Re: Kick Me When I'm Down, Please.

Along with being raised on strict doses of Fleetwood Mac, Elton John (the good stuff), Harry Chapin, and F. Scott Fitzgerald (I was read The Great Gatsby for the first time at eight); I was also versed in the words of Maurice Sednak before I could speak. And despite all of his books, it will always be Where the Wild Things Are, that I will love most. Even as a kid, it was Max whom I always identified with most...and still do to this day.

So when the movie version came out, I was first in line. I cried throughout the entire movie because I knew the ending from the get-go...how can one not love the simple lines of: "Please don't go. We'll eat you up, we love you so..." If I love you, I utter these words to you...because they're imprinted on my mind like a gorgeous scar. And if I say them to you, you deserve them.

I have this group of actor and artist friends who, to pay the bills, are the people behind some of the trendiest (douchiest?) bars in town. This association sometimes allows me into places I'd never be allowed into otherwise...last night I was at one of these venues in Midtown, a neighborhood I would normally never frequent, but last night worlds collided.

At this particular bar, I saw Spike Jonze in the flesh. Not just that, but I sat next to him in this bar. I had been told by the hostess that Sean Penn was on his way...lies, I thought. Not really...he showed up twenty minutes later. If that weren't enough, I was then told that Karen O. was on her way, too. When I left at 315am, she had not yet arrived and I surmised she was on tour or doing something equally awesome.

But it was Spike Jonze I loved most. I've known about Spike Jonze for years...since his career in the music video scene (didn't we all love Sonic Youth's "100%" video?), and of course his films, and his failed marriage to Sophia Coppola. I'm rarely impressed by celebrities...we see them all the time in New York, and even more than that I never swoon (perhaps, five times in my life), but last night I swooned when Spike ordered the same beer as me (The Spotted Pig, cask style)...perhaps we have more in common than a love of Sednak...perhaps, we love the same beer? Oui, we're soulmates...it's been decided...

I had flirted with the idea of moving to Paris with a friend earlier in the day, but all that was put to bed with Spike Jonze. I wandered home with Karen O. and the Kids echoing in my ears and made a resolution:

I will not leave New York City until I've achieved everything that I planned to achieve when I moved here seven years ago.

It was just after four in the morning when I walked up the five flights of stairs to my apartment with a six pack of Diet Coke under my arm. It was almost 430am, when I pulled up my rewrite on which to work, and by the time I was finally exhausted enough to sleep, and my words had fallen flat, it was almost nine in the morning.

And yes, I have a call-back interview at 3pm today to be an Office Manager, but I've got something else:

Dear New York City...

Go ahead. I dare you to break this heart again...I beg you to do it. Bitch slap me again, please. Subtract from me the people I love most and on which I rely desperately; leave me feeling unlovable, raw and vulnerable on your angst-ridden streets. Go ahead and up my rent so it's now four times the mortgage of my sister's three-bedroom house in Boulder, and make me question my purpose here in life, please. Leave me at the door with a pack of razor blades and a box of faulty Band-Aids for the impending wounds. Kick me in the face when I'm already bloody and on the floor. Pigeon-hole me in mediocrity, reduce me to nothing with a single word and level me in a single glance. Please. Do it. Go ahead...I shall not retreat. And when all is said and done, we'll call it a truce...I promise.

"A great many people go after success simply for the shiny prizes it brings...and nowhere is it pursued more ardently than in the city of New York." - Stephen Birmingham.

xo.Mandy.