It was a cold night, brisk, but not as cold as previous years when snow had fallen. Cold, but my velvet jacket sufficed as coat, and the bottles of rosé in my bag kept us going. Berlioz was our gatekeeper, still standing in the same spot today wondering when I will come back to sing sweet lullabies to him. It’s been 20 years since that New Year’s Eve in Grenoble, where I roamed the streets with my best friend Maud for hours, hopping in and out of random parties until we got bored and went home with pizza and 100 stories. Two decades! 

Less than a year later my mother moved to California, to the exact place I live now. But if you told me that twenty years ago I would have scoffed and said “never!”. France was my home. France still is my home in my heart. But I haven’t lived in France since 2002… While I danced around Place Victor Hugo that New Year’s Eve, ringing in the new millennium, I couldn’t possibly have imagined that my future would take me to live in places like Israel and NYC, to roam around Egypt, to settle in London for a while, to travel all around Italy, to visit Barcelona several times, to finally settle down again in Sacramento years and years later. I also couldn’t imagine the new shape the world was taking, that planes would be flown into the World Trade Center towers, bringing them down to the ground, that the US and their allies would invade countries under false pretenses and stay there, creating a new havoc amidst the old. That wars would be waged between countries within other countries, using civil wars as a reason to fight old, and new, conflicts. I couldn’t have imagined that the internet would have taken over, providing us with so much information at our fingertips, too much information one could argue, making our lives so much easier and more global, but also more disjointed. 20 years is a long time, but some of it feels like only yesterday to me.

When you walk to the end of the moshav at night, where the houses end and the desert starts again, the sky is alight with millions and millions of stars. They trace the past, the present, and our future, drawing lines through the black sky. They whizz past, dying, or flicker on, newborn, and you cannot help but gasp, and feel comfort in the silent, colossal beauty that surrounds us all. It’s so easy to get lost in the noise of everyday life, to only look ahead, or behind us, but that sky has so much to tell us, an expanse that is forever changing above us. Those days beneath the stars in Hatzeva in 2003 and 2004, in the middle of the Arava desert, are burnt deeply into my heart, unforgettable in how they changed my life, my vision, and my path.

The apartment was really a shoe box, a studio divided into bedroom and kitchen, a tiny bathroom to the side, which inexplicably still fit a full bathtub. It was perfect for me, right in the heart of the Village, Sixth Ave between Houston and Bleecker, above a couple of restaurants that were constantly populated by semi famous to famous people. I never set foot in those restaurants, my outside home was always a few blocks down Houston, firmly ensconced on the Lower East Side, spanning Ludlow and Orchard. I would leave my apartment around 10 or 11pm on Saturday nights, plug my headphones into my ears and walk down Houston, wondering why people would jump in cabs for a few blocks when it was so much easier, and faster, to walk. Jager shots at Motorcity with Harri, a few Stoli on the rocks at Darkroom with Eric, and into groups of friends I would drift between bars, always there, together, and apart. I put myself through a lot of crap in 2006 and 2007 and 2008, but the warmth I felt during those nights, and the friendships I made at that time outlasted the years. They are still here today. We made it through.

Only Michelle and I would forgo July 4th celebrations in order to sleep on the beach at Fort Tilden. Our plans included a hamper of food and a couple of gallons of water, sleeping bags, and our cameras. Our plans did not include rain or mosquitoes, but we made do with what we had and found, creating a fortress out of garbage and branches washed up from the ocean, dancing in the rain along the beach, and finally, sleeping under the stars by the dunes, suddenly very aware of actually how dangerous our adventure could have been. We woke up at sunrise on July 4th, the sky foggy, muggy, and once it cleared, saw a shark fin so close to the water's edge that we didn’t dare swim that day. As the beach filled with people we congratulated ourselves on having had it all to ourselves the day before. A perfect beach adventure in 2011, a day where freedom was palpable, and nature let us touch her, be part of her.

New Year’s Day, the day many of us consider the first day of the year is not on January 1st in Israel. It is a day like any other there. I traveled to Tel Aviv with Kirsten, Andrea, and Lottie, hungover from our NYE celebrations in the kibbutz the night before. We went to the Egyptian consulate to get tourist visas and spent the rest of the day on the beach in jeans and t-shirts. A long way from the snow and rain and general January glumness I was used to. Three days later Kirsten, Andrea, and I were off on a 10 day tour of Egypt, with no idea where we were going and no idea when we would be back. It was one of the most amazing trips of my life, where I learnt that all you really need is a couple of clean pairs of underwear, a passport, a roll of toilet paper, a little cash, and a huge amount of adventurousness and luck. January 2004 was the Sphinx and sleeping under the stars on the Nile in a felucca, and a return on foot across the border into Israel, wondering if I could possibly spend the rest of my life in Israel, a freedom I had been searching for for so long.

We lived together for 7 years, Beth and I. With my little Luna cat, and a bit later Beth’s Doyle, the sweetest, kindest, funniest abandoned pitbull that she adopted. We were the first to move into our building in Bushwick, both paying too much for shoe boxes in Manhattan, looking for something new, better. I treasure our similarities and our differences, and how we just worked, as roommates and friends. We met through a mutual friend and Bruce Springsteen, bonded through Buffy, Angel, and trivia, and stuck together through parties and sobriety, beaches and more parties. I hope the people who live in that apartment love it as much as we did through the years. I still miss the deli guys on the corner, their amazing egg sandwiches and their conversation over tea at 5am on my way home from work. I also miss Beth’s raucous laughter than bound the room together, and made whoever found themselves there feel immediately at home.

On Boxing Day 2014 I woke up early, content after a wonderful Christmas spent in our little apartment in Flushing, Queens. Just Cesar, our teeny little Luna, myself, and our cat Joey Ramone. The night before I had written a glowing piece about Christmas on my blog, while Luna lay fast asleep in my arms, and Cesar slept peacefully beside me on the couch. The following morning I woke up, and found out what I had expected for a few weeks: we were expecting a second child. That glow I felt that Christmas grew exponentially with that discovery. 2015 would be a year of joy but also of difficult decisions, and huge changes. During that Christmas in 2014 I had no idea that we would be leaving our beloved NYC behind a little over a year later, West Coast bound.

May 4th 2011, on a plane from Arizona to NYC, an hour after having been held back, yet again, by Immigration. Yelled at, accused of things I had not done, made to feel like less than a human, again. It was my 33rd birthday and I had just come back from an all-expenses paid over the top company vacation prize where I felt completely out of place. It was meant to be a way for the company to say thank you to certain people who had overperformed the year before, but for the most part it was a bunch of over-confident and overpaid sales people acting like they were on spring break. (For the most part, because there were exceptions who also happened to be my friends). The past year I had helped launch a massive website localization project, the first of its kind on that scale with a brand new software tool. I had spent days and nights dreaming in code, logged into endless phone calls with the client, and had celebrated our successful launch with all involved. But I hated my job, and felt so drained by the culture, the work, the need to be online, available at all times. But when it mattered the most, when I was stuck in Immigration with the rest of the company’s most privileged boarding their next flight, no one realized that I might need help. It wasn’t their fault - for the most part they didn’t understand the ins and outs of the US immigration system, or even my own personal situation. But for me it was the beginning of an end. I lost all motivation to work there, tired of playing a bit part of myself rather than a full role. I loved my life in NYC, I loved my friends, but my job took over my life, and my visa, temporary, restricted me from going my own way. Leaving that job would have huge consequences, but in late October of that year I walked out. Enough was enough, I would find a way to make it work, a way to be me, unapologetically.

I spent my last weekend in England in 2005 up in Empingham with Auntie Louise and Nana. Curled up on my spot on the couch, I ate dinner and watched TV, chatting away about the past, the present and the future. I had no idea what NYC would offer me, and I had no idea that that would be the last time I saw my Nana in person. She died quite a few years later, in 2012, but I was lucky to have spent so much quality time with her while she was still lucid, happy, even after the illnesses and the first strokes. When she died all of my friends got together and had a fundraiser for me at 200 Orchard while I was working there. That fundraiser, and the 10 days of bar shifts I worked in a row, allowed me to go back to England and go to my Nana’s funeral. I lost too many people in the 2010’s, three of whom were part of that fundraiser… Mick M, Scotty, George… Mick B, Eric C, Grandma, Debi, Patch, Johnny… And then all of the artists I admired over the years, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Chris Cornell, Prince, George Michael, and so many more. Life is always bound to death, but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less when the inevitable happens. I still miss my Nana. She would have been so happy to have three little great grandchildren who managed to take on physical traits of hers that I notice every day.

I met Meg one summer night in July 2007. She was DJing at The Skinny on Orchard St (the old version of the place, not the newer, bigger place), and we hit it off right away. 13 years, and many, many stories, and places, later and she is and always will be my best friend, the one who has seen me at my best and at my crappiest, and all of the moments in between, who tells me what my qualities are and tolerates my bad sides without letting them slide. She was the first person outside of Cesar and my mum to have met Luna, just a few hours after she was born, and that is exactly how it should have been. A friendship like ours is precious. We are precious. And completely insane too… I wrote this paragraph while shoving Hersey’s Kisses into my face, an action which was completely appropriate for the topic. We have moved past the Makers and the Stolis, the Powers, and the mornings after the nights before the night before. We have moved way beyond the down and out musicians whose talents ended up in the bottom of barrels, years past the basements and the DJ booths, but we have moved together, separated, but still together in some way or another. There will always be Spiritualized and Catch, memories of heart-shaped glasses and road trips in the BMW with the top down, and there will always be guacamole and candy.

We “met” online via the Hole message board back in 2003, and became fast friends. I met Irish Lynn in person in London in 2005, English Charlie in NYC in 2006, Brazilian Bela in NYC in 2008, amidst some of the others. There are others who I have never met but still feel close to, years after the last instance of our message board went down. Lynn, Eryn, Stephanie, Jenny, and I went to Seattle together in the spring of 2009, a pilgrimage to Kurt Cobain on the 15th anniversary of his death. We sat in Viretta Park right next to his house, lit candles, and sang songs, and later roamed Seattle, stopping at all of the places I could only dream of when I was 16. Seattle was unseasonably sunny that week, and I like to think that the dead gods of grunge were shining down on their kids. Or something along those lines. All of us, brought together by music, we would confide our deepest secrets to each other, even before we had even met. Our message board was called The Viper Room, and I still trust my VR girls (and occasional dude) with my life.

November 2016 was a ridiculous month. I felt car sick when I wasn’t in a car and found out that I was pregnant again, and Trump was elected president. I hovered between feeling elated and shit scared: what on earth were we doing? Where could we go? Trump’s presidential campaign was powered by hatred, especially against Mexicans, and despite this (because of this?) the US people saw fit to elect him as president. Today I look at three beautiful children and don’t regret a thing. They are being brought up to embrace their mixed race, multi-cultural heritage, and to strive for change. I don’t see myself growing old in the US, but I also don’t regret moving to this country. I dream of a peaceful island somewhere, maybe off of Scotland where I can explore the heritage that I didn’t know I had (a story for another time when we have solved a mystery that we may never be able to solve). Or off of the coast of Mexico, who knows? I still dream of life on a moshav, but that will all remain a dream I can recreate in another country. I don’t know where I will be in 2040, but if these last 20 years have taught me anything is that it’s OK to dream, and it’s also OK to pursue our dreams, even if it meets hitting a few dead ends here and there.

Happy New Year!!

(20 years is a huge amount of time to cover, and there are so many other stories between these stories, but to include everything would take me a year or so of continuous writing. Which is something I am planning on doing, and have already started, a project that is growing and changing every time I work on it. Happy New Year, may 2020 be the door to a better world that we work tirelessly on, where we spend more time listening to others and practicing real change.)