I CAN'T HEAR YOU DARLING!

Naked fingers delicately paint the air with earnest volition. A woman in her late thirties is sitting cattycorner from me in a coffee shop. She is deaf. The man across from her has dark skin, maybe in his early or mid-forties. His soft eyes move along with her hands, absorbing and translating. He is speaking methodically, enunciating each syllable. The sounds he is making are of no value to her, she can only understand his lips.

Tables are strewn with textbooks and the small space is littered with Saturday afternoon enthusiasm. People with running shoes and dog leashes are sipping lattés. But through the minutia of the busy coffee shop, his voice is the only one I can hear.

His language is universally spoken and her language is not. I wonder what it feels like to observe life quickly swirling around you, a quicksand of time drowned by silence, and not be able to say anything about it. And the same loud world is blind to her. I wonder if the glass wall is rose-colored, or does she even notice it exists? I wonder if the silence keeps her from her feeling chilly and isolated, as painful words have the power to do. Do voices make her feel invisible or maybe invincible because she might not know how many words, discussions, and feelings are wasted or neglected? Words are so easy to toss around when there is little effort in receiving them. Might there be any freedom in living a life mute of nonsense?

Did they both go to trouble to learn how to understand the other? All that for a date?

It’s odd. Typing and people watching, a joyful scenario any writer can relish, and recently I’ve run out of what to say. My paragraphs are mechanically imperfect and my thoughts lack structured coherence, but every sentence is woven together with truth as much as confusion. Each word inserted not for cadence, but rather for interpretation. Enough of a twist to separate myself from the text messages and emails and bored journalists, you have to reread, only if to forget. While not oppositional, truth and confusion are close cousins, one often resulting in the other, a by-product or a leftover… Life seems to be layered with uncovering truth and subsequently being confused knowing it now exists. Threatening or benign, truth can’t be deleted or recovered, it just is, and the only choice we have is to accept it, or walk away.

“I did let them know our plan was to quietly celebrate in the mountains, just the two of us. Or I thought I made it clear. ” He explained with frustrated scrawled on his face.
About five seconds passed where she deftly orchestrated motions into the air. Not placidity, but she was calm with a reassuring nod.
“I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want a bunch of people over to your place, go grocery shopping and cook, etc. with moving next weekend. Do we need to call a moving company?” His voice dropped an octave.

She didn’t sign back. Instead reached for both of his hands.

I hope I can pack all 171,000 Oxford approved words into my cranium. Extracting the appropriate idiom or synonym, inserting it into conversation, so the person with whom I’m speaking can accurately understand me. But dialogue is a struggle. Microsoft Word allows me to backspace, add and shuffle sentences around, so when I hit save, or send, it’s done with cognizance. Packaged, wrapped with spell check and removed of any extraneous blunders that otherwise would have weaseled their way into a phone call or after dinner cocktails.

And so I digress. This woman gently staring into the eyes of this man, understands exactly what he is feeling and with no audible exchange. I’m starting to wonder if maybe words can be more of a barrier than a bridge.

American Sign Language has 7,200 expressions. Does she desire such dexterity, intimacy with a convoluted vocabulary, 26 letters that if formulated correctly can create literature, masterpieces and lyrics, newspapers and opinions? If you don’t know how the words sound can your conscious talk to you inside of your head? Or is there just the peaceful silence I still fail to locate in my sleep.

Reaching for her bag, a strange emptiness swept over me. I guess these two people, who probably haven’t noticed I’m sitting across the room watching them gave me a silly hope that some things might be worth fighting for, had to go.

Before the two walked away, abandoning me with iTunes and a hundred images to dissect and reassemble. I saw him do something that I know every couple does. He lips parted and without a sound he mouthed, “I love you.”

STUCK IN AN ELEVATOR. Aka: Involuntary Confinement with a Broken Blackberry

A temporary ride in a small square cubicle…

Objective: Vertical Transportation.
Obstacle: Polite requiem/bad weather jokes.
My advice: Make sure you hit the powder room before climbing on board.

Around ten pm an elevator decided to stop between the 18th and 19th floor of my building, with me as its lucky passenger. Fortunately (unlike most of my jaunts in elevators) I was well equipped. Expecting company the next day and far too lazy to stop by a liquor store I had purchased a bottle of vino in Earl’s (conveniently corked) not an hour earlier. So while my friends were waiting downstairs at Earl's for me to grab a sweater… The elevator chose to take a breather.

The car sort of vibrated a bit and then a hefty CLUNK. Not shaking, not like an earthquake, but enough for a girl who is phobic of getting stuck in an elevator, crashing to my own demise (pitch black in a box – always think worst case scenario) to get scared. I begin searching the box for an alarm… a search button of sorts.

Before pulling my blackberry out to call 911… an omnipresent husky voice asked, “Are you okay?”

Bewildered....I examine myself. Search the ceiling for cameras and respond with a whimper, “Yes, but I’m a bit afraid.”

Terrified, and irritated that my friends will all be taking shots soon and I’ll just be trying to entertain myself with no book, or lap top or boyfriend, or even a freaking stranger! While my building is the safest, soundest and most bulletproof structure west of the Mississippi I felt like Karma was catching up with me. The only proof I could rummage up after being told to “press certain buttons, hold tight, be patient, all is good, we’ve called the fire department” was, “I am the least patient person in the universe (notoriously late) and so this is what God had to do to me.”

I stretched my calves and uncorked my bottle of cab, and starting fishing for sympathy texts from every poor soul in my address book. Damn, it’d be funny to pull together stories of people that got stuck in elevators, imagine the conversations?

The little bar on my blackberry was blinking with exhaustion, and soon I realized the only conversation I’d be enjoying was the one with myself (and the occasional few words with the technician trying to get me free from the locked jaws of this stupid freight elevator- padded walls included)…. Woops, did I leave that part out?

So my mind wondered past my To Do lists…. Fretted a bit about tomorrow, but when I realized I had nothing other than me to keep myself company (As a guilty extrovert - I was screwed)… I allowed my thoughts to lollygag and linger, rehashing happy memories, replaying the euphoric hours happening just days before ...... again and again.

When you're so caught up in the present, tangled in incredible conversation, the type where the words someone is saying, are so captivating you don't want to stop listening, but just thirsty for more... that's when you know you're living. Lately I'd enjoyed many an exchange so titillating... I appreciated my time locked nineteen stories above the Mile High City to step back. I carefully sorted through the layers of laughter and serious discussions, and pure curiosity to figure out what exactly about those particular conversations was so powerful.

Sometimes I get so busy loving/scheduling/analyzing life... I forget I can derive joy from a memory every time I pause long enough to relive it...

Then arrive the succulent memories, the funny ones, the comical anecdotes that rip sanity from your innards leaving your stomach aching with raw… so tender and so exhilarated…

You’re alive.

I chortled like a drunk idiot to the chilly air (I was nursing the red wine slowly… in fear of being discovered by firefighters intoxicated, but much more terrified of the possibility I’d have to tinkle and well…. Enough Said!) and when sitting up was no longer fun. I scooted my rear end up to the wall, extending my legs upward, so I appeared to be a massive L shape…getting my jacket and jeans and hair dirty, and relishing the unanticipated silence.

Until a knock on the door and five fire fighters appeared above me, ladder in tow, ready to save me from my adventure in solitary confinement. I was a bit sad to wave goodbye to my little box, the same box I’d venture into the next morning or evening.. the same box that carries me from my home and back. But now the box had more of me in it… memories, ideas, internal dialogue, the personal thoughts that make you smile…
Had I not pushed that button on that Saturday night, never would have come to fruition.


Sometimes when you’re all alone and you don’t have a choice, but to sit there and let your brain go where it may… are the moments worth holding onto.

Conclusion: Never enter an elevator without an extra cellphone battery and a bottle of booze.

The Art of Faking It

Normally speaking, I allow the days approaching New Years to become a spiritual journey into the depths of my brain. I leisurely take hours of afternoons selfishly mapping out the leftover of my life, with colored sharpies and stick-it notes. I dwell on the amazing moments tucked away in 2008 journaling with typos and adjectives. I dream big and eat bigger, and then justify it all by a long run (sans guilt from the doctors) listening to rap spiced with the occasional melancholy song, which remind me of old memories I refuse to let go of, and then as the clock breathes life into a new year, I swallow every last drop of nostalgia with a generous glass of wine. Because moving forward is rough, especially when everything behind was so perfect…


I’ve never been one to embrace change. But I’m damn good at faking it.

How many conversations have you had this past Christmas season at cocktail gatherings with friend, foe and strangers alike… The type where you’re teetering on uncomfortable heels, balancing your eggnog with awkwardness… silently pretending to be fascinated by someone’s verbiage… the nothingness that pales in comparison to your own nothingness… and yes, this entry is probably being interpreted as terrible of me to type, but seriously consider who you’ve offered your listening time to. Don’t you feel a wee bit better of your altruism for helping someone feel like they’re interesting enough that you’d voluntarily listen to them? Isn’t that all we want in life? To feel worth being heard.

Because regardless of how bored, or boring that someone might be, or the conversation they were droning on about… their nephew, boss, cat, terrible book they got through simply to get their mother-in-law to pipe down, there is certain energy, a light, a passion shared when someone is speaking about a subject in which they care- and then that boring subject suddenly starts to sparkle - and now that is subject is interesting - why? Why, because somebody cares!

Even watching their arms orchestrate through the air, hearing the octave change in their voice, like a melody, a contagious cadence- it’s infectious. Physics, the atoms exhaled and embraced are unstoppable little organisms in which we thrive off of… And what they're saying might have no value to us, but inside of their words… there is a person carrying this vibrant glow, and what they’re saying resonates even with us – and then we’re (I’m) not faking it anymore. I’m simply happy that someone has found something in which to believe in, enough so, that they're smiling, enough that they’re talking to me about it.

Traditional - not a transvestite at the Debutante Ball....

My date donned a Scottish kilt last night. No joke. Yes. In a flood of white Vera silk gowns, Armani tuxes, Channel frocks from the fifties there was a man in a kilt. The fete itself is downright incomparable to the modern parties thrown in honor of art/nonprofits/launches of any sort– and while this exclusive affair does donate to important endeavors for those less fortunate – it’s primal purpose is to present the recently arrived pubescent dames to the already-chosen-accepted-society members… To celebrate good cheer and good health- so visit with friends or foe from the past – or possibly encounter someone new- a sparkling transplant from Connecticut. Mostly these are the daughters, nieces, and cousins of those already mingling amongst the hundreds of close friends- familiar by Christmas cards, society pages and well country club gossip– politely sipping champagne while watching the marshmallow gowns descend the grand staircase. The girls, only nineteen or twenty years old smiling broadly at the flashing bulbs courtesy of all the local newspapers… curtseying, and sheepishly waltzing on the arm of their father… Truly it’s an honor as it is an intriguing experiment, ahem, I mean experience.

Now charisma can’t pull off a kilt alone… no not Halloween, or a rumination where men dressed up in their assigned cultural vetements, for a wedding or a parade. No, just something the decedents of Scotts do for only black-tie gatherings… And regardless of the rich history woven into a choice of this kind…Nothing can prepare someone for the “look” the kilt accompanies. The most shocking of questions came not from the slightly tipsy post-debutantes themselves, but rather several of the women from the upper echelons … the mothers to be more precise…who whispered in my ear so slightly I had to bend closer to hear their query, “Is he wearing underpants?”

“Um, excuse me?” Did I just hear this lawyer-gone philanthropist – the queen of society correctly?

She wasn’t the only foxy cougar taking aim under his kilt.

Comparative Advantage

I’ve never liked a good liar, however I respect the hell out of their dexterity.

Your eye hits their eye and unconsciously your brain has just categorized, stereotyped, calculated and formulated a subjective position, completely based on a quick glance. Isn’t it frustrating how people we assume stuffy turn out to be a comedic and endearing, or those who appear organized thrive in chaotic disarray. Then there are the people assumed to be wretched, snobbish or finicky, but eventually become our closest cohorts. And why is it that it’s nearly impossible to predict what people are presuming about us?

To forecast if the ethical mindset of a stranger is “good” or a “bad” is an art in which I admit I have no skill. It’s taken several years of sucking at reading people to recognize this shortcoming. However, the painful repercussions have challenged me to be open to the many things (intelligence, wit, empathy, sheer joy) an individual can offer in exchange for friendship, forcing me to rein back how judgmental I typically prefer to be… because let’s face it, people watching and analyzing the details of apparel or character traits is a frivolous and terribly delightful activity that journalists more than anybody partake in.

While I attempt to rummage up satirical humor to inject into my ramblings, it’s difficult to find anything funny about not being able to read people. It’s important to debunk my personal (narcissist) verbiage to note these entries are scribed upon the request of my friends, who either like to claim they relish my diatribe on a regular basis, or my friends from afar who miss out on my routine rhetoric. Not just to get people to read this stuff and think, wow… she must have a lot of time on her hands. I have hardly any free time (I’m a victim of over committing myself) – while I can’t claim expertise in intuition, I’ve mastered every area of procrastination.

Let me explain. While my biggest blunder is assuming I have the capacity to untangle the intricacies of a personally– I’m damn good at pretending it’s actually my strength. My desire to extract personal information about a stranger couldn’t be more authentic, genuine… it’s what I’ve dedicated my life to – a journalist has the ability to tell one story to thousands of people, which otherwise they never would have heard.

So I guess I can tell you the secret details of a person – their fears, what turns them on – and what turns them off. Ambition and failure – you name it, fetishes and absurd observations they inherently pick up. Their history of mistakes and successes, how they envision their future – I can script the life of a stranger or a confidante in different fonts and vibrant adjectives. I was born a proactive listener (as you read this – I’m sure you have doubts), but if you talk to me, or read my words I can recount verbatim what you said, in what tone, whether it was with enthusiasm, vulnerability and trust, or fear I’d judge. And while I can retell a story with dimension and emotion - I’ve just realized it’s nearly impossible for me to detect whether that person is “good,” or not.