Stacy Horn

I like the pairing of this ruffled shirt with this jacket.  Incidentally, I took this on West Broadway in Soho.  Not the window-shopping paradise it used to be, this stretch.

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” -Eleanor Roosevelt.

Earlier this week I did something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but I’d always been too afraid.  I wanted to sit down and talk about something that happened to me a long time ago. The specifics of what happened aren’t really important to the point I want to make.  But I’ve been haunted by that night my whole life. In times of great stress I used to relive it, which was horrible, and even though that stopped happening years ago, deep down I feared it might one day return and I just wanted to confront it once and for all.  Had I been suffering from PTSD, can it return, etc.?  I wanted to talk it out with someone who knows about this sort of thing. It seems like such a little thing, I know, but talking about it, even thinking about it, always gave me panic attacks, so for me, sitting down and going over the whole thing was like climbing to the top of the highest building and jumping.

But I finally did it.  I’ve been floating in this bliss of peace ever since. I cannot describe how good this feels, but that Eleanor Roosevelt quote is pretty good. You jump, risking going splat on the pavement and instead land safely in a pile of down pillows and kittens.

And, because I don’t like to have a post without a photograph, here’s a picture I took yesterday, it’s a detail on a building on Bleecker Street.

A sign in the store that was destroyed by fire, the one I posted about a week or so ago.  The tenants have not been allowed back inside the building, which the City has declared unsafe.  I’m sorry it’s a little out of focus, but don’t you love these people? Such grace.

This is the entrance to the Path train on Christopher Street.  It’s the word tunnels that got me. I see the word “tunnels” and it makes me want to go down there and explore.

That reminds me, ever since seeing the movie Cloverfield (which I highly recommend) I keep a flashlight in my purse.  In case I’m ever in the subway, and we lose power and are in the dark, AND there are monsters down there, I won’t be caught by surprise.

It’s just that it’s gotten mixed reviews from my friends.  Some loved it definitely, but some did not.  I should go though.  I love a feel-good movie and this is in that category.

Here’s that picture of me at my first post-college job that I sent my mother.  It was at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which I visited recently.  It was unrecognizable and no one that I had known was still working there.  I wasn’t surprised.  I worked there when? 1978 – 1980?  Something like that.  Whole other world then.  All new people now.