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January 1
There’s a giant fur coat just inches from my face. I could probably lean forward the tiniest bit and know exactly what it would feel like to cuddle with a hundred dead rabbits but at the moment I’m more concerned with getting to the top of the stairs without passing out.

It’s New Year’s Eve and 2009 is only moments away. There’s a stitch in my side and I’m astounded that my legs are still moving and somewhere in the back of my mind it occurs to me that the thirty or so strangers around us are dressed in cocktail dresses and stilettos and are still making it up the sixth flight faster than my sneakers are taking me.

Maybe I should resolve to lose a little weight this year.

“Come on, babe, we don’t want to miss it!” Lauren yells down to me from half a flight above. Moments ago we had been standing in a hallway on the first floor of some apartment building with Laura and Peter, my good friends from high school. The building looked like a renovated warehouse and easily housed half a dozen floors.

We hadn’t planned on coming to Williamsburg for New Year’s but Laura knows someone who knows someone so at the last minute we all decided to make the trek into Manhattan and back into Brooklyn. I stared around at the stark white walls, the crumpled paper bags; the doors to all apartments were made of steel. All this place needed was a coat of orange paint and some trendy furniture for a makeshift waiting area and the owners could jack the rent up a good twenty percent. We were only five minutes away from midnight, had been trying to get a hold of Laura’s friend to figure out which apartment the party was in, and cursing the possibility of celebrating the New Year with a bunch of strangers milling around in search of their own friends’ parties.

Somebody mentioned something about a rooftop. We followed the crowd, instinctually.

The first three flights were easy, exciting. Thoughts that we just might make it onto the roof before 2008 ended kept me moving. None of us knew what to expect and on any other occasion we might’ve shrugged off venturing back into the bitter nineteen-degree weather but it was definitely more alluring than that hallway.

The stairs were endless. I noted the numbers at each landing but I never stopped, even when I got cut off by a woman in a fur coat and seamed stockings. We had all slowed significantly by the sixth floor, but resting was not an option. I had no watch, no cell phone, and no breath to ask anyone how long we had left until the birth of 2009.

We slowed as a group soon after the seventh floor, an indication that we were almost there. I was three feet from the door to the roof before I realized I had made it and finally heard the cheers of everyone outside.

It was dark. I walked carefully, afraid of ice, and searched faces while my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. Lauren and I finally locked eyes and just beyond her I saw an endless rooftop and the red and green lights illuminating the top of the Empire State building. I had never seen it so close. Fireworks along the East River turned the sky a million shades of purple and fifty or so people hooted and hollered our collective success. The wind and euphoria plastered a smile over my face. The skin on my hands was frozen and my back ached from the cold. Briefly I wondered where the woman in the fur coat had gone, then the weight of my camera reminded me to start the year off right.

January 2


January 3
Queens looks a lot like my hometown tonight. My friend Aly is driving us back from her apartment in Ozone Park while we listen to artists like Ani DiFranco and The Blow. I can hear Lauren reaching for the lower notes from behind me while Aly harmonizes in a higher octave. It’s peaceful and allows my mind to wander. Queens isn’t quite as cramped as our neighborhood in Brooklyn and it’s that little bit of extra space that feels like rural Olean, NY. The wide streets are lined mercilessly with parked cars but are emptier at this hour than in the daylight hours.

I spent the majority of my formative years in Olean, NY, a small town just north of the Pennsylvania border. It’s been quite a long story so far, but I recently ended up living in Brooklyn, NY, hundreds of miles from my friends, my family, and my comfort zone.

Olean is statistically the most populated and profitable town in Cattaraugus County, but don’t let that fool you. It’s a valley, and if you were to find a map that showed only its people you would wonder if its inhabitants all formed from rain, each drop trickling down the surrounding hills to form a pool, its stagnancy providing the perfect breeding ground.

Olean is the kind of hometown that you either leave right away or get stuck in. Most of my friends have generations of family living here and there around town. They share the same teachers in school, they watch the town rise and fall with new businesses and they know who is who and what is what. I am not a native Western New Yorker. My parents moved to Olean from Missouri when I was three. My relatives are scattered around the country, settled into their separate lives.

I like not having the baggage. I like to roam, find my own niche, and move on. I’ve been moving around since I was three. Seven of my childhood homes were in Olean but I’. I’ve never lived in a house for longer than four years and I’m always excited about getting settled into a new place and finding its quirks and rarities.

Lately though I’ve been thinking of home as Olean. My mom and my brothers live there. My friends from years ago are still there. It is my constant, and it might be nice to head back there for a while and figure things out.

January 4


January 5
It’s a seesaw. Up. Down. Up. Down.

Up.

Down.

Up. We started off on level ground, both our feet, our toes, touched the woodchips that blanketed the soil below.

Remember that day in the park? You had just cut your hair and were wearing that green shirt with the peace sign. I had on a pink polo, probably the preppiest thing I owned. I liked to think of myself as a rebel, but I had the kind of haircut that only girls who read Cosmo and Teen would get.

My bangs kept flying into my eyes. We started slow, pushed off every few seconds until we rose high enough that neither of us could manage to cushion the landing.

Down. I’m usually a little wary of the teeter-totter. I’m troubled by the teetering part mostly, but only because I’m not sure what it means to totter. When I was younger I always had that friend or two who would jump back when their feet hit the ground and the absence of their weight would send me plummeting. And we'd always had such a nice rhythm going, too. I can remember brushing woodchips off my backside; tenderly avoid the tailbone by concentrating on the grits of soil collecting under my nails. I’m always reminded of corduroys, though I’m not sure why.

I hate the feeling of grit under my nails. That’s why when I scratch your back I only scrape my fingers forward. I try to avoid having to pick your dead skin cells out.

It’s nothing personal, really.

Up. I always get back up but it takes a little while before I can trust enough to have another go. Instead I swing. I have control over the swing. All I have to do is kick. It doesn’t take two to make something happen, to make me fly.

When I met you it was a different sort of playground. I was up then. I liked the new attention I started getting when I first broke free. It had been a while since I’d been unattached so when you came waltzing into my life I paid no mind to your sober advances. I thought I was flying, but I failed to see that you were actually the pilot.

We had our ups and downs, for certain. You were sure my past had followed us, that I might teeter ever so slightly. It’s often thought of my kind, that we will stray, follow the acceptable path. Truth is you were scared. I had no reason to flee our lifestyle. I was flying for myself and for us, not for my family, my career, or some silly belief system instilled by man. I stopped holding back because I had no reason to jump back and destroy the pacing.

Up. Down.

I guess I should have recognized it. You thought you saw a flicker of something in me that you failed to see in yourself. You’d see. You saw. You thought.

Up. Down.

You jumped off. You let me plunge from all the way up there. Up there, where I thought we had control of the sky. Up there, where I let myself get cocky. Up there, where I thought we were the envy of the penguins who could only fly through the water. They couldn’t see a thing from down there but I was the blind one. You let go for just a moment and I plunged straight to the bottom.

You tried to help me get my footing. There’s still a little grit under my nails. I had to claw my way up, but by then you were already heading back home.

So I swing. I abandon the teeter-totter because I want to fly. There’s so much I haven’t seen. The weather can get stormy this time of year, but I’m aiming to reach high above the clouds.

Kick. Up. Fall back. Kick. Up. Fall back. Kick. Up.

If I fall, I’ll just brush off my corduroys and get back on. Fuck the dirt. I can wash my hands later.

January 6


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This piece will be published in the May 2009 issue of Sweet: A Literary Confection. Look them up on Facebook.

---

The air is not exceptionally cold tonight, but my shoulders quiver with a chill I can't shake.

What I remember most is how beautifully the whites of her eyes, teeth, and ear buds stood out against her skin when I looked up.

I had been carefully running up the stairs to the subway, watching for ice and feeling the raw skin on my feet rub harshly against my borrowed socks. The train had just pulled up and a crowd of people wearing puffy black coats and iPods were crowded at the top of the stairs. We were all trying to get home. I picked up the pace, keeping my head down so I wouldn't fall, and was just about to reach the top of the stairs when I sank into her.

I don't know how tall she was, standing a step or two above me, but she was twice my size.

Excuse me, I begged. I just needed to get to the doors before they closed. I wasn't worried about getting stuck between them, though I've certainly heard stories. I had my mind on my feet and my eyes on her headphones. She started talking to me.

"You can't just push your way through somebody and expect to get what you want. You could at least excuse yourself."

She was clearly upset. I noticed the stairs and cold air behind me. I didn't back down though, hoping she would realize I needed to make that train. I put on my kind eyes and sternly stated my case: I did say excuse me but you had your headphones on. You didn't hear me.

I watched her take her ear buds out - the left and then the right. I listened to the beat now swinging around her neck. I was interrupting her song.

She kept talking. I started to wonder if she might push me down the stairs. I had my camera with me. I wondered if my camera bag would provide enough cushion to keep it safe or if I would land on it when I reached the sidewalk. Would my iPod slip out of the front pocket? My lens adapter would probably survive the fall - it was the only piece of metal in my bag. My train was still there.

I wanted to point out how I was on the right-hand side of the stairs, that the train was mere feet away from me, how it was common New York courtesy to let someone through to a stopped train because the conductors wait for no one. I wanted to point out that she was in fact standing in my way, not the other way around.

She just kept talking.

"Are you going to say something," she asked, "because I can stand here all night."

It's not in my nature to hit someone I've just met. I'm too polite. If I thought she might hear a word I was saying, or if I thought she was reasonable enough not to shove me down a flight of stairs I might have asked her what kind of night she'd had that left her with such an urge to lash out. Did her lover have wandering eyes? Did her MetroCard charge her an extra two dollars?

Instead I thought of the train, the stairs, and my fear. I apologized. I was sorry that she couldn't see that I was only trying to make the train. I was sorry that she thought the left side of the staircase was invented to compensate Her Royal Majesty's circumference. I was sorry that the volume of her music kept her from seeing me head straight toward her and from hearing my beg-pardon. I was sorry that in my rush I honestly could not remember whether I had bumped into her before or after excusing myself. I was sorry that I was too afraid of what those stairs would do to my body if I said what I was really thinking.

"You going to say something, girl? Or we gonna stand here the rest of the night?"

I faintly heard the melodic ding of the train's closing doors. The trains slow down at this hour and now I was stuck waiting in the cold.

My apology was short but it begged for my life.

"Next time you better watch yourself. Somebody else might not let you go."

I said nothing, refusing to acknowledge that she'd done me any sort of favor. Finally she walked around me and down the stairs. The platform was nearly deserted, with one man sauntering slowly toward me - no, toward the stairs. I suddenly felt alone and angry and frightened. My eyes welled from fear or anger or the chilly winds but a new found instinct to watch for danger kept my vision clear and my jaw set.

Each new sound of footsteps or voices made me sink more into the shadows. I had recently ended a two-year relationship but I could have used some company just then. The shopkeeper who had made eyes and smiled at me a few hours before was now making his way back through my thoughts. The rush of confidence his looks had given me now made me feel vulnerable and I longed to have someone by my side who could make me forget what had transpired.

I was no longer single. I was alone.

January 11


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January 13
This piece will be published in the May 2009 issue of Sweet: A Literary Confection. Look them up on FaceBook.

---

Claudette fell over tonight and broke my favorite lamp.

She’d been standing on top of the heater for so long that I thought nothing of it when the cats started sitting at her feet – Lola likes the warmth; Kiplikes to perch. Claudette was never particularly stable on the heater. I think it was the heels she never, ever took off. I should mention that Claudette is a mannequin.

That lamp used to be my father’s and I have always loved it for reminding me of simpler times. When it’s been kept on long enough the dust on the shade warms and produces this homey, attic-like must. It smells like all the times my father and I played backgammon, watched the early seasons of Buffy, and fell asleep to Deep Space Nine. I can remember the smell of his red felt-tipped pen when he graded papers under that lamp. There wasn’t much of a scent, really, so maybe it’s not the smell I’m reminded of but the small stains the pens made in the blue velour fabric on the couch my mom always hated.

I loved that couch. It had stripes.

I can remember the smell of the cold on the window and how it mixed with the warm feeling of the lamp’s light while I sat perched on the back of the couch watching and waiting for my father’s car to get home from work. It’s always snowing in that memory.

When my mother moved out and took the dining room table with her,she left the lamp and I wondered why. She told me once that they split the things they bought together. My mother wanted the table so my father got the car. After she moved out, there was a big empty space where the dining room table used to be that would sometimes house a Christmas tree and possibly some toys. I may have made this up, but I imagine the lamp was always my father’s. He probably had it in his first apartment during his college years. He told me a story once about his roommate and her smoking habit. The story involved a cigarette and a ghost, I’m pretty sure, but that doesn’t seem at all like the kind of story my dad would tell me. The cigarette sat on a side table under the lamp. Or it did in my head, anyway.

Most of the time when I’m reading or listening to a story that takes place in or involves a house I picture the last house my parents ever lived in together. If there’s a pool table in the story it’s always where the dining room table used to be, but most of the time there’s just a dining room table there.

When I was a kid, I used to sit and examine the lamp’s shade. It has white, swirly squares that remind me of the inside of an abalone shell but are more fragile. The squares are joined together like a stained glass window. For as long as I can remember one of the squares has been different. It’s just a simple piece of white plastic stuck haphazardly into the shade where the abalone square should be. It never actually fit. Two sides of it bubbled out because of the way the shade curves and when I finally convinced my dad to give me his lamp, the anomalous square went missing. Now there’s just an empty square-shaped space.

There’s an empty square-shaped space and a newly cracked square because of Claudette’s clumsy fall.

I’m looking at the emptiness of the wall she used to lean against. It begs to be filled but I hesitate to let Claudette back up there. Really, she’s not stable. It’s those heels.

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When I was little and my mom still had to tell me to take baths at night I spent the majority of them lying down in the tub and swooshing my hair through the water by waving my head from side to side. The way it moved through the water fascinated me. I never used to plug my ears to keep the water out but now the thought of submerging my head with open ears makes me cringe.

We moved around every few years when I was a kid so I encountered a lot of different bathrooms. Only one of them had a claw-foot tub, my mom’s favorite because of how deep they are.

My mom loves baths. Baths, pajamas, movies, and coffee. She’ll take a bath during the day to keep warm, to relax, to get away from my brothers, or just to pass the time. Often she’ll take several baths in one day.

I think I like baths too, but they make me feel vulnerable. I don’t like to feel the cold hard wall against my head, but I don’t want water to get into my ears either. And no matter how warm the water is there will most certainly be limbs that just have to be cold because for whatever reason, they haven’t invented affordable bathtubs that you don’t have to bend your knees in. there’s always this mysterious draft in the bathroom when you take a bath. Any skin poking out above the surface risks a fresh wave of goose pimples.

I’m not a fan of washing my hair in a bath. I used to swoosh my hair around to get the shampoo out but then my mom told me it would put knots in my hair. I kept swooshing after that, but I took careful note of whether or not it tangled more when I swooshed. I stopped when I started having to comb the snarls out myself.

I used to read everything when I was a kid. I read cereal boxes during breakfast and shampoo bottles when I took a bath. The Pantene Pro-V bottles always got to me because they had a picture of damaged hair versus Pantene treated hair and the little scaly pieces sticking out of the damaged strands disgusted me. I kept looking.

I’d love to read during a bath but visions of sopping wet pages deter me. There’s no way around it. I can’t see myself lowering into the tub without getting my hands wet. When they do it in the movies I get frustrated.

I wasn’t particularly fond of bath time as a child but once I was in you couldn’t get me out. Once the water started to get cold I’d let some out and turn the hot back in. I swirled my hands around my body like a whirlpool, just like I’d seen my mom do it, until the tepid felt like a warm blanket once more.

I like the way it makes my skin tingle when a chilled arm or leg submerges. It sends shivers deep into my muscles, much the same way a hot shower constantly pours over you. I don’t read the shampoo and conditioner anymore. When I have to lean back I’ll usually rest my head against my hand while the water beads through the hair on my arm. I get bored with this relatively fast and eventually slide back down to rest my head in the water.

I plug my ears now, but I still get the urge to swoosh my hair.

January 29
I remember everything you ever told me about her. In collecting these tidbits I've managed to piece together an idea of a person who haunts me from the beaches of Costa Rica. She dances around in my head, a margarita in one hand and pieces of your heart in the other. She's wearing a sarong and a grin that tells of her intentions.

I've seen her saunter in and out of your head like a tune to one if those pop songs. She's the kind of song that gets stuck in your head just because it's all over the radio. You're not sure what you really think of the lyrics but the tune is catchy enough to hold your attention so you start to listen a bit more closely each time it plays even though it goes against all of your musical ideals.. Before you know it the song is on your iPod. You can't get it out of your head.

Remember that time you picked me up from the bus station? I knew nothing about you then but you brought me a rose, carried my bags to the car, and played an album that one of your good friends had made. You tossed around words like genius and pointed out the lines she had dedicated to you.

When she isn't shutting you out she only keeps in contact long enough to make sure she still has a piece of you and then she breaks off what she can and falls back to those sandy beaches.

Maybe she's scared. Maybe she's confused. Maybe she likes the idea of you pining after her because it makes her feel attractive. And to that you would say: She isn't like that.

But what do you know? You can't even really see her. In the mean time I'm watching as her silhouette reassembles bits of your heart while the sun sets behind her in a manner not unlike the ones we saw at school.

She's probably nothing like I imagine. Free-spirited, sure. I already know she scores the story of her life using a soundtrack only she could write. She's probably a great person. Interesting, even.

I don't hate her, but I'd love to find the ability.

We've never really met, but I don't like her because of all the little pieces she has that you used to tell me were mine. I don't like her because I don't feel like I can trust you to tell me everything like you used to.  I don't like her because of who I become when she resurfaces. I don't like her ability to shut you out when I'm the one who's left with all your faraway thoughts. I don't like that she makes me feel like the safe, less complicated choice.

'Cause she certainly is a catchy tune. Goodness knows even I get her voice stuck in my head. Maybe they don't play me on any of the bigger radio stations, but I'm the song that moves millions and can definitely hold my own.

She's just a top forties hit, but you know I'll be the classic you turn to when you get sick of those Radio DJs.

January 30


January 31

I'm really excited about what's been coming out lately.

I know I've only written every other day but the past three weeks have been mind-numbing and it put a stopper on the creativity.

Now I'm ready for action. I'm just so motivated, so light-heared, and so clear-minded now that there is little that can stop me.

I'm not sure whether I should go back and fill in some writing for the days that I missed. This isn't meant to read like a journal, so I don't see why not. I'm not sure I really want to venture back to the days where I had nothing good to say though. I'll need to think about this one.

I name all of my external hard drives after my favorite authors. I get pretty excited about these things because they play such crucial roles in the safety of my hard work.

I have a 160 GB LaCie drive that was designed by Porsche. I named it Dennis Lehane. It was my first, a gift from my dad the year I started college. It's a sexy little thing, really. Filled up pretty fast.

I bought a 160 GB My Book from WalMart back in February or March because Dennis Lehane was formatted to my PC and Lauren uses a MacBook. It was read-only on the Mac and since I never, ever use my PC I bought the My Book with the intentions of transferring the files to it, reformatting Dennis Lehane, then returning the My Book for a full refund. Then I decided I probably needed it anyway.

For my birthday my dad bought me a 500 GB Seagate. I'm really looking forward to this one because I'll have more room to move around while I reorganize my whole life. Then I can use Dennis Lehane and the My Book for backup backups - just storing the really important pieces that I'd die if I lost them.

I haven't named the My Book or the Seagate just yet. I can't decide what to call them.

Perhaps Sue Grafton - I spent a lot of my high school career with my nose buried in her alphabet. I could go another route entirely and start using character names. Kinsey Milhone? Not exactly bad ass, but quirky like the character.

I like David Sedaris' work but he's a household name and he really hasn't held much of an impact in my life. I'm not sure why well-known names seem so unappealing to me. It's kind of like a little secret that only a few people are in on.

Gertrude Chandler Warner kept me reading as a kid, so that's a definite possibility. A mouthful, though.

I love Chuck Palahniuk, but somehow that doesn't feel right. Or maybe it does. Maybe it does. Still. Household name.

There are new writers now. As much as I like them and the people they've introduced me to I feel like it would be a small betrayal to just ignore all the authors of my past. JR Moehringer is wonderful and makes me want to drink for the all right reasons, but how would I explain that to my father? He'd be the one person who would ask. Mark Dunn had me enthralled in Higby, but not so much for Ella Minnow Pea. I did like the idea of a civilization governed around the alphabet though.

I could name the hard drives after my favorite professors but I'm hoping they'll start following me through Project:365 and constantly referring to my hard drives by their names might come off as obsessive and creepy.

I've thought about naming photographers instead (Robert ParkHarrison and Richard Avedon) but since the majority of the space on these babies will consist of photos I ought to let writing know it will always be my first love and honor it as such. I just don't have the same passion for the visual arts as when I was a kid (she says just before starting a long, visual project).

Oh, and let the record show that I read Mystic River (and all of Lehane's works) about a year before I found out the movie was even made. The book was better. The movie was pretty damn good.

I'm writing this three weeks before 2009 even hits us and already I have my concerns. Last year, less than three months into the project, I ran out of hard drive space and had to put everything on hiatus. I did eventually sort everything out again, but I didn't want it to be Project:207 so I put off starting up again until the new year was about to hit us.

That's alright though, because this year it's going to be so much better. This year it's about getting the story. I'm not going to let myself remember to take a photo at the very last minute, right before I go to bed. I'm not going to put half-assed shots of the cats up just because I didn't have my camera with me when I did something entirely different that day. And the writing? Hold onto your hats. I'm not going to list my boring daily events anymore. No more lifeless accounts of the weather and how much homework I have. This time I want to really capture my subject. I want to tell you all about the roommate you're looking at or the food at the Mexican place. You're going to sit next to me on the train and see the East River as I cross the Manhattan Bridge on the Q train. You're going to scooch away from the crazy singing guy with me and pretend not to know me while I brazenly point my camera at him.

What does this mean, exactly? It means I can't hide anything. In order to keep your interest I'm going to have to tell you all about the fight I had with Lauren. You'll probably know everything about my money problems but if I'm any good at writing you'll be able to ignore them and focus on something else just like I do. You're going to know my roommates. All five of them. You'll explore the city with me and we won't care who's watching.

No more keeping secrets from my readers. Well, maybe.

It's going to be hard.  At first I'm probably going to talk myself out of stripping down to the flesh and laying it all out there. I'm afraid there will be this distance between us, that you'll sense that I'm leaving things out, not telling you parts of the story. I'm more afraid of telling you everything. Part of this project - a part I had not forseen when I started it last December - is to help my writing grow. I need to be brave, or I'll never write a successful nonfiction piece. If I ever hope to be a writer I'm going to have to expose myself. No more secrets.

God, that scares me.