You Are Cozy

IDENTITY. THE TRUTH of who you are. Knowing yourself is at the epicenter of coziness. What makes you tick? What is your jam? Point of view? What roads have you traveled? How do you learn? Who do you love? Funnily enough, some people find coziness in things that once made them sad. I asked someone I met at a dinner party what she found cozy. While twirling spaghetti, she confided that she had a lonely childhood, and was often left by herself in a nursery. She recalled there had been a grate over a heater in the room where she sat and read. She pantomimed how she hooked her little fingers into the shining brass cover. The habit of holding on to the warmed metal was a self-soothing habit, she suspected, but now that she’s a happily married mother of two with loads of friends, any time she has the opportunity, she’ll hold her hand up to the grate of a heater. I suspect the warmth plays a part here, but perhaps there is a reckoning with her past as well.

The light that came into your window as a child—be it warm, cool, bright, hardly there, or blazing—could shape elements of what you can tap into later in life. But in order for that to happen, you must first notice the light. Coziness is in the particular. It’s a good start to know that you like color, for example. But what kind of color and where? Do you like wearing a certain shade of green? Do you like to have green notebooks to write in? Would you pick a green blanket over a red one? Do you use a green pen? Would you paint a room green? Recognizing yourself is a lifetime project, and it’s hard! Perhaps daunting. Here I’m telling you that in order to feel cozy you need to know what you’re all about, but what if you don’t yet know? What if you have no clue what animals you connect with, or what magazine you must have on your bedside table to make you feel all is right? I get that not knowing yourself can feel impossible, but it’s something that you can discover, zone in on, and develop. There are some who are aware of what makes them tick. They’re born with a strong sense of self. For these people, perhaps finding coziness comes naturally or more quickly—they have a clear pathway to their essence. Being a gal with learning disabilities, I know a little something about things not coming naturally or quickly, so it’s my firm belief that people who don’t have a well-defined notion about who they are, with tools, can find it, and then hone and develop the discoveries until they are well-worn and reliable.

Know Thyself

MAGGIE FLANNIGAN WAS the best acting teacher, I might even say teacher, I ever had—I think of her every day of my life. She was tough as a drill sergeant, intense as Sam Shepard, and petite. Maggie wore brown leather pants, the likes of which I thought were reserved for rock stars like Chrissie Hynde. In a second-floor studio on Third Avenue, she listened to our scenes play out with her whole body, like how some people look like conductors when they listen to music. It’s funny—you would think that one would watch scenes, but she listened. If a scene was going really well, her head would come up, but mostly I remember Maggie, head down, swaying with her eyes closed. Her ear was trained for authenticity, and if you created one false note, she stopped the scene dead in its tracks like she was training dogs, never letting bad behavior continue. Living truthfully, moment to moment, was her mantra. She was direct and unapologetic with her criticism, and in the rare case when you had done something well, she was direct about that too—it felt like winning an Oscar.

Maggie taught us how to endow an inanimate object with meaning. As an actor, you work in the make-believe, and props are just props unless you inject true, precise personal meaning into them. She taught us how to be specific, as specific as a chemist.

People often assume that the meaning has to be directly related to the circumstance, but it doesn’t have to be. I once played a murderer on Law & Order. While I was on the stand, the DA lifted up a prop knife in a bag to prove I was the perpetrator. Seeing a random prop knife wouldn’t elicit any feeling in me or anyone watching, because I’m not a murderer. I had to endow it with personal meaning. I asked myself, What if? What if that knife had killed my brother? That did it. I was able to emotionally live truthfully during an imaginary circumstance. Even when the cameras weren’t rolling, I cried my eyes out just thinking about that knife. It’s the same in life. Consider: if someone says, I love you, that’s pretty good, but it’s not as good as someone saying, I love your Long Island accent. Maggie understood the importance of being familiar with the specifics, and understood that knowing yourself doesn’t always come naturally. So, being a great teacher, she had an exercise for us to practice.

Here’s what you do: no matter where you’re going, from the time you leave your door until you get to where you’re going—whether it’s walking to the bank or to work or to get an ice cream—form an opinion about everything you pass. Start slow: Do you like it? Do you not? Then build to the harder question: Why? What’s your judgment? Walk by a man with a blue shirt, you think, I appreciate that color blue—it’s electric, fun, and you can see it from a mile away. Alternately, I don’t appreciate the man’s stride or his hat with no brim. Keep going. I like cracks in the sidewalk, but not if there is a weed growing out of it because that makes me think something is being ignored . . . I don’t like it AT ALL when people throw wrappers on the ground . . . I like seeing a recycling bin. I like the slope of that roof and wonder how many more are like it in this neighborhood.

Your views should be strong, abundant, and as decisive as you can make them. It’s rather exhausting because you’ll see that once you get going there is so much to have an opinion about, it almost drives you crazy. But you get good at it, and you discover that there are parts of the world that really do lift you up. In my twenties, I found that I adored mailboxes. Every solid, hardworking, dark blue receptacle sends small ripples of serenity through me. I hope that all this e-mail never does away with them. My guess is that I always liked mailboxes, but in noting their stout blue tubbiness on those walks I learned that they were a part of my everyday surroundings that I could count on to make me feel better. To this day I rely on them to ground me. Even the throaty squeak emitted from the hinges is a comfort—it’s like they say, It’s okay, I’m always here.

Just Choose Something

HERE’S ANOTHER THING: if you really can’t figure out what you have an affinity for or feel weary or daunted by the search for what turns you on, I think you can make it up. Just choose something. Close your eyes and think, “What animal (color, author, flower, etc.) would I like to zero in on to collect, identify with, or appreciate? What would I like people to associate me with?” When I was thirteen, there was an older girl in my school who was bragging that her beau just knew to give her her most favorite flower in the world, lilies of the valley. That declaration knocked my socks off. Gosh, I thought, one day I hope that I will be the kind of person who has a specific flower. Now, as it turned out, if you are my husband and you would like to give me flowers, the ones you get at the deli are huge white Casablanca lilies. That’s what I ended up loving. I find their enormity and their overpowering fragrance friendly, as if they are saying, Hello! I’m here! BUT, if one felt lost in the flower department, there is nothing wrong with just choosing. Yellow roses, gardenias, daisies—doesn’t matter. Do they make you happy? Great! Some people have a signature cocktail, like Don Draper always drank old-fashioneds—perhaps one shouldn’t drink as many as he did, but still, they were his.

My parents coincidentally each gave the other spoons when they became engaged. They built on that weird accident and have endowed spoons with meanings of family, romance, and togetherness—talismans of luck and love. Now they give spoons as presents when young people get engaged. It’s a fifty-year relationship with a plain old object that has taken on spiritual proportion. They didn’t wake up one morning with the epiphany that spoons were a physical manifestation of their souls. They chose to play along with serendipity, and now those spoons are a cozy reminder of love, partnership, and the promise of marriage. I always have my eye out for spoons. (Think how many spoons there are in the world.) And all of them are cozy to me. This is low-hanging fruit, and I shamelessly pick it all the time. If I feel lost or overwhelmed, even holding a spoon in my hand will do good.

Some people connect with a city from the moment their train rolls into the station. I knew Providence would be one of my places right away as I clambered up College Hill to visit a boyfriend there. Maybe all that young love did cast a cozy glow over the city, but Providence also has colonial houses nestled together along cobblestone streets. It had a great sandwich shop called Mutt & Geoff’s. There are multiple colleges there, so it’s pulsing with people growing and learning. I ended up going to the Rhode Island School of Design and was able to draw in gently banged-up studios for eight hours a day. Providence might have started out cozy because of personal experience with young love, but then I built on it beyond the adolescent friendship. Sometimes circumstances can make something cozy, and long after the situation changes, the coziness lives on.

It might seem that people who know how to incorporate this kind of specificity into their lives are advanced or nuanced—and maybe they get a jump on cozy, but the point is, anyone can have a point of view. Anyone can be particular. Anyone can have something to like.

Pencils

“Erasers make forgiveness possible.”

—APPLICANT FOR THE PENCIL APPRECIATION SOCIETY

PENCILS. FAMILIAR, STURDY, dependable tools that live with most of us. The humble pencil is put to good use while making lists, doodles, solving math problems, note-taking in margins of books, drawings, adjusting recipes, grading, producing fine lines, medium lines, thick lines, marking calendars, making budgets, scoring games, or lying on a desk—just the sight of a pencil is cozy. There is something about a pencil that says, I will help you try.

Pencils are generally wooden, a soft, warm material to hold—or bite into. Were you a biter or did you refrain? Some pencils have the name of an organization like a school imprinted into them—a small burst of institutional pride on a modest standby. You can sharpen a pencil to your liking with a variety of instruments, some small enough for your pocket, some heavy and electric, some with a handle that you get to grab on to and twirl until the right sharpness has been achieved. There are multiple brands, and a wide range of lead hardness is out there, so one can be as particular and as personal as one likes—and people are. You might think you know someone, but have you ever asked what kind of pencils they like? You can learn oodles about someone with that simple question. My upstairs neighbor is so affronted by an eraser-less pencil, if she comes across one in her house she immediately confiscates it until she is able to correct the offense with a nub eraser (she keeps a supply in her top desk drawer). Pencils come in a rainbow of colors. You can keep a pencil behind your ear or stick it in your ponytail, something I did the entire time I was a waitress.

Although for me pencils are a part of everyday life—we must have one hundred in different lengths and sharpnesses all over the apartment—for many in this computer age, pencils connect people with their childhood and schooling.

I know of a Pencil Appreciation Society, and in the essay portion of the application to join—yes, there’s an application—almost every pencil-written submission details how pencils played a role in the applicant’s personal growth. For some, whizzing through complicated math with the sharpest Ticonderoga #2, never needing to erase, united them with the strong and reliable side of their brain. For others, the pencil allowed the freedom to use their imagination with abandon, confident that if something didn’t come out right, the eraser was standing by at the ready—a chance for another go at creativity. For others, like architects, design simply wouldn’t be possible without the pencil. One applicant wrote:

“Since my birthday was August 25th and I was a schoolgirl in the 1950s, my birthday gifts were typically a new school dress and a pencil box. The dresses I’ve forgotten, but the pencil boxes I can remember in great detail. The snap closure, the stiff cardboard lid, the tray inside with multiple compartments for organizing supplies including a long area for pencils and shorter areas for erasers and crayons. One pencil case was deeper and had a shallow drawer that pulled out. That must have been a deluxe model. I remember feeling proud of my pencil boxes and how they demonstrated my readiness for school.”

This is the application for the Pencil Appreciation Society:

PENCIL APPRECIATION SOCIETY APPLICATION FOR MEMBERSHIP

Name:

Mailing address/telephone:

Summer___________________________________

Winter___________________________________

Email address:

In order for the PAS to determine your eligibility for membership in the Society, we ask that you provide us with the following information (pencil required):

What is your favorite brand of pencil?

What hardness do you prefer?

What size do you prefer?

What color pencil do you prefer?

Do you use colored pencils? If so, what colors do you prefer?

Do you use pencils with erasers?

If yes, what kind of eraser do you prefer?

Where do you keep pencils in your house?

What kind of pencil sharpener do you use?

Where is it/are they located in your house?

Do you use a mechanical pencil?

If yes, what brand do you use?

What is your favorite pencil store?

Does your library include The Pencil by Henry Petroski (1993)?

If yes, in the hardback or paper version?

What famous Concord transcendentalist’s family had a pencil company?

Using the reverse side of this application, please write a brief essay on each of the following subjects:

       Autobiographical material as it relates to the esteemed pencil.

       Pencil memories.

       How do you use pencils?

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*All drawings in this book were done with pencils.