1. Ian Crane is never going to pay you back. Just accept that his presence-- a whirlwind of urban diva, southern mama, and glitter nail polish-- is payment enough for all the wine.
2. People are nice. Like the guitar player on the 1 platform who asked you to sing along to "Wonderwall" because he could tell you were a '90s baby. Or the gay couple who invited you to dance in their wedding in Central Park. Or Henry, the 82-year-old regular at New Kam Lai Chinese who bought you a drink and told you why he'd rather live in a triscuit-studio here than in any other city. Realize that there are more stories in a given block than you could scrawl across the empire state...listen to as many as you can.
3. Try harder to be grateful. There will be days when it will seem impossible to extract yourself from your cotton cocoon of a bed and go be a person. There will be days when you don't feel like a person. At least not one you recognize. And no matter where you are or who you're with, that absence of identity is the loneliest.
But you have to get up. You have to count again the million and seven things that make your life worth it, starting with your steady pulse and ending with this blog.
4. Take chances. You never know when someone you track down on Missed Connections is going to resurrect your buried smile.
5. Say hi to that awkward girl in the corner of the party. She will become the kind of friend who brings a turkey-shaped loaf of bread to Thanksgiving dinner.
6. Invest in long socks. Amid mental breakdowns and identity crises, chilly ankles will remain your biggest problem.
7. Find solidarity in art. Know that people you will never meet have been where you've been. And some have the soulpower to translate that tornado in your skull into something beautiful.
Like Harry Potter surrounded by a fortress of dead loved ones, never but always there, you will brave the world made infinitely stronger by the voices in your earbuds and the pages between your fingers. Love them and don't give a damn if that makes you weird. You are. It's better that way.
8. Hummus is crack. How did you not realize this sooner?
9. Waiting on a subway platform with no sign telling you when the next train will arrive is the six-and-a-halfth level of hell.
10. Next time, hit on that Trader Joe's cashier. The only thing you have to lose is sea salt brownies.
OK, maybe keep it a strictly business relationship.
OK, maybe keep it a strictly business relationship.
11. Church is home. Find comfort in the ritual-- sacred songs lit up on shoddy projectors, basket-passing through the dark, hundreds of thousands of millions of people throughout existence drinking holy purple drink.
Let the radicality of a person who loved wholly shake you anew each Sunday and leave you stupid for words.
But,
12. Don't offer your snacks to strangers on the train. They don't take kindly to your awkward evangelism in this town.
12. Don't offer your snacks to strangers on the train. They don't take kindly to your awkward evangelism in this town.
13. Force yourself to be patient. It may take an existential smackdown between God, middle-class entitlement, and your ego to finally settle into the sweaty, exhausted reality that it's not going to come together perfectly. Or right away. Or at all.
Now keep living in light of this.
