The weather had changed by the time I got to New York last weekend. Variations of “too damn hot” had stopped trending on Twitter, no one was standing haughtily with their hands on their hips before the air conditioner, wrists fluttering in front of their reddened cheeks like a makeshift fan. “You came at the right time!” everyone said. “It has been so hot.”
I was scared that going back to New York would strike close to a reality I’ve tried hard to fend off: I miss New York terribly, sometimes. Its conveniences, its inconveniences; its arrogance and its rottenness. I thought going back might trigger something in me. Perhaps the desire to give up everything I’ve built in San Francisco the past few months would swell so strongly I’d finally be willing to admit defeat. It would be so easy to give in, get out, move back. Settle in with the same people, nab an easy 9-5 editorial job, reacquaint myself with delivery.com.
But it didn’t happen that way. I still felt crushed by the buildings, I felt myself growing unnecessarily angry at faceless pedestrians with that high fashion swagger. My nostalgia for New York did not outweigh my distaste for it. Climbing into the cab at dawn on my way to JFK I thought, “So this is relief.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about the writing process recently, and how much it differs from person to person. Writing is one of the only activities in which the goal is the same–to produce quality textual work–but the process by which you achieve that goal is completely inconsistent. Some of the writers I know churn out their best work just as dawn sidles up, cup of coffee in hand, brains fresh and ready for intensive mining. I tend to have my best ideas right before falling asleep. Every night as I drift off I find myself constructing phrases and sentences in my head that contribute to the ever progressing narrative of my life. When I was younger, I used to keep a notebook next to my bed for just this reason. But having grown up with insomnia, I often fear that getting up to jot down my ideas will trigger a writing frenzy–soon it’s 3am and I’m shaking the kinks out of my aching wrists, having written and edited a draft that began with just a measly string of words and a hypnic jerk. Now, so much of my best ideas are consumed by the heaviness that invades the space between my eyes just before sleep. When I told this to a friend, he responded, “If you want to be the best at what you do, you’re going to have to get up in the middle of the night and write, even if you’re exhausted.” He’s right.
The summer I was 15 I drove down the Pacific Coast Highway, past Hearst Castle and Big Sur to Lompoc, so that my cousin could visit the wild horse sanctuary there. The gas in Big Sur cost $3 a gallon, and at the time I remember thinking that was incredibly expensive. Someone once told me that Grace Kelly died when she drove her car off of one of the cliffs that hugged the PCH; I still don’t know if that’s true, but it always seemed like such a glamorous death. I imagined a white scarf wrapped around her neck fluttering out of the convertible’s windows as the car tumbled into the sea.
In Lompoc we settled in a crappy seaside motel that reeked of fish oil. I slept dreamlessly on a fold out couch with a stain in the shape of a starfish. The next day we visited the wild horses. My Aunt worked for In Defense of Animals and was friends with the owner, so we got a private tour. My cousin Amelia was seven at the time, and as we walked out onto the pasture her face lit up with glee. I was terrified of the beasts that surrounded us. They were powerful and majestic, but there was something menacing about the way they could strike out at any time. These were wild horses, not domesticated. “Try not to make any sudden movements,” our guide told us, “We don’t want to startle them, or it could get ugly.” I was frightened and couldn’t wait to leave. The only thing I took away from the trip was that Hillary Duff was the celebrity protector of the horse sanctuary. At the time I really liked Lizzie McGuire, so I thought that was pretty cool.
Naturally prone to the voyeuristic as a child, one of my favorite movies was Harriet the Spy, a film that seemed to both validate and encourage my incessant eavesdropping. Crouched in my bed with a marble notebook, I’d spy on the neighbor who lived across the way and scribble down every inane thing she did. It seemed like a very important task for an 8-year-old to undertake; I was now responsible for documenting my neighbor’s life. Patti was in her mid-30s with white-blond hair and a 2-door red Chevy. I envied the breezy way she carried herself; at times she even seemed to float. At night sometimes I watched as she changed into her pajamas. As an 8-year-old writer, it seemed like everything in the world was mine for the taking, for the describing. In short, if I could observe it, it was mine to write about.
This is a dangerous thought to plant into an 8-year-old’s head, and Michelle Trachtenberg isn’t wholly to blame. I’ve been eavesdropping on strangers for as long as I can remember. To be honest, I do it even more now than I did as a kid. Sometimes I’ll be tied up in conversation with people and my gaze will drift to their forehead. If I’ve done this to you, I apologize, I’m just trying to overhear the woman sobbing two rows over. Why is she so sad, and in what way can her pain be useful to me? I guess it’s not that sociopathic, but being a person who turns my perception of other people’s experiences into pageviews can sometimes feel that way.