Daniel Gabbay

There’s still sand at the bottom of my backpack from the shells that I collected in Fire Island, a New York subway pass stuck at the bottom of my wallet that allowed me to explore the city through its veins, multiple “goodbye, miss you already” messages lingering at the bottoms of my text conversations with friends that live across the country, a burnt wick dwindled down to its core lying at the base of my coconut-lime candle that I bought at a flea market in Maui, a fading stamp to Mexico sitting on the last page of my passport, square polaroid photos of our days in Malibu and nights in Hollywood stacked in the bottom drawer of my nightstand, and the rhythm of this time of my life still thumping through the bass notes of my “Summer 2019” playlist that I’m listening to as I write this reflection. 

The remnants of this past summer might remain in these bottom compartments of my life, but their memories live-on top of mind – as if these past three months all took place just yesterday.

The summer of 2019 was the summer of many things…

It was the summer of dancing through my parents’ backyard to celebrate my sister’s and my birthdays, under a sea of red umbrellas that hung upside down above a white dance floor on the lawn. We swayed to Spanish guitars and chased one margarita with another until we fell into a total trance of tango and tequila.

It was the summer of spontaneity – of waking up on a Sunday morning and planning to set out on a classic LA hike with friends, and ending that same night by the beach, toasting to the sunset unfolding before our eyes.

It was the summer of sunblock – buying a bottle and not using it because we wanted to get tan, ending our beach days red like lobsters and ending those nights with prayers that our burns would soon turn into the perfect golden hue that would last forever. Sometimes they didn’t – but at least we had hope.

It was the summer of eastern sunrises – and staying up until dawn beachside just to watch its colors delicately explode in the sky before us.

It was the summer of eating raw cookie dough and drinking rosé from the bottle in makeshift beds brought to life by outdoor lounge-chair cushions dragged inside onto the floor – and waking up on them feeling as though we had slept on goose-down.

It was the summer of dance – underneath the sunlight in Central Park next to a picnic blanket to the sound of a tiny speaker, and beneath the glare of a giant disco ball beaming above us on the dance floor, where we left our hearts and some confessions along the way – ones that made us smile and others that cut through us like knives. (Who knew that the dance floor is a place that can make us feel as vulnerable as it can make us feel empowered?)

It was the summer of realizing what we want, and standing up for that want, and making it happen.

It was the summer of growth and progress and perseverance and dedication, and hoping that all the hard work I put into building up the bricks of my own business will someday turn into an unshakable empire.

It was the summer of reconnecting with family members that visited from further, more cultured corners of the Earth – and picking up right where we left off a few years ago.

It was the summer of Mom’s homecooked Persian food served with as much flavor as there is love in every dish.

It was the summer of rain and thunderstorms – staying dry and hiding from them beneath a giant hut in Puerto Vallarta, and then embracing the damp as we danced through the storm once we had to leave our temporary straw-shelter behind.

It was the summer of temporary tattoos, and the heart-shaped tan lines they’d leave at the brims of our bathing suits.

It was the summer of writing post cards and messages with incorrect grammar for the sake of evoking emotion – and feeling so right doing so.

It was the summer of California palm trees – and gazing at them, rows at a time, as they’d fill my sight whenever I’d look up to the sky.

It was the summer of crisp white apartment walls and filling their faces with vibrant pieces of art – and making my version of a house feel like a home.

It was the summer of laughter.

It was the summer of unexpected discovery.

It was the summer of tears – both the happy and sad ones.

It was the summer of transformation.

It was the summer of nerves and risks and taking them.

And most of all, it was the summer of being twenty-five, moving from New York across the country to LA, and trying to grasp this thing called life without holding onto its reins too tightly. Allowing my heart and my mind to catch up to one another, and learning the difference between being a hopeless romantic and a smart one. Finding myself, creating myself, building myself, loving myself, loving others, and wiping away the fog in our sunglasses and dusting off the sand from our laps to see and stand up with pride and bravery, as we take our next steps into adulthood – all in these few shorts months we call “summer,” where the lines between mundane and magical intertwine and dance to the beat of an irresistible synth-pop anthem, creating a moment in time that’s as temporary as it is endless.

This summer made me realize that sometimes, all it takes is a rise in temperature for us to gain the courage, excitement, will, hope, fortitude, perspective, and passion to live to our fullest capacity and potential – no matter where in this world we find ourselves. It doesn’t matter if we’re at the top of a skyscraper in New York City or at the bottom of a bottle of Cabernet in California. Perhaps summer is more-so a state of mind than it is merely a season – and with that comes the opportunity to simply be, more colorfully and unabashedly than we ever thought was possible.  

As it turns out, the grains of golden sand at the bottoms of our backpacks will eventually fall out and the shells we collected at the beach will crack. The polaroids will gradually fade and our warm caramel tans will transition into chestnut-colored leaves that hang above us. The beats that once swept the dancefloor will become faint echoes, and our beachside sunrises will survive as glowing pixels in our phones.

So, with this cycle, perhaps the most poignant part of summer is its ending, serving as a reminder that life doesn’t stop for us; it goes on. And while its memories will live-on vividly, top of mind, we must live it fully, in real-time, while we can.

Summer 2019, if only you could have lasted forever. Thank you for the memories, the joy, the heartbreaks, the lessons, the celebrations, the adventure, the growth, and all the mindless moments in between that were, simply and effortlessly, beautiful.

Until we do our dance again…

Yours, Always,

Sometimes in life, we’re faced with experiences that make us feel things so deeply, that we just can’t find the words to describe how we feel at the time.

I lived in New York City for almost seven years and just moved back to Los Angeles in March. But it wasn’t until visiting the city this month and returning as a tourist on vacation that I was able to assign words to the millions of emotions I was feeling.

– – –

Seven years ago, I moved to New York and I met a boy. Right there in the middle of all that concrete charm, surrounded by ripe tulips, lush greenery, and the promise of the most unexpected adventure, I met a sweet, inexperienced, fresh-eyed, timid, curious, guarded boy in Washington Square Park. Standing there as a Freshman, at the steps of Hayden Hall and on the edge of adulthood, he had no idea that NYU, his end-goal, was merely the beginning. And so our story begins.

College is a very odd, perplexing place. A space where we’re told to grow into the people we’re destined to become in just four short years – all through courses and professors and exams that assign a number to our worth. It didn’t take long for me to realize that those scores and numbers didn’t mean as much to me as the number of nights my friends and I spent stumbling down MacDougal Street, singing and dancing our way through the dark, seeking the next stop in our Friday night escapade on a (sometimes too) warm summer’s night. The number of walks down Fifth Avenue between classes when I’d stop for a coffee and interpret the foam-art in my cup like an abstract masterpiece at the Met. The number of times I’d clink glasses of pink Cosmopolitan punch with my cousins over dinner as we’d toast to merely celebrate that we all found the time to reunite. The number of Polaroids I’d stick to the bulletin board above my bed, vibrant with construction paper and nostalgia. The short number of steps I’d tread down the hall to knock on Jordan’s door just to say hi. The number of phone calls Alex and I would have just to fill each other in on the most magical, mundane parts of our day. And most of all, the number of times I’d look out a window, gaze out to the skyline, and feel so delightfully small in such a big city. Sometimes feeling small is the most liberating feeling you can feel in such a vast world.

The exams and written statements may have gotten me my diploma, but the moments in between made me feel more human. And I think that’s the greatest accomplishment of all.

Soon enough, pink punch-cocktails turned into violet caps and gowns. In the wet blink of an eye, my friends that had turned into family and I were graduating at Yankee Stadium. The snapshot will always remain embedded in the crevices of my memory: There wasn’t a cloud in the sky that day – only tassels swaying above us to the music, painting a purple mosaic in the air that represented so much more than graduation, but confirmation that we accomplished a feat that felt unattainable at times. I guess that’s one of the most significant lessons I learned during my undergraduate career: that which might seem daunting and impossible is really just a party waiting to happen, if you hold on tight enough during the ride and learn to let go at the same time. Keep your faith so alive and allow the universe to take care of the rest. We can work tirelessly and strive so hard to achieve a self-imposed dream, but sometimes what’s to come is inked in the stars already.

And the stars – those mysterious little specks of hope in the dark mural that’s the night sky – are what gave me the courage to continue living in New York, even after I graduated. The city can be a tough place. I have never experienced a land filled with so many people that live so closely to one another, where everyone can still feel so lonely. I can’t count the number of times I’d walk up Madison Avenue each morning to the PR agency I worked at, to pass by hundreds of people who wouldn’t make eye contact with me or exchange a brief smile. But the optimist in me refused to believe that this morning behavior was right. (Come on, people – throw back your espresso and learn how to be warm and present and approachable.)

But now that I look back, I see that maybe my morning walks to work were amongst my most valuable rituals I experienced in the jungle. I learned first-hand that just because others might live their lives in isolation with their heads down, trapped within the mental confines of their nine-to-five’s – that doesn’t mean that we must do the same. We can be kind and just as bold and successful as all those who don’t choose to smile.

New York opened my eyes to the reality that there are so many people in this world. Before moving to the Big (more like huge) Apple, I would have never guessed that meeting quality individuals would require me to sift through what can feel like an endless gold mine – a landscape that might sound shiny and abundant. But it turns out that to find gold in a mine, we must dig through endless mounds of dust and coal to find those specks of stone that sparkle amongst the rest.

Fortunately enough, I gradually found myself in the company of people who beautifully contradict the spirit of those closed-off pedestrians I’d encounter on the daily. Men and women who shine amongst the coal, who have filled and fueled my heart with compassion and strength and excitement and joy, and the genuine belief that people do exist in that city and in this world who want you to succeed, and who will be there to celebrate your small, daily victories on your way to your life’s big dreams.

That’s another thing New York taught me: to dream – without fear or hesitation. The city itself was built upon the promise and fortitude of dreamers after all. A rhythmic island of individuals who gathered from all around the world to build a better life – and to live it. I once heard that when New York was being built upon its conception, contractors didn’t have much room to build wide; space was limited horizontally. So, they built upwards. It turns out that even the city’s architecture, its makeup, its blueprint, has inspired me to dream. Look at the Empire State Building, the Freedom Tower, the Chrysler Building… Even some of the tallest, most majestic and iconic buildings in the world have their heads in the clouds.

Seven years ago, I met a boy. (The same boy I mentioned earlier – shy, timid, free of experience). He would have never dared pop his head up into the clouds, see the view from above, leave the world below behind, and dream. Well, as it turns out, that boy is gone, and now a man stands in his presence. I never expected that a move to a new city would provide me with the scraps of wisdom, confidence, heartbreak, spontaneity, strength, brains, and soul, to say goodbye to that boy and to gracefully leave him in the past.

I came to New York with a shell. Over time, that shell turned into an armor – and for a while, it didn’t quite sparkle as brightly as I would have liked it to. But as time went on, as I lived more and learned from those experiences, I continued to discover the man behind the armor, and I allowed him to reveal himself authentically with pride.

I started writing this reflection about my experience over these past seven years. But as I continued to let my fingers dance across this keyboard, I realized that this afterthought is less about me and more so about New York City – and all that it taught me:

• Living alone in a new city, (no matter how glamorous and sparkly it may seem from afar), can be as painful and difficult at times as it is rewarding and wonderful. Sometimes life in a place like this makes you question why you ever moved there in the first place. But staying there answers all of those questions.
• The subway is a warm, sticky, horrible place. If hell manifested itself into a place on Earth, that would be it.

• Heartbreak comes with being human – (and a New Yorker, more specifically). Being vulnerable and open and bearing your soul is beautiful and brave. Just because someone doesn’t like you back doesn’t mean you are unlovable. It means they might just be incapable of loving.

• Most of the time, dollar pizza is better and more satisfying than any gourmet Italian meal you’ll find in the city. (The quality spots are also open all day and night.)

• Sometimes we have to endure the physical burn that a walk-up will induce. Carrying your groceries up five flights of stairs is as tough as it sounds. But dinner will taste better once you make it to the top and you will have the best hamstrings of your life after a few climbs.

• Distance does in fact make the heart grow fonder. Call your parents often. They appreciate it more than you know and serve as a constant reminder that there is a place for you out there whenever you don’t feel at home.

• In a city where you don’t have much family, hold on to your friends for dear life. In a place like New York, friends become family, and that’s more meaningful than I could have ever imagined.

• Glitter-confetti is extremely difficult to completely wash out of your hair and rub off your skin. The celebration is also worth the scrub that follows.

• There is no place like the top of The Plaza Hotel to hide away from Hurricane Sandy and watch the snowflakes do their dance.

• New York doesn’t have much nature, (in the classic sense of the term), and that’s fine. The city makes up for that lack with parks and rose gardens that are carved into little squares of concrete, and leaves in the autumn that gather in the trees and collectively look like auburn chandeliers, and rooftops that can evoke more height and magic than California’s tallest mountaintops.

• And lastly, New York will always be there.

The beauty of traveling as a tourist to a place that once was home is that you see it in a different light every time you return. The surprise, however, lies in the reality that each visit feels completely unique.

Each time I visited New York since I left, each trip has felt different. And each time, I’d ask myself why. It turns out that the city hasn’t changed at all – but I have. People, places, and sights that I used to feel accustomed to suddenly feel new. But no matter where in the world we live or travel, we change – we grow – we flourish – (like a beautiful tulip in Washington Square Park at the end of a summer season and at the beginning of a freshman year at NYU). And that’s what New York has made me realize. I will continue to evolve – as will we all. But she will always be there waiting for me, to remind me of where my journey began, and where I spent the most wonderful, memorable, crazy, difficult, painful, rewarding, joyous, eye-opening, meaningful years of my life. The place where I will continue to retreat, to remind myself of the progress that I’ve made – and to celebrate that growth.

Sometimes in life, we’re faced with experiences that make us feel things so deeply, that we just can’t find the words to describe how we feel at the time. And then the time finally comes when the words rush in and fill the gaps of emptiness we feel when we close one chapter and begin another.

New York, you crazy whirlwind of a place, you – you took my breath away. But now that I look back, I see you gave me wings instead. Thank you for it all.

Love Always,

I don’t know much about love. Most of what I know stems from what I dream up from books and movies, and what I see around me – couples that mindlessly wander down Waverly Place, simultaneously lost in lust and yet profoundly aware of each other’s presence.

I wasn’t planning on writing about Valentine’s Day at all. What does a single guy in the city have to say about love? But it seems that my eyes – (and perhaps my heart, too) – were both a bit more open than usual. The occasion inspired me to think about the boldest four-lettered word of the bunch.

LOVE.

What a tricky thing to grasp. You would think Valentine’s Day, an occasion about extravagant displays of affection, would shed some light to help us understand more clearly what love is all about. Or perhaps the holiday just complicates our understanding even more.

In the endless sea of kisses and locked arms I witnessed around me on that day, I saw just as many, (if not more), single people. To us, we parties of one that went about our day solo, a bouquet of flowers wasn’t a gift to give or receive but just a pretty sight. Champagne and chocolates were just sweet indulgences rather than a dessert that follows a candlelit dinner. And February 14^th was just another brisk Wednesday in the Village.

As I’ve had a few days to reflect on this truth, I find myself in a state of foolish bewilderment. You’d think that in such a big city, in such a vast world, everyone would have an easier time finding love and we’d all live happily (hopefully) ever after.

I’d like to imagine we’re all single until we aren’t – until you meet the person who turns on the lights in the glass butterfly conservatory of your soul and opens its doors. That special someone who commands the stars to align above you for the perfect sky, who makes you feel as though a stroll is a dance and a bouquet is a forest.

So, I must ask, why so many single people? Where are all of our plus one’s hiding?

Perhaps real life isn’t as simple as the storybooks and love isn’t a pop song. Maybe we’re picky in our pursuits of companionship, or our skin is thicker than Cupid’s arrow is sharp. Whatever the reason, we’re always assured that “the one” is out there waiting for us somewhere. We’re told that whenever one door closes, another door opens, and whatever is meant to be will happen on its own – in love and in life. So we’re told.

Whichever way we decide to interpret this narrative, I wonder, however, whether the line between hopeless and passive romantic has become blurred. I’m starting to think I disagree with what we’ve been told.

As a single man, I’ve always been more conscious of the presence of couples around me. Yet, this Valentine’s Day, for some reason my attention was drawn to the other team in the game.

For we singles, love may very well be waiting for us somewhere in the world. I’d like to think everyone’s knights in shining armor are on their way. There’s something refreshing about being a hopeless romantic and believing in love wholeheartedly. But maybe we can be brave, active romantics too – agents of our own exploration for romance. What’s the point of waiting around for love when we can set out to find it instead?

I’m not suggesting we divert from the paths of our daily lives or aimlessly travel around the world to find romance à la Eat, Pray, Love. Perhaps we could simply be more aware of our surroundings, ourselves, and each other. As I passed by bars and looked around me on the street, what I saw around me on Valentine’s Day made me wonder – maybe if we took our eyes off our screens constantly and our lips off our wine glasses, we’d feel more inclined to look around and speak to one another.

I wish I could make a profound statement about love or share a revelation I experienced on Valentine’s Day. But for now, I’ll leave you with a question:

What’s an open door good for if we don’t walk through it? How do we even know a closed door is locked unless we try to turn its knob? Perhaps a closed door is just as powerful as an open one if we take the initiative to go up to it and give it a push or simply knock. Who knows who might be standing on the other side.

Whether single or taken, Valentine’s Day can inspire us to put ourselves out there, to be more present and open hearted, every day of the year. Maybe the holiday itself isn’t just about celebrating love, but also about getting up and setting out to find it. It has to be out there.

XOXO,

There’s something delightfully odd about Halloween; no one goes as themselves, and yet everyone seems to feel right at home in their own skin. It’s almost as if the personas we adopt have lived within us all along, and we just bring them to surface for the night.

Whether we dress up or dress down, snag a treat or play some tricks, Halloween gives us a reason to distance ourselves from our ordinary identities, and to celebrate that gap in between. And in that gap, in the space between our regular selves and the façades we take on, we become artists, craftsmen, and visionaries. Our skin becomes our canvas, and we have the ability to create whoever or whatever it is we imagine ourselves to be.

This past weekend, my friends and I did just that. We traded in our regular personalities for some more intricate masks. Fangs in, claws out, blood painted and whips in hand – the moon was our spotlight and we went to the circus. Well, Brooklyn, that is.

Just for a night, ten twenty-something-year-olds who call each other friends became ringleaders, mimes, clowns, tigers, acrobats, and harlequins. We ventured from the West Village over the bridge to Williamsburg and stepped into a world where freaky was the fashion and normal was a sin.

House music flooded the air, cages of fire breathers swung above us, strobe lights pierced through the dark, and we creatures of the night claimed the dance floor as our own. I walked through House of Yes and explored each of its rooms. Observing the rest of the people at the club, I was amazed at the transformations I saw around me. But it wasn’t until I looked into the distorted funhouse mirror there that I almost didn’t recognize myself. There I was: a clown in a black vest under a round top hat. A red teardrop streamed down my cheek and grey contact lenses pierced through my eyes. The tip of my nose adorned burgundy, and the rest of my face painted every other shade of white I didn’t know existed.

Strangely enough, not recognizing myself instantly in the mirror was as jarring as it was exciting. I felt as if I had come face to face with someone I had never met before, but who looked oddly familiar. My costume even disguised me from myself for a moment, and that mystery was liberating. Perhaps that’s what came over everyone so infectiously on the dance floor – not just the music, but the invisible cloak of anonymity that hung over us all. No one looked like themselves, and perhaps that’s what made us all feel so free. The House became a sanctuary, dance our religion, and disguise our equalizer.

It was refreshing existing in a space where we were all covered in paint and feathers and glitter – and skin color, ethnicity, and race all faded away, even for just a few hours.

Finally, the clock struck four, the magic of our masks began to wear off, and our feet got tired of dancing. We made our way back into the city and bid farewell to the circus.

When I got back to my apartment and looked in the mirror, I could see much more clearly in the light this time – finally acquainted with the clown gazing back at me. I washed off my makeup, pulled out my contact lenses, took off my hat – and there I was, my regular self. As much as I enjoyed the alternate reality we discovered at House of Yes, I found comfort in being myself again as the sun began to rise.

Now that I look back, I think what made our night so magical was the fact that it was temporary, and that we knew we’d make it back into our own skin once the show ended and the curtains closed. Perhaps we escaped so freely into the circus because we knew we only had a few hours to be in it. After all, we couldn’t be lions, clowns, and ringleaders forever. But maybe that’s the true beauty of Halloween – that it forces us to find enough escape and liberation from the real world in just one night, to make us feel secure and comfortable enough in our skin again thereafter – until next year anyway, when the circus comes to town once again.