more than a blog name

there are times that i feel like the richest girl in new york city. usually those times are when my heart is full of the joy of friends, the love of family, and the spirit of...alright, i'll cut the crap. mostly those time are just after i bought a beautiful dress at my pal julianna's boutique, annelore, or when i'm wearing something that i bought from her with a perfectly matching pair of shoes. i don't wear the dresses that often, so maybe i don't always feel rich, but even at my dowdiest, i rarely feel poor.

every now and again a wet blanket of being "not so rich" is tossed at me and for the most part i dodge it, roll clear, and run down to horatio and hudson with my amex in hand to combat the possibility that it might be true. i mean, really, what are the chances that i could actually become a property owner in the city? i don't really have anything a bank might consider an asset. i always say that i have love, but on the list of what that means i don't have is a car. i don't have thousands in savings. i don't have property. all i have is gstaad, which (let's be frank) , could suffer some terrible accident and leave me with what i had before the bar, minus a career.

i really try to worry about these things. i think it might make things better if i fretted my finances. i really try to focus my attention on my lack of security, like i'm trying to make myself cry. it's true. i could get really sick or something terrible could happen and i could lose my source of income. it's true, i don't have anything to sell. i try, i really do, but i just can't panic about it. i just can't fear that i could go from this sort of comfortable hand to mouth existence to something worse that would/could ruin me. i don't feel like money alone can ruin anyone, even if it is the number one argument issue among couples. sure it would suck and it might be hard, but sometimes things suck and sometimes things are hard. i don't know how much one would need to accumulate before you'd no longer feel like you were hanging by a thread (donald trump). isn't that what life is anyway, isn't that what makes it so frail and so exciting, like tarzan, we swing from thread to thread. sometimes we slip, sometimes the thread breaks, and hell, sometimes we just let go.

i know what part of the reason is, and it isn't that i'm not old enough to think about it or that i'm just aloof. i think a bit of it has to do with the fact that a year ago, the house i grew up in, hell the town i grew up in, was engulfed by a 40 foot wall of water. my parent, my sisters, my grandmother, my aunts, uncles, cousins, my best friend, my school friends, and everyone that they knew in the area lost everything. when i want to make myself cry, i think about this kind of loss. i try to remember the things that my mom had in her living room. i think about my dad, who until katrina, had slept in the same room every night since he was 3 days old. and i don't feel sorry for myself, and i don't feel like i don't have enough, and i don't feel like there's anything that can ruin me, because i have love, i have my will to survive, i have pride, and all that other soul stirring crap.

and also, the other reason is the new york city factor of not having stuff that all new yorkers accept. we all have the same options. in the city we pay more in rent than most people pay on their mortgages and all their monthly bills combined. we eat in some of the best most expensive restaurants in the world. we pay more for sandwiches, sodas, clothes, laundry detergent, pens, entertainment, everything. we've all heard it before and we all know it's true, if i moved, i'd save money and i could get all that stuff that i don't have now. to that, i say, no thank you. i'm not ready to have stuff yet.