To 2008

This year has been exactly what it needs to be, and I am so grateful for everything it contained, like a great sea or like a suitcase packed for an unknown destination. The song at the end of this New Year post, by Neutral Milk Hotel, was released in 1998, 10 years ago. I was about to come to New York City by train, my first time here since 1990, for a one-day trip with my grandparents when I was 11. That week in 1998, I visited an old pen-pal but mostly wandered the city, staying at the Gershwin Hotel and seeing Art, Les Mis, and Madame Butterly at the Met. I wandered through Central Park in the surprising snow and went to the other Met to find the Chagalls. I was 18.

I wouldn't be telling you all of this were it not for the past year, which launched this blog, new friendships, new roles at work, airplanes to India and Ireland and Scotland, a journey to Alabama, steps toward 495 miles of running, new poetry, a new President, explorations of Jewish and artistic and neighborhood communities...and something that happens to be on my mind today, which loops in the Metropolitan Opera and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, along with snow and walking and community...blue lights and yams and me turned inside-out. This song is my heart on my sleeve:

"And in my dreams you're alive and you're crying,
As your mouth moves in mine, soft and sweet,
Rings of flowers round your eyes and
I’ll love you for the rest of your life (when you’re ready)."