Flop Like a Champion

There are few things I do better than flop.

Webster defines flop in two ways. 1. To fall or plump down suddenly, especially with noise; drop or turn with a sudden bump or thud; and 2. To be a complete failure. In Of Mice and Men, brothel workers charge a pretty penny for a nice flop.  Recent headlines tell me that Newt Gingrich is flip-flopping on his position on the Middle East.  My definition of flopping is more nuanced, more personal, though not entirely divorced from any of these connotations. Flopping is something I've been perfecting from cradle to college, but I've only recently come up with the semantics necessary to precisely capture the art of flopping.


Humans have flopped since we were primates.  Cavemen flopped and so did the Victorians; the hippies flopped with an unrivaled precision and grace. Flopping is an intensely lazy, but also necessary, form of relaxation.  You may flop in your bed or on your couch, on your floor or in your roommate/boyfriend/best friend's bed.  You may flop alone or with other, like-minded floppers.  Flopping is best done after a long day of work, on a rainy Saturday or hung-over Sunday. A snow-day flop is an experience of pure beauty.  Flopping may be accompanied by food (mostly of the take-in, pre-made variety), alcohol, books and movies, or it may be free of props. Flopping can last hours, but the craving can be satiated in mere minutes.  Flopping attire is important and must be comfortable--real experts flop in something stretchy.  Flopping is a highly personal and fluid art form, but it hinges on a deep desire to do very little in a comfortable setting.  Though flopping takes almost no skill, it does require genuine dedication to the practice.  You must recognize and take pride in the fact that you're going to be a lazy, worthless human being for the duration of your flop. There is no room for judgment in flopping.


I am a productive person in most areas of life, but I cannot deny myself a good flop.  On a particularly difficult day at work I might text one of my flopping partners: "all I wanna do right now is flop," and the message comes across loud and clear.  People who deny themselves a flop on the basis of self-improvement or productivity are denying themselves one of life's simplest, most rejuvenating pleasures.  Take it from a modest master: To flop is to live, and to live is to flop. 

Family Flashback

When my family got in a fight over winter break, my mom threatened, only half-joking:  you better not write in your blog about this.  While a revealing family feud narrative is far from my intention, the yearly—the unavoidable, the predictable—family fight is an experience common to those who travel long distances to see our kin. We do so with a mix of eager anticipation and mild trepidation because, for so many of us, visiting family has big highs and big lows.  Lofty ideals of familial perfection often lead to unmet expectations, and we find ourselves falling into the same old patterns. Despite a grass-is-always-greener mentality, no family is more perfect than the next.  An argument may be as traditional as your honey baked ham or grandmother's menorah. 

At a quarter-century, my life is mostly on track in terms of development and maturity, yet when I go home I’m met with a steep and instantaneous regression to a moody former self. This reverting back manifests in big, small and varied ways, but it always happens.

While I mostly clean up after myself in Brooklyn, I haphazardly discard clothes and dishes around my Portland home—a throwback to the teenage years of battleground bedroom.  Maybe it’s muscle memory or maybe it’s dependency on parents who still retrieve stray mugs from my nightstand. Whatever the reason, it’s still happening seven years and three states after I moved out.  In my adult life, I spend 50 hours a week mediating adolescent arguments, but when I’m in Portland I find myself enmeshed in similar debates myself. Feuding with my brother over things that don’t matter or things that still matter just a little bit too much.  Two grown-up people split up in the mini-van because proximity provokes argument. When I get irritated, I elongate my syllables like a preteen and, just like that, the mature rationality I work to maintain is shattered.  I might as well put my braces back on.

So, of course we had a family fight.  We each play the same roles as we argue about the same things.  We make up in the same ways and eat the same take-in when it’s all said and done. Each fight is like an uncanny flashback, a melancholy song left on repeat.  We say things to family members we would not say to others. Because we love more deeply, we judge and critique with more severity. We express and emote with an abandon reserved for only those closest to us.  Shortcomings are amplified, made enormous through microscopic lenses we turn only on our own.  This winter, just like every winter, everything was okay in the end. It really always is. Family seems to have a unique ability to bounce back. 

I flew back to NYC with three of my close friends.  In the airport, each casually mentioned a fight, an annoyance, a spat, an argument--all involving moms, dads, brothers, sisters. We commiserated knowingly.  Despite these minor or major difficulties, everyone had a great trip home; we agreed it was hard to say goodbye to our families.  Fighting is part of what sets family apart from the rest of the people we interact with everyday.  Maybe we fight because we can't help it, but maybe fighting reinforces bonds that need a little fine tuning.  

Seeds and Ramen

There are countless reasons New York is worth the price, but if you’re not taking advantage of those reasons you might as well move to a city with a few reasons for being cheap.  

When I used to visit New York—as a kid with my nostalgic parents and then as a college student enviously visiting friends—I packed every minute full.  The city shone with culture and people, fashion and food. I wanted to see and shop and eat and sniff until I was soggy with the weight of a place that lacks for nothing but quiet.   So saturated I needed to wring myself out before coming back for more.   I should have known better than to think life as full-time resident would be so action-packed, but still I hoped.    

Now that my full-time bed is in New York, it’s harder to make the time.  I suppose this is both obvious and counter intuitive.  As a person with a packed schedule and groceries to buy, it’s harder to take advantage of the dynamism surrounding me.  Being here should make me do more, but somehow I find myself doing less.  The temptation to order Thai food and eat it on the floor can be difficult to overcome on many Friday nights, but wasn’t I doing the same thing in Suburban California?  I’ve fallen into routines.  I go to the same restaurants, visit museums infrequently and go to shows even less.  I submit to Starbucks because it’s on the corner.  In a way, the routines reflect the comfort of reality over the illusion of vacation, but sink too far into routine and the reasons for living here are diminished.  Someone once told me: do things.   

Last weekend, I was proud of two things I did that were distinctly New York.  On a bizarrely warm Saturday morning, my girlfriends and I trekked from Huevos Rancheros in the East Village to a gallery in Chelsea where we took in one million hand-painted ceramic sunflower seeds spread out across the floor of a sky blue room.  They were pushed into a perfect rectangle.  If you squinted, the individual seeds became a flat gray island. I knelt down and resisted the temptation to push a stray seed back into formation.  I didn’t know if I could touch, but maybe also the stray was art. The next day, a boy and I resisted the temptation of the familiar and went to Chinatown for ramen.  The tiny restaurant was lit with neon and featured a few dingy tables, economy-sized bottles of Sriracha and a menu with the English in parenthesis.  We walked up to the kitchen and ordered two bowls of ramen and pork dumplings.   Standing in the doorway of the open kitchen, we watched a young man thwack a giant piece of dough onto the counter until it became skinny shoe lace noodles threaded expertly between his floury fingers .  I sacrificed vegetarianism for experience and had a bite of the best dumpling ever.  

A sustainable life in New York relies on balance. I love that life here seems normal every day. I change my sheets and clean my bathroom; I rely on the same delivery and spend weekends never leaving my neighborhood.  The banality of life can make it seem more livable, but this year I want to complement that with a little more New York.

Good Things Come in Threes

On New Year's Eve, we hosted a 4-course dinner party featuring a double dose of parsnips, chocolate mousse and unlimited seltzer from our new eco-friendly machine (apparently, either the key to sobriety if you're alternating or the ultimate downfall if you're mixing).  Our group of friends has a penchant for going-around-the-table -- an awkwardly meaningful tradition in which everyone's gently required to speak on some topic.  On birthdays, we sing praises; on Thanksgiving, we give thanks.  On New Year's Eve, of course, it's resolutions.  One way or another, people feel strongly about resolutions.  The introspective among us spend December contemplating the best path to self-improvement while the hedonistic spurn the idea of resolving to do much of anything. The optimistic consider the possibilities while the pessimistic wonder: Why make a resolution I'm only bound to break?

Historically, I don't take resolutions very seriously. After vowing to leave my fingernails alone for close to 20 years, I'm starting to wonder about my ability to stick with it.  Needless to say, I hadn't thought much about resolutions until the round robin got going.  I sipped my seltzer, half listening to the speaker and half thinking of a passable resolution.  I was impressed by my friends' thoughtful vows--to spend a summer abroad, to clean up a foul mouth and to eat more fresh produce.  When the time came for me to speak, I mumbled something ill-conceived and washed it down with parsnip. 

When the proverbial talking stick reached my friend Zoe, she mentioned a coworker's resolution formula: resolve to stop doing three things, start doing three things and continue doing three things.  At first I thought this was trite and overly complex--a three-part cocktail for guaranteed failure come February--but later in the night I became less cynical and realized the formula makes good sense. It recognizes that you're doing things right, while leaving room for stops and starts in the new year.  So, here's my cocktail:

Continue Doing...

1. Continue taking long NYC walks with or without destination.
2. Continue having dinner parties with good friends, food and drink.
3. Continue teaching vocabulary because kids really use it.

Start Doing... 

1. Start trying a new recipe every week.
2. Start writing more fiction.
3. Start making phone calls to parents when their students do good things. On the topic of phone calls, call my grandparents because it makes them insanely happy (that was 3.5).

Stop Doing...

1. Stop buying things on sale for no reason except that they're on sale
2. Stop losing credit cards
3. And because maybe someday I will succeed: Stop picking my fingernails