Goldman Sachs has set aside 16.7 billion dollars for bonuses this year alone.

Please explain to me why bankers get paid more than teachers, authors, social workers, police officers, firemen, or pretty much anyone else who dedicates his or her life to bettering society.

The rest of the country still suffers from the loss of jobs, homes, and lives built over decades. But the industry that contributed greatly to this crisis has rebounded quickly and for the players involved the rewards are huge, making their pockets deep.

Bankers, you’re not Wall Street, you’re Maul Street.

My NYC Weekend

1 Celebrity Sighting - Chris Noth (aka Mr. Big) on 49th and 6th on Friday evening. A nearby 12-year-old swooned. Then I had to wonder why a 12-year-old is watching Sex & the City in the first place

2 Bagels. As always, the best. I’ve heard it’s NYC water that makes ‘em so tasty.

3 minutes my credit card was on the street after I dropped it. I shouldn’t be carrying my anything related to money sans wallet pre-coffee.

4 times I sat in my living room practicing Jake Gyllenhall’s “I wish I could quit you” line from “Brokeback Mountain,” which I watched twice on Saturday night. Tear fest!

5 pages I wrote at the coffee shop yesterday morning. I’m on page 95!

6 x 5 = the number of minutes I waited on the platform for the D train yesterday only to find out it wasn’t running. Then I went to the A train platform only to learn that due to an “earlier incident” it was running on a “slower schedule.”

7 pages into Gayle Forman’s book IF I STAY, I thought to myself, “I wish I could write like this.”

8 of us in total on Friday night for dinner at Del Frisco’s steak house. The place was loud, so I barely heard any of the conversation. I however hear my mother at one point mention a minor health issue involving, and I quote, her “left breast” to my boyfriend.

9 deep breaths after hearing the aforementioned words coming from my mom’s mouth.

10 days. How long I’ll be back over Xmas and New Year’s. Can’t wait.

NOmaste

On my plane ride earlier today I read this article in the New York Times about Mrs. Bikram’s quest to make yoga a competitive sport—potentially even taking down dog and crow the 2020 Olympics. I find this incredibly disconcerting, and I’m not nearly a super yogi. I barely make it to class four times a month, I eat red meat three times a week, and I probably wouldn’t recognize Sanskrit if it were tattooed on my forehead

I do, however, recognize one of the most scared values of yoga—that anyone can do it without fear of not being “good enough.” All of western culture is obsessed with the idea of being better than someone else… Can’t I just chaturanga in peace? In yoga, you set personal goals, whether it’s inner peace or a freestanding handstand. Sure, I’ll sneak a quick glance at the gal next to me to check out her half moon, but most of the time, I’m in my own world, and that’s the way it should be.

Yoga is beneficial to so many people. You’ve faced three rounds of devastating chemo? Legs up the wall. Have cramps? Happy baby. I truly believe that once you start scoring people’s poses, and introduce the idea that one person does it better than another, you suddenly make this a hobby much more intimidating than it should be.

So, to Mrs. Rajashree Choudhury and your sequence-copyrighting husband, I say nomaste. Leave yoga alone.

I’m heading to NYC tomorrow morning for the first time in over six weeks. It should be interesting to see how, if at all, I see my hometown differently. To celebrate my return, I think heroes with grutty on the B train heading to Brooklyn are in order.

I’m heading to NYC tomorrow morning for the first time in over six weeks. It should be interesting to see how, if at all, I see my hometown differently.

To celebrate my return, I think heroes with grutty on the B train heading to Brooklyn are in order.

Finding places like the above (Snoqualmie Falls) are why I moved here. It’s a 20-minute drive from Seattle that doesn’t include any of the following: Trying to navigate around double-parked cars, crazy, angry pedestrians, or cabbies that raise their menacing fists at me Traffic of any sort. I hit 65 on the freeway and didn’t slow down once. A lot of people - let’s face it, tourist destinations in a crowd of any kind suck. Do you know how many photos I have of the Eiffel Tower with someone’s hair/hat in the corner? Now if only there could be someone selling Gray’s Papaya hot dogs at the top I’d be in pig-loving heaven. Click for high-res photo

Finding places like the above (Snoqualmie Falls) are why I moved here. It’s a 20-minute drive from Seattle that doesn’t include any of the following:

  1. Trying to navigate around double-parked cars, crazy, angry pedestrians, or cabbies that raise their menacing fists at me
  2. Traffic of any sort. I hit 65 on the freeway and didn’t slow down once.
  3. A lot of people - let’s face it, tourist destinations in a crowd of any kind suck. Do you know how many photos I have of the Eiffel Tower with someone’s hair/hat in the corner?

Now if only there could be someone selling Gray’s Papaya hot dogs at the top I’d be in pig-loving heaven.

Rain, Rain, Don't Go Away

It’s been raining a lot in Seattle lately. This may seem like an obvious statement, but it actually isn’t, because apparently even to native Seattlelites, these constant downpours are a little much.

But I don’t mind it. To me, the rain is wonderful. I’m here to start a west coast life after all, so why not wash away all those little things about my east coast self that annoyed me? I don’t want to be hard on myself, but there are specific traits that a New Yorker picks up after thirty or so years—impatience, a stifled belief that maybe you are just a little more important than everyone else (you’re not), a fast way of speaking. Of course, not all are bad. I like to think I have a good sense about people—that if someone is walking towards me at night on a quiet street I know whether I should cross the street, avert my eyes, or just keep on walking.

Lately, I’ve noticed that the narrow lines that burrow across my forehead and stretch from the corner of my eyes aren’t as deep as they once were. And while I for some reason can’t give up my east coast sleep schedule, when I do close my eyes I often sleep better than I have in years.

I used to love the song “Rain” by Blind Melon when I was in high school. In it, Shannon Hoon says, “I like watchin’ the puddles gather rain.” I remember my fourteen-year-old self thinking that maybe he was a little crazy. Who wants rain? I wanted sun, to be free, to be outside. But now, I’ll take a rainy day over a sunny day. Downpours give me an excuse to read, lie around, think, write—things I never knew I’d have to make time for when I was a teenager.

In the past few, damp weeks, I’ve realized a lot. Sure, starting on a new path is scary, but maybe you never really start something new. Maybe you just start with a new perspective, a watered down version of what once was.

“Insanity is a very tempting path for artists, but we don’t need any more of that in the world at the moment, so please resist your call to insanity.”

- Elizabeth Gilbert

HOLY BRAT PACK! Central Cinema, a small independent theater two blocks from my apartment, is hosting a John Hughes movie marathon next Saturday & Sunday. You know what that means? Two full hours of the Breakfast Club, baby. I’ve always wanted to see Molly Ringwald and Judd Hirsh lock lips on the big screen (sorry: late spoiler alert). But that’s seriously not the best part. Afterwards there’s a montage of Mr. Hughes’ movie trailers (Sixteen Candles, please!), trivia, and a classic eighties sing-a-long. I have died and gone to 1984 heaven, complete with Dong, lost automobiles, and Emilio Estevez, aka the blond-haired and not-quite-as-messed-up Charlie Sheen.

HOLY BRAT PACK!

Central Cinema, a small independent theater two blocks from my apartment, is hosting a John Hughes movie marathon next Saturday & Sunday.

You know what that means? Two full hours of the Breakfast Club, baby. I’ve always wanted to see Molly Ringwald and Judd Hirsh lock lips on the big screen (sorry: late spoiler alert).

But that’s seriously not the best part. Afterwards there’s a montage of Mr. Hughes’ movie trailers (Sixteen Candles, please!), trivia, and a classic eighties sing-a-long.

I have died and gone to 1984 heaven, complete with Dong, lost automobiles, and Emilio Estevez, aka the blond-haired and not-quite-as-messed-up Charlie Sheen.

A snapshot of my bookshelf in Brooklyn. grutty: Obama’s presidency. Click for high-res photo

A snapshot of my bookshelf in Brooklyn.

grutty:

Obama’s presidency.

(this post was reblogged from grutty)
Apparently, my new job involves some math. Okay, not even—mostly just numbers. I knew this going into it but I apparently forgot that I have a fear of numbers themselves. If you put a combination of more than two together I panic - especially when there’s more than three in a row in addition to a minus sign. At least then I know I’m usually looking at my bank account. I started thinking about why I live in fear of something as simple-looking as a 4. It wasn’t particularly hard to trace. I blame it all on my tenth-grade math teacher. Prior to enduring his antics I’d loved math, as geeky as that is. I floated through Algebra and Geometry on a trapezoid-shaped carpet. But then came trig, with cosines, and sines, and my teacher’s signs—telling me I should go back to learning numerators and denominators (which incidentally were actually mentioned in an email to me on Tuesday. Don’t people know that my brain had to delete 6th grade math terms in favor of say, David Bowie lyrics?) But back to my math teacher—he was a madman. Our homework had to be in by 8am. If it was in by 8:01 we got an F. His reasoning? If we were late to a job as adults, we’d be fired. Incidentally I’ve tested this theory, many times. It’s not true. In addition to his time-obsessed OCD, we had to do the homework in a number 3 pencil. This required many trips to art stores, since—although I don’t want to date myself—this was at the very beginning of the Internet and obsolete items weren’t just a click away. But that’s not all. Our names had to be on the top left of our perfectly perforated piece of loose leaf and the dates on the top right. We had to then skip a line and name the assignment. Once these key pieces of information were safe in their correct spot, we double underlined all three. Additionally, all equal signs had to line up, all answers also needed to be double underlined, and all proofs had to end with a semi-colon and QED. It’s Latin for the proof is done. I have no doubt that he believed he was preparing us for our lives as authority-fearing, tax-paying adults. Of course just attempting to file my taxes—a lethal combination of computers and numbers—sends me into a tizzy. Who knows what I could have been had I not been assigned to that fateful Honors class? A mathematician? Doubtful, but I definitely wouldn’t have to hire an accountant every year in April to explain the numbers to me. Over fourteen years my math fear has added up in front of my eyes. Every day I try to subtract some away and soon I’m sure I’ll divide it in half. In the meantime, as David Bowie himself says in Modern Love, “But I try, I try.”

Apparently, my new job involves some math. Okay, not even—mostly just numbers. I knew this going into it but I apparently forgot that I have a fear of numbers themselves. If you put a combination of more than two together I panic - especially when there’s more than three in a row in addition to a minus sign. At least then I know I’m usually looking at my bank account.

I started thinking about why I live in fear of something as simple-looking as a 4. It wasn’t particularly hard to trace. I blame it all on my tenth-grade math teacher. Prior to enduring his antics I’d loved math, as geeky as that is. I floated through Algebra and Geometry on a trapezoid-shaped carpet. But then came trig, with cosines, and sines, and my teacher’s signs—telling me I should go back to learning numerators and denominators (which incidentally were actually mentioned in an email to me on Tuesday. Don’t people know that my brain had to delete 6th grade math terms in favor of say, David Bowie lyrics?)

But back to my math teacher—he was a madman. Our homework had to be in by 8am. If it was in by 8:01 we got an F. His reasoning? If we were late to a job as adults, we’d be fired. Incidentally I’ve tested this theory, many times. It’s not true.

In addition to his time-obsessed OCD, we had to do the homework in a number 3 pencil. This required many trips to art stores, since—although I don’t want to date myself—this was at the very beginning of the Internet and obsolete items weren’t just a click away.

But that’s not all. Our names had to be on the top left of our perfectly perforated piece of loose leaf and the dates on the top right. We had to then skip a line and name the assignment. Once these key pieces of information were safe in their correct spot, we double underlined all three. Additionally, all equal signs had to line up, all answers also needed to be double underlined, and all proofs had to end with a semi-colon and QED. It’s Latin for the proof is done.

I have no doubt that he believed he was preparing us for our lives as authority-fearing, tax-paying adults. Of course just attempting to file my taxes—a lethal combination of computers and numbers—sends me into a tizzy. Who knows what I could have been had I not been assigned to that fateful Honors class? A mathematician? Doubtful, but I definitely wouldn’t have to hire an accountant every year in April to explain the numbers to me.

Over fourteen years my math fear has added up in front of my eyes. Every day I try to subtract some away and soon I’m sure I’ll divide it in half. In the meantime, as David Bowie himself says in Modern Love, “But I try, I try.”