How We Remember What We Read

I read a lot. Mostly I read narrative. Fiction. Stories. I read nonfiction too, and poetry, but I mostly read stories. For every novel I have read, I hold about four simultaneous versions of it in my head. Much like parallel universes might behave, these visions of the narrative are parallel, sometimes cross into one another, and look very similar but... not quite.

The first version I hold in my head is the one I received while first reading. It is the purest, the most blurry, and the most my own. It is not tainted by the author's childhood home, my grievances with the ending, or how Leonard Dicaprio looked in the film version. It is mine to keep. Sometimes this version can be blasphemous. I can completely disregard what the author is telling me in favor of my own imaginings. If I am blurry on a plot point, sometimes it just stays blurry, whether the author intended that or not. If I don't really know what a Russian farm looks like while reading Anna Karenina, I will replace it with a North American colonial farm. While reading a sci-fi such as Hitchhiker's, I can fill in gaps with any number of composite images, or I can keep holes in the scenery when I just don't know what's there.

This version of a novel- these first impressions are what makes or breaks a story for the reader. I believe these first impressions are what creates "favorite books." They determine which stories you want to reread and which worlds you want to revisit. Life of Pi, for example, filled my brain with such detailed and complex imagery the first time I read it that, even though I don't love that book, it will stick to me much closer than say, Bee Season.  If these first impressions are largely simply our own imagination’s response to a story or image, then it's not really our choice when we love a book, or the author's fault when we don't. Often it is chance- how well you processed the information on the first read. (That being said, some books just are not well written, and your imagination can't run free when distracted with bad writing.) My first impression of Howl’s Moving Castle is so strong, so unique, and so unlike anything else, that it instantly became and remained a “favorite book.” My friends who love Diana Wynne Jones all love her for their own reasons. My Howl is not Brittany's or Kate's. It's just not. Diana Wynne Jones gave such excellent bones, such ready bodies, that every reader can clothe Howl and Sophie in whatever sort of clothes they please (my Howl dresses like he's from Revolutionary War era Boston. I don't know why.) and the product is still at the heart the same. He is always still Howl Pendragon.

Other authors like George RR Martin don't give the reader much wiggle room. He is talented at giving huge amounts of information very simply. Yes, naturally every reader views Kings Landing slightly differently, but it is the overwhelming agreement that readers of A Game of Thrones share that makes the books easy to talk about, read together, and love in community. I know many people who love Howl, but we cannot sit down and talk about Howl the way we talk about Jon Snow. This is the mystery of writing and imagination. Somehow Jon is KNOWN and readers are in agreement. Like a friend we all knew in highschool, we KNOW Jon as a group. You might have slightly different experiences with him, different memories, but it's still Jon. Howl is different. Howl is an idea. Howl is a powerful symbol. He is mine. I don't and can't share my Howl with you. I wouldn't know how to.

This version of a novel is often very blurry in places, the parts you might not care about. But it is also this version that smells good and tastes good. In Rebecca, when she has breakfast for the first time at Manderly, those words are more than words to me. They are flavors that I won’t soon forget. It’s real food to me. Another reader might not have been stopped dead by the “tea, in a great silver urn, and coffee too, and on the heater, piping hot, dishes of scrambled eggs, of bacon, and another of fish. There was a little clutch of boiled eggs as well, in their own special heater, and porridge, in a silver porringer. On another side-board was a ham, and a great piece of cold bacon. There were scones, too, on the table, and toast, and various pots of jam, marmalade, and honey, while dessert dishes, piled high with fruit stood at either end.” I was stopped dead. This is more than words to me. It’s real. Similarly real are the crumpets eaten in Castle in the Air, the last of Howl’s adventures.

To quote Heminway, “All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”

Regardless of how well you liked the plot or the characters or the writing, it is this version of a story that is alive and vibrant and moves. It’s the one that lives in you, actively, always.

The second version of a novel is stored in my brain and my throat as I read a well. It is the words. This version is the “literary” one, the linguistic one. An author's words and phrases are important. There are books, novels, poetry, and nonfiction which I don't primarily remember in images as much as in words. After reading anything, I have produced both the initial imaginings and the streamlined word version. Which of the two is more powerful in my memory often has to do with the author and style of book. In Everything is Illuminated we are transported to Odessa, pre WWII. I don't have a clue what life looked like there. If I try really hard the best I can come up with a peasant with a kerchief.  My initial visual version of the novel is blurry. When I think on that book, what comes to life for me are the words.

When I was a child I was forced to memorize poetry, long pieces of Shakespeare, and Bible verses. I have an awful verbal memory when it comes to reciting, but a rather impressive verbal memory for written word. I am rather talented at memorizing the map of words on the page. The length of a book. I can find passages very easily because I just know where they are. (This is naturally, the biggest problem with Kindles and Ibooks. You can’t flip.) This memory of words on a page is possibly unique to me, but I am sure everyone who reads often enough has those passages they can recall to memory, even if they can’t recite them. Like a language you only know a little off, you can understand and place the general idea and little phrases, but you couldn't dictate the whole page.

Everything is Illuminated is like that. The following quote is important in terms of character development, and it has its place in the story, but most of all it’s just beautiful. Give me a moment. “Lunch in a bowl: I don’t love you. Bark on a tree: I don’t love you. Poem too long: I don’t love you. Fence post: the shape of you, the feel of you. I don’t love you. Nothing is more than what it is. Everything is a thing, complete in its thingness.”

I just wrote that out from memory. The real quote is, “Bark-brown fence post: I don't love you. Poem too long: I don't love you. Lunch in a bowl: I don't love you. Physics, the idea of you, the laws of you: I don't love you. Nothing felt like anything more than what it actually was. Everything was just a thing, mired completely in its thingness.” I never tried to memorize it, but the power of that quote has such a hold on me that when I close my eyes I can see/taste/KNOW the words and where they sit on the page. I can guestimate the words, recreate them to an extent from memory.

Words are harder to talk about than things. Words hold more meaning, or rather, can hold more meaning. Words are subject to interpretation. I’ve talked to my sister about this. She tends to see books through this lens. I tend to remember visually. But every book has a quote or a turn of phrase that sticks with me. Sometimes it’s a small thing. Just one word I will add to my vocabulary afterwards, without knowing why. Sometimes the words are important in and of themselves, as well as for the picture they describe, because they are doing work past simply describing. They are teaching you and delivering a concept beyond the scene.

"Only a moment. Dionis broke away sobbing. She ran down the path toward home. She did not once look around. She had not said 'yes', she had not even said 'good-bye'. Yet, as she ran, there came upon her again that sense of belonging to Jetsam--that terrible, intimate sense of responsibility for him. She could not tell whether it was intense gladness or intense sorrow."

This quote ends one of my favorite books. But when I read it, I don’t SEE Dionis breaking away sobbing. I feel it instead. I comprehend the concepts behind the words, the universalness of a girl, breaking away from a kiss, crying. That terrible, intimate sense of responsibility she has for Jetsam is not just the feeling for Dionis. It is mine as well, and yours, and everyones. This quote is a picture of love. It’s more than a teenage Quaker girl’s feelings. It’s what stands behind the words and behind the scene that makes it so memorable. Then, naturally, there are words in books that stand alone from a scene, and are not actions at all. They evoke simply the thoughts they are meant to evoke, they live outside of the narrative, to teach you something, to show or share something bigger than a story.

“I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women... I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck... I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”

This quote from American Gods is, like “lunch in a bowl: I don’t love you,” lives outside of the story Gaiman was telling in his novel. It tells its own story. Roughly I think words in a book can be broken into three categories. The first category is pure function: get this information across. Then there are quotation, paragraphs, and sentences that stand alone, outside of the story, and need no context to be understood or appreciated as beautiful. Lastly are quotes that rely on the context of the novel to bring out the beauty or the humor. I find Anthony Trollope to be one of the funniest authors I have ever had the pleasure of reading. He is witty, wry, and truthful. But when I try and quote his humor, I can’t. Much of it is found in dialogue or is highly situation. If I wrote it out here, you wouldn't giggle. His words are part of something bigger. They are meaningful- in context. I have this humor in me somewhere, and I draw them out as words and not as scenes, since they are often exposition or dialogue, but they are not easily shared. They are mine to mull over. They belong to the reader. PG Wodehouse is similar. His humor is in the situation, in the big picture. You need the back story. There are funny lines, but he does not write books of one-liners.

Sometimes though, a quote can be contextual and stand on its own, but take on slightly different meanings. Sometimes we can steal words from the author’s mouth, misuse and abuse them. In Little, Big, a multi-generational fairy tale set in turn of the century(ish) New York, a character says, “I don’t know, I don’t know! All I know is that I love him and that’s enough; I want to be with him, and be good to him, and make him rice and beans and have his babies and… and just go on and on.” This quote is lovely in and of itself, though it makes a lot more sense within the context of the story. But it’s also up for grabs. I used it once. It came out of my own mouth, in the past six months. I was talking to a friend about a boy, and almost this exact quote came tumbling out of my mouth. Not verbatim. And I don’t think I really meant it. But I completely plagiarized my emotions, either way. Sometimes your own words aren’t enough. When that happens, go back to the literary versions of the novels stored in your head. See if Jane Austen or JK Rowling can’t help you out. I don’t know how to be romantic on my own- but I have a lot of beautiful words stored in my head. They help me see my own life in perspective, put words to emotions I can’t vocalize, and when I am really stuck, I can use them as my own.

The third version of a novel is the most confusing because it isn't real. To use the parallel universe example again, this version of a novel in my memory is the universe that some idiot (me) messed up by time traveling around in the timeline to change everything they didn't like. I don't purposefully do this, but if a scene bothers me, an outcome upsets me, or 200 pages in the author decides to tell me a character who I imagined to be blonde was actually brunette... I have the choice to accept it. Or I course correct, create a pocket universe where the blonde version lives. Take The House of Mirth. Have you imagined an end where Lily isn't dead? Did her waking up ever cross your mind? That version stays in your subconscious somewhere. While reading Atonement, when Briony (and likewise McEwan, who was the one actually lying to you) admits to the reader (you) that Robbie and Cecilia were actually never reunited, what do you do with the fuzzy little future you'd made for them in a cottage in Yorkshire with a chubby baby and a tabby cat? You probably did not consciously think it through in so much detail but when you're robbed of it you think.... “But wait! What about that tabby cat and rose bush?” It's your tabby. You gave it to them prematurely, before you had all the facts. But it will live on in the “alternate history” version of the novel.

When you read you are constantly predicting. Some of these predictions are forgot in half a page, when the truth is revealed. Some of these predictions stick with you the whole way through and, when are proven false, have no where to go. I did this more as a child, when you finish a book dissatisfied and you try to fix it. (What if Manderly had never burned down?) I have an entire future for Johnny and Cilla, and incredible amounts of back story as well, for Johnny Tremain. I invented it when I was very young, and felt the book to be incomplete. It has always stuck with me, and when I read the real text of Johnny Tremain, I can also call up my back story and my sequel, as it were. I admit these versions are often stupid, filled with random nonsense. Any back story I gave a minor character, any romance I saw brewing in the background that was never really mentioned. It's all mine to do what I please with. Usually these extracurricular voyages your imagination takes are ultimately useless, sitting in the background harmlessly. But there have been times I have reread a book, years later, and found something missing. Something I really thought was there. A conversation. A sentence. A description. But it was never there. I made it up.

Usually the larger a book is and more you read it, the more complex your additions can be. In my mind, Kitty Bennet and Maria Lucus become best friends with Georgiana and spend summers in Pemberly helping out a pregnant Lizzy. I have never read one of those bogus Pride and Prejudice sequels. I don’t want to. I have my own. I first read that novel when I was 11, I think. That’s 10 years this little “fact” has sat with me. I don’t want to throw it out in favor of some other person’s imaginings.

The last version of a novel that you can have is not a narrative. It’s not complete. It is the version of a story that has been influenced by outside fact. When I visited Louisa May Alcott's home in Massachusetts, I had to realign Little Women with that home. It did not rob me of my initial impression from the novel- I'd read it too often and too long ago. Besides, you can't just edit your imagination. But somewhere in me, I took her real home and sectioned it off with other alternate Little Women universes, like those effected by film versions. A film will never ruin a book for me. Even if I have seen the movie first,  I tend to read the book with fresh eyes. However you have to admit the knowledge sits in there, somewhere. There have been times when I have thought "Robin Hood" and seen Errol Flynn first. When I read The Hunger Games, I see that characters as I first imagined them (darker, younger), but I see the arena from the films.

This version of a story can be influenced by personal experience as well as added knowledge of an author or time period. When I visited Switzerland I was able to visualize Heidi better. But I still held on to my "false Switzerland" that I had invented as a seven year old, faced with the concept of Switzerland for the first time. However my original Switzerland was actually not terribly inaccurate. The more of the world you know the more accurate your original imagination might be. But fields with wildflowers, I have learned, look pretty similar the world over. I recently went to Colombia. I readjusted all the South American novels I've read with what I saw there. Of course, Isabel Allende’s Chile probably bears very little similarity to Colombia. But Colombia is probably closer to the truth than my previous picture, which was a little more like a Southern Belle's Georgia. (The mind is strange. You can’t control those first impressions.)

Of course this is often a bit messy when your knowledge precedes your reading. Even while writing this, I realized I had read the entirety of A Farewell to Arms imagining Frederic Henry to look like Nick Miller from the Fox comedy New Girl. Trying to rationalize this I realized Nick loves Hemingway in the tv show and mentions him often. Also, Ernest had named a fictional version of himself Nick Adams in stories he'd written while in Paris with Hadley. Those facts together turned Henry into actor Jake Johnson.

The two biggest ways you can effect your memory of a novel post-reading (apart from film versions) is by learning about the authors life, and by literary analysis. Some readers/historians/authors protest that a book should never be influenced by the author’s life or his or her intentions. Intentions are not what is important. It is the readers own natural understanding that is important. That is the purest form. There are other readers/historians/authors who believe a book has not been understood until the author’s voice has been added back in. Till the back story is known, and their intent has been analyzed. I don’t know. I think it depends on the book. Normally, I go into novels blind. I read books knowing nothing about them but their title, the gender of the author, and the fact that someone recommended it to me. I find this to be the most pleasant experience. I often don’t even read the back cover. I like words to come from seemingly nowhere- this new world, these new people, just appearing from nowhere, burdened with nothing. I recently read The Painted Veil like this. (I hated it, by the way.) Afterwards, possibly because I disliked it so much, I researched it a bit, to find out where it had come from and why. (I still didn’t like it.)

The author wrote the book. You can never get away from them, really. There is no such thing as divine inspiration, really. An author can protest that they were “given” a story, or “found” a story, but ultimately, it came from them. But I also think you can enjoy a book without being bridled by interpretation. If an author is living and has been quoted giving information of value, a key to the book, that they want to share with their audience, I think that can be important. But the debate as to author’s meaning in novels written by people dead for centuries seems rather meaningless. I mean, it’s interesting. I enjoy reading lit crit. But I don’t let it color the bare bones of the book. These opinions, these interpretations- they can sit on top of the novel. They can be a lens which I can chose to look through, at times. They can’t be the only way to view a story.

I recently fell down the rabbit hole of roman a clef, in Hemingway and Fitzgerald’s works. It was a fun rabbit hole. I read a lot, learned a lot. I have a hard time, now, reading Hemingway without thinking the questions a critical reader may ask. This is due to the fact that I learned about Hemingway before I really read him. I read about his life while writing The Sun Also Rises before I read the novel. This can be a way to read, and a legitimate one. But I don’t think it is quite as fun. It can be sad. Authors are often sad people with sad lives. Often their so-called hidden meanings are darker than what you gleaned. I want that darkness as an optional lens, not my first impression. I can go back to The Great Gatsby and enjoy it with the purity of my first read- I can take off the glasses of the films, of the history, of Fitzgerald’s life. I read The Great Gatsby before I had any idea who the author was. Hemingway is not so easy. Then again, his novels are truly roman a clef. They are all, ever so slightly, autobiographical. Because of this, I think it might be important to know about Ernest before you read his works. An informed reading of his novels may be more enjoyable. You get it. You love it. I didn’t like Hemingway till I met the man outside of his work. When I understood him, I understood his novels.

But Hemingway is a rare case. I don’t give a fuck who wrote Shakespeare’s plays. I just know I like them. For most books, I think the analysis, the critical readings, are optional. After the initial read, when you create the visual version and the linguistic version, after you have developed your own little histories and side stories… then you can research. Then it’s safe to adjust the novel based on the author. If you make that adjustment too soon, or if you take what you find too seriously, it might ruin the whole thing for you. I try to forget CS Lewis wrote Narnia. I just want to love Narnia with the purity of a six year old. Now, I can read an analytic critique of Narnia (read The Magicians Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia. It’s good.) and I can apply that knowledge to my memory of the series, without really tainting the originals. I need to pocket the critical readings into corners. I know that Rebecca is a dark and twisty mess of a novel. But I like being able also remember the visual world I had created on the first read, the narrative without the analysis.

The more I read the more impressed I am with the human brain. I can’t believe the amount of information I have processed. I can’t believe how much of it I remember off-hand. I learn by reading. (This is why I am good at the humanities and awful at math.) Studying German and Spanish has left me once again amazed at the power of language. Everything I get out of what I read- it’s only understood because I have the tools to understand it. I remember the first time a sentence I read in German struck me as beautiful and poetic. It took me five years of studying to see those words the way I see everything in English. It took me years of study to see and hear and process and remember and analyze what I had read in German.

These four memories of a story, these four parallel versions of a book that I have in my brain and in my heart and on my tongue, are not separate in action, only in theory. Really, they blend and bleed into each other. After having read as much as I have, even two stories will blend and bleed into one another. But I think that if you understand how you remember what you read, it will improve your memory, your vocabulary, your speech, your writing, and your imagination.

I will end by saying I think that reading is magic. It is something that I hear, time and again, as being unexplainable. No one really knows how it works. It’s a miracle. As a religious person, I will say that with confidence. God did, after all, reveal himself to us in words. He must have been confident that the written word was powerful enough to last through the ages. Or maybe, He made reading so miraculous to be sure His word did endure. I don’t know. I know it’s a miracle I don’t understand. I just wrote six pages. How did I do that? Will you remember what I wrote? How will you remember it?

Hipsters: New York's newest and worst Immigrant Community

I was in East Williamsburg. On Metropolitan Avenue. A young Puerto Rican mother was pushing a stroller on the sidewalk, with her boyfriend. I was behind them. A young hipster on a bike came blazing past us, on the sidewalk, ringing his bell. He bumped into the stroller and just kept going. The young mother began screaming after him, but he biked away.

This would never have happened in Park Slope. This is the difference between the Yuppies and the Hipsters. Gentrification in New York is not new and it is not always bad. 15 or 20 years ago, a group of young professionals from the Midwest or South (not all white, this isn't about race, it's about community) moved into Park Slope. When my mom was a kid, Park Slope wasn't a great neighborhood. It had beautiful homes, but it was run down. These Yuppies moved in and built a community. They had children. They stayed. They renovated their brownstones and increased the actual property value. They put in new stoops and new kitchens. They replaced windows and kept with the codes of Historic Districts. They respected the history of the neighborhood and the architecture. Now Park Slope has middleschoolers and highschoolers. The young professionals who moved in years ago are aging. They have good jobs that add something valuable to the city. They've created a community that is safe and beautiful. They put down roots. They stayed. It was about building community and commitment. Park Slope Dads don't hit young women with strollers.

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I am not against gentrification in general. But what is happening in other neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Bushwick is different. When a Hipster moves into a run down loft in Williamsburg they like that it's rundown. They come in waves and leave in waves. They rack up the prices without racking up the property value. What's scary about the gentrification of the Hipsters is that it is not guaranteed. I look at Malcom X Blvd on the edge of Bushwick and Brownsville. An area with poverty and crime. Yet the Hipsters are moving in because it's edgy and underground and cheap. They will move into rundown apartments. They will demolish old buildings, not bothering to renovate, and put in something modern and ugly. There will be no respect for the history or the architecture. They will rack up the prices. The community that is already established there will be priced out. Then, when the Hipsters get bored of the neighborhood, when they move on, what will happen?

New York is my home. I was born here. I will raise my family here. New York is a community.

Last semester in my accounting class, a Cuban girl and a first generation Bosnian boy started dating. I was talking to her, during finals week. She lived in Astoria with her family. And she was telling me that she wants to pursue music but she knows she will not be able to pursue music and stay in New York. "I can't afford to move out. I can't afford to move anywhere." She was crying, knowing that she could never rent an apartment in the neighborhood her parents moved to forty years ago.

I have heard too many of these stories. Middle class people.  The children of cops and firefighters and taxi drivers and nurses and public school teachers. A friend who was evicted from his three story walk up because the landlord was selling the whole building to be demolished. So a developer could build condos. A single girl who was being priced out because her landlord wanted "white families." I am thankful I have to take a bus to the subway. Maybe it will keep my neighborhood from changing.

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Hipsters come to New York for fun. It's a summer romance. They think it'll last forever, but once it starts getting cold, they back out. Once things get hard and ugly. Once they have children. Once their dad offers them a better job back home. They leave. There is no commitment to community. And it's not right that communities with roots generations deep are being displaced for people who don't care about the future of their neighborhood. A cool bar scene does not constitute community. Underground clubs do not make community. And I am scared for the future of my city. I am worried about my friends and their futures here. I am worried about whether I will be able to grow old here, comfortably. Whether I will be able to raise a family.

Living in New York means making sacrifices and it always has. No backyard. No washing machine of your own. I just don't understand why I am being priced out of my city for weak, short-sighted party animals who won't be able to bend under the pressure. Young people, obsessed with being cool. Selfish people. Short-sighted, slightly racist, stuck-up artists who just don't care. People who will break the first time their downstairs neighbor screams at them to shut their kid up. The first time their bike gets stolen. The first time their elevator breaks down.

I don't understand why I am being priced out of my city for these people who don't want to invest. (They might say they do, but I haven't seen the results.) These people don't want to build beautiful, elegant, flourishing communities. Hipsters have the time and the money to turn any neighborhood they touch into a Park Slope. But they don't even bother. At the very least, if outsiders are going to move in and change neighborhoods and increase the rents, they could also increase property value. They could create something beautiful. They could invest for the future of New York- their future. My future. But their children won't have to live with the consequences of their actions, because their children probably won't grow up in New York. My children will.

The whole problem here is attitude. A sense of deserving. I see two ginger bearded men, and they are sitting on the back of the bus out to Rockaway. And they are dressed like Popeye, playing on their matching iPhones, with their linen bags filled with snacks for their beach day. They have nautical tattoos. I can't tell if they're twins, best friends, or gay lovers. But the looks on their faces are clear. The bus is crowded. There are little boys being rowdy. Young teenage girls laughing. Older women with their grocery bags. This bus is theirs. It belongs to the little boys and the teenage girls and the old women. But the Hipsters are scrunching up their faces and taking up empty seats on the crowded bus with their linen tote bags and they think they own this bus. They are mildly disgusted that they have to share this bus with these "normal" people. They left their Utopian bubble of wherever they live- Greenpoint, Long Island City. And now they have to interact with normal people. I hear their snide comments. It's always the same.

I can not abide the casual racism any longer. The sense of deserving. The disregard for history, community, and culture. They are chaotic. Their actions are unpredictable. They smoke their pot and graffiti up the warehouses just like everyone else always has, but now it's cool. Now it's art.

I can not abide these people any longer.

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If you moved to New York recently, all I am asking is that you seriously think about your actions and how they are effecting the communities you live and work in. Think about what you are putting into this city. If you are not here for a long time, if New York is just a stop along the way, then leave this city better than you found it. Please. New York is not your playground or your summer camp. Your actions here matter. They have a lasting effect on other people.

Invest in your apartment. Improve your neighborhood. Support preexisting businesses. Do not ride your bike on the sidewalk, stop hitting young mothers with strollers. It's stupid and makes you look like the douchebag you really are. Respect people around you. Just think about the imprint you are leaving on New York. Invest, not in your bar scene, but in the city as a whole. Invest in the history and culture that is already here. You don't have to make your own.

I thought people moved to New York City because there was something here that called to them. If that is true, come and invest in that. You don't have to create your little Hipster Utopia in the middle of a preexisting community. You could (surprise, surprise) try and learn about that community, and adapt to it, instead of instantly feeling the need to bring in your Dairy Queen and Chick fil A or whatever you are so homesick without.

You came here. For this city. If you keep changing New York at the rate you are going, it will no longer be the city you came here for. Think about that.

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I don't have an answer, I just know my heart is breaking for this city. I know we are losing something, our originality. Our history. We are a city of immigrants, and each wave brings something new and interesting, shakes things up a bit.

But Hipsters are not an immigrant wave. They are not here desperate to succeed, invest, work, and build. They are here for fun. For a laugh. That's the difference and the problem.

If you are a Hipster, if you moved here recently, think about that. Think about the sacrifices that the Irish, Germans, Italians, Polish, Russians, Puerto Ricans, South Americans, Mexicans, Indians, Koreans, and Chinese made to come here. Think about how hard they worked, and how much they appreciated the city they were lucky enough to live in and work in and commit to. That's how you need to be behaving. Because New York is a unique, rough, and scary city. And you're not adding anything to it if you came here for an art scene and a laugh or two.

Give something meaningful. If you just moved here, be more than a Hipster. Be a Yuppie. Be an Immigrant. Give of yourself. Serve and work. And then maybe this growing, widening chasm between you and me, us and them, will be able to close and mend itself.

This One's All About Love

Disclaimers:
A. I am not a sociologist on middle child trauma.
B. I am not claiming I was actually denied affection as a child. I'm just needy.

I am a middle child. I crave affirmation. I can be babied at times, yet much is expected of me. I live in a household where I am the odd one out. Both my older and younger sister suffer from physical and mental ailments that make them often priorities. My brother, being both youngest and the only boy, enjoys the benefits such as his own room.

I don't know exactly what the stereotypes of middle children are. We can sniff one another out, that I know. We feel for one another. I read on the internet that the middle children try and find a role that is not filled by their older siblings. This is true I believe, which is why middle children can find each other. We are all different, yet unified by our overwhelming desire to be set apart.

***

But enough about stereotypes. What has birth order done to me? Naturally, I am a person who is desperate for affection. I like being told "I love you." I need you to HUG ME, damn it. A few weeks ago I was at a Bible study. I was having a hard day. And I kept waiting for someone to like, put their hand on me and bless me. No one did. But as I left the apartment, the hostess (who I'd known for two weeks) comes out behind me.

"Are you ok?" she asked. I nod and take a deep breathe. She is an incredibly discerning person and had somehow magically read my soul. Then she said, "I love you." And she hugged me. A real warm hug and a real "I love you."

(Since then she and her family has done more for me than I can conceive. I barely know them. This is a picture of Christ-like hospitality. But I digress.)

This sort of pointed attention is what middle children often get less of growing up. This is not malicious. I am not accusing anyone in my family or any of my friends of emotional negligence. I think middle children come to realize their place in the family order and begin to adjust accordingly. I think they assume they're going to get less, so when any comes their way, it's a bigger deal.

***


When Kate (the older sister, but you knew that) was finishing highschool, being the oldest grandchild, all eyes were on her. Hours were spent in my Titi's kitchens as her choices were reviewed, and her skills considered. Whether that level of attention was something Kate wanted is debatable. But nevertheless, she got it. I graduated without much drama, and lost momentum by taking a semester off. Then I impressed everyone I knew by halfheartedly starting at a community college in January of all times. The eyes were not all on me. Once again, I don't know if I particularly regretted the lack of attention I received, but I did notice the lack.

I do have an uncle, Uncle Steven. He is a middle child. He will always take me aside to discuss my life. Middle children call out to middle children. Even across the generations. But for the most part, the middle child gets less parties, less excitement, and less questions. This is ok though. I am not pitching a fit. My birth order has saved me from being the experiment. Kate, as the first, was always the experiment. What went wrong with her was mildly adjusted and tried again on me. I do not mind my placement in the family. I am just stating the facts.

***

I am also in the unique place where I am sort of all the birth orders at once. I am a middle child, because I am. But, the age difference between me and my younger sister makes me the baby of my "set." (My family, being two sets of two.) However, personality-wise, it has been a long running joke that I am Kate's "big sister" because I am generally more organized, responsible, and I emotionally coached her through N*icky, J*ke, P*rker, D*an, Ch*rlie, and all the rest.

Thusly, at times I play all roles. This makes it even more complicated and turns me into a MEGA-middle-child because now I am "all things to all people." Or something like that. According to an article I just read on the internet from a website I don't recall, middle children are more flexible than oldests and youngests. We fulfill our duties. We bend to our older siblings and bow to the younger. The internet calls this "Middle Child Syndrome." I don't really know what that means, but it sounds cool.

***

But back to "I love you." I love quickly and easily. I fall in love with everyone. If I don't love you, you might be my nemesis. I'm not in the habit of just sort of feeling ehhhh about someone. If I know you, I probably care about you, worry about you, have hopes for your future, and generally just wish you health and prosperity. In my personal experience, the middle child is often the most ready and desperate for love. (Not that we always show it. We also have the toughest skins of any birth-order. We cry on the inside, dammit.)

I think middle children seek that affirmation. (Maybe that's just me. I didn't do a survey.) We want to be liked, because our older siblings were cooler than us. We want to be indulged, because our younger siblings stole our thunder. The internet studies I read that I'm not citing all said that people keep their birth-order personalities, even when grown and miles away from their family. I believe this too.

So, if you're not a middle child, love the middle children in your life. They probably got way less for Christmas ortheir first birthday than their older sister did. They probably didn't get their first A framed. Someone probably forgot to throw them a graduation party once. They ate their big sister's leftover toast and stole their baby brother's bottle. They bore the brunt of the handmedowns. And maybe, their first swim meet or whatever was overshadowed by the birth of that ominous baby brother. I'm not asking you to randomly hug all the middle children you know. They might not all like being hugged. But ask them some questions. Show affection. Even if you've never met their family and they haven't seen their siblings in years, somewhere deep inside that person is a middle child whose second-rate exploits were being ignored at age seven. Make that kid feel loved.

A Short History of a Greek Diner

(This is very off-prompt. But it is about being alone. It's just too weird not to blog about.)

As you might have noticed by now, I am an affectionate and emotionally needy person. I would also consider myself an extrovert. I need good conversation and distraction. Yet I still appreciate being alone. A little less so now, because my life and schedule is such that I am alone all day. Often I don't have a conversation with an adult till I get home. (This is why I tweet like it's going out of style- I need to share my thoughts somehow.) Even now though, with all this alone time, after a party or an event I relish the quiet subway ride home to digest my day. Even now I'll sit in a restaurant alone, reading a book. Sometimes I just sit there and think.

***

But let's backtrack. You all need more stories of my traumatic childhood. I liked being alone as a child because I have (had) an overactive imagination. Real life and real people could harsh that buzz. Growing up one of four, then one of three, then one of four again, I didn't have a lot of time alone. I used to lock myself in the bathroom to just be by myself. I entertained myself as a child with something I called "headgaming." My imagination was so strong that I would pick a character (fictional or historical) to be, and just live in their body all day. It made the boring part of life much more interesting. Instead of doing school, I would imagine I was in a one-room school house in 1860's Wisconson. While washing dishes or cleaning, I would imagine myself to be a servant in a Downton Abbey style house. I usually had four or five scenarios at any given time, and would pick one depending on what was going on at that time. Naturally, too much outside interference would ruin the whole thing. Which is why I'd lock myself in the bathroom and sit on the floor and have incredibly detailed conversations with people who didn't exist. Because of this, sometimes I wonder if I would be a good actor, given the opportunity to try. I can cry on demand and scream bloody murder to nothing very well.

Headgaming persisted into middle school. I would seek out alone time to cultivate these games, and then, while entering back into reality, would let them sort of simmer in the back of my mind while also engaging in whatever was at hand. Of course, if I was really having fun, I forgot all about the games. They existed mainly for when I was home, bored, and alone.

It wasn't until I was 14 that I learned the art of being alone while out. It was a whole new type of freedom. It was summer and I was taking classes at FIT for what I then thought would be my future career in graphic design. I had a decent lunch budget from my dad. Despite the fact I could have found girls in class to have lunch with, I decided to eat alone for the most part. I chose a diner, Greek Corner (ironically, the same diner currently around the corner from my church). I sat at a little table alone, at 14, and ate a burger at a Greek diner. It was quiet. I had my imagination.

Suddenly I had a whole new option. I could adjust my physical reality to fit with the game. I'd spent the last ten years of my life railing against my age. I wanted to be 35. I wanted to be married. Move on. Run an immaculate household and hold business lunches and buy babyfood on the way home from the office, while toting my briefcase. I've wanted to be a harried working mother since I was a kid. So, instead of being at home, pretending I was out living an interesting life, I could actually be out! It was an incredible realization. Especially considering by 14 my imagination was dying down.

***

I wonder now how much of this was natural weird-ass kid behavior and how much was some sort of extreme escapism. During the most intense years of headgaming, life was a little messy. My best friends had moved to Florida, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and up near Orange County NY. My sister Kate and I spent a lot of time slapping each other and sitting on each other. My brother had died.

But I don't want whoever is reading this to think I was a depressed child. I was very happy, though perhaps happy for the wrong reasons. But that is beside the point, I guess.

***

So then I'm a teenager. I'm working at Moretti Bakery and having lunch at Oasis Diner, four days a week. These hours of solitude kept the headgaming alive. If you're working at a bakery, essentially by yourself apart from your bosses, from 6-9am, you need to keep yourself entertained. So of course, whoever I pretended to be worked at a bakery, but it wasn't me. It was just... someone else. And then I sat in Oasis and stared at my Fancy Man (owner of diner, early thirties at the time, love of my life) and pretended I was someone else.

During these years I had lots of friends. These friends tore me away from my imaginings. The games didn't follow my around anymore- they sat in little pockets. If I was playing Monopoly with six people on my bedroom floor, I didn't have to pretend I was not me playing Monopoly. I just was. This state of "just being" was rather pleasant. But back to the whole case of me railing against my age. When I was with my friends, I was very definitely 16. And though I liked my friends, I hated being 16. And sometimes I just wanted to forget I was 16 and pretend to be "adult" again. So I'd go and hang out and be alone. I wouldn't have to engage in some sort of crazy imaginings- just being by myself without anything bothering me or defining me was enough.

***

If you're tracking with this, you might see that eventually this whole game was going to catch up with itself and implode. It did a long time ago. Now, if I'm sitting in Veselka with a cup of borcht, reading on my Kindle, waiting to meet someone... I'm me. I am now that adult person my little eight year old self longed to be. (Minus the children, the high-pressure job. But I think you understand.) I don't really have anything left to pretend.

I still eat at diners because that's how my life is structured and because I really like two fried eggs with toast and homefries and coffee for $6. But it has also become slightly depressing sometimes. Sometimes I get lonely now, and wish someone I knew would randomly walk in. (This, though sounding ridiculous, has happened before. So I keep hoping.) Real people are better than imaginary people, and my life is finally full. I don't need all those games, and obviously, I am no longer capable of playing them. I don't have access to that imagination anymore, it died a long time ago. I still need down-time. Most people do. But I have lost the whole reason I liked being alone as a child. It's a good thing because my reasons for wanting to be alone were a little strange. I always knew I would outlive the desire to "headgame."

I still hold on to a bit of that imagination. As someone who has artistic tendencies (despite lacking an actual outlet) I think my imagination is still better than the average person's. I write angry/passionate letters to people that will never be seen. I imagine scenes before they happen, and occasionally, have been dissapointed at how they played out in comparison to reality. (I know other people do this because of that scene in 500 Days of Summer.)

Memory is important to me. It's why I kept/keep a diary. It's why I instagram. I want to document my life. In a way, headgaming brought my childhood into technicolor, and has given so much more to remember. I was never just me, I remember all the people I pretended I was too. I believe very strongly into holding on to memories. So I do.

You're Not Puerto Rican

"You're not Puerto Rican."

I've been told that. Over and over. "You're not Puerto Rican." Alright, so maybe they have a point. I'm kinda blonde. I have pale (albeit grayish-olive) skin. I don't listen to Marc Anthony. I've actually never been to Puerto Rico. And, although I definitely know how to eat pasteles, I wouldn't have the first clue when it comes to making them.

None of that really matters though. My mother is Puerto Rican, born of two Puerto Ricans. Her father, my grandfather, immigrated to Hell's Kitchen in the 60's. My family history is basically West Side Story. I am my mother's daughter. I am half Puerto Rican.

If you take a step back, family is very diverse. My mother is one of four. She married a German guy (my dad). Her three siblings married another Puerto Rican, a Cuban, and an African-American, respectively. All thirteen of the first cousins in my family have their own unique combinations of skin, hair, and features. But we do all share the same big brown eyes. If you look further we have even more going on, including a completely different branch of German via my Titi's husband, and Italian via their daughter-in-law. I have some redhead Puerto Rican cousins in Ohio. Naturally redhead. Full Hispanic.

Due to the diversity within my family, I've never thought of myself as particularly white or Hispanic. I'm part of a bigger whole. I don't look at myself in the mirror and say "I am Puerto Rican." But when someone tells me I'm not I get defensive. Because however you want to slice it, I still am.

***

So who am I? Despite the diversity that my family married themselves into, the core of my family is Puerto Rican. My dad has very little family, and even less that he is close to. It was Nana, Pop-pop, and my Titis and Uncles that defined my family life growing up. In the back of the car on a shopping trip, I'd listen to my grandparents chattering on in Spanish. If they started speaking Spanish, it was because I wasn't allowed to know what was going on. I remember standing in my Nana's kitchen, watching her fry platanos. I ate too many and threw up, and then stopped eating them for about ten years. Pernil and virgin pina coladas, arroz con pollo or arroz con gandules, and pasteles were all part of a normal diet. My mom always despaired that she couldn't cook what she so subtly called "white people food." The big family, the roudy parties, the bossy older Titis. Lots of kissing. "Ay que lindo!" I guess those are things that could be found in a Greek or Iranian family. It's a lifestyle that, even if just in little ways, clings to something of the life that was enjoyed back home. Where ever that it. It's immigrant life.

I'm not an immigrant. But I can trace both my Puerto Rican and German ancestors back to their old countries without hitting 1800s. Nana grew up in Hispanic Williamsburg. You know, before the hipsters moved in. Jacob and Katherine Diehl came over from Germany through Ellis Island. I like knowing where I came from. I think of myself as Puerto Rican because I see elements of the cultures in my life. I might not be the most Puerto Rican multiethnic person who ever lived, but I am also no stranger to my culture.

On the German side, I had almost no culture in my life. My mother would try to make sure we got a little exposure to that other side of us, so we created events to celebrate the Germanness. And she learned how to make an incredible sauerbraten. When I was in high school I started studying German as a foreign language. I fell in love with it and turned into a German Language major. I've found ways to identify with both sides of me.

***

I've never had some sort of massive ethnic identity crisis. I know what I am and where I came from. I'm proud of it, and mostly don't think on it. The problem lies in how other people see me. "You're not Puerto Rican.

Being mixed-race, but looking mostly white, I have a unique look perspective. I've had the... privilege to hear some pretty off-color things from white people about other ethnicities and races. I guess they assume I'm "one of them." I've had Hispanic people tell me I looked "too white" and therefore was "not Hispanic." I've seen how my hair color defines how someone thinks of me. Me and my cousins were all raised similarly. Educated, bright, Christian households, outer-borough New York, very American. Yet I know that to some people, I look smarter, or more upperclass. My little black-hispanic first cousin has hold me she hates her hair and wishes she looked more like me. Somehow, she already knows how it works. I don't know how to fight it.

I've had a unique perspective growing up. Everyone wants to tell you what you are. Strangers always want to tell me what I am. They'll ask me if I'm Swedish or Italian and then stare at me in disbelief when I tell them what I am. I've been told, "no, no, you're totally Jewish." I'm totally not. It's so odd that we live in a world where a stranger can just look at you and start assuming your culture and prescribe a lifestyle to you. Total strangers. Just last week a Dominican classmate told me, "you look smart, probably because you're white." I guess I'm white to her. Should I argue? At other times Puerto Ricans have asked me out of nowhere, "are you part Puerto Rican." If they see it in me, is it there?

***

It's easy to say ethnicity, race, culture, color.... that it all shouldn't matter. Everyone is the same inside! But ethnic identity does matter, on a personal level. Your food, your culture, your family, language. That's personal. What we should say instead is that it shouldn't matter to anyone else. I'm a little tired of justifying my ethnicity. Why is it so important to you? Will you have to think of me differently if I prove I am "actually Puerto Rican?"

I think it has been a great privilege, growing up mixed, whatever that means. I hope I can give my kids what I was given, in some way. I can't say I've faced challenges, being mixed, but I have observed challenges. I think in general the world would be a better, happier, smoother, more loving place if everyone came from two places.

But back to me. I like who I am and where I came from. I've never fought it. And I'm thankful for that.

I Kept a Diary & Other Foolish Moves

I'm a guarded person. I don't volunteer information. I need someone to ask me pointed, direct questions if they want answers.

Part of this is because I sometimes I don't really understand my own thoughts or emotions. (Do we ever really?) School struggles get mixed up with financial worries. Friends, family and boy problems all seems related. I'm sad because a cat I love died, but it's not until I find out how many hundreds of dollars I owe in Federal taxes that I start to cry. I think this is called "being a girl." I'm sure I'm not unique. Except I don't spill my emotional word vomit on everyone. I listen to your word vomit. Then I nod and sigh and wait for you to ask about how I am. If you don't, the discussion is over.

I hate being teased. As a middle child and the youngest of all my friends I live in fear of being seen as juvenile, or disrespected for having "lesser" problems. As I get older the age gap between me and those people I am closest to widens. As a girl, my friends were two to three years older. Now some of my closest companions are 28, 34, older even. I wasn't born guarded and I wasn't bored afraid of being teased.

***

I used to keep a diary. Lately I have stopped. I went through a rough, confusing eight months. This month has just begun to feel ok. I stopped writing in my diary because I started to lie in it. I started to lie because I was afraid to write the truth. I was afraid to write the truth because.......

When I was twelve I visited my best friend in the Pennsylvania. My whole family would go on yearly trips to visit her whole family. We all squeezed in together, did our schoolwork together, played together, did chores together. In general, these trips are some of my fondest childhood memories. A naive young me, misjudging the maturity of her friend and sister, brought a Composition notebook along with her. That notebook was my diary. The overwrought diary of a twelve year old. I mean, I said some insane stuff in there. There was, however, a level of respect I assumed my sister and friend had for me. I would never read their diary. They would not read mine.

Wrong. So damn wrong.

They read it. The whole thing. I had one of those little-girl crushes on a fictional character. I was relatively lonely at that time and suffered from an overactive imagination. I wrote about this crush in my diary. Which my best friend and sister read. I previously trusted the two of them with my life. I looked up to them like they were the sun and the moon. But they read my diary, and my naive little world came crashing down.

I think that was the first time I understood the concept of being unintentionally cruel. My sister and my best friend did not just read my diary. They talked about it nonstop. They teased me mercilessly. For years things I wrote in there would come up as the butt of a joke. I didn't cry or, looking back, let on how humiliated I was. Inside though, it was one of the worst feelings I've ever had. I felt betrayed, mocked, disrespected, unwanted, and unworthy.

I've spent the last eight years trying to fix that feeling. I will never forgive them for what they did. I never quite trusted them again the same way. (Side note: I love them both, still. Forever. Just, you know. With a grain of salt.) But I learned to be guarded. If I could be teased so much for a little-girl crush on a fictional character when I was twelve, what could I expect when the stakes got higher?  I hold my cards closer to my chest.

***

Even right now, I'm going through something similar. When my secrets wriggle themselves out of me, panic sets in. It doesn't matter if you're trying to help me. It doesn't who you are or how nice you are. I'm convinced I'm going to be teased.

***

I'm twenty. (Almost twenty-one, shut up.) I get defensive about my age. I try to prove myself. In jest, people I love are often unintentionally cruel to me. It usually has to do with my age, my position in life. Little things about "not understanding" something. Little jokes about me being "too young to remember" whatever they're talking about. I'm sick of being called cute. I don't want to be adorable. It feels like a weakness. No one is trying to hurt me, but it hurts. Yet I know I am also unintentionally cruel to others. God, I just was, barely a week ago. It's something we all do. It's one of the most depressing, gross ways to hurt someone. It's so hard to apologize for. No one wants their problems to be mitigated. No one wants their heart to be stepped on. So yes, I'm guarded. It's something I constantly carry in me, but I don't think it necessarily defines me. It only shows sometimes, when things get awkward. When I feel set upon. I get quiet when I'm afraid of being teased.

I learned through that experience that sometimes your friends are your worst enemies. I guess I also learned to stop writing my embarrassing moments down in ink where it can be found and read by anyone; to keep my mouth shut sometimes. And I learned that unintentional cruelty is the worst. It can't be battled. If someone doesn't realize what they're doing to you, they're not going to stop. They don't understand. I can cry and complain for the next twenty years, but my sister and friend will never exactly understand what they did that day. I don't think I've ever even gotten a formal apology for it. Actually, more than that, my sister still teases me about... basically everything in my life.

To be honest though, I'm probably safer not writing about my dramatic love life with a fictional character in a notebook. I wish my twelve year old self had had more discretion. So it's not all bad. I learned that there are somethings no one else ever will understand. So just... those things can be kept to yourself. Or at least, held onto till the right moment.