..." And others will mumble "it's about fucking time...."

I will spend most of my savings on my mortgage, building maintenance payments and my health insurance. Those are my absolutes.

But with the weight of every stranger's gaze I meet weighting down on me, why else was I given this gift? But it is not a philosophical essay I seek to make my end game right now.

I want to capture your soul in a picture. Let me.