i'm so adjective, i verb nouns
"You think she's an open book,
but you don't know which page to turn to."
--Cake, 'Open Book'
My name is Georgiana Cohen. I was born on August 14, 1979 in Boston, MA, in the vicinity of which I currently once again reside after a 16-year exile in South Florida. I carried on 21 and three-quarters years of my life not knowing that, on the same day, my twin brother Andrew was born as well. He was given up for adoption when we were born. We were reunited in September 2002. Later, we found our birth father. Amazing but true!
Believe it or not, I spent the first two years of my life living on Beacon Hill, which was more Brighton than Brahmin back then. When rent control got the boot, so did we -- my mom and I found ourselves living with my grandmother in Delray Beach, FL. Such would be the humid, despicable, strained, constrictive, and hateful state of affairs until I turned 18.
I attended a Baptist kindergarten, a Jewish elementary school, an Episcopal school for sixth grade, and a faux-Unitarian school for 7th and 8th. I came away from the experience a determined Jew, maybe because elementary school was an overwhelmingly positive experience, while kindergarten and middle school left much to be desired -- namely, sanity.
I entered the public school system for high school, enrolling in the International Baccalaurate Program at Atlantic Community High School. In high school, I would acquire a nerd posse and we would ride around on scooters beating people with protractors and tomes of classic Latin American literature. When we weren't doing that, we were sulking behind the portable classrooms crying. Good times.
In high school, amazing friendships came and went, changed for better or for worse. This, I now know, is the norm. They should include that information on your freshman year schedule. I am lucky enough to have retained at least a few of them in one form or another, and I am grateful.
Also, during high school, I met the man I would marry, Rick. We did not, however, go to the same high school. We met via an alternative social network that ran mostly parallel to my high school experience (save for a few notable intersections, namely the aforementioned amazing friendships that went). Anyways, we met via Dragon World, a BBS of the old-school persuasion. But even then, he was not a member of the BBS at the time that we met; a mutual friend accidentally matched us together. That was September 23, 1995. Our first date was October 21, 1995. We were married January 25, 2004, at a bed and breakfast in Yarmouthport, Mass., surrounded by 50 of our closest friends and family members. His true calling is as a video game critic and scholar, and he works tirelessly to that end. I love him in a similarly tireless manner.
As convenience would have it, both of us attended Boston University -- he to (ultimately) study French, and I to study journalism and religion. I met my best friend at BU, as well as many other people who I still count as close friends today, three years removed from pomp and circumstance. One of my close high school friends -- who would be my maid of honor -- also attended BU. I was surely blessed. I graduated summa cum laude from BU in 2001 with a degree in journalism.
During my the last semester of my senior year in college, I interned at Boston.com. Six months after graduating, I was hired on full-time. However, I left Boston.com in October 2004 to accept a new position at Tufts University, pursuing a new career in higher ed media. I am now a web content specialist for Tufts, which is conveniently located about a mile or so down the road in beautiful Somerville, Mass. When not hard at work at Tufts, I can sometimes be found freelancing for the Boston Herald or writing/submitting personal essays for publication (I've had one published in a book). I used to focus on poetry (I had one published as part of a project by Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, and have published others in various literary magazines) but as time has gone by, I've been drawn more and more to nonfiction. I'm also a DJ at WMFO 91.5 FM, the Tufts radio station. Did I mention I'm obsessed with music? Really obsessed.
I have a problem, you see. I think I have start-up syndrome -- I always want to be involved with 56933 projects at once. I'm never sated. I probably never will be. My dream is to start up a publishing house-record label-literary magazine-web design-freelance writing multimedia firm. Wanna join up?
So, yeah. I play Scrabble. I download music. I write articles and essays. I cross streets without due caution for oncoming traffic. I love mango lassis. I walk everywhere like it's my job. I wear sensible shoes. I'm pretty funny, but only on the fly. I can make killer mix CDs. I'm not as great a reader as I would like. I'm not crafty, but I try. I've learned balance the hard way. I've endured poverty and ridicule, but I still don't understand them. Sometimes I hold on too tight, sometimes I let go too soon. I love funky socks, and I assiduously try to wear smartly matching clothes each day. I'm Georgy, and that means different things to different people. But to me, it just means that each day brings a chance for the unexpected to happen -- whether it's a new face, a new song, or heck, a new sibling (it's happened before). Thanks for visiting the umpteenth iteration of my website -- enjoy your stay!
When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion... Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won't be asked. You won't be asked if you were working on a wonderful moving piece of writing when you died. You won't be asked if it was long or short, sad or funny, published or unpublished. You won't be asked if you were in good or bad form while you were working on it. You won't even be asked if it was the one piece of writing you would have been working on if you had known your time would be up when it was finished... I'm so sure you'll get asked only two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?
--J.D. Salinger, "Seymour: An Introduction"
You may be asking yourself -- what is a mod housewife? It is a woman being dragged kicking and screaming into adulthood. Not quite able to give up her dreams of the good life, but incapable of saying goodbye to the slacker lifestyle that has served her well since before there was a term for it. Stuck in the netherworld between set lists and shopping lists. You've probably seen her at the supermarket with her kid in a grocery cart, headphones blasting Elastica while she debates the merits of low fat granola bars vs. Snackwells. Maybe you've seen her pushing a toddler in a swing, with a fading ink stamp on her hand from some club the night before, or pulling a scrawled crayon drawing out of her backpack. A mod housewife will wear a thrift shop miniskirt at thirty-five, varicose veins or no. She still wants to rock, and still knows how. She understands compromise, but she's not... ready... to... give in... yet.
--Amy Rigby
* Bio title taken from Toothpaste for Dinner
Bio updated October 2006
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