The Grand Larceny of our Democracy

There’s been a lot of suffering in 2025. Here's an oasis of this jar's pickled albeit chaotic thoughts. FYI Johnny is an impeccable ski instructor & today is Hannah’s golden birthday!

[So sorry for the delay, democratic-backsliding has muffled my inspiration as America’s very own Stalin floods the zone at the irresolute desk with a tsunami of fascism.]

My phone was stolen in our neighborhood out of my front coat pocket while I was wearing it but Gemma was there so it was ok; we went to the 94th Precinct after the show of grand larceny at Pete’s Candy Store to file a police report and they said it had happened the weekend prior as well. That’s delightful. Our house HVAC unit in the back garden is an actual block of ice, which would explain why our abode is very cold; we haven’t had any functioning heat for any of winter and my reliance on space heaters has done irreversible damage to the layer of thick-skin I never had. According to Maggie and Emma, the handymen said they’d “never seen anything like it.”

I’m waiting for endless grass and the wrinkled figs to return to the branches they vacated. The ground is covered in a mockery of wrong choices. I’m yearning for citibiking down Berry, picnicking in McCarren, loud living rooms, breezy backyards, hailing a cab in a thunderstorm in July and tireless summer nights where the heat hangs on your heels like golden retriever fur you can’t shake off. I can’t bear another February-date-turned-unsolicited-show-and-tell-time-at-the-table-of-our-camera-roll-water-ski-videos-from-12-years-ago unless I’m going to get to see these tropical bodies of water where these water sport videos are occurring myself! White Lotus is back and even though SoulCycle instructors are too comfy with practicing very early drafts of standup routines at the end of class, there’s a Mamma Mia class so life-changing I have new lip-sync mouth wrinkles and smile lines. What’s the name of the game? Dancing queen! Voulez voulez, SOS, Gimme Gimme!

I keep thinking of cobblestone streets from my childhood I can’t locate geographically but feel viscerally in my frontal lobe. Lefty loosy righty tighty. Heartbreak and not experiencing enough of it. Cold toes, letting go in pursuit of trust, Charlotte’s and my ski-arc at Hunter. “Just the olives in the backpack,” you tell the man with better eyebrows than you at Trader Joe’s. I’ll eat them all in one sitting while I overcook a sweet potato, worry about that new mole, fall asleep with my glasses on again and count my luck that they haven’t snapped (yet). Living for the catch-up phone calls from Coby, watermelon and feta, and getting the group to do a cold plunge in the Rockaways or a night of bowling at Gutters.

Watching your friends from college still dating each other, continuously falling in love over and over again every weekend and every trip, after all these years is enough inspiration to get through this moment, it keeps us single folk still watching Sex and the City watch on with an air of hope. The weeks are full and the days dense with news in what feels like a prologue to democracy’s end. I’m trying to find the light in the darkness but the societal wiring is damaged and the current of advocating for change is short circuiting. Peace and contentment, shadows offending.

The men on the subway sigh to each other, “Yeah, I’m not looking for anything romantic,” the curvature of his elf-like boots punctures every jolt and every turn on the L between First and Third Ave. Don’t you ever wonder? Not even a little bit? I would have loved to let it linger.

The fruit of surprise colors the staff break room’s conversation with a new and confounding discovery over lunch of this large orange’s sheer symmetrical magnitude, main character energy, inviting a comforting warmth to offset the frigid afternoon lull of CNN playing loudly on the TV. You remember Wendy Cope’s The Orange.

Just as you’re waiting for a much-needed text response, as he slides the door from the preceding train car shut, a man wearing a makeshift Hefty trash bag dress sing-yells out of key, “You don’t know how much I love you / I need you / I need you / I need you / I love you,” and you realized you didn’t know how much you needed to snap out of it, thank you sir!

You don’t want to be someone who waits for lighters on the street or aggressively crochets in front of a stranger’s face on the subway! You don’t want to be the type of person who’s too scared to ask the florist if her store only sells fake plants because the flowers look that perfect! You want to seek your own happiness and objectives, unabashedly and wholly! You are the curator of your happiness and you really can do anything…be one of the greats, just like Timothée said.

I rode the Northeast Regional to visit my grandma in Hartford and with each stop north the inches of snow cubed as the train brought us deeper into Connecticut. The last stop on the line - Springfield, MA - is not far from where I went to boarding school (film location of The Holdovers). I looked at the weather app for Mount Hermon, MA at 6:30 a.m. the next morning just for fun, and it was an estimated 10 degrees.

As I looked out the window, I closed my eyes and for just a moment, I was transported to that hill in Gill freshman year, running to “workjob” at the crack of dawn for the thrill of black ice, falling hard on my inverted backside, already late to my daily chore of vacuuming the science building before A block, Bunny still waiting.

The thrill of sledding next to the chapel. The thrill of cozying up in dorm rooms under blankets for Gossip Girl after a day of “sports” (musical rehearsal for me) and running to Blake student center for a milkshake and warm cookie after a long day of activity. Those were the days when the worst thing about your day was stressing over an English grade. The days of cracking phones in an act of clumsiness, throwing blinds out windows for attention and running for class president with cheese jokes (everyone did it!). The days of going on stage without pants because the bottom half of the Peter Pan costume broke but the character was more important than my dignity (no it wasn’t). We always laughed in the wings about it anyway! The days of Mountain Day and Spirit Week. The days of crying over exams, returning over-cooked steaks at Applebees, shuttles to Greenfield, endless hours of choir, and days of dreading Monday morning meeting. It was simpler then. We weren’t always looking for happiness back then but it’s warmth heated the cool air with each breath when we found it at the end of each victory. We can still find it now, we just have to invent the fun ourselves. <3