Dreaming Big

Have you every had a big dream? One that would take a lot of effort (and money) and is probably unrealistic? Of course you have, this is America. Anyways, I've always wanted to move to New York and have a fabulous apartment in Greenwich. I'd spend my mornings in the cafe before heading home to write. I've finally found the perfect apartment to go with that dream. It's $10,000 a month...so yea pretty unrealistic (unless some rich patron of the arts wants to sponsor me).

It's my ideal and I thought I'd share it with you.


This is my building, I live on W. 11th between W. 4th and Bleeker. On a very pretty street.


This is my bedroom, I have another one for guests if you'd like to come and stay. Don't you love my cherry hardwood floors?


A major requirement for any apartment is lots of light. This is where I do most of my work. In the winter I work with my feet pointed towards the fireplace.


I'm big on ceilings with character.


I like to read in that chair by the window.


You can come over during the summer and have wine with my on my patio at night. Boyan and I plan to have lots of plants, including tomatoes. Fresh bruschetta anyone?

Brown paper packages tied up with string

Classical Music
It invokes a picture doesn’t it? Is it almost impossible to imagine a beautiful green field in England with budding spring blossoms on the horizon? Maybe a horse drawn carriage taking some forlorn young maiden away from her summer house and back to the city, where she has to return to living the life of a simpleton. It’s beauty and it’s sadness. But mostly beauty.

Indie folk music, Western music
Any type of music that tells a story, a voice that carries with it the weight of meaning. Whether it’s a song talking about a lost bike or a cowboy asking not to be fenced in. If it can create a story in my head that I can follow, if it talks about the realities of life then I’m sold.

Jane Austen
I think it’s funny I like Jane Austen. Everything about my character and what I know about who I am (how do we really know ourselves, do we ever truly discover our genuine self?) says that I should not like the women in Jane Austen—Women who let societal rules dictate their behavior. I know what part I would play in a Jane Austen novel. I would be Mariah Bertram, I would do what society told me to then I would do whatever the hell I want. Or I would be Lucy Steele, secretly planning and plotting my entrapment of a man who probably didn’t want me. Would I ever be the heroine of these novels? Absolutely not. To be a heroine in a Jane Austen novel (including Elizabeth Bennett) you have to learn to restrain your corporeal desires. You have to have patience and the ability to act on what is best for your family and status rather than doing what you want. I would fail in Jane Austen’s world—or I would end up a spinster like Jane herself. So, in that regard, I guess I would triumph in Jane Austen’s world. Her real world anyways.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels
Oh god knows why I like to escape into a world of make believe. When I was little I loved fantasy. I ate it up like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And now I read and re-read every fantasy and sci-fi book I can get my hands on. Everything from Harry Potter to the world of Vampires to tales about philotic connections with Ender Wiggin, I can’t help myself. The funny thing is nothing truly connects me to the story. I don’t relate to the characters, I read them to know the resolution of the conflicts in the plot. It helps that the landscapes of the stories are so vivid and intriguing. Could it be the desire to imagine these worlds in my head? To escape to the planet of Lusitania and build in my own mind the forest that holds the trees of Human and Rooter? To be sure I don’t imagine what the main character’s faces look like—they’re just faceless, featureless bodies that play out the scene on the stage that is my imagination.

I love all these things but funny enough this is not the stuff I choose to write. Not for lack of trying—my attempt at a children’s fantasy novel seems to be failing miserably. I hope that with the help of my mother (who is far more inventive and creative then me) that we might be able to slop something together that is somewhat digestible.

I almost think it’s unfair of me to write about writing when all I have been doing recently is reading. Consuming stories and books without even the desire (I would say at this point I am more repelled by the idea) to write. I can’t even get myself to write blogs here or at work. I just read and read and watch and consume and my brain lays dormant like a sponge sunk at the bottom of a full bath tub. What’s the use?

These are a few of my favorite things. They beg the question, what do the things I like say about me? I don’t relate to them in that I’m not like any of the books I read or the music I listen to, but something draws me to them. Which means I have to, in some way, be like them right? Is it intrigue with the unknown or sentimentalism?

One step on the road of learning more about myself. The more I know the more I will be equipped to write I think. I hope.