As my time in New York draws to a close...

...I feel very sad.
I dread the day when I wake up and won't be able to execute my perfected morning routine of:

• wake up
• dance to The White Stripes 'Elephant' in my pyjamas
  
• climb onto the fire escape to check weather/take in amazingness of East Village
  
• get dressed in some variety of 'out there' clothing
• go to the cafe for hot chocolate, facebook and neighborly 'good mornings' with all the peeps from the area who I've got to know.
  

I'll be crying every time I hear Empire State of Mind again. This happens whenever I leave New York and is a clear indicator that I should NOT leave New York. But there's the little problem of a Visa, money and my life back home.

People have been asking me what's been the highlight of my stay in New York and I honestly don't know. One of them is definitely the trip I took to Rheinbeck with Lisa, who kindly has let me have her sofa bed for the duration of my New York stay and brought me to a vast array of events and places which I never would have seen otherwise. Taking Amtrak was an experience in itself, so comfortable and the views were great. When I stepped off the train at Rhinecliff and my lungs filled up with cold clean air that smelled vaguely of woodsmoke I knew I was going to love it there. Their house was beautiful, a white wood haven of warmth in the midst of rolling fields and forests which I explored shortly after arriving in my absolute favourite way; on horseback. Holly the Welsh pony took great care of me as we cantered through the yellow/gold/green of upstate New York, her breath and mine like clouds in the cold air.




I spent the rest of my trip eating amazing food, watching Harry Potter movies and exploring the lovely towns of Tivoli and Rheinbeck. It was pretty close to my idea of heaven.

Back in the city I've had some great days too; walking through the almost empty New York streets on Thanksgiving, followed by the true American dinner experience in Brooklyn; going to see a friends friend play in bar Williamsburg for the true indie experience and sitting in MoMa staring at my faves Pollock and 'smudgy squares' Rothko.



It blew my mind when I read that when MoMa bought their first Rothko in 1952 a trustee board member was so outraged he resigned.

My last week here is packed with internship stuff, seeing friends who I haven't seen yet, some parties and probably some Christmas shopping, and I'm terrified its gonna fly by and I'll be on a plane watching the Statue Of Liberty wave goodbye before I know it. I'd better find some time to sit in the Bean writing and people watching, which has for realz become my favourite thing to do in New York.

I got quite excited when I saw some snowflakes float by this morning. I finally have a chance to wear my sheepskin lined Docs that I got in T.K. Maxx during the summer! Though by the sounds of it I'll be living in them to conquer an Ireland covered in snow.

Until then...I'm gonna go take a lovely dog for a walk to distract me from the thoughts of leaving and maybe bottle some NY snow to bring home.

New York, New York

It's a beautiful sunny morning in New York City and its hard to believe that in Ireland its currently raining and economically imploding.

I've been in New York for almost 3 weeks now and am truly in love. I totally understand what that T-shirt is trying to say.

New York is beautiful and weird and there's a million different worlds depending on where you get off the subway, you can be whoever you want whenever you want , you can have have breakfast for dinner or dinner for breakfast, you can find your dream job or make a job of dreaming. Sometimes when I'm walking down the street, looking around me, this sense of happiness washer over me in a way I've never felt anywhere else. The sun shines almost every day, even when its cold, and I can spend whole days in cafe's reading and people watching to my hearts content. I eat breakfast on the fire escape watching the autumn leaves blow around the street and it feels like I'm in a film but in a great way. I wear whatever I want without being judged or put in a box, and even if I am its ok because the rest of the people in here are really cool and I don't mind being like them. I accesorize pretentiously with a hot chocolate and a book and take the subway in a nonchalant fashion. And in amongst all these people and buildings, I feel more alive than I ever have before.




Obviously, its not all cinematic moments of perfection. I find myself more alone than I have ever been before and though I'm enjoying the freedom it brings, New York can be a lonely place. When I'm feeling really lonely I go across the street to the animal shelter and take a dog for a long walk around the area.

I've got to know some lovely dogs and had some great chats with random people on the street. I fell a bit hopelessly in love with a pit bull puppy and even looked into how hard it would be to get her home but it would have been way too complicated and expensive. It all came about because I went in one day and there were no dogs to walk but the guy asked me to play with the puppy because it was sad about being away from its mother so I happily obliged and sat there for an hour happily cuddling and petting her. She's gone now (heartbreak) but he said there's were more puppies coming in today, so hopefully some of them will need cuddling too.

There's always something to do in this city, so when I'm not staying in to watch Mad Men or read I have been to some interesting stuff, including a back-room reading and the preview of Tiny Furniture in the Museum of Modern Art. Tiny Furniture is a film by a new up and coming writer/director/actress called Lena Durham.

She stars in the film, alongside her mum and her sister, and does a really good job of portraying whats its like to be released into the world after finishing a B.A. in Nothing Useful For a Job and feel lost. It's rare that I see something I find genuinely funny, and this was also clever and depressing in equal enjoyable measures.

Another interesting thing I went to was, you know *nonchalant*...Florence and The Machine!! Flo played up an absolute storm; it was the best show of hers that I've seen yet. Her voice sounded amazing soaring through the rafters of Terminal 5 and she twirled and danced around the stage like a leaf caught in a whirlwind of excitement. I always think seeing her play is like taking a Florence drug; you experience highs and lows and you get goosebumps and dance like crazy and afterwards you're exhausted but incredibly happy. She also looked like the High Priestess of Awesome.



As far as reading is concerned, I am lucky enough to be living close to The Strand which is only the best bookshop In The World.

I've just finished reading Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (which was great if even just for the fact that the whole book takes place within a 2 block radius of my apartment) and The Graduate, which was good at first but kind of degenerated into a farcical screen play meets Catcher In The Rye vibe in the end. I also read Clockwork Angel on the plane over, the prequel to the Mortal Instruments series I wrote about before. As someone who has never read Sci-Fi before and is slightly sceptical (I try not to lean towards scornful like most) about it, I really enjoy the whole vampires/demons/angelic descendant fighter world created in them.

Ok, I have been sitting here nursing a hot chocolate for about 3 hours now and the sound of the rustling leaves blowing along the pavement outisde in the sun is distracting me and making me want to go out for a wander. I'm always secretly hoping to bump into Garance Dore and Scott 'The Sartorialist' Schuman and become BFF's...but for now I'll have to make do with my ipod and some adventures.

NaNoWriMo

'Thirty days and nights of literary abandon'
November is officially National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) so I decided to take the plunge and signed up to www.nanowrimo.org . Basically the idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month, which breaks down as about 1500 words a day. Some of the novels have been sold and published successfully, like NY Times Bestseller 'Water for Elephants'. Signing up means you make a profile and they send you encouraging emails with pep talks from the likes of Dave Eggers, as well as info about events going on near you where other NaNoWriMo people get together to write and probably give out about hard it is. Nothing like a bit of communal complaining. I'll be in New York for all of November so I'll have to find a nice local cafe to write in every day, and it would be nice to meet other people who are doing it too because I need NY friends! Preferably nice cool ones. If you're successful you get a CERTIFICATE. Thats right, a certificate with your name on it saying how awesome you are. Everyone likes those.

Only a few days to go now until I jet off to JFK, and I'm busy freaking out about flying, trying to find adaptors, figuring out what the weather in New York is like, filling in forms for the United States government, reading about Tea Partiers, and practising (or should I say 'practicing') my american by listening to The Notorious XX, specially this:



Its all about the Benjamins baby.

A scrapheap of things I've been meaning to write about.

A few things happening/I've been thinking about/listening to:

1. I booked flights to become a New York City girl for almost 7 weeks at the end of October. My plans include wandering lonely as a cloud through the East Village, travelling to DC to see Obama's crib and generally soaking up all the awesomeness. Oh, and get working on my novel. And take lots of pictures. And hang around outside of Trash and Vaudeville (like the guy in the picture).


2. A major event in the world over the past few weeks was the release of the 33 Chilean miners trapped underground since August. So many people all working together to save them was kind of amazing. I was home sick so tried to watch as much as I could live on Sky News; the Phoenix 2 coming out of the ground once or twice an hour to release a miner into the anxiously awaiting arms of friends or family managed to make me tear up literally every time. I'm a total sucker for real life drama. Oprah kills me. I definitely won't be able to watch the episode where Oprah has the Chilean miners on.

3. Columbine by Dave Cullen: I finished it a while ago, and literally couldn't stop thinking or talking about it. I tried to write a blog post about it just after I finished, but kept referring to the killer by their first names and rambling into details that wouldn't have made any sense had you not read the book. Having never read non-fiction before, it was weird and kind of difficult for me to deal with that towards the end I felt I really knew all the 'characters', including my favourite FBI negotiator Dr. Fuselier, and then realizing they were all real people. That this really happened.
I would definitely recommend it to anyone and everyone who is in any way interested in what happened at Columbine. It doesn't just explain what actually happened, but also why, to whom and what happened next. I was surprised and a bit freaked out to find that nothing I had heard or known about it before was actually true; that they were Marilyn Manson fans, that they were loners, and most importantly that it was a high-school shooting. It was in fact an attempted bombing; their intention was to blow up hundreds of people and shoot the survivors as the ran to safety. The random shooting of students and teacher was a consolation act.
The book didn't have any pictures, and I'm not going to put any up in this post, because frankly the smiling year book pictures of Eric and Dylan frighten me. The knowledge that out there on the internet I can watch CCTV footage of them wandering the halls, with all I know about them now, is, for want of a better word, very weird. It took 10 years to finish, and even Cullen says 'living for that long with a massacre isn't easy'. I really admire his strength. But I digress. What I'm trying to say is: read it because its interesting, well written and will make you think.

4. The Social Network. I went to see it last night at the Irish Film Institute which is my new favourite place. Great hot chocolate and films. Anyway, I thought The Social Network was great. It managed to grab my attention straight away and didn't even let me consider letting my mind wander until I walked out. Jesse Eisenberg was very good as Mark Zuckerberg, who came across as being a super smart kind-of-asshole with some social issues and a dry sense of humour. The rest of the cast were awesome as well, including Mr. Timberlake. I have been watching a lot of films lately, and therefore am beginning to really appreciate a film which is enjoyable and interesting, because they are apparently rarer than I though, and The Social Network was definitely both. Thought it did really make me want to check my Facebook and then feel kind of weird about it at the same time. That boy knew what he was doing.


5. I am loving this song.



I would like to dedicate it to someone, but that would be rude, and I'm a lady.

6. It's almost winter again! I'm unreasonably excited about this. Jumpers! Fur coats! Boots! Woolly socks! Yay! Winter is a time for being cosy, going for countryside walks, hugs, Christmas, all the good stuff.

If I was young I'd flee this town, I've buried my dreams underground.

I found out at about 5 o'clock on Tuesday that Beirut were playing in Dublin at 8 o'clock that same day, and was completely devestated at the prospect of missing it. When I asked around as to why NO ONE TOLD ME everyone said 'well I presumed you knew!'. I didn't let it faze me however, and myself and a friend who I shall call Candy Warhol made our way to Tripod armed with a lot of hope and some faith that fate would come through for us. There were quite a few people standing around looking at each other shiftily, not wanting to make eye contact in any sort of friendly manner in case a ticket came along and you had to push them out of the way/slap them. It was getting closer and closer to Beirut O'clock and we were obviously looking quite desolate because a blond guy wearing a nerdy/cool blue and white checked shirt and smoking a rollie who was walking past in a group of similarly Brooklyn-trendy looking people slowed down and said 'Hey, are you guys looking for tickets?'. I replied with a very cool 'eh..yes!'. 'Oh thats cool, just say you're (name blank in case I get him in trouble!) on the guest list plus one'. Once again I was the picture of laid back appreciation as I stumbled over the words 'oh my god...thank you...thank you so much' and tried to contain my ridiculous happiness. With a brief awkward smile and a 's'cool' our knight in shining armour was gone. For now. We made our way to the front of the crowd so as to have a good view of the band and lovely Zach Condon, lead singer of Beirut and, apparently, cat owner (I read an interview with him in which he talked about his cat, which made his lovely status shoot up at least 9 points). When they walked on, we were surprised to see that our check-shirted friend was none other than Beirut's trumpet player!
They played up a storm, opening with Nantes, the song that made me fall in love with Beirut/Zach in the first place. The musicians were amazing, and Zach's singing was even better in real life, spineshiveringly soulful and different. They played all my favourites as well as a some new ones. As he came back on stage for his second encore, Zach leaned into the mic to confess that last time he 'stumbled his way through Hallelujah'. When the crowd roared its approval he ran his hand through his hair and half laughed 'not again. I'm not so good with other peoples songs'.



It was such a great gig, it honestly made me ridiculously happy, and it lasted for about 2 days afterwards.

The unexpected dose of happiness came at the right time, as the rolling around of the 28th of August marked the official end of my Sarah Lawrence dreams. I still cry every time I get post from them. But it was not to be. It was a hard lesson to learn that no matter how much you want something, or how hard you try, sometimes it just doesn't work out.

After wallowing in a pool of broken dreams for a few weeks, I had to get my act together and formulate some new high hopes so I decided I wanted to go to New York anyway on the 1 year work/internship visa available to Irish students and try to take a 10 week novel writing course at NYU at the same time.

On a happier note, I am now the proud owner of a Nikon D40 :) I had been saving up to buy an SLR for a while, and whilst in York I had used my friends D40 and loved it, so when some birthday kindness meant I had enough to buy one, I started looking around. The D40 isn't being made anymore so I was looking for a 2nd hand one, and I had a few incidents where sales clerks said 'You don't want that old one! For only 400e more you can buy this D3000! LOOK, new and shiny!' but my heart was set and I just sadly shook my head. Finally, my lovely friend Paul directed me to Conns Cameras where they had one in stock and the rest is history. I named it Paul after Paul. It really is a great little camera :) I'm still only learning how to use it but we're best mates all ready.

I gotta get to the passport office now to make me an official Irish person. I hope I don't have to wait around for ever. I'm bringing a new book just in case; Columbine by Dave Cullen. I've been reading up about high school shootings for a character I was writing about, but I've had this book for a while and not gotten round to reading it so I'm looking forward to starting today.

Hope everyones enjoying the last of the summer sun :)

Diamonds, Chanel and Demons

'I am Marina, and you are the diamonds'.

I wanted to write a bit about Marina and The Diamonds, because despite being unable to decide wether her music rocks my socks like Florence does, she is definitely cool, has a weird-in-a-good-way voice and is rapidly becoming the next it girl of the indie music scene. And, lets face it, she has awesome hair and style.

Marina hails from 'Wales and Ancient Greece' and trained in West London Music school, but her wikipedia bio suggests she wasn't a big fan of school and college. Watch out for her when her album drops at the end of February because I have a feeling she's gonna be big. Some of her lyrics I like :)

You are so magnetic, you pick up all the pins- 'I Am Not a Robot'

Never fell down like a princess, but at least I picked myself up as a queen- 'Seventeen'

I'll leave my Marina rant with this video for her song Mowgli's Road which The Guardian review described as 'think Gary Glitter, but if he kept pictures of the Wicker Man on his hard drive'.



Another thing I'm liking today is the Chanel temporary tattoos that Garance Dore wrote about on her blog. I love Chanel and its fabulousness, as well as the way its constantly changing and evolving with fashion and never allows itself to go stale but manages to maintain a distinctive Chanel vibe.


Last but not least, the demons :)
I am currently quite guiltily absorbed in City of Ashes, book 2 in the 'Mortal Instruments' series by Cassandra Clare. I never read fantasy but a fellow Twilight lover lent them to me and I have to say I am enjoying them (despite the fact that they are giving me awful nightmares!). Theres vampires, werewolves and dangerously attractive demonhunters. Seeing as its dull and grey outside and real life is being placidly monotonous, whats not to love?


Also, the series takes place in New York City, and since my visit to NYC and Sarah Lawrence in November where it suddenly became reality that I may well be living in the most amazing and mental city in the world this time next year, I have been devouring any piece of literature I can find that takes place in the Big Apple in the hope that it will provide helpful insights and make me feel less lost once I'm actually there. So far this collection of books has included What I Loved by Suri Hustvedt and a Marian Keyes book I picked up in a charity shop for 1 euro which will provide as a usefull manual if I ever have a make up crisis in Manhattan.

Anyway, thats enough snapshots of my current mind.
Good afternoon.