Familiar Faces

I just spent my first Shabbos ever in the Heights.

In some ways, I liked it much better than I thought I would. I was incredibly nervous to stay in for the first time - and alone. None of my apartment mates were in for Shabbos. After the last one left, I really felt emptiness settle in over the apartment. It wasn't like being alone at home - the Heights is still very new to me. It was like being alone in a new environment.

When I first realized that I was going to be alone in the apartment and that a lot of people were going home this weekend, I was sorely tempted to do the same. It would be easier. I wouldn't have to agonize over finding meals (which were hard to come by, since most people were not going to be in the Heights), and I wouldn't have to face the Heights on Shabbos for the first time alone.

But then I got annoyed with myself. Was I so insecure that any time Shabbos proved a bit difficult, I would go running home? What kind of independent young woman was that? So I made myself stay and I'm glad I did. Nor was I as alone as I felt I would be - at least, not most of the time.

Though I had never been to Mt. Sinai (the shul) before, I had heard a lot about it. I'd heard it described as "overwhelming," "such a social scene," and even "meat market." I have friends who "don't like Mt. Sinai" because it's too much of a "scene."

I have no way to compare it to anything because the only time I was there was last night. To be honest, I liked the fact that I was in a completely new place and yet knew so many people when I walked into shul. It made me feel less alone. And I feel like the scene is only there if you stick around for it and make sure you get in on it. Otherwise, who cares if there are a lot of people around? If you don't like it, you don't have to socialize with everyone there. No one's making you, you know? But then again, like I said, I was only there for last night's davening and it was kinda an off week - a lot of people were away because of Labor Day Weekend (side note: when I was in Israel for the year, the British girls were so confused why we had a day called Labor Day. They thought it sounded like a day when all women go into labor or something. Other side note: my bat mitzvah was on Labor Day. This year will be 11 years since my bat mitzvah. Yikes).

Anyway, I felt a lot better (and I mean a lot) when a particular friend walked in. You know how sometimes, when you're in a new place, or a strange place, and a friend from a much more familiar place in your life walks in, you just feel all your nerves rush out of you like jelly? And everything suddenly feels completely safe? Well, that's what it felt like. I was so astonished and happy and relieved.

Then I went to C2 for the Friday night meal. Two other girls were there and it was really, really nice. What was funny was that all Shabbos, I kept meeting people who are in school for education, which is what I want to do - and not only that, but in the two particular schools I'm looking into.

Night was harder. I was alone in my apartment, which wouldn't have been so bad except I felt awful. I really felt sick. I felt so bad that it actually kept me up nearly all night, and for the two or three hours that I slept some, I had really bad, detailed dreams where I was getting bitten by scorpions and other unpleasant things that hurt a lot. I remember pinching myself in my dream to see if it was real or not and actually feeling the pinch, but somehow knowing that it didn't feel quite right, that I didn't really feel awake, that I thought I was awake, in a filmy sort of awakeness, but...wasn't really sure.

Consequently, at around seven o'clock I finally fell asleep for a while (still with some weird dreams) and missed shul. I got up just in time to go to D2 for lunch.

D2's lunch was also really, really nice. A bunch of other people were there - but not too many, so it didn't feel crowded. One girl had just moved to the Heights and knew absolutely no one. She had been planning on eating by herself when one of D2's other guests met her in shul and insisted she come eat lunch with us. She turned out to be a really nice girl, and so was everyone else who ate there (aside from D2, I was not good friends with/didn't really know the other girls there, but we all had a really nice time together).

And some friends who are reading this will be pleased to know that I was not as shy at these meals as these friends might be used to or expect. In fact, I came away from them with more friends than I had before Shabbos started. And that is one thing I really do love about the Heights. I love the opportunity to meet new people and become reacquainted with others. It's like everyone is starting over in the Heights, so someone I never spoke to at Stern is suddenly someone I could speak to now. Girls whose paths would never cross mine in Midtown are suddenly in my path Uptown.

Due to the fact that I was still not feeling amazing - and I'm sure the fact that I barely slept on Friday night did not help - I went back to my apartment after lunch and didn't leave it again the rest of the day. I humored myself and the fact that I was not feeling well by spending the late afternoon lying on the couch reading a book from my childhood. (Those sort of books are always a source of comfort for me.) I suspect I felt worse because I felt a little lonely and little disoriented. I didn't quite feel like I was in a place I could identify. I know that doesn't make much sense, but it was like I didn't have a good grasp on where I was. Everything is too new here, too unfamiliar. For instance, even though I was not at my house, I would still feel at home when I stayed in for Shabbos at Stern. I even feel more at home when I go away to close friends, like when I go to SerandEz. But not here. Here I don't know how I feel, but it's not a feeling of being at home. Not yet, anyway.

I read until it began to get too dark to comfortably make out the words on the page. Then I reached a dilemma. I had forgotten to look up when exactly Shabbos ended. The only way I knew to find out would be to go online or call someone - neither of which I could do until Shabbos was over! Hmmm.

I figured I would just wait until I could see three stars, but the sky was really cloudy. At a certain point, I could make out two, and it was already really dark by then. It seemed really late. I couldn't imagine Shabbos wasn't over yet. I waited a bit to make absolutely certain it was late enough, and then figured I would make Havdalah for myself (another thing I didn't really prepare for...it was sort of makeshift) and then take a chance and go online to make sure Shabbos was really over. I had done the math based on when candle lighting was, but I couldn't really trust myself. What if I was wrong? What if Shabbos wasn't really over yet?!

It's one of the oddest things to go on your computer and check myzmanim to see if Shabbos is over. Luckily, it had been over for a while already.

Anyway, that was my adventurous Shabbos, which followed an adventurous Thursday. I've been having a steady stream of adventures on my own lately. It's interesting how that happens.

This post is more like a journal entry, huh? Well, I guess that's how it goes sometimes. I'm still feeling somewhat disoriented here, like I don't quite know where I am. But I really am making myself face this new place head on. Hopefully this disoriented feeling will go away soon, and then Heights will start feeling like home.

Though at the moment, the familiar feels like a breath of fresh air.

The Misadventures Of A Rainy Friday

There are some days when the rain is so fierce that it is not rain at all, but rather like the all the lakes and rivers of the world are falling from the sky right on top of you. This past Friday was such a day.

SJ, D2, and I set off on our trek from Stern to Penn Station in a gray world with a damp breeze. On occasion, a few droplets of water would sprinkle onto our faces, but as we walked, these droplets became more like fully-grown drops and their descents occurred more frequently than "on occasion." By the time we were halfway there, the sky had begun to dump its entire watery contents onto New York City.

For those unfamiliar with summers in New York, they go something like this: Nice Day. Hot day. Humid day. Very humid day. Very, very humid day. So-humid-it's-like-walking-through-sticky-swaths-of-hot-cotton-candy day. Stormy day filled with drenching, torrential rains, blinding flashes of lightening, and thunder so deafening it sounds like the sky's going to crash to earth any minute. The next day is a beautiful one, and the cycle begins again.

Although we have yet to reach summer, the rain which drowned our feet that day might as well have been an early summer visitor. SJ and I each had umbrellas, but the wind had decided to whip mine backwards into a position that was utterly useless. My hair, my shirt, my skirt, and my feet became completely drenched. I only hoped the contents of the suitcase I was dragging were still dry.

By the time we three got to Penn Station, our clothes were sticking to us in that uncomfortable way that wet clothes do and our hair hung limp and bedraggled. I could feel water squishing around in my shoes.

In such circumstances, a person may tend to feel bogged down by her wetness. I certainly felt that way. We had only four minutes until our train and we still had to buy tickets, but for some reason I could only shuffle my feet slowly around the train station. Everything around me, in fact, was operating on a slower, wetter system.

There were long lines by each ticket machine, but somehow both SJ and I managed to get a turn. I got tickets for D2 and myself, but SJ's machine was broken. We had no time for her to try on my machine, however, so we ran to our platform with one minute to go, stumbled clumsily (and wetly) down the stairs, and threw ourselves onto the first car of the train just before the doors closed behind us.

The train was a Double Decker, and for a moment we stood there in wet confusion, wondering where the seats were.

"Shall we go up or down?" I finally managed through chattering teeth. The others must have been too wet or bewildered or both, for they each mumbled something that didn't sound very much like a suggestion.

"Up, then," I decided for them and we all traipsed up the steps, shivering in our sopping clothes. Unluckily, there was nowhere for us to sit, so we had to stand until we reached Jamaica. That was where we had to switch.

I called my dad at that point to ask if he was also on the train. Then we could get a ride home from the train station. He wasn't, but he said he was on another train that was also switching at Jamaica, so we decided to meet up.

At Jamaica, we met my father and made the switch easily. Our next train had seats for us, but not together, so D2 went to sit in one area while SJ sat in another. "We're getting off at ---" I told them just in case we got separated, for it was a different stop than the one we were originally going to on our first train. Then I stood for a bit near D2 because I felt too wet to sit, but SJ finally convinced me to sit with her. I suppose that was when things went a bit awry.

Looking back on it, I don't think D2 noticed that I was no longer standing near her. When the train pulled into our stop, SJ and I got off the train, along with my father. As I got off, I looked around for D2 but couldn't find her anywhere.

"Is someone supposed to get off the train with you?" asked a man from my community. I nodded.

"What's her name?"

"D2," I said.

He poked his head back in the train and called out, "D2!"

But no one answered and the doors were closing.

As the train pulled away, SJ and I both took out our phones to call her. And we both noticed we had text messages from her asking if we were going to the stop our initial train, before we met up with my father, was going to. We looked at each other.

"Oh no," we said.

"What happened to D2?" asked my father. "Was she sleeping?"

I shrugged. "What's the next stop?" I asked. "Because that's where she's going."

SJ called D2, who told her what the next stop was. Then, still wet (though it was no longer raining), we trudged to my father's car and drove off to pick up D2.

Ten minutes later, D2 was found and in the car with us.

"When we get home, we should all have hot chocolate," I said.

"Ooh, yes!" exclaimed D2.

When I was taking a writing class at Stern, my stories frequently ended in everyone going home to have hot chocolate. SJ called these "hot chocolate endings." I figured we all deserved our own hot chocolate ending.

As soon as we got home, SJ, D2, and I ran up to my room to change our clothes. SJ, already wearing a light blue shirt that was mostly dry, borrowed a pastel pink skirt from me. Looking in the mirror, she exclaimed, "I look like ice cream!"

D2, meanwhile, had discovered that an air mattress was piled on top of my bed so that the whole thing looked like the set of The Princess and the Pea. She climbed on top and curled up. SJ and I, thinking this was a fun activity, climbed up with her. But after a little while, I remembered about the hot chocolate.

"Oh yeah, let's go have hot chocolate!" said D2, when I reminded her.

We all slid off the piled mattresses and bounded down the stairs.

"Do we have any hot chocolate?" I asked Mavis, who, like most teenage boys, was lurking around in the kitchen. We usually did have hot chocolate, but I wasn't sure if we had gotten any since Pesach.

"I don't think so," said Mavis. "But you can always use Ovaltine!"

So we tried the Ovaltine. The issue with that was we couldn't use the instant hot water on our sink. We had to actually heat up milk.

"Maybe we shouldn't," I said, glancing around the kitchen that had various Shabbos cooking activities going on in it.

"Aw, why not?" asked D2. I hesitated.

"We can just warm it up in the microwave," suggested SJ.

"Okay," I said. "But...in what?"

"Mugs?"

"Can you microwave mugs?"

"Sure! We do it all the time in my house."

"Um...okay..."

So I got down three mugs.

"Wait, girls, why don't you try these?" suggested my father, taking down some Styrofoam cups. I felt more comfortable using those and took them readily. SJ and D2 each poured themselves a cup of milk and put the cups in the microwave.

I waited for them to be finished but D2 kept putting hers back in.

Finally, it was my turn. I decided that instead of putting it in and out a million times, I'd just put my cup in for a full four minutes.

I suppose no one really paid much attention to what I was doing, because no one stopped me. SJ and D2 were busy with their cups of hot chocolate. I waited around for my cup of milk to finish microwaving.

As I waited, I did other things. I went upstairs to get something. I talked to SJ and D2. Mavis and I spent some quality time bothering each other. And then I decided to check out how my cup of milk was doing.

The first thing I saw when I looked over at the microwave was a steamy door and lots of white behind it.

You know that feeling where you suddenly feel the blood rushing around in your head? Shabbos was in less than an hour and I thought for a moment that I had broken the microwave.

After my feet unstuck from the floor, I shakily pressed the "stop" button and pulled open the door. A large circle of white liquid lapped up against an empty Styrofoam cup in greeting.

When I panic, I am generally overcome with a slow-moving, intense calm. I suddenly know exactly what to do, and what I knew most of all in that situation was that there was no reason my mother had to come into the kitchen until the milk was all cleaned up.

I became almost devilish about it.

"Should I take a picture?" I asked SJ.

"Yes!" she grinned. "It's like illustrated milk!"

I giggled and ran to get my camera.

Before long, I had both taken a picture of the milky masterpiece and had cleaned it all up. It was quite easy to clean, too.

"Here, let's try again," said D2, grabbing hold of the Styrofoam cup.

I looked at her incredulously, nearly started laughing again, and shook my head.

"I think I've had enough experimenting with milk for now," I said.

So I did not get my hot chocolate ending.

But I did get some illustrated milk. Oh, and a great story.

Shabbos Is Coming

It's Thursday night at the end of both a long and oddly quick week. I did a lot this week: wrote a lot, worked on editing my thesis, and even went home once. I didn't have my 10:25 morning class at all this week, which was weird. It made each day feel like I didn't have very much class at all (well, because I didn't). But it was nice. It was so great to have a significant amount of time each morning to work on things.

Yet through it all, no matter what happens or doesn't happen during the week, there is always Shabbos at the end of it. A friend said to me at the very beginning of the week, "Shabbos is important." It's important to think about even on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday...even before you can say TGIF. No matter what is going on in your life, there will still be Shabbos. Not just the day, but everything that Shabbos brings with it.

No matter what your worries are, your stresses, your difficulties, or even your joys, Shabbos will still be there, like a hug. You can't watch TV, you can't go on your computer, you can't really go anywhere. There are almost no distractions at all. You can actually daven without feeling like you need to be anywhere else. You can finally give people your full attention. You can really spend time with family and friends. You can take a rest from everything in the outside world that is yanking on your sleeve trying to get you to attend to it.

I know it's "only" Thursday, but tomorrow is Friday night. So no matter what any of your weeks have been like, I wish you all an amazing Shabbos.

A Preface To Nowhere, A Chapter Of Nothing

Preface

There's this strange dialectic that happens on Fridays, usually right after candle lighting. You suddenly think of something you'd really like to do but can't on Shabbos. This then proceeds to torment you the entire Shabbos until immediately after Havdalah where you rush to whatever it was.

For a writer, this is extremely difficult. The best ideas always come on Shabbos. This makes perfect sense, of course; on Shabbos, the regular distractions from the week are gone and you actually have time and space to think (what a concept). This sort of time and space is not physical. You can't tell me - well, during the random hours of free time you have during the week, you could get the same ideas!

...No. It has to be coupled with a mental relaxation that only comes with the sweeping peace of Shabbos. I suppose that is what I meant a few posts ago when I said I write better when I don't think. It's not that I'm not thinking. It's that I'm mentally relaxed.

Some might say that I can achieve this state of mental (and emotional) relaxation even during the week if I lived out of town. And perhaps that's true - I wouldn't know. But that is beside the point entirely.

The point is - when it comes to creativity, you've got to grab onto it when it comes to you. So how can you do that on Shabbos when you can't write anything down? How can you make sure you don't lose your inspiration without also overfocusing on it on Shabbos?

Chapter One

I was particularly early for the train home today - so early, in fact, that the track had not even been posted yet. Instead of waiting around in the middle of Penn Station, staring up at the information board in perfect unison with everyone else (they all look like a herd of penguins, don't they? Standing in a miscellanious group looking up with the same tilt of the head - same to very angle degree - and the same harried expression on their faces, each one occasionally looking down at a watch and then back up again like they're in a game of wac-a-mole), I decided to hang around in the station book store.

It's a very narrow store, but deep, so I dragged my imbalanced wheelie suitcase (I can't ever let go of it or it tilts forward like it's just been kicked in the back) past the sci-fi, romance, and self-help sections until I reached the set of shelves labeled "Young Readers." I scanned the books, looking for any familiar, nostalgic titles, when I reached a somewhat messy stack at the very bottom. There, the title Johnny Tremain caught my eye. Johnny Tremain! I leaned my suitcase against the shelf and eagerly reached for the book. It was sandwiched tightly in the middle of the stack and I had to squeeze my fingers around the binding so I'd be able to pull it out. That was when I felt the most peculiar sensation.

"Is the cover made of velvet?" I wondered to myself (not out loud - just in my head). I frowned, unsure how that made sense, and gave a final tug, the book finally pulling free.

No. It was not made of velvet. But then why was it so soft?

Slowly, I lifted a hand from the binding and looked at the tips of my fingers. They were covered in layers of thick black dust. I held the book a moment longer, wondering mournfully how long the book had been wedged in that pile, unread, unlooked at, untouched. The idea made me sad. I hurriedly returned the book to the shelf and dragged my suitcase out of the store.

Illustrated Milk

One Shabbos while at SerandEz, this conversation happened:

Erachet: It's calming. It looks like milk.
SJ: So when I need to calm you down I should just pour you a glass of milk to look at?
Erachet: No, only illustrated milk.

Now, on the surface, that seems to make no sense. What on earth is illustrated milk? What can I mean by it? Why do I find it so calming?

Here is a picture of illustrated milk:

There is something about that cool blue and white image that I find extremely comforting. I'm going to let you all into the workings of my mind for a moment. From this sort of picture, I think about similar images from childhood. For example, my mind today jumped from the image of milk to this image from If You Give A Mouse A Cookie*:

Illustrated milk, for me, symbolizes childhood. A sort of cookies-and-milk childhood. And I find that childhood comforting. It's a safe place. It's a world where you feel like anything is possible. Don't you remember being a little kid and feeling the wide world out in front of you, sensing all the possibilities, all the adventure, feeling you could do whatever you wished when you were old enough? Remember when people used to tell you that you could be whatever you want when you grow up?

But then you grow up and realize it's not enough to just want to be something. You have to actually have the capabilities for it. You have to be qualified. And the world has to also want you. And so, too many dreams drift slowly away in the dirty city air, or get crushed by the multitude pairs of feet rushing, rushing, rushing to and from office buildings and banks and courts and banks and office buildings. That dreaming little voice in your head gets drowned out by the screeching subway cars as they storm by like a herd of charging elephants.

And then again, sometimes you're able to approach things from that childlike point of view, to see the world in its vastness and possibilities once more, and feel that you really could do anything if you wished to. If you can do that, the very narrow, trapped feeling of, "I am finishing college and must now follow the next step in this path set for me by some sort of authoritative figure and find a job doing something I know I'm capable of, probably starting at the way bottom filing and answering phones, etc. etc. etc." melts away, is overpowered by this new - or perhaps old - eye-opening mindset.

Who says I have to play by the rules? Who says I have to be obvious? Just because I always thought of myself as an English person doesn't mean I can't get a job doing something that has nothing to do with books. Maybe I'll find something to do that's entirely random and yet utterly enjoyable. Maybe I'll find something that's completely out of the blue and yet insanely interesting.

I'm not bound by my major or by my passions. I think sometimes passion can be stifling. It's very possessive. It doesn't let you even want to do anything else.

I don't want to shed my passions. I still want to write. My dream is still to write. But I also wish to enjoy my life. This is my life I'm living, here. Not some checklist someone created for me with elements I must tick off every couple of years. A life does not have to be lived according to a list. A life is not something linear where you go from one predetermined thing to the next predetermined thing to the next. A life is all over the place. It's spontaneous. It's surprising. It's the only one I've got - I want to make it worth living. I want to enjoy it. And why shouldn't I enjoy it?

In this life, I wish to follow the Torah and halacha properly, to one day raise a frum Jewish family, to fullfill all my goals and ambitions as a writer, and to be happy with my life in every aspect.

I think we should all strive to be happy with our lives. We aren't going to get another opportunity to enjoy where we are other than in this life we are now living. Make the most of it.

Be happy. :)

* If You Give A Mouse A Cookie is one of the best children's books EVER.

Fudge-A-Mania

This Shabbos, Fudge and SJ came to my house. It was really a lot of fun (MOST!), but I would just like to point out two conversations on Friday:

Fudge: Wow, this is just like Monsey!
Erachet: What do you mean?
Fudge: There are trees!

Fudge: Wow, this is just like a real house!
Erachet: Um, that's because it is a real house...
Fudge: It just doesn't seem like you can have real houses in a place like New York!

Case in point! :)

(Don't worry Fudge, you're still awesome :P )

Whoaness - a four-day hodegepodge

I can't believe I haven't written in four whole days. I have a lot to say and not a lot of time to say it in, seeing as it's eleven o'clock (hee, I love writing out the time like that instead of digitally, like, 11:00) and I have to get up at six tomorrow morning. You see, tomorrow is my first day as an intern. I've never really interned anywhere before, if you don't count organizing pictures in a hospital archive for a friend of my dad's. I'm interning at a publishing house for medical textbooks every Tuesday and Wednesday this summer. It should be rather interesting, I hope. And this Thursday I have an interview at a local Jewish newspaper for the other three days in the work-week. I really, really hope that works out.

Speaking of that interview, my parents suggested I take a test drive to the interview spot today just to make sure I can get there without getting lost. Now, I have an awful sense of direction. And I mean awful. And I'm quite good at muddling up directions - which is just what I did. What should have been a seventeen minute drive, according to mapquest, turned into a two and a half hour adventure missing every single street my dad directed me to turn down. I ended up in the oddest places, ran a red light, nearly got into an accident, cried a couple of times while in a sketchy school parking lot on the phone with my dad, got yelled at by the security of the school (for being in their parking lot when the buses were coming soon), and was drenched in nervous sweat. Literally. My hands were wet, my face was wet, my hair was wet. I mean, I don't think I've ever been this nervous ever (and yes, I know I just used 'ever' twice in about four words. I was that nervous). It was my very first time driving out of my community on my own, I was completely lost, I kept getting myself more lost when my dad tried to direct me, and, yeah. Basically, it was a disaster. So we're going to try again tomorrow night and this time, one of my parents is coming with me to make sure I go the right way. I felt like such a complete failure this afternoon.

In other news, tonight was my brother's high school graduation. It was really nice, though some of the speakers spoke for rather a long time. I just cannot believe he graduated. It's weird, his entire life has revolved around high school, the hockey team, different teachers he liked, didn't like, his friends, and now it's over. Time to move on to the next level in life. I hope Israel is as good, if not better, an experience and that he continues to grow and mature and have an awesome time in everything he does.

Lastly, before I literally fall into bed, I've been having an internal debate with myself since high school. In high school, I had some friends declared they would not study secular subjects on Shabbat. I thought about it for a bit, but I really did need to study on Shabbat, or thought I did, anyway, and I never gave that up. It was a perfect long afternoon when I wasn't doing much else anyway - it was either studying, reading, or getting together with friends to eat each other's leftovers and debate over how to spend the afternoon. When I was in Israel for the year, the head of my school briefly mentioned once that he never studied on Shabbat and did well anyway. When I entered college, everyone I knew studied on Shabbat and I totally forgot about the concept that maybe you shouldn't. Until this weekend. This weekend, one of my best friends had some friends over from her college and they were talking about this very idea - studying on Shabbat. She explained to me that although she used to study on Shabbat in high school, she no longer does. Her friend told me that it is blatant hachanah (preparation) for after Shabbat and that a person should not even study religious subjects on Shabbat for that reason. I was flabbergasted. What about reading novels for school? When else do I have time to read for school??? No, he said. Even that I shouldn't do.

I frowned, I furrowed my brow, I reasoned, I rationalized, and I arrived at a dead end. The hachanah argument seems so logical and so obvious, and yet, I know that people study on Shabbat. I know people read for class on Shabbat. And I want to be able to. But am I allowed? Is hachanah for after Shabbat the real reason people don't do it? Or is it because it's not in the spirit of Shabbat to study secular subjects, and therefore religious subjects are okay and even reading secular novels are probably alright?

If anyone can relieve my mind on this issue, it would be greatly, greatly appreciated.