Room with a view

A few years ago when I was first living in New York, one of my best friends Kate lived in Brooklyn Heights, a small tree-lined historical village just over the Brooklyn Bridge. I lived in Manhattan and loved coming down to Brooklyn Heights to see Kate and always thought if I moved I wanted to live there. (Be careful what you wish for!).

Kate used to live in a rental on Hicks Street, and eventually bought an apartment of her own on a lovely cul-de-sac called Grace Court. Kate moved to London, and we were catching up on the phone a couple years ago when I moved to San Clemente. I told her I loved the area, and loved my work, but just was missing true girlfriends. "Oh I have two cousins who live there," she said. San Clemente is a small town so I almost couldn't believe it but did meet her cousins Ellen and Jane, who are now dear friends of mine too.

I got approval from the co-op board last night, and going to get keys this morning before I fly to Maine for my friend Beth's wedding. Sunday night I plan to stay there, aerobed style, and then arrange move part 2 later next week. I am excited again.

When I was looking for an apartment last August, Ellen had mentioned how much she loved Grace Court. I couldn't believe it when 'the one' was located on this lovely street, one block away from Stacy, Jason and the kids. I think every day it will remind me of grace.

New beginnings

Ok. Ok. I think I've gotten a grip. It's been a long week and oddly, have taken comfort in two separate client dinners. Both said to me "Why did you work last week? A relocation across the country is really intense." I had gone to both dinners thinking I was so tired, I wished they were coming another week, and ended up leaving thinking how grateful I am to work with people like this.

It's been one of those over-tired, over-stimulated, living-out-of-suitcases, action-packed weeks; not much downtime, a little homesick, out of touch with family and friends, and still sleeping on Carly's trundle bed. My eyes haven't adjusted to the new environment so it feels still like extended business trip, not my my new home.

I had the co-op board meeting tonight, it seemed to go very well, and I felt excited (for the first time) when I left. They are supposed to talk to the management company in the morning who then talks to the broker who then, I assume, talks to the owner, then me. Ah, New York. Anyway, feels in motion, and all signs seem to indicate that Move Part 2 can happen next week.

I walked to the end of the cul-de-sac and looked out over the Harbor and then walked over to Stacy and Jason's house on the lovely tree-lined streets of Brooklyn Heights.

The picture above is of my friends Jen, Antony and I in August when I first saw the apartment and we were celebrating at a bistro in Cobble Hill. Hurrah - the search is over! I haven't felt like that in a while. I think that feeling is back.

September sun

My friend Greta has an annoying habit of throwing my own pearls of wisdom back at me. Greta first started this when I was living in San Francisco and she was living in New York and I had sent her a long thoughtful email full of advice and perspective when she was lamenting over love's loss. Several months later when I was nursing my own aching heart, she actually cut and paste those very words and sent them back in an email to me! I am not sure I appreciated it at the time.

A few months ago I was talking to my friend Jane in San Clemente about going through change, and how most people talk about it after they've been thru something. In hindsight you can look back with such clarity and perspective and see what had to end before something could begin, and essentially see the gift in that, but the 'during' part is often very muddled and messy and not much fun! Jane has Greta's elephant-like memory of past conversations so when it became my turn to go thru change, she has reminded me of the cloudy days that are part of the package, and that some days all you really can do is just be gentle with yourself.

Someone asked me yesterday if I was excited to be here and I burst into tears. I am not excited yet. Still a little overwhelmed that a week ago I was spending time with people who had been part of my day-to-day life -- going on a beach walk, packing boxes and having pumpkin ravioli at The Vine. Seven days later I'm on the other side of the country, over-tired, behind at work, living out of a suitcase at extended family's house, nerves a little frayed, not able to move into my new apartment until I 'meet the co-op board' next Wednesday night (which all my California friends think is straight out of a Seinfeld episode).

Stacy and Jason and the kids went to the Hamptons today as it's a beautiful September day and they are planning on a weekend of pool time, tennis, riding bikes. I opted to stay behind to relax and recharge a bit. I said I was going on a neighborhood walk later and planned to investigate a new yoga studio to join, catch up on work, knock off some of the to-do tasks I still need to do with this end of the relocation, find a smoothie shop and also try to catch up with some friends and family.

So far I have done none of that. What I have done is sit on the terrace outside Carly's pink princess room and read Stacy's issue of Oprah magazine, and just enjoyed the pleasure of the dappled September sun.

One way ticket East

Chair out the window, boxes and Jetta on two separate trucks, Grover strapped in wearing his new New York Yankees hat, on route back to Sesame Street. For the last several weeks I was surrounded by the love and support of many friends who all, in their own way, contributed to the move.

At the moment, I'm at LAX waiting for my flight, not experiencing the same 'Move Day' adrenalin that I had yesterday!!

Suzi and I were on a beach walk the other morning and we were discussing the fine art of 'letting go.' My friend Lauren in San Francisco (now Chicago!) once said that when you let go of something, it's amazing to see what will then rush in. Of course it's like being on the high dive bar; you have to ignore the nerves a bit, remember it's an exciting adventure, and just do your part and jump! I am loosening my grip on lovely San Clemente but my dear friends in both SoCal and NorCal remain in my heart - and that's where home really is.

Bye for now California. We'll see where I end up on the infinity circle. And as our Governor once said in his most memorable movie "I'll be back!"

nothing is permanent

I've been having a few 'why am I doing this??' moments when I think about leaving California next week. I spoke to my friend Elizabeth tonight, a friend from both New York and California, and asked her if she thought I was making a mistake. Eli thought a moment and threw out Alicia Silverstone's line from the 1995 film "Clueless":

Tai: "Man this party is ragin."
Cher: "Let's do a lap before we commit to a location."

Tribute in Light

One of my favorite lines in a movie is the opening of "Love Actually" where Hugh Grant's voice over says that in the last calls from United flight 93 on September 11, 2001, they weren't messages of hate or fear, they were messages of love. My friend Jen wrote today in her own day of reflection that in the past 8 years since the attacks "I think I've learned to love harder and appreciate the simple things in life." Let love rule.

Love not Antioxidants

In the cold late fall in San Francisco a few years ago, I was going through a season of doors shutting, dreams ending. If you've never lived in San Francisco you might not appreciate how damp and chilly it can be there. Let me assure you, even with the famed California sun, at times it can feel feel colder than a Midwestern winter, especially when going thru some heartache and disappointment.

My agency started working with a company named Sambazon a couple months prior, and my client was in town for something called Greenfest. Sambazon was started by some friends who decided to manufacture and market an exotic berry called acai that grew on top of palm trees in the Amazon Rainforest - and do it in such a way that helps protect the forest and improve the livelihood of the people that live there.

I was planning to visit my client at the show for some client service face time and fully expected to be there for an hour or two at the most, get the credit for the visit, turn around and go home and wallow a bit. Greenfest is self described as a 'conscious party with a purpose'. It's a gathering of people, products and companies in a community whose early treehugger roots began thirty plus years around around such hippie notions of organic farming, taking care of Mother Earth, a diet for a small planet and an overall philosophy of peace, love and understanding. I was used to working with much different types of clients - mainstream consumer products, retail chains, entertainment properties, spirits brands, cat food. I had never been to something called Greenfest before, and before the show, really hadn't spent more than a couple hours with my clients at Sambazon either.

The two hour visit turned into a weekend. In short, I fell down the rabbit hole. Besides the music, products, people, scents, sightings and discussions that were completely brand new to me -- I was amazed at the comaraderie and true sense of connection between Sambazon and other businesses there, and the feeling that flowed from company to company, to consumer and back. It was bigger than brotherhood or sisterhood, it was an overall vibe of positivity, and a sense of being connected to a larger purpose.

It felt the opposite of business as I knew it.

Sambazon and many of the companies there like Guayaki, Manitoba Harvest , Dagoba Chocolate, - and the natural products pioneers that came before them who wanted to change the world - were making products that they really cared about: Products that contributed in some way to health, planetary protection, nourishing body and soul - products that mattered, that people loved. Companies who were about giving and improving and helping in addition to - not instead of - being profitable. William Yeats wrote "How can we know the dancer from the dance?" Among these companies, the products they made seemed a natural output of the vision and original intentions they set up at the onset. All I knew was that I didn't want to leave. More than just opening up my mind, like the Grinch from Hooville with the closed off heart, my bruised heart grew 10 times that day...

I saw a documentary once called "The Complete Beatles" and John Lennon describes his first meeting with Yoko Ono. He was in an art gallery in London and there was a step ladder and a tiny piece of art on the ceiling and part of the installation is that you climb the ladder and look at the art through a magnifying glass. So John climbed the ladder and looked thru the glass and there was a tiny placard with a single word on it: "Yes." As John tells it in the documentary, it was this positivity - and hope - that made him fall in love with the artist, Yoko Ono.

Here's a link to a slideshow from my first year at Sambazon where I went to surf events, reggae concerts and food shows, The Sundance film festival, the State Department and the Amazon Rainforest, and moved down to live and work in a small beach town called San Clemente.

Can love exist in business? I am here to tell you...Yes.

What Matters

A few months ago, a serendipitous internet search had me stumble upon a book called "What Matters". The title caught my eye and as I searched a little further, discovered the author had started a literary group called The Emerson Circle, at Sundance Ranch, based on the wisdom of the past masters in literature, poetry and philosophy. It sounded wonderful so decided to order the book and email the site to find out more. Making a long story short, I 'met' the author via email, and eventually learned he was friends with a close friend of mine, as well as my sister and brother-in-law! It felt like the smallest of worlds, considering his bio said he was living in a chateau in France.

I read the book nearly in its entirety on a long flight to South Florida, and it reminded me of my favorite class at college, where a small group of 10 of us were in a writing program within the English major, and we read, wrote and discussed each other's work, and the work of classic essayists. I absolutely loved it. Our group was a bit like "The Breakfast Club", and while we didn't all overlap socially, in class we shared and discussed the most intimate matters of the heart. "What Matters" reminded me of how much I loved reading these works, and the true pleasure of writing, and also began a deeper mediation on what actually matters most to me.

Thinking about 'what matters' is both disruptive and clarifying, and once you go down that path and really start to be really honest with yourself, unfortunately there's no turning back. I had a gnawing feeling for several months during trips to New York in the winter and spring which was unsettling. When I was in New York in May I think it rained for 3 solid weeks and I was freezing - and while I knew California would be sunnier, warmer, easier - I was sad when I left, because I was leaving many of the people that matter most to me. And being on the East Coast just felt that much closer to the rest of my family in Michigan and South Florida -- "There's a lot of states between us right now Aunt Laura," my niece Katy said. What I began to realize was that it ultimately wasn't about a lifestyle for me - it was about who you build your day-to-day life with. Things came to a head a bit in June when I was back in New York and losing sleep and trying to stand on my head at 3 a.m. (my yoga teacher said this helps insomnia...it doesn't) when I finally began to admit to myself: "Uh-oh, I think I want to move back to New York." Once I finally stopped resisting the thought, and said 'ok', I felt a certain peace, and knew it was the right decision for me.

Since I had fully embraced a Southern California lifestyle living by the ocean, people have asked before if I ever would move back to the East Coast, and my answer was always, "For love." My Godson Logan (pictured above in front of my new building), age 2, is one of the 'who's' I am relocating 3,000 miles closer for.

U Turn

With the task of packing set out before me this weekend, a quote from Adlai Stevenson I remembered from a Northwestern University brochure, came to mind:

"Your days are short here; this is the last of your springs. And now in the serenity and quiet of this lovely place, touch the depths of truth, feel the hem of heaven. You will go away with old, good friends. And don't forget when you leave why you came."

Then saw Seth Godin's wonderful post this morning about square one. Thanks Seth.

Sunset

I know I will miss California at night. When I lived in New York, you could be getting home at 2 a.m. (or later), cabs whizzing by, people still spilling out of restaurants, the night sky glowing pink overhead - an absence of moon and stars, just a reflection of all that was below. And if you didn't want to go home at 2 a.m. there was always another place you could go, another party, or after party, or late night happening that got even more interesting in the early morning hours. If New York is 'work hard, play hard' then people in California are an almost clichéd 'early to bed, early to rise' - waking, sun salutation, wheat grass shot, blending a smoothie, excercising and seizing the day before New Yorkers have gotten their coffee and New York Times and decided upon a place for brunch at a more civilized hour.

Nights end early in small beach towns in Southern California, much more 'geri' as my friend Dave would say. Restaurants close by 10 on the weekend, and there's only a distant hum of cars from the freeway, and the Surfliner train going up and down the coast. When I first moved to San Clemente it took me a while to get used to how dark and quiet it was at night. I frequently went to a midweek evening yoga class in Laguna Beach, about 20 minutes north up the Coast Highway, and always enjoyed driving home, smelling the salt air and just sensing the presence of the mighty ocean nearby. I enjoyed walking the beach trail right before dusk, a time when most people have left the beach and just the surfers remain, and I'd watch them paddle out and wait for the last waves of the day before the sun would slip past the horizon.

California at night means: a chill in the air; wrapping up in a blanket and Uggs; firepits; a glass of wine in a hot tub; beach bonfires with someone strumming a guitar; flip flops in January; a night quiet enough to hear waves lapping against the shore; looking up at the inky sky and seeing the missing moon, and a dusting of stars scattered overhead.

Good night California. I sure will miss you.

bye bye courtney...

A few years ago on a business trip I received the nickname "Courtney" after Courtney Cox from a friend who used to work with her in the entertainment industry. Perhaps she has changed her ways but apparently at the time she wasn't low maintenance in the area of travel and baggage, so this wasn't a flattering nickname.

I'm not the best packer. I wait until the last minute, and come up with a million other things I'd rather do, and typically at midnight begin packing 'options' vs. outfits (leaving no time for edits). Of course a larger issue is making decisions but we're not going to go there right now...

So I have a move date (Sept 15!), and just scheduled a one way flight from LAX to JFK on the 16th. Just was speaking to United Airlines (sorry Porter! had a credit..) to determine whether its better to ship extra bags or check extra bags and it's now $150 per bag if your bag is over 50 pounds!! I've donated nearly 30 now empty photo albums and, 6 big boxes of books to the Salvation Army - and not stopping there! If its not beautiful or useful, it's being recycled onward. I am turning over a new leaf, and going to be a light packer. Bye bye Courtney...

Perspective

Moving has the ability to make things 'all about you.' My move date, my stuff, my relocation details, my new apartment, my schedule, juggling my work with my life, trying to fit in QT with everyone along with all the details you need to do. I had an early morning work call and then had just gotten off the phone with moving company and car relocation company - and was starting to think about the various balls in the air, and what I needed to get in motion. All the while, feeling pretty sad about leaving California and especially people I love here. I was getting a little overwhelmed. Then I got an email, and watched this video, and got some perspective! Happy September everyone.

"The Great Experiment"

I'm moving a brown wicker chair across the country I'm not certain I'll have room for, but its a chair like one my friend Dave used to have in the "Clinic" in his backyard in Venice.

Dave and I became friends in New York when we worked together at kirshenbaum bond & partners and LIME. He and I and another friend Jodi were having what he'd call a ‘big boozy lunch’ in New York a couple days after September 11, when we all stated were moving to California. In Dave's case it was being closer to his family and his roots; in my case I was probably what Joan Didion would call a “golden dreamer of the golden land.” When I moved to San Francisco three years later, Dave was already in his second home in Venice. He mailed me a CD of his California Mix which simply said "Welcome".

When I first visited him for an extended long weekend in Venice over Thanksgiving when everything felt like it was falling apart in San Francisco, he had me watch "Dogtown and Z Boys" followed by “Riding Giants”, breakfast at Paradise Cove, visit the Center of Self Realization in the Palisades, and of course say goodbye to the sun at the Venice Beach drum circle. “California is the great experiment” he said to me at the time, as I was taking it all in. More than simply a big brother, he was like an Ambassador to California to me.

When I moved from Northern California down to San Clemente a couple months later, Dave of course had plenty to say about that too. “It seems very transitional” was one of the first things he said to me when he walked in my house. He was on a mission to make sure I had a toe ring 'like all the hotties in the OC', told me I should aspire to being one of the 'Housewives of Orange County", and commented on the "subversive subcultures of San Clemente" (which I hadn't observed at all), noting the "undercurrent of tension between the surfers, marines, mexicans and ‘geris’."

Dave’s Venice casa and his guest bedroom with camouflage comforter and amazing books and items from his travels became my second home over many weekends. I loved coming up from my sleepy beach town for Venice weekends and we'd would often go on “Journeys” (yoga classes), see family and friends Virginia, Don, Owen, Conn and Marlen, and typically enjoy some of Dave’s fine tequila while "reanimating" in the Clinic. We'd often go on walks around Venice and sometimes browse the shops on Abbott Kinney and he would note (while humming the Little House on the Prairie theme song) that I was like Laura Ingalls Wilder "coming in from the prairie for some bolts of calico"....as he felt that my time in the OC had an expiration date. There was no who made me laugh more, or who was more of a high beam on the road, than Dave.

Dave was a brand strategist - advising brands and companies what to do, next year, 5 years down the road, 10 years - What's next?? He was known as a "big idea guy" but beyond that, both a cultural observer and debunker, a truly original thinker, and like many creative types, could be impatient, bored with complacency, challenged the norm, and often radical in what he said. He would both see it - and say it. In one of my favorite books, "A Prayer for Owen Meany", the author describes Owen as speaking words of truth that were so simple but profound, sometimes jarring and outrageous, that dropped like pebbles in still water, rippling out, and no one could really say anything after them. Dave had that effect too. More often than not, they had to do with change, and a big, uncomfortable push out into the unknown. While he did have a Che Guevera coffee mug and other camo artifacts, when he said "Are you ready for the Revolution?" his statement was not necessary literal. He'd often make us laugh, though pause, when he would clap his hands impatiently about something and say "We're going to the future people, are you coming??"

Of course none of us were prepared for the revolution at all, when Dave left us suddenly for a better place far too soon, and we were left behind trying to figure out how to go it alone, without him.

When I recently decided to relocate back to the East Coast, back to what Dave called “The Colonies”, I had been thinking constantly about what he would say about that. I am not sure but I think he’d eventually say something like “Oh Laura, well you’re kindof Colonial....” And I’m sure I’d laugh but somehow know that it would be alright, because Dave thought it would be.

"Time to reanimate."

Moving

My cousin Sharon wrote in her email to me this morning "I wish I was moving!!!" Those who know Sharon know that she and her husband Bill tried to move a couple years ago (retire, sell their business, escape from Northern Michigan in the winter to travel to warm states). Again, you know what they say about making plans...they now have their former business back, never sold their house and Sharon has also started an exciting new career. Sometimes the new chapters begin right where you are.

Most people, however, have said "I hate moving" when I've mentioned my plans, meaning the physical act of packing boxes, all the logistics of changing addresses, getting your cable turned off then on again, unpacking, the pain of change. And a couple others (who thankfully are helping me move!) have merely treated it cooly - with the operations-oriented brain cells that I lack - as the necessary step to get from point A to point B; in sailing when the wind shifts, and your sails begin luffing, it is time to tack.

At the moment, even though friends here have said I don't have much 'stuff', I'm surrounded by moving boxes in my small beach cottage that functions as both home/work space - so alternating between feeling claustrophobic and the emotional roller coaster of a cross country relocation, and who and what I am leaving behind. My last two moves happened very quickly - and movers packed and moved me completely in less than 4 hours - so I didn't have the multiple week period of pruning, going through old photos, making decisions, thinking about things...

I have found an apartment in New York but going thru the process of renting from a co-op building, so its not 'official official' yet (much more hoop jumping involved than San Clemente-style "find an apartment in Craigs List and 'we'll take it'! " approach). I have scheduled movers but haven't booked a plane ticket. I am spending QT with people I love here, and all the while scheduling meetings and outings in New York for a period "later in September". Friends are scheduling trips to visit me in New York in October. I am letting my earthquake insurance lapse. People have asked me when I am moving and while I still don't have the exact date on the calendar - or the official address of where I am moving to - the act of moving is mental before it is physical, and it is in motion.

New York, New York

Some years ago I moved to New York over 4th of July weekend. My college roommate Chris and I stayed in Great Neck, Long Island and came into the city over the hot, muggy weekend to look for apartments that would be a fit for our budget. Ultimately we ended up in a studio apartment overlooking Second Avenue in a rather unglamourous area of the city called Kip's Bay - not technically Murray Hill, not technically Gramercy, East Side but a far cry from The Upper East Side. There was a Chinese restaurant below us, an Irish bar on the corner called Paddy Reilly's and a Ray's (though not the original) pizza-by-the-slice pizzeria a block away. There was a lack of trees and charm in our particular section of town, it wasn't really near anything of note other than being relatively close to the entrance of the Midtown tunnel and a couple blocks away from Bellevue, a public hospital known for its phychiatric ward . We only saw possibilities and adventure. We were excited and energized to move to New York - many of our friends stayed behind to live and work in Chicago, or moved to other midwestern cities to begin their post-college life. We were pioneering a new chapter - we were moving to New York, albeit ' The City'.

I had only visited New York once before, visiting a friend in college, so most of my expectations and imagination was fueled by such movies as "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "Miracle on 34th Street." Joan Didion had written a wonderful essay called "Goodbye to All That" I had read several times in college about moving to New York when you were young:

".....I am not sure that it is possible for anyone brought up in the East to appreciate entirely what New York, the idea of New York, means to those of us who came out of the West and the South. To an Eastern child, particularly a child who has always has an uncle on Wall Street and who has spent several hundred Saturdays first at F.A.O. Schwarz and being fitted for shoes at Best’s and then waiting under the Biltmore clock and dancing to Lester Lanin, New York is just a city, albeit the city, a plausible place for people to live, But to those of us who came from places where no one had heard of Lester Lanin and Grand Central Station was a Saturday radio program, where Wall Street and Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue were not places at all but abstractions (“Money,” and “High Fashion,” and “The Hucksters”), New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself. To think of “living” there was to reduce the miraculous to the mundane; one does not “live” at Xanadu..."

Of course, if you go back and click the link and read the essay in its entirety, I had missed the entire point and poignance of her story, and didn't fully grasp it until several years later -- about what it means to be young in New York, and seeing things one way, and then at some unknown point, the fantasy changes.

That particular 4th of July weekend, Chris and I were driving back to Long Island, energized by finding our new home. We were stuck in traffic and I remember seeing firework displays happening simultaneously in several burroughs, lighting up the sky over the bridges and buildings. It was beautiful and exciting and felt symbolic of our new beginning. Horns were honking from cars going no more than 20 miles an hour, not as charmed by the view from the Long Island Expressway as we were, but looking at the sky all around us, we didn't hear them at all.

I'm now living in Southern California, in a small beach town called San Clemente at the southern end of Orange County and have been in California a total of 5 1/2 years. Over the past several months I had been traveling back to New York for work and to see family and friends, and on a recent trip it began to dawn on me that I wanted to return to New York. I was pretty resistant to this idea - I had fully embraced Southern California lifestyle of daily smoothies, yoga on the beach, year-around wardrobe of sundresses and flip flops and the occasional hoody. I had met some wonderful people in California who I now count among my very closest friends and extended family. I had been contemplating and passively searching for an apartment on the westside of LA to be more connected to urban life; New York wasn't 'my plan'. (you know what they say about making plans....) Over 4th of July weekend this year, I realized I had a change of heart, and called up a couple friends and told them that I was going back to New York, ultimately to be 3,000 miles closer to family and friends on the East Coast.

My friend Virginia said returning back to New York would be just like 'riding a bike' and maybe in some ways it is. I am not returning with the same sense of naivité that I once had about New York when I was a small town girl from the Midwest, 2 weeks out of college, to a skyline that once had dramatic Twin Towers; but am returning with an open heart and expanded life from my time in California, and a true sense of not really knowing what will be around the corner...but that is also part of the magic and wonder of what New York is ultimately all about.