By Its Right Name

In my last job, management kept trying to convince its staff that titles meant nothing, but people have a natural inclination for naming - naming stars, species, babies, and themselves, as well as nicknaming loved ones and pets and the otherwise nameless guy on the subway platform every morning.
When I started working out of college, I stopped using my last name in conversation. I never introduced myself by my first and last name, only my first, and when I answered the phone or made calls or announced myself to building security, I always addressed myself as "Sandi from Atlantic."

Since then, I've been "Sandi from Razor & Tie," "Sandi from Kidz Bop," "Sandi from Ziggy Marley," and now, "Sandi from Ultra."

People ask me what I do for a living, and I often tell them I'm a marketing consultant. I might tell them I work in the music industry. If I'm really brave, I tell them I'm a writer.

Earlier this week, the woman I'm filling in for while she's on maternity leave introduced me as her "temp." Duly noted.

I guess it doesn't matter what other people call me. But with my refusal to embrace my given last name and without a definitive career goal to serve as a surname ("Sandi the attorney," "Sandi from Peace Corps"), I'm not sure what my right name is.

What is "Sandi," all by itself?

This is a question that has plagued me since I first released myself from my last job, where I recoiled at being called a "marketer." Of all the things in the world that I am, that's the one name that someone should choose to call me?

Why not:

• adventurer
• explorer
• student
• teacher
• sister
• friend
• mentor
• instigator
• investigator
• sinner
• dreamer
  

?

Surely all of those would be true, and permanent.

I guess you can call me a "temp" now, for my current working state is temporary. But I hope for a longer-term impact out of my time spent there. Unless we figure out by what right name to call me, we will forever keep each other at arms' length.

I keep hoping for something or someone to get close enough to give me a name that really is right.

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Disappointments, I've Had a Few...

Avoiding disappointment = not going somewhere because you're afraid you'll go and not be able to get in

Avoiding regret = going somewhere even when it's sold out, when you're not on the list, when it's raining, when everyone has ditched you, because you really want to go, and you just have to try to get in.

If I spent my life avoiding disappointment, I would never interact with the human race. I would never buy a concert ticket for fear the show would be cancelled. (Come back, Lady GaGa!) I would never give out my phone number, even though I know they will never call.

Avoiding regret is about keeping up your end of the bargain. You do whatever is necessary and whatever is within your control. But sometimes when regret is avoided, disappointment remains...

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A Private Feast, in Pictures

I lived in Brooklyn for seven years, and while I was there, I tried to make the most of it. Instead of going "into the city," I hung out in my neighborhood, Greenpoint, quite a bit, even though there wasn't much happening there yet, and ventured into Williamsburg whenever possible to experience what the locals had to offer.

That was before the affluent hipsters living off their parents' wealth moved in. And the celebrities.

I often hung out on the south side of Williamsburg, by the bridge, when local artists like Vic Thrill were singing about the "Williamsburg Stranger" and lived a block away from the Chickenbone Cafe, where an up-and-coming chef named Zak Pelaccio made amazing pressed sandwiches out of an open kitchen with only a sandwich press and a hot plate.

Vic Thrill was forced out of his studio and Zak out of his kitchen, and I moved to Manhattan. The Brooklyn zeitgeist was over.

Since then, I've followed Zak to 5 Ninth, Fatty Crab, and Borough Food & Drink, never quite recapturing the homegrown quality of his original restaurant endeavor but gathering new fans along the way.

Today, Epicurious gave me the opportunity to sample a preview of Zak's return to Brooklyn, the soon-to-be-opened, BBQ-themed Fatty Cue, as part of their Epicurious Entertains New York festival.

It was hot, meaty, and juicy.



Zak





brisket

cucumber salad



bacon & clams, charred turnips

Banh Mi

Tecate w/Thai chili pepper and yuzu

Supposedly, today's menu was to be more adventurous than the restaurant's menu will actually be once it opens. Knowing we were experiencing something special, we were happy, satisfied, and burning and yearning for more.

New York allows you to have a favorite chef, who doesn't have a TV show and who isn't endorsed by a celebrity. You can follow them around to their various restaurants and champion them amongst your friends. And when they succeed, you feel like you've helped them a little bit, by eating their food and saying hello to them when you can. Sure, they're not celebrities like Mario Batali or Bobby Flay (who I also love), but they make damn good food and are actually in the kitchens of the restaurants they operate, charring turnips and winking at you when you greet them.

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Photo Essay: Wave Hill Public Garden

Since I'm forever seeking a partner-in-crime for my various escapades, I figured I'd take advantage of Edith's offer to take the day off from work in order to go on one of my infamous urban hikes. Accompanied by someone who'd appreciate it as much as I!

Like the New York Botanical Garden, Wave Hill is appealing because, although it's a public garden, it seems safe considering the required admission charge and the onsite security. Also like NYBG, as well as Van Cortlandt Park and Pelham Bay Park - two of the most satisfying urban hiking experiences thus far - it's located in topographically diverse and surprisingly woodsy Bronx. There's even a short woodland trail you can hike, mulchy underfoot, moderately thick canopy full of acorn-munching, berry-picking squirrels and throngs of shelter-seeking finches, blue jays, and redwinged birds.







Outside of the woodland trail, there are more formal gardens of perennials, wildflowers and herbs: from dahlias, lilies, and lavender to lemon verbena, peppers, and even wormwood. And plenty of pollinating bees, still at work.

















Like the day before, the sky was mottled in shades of gray, dark gray, nearly black and nearly white - all reflected in the lilypad-laden pond whose sign asked for us not to feed the fish.

I found the most common subjects of my gaze - and photography - the wilting petals of summer season flowers still trying to hold on, reaching high up to the sun but losing their vibrancy one by one. Their decay reminded me of the many abandoned buildings in which I have sought shelter, struggling to stand up and retain some semblance of usefulness. Beautiful in what life is left in them. But soon just a shell of their former selves.

Wave Hill's lofty location on, appropriately, a hill gives a nice overlook of the George Washington Bridge and the New Jersey Palisades across the Hudson River. Located at the end of a winding street lined with ancient stone retaining walls and gnarled tree branches, it's hard to remember you're in the Bronx at all, until you hear the distant moan of a passing Metro-North train (nearest station is Riverdale) and the meowing of schoolchildren somewhere beyond the forest.

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A Good Start

For years, I never took my birthday off from work because I wanted to be certain that I would be around people and not alone. This year, I had the pleasure of not working most of my entire birthday week, and I made the most of it by driving with Joe and Edith out to the North Fork Wine Trail in Long Island, capturing a bit of California at the tip of New York City, and giving me a birthday that was a tipsy, celebratory revelation that turning 34 can make you feel both young and happy.





Sure, at the end of September, Long Island is cold, damp, and windy. The sky threatened rain with a billowy gray cover, wrapping us in a woolen blanket, cool as though pulled from its winter attic storage. But the orchards were green and plentiful, and this peak harvest time proved to be fruitful with white, blush, rose, and red.





It was too windy to light a candle on my birthday loaf, but we didn't care. We were sipping wine on the back patio on a bright day, watching green grapes being trucked in and savoring every moment before we had to return to the city.



The day was capped off with dinner with friends back in the city, and I was home sometime after midnight, cheeks hurting, eyes swirling, lids drooping, and heart loving.

It was a good day. Maybe, for once, it will be a good year.

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I Am 34

For a long time, my age defined me because I was too young to do so many things: too young to wear nylons and lipstick, to date, to drive, to see R-rated movies, to buy cigarettes, to vote, to drink, to become completely independent. My parents even made me wait until I was 12 to get my ears pierced, making me a freak among my classmates in the early 80s when brightly colored earrings were de rigeur. Even when I turned 12, they required that I get them pierced at the doctor's office, and that I pay for it. Once I came of age, my meager allowance wasn't enough to pay the fee, which my memory has perhaps inflated to $30-50, so I had to wait one more year until my 13th birthday to catch up with all the other girls my age.

Once I turned 25 or so, my age became more or less meaningless. I've always looked younger than I am. I'm somewhat age-agnostic when it comes to dating. And there aren't many more things that I'm too young to do, besides become U.S. President and, well, retire.

In my tumultuous 20s, many of my older female friends and work mentors assured me, "It all gets better in your 30s." When I turned 30, I was miserable, scorned, and over the next four years watched my love life deteriorate into nothing and my job become my worst enemy.

So now I'm four years into my 30s. I'm smarter than four years ago. I'm a better writer. I'm probably not any lonelier but I am more alone.

I am 20-30 lbs heavier and I watch strangers' eyes run down my body to my stomach, wondering if I'm pregnant and wondering if they should ask.

I am a whole lot grayer and I watch my friends' eyes glance up at the white stripe on my head, wondering when my next hair appointment is. The insidious devil keeps to itself for two weeks out of the month, and at week three sprouts a blinding beam of sparkling root, seemingly instantaneous, like birth. I give my friends the same look of consternation that I have on my face when I look in the mirror, and they quickly look away.

I don't really care about turning 34, or the significance of now being in my mid-30s, but as midnight approached tonight, I felt the same dread that irks me on New Year's Eve: the belief that the clock ticking over into a new day should be somehow a transformative experience, and the heartbreaking knowledge that it never will be. There is no kiss at midnight. There is no popped champagne cork. The closest thing to fireworks in the sky is Jupiter beaming brightly, cozying up to a waxing moon.

To celebrate midnight's arrival, I frosted the cupcakes I had baked for myself earlier today. I added droplets of blue and red food coloring to plain vanilla frosting and whisked it with a fork, watching it progress from a patriotic swirl into a lovely shade of lavender. I sprinkled colored sugar in hues of red, purple and white like my own little confetti party. And then I packed up the small cakes, sculpted and primped as fancy as little prom queens, in some Tupperware to take with me tomorrow, along with candles, plates, and napkins that I'd picked up for myself over the course of the year.

I swore last year that I wouldn't celebrate this year, but when it comes down to it, I can't help myself. My inner nine-year-old still wants to be able to request French toast for breakfast and eat pizza for dinner. Why pass up an opportunity like that?

In the end, though, it's just another day. Nothing pivotal is going to happen. Nothing's going to change. But at least I'll have a reason to get up in the morning.

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Comforts of Home

I spent most of my childhood with insomnia, forced to go to bed too early by my parents. I eventually would cry myself to sleep, nearly every night, but not before my sister would tsk and whisper, "Can you shut up please?"

I wasn't tired because my parents didn't let me do anything. At least during the school year, I ambled from class to class from 8 to 3, and was sometimes allowed to attend an after-school rehearsal for a play I'd been cast in. But in summertime, I really couldn't do anything.

My sister and I might play badminton in the driveway, but inevitably would get too frustrated with the birdie landing in the street or in the gutter of our garage's roof, forcing us to scrape it out with a rake or set up the ladder to climb and fish it out of the rotten leaves and bird droppings.

I might ride my bike, but for some reason I paid attention to the perimeter that my parents set forth, and did not go past: James Street to the north, Thompson to the east, Burnet to the south, and Teall to the west.

Nights in the summer were the worst. We'd take cool baths and change into billowy cotton nightgowns, worn too thin to be worn around our father, and go to bed when it was still light out. The window fan would rumble, but cast no relieving breeze on us, for our mother insisted on setting it to suck the hot air out rather than blow cool air in. Sweat would collect along the backs of our necks and knees, but even as a teenager I would cling to the soaking fur of a stuffed puppy or a small bear for comfort.

Amidst my whimpering and sighing, which often continued after I fell asleep, I'd wonder what was happening out in the world, what my classmates might be up to, what wonderful things might await me when I could finally leave the house. I never replayed the day's events in my mind because, as I said, nothing really ever happened except what happened on TV, what punishments I'd served, and what new accusations arose.

I've lived a lot since then, going away to college, spending a semester abroad in London, moving to New York City, escaping to California for a month...But lately I've been feeling myself quickly regressing back to my childhood self. It's not just the gradual unsexing that being left behind in a cavalcade of marriages and pregnancies has precipitated. I'm drinking less. I'm cursing less. I've reverted to simplistic judgments of people, like "mean" versus "nice." I'm comforted only while clutching onto a sympathetic stuffed pig.

And I'm staying in, letting the world pass me by.

I think that there must be people having fun out there, in the rain, this Saturday night. I think that there are a lot of people who think they should be having fun, but really aren't. I'm in here, wondering about it all, rather than doing anything.

I've seen too much. People have shown their true colors to me. New York has shown me what it can do to for me. I keep putting myself out there, giving them all a second chance, and regret it all the time.

I know I should probably keep trying. But not tonight.

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Baggage Check

I've done a pretty good job of avoiding regret, but I've made no promises about avoiding anxiety. 

I was up at 7:45 a.m. this morning. Not to watch the sunrise, as I do every morning in California. Not to catch an early flight somewhere fantastic, or to get an early start to the beach or on a hike. 

I got up at quarter to 8 this morning, after six hours of sleep, before my apartment showed signs of day, to go to work. 

Although I have certainly worked a lot over the last several months - if you count blogging, writing press releases, watering the plants and advising Ziggy Marley on children's music - I haven't had a daily office routine since the end of January, when I left my job as head of marketing for KIDZ BOP. 

That routine, at least at the end, consisted of feeling disempowered and manipulated, crying behind my office door that wouldn't lock, and finding any excuse to leave town or work from home. 

Understandably, I'm not thrilled about subjecting myself to another potentially disastrous work situation, having spent months repairing my self-esteem and my love for music. 

The good news is, I do love music, still, and my new gig will put me back in a genre I care about (dance/electronica), amongst a group of colleagues more diverse than mommies and daddies and their adored babies, and in an environment that seems more supportive of women. 

I'm sure it's political in its own way - isn't every job? - and I'm sure that I'll collect a whole new set of baggage after working there for three months this fall, but I'm hoping that, for now, I can shed my baggage from my most recent office life (the last year or two of which was uncharacteristically bad compared to my entire six and a half years there) and start anew. 

I'm constantly trying to see the world with new eyes. My eyes are constantly clouded by people who have behaved badly, without remorse, without apology. 

I am unable to, or refuse to, forgive them, but perhaps I can forgive the human race. 

I'm working on it. 

So for now, I'm out of hiding. I am trying something new, scary only to the parts of my brain I can't yet turn off. 

Photo Essay: The Bronx River's Northernmost Pathway

There's a whole world out there that you've never even thought of. There are trees and berries and leaves and deserts and dams and forts and estates and ducks and criminals and driftwood and castles and rivers.

I went exploring the Bronx River again today, hoping to walk the five miles between Valhalla and Scarsdale but only making it as far as White Plains along the Bronx River Walk. I'd already completed Section 2 in early August, and had made a mental note to return in the fall when the foliage would be more scenic, but with a new (temporary) job starting on Wednesday, I thought my autumn free time might be running out. So I tackled Section 3 today.

The path along the Bronx River can get a little circuitous, but generally it's flat, winding, shady, and accessible by the Metro-North. I'm always worried about getting lost, and asked both a bus driver and a gas station attendant how to find the starting point at the Kensico Dam Plaza today, met with blank stares and vague gestures. But a short walk down Broadway (yes, because there's a Broadway in every town) led me to a huge granite dam wall, unmistakably the starting point of the pathway.





It's still early in the season, but a few leaves have turned and many more have fallen onto the path, breaking up the green I've quickly tired of with hues of yellow, golden brown, orange, and red, the sun casting its rays through the newly-turned colors more than green would ever allow.





As I got farther south, the pathway became more populated, more citified, so much so that it was easy for me to cut my walk short and head home early.



But I'm glad I have a little bit left (between White Plains and Scarsdale) to come back to and conquer.

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New York Botanical Garden, Past Bloom

The weather was gorgeous and summery on Saturday, so after hiding in my apartment for most of the daylight, I forced myself out to enjoy it. It was already too late in the day for any serious hiking undertaking, or any exploration too far out of the boroughs, so I braved the Bronx once again to visit the New York Botanical Garden for the first time.

I'd visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden during the Cherry Blossom Festival a few years ago, and I guess expected something similar in the Bronx. But it is fall, after all, and most of the summer blossoms of daffodil, tulip, magnolia and lilac are nowhere to be seen. Still, summer is not yet a distant memory, so most of the leaves haven't turned yet, making for a nice walk without much to see.



Still, the Botanical Garden is a sprawling offering of nature, with boulders and trees and even some forest trails.





And the Stone Mill by the Bronx River, being rehabilitated, hopefully ready to open next fall.



Although it was still open, the rose garden's blooms are past peak, with most roses fully open and many starting to shrivel.







Since walking through the front gate, I'd come across many families and couples exploring the gardens with me, but once again, I was alone. As I departed the Rose Garden, a security guard asked me if he could give me directions. I showed him my map and muttered something about the oramental conifers - not that I cared at all about them, but at least it would be something to see, and on the way out.

"Have you seen the waterfall yet?" he asked.

"Yeah, I was down over there and crossed the river over the bridge," I offered, unenthused.

"But you didn't see the waterfall," the security guard prodded.

When I explained that I'd seen it from above, he started to tell me about the paths that go right down to the river.

"Yeah, but I didn't want to go down there by myself..." I interrupted.

He looked at me, smiling, eyes bulging. "Now, it's not that kind of environment in here. In here, you're safe. With me around, you'll be OK down there."

I returned his glare doubtfully. The corner of my mouth turned down as I told him, "I've had a bad summer..."

I thanked him and turned away, towards the conifers, before he could see my eyes tear up. I pulled my sunglasses down from the top of my head and squinted into a tiny sob, squeezing out just a tear or two as I plodded along.

I'm sure the security guard believed he was right, but he was the only one of his kind that I'd seen in the entire park, and certainly nowhere near the Bronx River Greenway that loomed dark and dingy below.

I'm glad I got to see it, but my visit to the New York Botanic Garden on Saturday felt perfunctory. I didn't really want to be there. It was simply on the list of places I'd never been.



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