How To Change The World
If, as my former bandmate, once sang "World's change in the belly of an insect," then universes transform in a matter of years.
Little wonder, then, that I should comment to Abbi this weekend that I can't remember a period of transformation as radical as the last five years.
Five years ago, I was an Executive Producer. I lived on the Upper West Side. I played rock shows on the regular, smoked, drank, caroused, and regularly hailed cabs as dawn broke. Five years ago, I was single. Don't take my word for it, though; the archives ...
Thirty Thousand Sunrises
If a guy's really lucky, he sees some thirty thousand sunrises.
This fact dawned on me as I turned eastward on 86th Street the other morning. The sun burst bright-ornage through the pale-green leaves as I jogged across East End Drive and I thought, "These are finite. Enjoy 'em."
The average life expectancy for a 21st Century American is 78-years-old. Leap year nothwithstanding, that's 28, 470 sunrises. Now, I was born September 4, 1971, which means I've already lived 14, 125 of them. I have just 14, 345 left. (Put another way, my ...
Into The East
Abbi and I moved from West 56th Street and Tenth Avenue to East 71st and First this weekend. To most, this would seem a simple, two mile, two zip code, cross-town move. Which would be true. But man, what a difference two zip codes can make.
New York neighborhoods are rife with generalities, none more pronounced that the Upper West and East Sides. The Upper West is for cultural and artistic workers, the Upper East for more commercial and business types. Nothing is that simple, of course, still, it often bears out. The Upper West has ...
Something To Say
It wasn't until somewhere around Christopher Street that I realized that Thursday night's Rockwood Music Hall set was littered with references to breaking silence, speaking up and being heard.
From "Giving Up The Ghost" ("It's impossible to argue / It's impossible to scream") to "Live Forever" ("There's nothing left here to say"), "St. Anne (Of The Silence)" to "Dear Elizabeth" ("I still have something to say"), "Trying To Tell You" to "I'll Be Waiting" ("This is a message to you"), the set -- in this case drafted by my pal Chris Abad but ...
It’s All Right
Saturday morning's slate-gray, wind-whipped bluster was an angry, Joycean tempest fit solely for hours indoors with tea and sympathy.
Abbi and I braved the elements nonetheless, striking out through the icey, soggy streets to yoga at Exhale on Central Park South.
Arriving waterlogged was rich irony, as our instructor, Kirtan, and I had conspired to base the class around the return of the sun.
I've only been going to yoga for a few months, but my connection to the practice was immediate. Not only have I discovered muscles I never knew ...
Heart Shining Forward
These days, it doesn't take much to make me cry.
I'm not talking full-bore, crocodile tears, or the hyperventilated, cheek-puffing sobs of childhood. I'm talking about those moments when the beauty of life becomes so temporarily overwhelming, so impossibly moving, that you have to pause, recognize, and absorb. It's a good thing, a warm feeling, a sense of connectedness, gratitude and wonder.
The latest and most-profound of these moments began (as is increasingly the case) Saturday morning during yoga. The class was packed with ...
The Miracle Of Showing Up, Part II
Yesterday afternoon, I raced uptown to a doctor's appointment on West 96th Street, tripping out of the cab some fifteen minutes late. It took me at least thirty seconds to realize the appointment was on 86th Street.
Just seventy-two hours shy of leaving Nantucket, then, I was plunged back into my nuance-free life: rush rush, blur blur, wake, sleep, wake. It's like being at sea for a month; terra firma is disorienting.
Worse, this waking life scarcely affords time for reflection or appreciation.
My office is a south-facing, Midtown ...
A Life Less Ordinary
I'm not sure whether my life is more moving, or that I'm more open to being moved. Either way, I choke up pretty easily these days.
A few weeks ago, for example, Abbi and I bought Ethan a grab bag of magic tricks for his sixth birthday. He and Edward sat transfixed, wide-eyed and amazed as I showed them each of the simple slights-of-hand. It was difficult enough to hold back tears of joy as I watched them each pull the new, black-felt top hat over their big, bright eyes, and more so as I walked home with Abbi.
"What could be more ...
The Hurt Locker
A few months after September 11th, the Department of Homeland Security launched a website called ready.gov.
The site's initial incarnation was ostensibly a series of updated '50s brochures: what to do in the event of nuclear blast (duck and run), what to do in the event of building collapse (duck), etc. (It's since been significantly neutered.)
I found the site (and the entire Department of Homeland Security, for that matter) comical, but also frightening close to home; just two days after watching the towers fall with my own eyes, I ...
The Hagley Fireworks (Or, In Consideration Of Teflon, Kevlar & The Apollo Space Program)
All I knew was that Abbi signed us up for "The Fireworks" back home in Wilmington, Delaware, and that the tailgating started early so I had to catch an early train out of the city and wear nice pants.
"The Fireworks," it ends up, are an annual tradition at The Hagley Museum in Greenville, Delaware, birthplace of the now-behemoth chemical corporation, DuPont.
Growing up in nearby Valley Forge, Pennsylvania (just thirty miles north on Route 202), the Brandywine was a placid, almost mythic place reserved for revolutionary history ...
