Category Archives: Big City

New York City. She’s a rare thing.

The morning you move to New York City will be as distinct as the day when birds first learned it was in their blood to sing. Oh, can you imagine what happened in the trees that day? You’ll delight in … Continue reading

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Filed under Big City, Big Dreams

I’d bring you sugar. You could borrow flour.

I am willing to travel across the country to show up at your door and tell you this: I’ve got camping gear. Yes, that’s right. Camping Gear. I know I have it somewhere cramped up in the attic. Wedged between … Continue reading

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Filed under Best Friends, Big City, Disconnect, Girl meets Boy, Hunger

And then a ballerina emerges from the crowd. Tattered shoes. Blistered feet. The Big City lifts her from the waist and she’s up, up, up. Kissing the Sky.

I have high hopes of one day being a car wreck of a romantic. Of one day lending my heart out, as if it were a well-read library book, to someone who would have no choice but to rip the return … Continue reading

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Filed under Big City, Big Dreams

Show me a girl with pencil shavings on her forehead and an imaginary cousin by her side and I’ll show you a fireworks display more smashing than July 4th.

Picture a girl in elementary school, legs as thin and long like two yard sticks holding up a torso, anxiously rubbing pencil shavings onto her forehead in the girls’ bathroom before running out the door to meet her imaginary Italian … Continue reading

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Filed under Big City, Big Dreams, Humanity, Passion, Thank You

And for a short fix of time, he and I were just two children sleeping in your arms, cradled by your transit line.

The lurch of the subway that followed closely after the full stop sent the sleeping child straight into my lap. He did not move. He did not stir. I looked around for a parent to step forward and scoop the … Continue reading

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Filed under Big City, Big Dreams

Let’s Turn Our Lives into A Christmas Carol that the World Just Itches to Hear A Single Note of.

So I have been on Facebook for the past half hour and it is official. Facebook Official, if you will call it that. There is no way to defriend your own self on Facebook. Come on Mark Zuckerberg, how did … Continue reading

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Filed under Big City, Big Dreams, Happiness, Life Lessons, Love Is..., Love Letters, Uncategorized

Like Strings of Christmas Lights. Like Boughs of Holly. Like Fa La La La La, which an extra La to prove some point.

Some days my creative nonfiction techniques and fiction story lines get sassy together. On these days I think I write the best. Or at least I have the most fun. I spent all day looking for the Bridge. You know … Continue reading

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Filed under Big City, Disconnect, Girl meets Boy

Becoming a “New Yorker”: Glass slippers don’t make for an easy morning commute.

The first time I attempted to be a real New Yorker I was nearly hit by a car. For the longest time, looking like I belonged in New York City came with a belief in the practicality of impractical shoes … Continue reading

26 Comments

Filed under Big City, Big Dreams, Humanity, Life Lessons, Loneliness, The Tough Stuff

Keep painting the world, dipping all your brushes into the same big bucket called “A Better Place.”

I learned at sleep-away bible camp in the 5th grade that God had messed up in making me. One) It is beyond me why a bunch of camp counselors would make a bunk full of homesick, Bible-toting adolescents draw pictures … Continue reading

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Filed under Big City, Big Dreams, Disconnect, For a Better World, Love Is..., Reality

The City is a Living Lullaby: Before & After. Me to We.

I have not needed a lullaby in seventeen years… Last night the strident sounds of an insomniac city pulled at my eyelids and slid me into safe slumber. Those same sounds– the rhythm of a basketball dribbling in the distance … Continue reading

30 Comments

Filed under Big City, Disconnect, For a Better World, Humanity, Simply Living, Uncategorized