“You’ll get over it…”

It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life forever. You don’t get over it because “it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it?

The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?

—   Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

I can’t even begin to explain to you how much I haven’t really seen in my own city. I’m always amazed at how diverse New York is, but I know that there are a lot more places and things that I haven’t even seen yet. I was in the car the other day with my mother and we were driving back from somewhere. It was a really nice day out, so all of the icy carts were out. And in that moment, I thought to myself, you only really see that in New York City. And it’s really only in the Latino communities that you see them; everywhere else you have the legit ice cream trucks. But to be honest here, do you see Latinos with icy carts on your street corner in the city you live in? Really now, I think it’s a New York City thing.

Anyway, I’m almost sure I haven’t seen all that my beloved city has to offer. And I suppose that’s because I’m a native New Yorker and have, in my twenty-something years alive, taken this city for granted. But no longer! I’m setting a really big goal here, right now. The fact that I probably seen more of cities in Europe than my own NYC makes me sad, so this summer I’m going to do something different. Really, I thought of this last night and I’m going to do it.

This idea was also inspired by a post I read on The Freedom Experiment. I suffer from occasional bouts of wanderlust and as a semi-unemployed person, I can’t be going on oversea adventures like I would want to. Because of this intese urge to see the rest of the world, I often forget that I haven’t even seem most of my part of the world. Marthe, from The Freedom Experiment, wrote a few tips on dealing with wanderlust and the restlessness you feel from not being able to go where you want to go. One of her tips was to buy a travel guide of your hometown. As weird as that may sound, I’m starting to think she may have a point.

So my idea is to conquer this list, that I’ll post below, during this summer. I really hope I can motivate myself to get out and do all of these things. Maybe I can even sucker a few of my friends to do them with me.

1. 1. Walk the length of Central Park, from 110th Street Central Park North to 59th Street Columbus Circle.
2. 2. Photo document every section of Central Park (even the ones not on the map)
3. 3. Attend a Shakespeare in the Park performance.
4. 4. Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.
5. 5. Visit the African Burial Grounds.
6. 6. Visit the 9/11 Memorial.
7. 7. Go to the top of the Empire State Building (outside observation deck this time!)
8. 8. Spend the day at the Cloisters and Fort Tryon Park.
9. 9. Go down to Wall St.
10. 10. Visit The High Line.
11. 11. Kayak on the Hudson.
12. 12. Visit the New York Public Library (the really big on 42nd Street with the lions out front)
13. 13. Visit and/or revisit as many museums as possible (plus, I have my art class that starts soon, so I’ll have to go to these.)
14. 14. See the current public art installation on Park Avenue.
15. 15. Visit Grant’s Tomb
16. 16. Visit Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens

I’m sure there are a lot more things to do and places to see. I just have to find them. Suggestions are welcomed and I’m probably going to add to this list as I get new ideas. I’m kind of excited for this! And I know already that I can do most of these things in a day. Hum…I suppose I should add learn to ride a bike on this list, but it’s not really New York City related (that and I haven’t fully convinced myself that I am going to learn how to ride a bike yet).

I’ve always liked making playlists. When I was younger, in the days before CDs, I remember having a pile of blank cassette tapes my dad got for me sitting on my desk. My boombox or walkman was always tuned to the local pop radio station. I’d sit there for a while just waiting for my favorite songs to come on, just so I could hit record and get them on my blank tape. I’d fill up all the tapes my dad got for me, then take even more time writing out the names of all the songs and artists who they belonged to. I remember carrying them around with me everywhere I went. Eventually, the CD boomed and my dad bought me a Sony CD player. I would carry around a giant case with all my CDs in them. Then when computers and software like Real Player and such came out, and when burning discs were a thing, it felt so nice to save all of my music from discs onto my computer, and then make playlists of all my favorite songs to burn onto discs.

These physical mixtapes (or CDs) were so cool–at least to me–because it made it so much easier to share the music I liked with my friends. Plus, I just really liked compiling my favorite songs together in different ways to create a unique listening experience. I always tried to theme my mixes or at least have songs of the same genre in their own playlists. With the onset of advanced technology like the iPod–which I’ll be first to admit, I didn’t get one until like…the 3rd or 4th generation came out cause I was too attached to my CD player–and iTunes and file sharing or Youtube, it’s fairly easy to send and share playlists with people.

But of course, these playlists lose their novelty as mixtapes (or CDs), since they are not really material, just simply 0s and 1s flying through hardwire.

This doesn’t discourage me though. 8tracks is an awesome site that lets me make playlists real easy and share them with people, and I kind of like it. Today I felt a bit nostalgic about summer. It hasn’t come yet where I live, but that anticipatory feeling you get in the pit of your stomach that is only enhanced by past summer memories and your future expectations of what this summer’s going to be like, was just eating me alive. So I made a playlist to crave my hunger for that summer wanderlust.

You can listen to it here:

It depends where you are in the world, but if you’re like me and live in a place where the weather seems to be drunk, then you too may be wishing for summer to come fast! I’ve been wishing summer to fall upon us for the longest time. I suppose (since I live in a place where we get winters) it was because I got sick of the winter cold rather quickly this past winter season  I don’t know what it is exactly, but the cold just doesn’t suit me. For one, I’m always cold and two, I really don’t like wearing so many layers of clothing. But in summer, it’s so hot that none of these things are a problem!

I have a new found love of my summer shorts. As a kid–or really my years from prepubescent teen to teen–I was very self-conscious and deathly afraid of being spotted in shorts. It’s really weird, now that I think of it. I sometimes do not understand my younger self. Anyway, I rarely wore shorts, let alone, owned them. Now years later, I have a good number of shorts and I wear them constantly during the summer. I love them so much that when autumn comes along, my leg refuse the touch of jeans and I get really sad. I suppose this means I need to live in a warm climate all year long.

Anyway, it’s currently pouring here in New York. And as I lust for summer to come tomorrow, I spent part of my morning online windowing shopping. Here are just a few summer shorts that I think look so cute, I wish I had the money to get them all!

1- AE Beaded Denim Shortie
2- Floral Printed Ditsy Denim Shorts
3- Blank NYC The Solid Gold Cutoff Jean Shorts
4- Celebrity Pink Printed Denim Short