New York City smells like Chinese food, patchouli incense, the cologne of delivery boys, the roses for sale on each street corner, and Jamaican nannies wafting coconut trails from perfectly woven braids. It sounds like Hot 97 pumping from Escalades, taxis blasting, laughter on the streets, musical shopfronts from Tom Petty to Rancid to languages I've never heard, and people saying things to their friends like 'What you need is a make over,' or a...
I have this thing about graveyards. Until I was about sixteen I just assumed everyone liked hanging out in cemeteries.When I first got my license the one thing more exciting than New York City being 75 miles away was the whole new range of graveyards to visit, wander around, write in, take photos at, etc... I'd even go to the extent of saying I find cemeteries peaceful - especially ridiculously old ones. Australia was colonized in 1788... the...
This morning as I settled into the hunched-over-laptop pose that I form seven or eight hours a day, Mom says 'Gretchen, lots of people want to be writers. Too many people, that's why only some people actually get to do it.' Maybe that's true... but I'd like to hear about how hard people are willing to bust their ass to make it happen. And let's face it, it isn't really the sort of thing with a million doors open and employers saying, 'Creative...
I love living in Australia. It's a laid back lifestyle, four weeks of vacation on top of public holidays is standard... the people are cool for the most part (let's face it there are going be a few scaries anywhere you go)... and if you can afford to live on the coast (which naturally I can't), I don't see why you'd ever leave your neighborhood - except to go to New York City, of course. Since I was raised in a family of seven my mother...
I read an unfortunate article yesterday where another celebrity (Kristen Bell) visited Australia and said something like 'Sydney airport was disappointing, I thought there would be kangaroos.' The first kangaroo I saw when I moved to Australia in 2002 was roadkill we drove past on they way to Lyndhurst. So my point is Yankee people, if you happen to cross an Aussie (which are few and are between considering there are only about 22 million of...