On Brooklyn Backyards

Where the Magic Happens.

When Brooklyn transplants wonder aloud how native New Yorkers can stomach a childhood without access to nature and fresh air, we retort that backyards and neighborhood parks (like the ones they so enthusiastically bombard for summer concerts) are filled with memories of grandparents and barbecues, birthday parties and piñatas, roller skating (across the smooth bandshell surface) and hot cocoa breaks (at Prospect Park's Wollman Rink). Those measly 4x4 patches of backyard grass have staged many-a-choreographed dances to Dirty Dancing's Greatest Hits, provided muse to young siblings videotaping Garden Adventures with their film-maker Uncle, and soaked up the water from aqua-blue baby pools where first (and last) swim strokes were introduced. Enjoy!

[Photo Credit: My Dad, circa 1980's.]

On L'Entranger

Translation: The Stranger.

Some travelers safeguard their privacy behind the anonymity of headphones and dark lenses, knees tucked to their chests with seemingly relaxed leans against the plane/train/automobile windows with impenetrable gazes towards the outside world. Others contrast sharply with the strangers around them, looking inward (instead of outward) into the stories and habits of their road trip companions, as leg room is compromised, relationships are forged, and goodbyes are consistently on the peripheral. Enjoy!

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On Rock 'n' Roll

And All That Jazz.

Last year my brother was a four-year-old cowboy who let me snap photographs of him against a homemade backdrop made from white twin bed sheets and a careful arrangement of familiar kitchen chairs, to contrast his red bandanna and curly-Q mustache drawn meticulously on with our mother's eyeliner. This year he's a 20-something filmmaker, flying to concerts where sex, drugs, and rock n' roll are documented with the precision of a seasoned veteran, only the backdrop is real life and the subjects are real people whose emotions in the presence of alcohol and music are as present as the performers' ambitions. Enjoy!

[Blog Reminder: Click on Link to Attend Coachella for 3:17.]

On the Other Side of the Tracks

To Date or Not to Date.

As the most unpracticed, disinterested, Hebrew-school-boycotting, goy-dating Jew in my family, on the verge of a relocation to a city where the Yiddish-speaking population can be counted on less than one hand, I suddenly feel an urge to throw fistfuls of baguettes into Prospect Park's dog pond and restrict my household diet to unleavened bread. Although my own holiday rituals aren't religious in nature, distracting my brother during his recitation of the four questions and denying my mother company during the holiest day of year are as important to me as the Christmas tree I've been vying for for the last 30 years, and are practices I plan to sustain from afar. Enjoy!

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On Disconnected Connections

Growing Fonder or Farther?

We're friends but we don't phone. We tweet but we don't text. We like but we don't love. We're connected but we're disconnected, in a world where life's intimate moments are on display for the whole universe to see, but not touch. Breakups and makeups, births and deaths, successes and failures fill our dinner conversations, gchat exchanges, and text messages, as we grow connected to the disconnections of our past, present, and future. We congratulate ex-lovers, offer condolences to acquaintances, and facebook message enemies while maintaining an arms-length distance the size of an actual arm plus an army. Enjoy!

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On the (Other) City of Lights

I ♥ NY.

Maneuvering the nine short blocks from Broadway and 51st to the subway station on 42nd street with the one memorable lyric from the musical still pulsing through my mind (I'm who I am today because I knew you), distracting me from crowds of tourists preventing the b-line I'd otherwise make for the express track back to Brooklyn, I acknowledged the magnitude of Times Square through the lens of a native New Yorker while simultaneously running through names and faces of people who've made me who I am (today). Enjoy!

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On Better Postur(ing)

A Fine (& Crooked) Line.

I've attempted to find my inner yogi several times over the last few years, but to no avail. Instead, I admire the (seriously) cute yoga pants and perfectly-postured 50-somethings from afar (on subway cars, in facebook albums, on my street corner where there is a donation-only yoga studio), and yet I can't seem to get my yoga-act together. On the brink of a relocation to one of the healthiest states in the country, my fantasy - among many - is that my inner yogi is simply waiting for me to cross the crooked line between the two states where it's stylish to get down (to the ground) or where it's a life-style to get grounded, at which point I'll gladly embrace my long-anticipated, deserved new exercise attire with pride. Enjoy!

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On iPros and iCons

I worry, i-think, therefore iAm.

While the iphone has replaced our innate ability to observe and appreciate the world around us, the upside is the increased efficiency in which we're able to navigate our surroundings (translation: without getting lost) while maintaining a constant stream of brain-boosting activity (translation: Words With Friends). So although it's no longer the journey that counts, our memories are better equipped to hold on to the details of our final destinations. Enjoy!

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On Helicopter Parenting

One End of the Spectrum.

For those of us raised by helicopter parents, our t's are crossed and our i's (likely) dotted well before the friendly yet persistent blimp reminders flash across our anticipatory skies. And yet to the hovering parents - who raised us to prepare for unexpected rain on sunny afternoons while maintaining a required level of cleanliness in our bedrooms and kitchen sinks (a.k.a. no dishes ever) - perfected hand-writing is simply par for the (air traffic) course. Enjoy!

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On Men in Uniforms

Impossible to Resist.

My fondest - and only - memory of scouting out men in uniforms was during my freshman year of high school, when the knobby-kneed 15-year-old that I was braved the fleet week crowds (of much more mature women) to catch brief glimpses of the uniforms in action. With my best friend in tow, we glimpsed, we goggled, and then we hopped the first train back to Brooklyn, giggling like school girls who had just tiptoed into adulthood without saying a word. Enjoy!

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On Rules Being Rules

Follow(ing) the Yellow Brick Road, or the Balloon.

Life's larger, unanswerable questions aside, it's a rare moment to find ourselves without direction or purpose, as we (so often) fill our hours and days with to-do lists, calendars, meetings, plans, rules, assignments, and so forth. To aimlessly exist is to add an unsettling sense of peace to a typically ordered existence, where we look for signs to prescribe meaning that we can't (comfortably) exist without. To break this mold - to throw out the post-its, to break the dates, to ignore the rules (with a rule to ignore the rules, no doubt) - is to seize the fleeting moment of freedom from ourselves and because of ourselves. Enjoy!

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On Odds in Our Favor

Insuring Our Lives.

When the odds of dying in a plane crash are one in a million, and surviving a plane crash are one out of three, we feel naively invincible from the dangers associated with every day life: crossing the street, texting while driving, walking under scaffolding, and so on. And yet when the insurance protection plan temporary seizes to protect-on account of unemployment, transition between job and job, graduate school or world travel-we make sure to look both ways on one way streets, invest in a bluetooth, and calculate the number of construction workers hovering above. Enjoy!

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On Loving and Losing

Or Never Loving at All.

Anyone who has experienced heartbreak before is familiar with the one-sided lists of regrettable memories (birthday gifts, romantic getaways, family visits, and so on), as REM's hit single plays on REPEAT through the haze of (cigarette) smoke and uncontrollable tears. It isn't until months (for most men) or even years (for some women) when the clarity of hindsight kicks in and Alfred Lord Tennyson's (in)famous poem -- 'Tis better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all' -- finally rings true. Regrets are replaced by life lessons, as appreciation for clarity finds space in a formerly broken heart. Enjoy!

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On Being Out of Town

Out of Town, Out of Commission; OnBeingUnrelated will return on Tuesday, June 14, 2011.

On Everyone Else

Younger Than Us.

How quickly remembrance of our yester-years is replaced by apathetic disdain for anyone younger than the crowds within which we roll. Hat-less children in 32-degree weather are as senseless as their mothers who (likely) looked the other way, even though our own childhood screaming fights (over gloves, scarves, and zippers) fail to recollect. (Pre-)Teenage adolescents are silently cursed for hogging street corners, even though our (junior) high school (lunch-time) meeting ritual was at the intersection of 3rd Street and 5th Avenue, with zero regard for passerbies. And the 20-somethings in revealing skirts and spaghetti-strapped tanks (en route to their first post-college jobs) should know better, as we fail to remember our 20-something disheveled hair and untucked, un-ironed button-downs during meetings with executives who were - then - our current age. Enjoy!

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On the New Date Night

"Hump Day."

While the appeal of Modern Family reruns and a pint of Haagen Daz is hard to turn down, research suggests that hump day (aka Wednesday) is the ideal night (on the town) for finding romance. With the eye on the ball, and six days left to catch up on prime-time television and weather-appropriate indulgences, email your single friends and set date for Mid Summer (Week-)Night Dreams. Enjoy!

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On Swimming Lessons

Avoided at All Costs.

I loved everything about summer camp except for one thing -- the swimming lessons -- and did everything I could to avoid them. In the early years, crying hysterically got me front row seats on the sidelines of the freezing cold pool while everyone else practiced doggy paddling. In my teenage years, "monthly obligations" exempted me from graduating to freestyle, as I read YM magazines on the sandy beach while clutching my imaginary cramps. And later, as a camp counselor, I devoted myself to "boathouse duties," never leaving the shore without my life preserver, behind the facade of proper counselor role-modeling. Flash forward to adulthood where I made two separate attempts (years apart) to master the basics at the local YMCA, but quit after 3 lessons -- both times. Needless to say, I've accepted my lot in life as the blanket-watching, lunch-gathering pool/beach/bodyofwater friend who will never master the art of the breast stroke but will always eagerly volunteer to make a lunch run, even if it involves rowing out to the middle of the lake. Enjoy!

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On Collegiate Living

Remember When?

Senior year, my college roommate and I would stay up until 3am on weeknights to catch reruns of Family Ties, as we swooned over Alex and ate turkey club leftovers, intentionally purchased for these specific occasions (minimally, once per wk). Our Friday night ritual consisted of Bill Cosby's Darndest Kids from 8 to 9pm while drinking cheap vodka and mapping out the evening's order of events (aka campus parties). The hours in between classes involved exchanging mp3 downloads from the latest Dawson's Creek episode (--we'd both abandoned 90210 long before), eating bagels and cream cheese topped with sprouts and cucumbers (which she introduced me to), playing video games until our fingers hurt (Grand Theft Auto), and sharing make-up tips for life (black eye shadow instead of mascara - it lasts longer). Enjoy!

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On Being Loved

Charac-atures That Bind.

Gone are the days when romance was initiated by the brush of a shoulder or an unexpected (love) note passed between classes, replaced since by facebook pokes and unexpected g-chats between meals. Our addiction to technology has contributed to our need for instant gratification while maintaining a wide physical distance in which eye contact and scent are left to the throws of our imaginations, however unpracticed they've become. And yet the addiction is as real and physical as these ancient practices of flirtation, when our hearts thumped and veins soared during withdrawal from the desire to be loved. Enjoy!

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