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“When asleep we go back to the old ways of looking at things and of feeling about them, to impulses and activities which long ago dominated us, in a way which seems impossible in the waking hours, when the later self is in the ascendant. In this way the rhythmic change from wakefulness to sleep effects a recurrent reinstatement of our ‘dead selves,’ an overlapping of the successive personalities, the series of whose doings and transformations constitutes our history”

-James Sully
The Dream as a Revelation

Posted on by saraelizabeth419

My New Favorite Accessory

I had been dying to go into this cute little vintage shop in Huntington called My Inheritance since before the summer. I had seen it in passing a few times, but always on a Sunday when, I’m sad to say, it is closed.

Back in May, I had been visiting my mother. We were walking around town window-shopping, when we happened upon this store. Immediately, my attention was drawn to this amazing rose clutch that looked like it had literally been made of roses. Needless to say it was love at first sight. It was a Sunday, so to my dismay, I was unable to go inside and retrieve this item of my affection. The next day my mother went back to the store and bought it for me; I was beyond thrilled.

A few weekends ago, I had nothing to do and was in possession of a car, a rare treat for me, so I decided to drive out to Huntington for the sole purpose of going to that vintage shop and possibly treating myself to something. With a latte in hand and my ipod plugged in, I set off on my hour-long embarkment.

Once in Huntington, I parked the car on the edge of town (because even though I grew up there, my sense of direction gets lost for some reason) and trotted through town to My Inheritance. It was chillier than I had anticipated and I immediately wished that I had remembered to bring a jacket. Upon entering, I was filled with pure ecstasy. I decided to peruse the store in its entirety. Jewelry, purses, clothing, all either vintage or couture or both; I was in heaven.

When I was about halfway through my examination the owner walked up to me and asked if I was looking for something in particular. I told her possibly a necklace. She brought me over to a display, which contained vintage pieces from the ’50s. I loved the style of them, but to my dismay, they were all yellow gold. I hate yellow gold. I asked her if she had anything in silver and she did. As we were looking at the few silver pieces that were there, she explained to me that they were rare because yellow gold was popular in the ’50s. I picked up one necklace. It had a double chain and a big, decorative clasp, and tried it on. I stared at it in the mirror and it was beautiful. I bought it immediately.

If you are in the market for a nice vintage piece or you want to give an extra special gift, I totally recommend going to My Inheritance in Huntington. What better a gift can you get than a vintage, one-of-a-kind item. I have worn my necklace at least a dozen times already and always get compliments for it. Oh, and the rose clutch is also a hit!

Posted on by saraelizabeth419

“When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific…more cures for the old sickness…good, but a harsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never let her go. That is what I saw. It wasn’t really you, what you were doing, I know that. But I saw you and it broke my heart. And I’ve never forgotten.”

-Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go

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To Purchase or Not to Purchase

For those of you that don’t know me, I am extremely picky when it comes to, well, anything…so it should come as no shock that I have been looking for the perfect casual boot for the past few years, sadly to no avail. There are so many options to choose from and nothing had caught my eye, until now.

Recently, I had narrowed my list of choices down to riding boots. Having grown up with an interest in horses and getting the opportunity to ride them for two summers, I had always liked the simple yet timeless look of the riding boot. The sleek, smooth lines uninterrupted by much detail exude class. I have finally found the perfect one! The Frye Phillip Harness Tall. It is my dream boot. From the soft vintage leather to the barely there heel, it screams to be worn. Now, I am definitely a bit girly when it comes to how I present myself and although these Frye boots possess a certain ruggedness, I feel that they will be a good addition to my style rather than emasculating it. I love the cognac and dark brown, and honestly would have a hard time choosing between the two. They also come in black. At $328 before tax, they’re a bit steep, but Frye boots aren’t just any boots; they’re an investment. Not sure if I will in fact purchase these, but I will dream about them until I do!

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The Perfect Ending to a Bad Day

We all have had those days; the kind of day where nothing sits right and everything piles up. Today was one of those days for me, but the fabric of it was weaved the day before. Before I even got into the office yesterday morning I received a phone call from my old supervisor asking me to cover a task for him that I don’t normally do, which meant that I wouldn’t have time to fetch my morning latte since I now had to go out of my way to get it. There had been the perfect little coffee shop practically in my building and they had made the best coffee ever, or so I was told. I am not a coffee drinker, but I do love lattes and within the first sip it was love at first sight. I can still remember the way it tasted, the satisfaction that only the perfect latte could bring. Sadly, the perfect little coffee shop is no more. A few months ago it was taken away from me and I am still heartbroken because of it. So, I marched to work yesterday morning, sans latte, in dread of the task I had been forced into. This of course meant that I wouldn’t have time to hit the gym.

With no other issues, the rest of the day went pretty smoothly, that is until I tried to go to sleep. After about an hour of tossing and turning, I gave up. I was wide awake when I shouldn’t have been and ended up staying up for a good portion of the night, all the while knowing that I would be beyond tired in the morning. Finally, I was able to fall asleep, only to be awoken by my alarm not too long after and also not realizing that it was my alarm at first. I can always tell when I should really be staying in bed and sleeping; when the alarm disorients me. I sluggishly got ready for work and ended up having to run for the bus, which is always fun. Then I went into the subway, fishing my ipod out of my bag only to stare at it in disbelief when it wouldn’t turn on; another failed attempt to gym. I cannot go to the gym without my ipod. I’ve tried it mutliple times. One time, the entire gym was devoid of music. All of the other times, it just wasn’t the same. I feel like without it, I can’t concentrate enough…the music pulls you in and gets you to push more. Any avid gym-goer would tell you the same.

I got into work this morning and immediately my mind turned towards finding the closest Apple store in conjunction to my office so that I could venture in during my lunch break, purchase a new ipod and run. There are a slew of Apples stores in Manhattan, but none of them in a lunch-worthy distance. I succumbed to the thought of purchasing my replacement online, but as soon as I went to the website, I realized that I didn’t know which ipod I wanted. Did I want the same one that just broke on me or did I want one that was different. With the answer yet to be determined I set about my normal day, cloaked in exhaustion.

On my way home I was squashed into the subway. The car was packed and there was hardly any room to stand, let alone move around. The train ended up being stopped at a station due to a sick passenger. I don’t know about you, but that seems to always be the excuse that the train conductors use, so instead of my feeling bad for the person who was supposedly ill, I got furious. Of course my train would be stalled when I didn’t have my ipod to escape. The stalling of the train also meant that I was going to miss my bus and have to stand outside in the cold for an extra thirty minutes, waiting for the next one, which, by the way, is exactly what happened. I longed for the summer, where I had been subletting in the East Village with my sister and the commute was so much easier.

Finally at home, I made myself a cup of tea and turned on the television to an episode of SATC. The warm feel of the mug in between my hands and the fragrance of the tea in the comfort of my quaint little apartment seemed to envelope me and suddenly, my day didn’t seem that bad. Sometimes, all you need is a nice cup of tea and the comfort of your own space.

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Don Quixote, Revisited?

Long ago, I started a list of books that I wanted to read. I figured I’d check them off as I went and slowly, I would actually read them all. The list is a mixture of classic and modern literature, some of which has been recommended to me and others that I knew of and have wanted to read myself. One novel that I had been dying to read was Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. I picked it up last summer and started reading it, and when I say last summer I mean the summer of 2010. I was so excited to finally be reading this novel that I didn’t care how thick it was or how heavy. People laughed when I would pull this book out of my purse and ask me why I was lugging it around. They couldn’t understand why, in their minds, I would choose to read something so grandiose when there was plenty of literature available in the “smaller” variety. There ignorance of this great work of fiction was the encouragement I needed to continue…or so I thought.

I have to confess that I have only gotten through about a quarter of the novel. It’s not that it isn’t entertaining. I actually laughed out loud numerous times while the novel accompanied me as I rode public transportation or sat at my desk at work. The problem that I found with Don Quixote was not so much the content, but the repetition of it. The main character, Don Quixote, constantly gets into scrapes and then gets out of them. He has his own reality and constantly miss-assumes things as other than what they really are. I got a little bored with the repetition and am sorry to say that my copy has been sitting on my shelf collecting dust for the past year, but I have decided to open it up again and delve into it with the determination to finish it this time around. It really is a great novel; just one that might need to be read in strides instead of all at once.

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Wide Awake and No Sleep in Sight

Once again I find myself devoid of the one thing that I want the most…sleep. You would think that after all these years of being a professional insomniac I would get used to the long, sleepless nights that go along with it, but you never really do. Sure, not all nights are bad. Some are better than others, but some nights, like tonight, are just intolerable. I live alone. I love living alone. There’s no one to answer to. You can do whatever you want, when you want it. I feel that everyone should live alone at some point in their lives. You learn a lot about yourself and what you can handle. Your apartment becomes your world and you cherish it at the end of a long day at work. You may think that you appreciate your space, but the true test comes with what you do with it on these lonely, sleepless nights.

I keep a lot of things to myself. A lot of thoughts and feelings, trapped. It’s hard for me to open up to people, to really let them in. I grew up in two homes. In the first one, opinions were not voiced. It didn’t matter what you thought of anything really, because there was no one there to listen. I had a strict bedtime. Always. No exceptions. Many nights, I would lay in bed, completely awake. I didn’t dare to leave my room or go downstairs. The understanding was that it was bedtime and that was where I was expected to be, regardless of the fact if I was sleeping or not. So, I would lay there, my body completely still but my mind racing with thought after thought after thought; I couldn’t turn my brain off. Every so often thoughts of sleep and why was I not sleeping popped into my head…when that happens, you know that you’re in for a rough night.

My second home was completely the opposite. Opinions were encouraged to be voiced even if they were in disagreeance from someone else’s. Everyone’s thoughts mattered. There were no bedtime laws. Everyone there was a sort of insomniac like me. At all hours of the night, you could bet that someone would be awake; you could hear the soft paddle of feet in the halls or voices in the kitchen. I didn’t feel alone there, but I also didn’t partake in the evening rituals of walking around the house, of actually getting up from my bed. I stayed in bed as I had been trained to do so, quietly and still with only my brain for movement. I tried to train my mind to stop thinking, to focus on nothing, to clear the mind as the expression says, but to no avail. Some nights, sleep just wasn’t meant to be.

Flash to my present day rituals of curbing my insomnia. In the comfort of my apartment, I lay in bed as I always had, but now I get up. I roam around my dark apartment eating snacks or running to the bathroom. I do not believe that the comfort of a good book will aid to clear my mind so that I can sleep. They don’t do that for me. They keep me awake, wanting to read more and more which is why there is never a book at my bedside. I turn my lamp on, I sometimes turn the television on (sometimes not), I write in my journal. Believe it or not, all of these things can help at times, but sometimes none of them can. That’s when the loneliness kicks in and I wish that I didn’t live alone all of the time. Will I go to sleep tonight or do I have many more hours to brave alone? The answer to that is always unknown.

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New Beginnings (excerpt)

The sunset was perfect. It was one of the truly great ones that only happened after a rainy summer day, when the clouds passed long before the night started to settle in and the world smelled fresh and new. Kate sat on the sand. She was wearing jeans and a white tee shirt, her favorite thing to wear and although it had stopped raining hours before, she could still feel the slight dampness of the sand through her jeans. Kate didn’t care. There was no one that she wanted to impress tonight. She dug her palms into the sand, tilted her head back and closed her eyes, letting the darkness engulf her. The only sound that could be heard was that of the waves softly crashing against the shore. It was exactly what Kate had been looking for and she hoped that the sounds of the ocean would drown out the racing thoughts in her head. There were a lot of exciting things happening in her life right now, a lot of distractions, but she still couldn’t shake him. There romance had been brief, but it had changed her life forever. Like all of the great love stories, it had been tragic and though she hadn’t laid eyes on him in over a year, Kate was still sitting amid the pieces.

She heard movement in the sand and glanced back to see her best friend trudging towards her. Kate smiled, though Abbey couldn’t see it and turned her gaze back to the ocean. Moments later, Abbey sat down next to her in silence and handed her a glass of wine. Abbey always knew exactly what Kate needed and vice versa; it was why their friendship had lasted as long as it did. It was also why, when she had picked up the phone to ask Abbey if she could come out to the beach house for a week she didn’t even have to say the words; Abbey answered saying: When shall I be expecting you. And why Abbey sat in silence with her now. No facade necessary.

Kate brought the glass up to her lips slowly. She took a sip, allowing the wine to saturate her mouth before she swallowed. Kate sighed, stretching her legs out in front of her. She rested the wine glass on her lap, balancing it between both hands. She felt Abbey’s hand on her right knee, reassuringly. Kate stared at the dark shadow on her knee. This was what she had needed.

“It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?” Abbey stated.

“Yes,” Kate said, softly. She slid her legs up, bending her knees and rested her forearms on top of them, still cupping the wine glass in her hands. She felt the curve of the glass, letting her fingers glide over the exterior. It was hard to imagine that it was once part of the choppy surface that lay underneath her.