A snap from dinner prep last night. I used this recipe and it was delicious, but I should have thrown some salt into the meatballs.

I went back home this weekend to see my mom and my sister, but I didn’t take any pictures. I meant to, but I always feel like a weenie trying to explain to my mom why I’m trying to get the perfect angle on the plate of sushi. Instead, here’s some snaps from the last weekish.

I like to take pictures of Elizabeth the Ghost while I’m commuting to work. It’s either that, or endless games of solitaire on my phone. I can’t seem to find a commuting game that sticks, so throw your suggestions at me (not Angry Birds).

The trees around here are lookin’ all fancy lately. If you see a girl in a huge scarf and huge sunglasses taking 400 pictures of the trees, say hi.

Yesterday was so wonderfully lazy. I made myself pancakes and then spent a few hours on a really delicious beef stew. It kind of looks like mud, but it tastes like home.

And, of course, I’m still taking pictures of the sunsets. I think this is the last one, it’s been getting dark before I’m off the subway.

Dear Sun,
I miss you already. Please come back to me.
Love, Elizabeth.

What does your week look like?

I took this picture on my walk home last night. Turning the clocks back means it’s nearly dark at 5pm, which I’m going to hate in a few weeks, but right now I’m walking home slowly and enjoying the light and snapping pictures where I can.

I love city sunsets more than any other. I love how everything goes black and the sky fades into orange and red and blue. When I was a freshman in college, my dorm was on the 9th floor and I put my desk in front of a window that looked out onto West Philly. I’d come home from class and pretend to be hard at work on my laptop but I was really getting lost watching the sun go down. From just nine stories up, I couldn’t see that fat, a little past University City, but I imagined the whole world was stretched in front of me. The entire world, going from a little grungy and a little gray to black and sparkling.

I’m trying to take these sunsets in as much as I can before the world shifts and the sun sets while I’m on the subway–or worse, still in my office. I’m trying to enjoy slow walks home while the weather is still a little warm, with Neko Case in my headphones, and slowing my brain down from the busiest of busy days.

It is entirely possible that Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids, is not that good by most standards. The story is nice but you’re never sure what year it is and it takes turns at odd points. Sometimes a story begins without warning, and often names are dropped without much reference to the people they belong to.

Oh, but I don’t mind at all. I don’t mind because Hello, my name is Elizabeth, and I am nostalgic for a time that I have never experienced. I’ve been like this all my life, romanticizing New York and dreaming of moving to the Village with only my suitcase and eighty dollars in my pocket. I imagined I’d live much like Patti describes in her memoir, in small apartments or at The Chelsea, always navigating the constant stream of artists and musicians that would waft through my life. I was sure that I would meet the next Alan Ginsberg and hear the next Velvet Underground.

I was so enamored with the idea that I used to question my parents for hours about Woodstock and what it was like to burn your draft card and were you sad when Brian Jones died? You can imagine my disappointment when I realized my parents were born in 1957 and not 1947 which left them a generation behind the one I held in such high regard. It also accounted for holes in my dad’s record collection, but that’s a story for another day.

Clearly, I was looking to Just Kids to satisfy my nostalgia, but it also reminded me just how embedded I am in The Future. The idea of just running into someone without a call or text seems foreign to me now, and I can’t even imagine living without a phone of my own. I actually gasped when Patti wrote about quitting her job because she didn’t like it, with full faith she’d find something in a week or two. Reading Just Kids, I got to live the dream. I got to vacation in the past, in a world without tweets and blogs and instant everything, a world of letters, a world in which having to wait is a very real possibility. As I turned the last page of Just Kids, I felt tired and heartbroken, and I felt that I had lived through the 60s and 70s with Patti and Robert. I felt satisfied.

I’ve hemmed and hawed over this for a long time. Honestly, I’m completely freaked out. I can’t figure out exactly what to write about and my camera sucks so I keep avoiding this, but it’s something I’d really like to do and everyone has to start somewhere, right?

I’m doing this because I want to figure out who I am. I want to be the Best Elizabeth Marley. I need to know if the Best Elizabeth Marley is a writer, or a cook, or really good at picking outfits. I have this theory that if I turn me into a product I might get a step or two closer to figuring out what I’m good at.

Right now I’m good at…

Making chocolate chip cookies.

Knitting

And jumping on the bed.

The rest will all come in due time. I hope.