Riipi. Caldwell. Legs. And interview.

Whereas the Joseph Riipi talks Legs Get Led Astray with Chloe Caldwell at The Lit Pub.

JR: One of my favorite moments in the book is in “That Was Called Love,” a kind of love letter to New York City from Seattle, when you write: “Last night I described New York to a rock climber in Seattle. ‘It sounds like, New York is for you, what the mountains are for me.’” Since then you’ve moved back to New York (but now just outside the city). Have you found for yourself a permanent mountain?

CC: No. I think “mountains” or “homes” are specific to what you need at that time in your life. For a long time, I truly did think you could count on a place to make you happy. Like, when I moved to New York City, I was young and so affected by it that I thought it was alive. Now I see that just like people — there is not one person or place that you can get everything you want from. It’s all about compromise. If I could mix my mother’s backyard, Brooklyn, and Portland together, that would be a pretty sweet home. When I left the city to move to Washington, I thought that Seattle would be as new and exciting. But it was far from it and for a while, that was hard for me to cope with and accept. It’s like this quote by Fran Lebowitz: “When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.”