What happens when I crack under pressure, birthday and live TV edition

Here's an essay, "Thoughts About Panic Attaking" at The Frisky, about my pre-birthday, pre-live TV panic attack week in November. There's a related essay in the works, because I'm still working on figuring out how not to collapse under pressure. This week, it's getting through until Friday and getting on a plane and going far away. Sometimes that's the only answer. And at least I now know how to get to Cherry Lane Theatre! Hopefully the Erin Courtney reading I missed will happen again.

Two days before my birthday last November, I got a facial at my favorite spa. I lay down on the bed, with the paper gown tucked around me, and the technician went about working her magic on my pores. She put a mask on my face and left me to relax for 10 minutes, with cucumbers resting gently over my eyes, the lights dimmed, and soothing music playing. The setting should’ve been everything I needed to stay calm, and it was … for about two minutes. Then my phone beeped, and I saw a text from a friend telling me to check her Twitter stream ASAP. Of course, I was curious, but I couldn’t get a signal, and spent the rest of the “rest period” feeling antsy, continually picking up my phone to see if suddenly service had been restored. The serenity that I look for when I go to the spa, the chance to shut off my mind while getting my skin rejuvenated, wasn’t there, because all I could think about was when I could get out of the room to check my phone.

Later that afternoon, I decided to see a free play reading at a theater in the West Village. The playwright and I have mutual friends and I loved the idea of getting to do something for free that I couldn’t have done at my day job. I was running late, as usual, and chose the subway stop nearest where I thought the theater was. Then I found myself walking this way and that way, cursing to myself and then to anyone in the street as I realized I wasn’t going to be able to find the theater. I felt so stupid, because I’ve lived in New York since 1996; I should know where I’m going. Even though the West Village is notorious for its winding, hard to navigate streets, I was sure it was my fault. I took my iPhone and slapped it hard against my inner arm, the sting a reminder of my error, a physical manifestation of my anger at myself.

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Why “Nerd Lottery” Winner Andrew Kessler Opened “Monobookist” Bookstore Ed’s Martian Book Stocking 2,500 Copies of His First Book

The other day I gushed over how cool Ed's Martian Book (which I keep wanting to call Ed's Martian Hand, in some misguided Dorian's Red Hand mental transposing) is? Well, I interviewed the Meatball Shop-inspired mastermind behind it, Martian Summer author Andrew Kessler. For The Nervous Breakdown, which makes me crazy nervous to write for. Hope you like it and if so, let people know!

My favorite line is at the end: "When you start thinking of ideas, the one that makes people the most nervous is the one you want."

Ed's Martian Book, the West Village bookstore selling only Martian Summer by Andrew Kessler

Tonight I particpated in one of the most fun, unique readings I've ever done. I was invited by all-around cool guy and Galleycat editor and birthday boy Jason Boog to read at Ed's Martian Book. I looked it up and all I saw on Yelp was "science fiction bookstore." I arrived and this is what I saw:



Yes, author Andrew Kessler set up an entire shop with thousands of copies of his book artfully displayed. What's his book, Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and My 90 Days with the Phoenix Mars Mission, about? From his site:

Martian Summer is a non-fiction account of author Andrew Kessler’s time spent working on the Phoenix Mars mission. It’s about winning the nerd lottery--getting the most exclusive ticket to work inside mission control for a NASA mission to Mars. The luckiest fanboy in fandom gets a shot to spend three months with unfettered access to mission control--that’s a journalistic first and potential NASA no-no. It’s just your average summer trying to capture the story of 130 of the world’s best planetary scientists exploring the north pole of Mars. It’s a warts-and-all look at the Phoenix Mars mission and NASA’s space narrative from a regular guy who once dreamed of leaving the planet.

Andrew Kessler is a writer living in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in The New York Times and on The Discovery Channel. He holds a degree in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley. This is his first book about Mars -- or any planet for that matter.

More photos. The e-book launch party is Thursday night, April 21st. I encourage you to check out the store if you're in New York, whether Mars or space interest you or not. As a book lover there is something mesmerizing and gorgeous about seeing the same title seemingly endless displayed on shelves. It makes you wonder what the book buying experience would be like if every book were given that kind of display. Plus it's fun. And the bathroom is totally charming! And, yes, Martian-themed.
















(slightly fuzzy cause this giant ball was swaying in shop window)



From an interview at Galleycat on the opening of a "monobookist" bookstore (by Jason Boog):

Kessler also explained how he assembled his ambitious project: “I dipped into the old savings a bit to make this whole project happen–but who wouldn’t to live on a NASA mission and then make a giant art project about it to tell the world!? I live the frugal life to make these moments happen. But I’d be very nervous to tell others to spend their hard-earned money on art projects (although I secretly want them to).”...

He added some simple advice for authors interested in following in his footsteps: “You’re going to hear a lot of people say, ‘Wow, that will never work.’ They’ll be right, of course, but if you love books and you should do it anyway. ”

Watch videos and learn more at kessleronmars.com and follow him @kesslerandrew on Twitter.

Richard Thompson, Stacy Morrison and Marion Winik walk into a bar…

Actually, I would imagine none of them know each other, but they have all been living in my head. I, however, did walk into a bar, Kingswood, last night, after having a moment of dyslexia (thinking it was between Greenwich and 9th, not 6th) and having to take a cab rather than let the West Village further confuse me. At the door, a cute guy named Lawrence said, “Rachel, right?” I, of course, was suffering from manesia and didn’t remember him, though he was very nice and I got inside and Nichelle told me he’s Sarah Ultragrrl Lewitinn’s brother. (Sorry, Lawrence!)

The party was quite the scene. It could've been overwhelming, but there were lots of familiar, friendly faces. So I met Lilit Marcus, my editor at The Gloss, said hello to Marty Beckerman and surveyed the crowd of, oh, most of the NYC blogging scene and was talking to Amelia, my editor at The Frisky, when someone taps me on the shoulder, and it’s my ex. I was totally caught off guard; I expected to run into him on the Lower East Side, while at The Meatball Shop or walking to The Slipper Room, not at some crazy media party. I was surprised that our mutual friend, who is much closer to him than to me, didn’t mention she was going, though I also failed to ask her. So I just stood there trying to figure out what to do. It jolted me how good he looked, and also that I didn’t fall apart. I’m more teary now than I was in the moment. And there were a million things I could’ve made small talk about, like his friend’s 600-page book that’s been getting lots of buzz, restaurants I’ve visited, any number of shared little jokes but all of it seemed pointless. All I kept feeling was the rejection radiating from him, and none of that was mitigated by his smile or his text last week telling me to “stay awesome.” This may sound obnoxious, but I have a lot of friends, I don’t need more. Or maybe I do, but he’s not among them. I just don’t operate that way, and am still trying to sort out my thoughts about my own role in that relationship. I wish I were able to handle having a friendship with him, because he's a good friend, a great one even, better than a boyfriend, dare I say, at least better than a boyfriend to me. Maybe I'd have been better off never trying to go there, but I couldn't have known that.



After at comedy I met this girl who’s I think 24 and had dated this guy for “not that long” – a year and a half. I almost laughed because my barely three-months blip should be nothing, not compared to all the things people around us have gone through, and yet suffering isn’t really subjective like that. As Stacy Morrison writes, "Everyone has pain in their life. It all counts the same."

Which brings me to…I’ve been reading Stacy Morrison’s memoir Falling Apart in One Piece: One Optimist’s Journey Through the Hell of Divorce. She was with her husband for 13 years and their son was under one when he decided he wanted out of the marriage. Obviously my almost-three-month relationship came nothing close to that, but why I wanted to read it is that I thought we had the potential for something long-term. I put more of myself than maybe I should have into the relationship and wanted to see what (now former) Redbook editor Morrison had to say.

In what could have been a morose, bitter tale, she simply told their story and how they’ve negotiated, haltingly, at times angrily, being co-parents. At the very end she writes:

I will never be a hundred percent sure why Chris and I broke up. But I am finished with those questions, even though strangers and new friends can’t help but ask them, even now, because they still need their magic, their prayer, their proof, their certainty that if they can put the end of our marriage in a box, they can keep divorce from coming to them. I’m done with certainty, at least in this one area of my life. It took me more than a year before I could accept all this vagueness as being the most I, and we, would ever get to know about the end of Us. I didn’t get the answers I thought I neededæthe answers that would keep us together, the answers that would make me look good, the answers that would hide all the messy, unhappy stuff that lives inside even the very best of marriagesæbut by being unafraid to see the ugliest of things, I have laid my whys to rest. They won’t haunt me anymore.

Then, I also got from the library Marion Winik’s book of essays-as-commencement-speech-advice, Rules for the Unruly: Living an Unconventional Life, after reading an interview with Dylan Landis, and it made so much sense (except for the prince part):

Even if things seem to have worked out for me at this point, I certainly remember what impatience feels like; for me, it was always combined with a deep longing for love. Put them together and you get a wicked case of desperation, which was the fuel that sent me zooming around like a nut for so many years. I know every cure for this that doesn’t work, and one thing that does. It’s sometimes called faith, though you might just call it extremely embattled optimism. Because it’s definitely not a tranquil faith, a religious faith, or even a faith that anyone would recognize as faith. The feeling I’m talking about is a fierce, messy thing, a faith with gritted teeth and ADD. It has one prayer: Someday my fucking prince will come.

Poor dear brokenhearted people, I’m telling you because I know. You can’t make someone love you. You can’t make someone stay. You can, unfortunately, make them feel sorry for you and want to flee. And anyway, you don’t want the love you have to chase down and hog-tie. One day, it will show up on your doorstep. All the love you can handle, waiting for you with a bouquet.

And that will just be the beginning of your story.

It's really not that I mind being single; part of me loves it because I like making my own schedule and I also have plenty of demons to fight that are easier to do alone, or at least, I'm used to that. At the same time, I like being able to become someone slightly different when I'm with someone in that full immersion way. I like learning about what makes people take, observing them, getting inside in some way. That is ultimately what I'm after and while that rejection felt and continues to feel pretty fucking awful, I know that there is nothing I can do about it except move on, starting immediately.

There's some lines in "Love Lee" from that new Bettie Serveert album I like a lot:

I came across some monsters
That I never knew I had
And once I got to know them well
They didn't seem so bad
But they altered my life

I don’t want to be “in love with my loss” as Morrison writes about one woman. I just want to learn from it, and I learned last year that out of sight out of mind is the best way for me to handle rejection. Not out of sight, oh wait I’m going to suddenly be nice to you after breaking your heart. It’s not that I blame anyone for wanting to get away from me—I do plenty of the time—but when it’s so abrupt, it’s better for me if it’s final because otherwise I’m too caught up in the person in extremely unhealthy ways. I already care(d) too much about T, to my detriment, and that’s what I heard at the end: you are too much, too intense, too needy. And maybe I need to work on that or maybe I need to look for someone who appreciates that passion. I know that the kind of relationship I want is one where we are mutual fans of each other, in addition to being friends and lovers. I want someone I can support and vice versa and am an avid follower of the couples I know who model that.

I’m thinking about this song “Beeswing” by Richard Thompson that Mary Lou Lord sings, and at the end, he picks up from what the girl of the song has said to the narrator, and he looks back with regret and sings:

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing
And I miss her more than ever words could say
If I could just taste all of her wildness now
If I could hold her in my arms today
Well I wouldn't want her any other way

I’m not comparing me or my ex to a bee’s wing, or to the girl in the song. I'm not that fragile (I hope), though maybe I'm not as tough as I want to be when it comes to emotions. But I think the through line, from Marion Winik to Stacy Morrison to that final line of the song is about the fact that there’s no one else we can be but ourselves. The girl in the song had said that to the narrator, "And you wouldn't want me any other way," but he tried to change her and she, wisely, escaped. Of course it would be a sad life to never have anything about you altered by anyone else; then we might as well live locked away in a hut all alone. But there are things you can change, things that are worth exploring, and other things that are essential to who you are. That difference is one I struggle with all the time but think that maybe the whole point of that relationship was for me to stop looking outward for validation and start looking inward a bit more.

For me, part of why the rejection hurt me so much, aside from what at the time felt like its suddenness, though in hindsight I can see was building and probably there from the start, was that it felt like, “Here are all these things that are wrong with you.”

And some of those are things I can and am working on, but the heart of it are not things I can work on because they are just, well, me. I sometimes think it would be so much easier if we could just change, magically morph into whoever someone else wanted us to be, if that would lead to this mythical thing called happiness, but at the end of the day (a very long day, admittedly), I wouldn’t want to be with someone who doesn’t want me. In some other universe, I could do that chitchatting thing, but it’s sortof meaningless right now. Maybe I wind up sharing the minutiae on Twitter or in my journal or just to my fluffy new pillow (yes, I do talk to my pillow sometimes). I try not to have regrets but certainly if I’d known that was the trajectory of our relationship there’s a lot I would have kept to myself; I never would’ve shared as much of myself physically and verbally as I did and part of me wants to say I will be that much more cautious going forward.

But who knows? I have no idea who I will wind up dating next. I have hopes and ideas and possibilities but I can’t make assumptions about what anyone thinks about me and right now I’m focused on righting a lot of wrongs of the past year outside of my personal life and taking care of my health and home and finances and friendships and family and repairing so I can enjoy myself rather than hate myself to the extent that I have in the recent past. That’s what I’m trying to privilege and when I have those low moments and think that contacting my ex will help me through them, I know I have to resist, to fight them because that’s a pretty disastrous road to head down.

I don’t hate my ex; I’m not even mad. He did what he needed to do to take care of himself, and that’s what I’m attempting to do too.

Pasita is delicious!

Very briefly, just wanted to say how delicious the food was last night at Pasita, where I dined and chatted courtesy of co-owner and awesome writer Nancy Balbirer, who read at In The Flesh (video TK) this month and whose book Take Your Shirt Off and Cry I highly recommend. The food was amazing and I can't wait to go back and eat some more. Oh, and at In The Flesh I learned how to pronounce "boite."




I forgot what these were called by they were these corn fritters with nata cheese - looked like sour cream, which I hate, but was delicious.


This ropa vieja pizza was my favorite. Sorry I can't be more descriptive, I'm super tired but in happy news, I got my teeth cleaned this morning, for the first time in longer than I care to admit. It didn't even hurt and I got complimented on my teeth. Have to go back for a deep cleaning, but I don't mind. I'm always so scared doctors (or anyone, really) are going to yell at or be mad at me.

Google maps gone wrong on my iPhone

Yes, even though I've lived in New York since August of 1996, I still sometimes get turned around, especially on the windy, wily streets of the West Village. Last night, I was heading to bakery Batch, which apparently has gotten a reprieve from its sad closing and will be open a little longer (call the store to find out exactly how much longer!).

So last night, after answering 2 hours of questions from NYU journalism students (who knew time could fly so fast when talking about yourself?), I tried to meet my friend and fellow cupcake blogger Stacie Joy there.

Here are the directions I got:



If it's not immediately clear what's wrong with this picture, I'll tell you: You can just make a left on West 10th Street, the street Batch is actually on! Plus it was freezing cold. I'm pretty sure these are meant to be driving directions, in which case it makes sense, except that, oh, I live in New York and don't drive. There really needs to be a "walking directions" option.

I outsmarted these convoluted directions by making said left, only to find Batch closed. Grr...at least I knew where I was once I got to West 10th. Still, these looping directions had me super confused.