The Sarah That Never Sleeps

Brief Updates

2012-01-25T23:08:00.004-05:00

No, I won't move back there, to that giant Apple of a city, though I have thought of it every other week or so for 8 months now. Austin has become my home, my refuge, my playground with sunshine and traffic and music and Orion's Belt above me in the sky. I sit here tonight on my bed, looking around at this environment I've created. I wonder what the future holds for me, my friends, my loved family. For the first time in a long while, everything seems more peaceful, with a dash of adventure. I smile a lot.

A friendship developed that I will always cherish. She took me in at a time when I didn't know left from right anymore, or right from wrong. She helped me through what could have been a terrible time -- showed me that everything is and always will be just as it should be. Confidence regained, clarity revisited. I'm becoming a yoga teacher soon, something I never thought I could actually do, and things just seem to all be falling into place. People here are happy, for the most part, and I wonder why I stayed away from Texas so long. How easily life can suck you in, and you wake up 4 years later only to realize you have missed out on your own idea of fun. To have a sense of self back is something words just can't describe, and it's awesome. I take responsibility for all that has happened, good or bad, and I welcome everything to come.

I laugh a lot, I write from a place that is true and valid, and I care about people a shitload more than I used to. The world is a scary place, and to not (try to) be your own best friend is senseless.

Living in the present is the best gift we have, no matter what happens tomorrow.

I'll write more after I finally get to go on my solo camping adventure (next week?), in bad ass Hill Country. Who's scared? Not I.

All I Had To Do Was Walk Away

2012-01-25T21:14:00.003-05:00

A burst of light
Finally hitting the right parts
The room was dark
Electricity out

You were always there
On my skin,
In my fingernails
Like a stain
On a piece of wood
That is rotting.

In one breath
I jumped down
Into the icy cold
And felt alive again
In a way most don't know

And then you were gone.
A distant figure
Only to exist in my dreams
Only to haunt me
Above the surface waves,
Blocking the sun.

I don't blame you
Or me, or this, at all.
Was it the jump,
Or the fall?
That brought it all
Right back to life--

Maybe we will never know.
New seeds have grown,
Life is back
And waiting to be milked.

Friends

2012-01-13T03:43:00.004-05:00

It should have been...

This way.

It could have been

Not blue, just gray.

A perfect reflection of all of it-
Looking onto a cloudy day,
*You don't get sad*
*You don't feel astray*

And yet I do, for reasons made
But feel like a rebel
All for the purpose of...
Most days, most nights.
I don't mind lonely,
People make you crazy.

Logic seems to create
A disaster--I know a million others
DO relate
What a fate...

This society we have
This logic of the ill-advised
Is nothing, nothing
Compared to how I feel
When I see

You smile.

In My Late Twenties....

2012-01-13T02:59:00.003-05:00

I have discovered these things:

-Velvet Underground is still good, many years later
-Coffee (forever)
-Save the coconuts, because they are going extinct, apparently
-Skinny guys are much stronger than they look
-I hate doing karaoke unless I am WASted, then I am amazing at it
-Nostradamus lied
-Johnny Cash Money
-My soulmate is myself
-Most things in advertising are designed to be against you
-Nothing is to be taken as seriously as you think it should be
-Love is important
-Everything that used to take more time to do doesn't take that much time anymore, i.e. dishwashing, nail-painting, picture-hanging, birthday parties, clothes shopping, key making, grocery shopping, drawer organizing......so with all of your saved time you should just create some extra fucking +ART+.

It's Okay...

2012-01-04T02:26:00.005-05:00

It's not that you weren't enough, you just weren't the It.
A person who falls for It would be a person I am not.
A + B no longer equals C
And for you and me to talk again, well, it would just be...

Bad.

That City I Wanted

2012-01-04T02:08:00.008-05:00

And then I landed.
Grounded, perfection.
Bottomless springs
With algae and sunlight
Beers and bicycles...
And it's so quiet.

Touching the desert
With my hands and feet
With every intention
Of rebirth.

The asphalt left my heels
And the pores
In my hands
Were once again free
Of everything the city
Wanted all of them to be.

Because not everything
Is about "that",
That thing you think
Will save you,
Not degrade you.
That which is greed
And clubs,
And 2 story townhomes.

My tattoos,
My tanned skin
Will never forget each step
I took with you...
Each lesson you preached.

When I get my face-lift,
When I sell out again
I'll call you.
30 years
Isn't very long.

I Already Knew You A Month Before I Met This (You)

2012-01-03T20:54:00.005-05:00

The things you say
The way you say it
You suck me in
You suck me dry
Like a giant pipe
Of needed want

And then I don't hear
A word for days
And things go quiet
Finally
But the panic sets in
Of what will be

Dopamine
and seratonin
And ecstasy (not in pill form)
You liar, you whore
You, the one I will always...
Adore.

Don't ever stop doing
What you do
Because everyone will love
And be addicted to you.

Almost Winter

2011-10-29T05:40:00.001-04:00

Maybe we didn't know how good we had it.

Those nights that we sat there, on your bed, careless. Listening to bands that the youth have just now discovered (before they became famous of course)...we didn't really know, did we. You held me so closely, and I looked up at the ceiling as if everything we love comes from up above. For months we spoke of hope and dreams. For years they came true, and maybe it didn't even matter.

Suddenly I woke up one day and realized everything is more complicated. Dating has become more of a quizzical reality TV show test—-the audition to end all auditions, and it's nothing close to what it was. When I was with you, when we were laying on your bed, figuring life out at the same pace... looking into each others' eyes as easily as one looks into the night sky. We didn't know what we were holding, aside from each other.

My stomach flips as I realize I will never really feel that way again. I hope I do, but doubts have begun to settle in. After the last heart break (%&^*^&*^*^), I can't take much more, so I won't. I look at the photos of men I once knew, on mountain tops, in love and in sync with life, and I sink down into a valley of....valley of nostalgia and hope. Lust for something I always thought I would have, and then had, but it never quite felt right. That starry night I saw in a painting just isn't coming forth and somehow this feeling of have-not is supposed to be something to be reckoned with. I don't want the damn reckon.
I want the sun.

I want the conversations on the bed, with the fake stars we put up together above on your stupid cheaply painted ceiling in your cheap house on your cheap block in your cheap “up and coming” neighborhood. I want them back. I want the planetarium of fantasies to be real, just like I imagined. I want to think about what it would be like to build a garden, with you. And today I really never do. I never really feel much of anything.

Yesterday I was almost run off the road by a drunk driver. A stranger I have no control over, someone who had no control of who they might hurt, what they might ruin. And I wanted to call you and tell you....

But you are long gone, many years later, and I am here in my valley of plastic stars and planetarium winters.

You are rich now, and I'm an artist. I'll always love you in my alternate reality, my plastic star epiphany.

Ambition & Ambiguity

2011-08-11T12:42:00.005-04:00

"I think I'll move to Austin. Why not."

I'm sitting in a friend's home in the north side of Chicago, it's a beautiful day in May, and we have just finished spending the day riding scooters near Buck Town and Lincoln Park. Everything is bittersweet, because I am suddenly realizing that staying in New York City much longer is simply a bad idea. Feeling the wind on my face and the sunshine on my back has changed everything, and things in New York have been falling apart for some time. No longer do I smile much in the city, or laugh much, or look forward to walking outside of my front door into a pit of smog and skyscrapers. The bridges don't light up the way they used to. The thrill is gone, and the mind is wandering. My fatigue and cynicism have taken over everything passionate, and it's time to make that big choice to leave a place I have worked so hard to be a part of for a large chunk of my 20's. I'm not just leaving a city, I'm leaving behind a civilization, a lover, a sense of identity; I'm leaving behind an illusion, the greatest machine ever made...

"You guys have alleys! Genius. That way the trash doesn't sit outside on the street, huh?" My friends smile at me and nod, like my enthusiasm is a bit misunderstood. Neither have been to New York, and I feel like a tourist in my own country. "And you guys smile at each other, and say 'Excuse me'...and you hold doors open and say 'Good morning'. Damn, I have missed human decency." I sigh and take a sip of my beer. We are sitting on their giant back patio, letting the sun drench the wood around us while we accept that spring is one of the best things to ever exist on this latitudinal line. For the first time in months, I feel...happy.

I left my job in midtown Manhattan in April. My co-workers took me out for drinks and gave me a "Happy Retirement" (at the age of 28) greeting card they had all signed with endearing comments. Thinking about it now, I feel emotional, but at the time I had the flu for the third time that year, so wasn't quite thinking clearly. I wanted to get on with life in parts of the country outside of Manhattan and Brooklyn. I wish I could have taken them with me (both boroughs, all friends)--transform this existence to a place with wildflowers and smiling strangers. A place that rubs your shoulders when you are sad, rather than locking you in a symbolic solitary confinement cell.

Every person has a different feeling about living in certain cities. Some people love Seattle and will never leave it, because they love the rain, fish markets and wilderness. Some people adore Los Angeles (?) because of the glamour and sunshine. Some people love Minneapolis, for the music scene and friendliness. Me, I love change, and finding new places. At least for now...my city will be a culmination of many in my mind.

I cried my whole flight to Austin from JFK, a good 4 hours of tears streaming down my face, for reasons greater than what can be written on a piece of paper. The woman next to me looked quite uncomfortable, but New York taught me to really not give a shit what other people think. I left behind my dream of being rich and famous, or just becoming a well-rounded professional, and in the process accomplished that which I did not originally intend to accomplish. I left behind my artistic lover, and I left behind a part of my youth. In three and a half years time, I had become a completely independent, humble, persevering, and considerate soul, aware that life is not your friend without hard work and treating others with kindness and respect. "The world owes you nothing", as some people say, and until you understand that first and foremost, it's difficult to really start your life. Everything we do is up to us, and everyone is capable of quite a bit more than they might have ever imagined. And that's a wonderful thing. New York City was wonderful and horrible and genuine and frightening and aesthetically pleasing and careless and energizing for so many years to me. And now it's time, again, to step off the platform and dive into a new chapter.

I miss it every day.

But I have a tan now, and a car, and swimming pools, and nature all around me. I can't complain. Let the adventures continue forever, with a little bite of Big Apple wedged inside my heart, pumping through my veins.

Easier To Leave Than To Be Left Behind

2011-05-24T00:55:00.007-04:00

It's easier to leave than to be left behind
Leaving was never my proud
Leaving New York, never easy
I saw the light fading out

Now life is sweet
And what it brings
I tried to take
But loneliness
It wears me out
It lies in wait

-R.E.M. Leaving New York

A Day in the Life

2011-03-29T12:45:00.008-04:00

It's 8 a.m. on recent Thursday. I hear the dreaded noise I hear almost every morning. My roommate's alarm on her phone is going off (thankfully, it's a cheerful bell noise, not a fog horn), and I know exactly what this will mean. She will be pushing snooze every 5 minutes, in her sleep, for the next hour or so, considering she is taking several college courses while also working late nights at a restaurant in the city. I have ear plugs, xanax, and a sleep mask, but this doesn't do the trick anymore. I decide to get up an hour before I usually do so I can sneak in a shower before heading to the office slightly early, rather than put a pillow over my face and lie there with my eyes squinted shut. Normally this would not be an issue, but our small Lower East Side place is a one bedroom, and my bedroom is pretty much the equivalent of an entry-way/kitchen/dining room/living room.

I love my morning walk to the 6 train. I pass the most amazingly ugly church (or whatever it is now) on Bowery, and there are always at least a couple of bum-like gentlemen sitting on the front steps, smelling up the sidewalk and spewing odd comments (for example, "Damn girl, I LOVE your purse!"). I usually bump into anywhere from 2 to 12 tourists on Spring St.; often they are stalled, stopping in the middle of the narrow sidewalks to snap photos of street carts and dress shops. I always walk past them thinking "Wow, if today were my vacation day to prance around the city, I would be a happy girl." It's been a really long time since I've been able to leisurely stroll around Manhattan on a Thursday morning. Most days I am power walking so I'm not 15 minutes late.

After exiting the station in midtown I grab my much needed coffee with milk and sugar along with my "NYPD breakfast special" (turkey, egg whites, swiss, in a wrap, YUM). I used to have issues with walk rage/transit tension, maybe a year or so ago, and it was quite ongoing. But now I am used to the push and shove of my train commute and typically listen to meditation MP3s to keep myself from becoming aggro. Or play games on my phone where I am destroying things and blowing up imaginary buildings. Not kidding.

I like my job, I love my co-workers. 6 PM comes along, and it's time to head out, back downtown from midtown. A list always pops in my head of what to do. I could go out for cocktails with friends? Then I remember skinning the hell out of my knee last week after falling down in the middle of Park Ave. I was NOT drunk, but on my way from the office to the bar to get drunk, so this already has negative connotations. I could go to the gym? Do some running? Okay, maybe. I could go shopping. Oops, can't spend money, saving for a trip to Austin. Eventually I settle on walking home, which is about 2-3 miles--plenty of exercise for one day. After climbing the steps to my 5th story Rapunzel tower-like apartment, I pop a bean burrito into the microwave (Amy's Kitchen, Southwestern Burrito is THE best), pick out some Netflix movies online to watch, and re-open the red wine I bought the day before from an angry Frenchman.

Right before I fall asleep, I curse winter, say goodnight to New York City, think of everyone I love along with my glorious weekend plans and glorious black-colored vintage outfits I will wear. Life or something like it, I guess, and I can't really complain. I just can't remember at what exact point in time I began to think of myself as routine-like, almost boring, and completely used to falling asleep to the sound of sirens.

If This Was New York City...

2011-03-29T12:44:00.001-04:00

http://ifthiswasny.tumblr.com/

Spring, Really Now. Right Now.

2011-03-28T22:25:00.006-04:00

Ay ay ay, New York City. Really? Am I really still here after 3 years? I guess I am, indeed--living and learning and loving and hating. I'm spending all my money on nothing in particular and riding subways and hailing cabs. I haven't written in a long while, like a couple of months, and I'm not really sure why. The doldrums of winter have left me tired, boring, and mute. I don't have much to say to my friends some days either, so what the hell am I supposed to write about, to tell perfect strangers?

I moved down to the Lower East Side back in November, and have really enjoyed living in Manhattan. Part of me misses those Brooklyn hipsters (little devils, yous) and cafes, but it's a much quicker commute to my job now, not to mention a few thousand new bars and restaurants to explore. I write this as if I am going out to eat and drink every night - quite the contrary. Netflix and Trader Joe's have become my two best friends this winter, and I save my pretty pennies for the couple of weekend outings I always highly look forward to. I've also joined a gym, and I look like the most awkward person in there. Especially when I am lifting free weights next to Mr. Jersey Shore himself, in my long-sleeved t-shirt with a hole in the shoulder. I get a kick out of pretending like I know what I'm doing.

I guess I stopped writing because things slowed down in my life a bit, or settled down for a while. The only thing that has been exciting are the incredible ups and downs of my relationship of two and a half years. Our on-again, off-again lifestyle could be three to four novels in length of dramatic prose, easily; perhaps the wounds are still healing so I'm not quite ready to share this juicy mess with others yet. He means a lot to me, and always will, but for now we are off-again. And this means I am alone in my apartment, listening to 90s girl-power/disco music, talking to my stoned roommate while she studies, and attempting to type complete sentences again.

Love sucks, it really does. I'm not really a fan anymore actually, and I've been wishing lately that I was a psychopathic person who felt nothing for other humans. I'm quite the opposite, as most of us are, and that's the shitty part. I feel everything, and yesterday I spent 10 minutes crying which felt like a whole year to someone who doesn't cry unless extremely drunk off her ass (usually every 4 months or so?). I kept refreshing my G-mail page over and over while crying, then eventually slammed my laptop shut. That's not a good sign, now that I'm seeing these words on typed on my computer screen. Luckily, I finally have a few kick ass girlfriends I care about and who care about me, so I can text one of them when I start to engage in really strange acts of solo emotional wreckage.

This Friday it will be the beginning of April, and that's not good enough. This winter was so damn harsh that April should just borrow a little bit from May, because we have honestly had enough. And once the weather is really nice in May, I'm getting the hell out of NYC of a week or two to find out how the rest of the country lives. Austin, California, maybe even Chicago... The travel itch is coming on strong. Oh, and I'll spend a while in Kansas City, to see my family I have become astrayed from a bit, who know me like no one does here in Gotham.

Maybe some day I will become a real writer. For now, I am struggling to find anything about myself I can come close to finding interesting. The writer's dilemma, or the dilemma of March? For this monotonous phase, I apologize to my readers. Come visit me here on the Lower East Side so we can stir up some much needed trouble.

Hellish Kitchen

2011-02-02T20:34:00.002-05:00

And here I am, sitting in my apartment at 8:30 PM on a Friday, trying to shake off a week of juggling work with a social life (I'm starting to learn how to do it). Last night we went to a show in Hell's Kitchen that involved amazing Rock Steady (better than Reggae, in my opinion) music, and in order to have the energy to do this I did the right thing. I split a "5 Hour Energy", that tasted like battery acid, with my date, which gave us each 2.51 hours of energy a piece. Plenty of time to go to a concert after having bellies full of mediocre $50 Mexican food.

After being told "Fuck You" about one hundred times by a homeless person on 52nd and 9th Ave who we denied a cigarette to (come on REALLY, they are $14 a pack now), we entered our beautiful establishment full of friends from distant lands and discussed the fine topics of China Town, bed bug epidemics, foreclosure, insanity in the city, and why we all seriously LOVE Rock Steady music. It was a pretty good time, I have to say. Rock Steady and Reggae are about as far away a music genre from my real time life as I can possibly imagine.

Staring up at the brightly lit apartment building outside of the bar was kind of amazing. You can watch people living their evening lives right on 9th Ave, and because one of my favorite movies growing up was Hitchcock's Rear Window, you can only imagine the voyeuristic delight that occurs inside my tummy on a day to day basis. What I've realized after three years of pumping out whatever I have left in the NYC, is that I've come to notice that everyone here is (for the most part) here for the same purpose. We want to make our dreams come true in a dark, in a Scorcese type of way, and to find love and friends in a fashion we didn't understand while we were kids. We just prefer it here because it's tough, hard, and there is no glory without the guts. Amen. Ahem. Not to sound like one of "those" people, but yeah, I said it.

Sinking Into February, Swimming to the Top

2011-02-02T19:41:00.008-05:00

Concrete city and plastic faces. It's February, and I believe February to be the most bullshit month of the year (and thankfully, the shortest). I worked my ass off today after working out too much and too hard last night until 10 PM. I'm extremely sore everywhere. Tonight, I got home, found a heavy t-shirt fabric bottom sheet in my wash-and-fold laundry that did not belong to me, then gelled into the couch. The couch being, my bed near the refrigerator in lovely Lower East Side. I sat there only to dread walking the heavy sheet back to the laundromat before they closed, only to go up and down the 5 flights of my apartment once again.

After taking half of a Xanax and watching ten minutes of a "reality" television show, I can officially say I am losing momentum lately, and possibly my mind. The usual wintry mix of emotion. Not that I have given up necessarily, as I firmly believe that tomorrow is always another day, but it would be nice to have the energy on days other than Sunday or Monday to hold a normal conversation with someone--or join a marching band, the roller derby team, spelunking club... Instead, after work, I typically run for the flat city hills toward my apartment once leaving the subway, then bitch about life to my roommate for about an hour before daydreaming about New York City parks being a grand display of lush greenery again. I realize that I haven't truly sat in the presence of any sunlight since September, and considering it has snowed almost every day for two months now, I am somewhat speechless at this moment.

In my day to day routine, it's not unusual to see a stranger scream at a cab from the street if they don't know what exact neighborhood that person would like to be taken to. It is not unusual to spend the entire day surrounded by hundreds of people and have one (1) 5 minute conversation in a 12 hour span. It's not unusual for me to wake up one day and feel like I can take over the world, only the next day to fall on my face with exhaustion and reluctance for my capitalistic club membership. It's not unusual to dream of distant beach destinations every moment I can, slipping over 6 times on the way to work because the sidewalks are full of freezing rain accumulation. I know for a fact that none of these strangers would reach out to catch me were I to fall, unless it was one person in the 12% exception bracket of the Manhattan population. It's not unusual to hear the cries of a homeless man in the 6 train subway station, on a daily basis, about how we aren't finding Jesus fast enough. Perhaps I would find "Him" in the ever-sunny California.

So, where does the positivity come in? Because yes, I do feel it about 50% of the time. It's just difficult to portray it to others when I have burned too many calories in a day and not consumed quite enough to express a single smile. I'm trying to lose ten pounds, always...and have therefore gained about 5 over the holidays while now losing 15. The math works. Salads and gyms and 5th floor walk-up apartments...Oh My.

If someone had told me at the age of 22 that life kind of gets infinitely more challenging toward your late 20s if you are motivated to get to the top--I would have perhaps made different choices. Hedonism is no longer an option, and self-preservation and robot/machine antics must always be at the top of my list. My skin is so thick it would probably take an extremely expensive x-ray to see all the way to my bones (do I have any left? Not sure). It's a normal expression of being alive these days to have the perseverance of a feral cat lost in the Greenland mountaintops. I should have listened to my mother, 7 years ago.

The good news is, well, I got my hair styled last week at a great Manhattan salon. And I got an amazingly long facial yesterday at a discount price. And I bought new bras a couple of weeks ago. Other than that, there must be something more out there that I am too tired to take on but will someday soon, because I'm not sure how much more of the NYC grind I can take (not to mention, I have had 4 colds since the cold weather set in). Waaaa, waa, wa.

No, really though. I AM staying positive, and my inspiration for writing today is the simple fact that February kind of sucks, as I'm sure everyone in cold/temperate climates would agree, and at this exact moment I would give my right arm for a hammock, a cocktail, a beach sunset, and great conversation. Four more years of working hard and living right, and I predict that my chances are realistic of being able to do this tropical-style getaway more often.

Welcome to America, kids. And, always remember that hard work does pay off, and occasionally you may find other peoples' wash in your clean laundry bag. It's all good. For now though, let's all take a moment to salute to SPRING, the best season that will occur during this dreary, 2011 apocalyptic winter of extreme weather and lovely hibernation. May you all be well and overdosing on Vitamin D.

:-)

The I Didn't Write This, I Kind of Wish I Did

2010-11-04T13:36:00.001-04:00

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2010/11/50_reasons_to_b.php

Redemption

2010-10-28T14:32:00.007-04:00

Things I would miss about the city were I to leave it:

The transportation. I can get anywhere at almost any time by subway, bus, cab, car service, or rail. And by anywhere I mean the Jersey Shore all the way to Yonkers. I don't pay for car insurance, oil changes, or gas anymore.
The quickness. Everything moves 100 miles per hour so you are never, ever bored.
The hot dog stands and the Pakistani man on the corner who owns one and called me "crazy" one day.
The parks. They are beautiful, and Central Park is one of my favorite places in the world to be.
The FOOD. I order from a Chinese/Japanese restaurant almost every day and never get the same thing. It's always delicious. And despite what people think you really can live in NYC on $5/day for 3 meals if you know the ropes. I did it for months when I first arrived.
The sassiness. If you do not follow the known code of the city, i.e. walking rules, subway rules, and elevator rules, you will be given dirty looks and possibly spoken to very abrasively.
The danger. There are 100 different ways to die here, anything from air conditioner window units falling on top of you from a 10th story apartment to the third rail in the subways, to a taxi running over you when you actually do have the right of way walk signal. After living here for a while, you are a tough bitch and every day you don't die is good day. Something about this is enthralling to me, and it makes you never sweat the small stuff.
The street and subway performers. They seriously make my day. The mariachi guys to the beat boxers in the Union Square station.
Trader Joe's Wine Shop. I know they have this place in other cities, but it's an incredible thing for any wine lover, and it's on my way home (sort of) from the office.
The beautiful sky line. It's really the best in the world, and the Empire State Building changes it's lights each night to represent something different. It looks awesome.
The clothes. I didn't realize that I didn't really know how to dress well until I moved here. You see hundreds of people every single day to get style tips from, and you can really get away with most any hip ensemble you can think of. Boots, kick ass jackets, and leggings are essential cold weather wear for the ladies, and I love it.
The bridges. There are so many of them that I still don't know what some of them are. At night they light up with their light blue lights and it's pretty breathtaking. When I walk home across the Pulaski Bridge I can see four of them in all different directions just from where I'm standing.
Coming home to NYC is amazing after you've been away on a trip. You feel proud to live where you live, and you immediately make plans to hit up your watering hole and say hi to your friends. The city looks new again and it's like starting all over, even if you've only left it for one week.
The breakfast options. I think and think and think each morning on the subway what I'm going to order at my favorite deli spot--sometimes I get egg whites and tomato on a bagel, other times I get turkey bacon, cheese and spinach on a roll. And it's fresh and made to order for about $3. I'm not a morning person so I have to have fresh and good food to look forward to after a half hour transit ride. Not to mention the guys that work at this place are SO nice, and it just makes me happy when I see them.
The EVENTS! Anything you can think of wanting to do can be done in NYC. From concerts, to museum displays, to festivals, to restaurant weeks, it's all here at your fingertips at all times.
The deli cats. They work hard to keep stores rodent-free.
The parties that I accidentally get invited to and you end up on a 20th floor terrace over-looking Manhattan. There is no better place to have a cocktail and make a friend than overlooking the craziest city in the world.
The tourists. I have no idea why, but I get asked for directions all the time. I never thought I looked like I knew what I was doing, but when I do get asked I really like helping people. This place can get so damn confusing and if new to it, you really do need help.
The exercise. You can walk 4-5 miles here per day and not even really notice you are doing it. I grew up in a city where you basically have to drive everywhere, so to me this is the only way people should live.
Coney Island in the summer. You will never find a place like this, never ever ever.

That's enough for now. My last couple of posts seemed to knock the city, but really it's just me feeling a bit spent.

A Little Bit of Metaphor

2010-10-28T01:09:00.005-04:00

Some days you're the spider, some days you're the fly. But most days, you're just the web.

It's Familiar But Maybe Never Will Be

2010-10-26T20:56:00.004-04:00

Walking home from work after my "physical therapy" appointment, I feel nothing but emptiness inside. My chiropractor tells me that I'm "physically depressed", which is why I guess I need physical therapy. Apparently there is a difference between mental depression and physical depression, and I smiled as I asked him so he wouldn't think I was some Sylvia Plath nutcase. He told me I have shattered my adrenalin, endorphins, and I guess self-esteem by living the Manhattan life of working too much and too often for nearly three years now. Perhaps my boss would disagree, but I am sort of beginning to feel like a wounded puppy who desperately needs part-time work, not full-time work, as the best treat for good behavior. Or maybe I'm just destined to feel exhausted to the point of having no social life between Monday and Thursday.

Perhaps some of us are more sensitive than we let on. Perhaps we think we are super heroes that can ignore what our body is telling us for so long that we end up with vertigo, agoraphobia, and a drinking problem. Is this the New York City destiny if you let it go for too long?

Regardless, I have changed my commute route from my office job to consist of walking across the Pulaski Bridge each evening (an attempt to raise my level of endorphins, as my chiropractor suggests), which separates Queens from Brooklyn on the west side of the boroughs. With amazing views of the Manhattan night skyline, you can't help but have a few minutes after your day to reflect about life and the concept of liberty. And me, tonight, all I felt was silence. I even sat on the bench, Buddhist-like, that lies in the middle of the bridge, overlooking the river and the Empire State Building in the distance (for 5 minutes I thought about what I would do if I were to get mugged--obviously I would go into ninja state)--and I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. Everything was just still and just as it was.

And in the silence of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, I walked home to my apartment, with my headphones blaring "Total Eclipse of the Heart", a song that always makes me tear up no matter where I am or how I'm feeling. I spend my walks ignoring the disgusting cat calls of deli owners and the blaring horns, eyes down, searching for anything color-filled and pretty that I can spot along my way. Pretty is good. Pretty makes me feel good again.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that New York has begun to feel like my home, but I've never been faced with such a mysterious place in all of my life. Or maybe it's not a mystery at all, just an amplified version of what people are used to. Think of your home town, then add 10 million people to it, along with a bunch of flashing lights and trash trucks. I can't get comfortable here, and perhaps that's the appeal of New York City--it's fucking awkward and disgusting, yet people love it. And I love it, for what it truly is. And you're not truly a New Yorker until you start to hate it, and take it for granted, just a tiny bit.

New York When You're Not Into It

2010-10-23T01:40:00.008-04:00

And I walk around this city, completely bruised, tolerated.

The world owes me nothing, and I know this now. I need to feel my face in a familiar place but there is nothing around to find that is familiar.

Faces, all these faces. A woman so keen on making it, breaking a leg, and yet I can't see the end point because I'm wrapped around just making it to the subway in time to get to work 10 minutes late. I think of the Polish woman I once saw so often playing Cranberries covers in the train station (she was actually really good).

The people, the people. The bible thumps, the skateboarders, the smelly gross bums that make subway cars empty...I never knew life could be this real.

The Friday nights when I decide whether or not I should take a muscle relaxer. The boyfriend who is so amazing and present, and yet I am never present. The delivery.com that I decide to order from once I finally have an appetite, and all that is left is the horrible Mexican/American restaurant with disgusting burritos--so I go hungry.

The talks of another place, and yet knowing that New York was not so bad two days ago, it just feels awful today. Because that bastard cut in front of me on my way to the escalator, on my way to the M train. Fuck.

It's great, this place. It's great, and it's not. It's a million miles away from normalcy, and for some reason I feel proud to know it and live it. Every person here I meet is incredible and so ambitious as a human being.

Yet I, me, I have no resilience. I am trapped in a cycle of longing and staring, waiting for God to hand me a lottery winning when I have never purchased a lottery ticket. Perhaps overcoming the lack of energy is the key to Manhattan love, but me, I'm just longing for something real. I'm longing for a jam session in the middle of the country...perhaps they will play "American Pie" by Don McLean and then everything will go back to normal.

No Tips, No Tolerance

2010-10-06T21:23:00.008-04:00

You thought you knew who you were, but you never do.

Me, I'm now compromised.

Sitting here in the low light of my living room, typing away about what I thought my experience in New York would be like, only to conceptualize what it's actually become.

I've managed to run away from my feelings for some time now--the anger of working frustrating jobs and having no time or energy for release and decompression. The feeling that I am trapped in the urban hell I once thought would be heaven. The sense that things around me are going okay but inside me they never will be. The stares from strange people all around me that only make me feel emptier. The dreams I dream at night that I am surrounded by wilderness; deserts, mountains, and oceans are calling to me and welcoming me into their virginal arms.

Today I rudely ordered angel hair pasta from the downstairs Italian restaurant I once loved. I became rude after discovering that Gino, my favorite restaurant host ever, is nowhere to be found. I guess he quit a month ago or something, and tonight I realized he was the only reason I ever ordered takeout from that place. He treated us like family and was a good neighbor, and now I'm taking my frustrations out on this poor blonde waitress who doesn't have a clue of anything going on around her. For the first time in my life, I don't tip the person giving me my takeout order. I ask her where Gino is, she tells me he doesn't work there anymore. I scowl and walk out the door, pushing past a man who is blocking me from leaving and I don't say "excuse me", because every time I do no one says it back to me. I gave up on that a few months ago.

I'm frustrated because I didn't want to feel like drinking tonight, but I am. I'm frustrated because I bought a bottle of wine at the wine store I don't like going to on the way home because the better wine store is two more blocks down than I'm willing to walk. The wine was so turned (it was bad) that it had become carbonated, and I spit it out. I'm frustrated because I was so hungry when I got home that not even a grilled cheese would do the trick, and so angry that even Sex and the City episodes couldn't calm me down and put me in my usual post 9-5 day trance. I'm frustrated because this is the first time I have really written in months, and I moved here to become a writer. I feel as though I have nothing to say, that my heart and brain are broken. My trip to Mexico two weeks ago was a mistake, perhaps, because this re-urbanization has become much more difficult than I thought.

Everything seems lately to be a huge let-down, more so than it should be. You know you are heading downhill when a bad bottle of wine makes you want to break a plate, even a really nice plate, on the kitchen floor with no remorse. It wasn't even the wine really, just the feeling of getting off the train and numbly walking down the same block to my apartment; no smiles from anyone, no laughter anywhere. The air is turning cold and apparently I'm finally losing it.

I read these past entries I've written and scoff at the waste of time my idealism once created. Yet, at the same time, I miss feeling that way, like the world would somehow take me under its wing and finally and show me the path to truth. But it hasn't yet, and I'm tired of wondering if everything will forever be life in the hamster wheel. I'm going to throw my neck out again, like I did last week, if I continue on this path of tense, manic thinking. I miss feeling as though my idealism was my way of rebelling against a world of greed and cynicism. In a way, I've become the greedy cynic I once rebelled against.

Maybe we are set up to occasionally feel miserable, so that life isn't always boring and you are constantly forced to seek new solutions for your misery. Not that I always feel this way (in fact lately things have been pretty okay) but I guess there are moments from the past couple of years that have all stacked upon each other like Jenga blocks, and now I am finally finding myself being pushed over the edge by them. I even tried taking up smoking pot again, but clearly that didn't work...

Damn. Damn tonight.

Every time I try to write the title of this blog, the typing turns to Arabic. I don't know how to fix this web error. Perhaps this is a metaphor for the way I am living my life right now--thinking one way, and yet it comes out as something completely garbled and foreign to myself and to everyone else. I'm going to read this post tomorrow and laugh, but for now I'm allowing myself to feel like this.

I'm lonely tonight in New York. I'm aching for something to make my heart smile. I don't know how to find "it" anymore, and I'm turning 28 soon. Which, two years from now will seem stupid to have typed in that context, but right now it feels kind of like Doomsday getting closer. I wanted to feel something different by this point in my life, and all I feel is static.

*and a note to my parents, who I know read this ritually: you don't have to worry about me, I just had a bad day and felt like writing about it. My therapist is a very nice lady, ha ha

10 Sarcastic Rules for New New Yorkers with Day Jobs*

2010-07-30T13:56:00.001-04:00

1. Look back on hard times with pride and dignity. These crazy months are what made you the badass you are today, even if you did eat PB & J for two months straight for every single meal, and call your mother to use her credit card to order groceries from Fresh Direct. Always remember the reason you are the person you are today: Craigslist.

2. Any co-worker who passive aggressively tries to upset you, undermine you, speak despicable things of you behind your back, or plot a skydiving trip while they are "sick" and "working from home", leaving you with an extra week's worth of work to do -- should be immediately sabotaged. Tell them to their face that you are not their "bitch", then alert upper management and human resources.

3. Although bars close in Manhattan at 4 or 5 AM, do not accept this glorious offer more than once a month on a weekday night, or you will get disciplined at work. People CAN smell vodka on your breath when you have "disco napped" for 2 hours just before your 9 AM meeting. Just saying.

4. If you see feces, vomit, or any unidentified objects on the subway platform or in the train car, avoid all eye contact and remind yourself that sometimes human beings are disgusting, and you are fabulous. Also, ALWAYS look on the subway seat before sitting down, as well as to your left and to your right for who you will be accompanying for the ride. Otherwise, you could be surprise attacked by smelly, overly aggressive drug addicts or even "mole people" (they do exist!).

5. When someone asks you for directions on the street, always be smug and slightly rude. This maintains the true nature and blessing of New York City and keeps us original. Otherwise the tourists will have nothing exciting to tell everyone back home.

6. When invited to any type of event or work "social", even if it involves putting mini golf balls around by the pier and you can barely stay awake because you stayed out until 4 AM the night before, just GO. Or at least try to go. If you don't network here, you will end up eating PB & J sandwiches for two months for every meal. Keep all business cards you are offered in a (tiny) special drawer in your tiny apartment.

7. If you get the chance to leave the city, for a weekend or for a trip, DO it. Otherwise you will slowly go insane and start to actually go TO the psychics in Chinatown that charge you $5-$500 per reading to find out why you have night sweats and feel like throwing street meat at people. And if you can't leave the city often enough, the parks truly are a fantastic place to rejuvenate yourself after your soul has been dirtied by urban debauchery for WAY too long.

8. People in New York are often overbooked, running late, and trying to advance their careers in any way they can. If you want to grab coffee with an old acquaintance, text or Facebook them at least 10 days in advance or your chances of meeting up with them are slim to none.

9. Do NOT allow yourself to begin an obsession with bedbugs, though they do exist and they are real. If you are at least semi-OCD, and you do by chance end up with them, it is not the end of the world. Also, there are plenty of really great therapists in the city.

10. Just be yourself, and if that's not cutting it, join a gym, get a mani pedi, and go see that psychic fortune teller you were always curious about. But most importantly, be amongst people who really like you and have your back, because without that it's hard to love the true and tantalizing New York the way it should be loved. It's actually a pretty amazing place, once you have graduated from the PB & J and pizza slices and moved on to sushi and hors d'oeuvres. :-)

*Disclaimer: these are all the opinions of a 27 year old female who has lived in NYC for 2 and a half years, and these opinions are probably not entirely based on reality.

Reminiscing on the past 730 (minus 90) days in NYC

2010-04-28T20:17:00.008-04:00

I'm approaching my two year anniversary in New York City (not including a three month stint in San Diego last spring). It's hard to believe I've been away from my hometown that long, day by day getting closer to a sense of ease--or possibly further away from a panic attack.

It's been quite the ride, I have to say. A fascinating blur of emotional highs and lows, knowing that many more are yet to come and saying "show me what you got" with muscles tensed and fists clenched. A lot of things have softened lately. The first bartender I ever met in NYC was from New Zealand, and having lived here nearly 8 years told me, "The first year is going to fucking suck. And then you will never want to leave." Those words still ring true in many ways, but for me I guess it was more like the first year and a half...

It's hard to believe that all I had when I stepped off that Chinatown bus 2 years ago were two bags, some ugly shoes, idealism, and a couple grand in the bank.

A few highlights from the past two years:

While becoming accustomed to having no vehicle, I've had the pleasure of witnessing some of the best subway songs, sermons, smells, and train break-downs of all time (one day I was trapped on the L train between Brooklyn and Manhattan for 45 minutes because someone had pulled the emergency brake as some strange version of a rush hour prank).

Though I used to be a starer, I have learned to keep my head down and involved in a book or magazine unless something incredibly interesting is going on, because really, what's the point of looking at people you will never see again, or worse, have them catch you staring at them and analyzing their every move. I never thought of it that way when I lived in the Midwest, but when you ride crowded trains every day all the time, something about the constant invasion of privacy changes you. You are amongst so many more people, yet so much more closed off.

My favorite moments as of late include a woman on the J train, who preaches very loudly to a crowd from the middle of Brooklyn all the way to downtown Manhattan. I call her the "Witches and Warlocks" preacher woman, an expression she uses often in her speech. I was lucky enough to have her in my subway car three times in two weeks, and learned that 80 percent of people are devils who only want to steal your soul, but if you have the strength to ask, Jesus will save you - no church required. She was an amazing public speaker who was good at scaring the crap out of everyone, and when someone would make a wise crack she would look them in the eye with a rote response for anything, which would promptly shut them up.

Another great moment is from last week, on the 6 train, while during the morning rush hour I kept hearing someone loudly mumble the words "Rough Rider", and "Biggie's back" over and over only to find it came from the lips a square, middle aged white man reading a magazine. No headphones, just pure insanity going on right behind me.

I have also witnessed immense kindness. A pregnant woman boards a crowded train and a couple of people immediately stand up to offer her a seat, which she gladly accepts. Or the G train conductor keeps the train at a standstill while smiling as I sprint several hundred feet to catch it while the doors are still open. Or the operators who are told not to do so by the Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York City, but still announce their upcoming favorite subway stops along with the local weather forecast (this is a rare event, but brightens up the whole train car's mood when it happens). "Ladies and gentleman, thank God it's Friday, and the high today is 72 degrees. Thank you for riding with the MTA. The next stop will be the lovely West 4th St."

Today as I walked from my office to the downtown 6 train station, a cabbie was driving along a side street and a drunken man in a business suit charged (wobbled) toward his cab as he was cruising down the street, yelling "You're going too fast, asshole!". The cabbie slammed on his brakes and yelled out the window back. "I'm following the speed limit laws, you drunk jaywalker! Cross the street at the crosswalk, you pig!" I think their cross-town argument was still going on as I descended into the station, but I didn't stick around to see how bad it might have gotten.

When I first moved here, things like this would excite me in a strange way, like you're in the middle of a huge metropolitan circus full of unexpected tricks and stunts and bloopers that break out between random strangers. Today it still feels that way, I just pay attention about half as much. The other day I saw a man trip, fall, then proceed to roll horizontally down a set of stairs in an underground station about ten feet away from me. He just got up, brushed himself off, and checked his grocery bag to make sure nothing was broken (the milk was leaking in a trail behind him). He kept walking with no changed facial expression then boarded the train. It was only myself and an older Hispanic woman that stopped and asked him if he was okay, to which there was no reply or eye contact. Everyone else had deadlines to meet and places to be, I suppose, and the fall didn't seem to bother the man in the least bit.

So what's different, you might ask?

I feel a sense of calm amongst the ruckus. A soft rhythmic cacophony of ambulance and fire engine sirens has been implanted in my brain, and I come to expect the crazy city noise as a person would accept their childhood surroundings for what they are without questioning them. It's become addictive to me, rather than repulsive, to feel the city on my skin, pulsating and ringing in my ears. You can't wear white here, though I still try sometimes, because everything turns to gray, black, or brown no matter what. I have to walk and walk and walk to feel alive now; I have to brush past 1000 people in a given day to know it was a day well spent (most days). I used to hate New York City, and my hatred lasted for about three months--or six months, something like that--for all the reasons one might expect. But then the flowers bloomed, and the tights came off the legs, and the sun came out. And then it didn't feel like living on the Death Star any longer. Things change so fast when everything around you is moving at a faster pace than you can ever possibly keep up with.

I have a relationship. I have a salaried position with health benefits. I have my health back (but still pop pills sometimes to deal with panic, though seldom these days). I have good friends who are artistic and idealistic and caring. I have a relationship with my mother again, though it may be long distance.

It's nice, to struggle and writhe and stubbornly want what you want sometimes, no matter what it takes to get it. Because after you've done it long enough, things really do start to fall into place. And then they might fall out of place again, but you've already dealt with worse, so maybe next time it won't be so bad.

Talk to me in two weeks and ask me if I still believe what I've just written. It's hard to stay optimistic in a town of chutes, ladders, and dirty looks. But I love it, for everything it is and every life it allows stragglers like myself to try to live.

At War With the Unknown Soldiers

2010-02-12T16:28:00.004-05:00

It's my one night I give to myself, entirely alone--to do laundry, watch movies I have already seen a hundred times and still love, organize my perfumes and undergarments, and hang out on the fire escape outside my window smoking cigarettes and staring at the graffiti on our "yard"'s back wall. I love quiet Thursdays, because the rest of the week is generally a mad rushing blur of a whirlwind, juggling work with freelance with writing with relationships and new friendships...it's February in New York City.

This month leaves many of us feeling the blues if we haven't already. The holidays are long over, the snow is still falling, and spring is too far away to get excited quite yet. It's a month of hibernation, rebellion, and introspection. I need quiet, and I need rest more than ever.

As I start to pass out to Aaron Eckhart's beautiful speech in "Thank You For Smoking", I hear a loud banging, a person's foot stomping over and over to a beat on the ceiling above my head. It must be one of our upstairs neighbors who I haven't met yet. (Maybe one of them is that punk-rocker who I let in the other night when he didn't have his key?)

At first I'm not worried whatsoever. The walls in most of these buildings are paper thin and you just get used to it. You put on your headphones and smush your face into the pillow.

Then the music starts.

The cymbals, the drums, the guitars and amps are becoming louder and louder...

Oh shit, I think to myself. Band practice. You're kidding, right?

After an hour of laying in the bed, listening to a Motley Crue-ish cover band play above me, trying to focus on a movie while semi-passing out at the same time, I can't take it anymore. This city is giving me shit every day, and now this? On quiet Thursday? I grab the nearest thing with a handle, a mop sitting in the corner, and bang the tip of the mop against the ceiling, three hard times. I've seen people do this in movies about New York, so maybe it really works. I just do what the movies do. Whatever, seems fun.

The band stops for a second. Then I hear a foot, right above where I shot my noise ammo, stomp on the ground three times, as if to echo my objection to the noise. The hipster band is mocking me!

Oh, wow. Hmmmm. Whoa.

I decide to do it again. I'm standing on my bed, on my tiptoes, trying to reach the loft ceiling with impact.

Boom. Boom. BOOM.

Again the music stops. And, ten seconds later, I hear laughter. BOOM, BOOM, BOOOOOOM, says the foot back.

I'm trapped in hell and I have to be up in 6 hours, with two movies still to watch. "Peaceful, noodle soup, bedtime story, laundry Thursday" is not going to go over easy this week. Damn hipsters. Damn Brooklyn. Damn New York.

I finally doze off at what I think is between 2 and 4 AM after fantasizing about the strange, sarcastic notes I could leave in the foyer of the building, taped on the wall in a distinctive, serial killer-type of hand writing. When I awake at 7:30 AM, none of these awesome notes seem appropriate in any sense. Not unless I want to fight each band member one by one with a paintball gun strapped to my arm while they throw ninja stars at me from over the railing upstairs.

I write this off as a one-time occurrence--and the last time I will ever just lay in my bed and take it while some 20-year-olds hold band practice above my head.

One Xanax later...

***

It's beautiful in the morning. I got some sleep, which is perfectly fine, and today is Friday. It's not Monday, it's not Wednesday, it's f-ing Friday. The sun is shining, covering the Empire State Building in warmth as I walk toward my office through Madison Square Park. I'm smiling, strutting in my "new" thrift store boots I bought the night before, and feeling nothing but happy.

At night, I wonder if I can take this city anymore, then in the morning light, I fall back in love, all over again. It's a regular occurrence. Love/hate, love/hate.

The Misplaced Broad Who Became an Adult

2010-02-02T19:01:00.009-05:00

The city that never sleeps. And if I'm lucky, I will sleep somewhat well and feel somewhat rested tomorrow. Unfortunately, it usually takes one Benadryll plus one Xanax to have a blissful, complete seven hours of sleep these days in this crazy town.

Two nights ago my roommate and I very bluntly confronted our punk-rocking upstairs neighbors, a long standing situation of band practicing above our heads until 5 AM on weeknights. Although the battle may not be over yet, it is definitely looking like the outcome will end up being in our favor (um, stop your band practice before midnight?). After all, we're in our late twenties, unlike our teen neighbors with their spiked hair and spiked belts. We know how to write letters to the right people. And speak sense to the right people. Yes, indeed. The pen and grin are both mightier than tazers.

For many people around the country, this month can be the hardest. February: the month that follows months of holidays and vacations and white Christmases and Festivuses... Ahhhh, yes. February is the biggest thing standing between us and spring flowers and short skirts. It's an ugly month; there's a reason they made February 3 days shorter than the other 11 months.

As I'm typing this I'm looking outside my office window (everyone has already gone home) watching the blizzicane continue to come down atop our workaholic island. Somehow, I'm at peace with it all, though I can't say I even remember what leaves on trees look like anymore.

At this time last year, I was getting on a plane to leave New York to move to San Diego. I thought it was what I wanted...to be a hard worker, doing exactly what an organization needs me to do. Do what the good people and the good politicians the good Protestants say is right. I also wanted to get away from New York City to see other lands (warmer lands). Maybe New York really isn't for me, I kept thinking. This is a question all of us city dwellers must ask ourselves of our current residence. Is it worth the exhaustion, the straphanging, the high rents, and the occasional freak-outs? A year ago, I thought perhaps it wasn't. Then two months later, after living by the beach for a while, I could think of nothing other than getting back here, back to the center of large prosperity, deep poverty, and extraordinary culture . I missed the hell out of it, and to this day, no simple paragraph can truly explain why.

Last night I came to a realization regarding a theory so many philosophers have spent their lives deciphering and theorizing about: human desire versus human happiness.

What I've come to realize is that I'm actually kind of, um, dumb. Every time I want to run somewhere or change something, be it a new job, a new city, a new relationship, what I'm actually doing is avoiding feeling attachment to all my current surroundings. And, if I look at these surroundings closely enough they turn out to be great, satisfying things I already have--things I already want. What I'm running from time and time again, I'm not quite sure of...

Trust me, I'll still run again in the future, from something very necessary and important I'm quite certain, but I think in my mind I've finally decided that even with February, I can't complain. Despite this monster under my bed and over my city, I want to stay here for a while. Maybe even be responsible, try to make money, have a photography exhibit at a Chelsea gallery, make good friends, and put on a smile on my face as I push myself to the subway station with 30 mph wind and snow in my face.

It's hard not to run away sometimes. Then again, the older I get, the more I realize that there will always be loud neighbors occasionally, no matter where you are in the country or the world. There will always be discomfort. It's all about how you handle it.

At this moment I choose to handle it with confidence and class, and to love New York City during its darkest hour, the way a mother loves a child who is struggling.

A Little Bit of Zen from Within

2010-01-24T17:56:00.003-05:00

New York New York New York.

It's been a while since I have been able to compose my thoughts enough to write an actual entry. Looking back on 2008 and 2009, these were probably the most monumental years of my silly, complicated life.

Brief bio: Moved to New York City on a whim in May of '08, worked myself like crazy with intense campaigns for politics and the environment (they do go hand in hand, as usual), found love and companionship when I least expected it, moved to San Diego with two weeks' notice last March, and returned to New York to find the challenges only increasing as the days go by. I have lived in 8 different apartments in the past 20 months. No wait, 9, actually.

And the list goes on.

The good news is, despite the Xanax I am now prescribed for immense anxiety, and the panic attacks that come and go like I have never experienced, things really are looking clearer--perhaps "less oblivious" is how I find myself feeling. I feel as though I'm facing some milder version of PTSD--the nightmares that everything is falling apart, the dreams that I'm never going to be who I'm supposed to be or achieve what I want to achieve, the months of utter exhaustion from never having a given myself a break to take a breath, holding on to the idea that work is more important to me than life itself...

Today I awoke on a Sunday morning, over-rested from going to bed early the night before, and thought to myself, "Today is a day I can do anything I want." ANYTHING. This thought does not come easily for a control freak like myself. Maybe something about getting older helps you to see the world as more of your playground, less as your enemy.

So rather than zoning out on the couch watching re-runs of Six Feet Under, I chose to meditate, practice yoga in my living room, and completely focus on seeing the world as a not-so-scary place. Believe me, moving to this big city put the fear of God into my heart and soul for months, and once the music stopped, and I quit my incredibly high-stress job, I found myself standing in the middle of several crossroads. Suddenly, work was not the only thing I had to focus on, and I got to a point where I needed to re-evaluate everything, including whether I even belong in this city at all. "Is it even worth the stress?" I have thought to myself many times. And yet, every time I leave New York, after a couple of days pass I can imagine nothing more exciting than jumping back on that plane, flying over Manhattan with a fluttering heart beat as I gaze at the Chrysler Building's neon glow.

My relationship with my boyfriend of a year and a half has been wild. It's been joyous, painful, intense, destructive, and enlightening all at the same time. I had never found someone who is so similar to myself, and truly understands me. Despite the fact that I've recently moved out of our shared apartment to find my own place, we are better than ever. The biggest realization I've had in recent months is that without an adventurous relationship with yourself, you can never find true fulfillment with another person. Be it New York City, Kansas City, or San Diego, if I'm completely shut down inside and looking for a fix, whatever that may be, I won't ever really find what I'm after. Boyfriends don't fulfill it, moving doesn't fulfill it, and neither does putting your heart and soul into your career.

I guess more than anything what New York has taught me is that we live in an insane, busy, fucked up world, and there are hundreds of ways of looking at it. The question you must (I must) continue to ask is, how can I wake up looking forward to each new days' experiences? How can I love better, be still, and breathe through my diaphragm rather than hold my breath?

I consider myself a survivalist in some ways, and like I told some family friends about a year ago when they asked me if I would ever leave were it to get too difficult, I replied "I've chosen to go to battle with myself and this damn city, so I'm not leaving until it's over. I'm not leaving until I've won." A little competition never hurts, and it's me against the world. Friendly competition.

As dramatic as it might sound, I can't live life without reminding myself that each day we can be closer to who we want to be. And it's better to do it in a place where you really want to be. Knowing people you really want to know.

Ranting Tangent for Those Who Take Anger Out on Strangers

2009-12-03T19:30:00.004-05:00

It's another morning commute and I'm frustrated as usual because I still can't shake how crappy riding the subways in the morning can be. In all reality, I love the fact that I haven't had a car in over a year, because it feels freeing and amazing. However, certain New Yorkers have begun to piss me off on a regular basis. As I board my second transfer train to midtown Manhattan at 9am I remind myself that you can't control anyone else in the world but yourself really, so why be upset...

He stomps onto the most crowded subway line, the 6 train, like he's completely over and better than every single person who lives on the planet. He smells funny, he's sweaty, and he's putting his hand practically right on top of mine while I'm holding the pole as the train jolts forward. I bite down on my lip to refrain from scowling directly into his eyes. He steps on my foot a couple of times then looks at me like I'm a complete jerk off.

I don't typically get bothered by certain individuals, as you encounter about 1000 people on a typical working day in the city, but for some reason this guy is incredibly irritating to me. After living here for some time now, and having come from a cute and quiet Midwest city, I can detect very minute details about a person simply by standing next to them in a crowded subway car. No talking needed, I know this guy is a goddamn jerk. He keeps looking around him and at me with horrible sneers, jutting his elbows like he's completely pissed that subways and people even exist. Like he's the only educated person riding the 6 train during morning rush hour in New York City.

After a couple of stops, I look over his shoulder to see what he's reading with his coo coo eyes. It's the New York Times, and it's an article entitled "Humans May Have Been Born With a Natural Tendency to Be Kind to Others".

The corners of my mouth start to move into a smirky smile. I let out a tiny laugh, knowing nobody anywhere gives a shit if I display eccentric human behavior during morning rush hour or at any time for that matter. After all, there could be someone pooping in the next car next to someone's Prada shoes.

You goddamn New Yorkers are just like me. You want to be nice, but it's really hard when your morning commute is 45 minutes of being packed like sardines into a subway car that should probably never exist without a second subway line right next to it (they've been "building" the Second Avenue subway line for years now, to be completed, TBA). And suddenly, I get it.

The same way I get it when a woman crashes into me as I exit the train station (and there is no one blocking her path, it is a simple matter of not crashing into me that is the best option for her). She proceeds to turn around in the middle of the street to give me one of the meanest stares I have yet to receive from a human being. I respond by smiling, knowing this is not about me, but about her just being angry and not understanding how to walk on a sidewalk. I look to my right and notice that the security guard standing next to me who has now joined "Team Normal" is smiling at me and giving me the look of "I'll kick her ass if you want me to". I plan on buying him a home-made jersey in the next coming days. "Team Not Stupid and Nice".

In a sense, most of my interactions in this city are quite uncatalogued and random, completely based on the 5 senses of the human beings I encounter at the deli, in the subways, at the Trader Joe's...I wished a woman "Happy Holidays" today while checking out and she didn't even look up or respond. You understand.

And I still love it, because some people like to feel frustration first hand to feel alive. This is the blatant truth. In all actuality, it gives me a reason to write and gossip about complete strangers who probably haven't really done anything wrong whatsoever in terms of big city standards. People I will very likely never see again, so it creates a sort of fantastical world inside my cartoon mind.

I have come to a conclusion that the next person who shoves into me or yells "excuse me" impolitely will finally get a response from me. I will simply look at them with my best New York "fuck you stare", and be on my merry way. Maybe even bark like a dog very close to their face.

Like you, Ms. Bossy (if you even remember this interaction last week at Cafe 28): we are both in line to order salads, and there are two salad makers to order from. You cut in front of me while I'm telling the counter boy that I would like kalamata olives and bleu cheese in my salad, saying "EXCUSE ME" incredibly loudly and pushing me aside. I don't forget faces, Ms. Corporate Salad Orderer.

This is what happens when you put eight million people on a tiny island with overcrowded subways and cafes all while experiencing hangovers and the 9am-7pm work syndrome.

I sound like an angry "bitch" at this moment, but as far as comments go, I would like anyone who reads this to randomly post a comment of someone you've encountered in a big city who was rude for no reason, and why you laughed about it later with your friends.

:-)

I <3 NYC!

Different City, Same Me

2009-11-29T13:23:00.004-05:00

"Moving away doesn't solve all your problems. You're still YOU."

"I know."

I'm sitting around in my friend Tony's apartment. This is the point in my life where I've decided that everything I touch/do turns to shit, so I'm going to do nothing until my move date. I've surrendered to the demons of whatever-land, completely assuring myself that I have nothing to give to the world for the time being. Failed relationships, getting fired from jobs, having nothing to write about because I hate everything at the moment.

I watch him drink another glass of whiskey. It's 2 o'clock in the afternoon and I'm not even sure what day it is.

"You know, New York is a great city. But do you know anyone there?"

"I guess. There's this guy I'm going to stay with who I went to college with. He lives in Manhattan."

Tony's eyes move around, like he's about to lose consciousness to deep thought.

"How well do you know him?"

"Not very. But it's somewhere to stay."

"Well, sounds good to me."

This indifference and skepticism is pretty much all I received from my hometown acquaintances. I think part of it was disbelief that I was moving for the right reasons, considering how dramatically and publicly I had chosen to take a pause from purposeful living.

"She'll be back." I guarantee you this is the first thought creeping through even the best of friends' minds, and who could blame them.

And it has crossed my mind to go back, almost two years later. There, I had the comfort of twenty-plus familiar faces who I could call any time I felt like it. Anytime I wanted to meet up with someone who knew my last name, the phone was right there. I spent years making those friendships. People knew me, and people wanted to see me around.

Here in New York, with less friends and phone numbers to call, it's lonely at times. When my significant other and I have problems, I sometimes wonder if I'm fighting with one of my only friends. After all, to mildly make it here the way I did (no food stamps, no prostituting either), you have to make it with the help of some angelic folks along the way, and never forget that they were there when you had nothing. I guess what I have learned is that good people are the driving force of life, and without them around, the world just seems like shit most of the time.

As I switch jobs from an insanely stressful, overworked career of a year and a half to a desk job that makes me daydream day in and day out of distant planets, puns, and after school activities, I can't help but think that this moving cross-country thing is the only way I got out of those lonely apartment whiskey afternoons. I grew to be 65 years old in my home town then realized it was time to actually use my youth the way it should be used. Perhaps the world is as gray as you make it.

And I found love, and I found shitty, mean New Yorkers. And I found nice ones.

I guess the point of this entry is that Tony was right, in a way. The world is the same everywhere, in principle. But you can't change much about yourself if you're sitting in the exact same apartment for a year straight, drinking the same type of whiskey, looking down at the same street with the same parked cars.

My demons haven't left me, but they have realized that I'm someone to be reckoned with.

Lucky or Crazy?

2009-11-05T21:04:00.003-05:00

New York City. November night. It's raining outside, and the streets seem much quieter at night than they were during the summer time. I took a long walk across the Pulaski Bridge just to stare at the shining city in all its glory, hoping somehow being alone on a bridge would be inspirational rather than depressing.

With my recently purchased glasses, I realize that looking up at the moon tonight I can see the man in the moon for the first time in years. I wonder what he's thinking, looking down at these millions of people and cars and lights and buildings. I wonder if he's laughing with the beauty, or just feeling sorry for the girl on the bridge. I personally get lost when I have the aerial view, but somehow this city never ceases to mesmerize me.

It's been one and a half years since I stepped off that airport bus into Times Square, disoriented and amazed that I had finally done what my heart told me to do, without knowing how or why such a giant move was calling to me. Immersed in workaholism and finding solutions to the world's problems, New York has been one giant test after another for this young Midwest lass. An endurance challenge I still don't know if I will pass.

Jobless in the worst economic times seen since the Great Depression, myself and millions of others are facing a different type of endurance test. It's time to get creative. It's time to use this free time to remember why we came here in the first place. I'm still trying to remind myself that this was the best decision I ever made. I know it is, though some days ring prettier than others.

I walk around the apartment every day, looking around at my books, my etchings on notepads, my memorabilia that has amassed since arriving in the boroughs. "Have I really fulfilled my purpose here?" I wonder. Or is it an every day obsession, constantly pushing that rock up the mountain, hoping it doesn't fall as hard as it did last time.

This weekend I'm leaving the city to go upstate for a couple of days. Time to snap photographs, breathe fresh air, and take in the green pastures that have been unavailable to me for so many months. Sometimes you can only find what's wrong in your life by doing the wrong thing, trial and error. Of the dozens of movies I have watched in my lonely, introspective jobless past two weeks, all I can seem to remember is a quote from the movie "Vicky Christina Barcelona". She says, as she leaves a man who she has spent some time with as a lover, "I don't know what I want. I only know what I don't want." And perhaps this is what has gotten me here, and perhaps this is why I'll stay and wake up every morning thinking today might be the day everything makes sense. Screw money, screw privilege, it's time to find out what makes the heart sing and not want to stop. Because everything that can make you happy can be found in this city, of all places. Or anywhere, for that matter, if you can get to know yourself in a good way.

Edith Wharton once said, "Nobody should come to New York unless they are very lucky." (Don't laugh. I'm not a scholar obsessed with Edith Wharton, I heard this long ago on an episode of Sex and the Shameful City). And now that I have been here enough time to begin to understand the human element of overpopulation and competition in this town, I agree.

I also agree that luck can be created if you want it bad enough. And I want it. After all, I didn't come this far to fold my cards in. I have secret stashes of tools I never knew I had.

Walk Rage

2009-08-02T20:07:00.003-04:00

In New York, there is a particular type of rage one feels in the middle of the day, or the middle of the night, or the beginning of the morning. It's very different from other cities, because not many American cities induce the claustrophobia one feels on a daily basis. It toughens your face, intensifies your stride, and produces a sense of human detachment I've never felt in any other place.

It's Monday morning and I'm back in town from visiting my boy's parents' Upstate home (in New York, Upstate is anything north of the City, as I have learned, even though we were merely 30 minutes north). On my way to a work site in Chelsea, I'm walking quickly down 24th Street toward 7th Avenue, eager to meet my co-workers so that we can start the day and week off right. In front of me a few steps is a man, 7 feet tall, who is walking slowly, methodically, like he's just waiting for something to happen to him. Though I can't see his face I know he's a little nuts because of the way he's taking up the entire sidewalk with his giant, slow gait. I make a split decision to walk past him on the sidewalk even though this act will inevitably cause me to bump elbows with a complete stranger.

"You bitch, you better watch where you're walking."

I hear his scary, muffled voice whispering behind me as I pass him. Pissed that he's such a rude walker, a bully of sorts, I turn my head almost all the way around and say "Maybe if you weren't taking up the whole side walk it wouldn't be a problem."

I was not raised in the Mid/South/West to speak like this. Living in New York has made me some variety of "aggro", as people say on the East Coast, and even seven feet of height don't stop me from calling out a rude walker.

"Why don't you come back here so I can teach you a lesson? I'm an ex-Marine, bitch. You don't fuck with our kind. Get back here."

At this point I've already let it go because I'm seconds away from finding my group of non-scary friends who are all less than seven feet tall. If this crazy man follows me, I'll probably be fine. I'm also walking much faster than him. Fear sinks into my bones for 12 seconds, which feels like 5 minutes.

As I reach Seventh Avenue, I still hear his voice grumbling behind me, getting quieter and less intimidating.

"Whew," I think to myself. "If I wanted to get myself into lots of trouble it wouldn't be that hard. My filter no longer exists." But then again, some people are in the mood to start shit with anyone who is walking past them, which is why they take up the entire sidewalk and walk at a snail's pace. It's a great opportunity to create any aggro interaction--a common version of amusement for New York's less fortunate, mentally ill characters. This is not the first time a crazy person has threatened me for bumping into them, or standing next to them, or smoking a cigarette ten feet away from them in a public place. This past week a purse dog bit a friend of mine in the face after he asked the owner if he could pet it, and she politely said "Of course!".

We take these risks when we roam this island of millions, because honestly you never know what you're going to get. The best approach is to be as mean and crazy as what you come across, and follow that up with walking away as soon as possible. Our time is precious and I don't have time on Monday morning to have a boxing match with a seven foot tall Marine, even though my ninja skills mean I would surely win.

:-)

NYC

2009-07-14T22:24:00.002-04:00

Life with you

jujitsu in the middle of the night

even though we don't know how to fight

castles in Central Park

that seem in daylight to glow in the dark

Chinchillas that dance for us

getting kicked out of toy stores

for acting like children

Dancing on rooftops

Don't worry I won't fall off

subway stations that speak to us

Telling us what we want to hear

What we want to see

All over the world

Crazy polish women screaming on sidewalks

before morning coffee speaks

laughter

singing

til we don't say anything at all

and it feels perfect.

Life with you

Going everywhere

with no intentions, no direction

with a huge smile

smeared like silly putty

across our gray faces

sooted with city shit

that somehow smells incredible

And New York City calls

to us dead in the night

with its candlelit restaurants

and pedestrian influence

incense that smells of politicians

and vagabonds

How I love never being on

because perfect is dirty

and love is clean

When it means something

And you know that when you wake

from dreams

nothing is what is seems

and it's better that way

You let me play.

This city that never sleeps has taught me to stay.

Why Complicated is Good

2009-06-30T22:02:00.003-04:00

New York City is dirty. Lovely, and dirty.

I take two showers some days, one in the morning before work and one when I come home after a busy day walking around and talking to these beautiful citizens. I wash the dirt off of my flip-flop faded feet and scrub my face until it feels smooth again. I figure with all my environmental campaign work the 5 extra wasted water minutes won't hurt my karma too badly...

My coworker was in Union Square today, one of the busiest parts of the city, and he came back to the office talking about how eerie it was that for a good half hour the streets all around him were QUIET. It scared him. You couldn't hear any loud traffic or chatter, and at one point he yelled "What's wrong with you people? Anything to say? Anything??" He told me it was like the scene in Ghostbusters when the Manhattan sky became strange colors and an otherworldly "front" rolled in. I found this quite amusing.

I sit here in this $1700 1-bedroom apartment wondering how to deal with the silence now that I am away from the city noise and ancient subway cars at the end of my manic workday. I figure the more you are exposed to extremeness, the more you appreciate the simplicity of life. Those quiet, dull moments begin to add up and create a sense of calm at the end of your day. No matter what I do in New York, I feel as though I am living. I wake up and have the map of the city in the back of my brain like it's my own back yard, a recent phenomenon I thought might never occur.

Two days ago I looked through online photographs of my friends in Kansas City. They were at a baseball game one summery Sunday afternoon recently, drinking vodka drinks and snapping silly photos of one another. As I looked through them I felt like I had been away from them for a lifetime, so far removed from those feelings and connections I once experienced on an everyday basis. My first instinct was sadness, and perhaps a feeling of not belonging to a club I was once a founding member of, but then I remembered how far I have come since my departure from the Midwest. I carry their amazing personalities with me always, but don't necessarily ever feel the urge to go back.

I don't speak to the man I dated for three-plus years in Kansas City anymore (which is a good thing, rest assured). The man who jaded my innocence to the point that I felt the need to sell all my things and buy a one-way ticket is a distant memory in my brain. It's almost like all those memories and faces were dreamt up during a nice REM rest. Dorothy's not in Kansas anymore, and by abandoning all that simple familiarity, I am beginning to understand who I am. Bittersweet and graceful new beginnings that change every aspect of one's life.

It's hard to believe so much can change in thirteen months' time.

This weekend I will sit on a rooftop with plastic chairs, sparklers, cupcakes and new relationships, and watch fireworks explode over the Hudson River for the first time. And, for the first time in my life, I feel like I'm exactly where I need to be.

Peace of mind isn't always as far away as you think, if you can dream up a plan to get it during a nice night of REM sleep. And it definitely never comes easily.

Back

2009-06-20T14:34:00.005-04:00

Two weeks ago I boarded a plane. I said goodbye to all my friends in Southern California and I said goodbye to the beach that greeted me every morning for three months. So tired of saying goodbye, I was ready to say "hello". I was ready to stay somewhere. I was ready to feel happy in my own skin. Get everything out of these moving boxes and into drawers that are welcoming and stable.

Back in New York City, there are little and BIG differences that make me smile. No one here is rude really, just forward. Direct. Exactly what I need from life so that I don't spend my time reading into fake niceness. I would take the daily thunderstorms in June 2009 of New York City over the perfect 75 degree sunny days of Southern California any day. And maybe I'm crazy. Why? Because it's real. It's rugged. It's messy and dirty and difficult. Kind of like life in real time. Kind of like my life leading up to the age of 26. There's a reason rents are so high here, and no, it's not because the tap water is the best in the country...

I walk down the Brooklyn streets passing ten people per second. I watch the boots and raincoats and black umbrellas whiz by me. I stop into my old bodega I once got my morning coffee and evening cigarettes from and am greeted by old smiles.

"Hey! Where have you been?"

"California," I smile.

"Ah welcome back, dear!" he says in a thick Middle Eastern accent.

I smile so much it almost hurts. I'm back home and I'm ready to give New York another shot.

And here I am, back on the subways, back on New York time, reading the Daily News and buying packs of cigarettes for $10 (I have a weakness for any type of distraction).

I'm swallowing the bagels and pizza I have so missed for 12 weeks, feeling once again like a stranger in a town I never could quite get to the point of claiming as my own. But maybe now that I'm back and I've missed it I finally can call it home.

There's nothing like leaving something behind at a moment's notice to make you love it more than you ever thought you could.

There's nothing like leaving a home town to move to another GIANT city, only to move to a different coast, then return. Maybe this is what it takes to let reality set in. Some of us are only grounded when we feel immense challenge and disorientation, ironically. Geographical instability is how I started writing in the first place.

And I still miss my family, my friends I've made all over the country, my sense of right and wrong and self. But I'm once again starting over, this time with a better sense of purpose.

I blame the parrots by the beach for not keeping up this blog. And the sunshine. They are loud birds. I couldn't concentrate in California. But sirens, yes, they inspire me. I'm back, back home in New York City. To make waves and perhaps find a new anxiety medication.

:-)

Why Romantics Die Poor

2009-03-18T02:11:00.004-04:00

I moved.

They asked me to move away, and while I only let myself think about it for a few hours before saying yes, there I was, getting on a plane headed to the West Coast. I don't know how it happened because it all happened so fast.

And here I am, feeling lost. I'm in paradise. There are literally parrots that squawk in the morning as I walk along the beach, pacing toward my Southern California daytime routine.

I miss New York. I miss the pain and passion of it all. Most of all, I miss the boy I fell in love with and the city I grew to adore. I miss the challenges, the strife, and the interesting intelligence that can be found on every corner.

However, being the romantic that I am, I make impulsive decisions. I moved optimistically to be left with just, well, mystic feelings.

I feel lost right now, in the midst of mellow, sandy beachtown surfers and procrastinators. Perhaps if I had moved here right after college this would be a different story--but some nights, the same way I did when I first moved to New York, I cry myself to sleep. Not because everything is terrible, but because everything is neutral and uncertain. I've been away from a midwest hometown that never felt like home for almost a year. I've lived bi-coastally, and now that sense of having no real home is sinking into my March skin.

It's not getting easier lately, just more confusing. Love seems to be the only thing worth living for these days, and I left my love in NYC.

So I think my next mission is to make it back there. ASAP. Somehow.

<3

Good Things Come to Those Who...CREATE

2009-01-24T02:28:00.007-05:00

I can barely move my hands to write. My muscles are aching---I'm completely annihilated from my months of hard work and hard knocks in New York City.

It's two in the morning, and although I was falling asleep on the subway on the way home, I can't sleep tonight. I'm obsessed with "making it" in this town of brutality. I often can't think about anything else, and therefore can never sleep.

It's wintertime here. It's cold, it's annoying to spend many of my waking hours walking around and freezing amidst the honks and yelling from car windows...but I'm adjusting.

Celebration, tonight. And tomorrow, and the next night.

I was flown to San Francisco last weekend to interview for a much coveted position with an environmental organization I have always respected. The organization is genuine, fantastic. The office was covered with flora and fauna. I know of no such things anymore. This talk of genuine means nothing to me.

So, upon returning to New York, from lovely San Francisco, and after beating out over 500 people via phone interview, I learned that I got the job.

At this point, it's not even real. For months I've been enslaving myself on websites like Career Builder, Monster, Craigslist--for anything, ANYTHING, that will get me back on track to make money and do something meaningful. It's all a shot in the dark. Somehow, I got one interview out of 300 applications. Not joking.

"You'll do fine," said my oh so optimistic friends in NYC, most of them in the same situation as I. "Just be yourself." Interview perfectly and calmly, whatever.

So I was, and I did. To the grandest degree. And in the interview in San Fran, they told me, so eloquently, "You might have to relocate for this. We have more positions on the West Coast and those that we hire will most likely have to be willing to move."

"I need to stay in New York."

"Why?"

"Because I've worked so hard to live here for eight months, to survive there. I would like to continue to make my life happen there. Unfortunately, I have a certain... attachment to that city."

As I'm talking they're making notes on my resume, notes I cannot see. Of course.

"I mean, if it's in San Francisco I would definitely consider it. But, I have a life in New York now, and I have the experience it takes to direct an office there that no other applicants have. Plus, I don't have a car (wink wink). I mean, I can't go to L.A. or anything."

"Ha ha. No way, no L.A." (he's making more little scribbly notes).

4 days later.

....so now, hello. Welcome to not living in poverty anymore. Welcome to dental benefits, vision benefits, 401ks... I never would have imagined in this economic crisis the hundreds of resumes I sent to NY employers would have paid off. I lost hope.

For those of us who are cynical at heart (I trust no one, and if you follow my blog and you love NYC you probably have a dark side as well) here's a little hope for the seats in the back. Put yourself out there like a goddamn vulnerable working machine and perhaps some benevolent force will heed your late night drunken prayers during a desperate economic crisis.

"Congratulations," reads a text from an anonymous friend/NY go-getter. "Now you can save whales while America gets it's shit together."

And have a nicer apartment, while I'm at it. And better connections, and better optimism. I can't believe I stuck it out in this shit-for-an-economy city during a stock market crash--to somehow made it out on top.

Like I said, tonight, my bones are tired. I can't move. I'm overworked. Welcome to the biggest city in the country. Welcome to holding out for big breaks, and having the patience to do so. Honestly, I was this close to folding my cards, kids. I have never felt so exhausted, yet happy, in my entire life.

I have never been this happy.

I wasn't born with patience. I wasn't born this way at all, but somehow have been sculpted into a different person; I've been sculpted into someone who will never give up.

January Dismissiveness

2009-01-20T19:06:00.007-05:00

So these song lyrics basically sum up my last few weeks spent in New York City. In an effort to relax in the most uptight city in the country, as well as avoid the freezing cold, I have gone into temporary hibernation. Luckily, I found a partner in crime to play with indoors.

Be still for a second while I try and try to pin your flowers on

Can you carry my drink I have everything else

I can tie my tie all by myself

I'm getting tied, I'm forgetting why

Oh we're so disarming darling, everything we did believe

Is diving diving diving diving off the balcony

Tired and wired we ruin too easy

Sleep in our clothes and wait for winter to leave

Hold ourselves together with our arms around the stereo for hours

While it sings to itself or whatever it does

When it sings to itself of its long lost loves

I'm getting tied, I'm forgetting why

Tired and wired we ruin too easy

Sleep in our clothes and wait for winter to leave

But I'll be with you behind the couch when they come

On a different day just like this one

We'll stay inside til somebody finds us

Do whatever the TV tells us

Stay inside our rosy-minded fuzz for days

We'll stay inside til somebody finds us

Do whatever the TV tells us

Stay inside our rosy-minded fuzz

So worry not

All things are well

We'll be alright

We have our looks and perfume

Stay inside til somebody finds us

Do whatever the TV tells us

Stay inside our rosy-minded fuzz

So worry not

All things are well

We'll be alright

We have our looks and perfume on

-The National, Apartment Story lyrics

But We Like It Here

2009-01-20T16:18:00.007-05:00

California. As I step out of my discotheque hostel and into the streets of San Francisco the unfamiliar feeling of warm January sunlight is dancing upon my sleeveless skin. In the distance I see mountains, I see hills covered with thousands of tiny, pastel-colored homes. A cable car is inching down the street. Salsa music is floating out of car windows as they slowly drive by.

I do not miss New York today.

Despite the fact that our flight came in so late the night before and we barely slept a wink, I feel nothing but calm in the early morning hours.

We're staying in the Mission District, where you'll find some of the best Hispanic food in California. In New York all I eat is Italian and Asian food (I don't have much to complain about). Everything feels slower here, smilier--sane. People on the streets are greeting one another with courtesy, and suddenly I have a pang of anxiety that New York has begun to change everything about my personality, perhaps jaded me. I need smiles at this point in my life or I might continue on my path to going crazy, 5 borough-style.

Down the street as I wait for the bus three homeless men are laughing and playing music on a bench about ten feet from me. I can't help but stare because they are some of the happiest homeless men I have ever seen in my life.

"Here. These are for you." The ring leader of the trio walks over to me and hands me a pair of cheap, black, 1990s sunglasses. I already have my yellow NYC ones on, but I'm very appreciative of this gift. He's practically shirtless, unshaven, and his teeth are rotting.

"Thank you," I smile. All three men start watching me on their bench, waiting to see if I put them on. Though silently disgusted about my new gift, I do put them on, against all my best instincts. I think it was the peer pressure and the feeling of being in a new town. Perhaps it's a right of passage to put on a pair of gifted sunglasses from a homeless trio here in San Francisco.

I kept them on until the ring leader once again approached me, offering to wipe them off (they actually weren't smudged at all) with his greasy, torn shirt. At that point, I couldn't hide my disgust any longer.

"No. My bus will be here soon. But thanks." Ugh. I miss New York bums. They don't ever really say anything to you unless it's a public speech on the subway, which you can of course easily ignore by placing the New York Times as close to your face as possible.

I take the bus a few blocks to another neighborhood down the street, and as I get off the bus I overhear a gay couple (ex-New Yorkers) discussing how much they would like to draft a bill to send all the homeless people in San Francisco to Alcatraz, or the moon. It sounds offensive to me--to so blatantly wish to ban an entire group of people from one's city, a group of people who most likely can't do much about their unfortunate situation. But then again, I have heard for years that the homeless of San Francisco are the most aggressive, talkative homeless in the country. They even give you gifts when you least expect it.

Despite the close encounter that makes me somewhat uneasy, maybe it's the brightness of the colors, or the beautiful January weather that sends me into a fantasy world of moving to California. Of course I won't, because I call New York my home, but I do understand the temptation. To be fair to my fellow peoples I did represent New York the entire time I was there, defending myself against ex-New Yorkers and boasting that San Francisco is like a New York Lite (they didn't find this amusing).

It was hard to leave this place at the end of my short weekend, as I rode the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, for those of you who haven't been there in a while or ever) toward the airport. Out the windows in the distance I saw blue mountains, blue sky, blue houses on blue grassy hills. What a short trip to such a different terrain. So little asphalt, so little smog.

As I walk through the JFK airport back in New York at one o'clock in the morning, I breathe in a sigh of relief. I'm home, after a weekend of crazy sunshine and 6 hour flights. In the airport bathroom there's piss all over the seat, and as I leave the bathroom to quench my thirst, the water fountain doesn't work. I'm home, sweet home.

"How much for a cab to ( ), in Brooklyn?" my friend and I ask the driver standing outside the airport.

"$40," he says, with no reservation and a smirk.

"Fuck off," I say. "We're not tourists, idiot." I'm back and so is my attitude, apparently. He has no reaction but to smile again. He knows.

We walk away, laughing at the ridiculousness of big city rip-offs. There's something comforting about the aggressive and crass vulgarity of New York City. Something that keeps us coming back for more, month after month. Screw California and its happy go lucky sunshine. Hello urine-soaked streets, dark corners, and crooked cabbies. The honesty is untouchable.

The mere insult of trying to overcharge a couple of girls who live here causes us to head toward the subway station. We know of course that the airport is the wrong place to get the right rate--the perfect tourist trap. It just felt really good to tell a scammer to fuck off. It felt like home.

I get on the J train, pull out my headphones, and take in the sweet smell of body odor and urine wafting through the subway train.

Across from me lies a homeless couple, practically spooning sweetly on the train bench. They are peaceful, they are quiet. In this city it's all about living your own life and keeping to yourself, homeless or not.

I look at the electronic map above me on the subway. 18 stops to go and it's almost 2 a.m. At least this way, I'll get some reading and music listening done. Ah, the bliss of being left alone in a massive city...

I step off the subway, and I'm back in Brooklyn. I'm back home. Giant flakes of snow are falling and the streets are quiet and beautiful. I feel a romantic sensation in my heart as I watch the cab television for a few seconds then proceed to turn off the volume.

Though I love that California sunshine, I stand by New York City, for all it is and always has been. It's a city of crazy people that keep it real, for better or for worse. It's my crass ass honest home, and I wouldn't trade it for any other city in the world.

But if I ever need to tan on the beach for a couple of days, California, here I come.

That's My Child!

2009-01-13T01:26:00.005-05:00

My parents, God bless them, made a couple of trips to New York City in their hey day.

One of these trips is the most memorable to everyone in our family, because we have heard this story a hundred times. Lately, a renaissance of New York stories has occurred now that I live here, in this big ass scary city.

1985-ish.

They're riding the subway (above ground) over the tracks of the worst part of New York City. The South Bronx looks like a bombed out version of an Eastern European war zone. The worst part of it is, no official wars have ever happened in the South Bronx, as you history buffs do know. It was a civil, neighborhood war of crime that seemed to put other cities to shame--and any subway rider could see the damages just by riding the train to Yankee Stadium. I won't go into too much detail, for most of you are aware of its reputation.

To give the Bronx credit today, I hear it's gotten much better...but anyway.

I'm two at the time. I'm being pushed in a stroller, all around a crazy city of public transit, and the more I think about it the more I realize that I'm probably that perfect baby to bring along on a trip to New York City. From what they've told me I spent most of my baby time staring at crazy people everywhere we went and occasionally cackling at whatever babies laugh at in New York. I wasn't much of a cryer, more like a baby with a staring problem (things don't change much 24 years later). An observer of unique events.

So, they're on the dirty 80s subway car (little update--the subways today are also much nicer than back then), riding over the Bronx, and this gangster-esque man with giant chains around his neck is staring at their baby, sitting very close. According to their story, this goes on for quite a few uncomfortable minutes.

Being from Texas, my parents aren't quite tolerant of a huge man with chains staring at their baby, grimacing and leaning in closer and closer on a train ride to the Bronx. My parents are not from New York, meaning they're not used to any frequent starers. Plus they are brand new parents, protective to the max of their two-year-old offspring.

Apparently, I stare back at the subway gangster man with my little blue eyes, using my craziest baby stare warchest. And, before my mother can have a heart attack about this strange person eye-communicating with her daughter, the large gangster-esque with chains leans over and says loudly, in this baby's face: "Goochie Goochie GOOOOO!!!"

I believe this was the point at which both of my parents began laughing. Hysterically.
A truly New York City visitor moment, at its finest. The big bad scary city likes to make babies laugh.

This story makes me think that maybe, just maybe, the things you are introduced to in life at an early age really do make an impact on the choices you make in your future. That Goochie Goochie GOO may have subconsciously hypnotized me at the age of two to take my happy ass back to New York in my twenties to find my Goochie (not Gucci) moment.

Goochie Goochie Goo, New York. Just when you thought it was a serious place of crazy starers, a huge man with chains wants to make your baby laugh.

Thanks Mom and Dad. And thank you, random subway man with the chains, for inspiring a crazy baby with a staring problem.

To me, this story summarizes many aspects of my beloved city.

I LOVE NEW YORK.

Don't Ever Let Them See You Cry

2009-01-13T01:07:00.002-05:00

Just another soul
Trying to make it
Somewhere I've never been

My mind is on fire
With thoughts of love
And life insurance

He told me
Never tell anyone
What you're up to
What you're working on
Because they'll steal it-
Steal your fire
And I never knew
What I was in for

Until I came home
And sat alone
In my new city
My brand new country

And realized
This world is NOT yours
Until you take it
By the shirt--
Until you make it
What you're worth

Because most likely
You're worth more
Than any other friend or foe
Ever valued you for

And until you're there
Under the heat lamp
Under the microscope
It won't be clear
Until it's right THERE

Staring you in the face

This is your home
This is your place
To be strong
To get that life
You always wanted
You always dreamed of

No one ever got anything
Without years of sweat
And sweet heartbreak

So that's your goal
To show no fear
Even when it seems like
The coast is clear

It never is, it never is
Until your own path
Is set in stone

Just the way you wanted it
When you were five years old
In your bones

In your heart.

Who cares if they say
You will never see the day.

Keep Your Cool...

2009-01-05T19:03:00.006-05:00

227 days in New York. I'm sitting in a coffee shop on 8th Street, thinking about life and love and dreams.

Last night I dreamt I was back in Kansas City. It was the summertime and I was jogging around these rich neighborhoods near Loose Park. I ran for miles and miles, ignoring my tired muscles, exhausting my lungs. I ran far and fast until I couldn't run anymore, passing houses of friends' parents who I may still know now or perhaps never will again.

I come to a pool, a country club of sorts, and stop running so I can stand outside the fence and watch the families splashing around in the chlorinated oasis. Hundreds of children and parents are laughing and screaming, enjoying this relief from a hot summer's day.

Without thinking about it I bolt through the turnstile and leap into the deep end of the pool, still wearing my running clothes and shoes. I dive down all the way to the bottom, taking in the refreshing feeling after my long, hot marathon. Pure bliss. I'm in heaven.

I emerge to the surface to see a man standing over me, scowling.

"Are you a member?" he asks me, as I take a deep breath of air into my lungs.

"Yes," I lie. "I'm waiting for my little sister to get here. She'll sign us in."

He looks around, then looks back at me with disbelief. "Why didn't you just check in at the front like a normal guest? We saw you sneak in the gate."

"Oh, sorry. I forgot how it works. My sister will be here any minute. No worries." I smile at him.

"Until she gets here, you'll have to exit the pool, miss. Unless you have your member card."

Busted.

"It's fine, I'll leave." At this point the kids around me are squirming in their floatation devices to determine if I'm a criminal or not. This might make front-page news.

I pull myself out of the pool and make a quiet exit. I feel ashamed and embarrassed. We used to belong to a club like this when I was younger, and now taking a swim in this neighborhood is out of my reach. I have no family anywhere to be found, and I'm being kicked out of a pool.

"Oh, sir!" I yell from outside the fence. "I left my shoes in there!"

He walks over to my running shoes, hesitates for a moment, then picks them up and walks over to the gate to bring them to me.

"Thank you."

"I better not catch you sneaking into this club again without some type of ID."

I just look at him like he's a bastard without saying a word. I smile at the families staring at me as I put on my shoes, dripping wet from my illegal dip.

Then I woke up.

I'm not an expert on dreams, but I think living in New York City has made me feel like an outsider, unable to attain access to the life I so badly want to live here. In the midst of this Great Recession it will take an even stronger version of myself to walk past people wearing diamond rings and mink coats in Midtown without feeling that envious, ridiculous feeling of the have-nots. Of course those things aren't important to me, but I've also never seen anything like this in my lifetime. Perhaps I'm just seeing what I want to see--people who don't seem to be struggling to get by like myself and my other young friends. People who made it here long ago and don't want to share one penny of it; capitalism at its finest.

With every hardship comes a new life lesson, and I am learning so much in my post-graduate studies. "Perseverance" is the word of the day in this episode of Pee-Wee's Playhouse. In these days and times you have to be a city ninja, a fighter. 33,000 people have been laid off in New York City alone this year. And perhaps the worst isn't even yet to come.

Maybe that membership or golden gate key isn't far out of my reach, but I must be patient and keep my head up. My biggest weakness is my tendency to feed off of pessimism. That won't fly anymore, not in 2009. Not in New York.

Until then, I'll keep running, faster and harder, stronger and farther, and try not to think too much about that cold water pool I can't have access to on a steamy hot day.

Yet.

The Anti-Carrie Bradshaw Love Piece

2009-01-05T10:50:00.007-05:00

"I love you."
The first time I said this, I was sitting on his couch watching him walk out the door to go to work. It felt vulnerable, awkward. The obsessive thought process began.

Did I always love him? From the moment we first connected on that dark summer night in Brooklyn....cheesey, whoa. Or does love grow like a seedling, sprouting out of the ground once the right water and sunlight and temperature are enough to nourish? The right combination and you have a beautiful, bright green life rising from the hot earth. The wrong combination, and you have a life that turns brown, shrivels and dies. Better yet, you plant the wrong seeds, and you get a venus flytrap. Yikes. Run for the hills...

In the early stages of a relationship, sometimes it's hard to tell if you have the situation it takes to grow the best love. It's a team effort, and you have to have similar points of view that enable you to deal with the most difficult of situations. The ability to adapt together to the variety show we call life.

And like my boss told me when our office was training for an intense new project last summer, "You will fuck up a lot this next week. It's inevitable. And it's fine."

Because no relationship is ever the same as any other relationship, there's no way to perfectly prepare yourself for the challenges that may arise between yourself and that person...all you can do is work through them and decide that you're in this together. And treat each other well. And be careful with each other, because I know from personal experience that hearts can take a long time to mend once they are broken. I spent the past year or so fighting the heartbreak I felt. It was disabling, to say the least.

And now I'm not sure if I know what I'm doing anymore, or if I ever really will when it comes to love. But I'm willing to try.

I've found that the things I've been most terrified of doing and done anyway have always proven to be the most rewarding (ha ha, some of them). Like selling everything I own, saying goodbye to everyone I've known for years, and moving to New York City. The greatest gifts in our lives are sometimes the greatest sacrifices, and until we take that leap of faith, the world keeps on turning--whether you jump or not.

So why not? Jump.

Ignoring St. Nick in New York

2008-12-24T22:44:00.007-05:00

Christmas Eve in Queens.

My apartment is filled with noise from the television, my online poker chips swishing and clicking, and the smells of au gratin potatoes baking in the oven. I'm saturating my night with denial and distractions.

I poke my head outside the back window of my kitchen to see what I can see. Past the courtyard are lit up windows of other apartments, and I can see the families moving around in kitchens, cooking and grimacing and laughing. The faces are beginning to look like people I know, so I pull down the blinds and go back to my distractions. It's the holidays and I'm alone in New York, far away from what I used to know.

I fill my holiday evening with things I would only do spending Christmas Eve by myself in my apartment. I'm sewing on buttons, I'm drinking the cheap bottle of wine I bought at my favorite wine shop in Manhattan. I'm texting my sister and watching Top Chef reruns. I'm content, but my heart feels empty. I'm dressed up in the vintage skirt I bought today at a thrift store and my nails are perfectly manicured because I couldn't think of anything better to spend $6 on. I've dressed up to commemorate this holiday despite the fact that I probably won't see one single person tonight.

I guess I could have flown home today. But I chose not to, because I've never known what it was like to spend a holiday like Christmas alone with your own thoughts and ideas. Not to mention, I'm broke. Again. Welcome to a recession and welcome to New York City. I picked the perfect time to move here, and I will learn my valuable lessons of frustration with style.

It's time to buy some milk, so I put on my fluffy hat and cheap coat to head for the corner store. Despite it being Christmas Eve, most everything in my neighborhood is still open, I think. Nothing ever seems to close in this town. And I'm right, sort of. The corner store that never closes.

Before I leave my apartment, I grab a gift.

I walk half a block in the freezing cold and snow to my little bodega, which on other nights is usually filled with chatty old Italian men, sitting in the back of the store sipping sodas and juice while eyeing the customers. The neighborhood is filled with old friends and tradition. But this is Christmas Eve, and on Fresh Pond Road all we have tonight are myself, the bodega boys, and the homeless man who is somehow still sitting under the awning camped out in the snow.

I buy my milk and my cigarettes. I can't quit my bad habit at such a lonely time like this. While the bodega boy turns around to grab my smokes I place two big pieces of chocolate candy on the counter. One for him, one for his friend who is stocking in the back.

He turns around and barely notices. I say thanks, pay for my items, then turn to go.

"What's this?" he smiles.

"Merry Christmas." I say quietly, sweetly. I have no idea why I'm so bashful about gift giving because generally nothing makes me happier. Even if it's someone I hardly know.

"Thank you. Merry Christmas. Have a good night."

I can see him turn to his friend out of the corner of my eye and hold up the candy. I leave quickly but I'm smiling all the way home.

You have to work all night, I think, and I have to stay alone in my apartment while my family is half way across the country. C'est la vie, I suppose. Someone should get some kind of tiny pleasure out of it.

I fall asleep on the couch that night with the television still blaring commercials in the background, with the hopes that one morning I will wake up and everything will feel normal again. In a way, it's the simplest holiday I've ever had, and who doesn't like new experiences?

Bittersweetness.

The Compulsions That Follow

2008-12-23T00:23:00.004-05:00

I've got it down.

The piercing eye stare that says, "I don't really give damn. Do I know you?"
The ability to do anything on the subway with hundreds of people around me, completely undistracted by the man in the corner screaming about Jesus, waving around a bible.
I don't notice the bum who won't stop staring at me as I wait for a cab on the corner, asking me for a cigarette and spare change from six feet away.
The confidence to talk to anyone about anything. The wisdom to know who to approach and who to ignore.
The irritability. The tiny moments of glee that you keep to yourself.

Now I know why people here stand near the subway tracks and look down the tunnel to see if the train lights are approaching, even though looking never made sense to me. Doesn't make it come any sooner. But people look again and again because it brightens your day when you walk down into the underground and the train lights are right there, coming from the end of the tunnel. Sometimes we just need to know. It's a New York compulsion--one of many. Control freaks.

A rat run past my foot the other day and I didn't even flinch until 10 seconds later when I realized how disgusting it was.

I can survive the city for a whole day wearing heels because now my feet are well-trained and my calves are like rocks.

I cherish my free time in the evenings like nothing else. I want to be alone with my thoughts and my favorite Bravo shows. I want to be indoors, in my quiet, old apartment. I want to sleep soundly so I have the wattage it takes for one more day of work and running around the city.

I have grown up. My emotions have matured. My sister told me that as a social worker they teach patients that one definition of maturity is when you stop needing approval from others to get by. I'm getting there, slowly but surely.

And in the past seven months I have been more frustrated than any other time in my life, more impoverished, felt more despair and loneliness than ever before. I have seen my entire past flash before my eyes hundreds of times, lying in bed, trying to fall asleep to the sounds of cars honking and old radiators screeching, clanking.

You have to take care of yourself to survive in this city. You have to grow up. You have to be aware of everything around you, for if you miss a step, you could fall flat on your face. You have to look out for number one, and I have never really understood the importance of this concept until I found myself almost failing at something I wanted so badly.

I moved here to write, to love, and to find a new life. And as jaded as I may have become, it's an elegant type of jaded, a wisdom you can't find anywhere else in any other place in the world. I recommend it to anyone who is up for the challenge, because it's hard to leave this place.

I'm spending Christmas in New York this year, my first away from my family. And for the first time in my life, I'm perfectly fine in a tough sort of way.

Some days, I can't even believe I'm here.

Happy Holidays from New York City.

Cocktail Server's Revenge

2008-12-22T22:35:00.003-05:00

It's spring time in Kansas City. I'm working one of my many shifts as a cocktail waitress at a downtown bar on Saturday night. It's getting late. The tips are rolling in, and I'm working my ass off to save for my move that's only one month away. The day before I worked as a substitute teacher at a French elementary school, and tonight I am teaching adults how to handle their liquor and tip appropriately after they've had a few. My patience is wearing thin because I work too many hours serving thankless idiots who come out on Saturday night (we call this "amateur night") but I'm trudging along, keeping my eyes on the prize.

"Sarah? Sarah Williams?" I look at my table of four young men who have just sat down. I realize that the man speaking to me was a friend of mine in high school who I haven't seen since I was 16. He looks exactly the same as he did nine years ago, and here I am, working hard at midnight in a downtown bar, looking nothing like I did nine years ago.

"Oh wow! How are you?! Good to see you."

"Yeah, hey! It's been a while." There's an awkward pause. I wait for him to introduce me to his friends but he doesn't. Instead he says, "You work here?"

No, I just wear a black outfit and ask people what they would like to drink.

"Yeah. On and off since I was a sophomore in college." I'm smiling politely but really I want to keep working...screw the chit chat. If I really loved this guy as a close friend I would have kept in touch with him.

"You're a waitress? I never thought I would see you working at a place like this."

My face is turning red. He's drunk and doesn't care that his statement is coming off as offensive. I'm searching for something to say that isn't going to ruin his life--I want to be nice. I remember him as being someone who had no social skills, and now I remember why I didn't make the effort to keep in touch.

"I'm moving to New York in a month. Working here is a way to make some extra cash--it's great money. I also work at a school part time..."

I have no idea why I'm defending myself. This guy, from what I've heard from others, still lives with his mother and got fired from a car wash a couple of years ago. Loser.

"Oh. Sure. Can I have a vodka cranberry? With lots of vodka?"

And he thinks I'm going to hook him up with extra booze after insulting me?

I force my best smile. "Sure. It's great to see you."
I take the other drink orders from his friends who seem equally as interesting. What a lovely reunion I've just had. In a way, this is why I'm moving to New York.

I walk up to the bar to get the drinks. I'm far from ear shot from my long lost "friend" from high school, and I lean over to the bartender after I put in the order.

"Hey, um, can I ask you a small favor?"

"Sure. What's up?" He leans over like he's excited to hear what I'm about to say. My face is pinkish and my eyes probably look intense.

"These four guys at my table, well, they're really drunk, and I think they're driving. I can't even understand what they're saying, you know. Wasted. Can you make their drinks just cranberry juice, no vodka?"

"Sure." He looks at me again as though he doesn't really believe me. I just smile. Even if he knows I'm lying, the bartender knows me well enough to know that I would only do this if someone were behaving like a total, well, "douchebag" as we nighttime bar staff refer to people who insult us.

I serve my friend's table two rounds of juice, charge them full price, and say nothing else to Mr. Jerk. I am proud of my life and what I've done with it, and how dare you insult me in front of your friends when you haven't even spoken to me in almost ten years.

That night I felt triumphant as I placed the bill on the table and waved goodbye to someone I hoped to never see again.

Then I moved to New York a month later, found a career I enjoy, fell in love, and made a few new friends. Now that's a fairy tale story if I've ever heard one.

Say hi to your mom for me, Sir No Social Skills.

Holiday Madness

2008-12-19T13:30:00.002-05:00

There are many many more crazy New York stories in the works. I have been busy with birthdays, holiday madness and long work hours. By New Year's Eve, I promise to have at least five new postings.

Happy Holidays.

Huge Dork in the City

2008-12-05T19:20:00.003-05:00

"I'm leaving Queens right now. I can be there by ten," reads a text from a new friend I'm trying to get to know. She's from my hometown and has lived in NYC 8 months longer than myself. We know all the same people so I want to hometown chat it up for a night, have some fun.

I leave my neck of Queens ten minutes later, only to step out of the subway station at 10:15. It's Tuesday night and I haven't been out in quite a while, so I'm ready to go nuts in the city. I miss Manhattan and feel like I don't go there very much anymore.

It's freezing, windy and ridiculous, as the winter weather in New York always is, and as I approach the bar I'm checking out all the different scarves of the foot traffic I pass so I can update my sense of fashion. I don't read magazines or watch E! anymore. No time, no care for it, no reason to tempt myself with things I can't afford.

I walk in the place and realize I'm nervous. I don't know my new friend very well and I definitely don't know who I'm going to be hanging out with. It could be a group of people my age who have way more NYC success stories than myself, and I don't feel like playing the twenty-something one-up-eachother game tonight. I want friends, honesty, and fun stories about our city. I want a common understanding between my experience here and everyone else's.

"Um, this place is like, a fucking oyster bar. I don't know if I want to stay," says new friend. Despite not really knowing me, our conversation is sans-bullshit, immediately, and there's no awkward introductions or silent moments. "Yeah. It's more of a restaurant. Let's go somewhere else." We can't leave right away though, because her friend is here with colleagues. Instead we start our own tab at the bar, away from any work-related talk. I like this.

She introduces me to her friend, who is also from our hometown, but has been in the city a few years longer than the two of us. "Puppy Love", as he insists I refer to him if I am going write about him, is a pseudo-film maker, a jack of all trades for freelance work and various other arts projects. I envy people like him who have traveled the world and made a living doing interesting work in a field they enjoy. Puppy Love is an outgoing guy, straight to the point the way most New Yorkers are, and witty and fun to talk to. So is new friend. This night will turn out just fine, I think to myself.

As I'm finishing my overpriced beer at the overpriced oyster bar we accidentally stayed at too long, I notice out of the corner of my eye an all too familiar face a few feet away from me. I turn my head to look at this face, look away, then look again. It is him. It's Mr. Big from Sex and the City.

Out of all celebrities to see in NYC, this one is actually nothing special from what I hear. He's in Manhattan all the time, filming his Law and Order shows and drinking and smoking cigars uptown, downtown, and at oyster bars near NYU. Several people I know have actually seen him several times so most New Yorkers probably wouldn't give a damn. But I do. I haven't had my fill of famous people, kids. My guilty pleasure a couple of years ago was watching every episode of that over-the-top femmetastic show, and seeing any cast member is a big deal. Mr. Big is a big deal.

At this point all three of us have noticed him, but I'm the only one who keeps staring. He looks scruffy, like a normal guy. He's laughing and drinking too much with friends, and he's wearing nothing to disguise who he is because it's one of the few cities celebrities can just be themselves. The feeling is building up inside of me as the table starts to get up, put their coats on, and move their way toward the door. I have to say something. As uncool as it is, I'm gonna do it.

I tap him on the shoulder as he walks past me. He turns around slowly, his eyes a tad bloodshot from the red wine or cognac or whatever he was drinking at dinner. He smiles at me.

"Um, hey. Just wanted to say that I'm a big fan." We shake hands.

"Thanks." And then he's walking away.

A six second interaction that I will always remember, even if he made no effort to be grateful to his midwest fan, or utter more than one syllable. I shook Big's hand, and now I can join the team of cool New Yorkers who don't go ga ga over famous people because I finally met one face to face.

After he leaves the restaurant, there's a tiny uncomfortable silence among the three of us.

"You're a dork," says new friend.

"Yeah, I know."

"Super dork."

"I had to get my fix. I am ashamed to admit how many times I have watched that show. Who doesn't love sex and big cities?"

"Yeah, I guess. "

I'm still relishing in my moment as the other two continue to talk about New York, Kansas City, and the ever-changing world we live in. Even though he was a cold fish of a man to meet, I'm daydreaming slightly and checking it off my list, as us dorks who are new to big cities often do.

We leave the oyster bar, and see that Mr. Big is still standing there, close by with a friend in front of the restaurant. A group of teenage girls are walking across the street, eight or so of them, and new friend gets an idea.

"Should I run over there and tell them he's here?" She laughs.

"Only if you've got a bad beef with Mr. Big."

It would be a hilarious and callous thing to do.

We walk away from the bar, a Kansas City trio of NYC survivors, and head to a basement karaoke bar to sing our hearts out on a wintery Tuesday night. I get sick of this city a lot, especially lately, but nights like these more than make up for my blues.

This one's for you, Mr. Big the Heartbreaker.

The First Visitor

2008-12-02T00:52:00.004-05:00

Standing there in the subway station, waiting for yet another train. I'm sipping my bodega coffee, with two sugars and light milk, taking the G train from northern Brooklyn to my office downtown. It's Monday morning and I can't believe after this long holiday weekend it's time to work again. My stomach is still stuffed from four days ago. I wanted to keep sleeping like I do when I'm on vacation. The rooster crowed and I'm back in the train station with everyone else, reading the Daily News.

I'm thinking about new memories recently created. I had a friend come visit me a couple of weeks ago, and having someone from home come stay with me for the first time since my big move really opened my eyes to what this city means to me. It added some local flavor from my hometown in the middle of the country to my East Coast recipe for homesickness and immense adventure. She saw my perspective in the flesh while making me realize how much I miss having close friends. No one in this city (except for the Morans, love them) has known me longer than 6 months. Long-time friends make the best mirrors and give you the best insights when you've been alone in your head for too long. This is my situation, I think.

One night it was drizzling rain outside, and it had been getting dark earlier and earlier every evening. New York City felt as though it was going into hibernation. Suddenly the streets are getting quiet by seven p.m. In the summer time, it felt as though the nights were endless. Apparently in this town you sleep all winter and stay awake all summer, like wild brown bears in their caves. Some apartments here are very cave-like, now that I think about it... whoa.

We decided to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge that night, one of my favorite New York things to do. It was her first time in the city, so it was a must. After almost being assaulted by a "bum gone wild" (he was thrashing about in the subway station -- luckily a seven-foot tall NYPD officer showed up to restrain him), the walk across the bridge was perfect. Because New Yorkers stay indoors during this first chilly month, we had the bridge to ourselves, the Statue and East River to ourselves, and downtown Manhattan quietly waiting for us on the other side, bright as a big city can be against the black sky.

Though maybe a little tamer of a visit than I had expected, she got to see a side of the city I had never seen before. A much calmer, softer version of New York I hadn't been paying attention to because I'd been too busy working, being poor, and riding subways in Brooklyn. Visitors are the best way to fall in love with your own city all over again. It was hard to see her go after four short days.

Her visit made me realize that when you visit New York, you have all the time in the world to do the sightseeing there is to see. The city is vibrant and wild and fancy. It's a blast. It's everything you want and need it to be. Especially if it's your first or second or millionth time visiting. When you live in New York City, however, you find that your free time shrivels up to hardly anything, and the "New York minutes" become more like seconds. Six months since I stepped off that bus into Times Square, and I've been so busy here in New York...living. Just living. I have passed Survivor-type challenges I didn't even know I was capable of overcoming without even realizing it.

For example:

You wake in the morning with two choices: do something really hard this week, like say goodbye to Starbucks lattes, or, move back home to the Midwest. It's a big decision, because if you don't say goodbye to Starbucks, you may not be able to eat food. Or take the train to work. Or use your cell phone that week.

I'm staying. Adieu, Starbucks. Parting is such sweet sorrow. I'm exaggerating slightly, but these are true stories I tell. This is what goes through the brain of a 25 year old female who has never had to think about these things before. I live in Space/Face land, text world, and Youtubeville. Doing without coffee, beer, or the internet seems to me like a crime against humanity.

Or, sometimes you have absolutely NO money for two more days, and you're waiting for that sweet sweet check to slide into the hands of your boss so it can then slide into your diminishing checking account. Those two days go by so slow. It seems like payday will never come, and you're thinking of ways to ride the subway for those two days. Are you willing to jump a turnstile or ask a stranger to use his/her card? Can you walk four miles each way to work, if only for two days? What will you eat, or more importantly, how will you eat?

It doesn't really matter anymore. As long as you're not dead or fired before Friday. As long as you still have your apartment in one of the five boroughs. As long as you're not calling your family back home, sobbing into your cell phone (the one that costs you what might have bought you a month's worth of groceries) that you need a plane ticket home and your waitressing job back.

I'm not going home. No matter how mean or dirty this city gets. With each hit, the sting is a little less, the bounce-back from the last let down is much bouncier than the one before. I'm tripping and falling and no one is asking me if I'm okay. I'm just telling myself that I am. I'm telling New York to piss off as I blow it kisses.

I'm glad a dear friend got to see this city I've paid tribute to in my months of writing and days of immense stress. We did the Big Apple the right way, the way I like to celebrate someone's first time here. I don't know if she fell in love with it the way I did at the age of nineteen--eyes wide and heart fluttering--but I do know she enjoyed me playing tour guide in a new place.

I told her that when I come home to visit Kansas City, next time, she has to pretend like I've never been there, at least for a day. Take me to all the little things that make Kansas City unique, and we'll trade tour guide positions so we can stop taking our towns for granted.

And like I said, even if she didn't find New York City to be the magical place some of us have fallen hard core in love with, her trip inspired a new event to occur: she got engaged upon her return.

So, you see, mixed in with all the misfortune and dirt and expense, I find that there are many happy endings produced in this city, or at least, because of its existence.

Humble Turkeys

2008-11-27T23:04:00.003-05:00

Thanksgiving Day. I'm in New York. I can't go home because no one can leave this island without enough frequent flier miles, apparently. This is Lord of the Flies for the twenty-somethings who shipwreck here with great expectations. And we're here to survive--find a greater life and love. And we leave for nothing, not even Turkey Day bliss in the midwest.

I'm typing away at an apartment I'm "housesitting" for (I made him give me his keys so I could watch cable) while he is Upstate, visiting family. I'm listening to comforting, cliche music and shivering as I think of the changing seasons of New York City. The changing seasons in my heart on a lonely holiday.

I spent six hours today in Harlem, visiting with the closest thing I have to a family on the east coast.

"Do you miss Kansas City?" I ask a friend of mine who has lived in Manhattan a few years now. We grew up together, and now she's a grown up, happily married New Yorker.

"Sometimes. I miss some things about it, I guess."

"Do you miss Kansas City?" asks William, the man who owns the condo at which I'm having my first NYC Thanksgiving dinner.

I didn't expect to be put on the spot, but I definitely don't mind answering.

Ahem. "I did, at first. The first couple of months. But now... I don't know, now, I guess I feel as though I've already gone to battle, so I'm not even thinking of going home until I've won."

Snickers around the room. They understand exactly what I mean. They're mostly all New Yorkers who have at one time lived in Kansas City too.

This can feel like war. I feel like I'm at war sometimes. Having moved two months before this drawn out stock market crash of Wall Street, my challenge of moving to the Big Apple became all the more complicated. I know very well-qualified people who live here who can't even come close to setting up an interview. In the past two weeks, I've had two scheduled interviews cancel (they had filled the positions), a sublet flake out, my computer's hard drive crash, and my I-pod die. And I'm not the most unlucky, I'm sure. The island is sinking quickly into a mess of uncertainty.

Despite all this despondency, I am happy to be here in New York City while the world changes beneath our feet, before our eyes.

Tonight I took the train (two trains) from 116th Street in Manhattan to northern Brooklyn, unsure of what to think of the holidays. I know I feel thankful but the world is quite bleak at the moment, in all honesty. I'm thankful for good people, mostly, and I'm thankful for...the future. I know things will get better. For myself, for New York City, and for the world. For India...for Mumbai.

And if it doesn't, we'll manage, the same way we have all gotten through everything bad we have dealt with in the past. The same way hearts change and mend and then change again. I'm thankful for the versatility of the human race.

I'm thankful for the Empire State Building, tonight, lit up in its gold and red and orange colors; I'm thankful for the trees in Central Park, glistening gold and red and orange.

At this moment in time I feel more alone in my life than ever before, but this city has made me stronger, wiser, more courageous, and more thankful for the little things in life than any big city ever could. Because it's the beast, and it's the best place to find yourself. Especially if you're a crazy romantic who thinks that the magic of one particular city will revive you.

Tonight, I'm thankful for the serendipity of everyday life, because that's all that I've got right now--the present.

Happy Holidays to the ones I love.

I MISS YOU.

Any Day Now, I'll Make It

2008-11-27T22:53:00.003-05:00

"It is altogether curious, your first contact with poverty. You have thought so much about poverty--it is the thing you have feared all your life, the thing you knew would happen to you sooner or later; and it is all so utterly and prosaically different. You thought it would be quite simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring. It is the peculiar lowness of poverty that you discover first; the shifts that it puts you to, the complicated meanness, the crust-wiping.

You discover, for instance, the secrecy attaching to poverty. At a sudden stroke you have been reduced to an income... But of course you dare not admit it--you have got to pretend that you are living quite as usual. From the start it tangles you in a net of lies, and even with the lies you can hardly manage it...

You discover the extreme precariousness... Mean disasters happen and rob you of food.

You discover the boredom which is inseparable from poverty; the times when you have nothing to do and, being underfed, can interest yourself in nothing."

-George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

Just Yell At Them

2008-11-11T01:14:00.002-05:00

New York: sinking your claws into my skin.

I'm riding the subway to my friend's place in Brooklyn after work. I'm tired. I'm careless.

It's hard to define how different I feel from the way I felt 171 days ago, when I stepped off the bus into Times Square, like an experimental nomad.

I pull out my subway pass from my safety-pinned purse, watching the group of ten or so police officers laugh amongst themselves beyond the turnstile. I frown at them, not because I hate cops, but because lately I frown at everyone without realizing it. In New York you're surrounded by people of all different kinds, at all different hours, and sometimes you just don't want to be. But you always are.

I wait for ten minutes, which feels like twenty, for my train to arrive. While I stand there the subway station is silent, though filled with almost a hundred people. It's a city of lone travelers who step on toes every day. We think everyone is a freak, but not us. I'm not a freak.

My friend described to me the subway eye glance. "You make eye contact on the train, maybe not even on purpose, and that guy looks back at you. Then he looks away. Then when he thinks you're not looking, he looks at you again. But you always know out of the corner of your eye." The one-two stare, as we call it.

"Everyone checks each other out in New York. Everyone. We just know how to hide the fact that we do."

It's annoying to me sometimes. I have all these eye contacts, all these brushes with other people, and none of it means anything. It makes you frown sometimes, and dislike the idea of other people sometimes. I'm starting to understand the cynicism of this town all too well.

The best night, which I felt was almost like our revenge upon distracted New Yorkers, was on Halloween.

My coworker and I did not dress up, but we went to a party after doing all kinds of election work (it was 4 days before the BIG ONE, you can't blame us). Somehow, he scored a megaphone from another member of our organization, so our Halloween treat to New York was to say things to drunken costume wearers on the subway, on our long ride home, that we would never normally say. Like, "Hey, you're dressed like a bunny, but that's the worst costume for a bunny I have ever seen. But, your pterodactyl friend looks pretty hot." The next stop is, Bergen St." We played "subway announcer" slash Joan Rivers of the Halloween world all the while promoting voting on a party line ... attempting to offend some people but mostly just creating hysterical laughter with a loud megaphone.

And the great thing was, everyone we met on our long train ride home LOVED it. Never have I seen so many bitter New Yorkers laugh heartily. The idea of a megaphone blasting gossip about their friends from fifty feet away in the subway car was apparently quite refreshing to not just ourselves, but all the subway riders that night.

And that, my friends, is why I forgive New York for making me such a frowning, jaded person after 171 days. Because you know, deep down, there is nothing mean about New Yorkers at all, we're just all in the same boat, and quite tired of the awkward silence on the streets and trains we ride every single day. When you work this hard to pay this much rent, you need some kind of release. And instead of taking it out on your neighbors with your evil subway/street stares, perhaps we need more megaphones, booze, and costumes in this world.

The Power of Positive Thinking

2008-11-10T23:26:00.002-05:00

He won.

Just like that. Ohio was called, and I knew it. We all kind of knew it. The state that had caused so much stress in the 2004 election was called--"blue"--done with. It was a sigh of relief, to say the least. Before that it was Pennsylvania, a state Sarah Palin had spent many a day campaigning in throughout the last month. After Ohio, it was Florida. That rascally Florida, where the famous recount of 2000 occurred. Throughout the campaign season McCain was winning in the Sunshine State. Suddenly, he couldn't.

We had won three of the most difficult states, and the rest is well, history.

And then, as we sat in our seats, glowingly sipping our beers in downtown Manhattan, watching America slowly turn from black to blue, Mr. McCain conceded. We almost didn't want him to, because watching all our states turn blue was such a glorious sight and process. In the end (or the middle, as some might say) we won this thing, not just by a margin, but by a landslide.

After the concession speech, I slipped outside to listen to the streets. Screams could be heard from distant miles around. The world was screaming and bursting with fruit flavor. America was awake and crying and laughing and smiling. I saw Europe from Manhattan, jumping up and down, the same way Sarah Palin could see Russia from her front porch. I rejoiced that night with the very field organizers that created this victory for Obama, as Ms. Palin ate her words with a side of moose sausage.

This is exactly what we needed in times of ever escalating despair in America. Obama's victory defied our stereotype of a traditional victor, and that night, November 4, 2008, history books were re-written. Not because Obama is an African American, but because he is a new genre of politician. He's a genuine and frank human being, and he will put in the necessary work it takes to care for a country that has been neglected for almost a decade. He represents hope to a country of cynics, and the only cure for cynicism is a reason to have hope again.

And today, I am somewhat speechless. I don't know how to feel, because I put all my emotions into one man's campaign for hours and hours and months and months, and now that day is over. And we were victorious. And everyone is now on the edge of their seats, watching his every move, hoping he can bring swift hope and change like he promised.

I believe that he will. I need to believe in something today, as I feel the pressure of a stumbling economy, new myself to the most expensive American city. I feel the pressure, and yet I'm not one of the million who were laid off, or foreclosed upon, or a business owner who today put a "For Sale" sign in the window of something they've worked hard for their entire career. The economy's thumb is pushing quite heavily on the heads of many.

Call me an idealist, but some people can only feel extremes. The worst cynics are often, at heart, the most passionate, positive idealists turned temporarily bitter.

Hey, Obama. Now that we've screamed and cried and cheered for you all these months, and given you all our energy and money, prove us right. Do it for the future generations of America. Do it for us, and maybe we'll finally turn those frowns upside down. Nobody said it would be easy, but I'm pretty sure you know that by now.

We elected you because we think it's you who can do it. Let's change a few hearts.

It Comes and It Goes

2008-11-08T14:00:00.004-05:00

Not wanting to be alone, not wanting to be with anyone in particular.

My head is quiet, uninteresting. I wander my apartment, check my e-mail 3 times, smoke a cigarette outside on my fire escape. The city outside feels dark and dirty tonight, like a monster waiting to eat me alive with a smile.

I'm restless. Nothing is the same as it was. New York City purgatory on a Friday night.

I shower, style my hair, throw on some make up. I want to look pretty, then hate the whistles I get on the sidewalk a I walk toward the subway. I don't want any attention, but tonight, I'm feeling lonely.

The French say "some are born to cry," and while I don't really cry, I often see the other side of life; behind the smiles, underneath the laughter. In the basement of the suburban dream home there are cobwebs. Cobwebs in my mind and in my city.

"Smile, baby!" yells a loiterer on my avenue. "Why don't you smile?"

Because today the world is uglier than usual, and I'm thousands of miles from home.

You smile.

It's All Leading Up To NOW

2008-10-31T01:50:00.003-04:00

Five days before the election.

Some people have been working for years for this day, this hour, this moment. They are waiting for their hard work to pay off. And by hard work, I mean, these people have worked for nothing but... this election.

I'm canvassing a neighborhood in Long Island, in the town of Brookhaven. So far, during this cold, dreary, pre-Halloween evening, my responses have been negative, to say the least. People are opening their doors, peering out with suspicion, then closing them in my face. This is a rare occurrence for me, but in a way a sign that the election has brought so many people to their doors that they are tired of hearing about it.

The next voter on my list is a male. 60. Democrat. Whatever. It's seven thirty at night and it's freezing. I'm ready to hop in a warm van to go back to the city, but hopefully I can have one significant and redeeming conversation before calling it quits for the night.

A middle-aged woman comes to the door. She's on the phone, and when she sees me she tells her caller that a "nice girl" is at her door. Better take some time out, I guess?

"Hold on," she says. "Let me see what she wants."

"Um, yeah, hi. How are you? I'm with the Brian Foley campaign. Have you heard of Brian Foley?"

She tells the person on the other line that she has to call them back. This is either a sign that she's going to curse me out or give me a speech about how much she loves Democrats.

I'm ready. After weeks of doing this campaign in a land I have never been to I've seen the best and the worst of people shun me or love me. It's all the same at this point.

"Have I HEARD of Brian Foley?"

I have no idea.

"Yes, have you heard of Brian Foley?"

"Young lady. Let me tell you a story about Brian Foley."

Um, okay.

"Brian Foley and I grew up together. I've known him since he was this big. I have two daughters. One of them had a seizure when she was a teenager, on the couch, this couch here in my living room, and I had no idea what to do."

At this point I'm listening, but skeptical. I'm still not sure if she's going to make my night better or worse.

"We had no insurance. My shitty ex-husband and I had no insurance, and being a mother I had no idea what to do with a sick daughter. I had no idea. What's a mother to do? Your daughter is having a seizure on your couch and you stand there helpless."

"Oh, wow. Yeah." This seems more interesting than any other door I've been to at this point.

"She was so sick, seizures all the time, and with no insurance there was nothing I could do. We got new insurance and they wouldn't cover her because of her pre-existing condition."

At this point, my heart is beginning to warm, because I can tell this woman is having a sincere conversation with me. Being very sick myself, recently, I can relate. The health care industry in America is a nightmare. An ironic epidemic in and of itself.

"I called Brian Foley, being the Town Supervisor and all, and told him that I couldn't do anything for my daughter." She looks like she might start to tear up.

"What did he do?"

"He sent me a list of experimental programs for epileptics in the area, and my daugther, somehow, was able to participate in a study. Because of this, that gave her free treatment for the rest of her life."

"Oh my God. That's incredible."

"Yeah."

"Like all politicians should do, right?"

"EXACTLY!"

We share a comfortable moment of silence, perhaps for all the sick people out there who haven't had that kind of grace injected into their lives the way this woman has.

"Today, my daughter is a professor, married and living in Florida, teaching classes about health and health care. She became a member of the board for the epileptic organization that paid for her treatment. She's living a normal life. She's happy. As a mother back then, I was so scared that I could never offer that to her. She was so sick."

"That's an amazing story."

"Yeah. So yeah. I'm voting for Brian Foley. Because I owe my daughter's life to Brian Foley."

"I'm going to tell people at my office your story, and I'm going to tell the other voters I talk to."

"Thank you. You should."

"Absolutely. America is a scary place sometimes, when you don't have people on your side. When you don't have the government on your side, helping you."

"It shouldn't be that way."

Most people aren't so lucky. Some diseases don't have an organization who will pay for your treatment, but this woman found a politician who helped her find one that would. And you can see in her eyes that her entire life has changed because of it.

"Thank you for your vote. Hopefully, in five days, there will be a chance for some real change to occur."

"Hopefully."

I leave that house satisfied, with the optimistic feeling that there are people out there, elected people, who really want to see our country be amazing. There is no other reason to be a politician than to want to help people, and perhaps as a country we have strayed from this. For a long time.

However, there is so much work to be done. Whatever happens on election day, the war has just begun to get back to the America I was told was the land of the free. Right now all I see are the lucky and prosperous living the dream, which is far from a country that was founded upon rebellion and equal opportunity.

Please vote.
Please volunteer.
Please help take back this country, and make it what it should be, so that our lives and the lives of our loved ones are not placed in a lottery. We have the right minds in this country, we want the best for our families...and we deserve the best from our politicians.

No more excuses.

This is Brooklyn

2008-10-28T01:11:00.004-04:00

"Yo, that's a white girl."

I'm walking up the stairs out of the subway station on Franklin Avenue in Brooklyn. It's eleven or so at night, and I put my head down just a little as I walk past two young men clearly talking about me on the sidewalk. I want to laugh when I hear them say this, but I also don't want them to pay any more attention to me than they already have.

Yes, it's true. I'm a white, um, girl.

And my neighborhood is far from white. It's a spectacle. And I look like I'm lost, but I probably live closer to that subway station than those two guys do. I claim my stake in Crown Heights.

Moving here recently from Park Slope has been mind-altering, to say the least. I can't say I quite feel comfortable yet. I haven't grown accustomed to the crackheads that approach me and ask me crazy questions as I chat on my cell phone outside my apartment in broad daylight like, "Damn girl. How long it take you to get dressed? Shit. You got a quarter?"

Maybe they're referring to my wintery layers...or my big boots?

I don't know what the first question means, but I do know I can't spare any quarters.

Park Slope was the "Upper West Side of Brooklyn", and in a way it was making me bored. Everything was perfect. Mothers strolled the sidewalks with their $500 baby carriages. Milk was almost $4. Bodegas were like gourmet patisseries. Even the clothing at the thrift stores looked, well, new.

In a way I felt like a fraud, a couch crasher in a town I had no business being in. I didn't go to an Ivy League university and I don't own my posh apartment. When I left Park Slope I suddenly felt at ease a bit, like I was going back to live with my own kind--the poor hipster artist musician types who buy beans in a can then cook them on an old junky stove, while watching a fuzzy PBS rerun on the only channel their TV can get. This is how I envisioned my first year in New York being anyway. It's a bohemian rite of passage.

But in my hood today, as I'll call it (no offense, I'm just using hip language), I have all that I envisioned plus a few things I did not expect.

I'll give a couple of examples.

The other night there was a Panamanian parade on Franklin Avenue (there's a large Caribbean population here), and I was gone at work all day so I missed it. However, as I left my apartment that night all dressed up to go out for the weekend, there was a tiny little barrier between myself and Saturday night.

"No one's leaving miss. Sorry. You have to wait."

"Um, what exactly happened, officer?"

"Crime scene investigation. Can't tell you."

"Oh."

I'm running LATE to meet a friend, and now I'm waiting in line to leave my own building. Outside on the street a helicopter's light is bouncing all over the darkness, mixing its own light with reds and blues of police lights and sirens.

There's a group of about fifteen people, mostly women, gathered around the front door of my building. I tap the pregnant woman next to me on the shoulder.

"Do you know what happened?" I ask, hoping for some kind of non-homicide-like story.

"Nah, I just know they ain't lettin no one go til they ask you all kindsa questions. Damn pigs. Why don't you just let'em go??! They ain't did nothin!?" She's loudly yelling at the cop now.

"Do you live in the building?" I ask her, trying to direct her attention away from my only ticket out of the building.

"Nah."

"Oh."

Um, so maybe the officer will let me go if I just hand him my ID and tell him my life story. My driver's license is from Missouri. I doubt they will think I'm a suspect with my silly midwest picture.

After chatting with the cop who is guarding my apartment door for a couple of minutes, telling him that I'm late and he can have my cell phone number and even apartment number if he just lets me go--I finally get my ID back, and I'm released from a police investigation I still know nothing about. Maybe I don't want to know.

Ah, Crown Heights.

Today I was walking down my street, trying to make it to work a bit early, and a young man followed me for a few feet, talking behind me.

"Girl, you ate lunch yet? Cause you know, if not, it's on me. Damn baby!"

Though I'm appreciative of the wonderful opportunity, a lunch date with a stranger, I just ignore him. I just ignore every comment that flies my way. The crackheads that move around like little shadows in the night, drifting from one end of the block to the other. The high school boys that stand in a huddled group on the corner, making beats and making fun of one another. I moved to the other side of Prospect Park last month and it feels like I've teleported to another planet. Everything here is alive and wild and unpredictable.

But truthfully, I have found many good things about Crown Heights. People are friendly, they just have to get used to you. The food is WAY cheaper. I'm right next to an express subway, which makes all the difference. Ten minutes to get to Manhattan. My current roommate is a broke twenty-something who will watch Law and Order with me after we cook our beans and rice. Not a rich, pretentious businessman who alphabetically files his to-go menus in a laminated folder, in a drawer in his $10,000 kitchen... true story.

And most importantly, Crown Heights has character. And diversity. And despite my story posted above, I do feel safe now that I'm used to it, as long as I use my street smarts the way I have at every other juncture in my life.

Fear is a concept created in your mind by the media, and many of us know this yet are still affected by it. America is a fear factory. But once you live in the neighborhood people fear and whisper about, you realize that all the things that are supposedly scary are actually, though I may sound crazy writing this, charming--and not quite so scary after all.

Day O' Rest

2008-10-25T19:21:00.002-04:00

Rainy day in the city.

It's Saturday. I have woken up this morning and realized that every single day since I've moved to New York City, months ago, has been spent doing SOMETHING extremely productive, whether it's work, job search, soul search, or city search. I awaken here with a restlessness that I feel can never be wasted. I must do. I must act. There are thousands of things going on all around me and if I stay indoors and just be, that energy will move around without me. I'll miss out.

So today, I just played. I watched the rain fall from inside my boy's apartment. We played poker with pennies and nickels and dimes and listened to music on I-tunes and ordered take-out. I forgot how great it is to not do anything at all, and how valuable forgetting the outside city that never sleeps.

I tried to think too hard about life, then convinced myself today to just forget. If only for one day. Forget how stressful life can be and just be happy with everything I have, try not to think about everything I don't have. Because for those of you who have been reading, I really don't have much anymore, and haven't since my big move, but what I do have is a new appreciation for time spent with yourself and with good people, inside a hardwood-floored apartment in Brooklyn.

A song comes on that I listened to while I was flying across the continent for my move, back in May, and my brain goes back to a time when I had no idea what to expect from my life---everything is up in the air. Oh, the air.

And then, I realize, I'm still feeling that way. And maybe will, for the rest of my life.

"Walden" on Long Island

2008-10-23T14:09:00.003-04:00

My latest New York "odd job" (and by this I mean I haven't yet had a normal job since graduating college) involves identifying voters as well as persuading undecided voters for the New York State Senate race, whose election falls on the same day as the Big One. To do this, every day, seven days a week, I hop in a van with a few other twenty-somethings and set sail for the far reaches of Long Island ("the Gisland", and my native friend has called it).

We knock on doors in suburban cookie-cutter pastures for three hours or so, informing everyone who the best candidate is. This task is not easy, because most everyone is more focused on whether we are going to have a black President or a female Vice President in twelve days. But I love it, because this grassroots-type political work, talking to people face to face, is how you win elections.

On this particular evening it is COLD. Our bodies take some time to acclimate to a sudden shift from Indian summer in New York to forty degree evenings. And it's windy. It's the Gisland. I'm freezing and walking incredibly fast between doors, trying to get as many yeses as possible so we can win this thing.

I get to the end of the street on my map and see that the registered voter I am to identify is an 86 year-old registered Republican. My candidate is a Democrat, but being the year that it is and all the changes that are going on in our country, you never know how people are planning on voting. Everything is flip-flopping and views are evolving into who knows what.

"Um, is Charles home?"

"Yeah that's me missy!"

This man looks maybe 65. No way is he 86. Damn, prescription drugs and modern medicine really help with the aging thing I suppose. This man's got spark.

"What you selling? You got anything good there? It's cold missy. What you doing? Me and the wife are about to go out and get a nice meal..."

He will barely let me talk, and his crazy thick Long Island accent is so entertaining to me that I just let him keep talking.

"Wanna see my deer? Just go round the back. She's back there. She's got her baby. Go on! Go back there. We're bout to go out to eat. But go on, go round back there."

I'm practically laughing at this point. I hand him some literature about our candidate, wave to his wife who is staring at me from behind him with a huge grin, and start to wonder just how crazy this guy really is. Deer? Okay. Your pet deer. Right. I'm definitely going to your back yard right now, sir.

I wave goodbye and head around to the back of their house. I have no idea what the hell this guy wants me to see but he's got all my attention. He's a 65 year-old 86 year-old. I've seen many a deer in my life, but they were always running away from human presence, running from cars and noise and potential hunters. And there are no animals in New York City, unless you include pigeons, rats, and rich people's magnificent dogs. This could be a unique opportunity.

I quietly open the gate to a stranger's back yard, and peer around the corner. It's dusk and I can still make out the outlines of two wild animals--a doe and her little baby fawn. At first I think they're statues because they are standing so incredibly still. I try to stand just as still as they do, and seconds later the doe is walking very slowly toward me.

I start to get nervous, because like I said, I've only ever seen deer running away from me and other human beings. They are afraid of us, as they should be, with our cars and guns and rage. She is walking right up to me with no fear and soon I feel her wet nose on my hand.

"Hi. Hi little deer," I whisper. I'm not sure if I should pet her. Maybe they bite? Maybe she'll bite me? I'm a city girl. This shit never happens. Is she going to jump up and bat me with her hooves? Like in the cartoons...

Then she starts to lick my hand. A large deer is licking my hand, while the baby fawn is calmly walking around nearby, chewing grass in this stranger's back yard.

"So, I see you made a new friend." The old man with piercing blue eyes and a crazy Gisland accent is standing behind me, witnessing my first nature moment since I've moved out to the east coast.

"Ha ha. Yeah." I'm lost in the moment. "These are wild deer right? I mean, you don't own them or anything?" (Cause if you did that would make you a freak, I think to myself).

"Na, they just come here about once a week. That baby needs to get bigger fast 'fore the cold sets in."

We both stand there for a minute, staring at the animals.

"Sorry, I'll let you go on to dinner. Thanks for letting me see the deer." At this point the deer is still licking my hand.

"She likes that salt on your skin."

This is really weird. I live in Brooklyn. I'm lucky if I see a cat.

He puts his arm around me as if to say, okay strange lady, get out of my backyard. But in a nice way.

I'm still hypnotized. I whisper goodbye to my new friend, petting her head quickly and gently, and walk through the old man's driveway back to the foreign street.

As I finish my night's work I take a minute to look up at all the stars in sky, which I can never really see when I'm back in the city. There are thousands, and they're beautiful. The air feels clean and street lights are dimming. The street is silent. The top of my hand still feels sticky. Despite my moment with nature, I still know the ugly dirty city is where I want to be and where I belong. But everyone needs a little escape from time to time.

Some days are weird. Some days in my life are very weird. Due to moments like these, I don't think I will ever stop working my "odd jobs", because sometimes my work results in being licked by a deer on Long Island.

I bet that deer was a Democrat.

One is the Loneliest Number

2008-10-20T23:46:00.003-04:00

"I think I'm lonely."

I create this text on my phone at 11:45 p.m. I don't send it, but instead snap my phone shut after reading the actual words before my eyes. I have created this text several times with the intention of sending it to whoever would do the honor of reading it at this hour of the night. 90% percent of the time I'm the only one who reads the text. Five months in this city and I do have friends, I even have a couple of close friends (congrats!), but the loneliness haunts my bones when I sit in my room in the late hours, typing away on my computer.

And really, there is nothing wrong. My job is fine, I like it enough. I work with crazy liberals in a crazy office that advocates everything I love to advocate. I wear torn skirts and ripped tights to work, with silly t-shirts that say things like "I bet you'll vote this time, hippie." We discuss politics and ethics and liars and idealism. It's like nothing I've ever done. I work an eight hour day, I go home, and I brood. I think about what's important to me, how the world has changed, how New York has changed my heart. I used to go out almost every night and now my solitude is a new concept, something I cherish and loathe with equal passion. I look forward to my nights at home in my room but have a sinking feeling before I go to sleep that maybe, maybe, I should call a friend or sibling to make some kind of connection. I went from going out five nights a week in Kansas City to going out one, if that.

I've talked to so many other people who've experienced the same feelings. People who have lived here for years have said, with a cigarette in hand, "My first year here, well, it was rough. It was lonely. (cool person pause...) It will be hard, my dear. And then, you will never want to leave."

I'm waiting it out. With pleasure, New York.

Tonight after finishing my work day I hopped on the train and went to Union Square, a fifteen minute train ride from my Brooklyn office. I walked with my headphones on, listening to the Pixies, a band I discovered in middle school (a time of ultimate horror, hands down), for what seemed like miles. I passed Whole Foods, Shoe Mania, Forever 21, Trader Joe's... I window-shopped and stared at people until I had my fix.

I'm here. I'm getting used to it. I'm in the mecca of hometown abandoners and what we call "transplants." I feel overwhelmed by everything there is in this city because you can't do everything and be everything at once. You just have to be satisfied with the fact that you're here in a city of everything, you know good people, you have a job that pays you money and gives you respect, knowing tomorrow everything could change. You're satisfied. Your rent costs an arm and a leg, but you are never bored. Your idea of America is forever changed.

And loneliness is never the end of the world. Even on the quietest nights.

My friend Dan told me, a few weeks ago via space/face, "New York can be, ironically, the loneliest place on earth." In a city of 8 million, you would think good friends come along like spam comes into your inbox. People are everywhere, bumping shoulders with your and stepping on your toes. But just like the virtual world of the internet, you never know who you can trust, and true bonds take a long time to develop. You can be impatient and trust the quick and easy spam that sounds too good to be true, or wait around for the true relationships that are few and far between. They say the real deals will cross your path. Sometimes it's luck. Sometimes it's effort. Mostly it's a combination. I've found about five, and that's enough for me. I've earned one friend per month. Good enough.

My closest relationship in my new neighborhood today, besides my roommate of course (he's fantastic, but he's been here so long he curses the city), is with the little Indian man at the bodega. The other day he spotted me 75 cents, and two days later, I paid him back. He was shocked that I even remembered. Now every time he sees me he asks me about my day, tells me about the new products they have in the store. They just got Kettle Chips. Holy crap. Who would have thought... I dig it. When they're out of the cheap coffee they brew, they take out the instant tea bag-ish terrible awful coffee and brew me a cup, free of charge. This makes me happy. Mr. Bodega Man.

In a city of endless possibilities, one can feel overwhelmed, to say the least. And sometimes, when I want to send my little lonely text, I sit and I wait, and realize that maybe being lonely for a longer period of time, for once in my life, isn't such a bad thing. Maybe this is my chance to figure out who I really am without the crazy social life and dramatic relationships that can cloud your head. Maybe this is my last chance to be lonely before the world forces me into a situation with endless obligations and no down time. The way we like it in this machine of a country.

Embrace that first year, kids. Though it sucks-- the many nights alone, typing away, surfing Youtube and watching eighties movies on your laptop, thinking too much-- it can also be an opportunity to reinvent yourself. To make peace with your mind before the big bad world eats you alive.

"Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for." -Dag Hammarskjold

Oh crap, I just hit "send" on my phone.

Little Fish in Big Ponds

2008-10-14T22:40:00.007-04:00

I'm at a show in Brooklyn on a Saturday night. My friend's band who I have been meaning to see perform for months is playing and I'm finally OUT, on a weekend night, enjoying New York at its finest. The lead singer is from my hometown and it feels great to have the chance to listen in on a little local flavor.

After they play I end up briefly talking to another girl I met (it turns out we actually worked at the same restaurant, years ago, back home) and she's more fresh off the bus than myself. I have five whole months under my shiny New York belt, though it's hard to believe.

"I just wanted my life to be more, like, anonymous, you know?"

It can be liberating.

"I've spent my whole life in one city, and I wanted something a little more... challenging? A little less comfortable."

I'm nodding as I sip my PBR, the hipster mascot.

"I feel like here I can be who I want, and no one gives a damn."

It's liberating. I relate.

On the subway ride home from work tonight, I got to thinking, what exactly are the pros and cons of this anonymity you can find so easily in New York City?

After all, that night I went out my outfit didn't cost more than ten dollars. I cut my own hair, and it's clearly uneven. I don't give a damn and I fit right in. There are no ex boyfriends in sight. People here know me as a writer, a nomad, and a political campaign manager. I have no specific clicks or scenes--all I have in my life is what I choose to have. I'm anonymous on the subways, during my long walks in Brooklyn and Manhattan, in the public libraries. I haven't been screwed over by anyone in this city, and I haven't betrayed anyone. I'd like to think that this is because I've matured, but sometimes it's inevitable when you have longer-term relationships with friends and lovers...

It feels clean, like drinking purified water when all you've ever known was a river.

Because the truth is, when you spend your life in the same hometown, with the same old friends and faces, you will always be seen for who you were, whether you change or not. And if people are wise, they change and they grow. Human nature at best.

I have made a lot of mistakes.

And this is why anonymous can be good. This is why New York can be your anonymous playground. You can be insane, if that's who you are, or you can be a hermit, hiding in a tiny apartment writing on a four year old laptop. I can be Wall Street, I can be Williamsburg. I can be Harlem or the Village, all in one day. Having no one know your name or face (besides the people you seek out as committed friends) provides a sense of freedom and power to redefine everything you once thought to be true, no matter what the truth might really be. It's abouit self-respect in some ways.

Take your loneliness, put it in a bottle, shake it--make it explode.

I'm buyhing a pair rollerskates this week, and I'm going to start rollersking to work. And maybe I'll dye my hair. Orange.

That, my firends, is the beauty of big cities. Because honestly, no one will give a damn whether I do this or not.

Like my friend says, "Take a look at your resume, take a look at your life, your age, your race. Now imagine that there are a hundred people, at least, who are just like you, doing what you do, being you. That, my friend, is a big fucking city."

Being my stubborn self, I respond, "Yes, I take that as a challenge. Because there isn't and never will be a hundred people just like me. Damnit. I can prove that to this indifferent city."

"Um, okay, Dorothy."

And naivete, well, it's liberating.

Everyone Needs It

2008-10-13T13:40:00.003-04:00

I'm getting off work. It's late in the evening. I'm working a couple of different jobs, and I make my own hours, and set my own schedule, and I sing to my own tune. I do good deeds in my non-profit political atmosphere, finish up at the office with a little more cash than I had, then about three times a week I call him up.

I don't know if I would have made it here without him.

I head to northern Brooklyn, blasting my headphones on the subway, reading my miscellaneous book of the week about a twenty-something be-zillionaire entrepreneur hippie I have nothing in common with. Or if my book bores me that day I scribble in my notebook about philosophical and existential interpretations of daily existence, unsure if my thoughts would be interpreted as profound or just plain insane. Maybe there really isn't a difference anymore.

The train stops at my typical destination, and I climb the steps up to greet a neighborhood filled with Polish bakeries and stylish hipsters. I've been coming here for months now, and it's how I've grown to love to pass my evenings between work and sleeping.

We go up on his rooftop, spouting off political updates, ranting about the state of our sad nation. We're optimistic but still perhaps a bit angry our country has to go through the hell it has gone through lately in order to learn from its mistakes. We agree on most everything, but continue to push each other with new perspectives about race and class and war and peace. The horizon holds the view of the Manhattan skyline. The Empire State Building is red, white and green tonight, lit up like an Italian bomb pop. The Chrysler Building is art deco magnificent. The moon is half full and the stars are hidden by the bright lights and miles of electricity.

And when the roof discussion is over, we're usually in the kitchen, making bad jokes and eating dried fruit, drinking European beer and talking about the next movie we should rent. He wants to rent "The Sting" with Paul Newman, and I want to go on a crazy Hitchcock kick because I had a dream about the brilliant director the night before.

He's my first New York best friend, and he makes me laugh when life gets so serious it feels hard to relax. He told me that relationships are considered good when you feel like that person is family, because that's really what we're looking for in life, right? Right. People to count on in a world of flakes. People who will care about you if things aren't quite right in your life. People who will listen when you want to talk about the ups and downs of our crazy town. People who will make fun of you and let you make fun of them. People who make each other laugh to the point of tears. People who always return your phone calls.

Sometimes at two or three in the morning we're still awake, lying there laughing hysterically like children or even discussing the history of communist Russia. Don't ask. Random. I feel like I have known him for years. I feel safe in a city of harsh barks and soft bites. My soft spot in a world of hard knocks.

How the Big Apple Fell Close to the Tree

2008-10-13T12:33:00.008-04:00

"Never have I been so poor in my entire life. I mean, I didn't think it was possible to survive on this little. But I pay my rent, I buy my cheap peanut butter, pasta and frozen spinach, my subway card. Living here has taught me to want what I need, you know?"

"Yes, of course," my father says in his comforting, radio personality-type voice.

"You have to be there at least once in your life before you actually become successful. It can take a while. Especially in New York."

We're driving down tree-lined parkways in Kansas City, discussing life and happiness and geographical differences. I'm spouting off the pros and cons of K.C. vs. NYC as though it were a manifesto I've been working on for months. Coming back has made the dichotomy concrete.

My father is driving me to the airport after my four day visit, during most of which I was still incredibly sick and miserable. The hybrid SUV speeds down the road (I'm so excited to be riding in a car) in my serene hometown and as we're driving I'm picturing my father as a 25 year old starving artist, trying to figure out the world, just like me.

He has worked for the same large corporation since I was a little girl, and his past always sparked my interest because it's filled with stories of travel, wilderness adventures, rock shows, southern hippies, and mild debauchery. Every year I hear a little more about the father that existed before I was born and I love it. He also spent quite a bit of time in New York City before I came around.

"You know, you're one of the big reasons I decided to move, Dad. You told me if I was going to keep waiting tables, why not apply at restaurants in New York... that stuck in my mind."

"Oh, I said that?"

"Ha ha. You said it to me a couple of years ago. But it stuck. I may be poor now but my life is closer to what I want."

"You know, when your mother and I were living in Austin and I was working as a freelancer, we had a quarter left between the two of us the day I got my big job offer."

"Whoa. Intense."

"Yeah."

My father is quiet for a minute, as though his mind is racing with colorful memories filled with a different kind of music he hasn't listened to in years.

He clears his throat. "All we did was hang out with good friends. We ate beans and rice every day. We were dirt poor. We all were."

"Yeah." I look out the window at the midwest eye candy whizzing by--yellow and red painted fast food restaurants galore, corporate auto parts stores, enormous gas stations...

I feel like a stranger in my own hometown.

"Actually, man, those were some of the happiest days of my life, come to think of it."

Silence. My heart does a little flutter when he says this. I smile. "Yeah."

We make it to the airline departure gate and I'm not sure how to feel as I board the plane. I want to take a young version of my father with me to New York so we can run around all over the island and stand in the front row at every small venue indie rock show, dancing our asses off. I want to bottle up his spirit and carry it around in my cheap backpack as I climb the concrete Manhattan mountains. His wanderlust and love for New York City has been passed on to the next generation, and I accept it with pride.

My father, my version of infinite youth, my motivation to sail away to find out what I'm really made of. To make life more risky and adventurous. Peanut butter and contentment, bad boxed pasta and great conversation, nickles, dimes and endless stacks of overdue library books, second-hand shoes and tattered wallets, midnight walks and fifty cent coffee, uncomfortable beds and adventure-filled big city mornings. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. And when you have nothing, it can feel like something.

From New York City to Kansas City, this entry is for you, Dad. The Apple is always here if you want to visit.

Welcome Back to Earth

2008-10-13T11:35:00.003-04:00

I'm in New York again. I'm back and I'm healthier. Never have I been SO sick. I'm still to this day not sure exactly what it was, but imagine feeling as though you have the spins -- the ground is wobbly beneath you though you're standing still, your legs tremble if you walk more than a city block, objects in your peripheral vision bend and twirl creating a cartoon-like mess.

You lay down to rest because the fatigue is immense, only to find that when you close your eyes the blackness is moving around in your head. Now imagine this continuing for weeks, every minute, every second. As a cherry on the sundae, add some feverish chills, lucid nightmares, and stomach cramps. It was awesome, kids. I wouldn't wish this upon my worst enemy.

There were moments I wanted to die just to end the dizziness, but instead I stuck it out in my apartment, spending days in a row alone with my books and TV. I waited for my body to heal, chugging orange juice, popping vitamins and cold pills, and nothing seemed to be getting better as the days went by. I couldn't work. I couldn't think straight. I was alone in a new city more sick than a 25 year old should ever be, with no health insurance.

I booked a flight for Kansas City, hoping to return home to my family and friends, able to schedule a doctor appointment more easily than I could if I were in New York. Luckily I was able to see a family doctor, and was given a few diagnoses:

A. Ninety-hour work weeks f*ked your body up.

B. Drinking five cups of coffee a day to stay awake when you only sleep five to six hours a night is bad for you.

C. Stress is bad for you. New city + stressful job = potential health problems.

D. You've been living on adrenaline for months, and now your body is crashing. Some of your vital organs are actually screaming at you right now.

My immune system was down, six feet under the ground, and in a city like New York where subway cars are packed like sardine cans you pretty much contract whatever the person next to you has if your body can't fight it off.

Enough said. I'm alive. I'm walking and living and working again. I'm grateful to be part of the human race once more. The world is less fuzzy.

Oh, and I found a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk the other day, so things are looking up.

Untitled

2008-09-23T18:02:00.003-04:00

This city, this city, this city.

I moved here to find a new America. I found America here, amplified exponentially.

with more wattage
more traffic
more heartbreak
more passion

richest of the rich
and poorest of the meek
no sensitivity
no dishonesty

I found the happiest of the poor
the couch-surfers who beam
who haven't saved a dime
but saved their souls
from quiet despair

so much it's overwhelming
never the same place twice
and I find myself
some days
trapped in the cushiony
floors and walls
of my apartment
to take a break
from all the noise

everyone wants something
in life
everyone needs that push
to make it right

and maybe this isn't for everyone
but it's for some

to the romantics
to the insane
to the driven

this is our town
and this is my asphalt planet

The Intricate Web of Homesick

2008-09-17T11:56:00.008-04:00

I'm embarrassed to post this story about myself, but unless we laugh at ourselves life becomes way too serious.

My loneliness is reaching a red alert level this week. Rather than spending time contacting the new friends I've made in the city I'm mostly spending my time walking, reading in my room, and analyzing my new life in my new town. My friends here tell me that to be successful in New York you can't be a hermit, but I'm not listening. I'm reading Prozac Nation, a book I accidentally bought from a street vendor out of boredom. I'm trying not to fall too deeply into the dark world of the writer, but I can't put it down. She makes depression seem so beautiful... oh no here we go.

My job provided me with something to occupy myself with constantly--I've never worked like that before. The adrenaline became addictive, like a drug in and of itself, and once you are away from the constant movement and madness all that is left is silence. I'm alone with my own thoughts on a consistent basis. It's enlightening and maddening all at once.

In these horrible economic times that I am witnessing first-hand I know it's crazy to quit one's job. At my new job I work near Wall Street in downtown Manhattan. I walk past the investment bankers who are drunk by eight o'clock, ranting about the end of their retirement dreams on the sidewalk. I know this. I quit my job because my exhaustion was making me sick. I have my first New York doctor's appointment tomorrow morning, where I will hopefully be diagnosed properly for my dizziness and immense fatigue that's been occurring for weeks now. My lease is up next week and I haven't figured out where to go yet. I quit a job that was my entire life, and now my health appears to be in jeopardy. Good preface for an episode of insanity, right?

It's Monday night. I leave my new job around 9:30 and head back to Brooklyn. The air is getting colder, my legs are achy and I want to get out of bustling Manhattan as soon as possible. Once back in Park Slope, I find a little restaurant on the corner that has put all of its chairs up, but the light is still on at the bar. On Mondays they have $2.50 beers, the sign reads, so I decide to go make friends with some local business owners in the neighborhood if they'll have me for the last few minutes they are open. I need a conversation, and I need one now. Sometimes strangers are more comforting than friends because they offer an unbiased perspective.

I spend an hour or so hanging out with the bartender, a sweet half-Maltese half-Irishman named Rob. We're talking about the ups and downs of restaurant work, the downside of renting cheap apartments in bad neighborhoods, and the difficulties we're facing these days in this world. Today the stock market crashed 504 points, and here in New York everything appears to be unravelling. And unlike the midwest, the residents of this town don't try to conceal their discontentment. It's written on faces everywhere. No one knows what comes next and it's frightening.

Around midnight I peel myself away from the warm welcome of the bartender, and force myself to go home. I feel dizzy. I feel lonely. I don't even really know how I feel but I know that on this night, I want out. New York is making me try so hard. I can't do it anymore. I want to kill New York for abusing me, but I know that I asked for it, begged for it, married it. I know that this dark Monday night is not the end-all be-all of my experience, just a "rough patch"--as my mother might say were she to speak to me like this in my 25th year. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and I haven't died yet.

As I walk home the several blocks to my apartment, I'm becoming angry. I'm becoming sad. I want to see all of my friends in one place, hug them for hours and scream across the Kansas City skyline that I'm HOME. I'm home to visit. I missed you Kansas City, and I took you for granted. Your cheap rent, your friendly residents, your quiet neighborhoods. I miss my grandparents and my dog. As delirious and unsteady as I feel, my rage requires action. The words "homesick" make it onto a text message I'm sending to friends, and it hits me that after quitting my job, after the world slowed down and got silent, I found myself in a city of strangers and now I can't leave. I'm a fly caught in a beautiful, intricate spider web, and the spider will awaken any minute now to devour me alive.

"I'll be home tomorrow." I text this to several friends around one in the morning. It's midnight there, many of my friends are still up. In my mind I've decided that the only way to fix the way I feel and have felt the whole past week is to leave behind everything I've built up, at least for a little while.

Then the words of my New York friend ring in my mind. "Going home for the first time is never as good as you think it will be." I don't care. I want to be amongst those who know my middle name. Perhaps this is just one more example of how I use quick fixes and impulse to run from my problems. In this case, though it's normal to miss home and miss your friends, it's definitely not normal to awaken half-drunk at nine in the morning and pack your bags for a trip home when you don't even have a plane ticket.

So, on a rainy Tuesday morning I make the hour or so commute to the northern tip of Queens, Laguardia Airport, feeling stoned (I don't do drugs anymore but perhaps I should at this point) going over in my mind how great I will feel once I've arrived back home, welcomed by thousands of people who may not even exist. Maybe all the Royals players will be standing at the arrival gate as I exit the plane. This little bus trip to the airport also gives me time to sum up everything about the last four months and how much I have to be proud of. I did a lot here in the city. I made a footprint. And I'll come back and do more if I can, when I can.

I make it all the way to the desk where I would buy my ticket home, stand-by. I contemplate this purchase. I search the internet on my phone for last minute deals for my very very last minute trip.

And then, I change my mind.

All my life, I've run away from my problems when the goings got rough. All my life, I've avoided feeling discomfort, which is a crucial part of being human. All my life, I've flown away from situations I've created, and today I'm flying away again. This isn't so much about missing my friends, it's about fearing change. This city has created change in my mind, in my heart. And this time, I'm not going to run away. Not yet, at least. Today I'm going to stay and finish what I started.

I slowly board the bus, leaving the airport. I'm emotionally conflicted, to say the least. I want to curl up in a ball.

That evening back in Brooklyn I go over to a friend's place to talk and hang out. I wait a while before I tell him about my morning, because I haven't really told anyone yet. After I finish the story, he looks down at me. I'm sitting like a zen statue, cross-legged on the rooftop. His eyes are wide with disbelief, and I'm completely calm.

"You're really losing it, aren't you?" he says in all sincerity, meant to be compassionate, of course. "You really did that this morning?"

"Yep."

Moment of silence. Then we both start to laugh.

Some days you're the fly, some days you're the spider. Some days the spider never wakes up and you find that maybe, maybe...you'll make it out alive.

Mean Poem

2008-09-17T11:56:00.002-04:00

You think you had me,

But you never did.

The only thing I can say

That may justify

The way I feel today

Is that you never really had me.

Though you may have thought

Those presents I bought

The way I talked

The way I kissed

Meant I would miss

My nights with you...

Today is the day to learn the truth.

It might be hard for you to hear

You didn't mean that much, my dear.

It serves you right

Mr. Man of the Night--

Sir Procrastinator

of Doing What's Right.

Maybe

One day you wake up

To realize

You never had me,

Or her,

Or any of them.

And suddenly you're growing old

Sitting puzzled, wondering

Why it is

You never had me

Or her

Or anyone at all.

Every ego must fall.

Some time.

How People Meet People

2008-09-10T13:11:00.003-04:00

We met in the strangest way. It was magical. Magic happens.

It was a Friday night, getting very late. Still at the office at nine-thirty, I mention to one of my co-workers that I had promised a friend I would go to his band's show in Williamsburg. I want to make it before they go on at 11, and unless I leave the office right then the odds are miniscule.

As I find a cold seat on the F train toward Brooklyn to go home and change my street-stained clothing, I start to wonder if it really is in my best interest to go to a show for a friend I hardly know, in a neighborhood I've never been to, on a night I should go to bed early. I use my time on the train to overanalyze my weekend night plans, the way I've overanalyzed every situation of my life.

I'll just go home, change, see how I feel after that. Though I'm tired, my social life has become equivalent to that of a monk in the French Alps. I am new to the city, my work is my entire life, and frankly, I'm lonely. I went from working at a restaurant in Kansas City, having the pleasure of knowing so many people and places, to facing possible social isolation each weekend. I decide to gussy up and hop on the JMZ train, bound for south Williamsburg.

As I approach my destination and pass the above-ground abandoned buildings in this former industrial neighborhood, I realize this could be a total mistake. The person whose band it is, who I claim to somewhat know is someone I have met once, and we only know one another because we're both from the same city originally. We have a couple of mutual friends.

It's dark. I'm walking underneath busy highways and passing crowds of Hispanic teenagers who are whistling and laughing amongst themselves. I walk almost a mile before finding the address to the club.

As I enter I realize the only person I know there is drunk, very drunk. Their band has already finished playing, and the tiny room is filled with 19-year-old hipsters drinking cheap whiskey and PBR. The room smells of cigarettes and sweat. I start to feel claustrophobic. There's a table selling PBR cans for $2 by the door, and I think to myself, I'll down one, and if nothing exciting happens by the time I finish it, I'll leave. That's that. I came and I saw.

KC friend sees me and says nothing at first. Perhaps I look like the wallflower no one wants to approach. I'm going for the record label look, like someone who goes to shows alone to write brilliant, pretentious reviews about unknown bands. My ego is sinking quickly, and I'm planning my escape route once the empty can hits the trash.

"Hey, Sarah," says my KC friend. He drunkenly kisses me on the cheek, almost missing and planting one on my lips, and the anxiety in my stomach rises. I'm far from in the mood for this. Why did I come...I want to go back to my hometown where I can walk into a club and say hi to twenty people...

"Hey, how are you? I'm so sorry I missed your show, I tried to get here as fast as I could."

He's not even listening. He's looking behind me at a young girl with a short dress on. This is my exit cue. Normally I would know how to fix this problem and make him introduce me to some of his cute musician friends, but I'm too tired to play any social games tonight.

"I'll be right back. Good to see you." I excuse myself and because the room is so crowded I successfully sneak out the side door, away from the hundreds of faces that remind me I'm in a strange new city. It's an eerie feeling when you see people who look so similar to people you know, and for one instant your heart perks up until you realize that person being there is impossible. You're here in New York City, and they are not. The period of adjustment has no specific time frame.

I find a stoop outside the loud, smokey club and take out a cigarette. It was a long subway ride here, and now that I'm in this wild, dark neighborhood I'm debating whether to walk around and snap photos. I clearly can't stay.

Right next to me is a bicycle, and to my left a very tall, thin man with thick wire-rimmed glasses is walking toward me. He begins to unhook his bike, and for a moment we make eye contact. I impulsively choose to speak.

"Know of anywhere cool to go around here, maybe somewhere not so loud?"

He stops untying his bike and looks down at me, smiling.

"Um, yeah. I mean, there's a few places. Were you just at the show?"

"Yeah, I missed the band I came to see though. I was late. I work really late, so, you know."

"What do you do?"

"Political fundraiser. Director. Obama." These words sound strange coming out of my mouth because it's my first important-sounding job. I may even come across as arrogant, unintentionally.

"Oh wow. That's awesome!"

The conversation soon turns into one of the best discussions I've had since my move. "Mike," as a I will call him, is a very intelligent person, who follows politics very closely, and is a huge Obama supporter. And he rides a bike. And he works in the music biz. Sounds good to me. And, I'm lonely on this Friday-bust-of-an-evening.

"Wanna go where I'm going? I'll call us a car."

"Sure." I can't believe I agreed so quickly.

"Great. I'll get my bike in the morning. Let's go. It'll be fun."

This is how New York City friendships begin, I suppose.

This evening occurred two months ago, and he's still a good friend, maybe more.

Magic happens.

Saving the World on the Streets

2008-09-08T00:55:00.004-04:00

Chelsea. Whole Foods, to be exact. The sun is beating down on the polluted sidewalk, and I'm watching the people stampede past me as I begin my four and a half hours of signing on new members for my non-profit "test campaign."

Today is not just another day fundraising for the Democrats. I have been recruited to launch our Amnesty International campaign, a group I know very little about save for the fact that ten years ago, in high school, I wrote letters to political prisoners in distant countries I can't even remember the names of.

It's a good group. I'm a good fundraiser. Whole Foods is good. Pricey. Let's do it.

Across from me stands a new kid, who has just moved from the Midwest, sort of like myself, but way more new to the island, and my job is to make this transplant a bona fide New York tough guy. He's just out of college, fresh off the bus, and standing in Chelsea with me attempting to stop New Yorkers for a good cause. It's possibly the hardest job you could take on, and my job is to make him think it's easy.

"Minute for human rights? Wanna shut down Guantanamo Bay?" I say loudly to passersby. I smile my "connect with strangers" smile at everyone who gives me their best New York half-smile back, hoping to get some reactions. Any reaction is good.

Across from me, ten feet ahead, he faces me and tries to take a mental picture in his mind of how I am even halfway successful at this. His face is contorted with a mixture of awe and desperation. After all, we talk to strangers, which I was told as a child not to do. In New York, a place I was told would be difficult to live. About politics, which my family does not discuss with other family members, much less strangers. And we ask them for money, something only the bums on the streets are able to do here, quite successfully.

My first "stop" is a man with a thick Spanish accent.

"How are you? I'm Sarah." I shake his hand firmly and smile like a devil, unintentionally. His name is Bernardo. He's interested in Amnesty. Great.

I start my little speech about human rights, but because it is my first day on this campaign I cut straight to the chase. Become a member, Bernardo. Sign my paper and give us $10 a month.

He agrees, and my first sell is almost done. As he signs the papers, writing his credit card information, I tell him that $20 is better than $10. He agrees once more. Done. Sold. In this one interaction my "quota" for the day is complete, despite the fact that salaried directors don't really have quota. Our job is to set a good example for the new guys.

I have done this type of work for so long I can make a person give to a good cause in my sleep. I am practically asleep every day that I work because I haven't slept a full night in days. It's not rocket science once you master the psychology of simulating personal connections.

As Bernardo walks away my trainee grins at me down the sidewalk. "What'd you get?"

A good one, I say. And then continue to try to stop people. Learning by example couldn't be more important this day, in hot hot Chelsea, as I'm deciding I've reached my breaking point in this type of work...but midwest college grad will never see this burnt out feeling on my face. Just my smile.

It's not that the work isn't good, because I can't think of anything better than the $10,000 I've raised this summer in New York City for the Democrats. There's nothing better than seeing the face of a first-time good cause contributor light up as they stand there, pouring their heart out to you about political enlightenment. And there's no better year for this than 2008.

Another man stops for me fifteen minutes later. He's come out of the apartment building right next door to Whole Foods on seventh avenue, so above his head there's a cartoon dollar sign only I can see.

"What are you doing?" he asks me, rather coldly. I'm used to this attitude, so I casually jump into my story about Habeas Corpus and international human rights.
He interrupts me. "No, what IS IT?"
"Amnesty International, sir. We've been around since 1961. We're looking to increase our member base."
This is where it gets weird. I'm ready for it. Bring it on crazy, because you have no idea what I'm prepared to deal with.
"WHAT IS IT? What are you doing? Tell me what you're DOING." His rage is practically seething through his eyeballs, and it's not because of anything I have done. At this point I've realized that just because he came out of a nice apartment building doesn't mean he lives there. This is no mad professor. This is a stereotypical New York crazy bum, who will talk to anyone who will talk to him. His goal is to piss me off and start an argument with me, and today I'm not having it. I'm at the end of my rope when it comes to dealing with street traffic.

"Here's the deal. I'm a fundraiser. My job is difficult. Clearly, you are insane, so I suggest you walk away from me right now and let me talk to someone who isn't bored enough to be an asshole to street canvassers. Walk away, before I make you walk away."

Words like this have never left my mouth before. I stand soaked in my own astonishment, proud that I've put my foot down in the hot hot streets. He stands there for a minute, stunned that such a smiling sweet girl could shoot him down so quickly.

"Fine. I'll go ask that guy then." He points to my trainee.

For a minute I think perhaps I've made a mistake, and this man really is a mad professor-type, ready to give his life-savings to Amnesty International. I listen to him begin chastising the boy across from me until the look of discomfort grows so apparent on the Midwesterner's face that I walk up behind the crazy and tell him to leave us alone, once more.

Ah, New York streets. And this small interaction/discomfort is one of the least inappropriate things that has happened in my three months of non-profit warfare. There are many good stories floating around in my head, just waiting to spill out onto the pages of my little notebook. They will come, trust me, and they will make you laugh heartily.

Right after this man leaves us alone, he saunters over to sit underneath the window of Whole Foods. Out of his bag comes a brown bag of beer and a half-smoked cigarette, which he re-lights. Midwest and I exchange uncomfortable looks and decide to move down the street away from the annoying psycho. As I walk down the street hoping to avoid any more awkward confrontation I step in a puddle of urine on the street, soaking my shoe. I don't even flinch.

Toward the end of our day, my favorite interaction of the season occurs. A tiny woman, perhaps 85 years old, appears within my view and quietly says to me "Okay, now I've got some time." It warms my heart.

"You came all the way back here? That was like three hours ago!" She's literally half my height, leaning over her walker.

"Well," she says slowly, "tell me what you've got."

I tell her about Amnesty, about how we need members to keep our overhead low, blah blah blah. It's a good cause, I say. She tells me she likes good causes, and she likes my hard work.

"I'll give you ten dollars a month," she says slowly, as she pulls out her Mastercard.
"Make it fifteen," I say.
She laughs, very quietly. "Fifteen is a good number."

Keep up the good work. An expression I have heard hundreds of times this summer.

Yesterday I gave my boss my two weeks notice. My days of ninety hour weeks have ended, and my boss told me I should be proud of myself as we spoke on the phone tonight. "The kids in the office really respect you. You've worked really hard. You should take care of yourself."

I know. My life is forever changed because of the hundreds of college kids I have trained to be street machines, doing the most honorable good cause work a person can do, occasionally stepping in a puddle of urine while being told that you are a saint by an 85 year old woman. And yes, for the fifth time since my move, I cried as I told my boss that this job has taught me more in these months than I could ever learn.

This is how you turn the streets into a forum for change. And God bless anyone who does the work I have done. I know there are thousands of you out there, and one of these days, we really will save the world.

Statues and Sunrises

2008-08-28T19:34:00.004-04:00

It's seven thirty p.m. (sometimes I don't know if it's morning or night so that clarification is for you and I both) and my evening at the office is coming toward a close. Normally while at work I have no time to write anything besides a couple of professional e-mails, but being that I'll be completely finished before nine P.M. I think this causes for a celebration blog.

I've been in NYC for 96, count em, 96 days now. I am beyond adjusted to the city. I am toughened. I am muscular, inside and out. I walk everywhere and for miles on end--most days I don't even notice how far I've walked. Today when someone smugly snaps "excuse you" at me, perhaps because I have crossed their path in the midst of boisterous foot traffic, I yell "excuse you!" right back. It's hilarious. It's New York. It's ridiculous. It's the fastest speed you'll ever go, and the best time an adrenaline addict can have.

I consume more coffee than than a tired barista, and I sleep less than your average coffee junkie. Some nights I try to behave like an average 25 year old, new and excited in New York City. I meet people in my office out for drinks only to find myself practically falling asleep at the bar. The liquor hits me hard and fast and soon I have nothing intelligent to say except "good night." And I go home.

New York has made me into a machine. And the truth is, everyone can use a little discipline, especially if it's post-depression discipline. I never would have been able to get myself out of the hole I dug while living in Kansas City. My routine became sleeping late, working late, hanging out with friends too much--basically procrastinating the act of making my newly distant dreams a reality. Some of my friends have since my move even made comments to me like "I'm so glad to see you doing well... you seemed like you were sad for so long..."

No one tells you how scary life after college can be until you get there and realize exactly how it feels. There are those in life who accept challenges presented with a go-forth-and-conquer attitude, and then there are people like me who need to be shoved occasionally, perhaps in front of oncoming traffic, so that we can be forced to face these challenges with courage. Some of us need to be taught what courage really is, perhaps more than once, to really succeed in this world of chutes and ladders.

These past few entries have been borderline preachy, at least from my own cynical perspective, and for this I apologize. It's not my typical writing style.... but I feel the need to express what a different life I have found by simply pushing myself to work harder and expect more from myself and this life. I hope to never lose sight of that again if I can help it. But more importantly, I hope to take everything I can from this experience, and if I take only one thing may it be that every person is capable than much more than they think.

I'm running and directing an office of dozens of staff, with the help of some amazing and brilliant coworkers, and my loneliness outside of the office (I have no life, and this is the absolute truth) is outweighed by the fact that I am a small part of a huge goal, a goal that will hopefully be achieved in a mere 67 days. And even if we don't win this election, these hundreds of hours spent campaigning have surely changed the lives of millions of people, all across America the Beautiful.

I hate this song, but I'm going to quote it anyway, because when the song came out people didn't own i-Pods and were forced to listen to the radio as it played terrible songs, again and again.

I won't even tell you what band it is, because like I said, it's embarrassing to a self-professed music snob.

I stand by these words, because it's true, yet not always easy to do.

If you want to be somebody else,
If you're tired of fighting battles with yourself
If you want to be somebody else
Change your mind...

Some days I want to leave this city so bad I can taste it, feel it in my bones. Some days I fantasize about moving to Jamaica to be a bartender on the beach, while a young Tom Cruise and I slather suntan lotion on one another with eighties haircuts and bathing suits. I dream of boarding an aircraft that will fly me somewhere simpler, less expensive, more smiley. Ha ha.

And then I awaken, and I leave my apartment bright and early in the morning. Down the street in the distance is a clear view of the Statue of Liberty. And she is holding a torch for my country, and she represents the courage I need to finish the projects I take on. And she represents a country I want to take back.

And I smile, as I sip my cheap coffee. And she smiles back at me. Freedom is so subjective.

Sad Bastards

2008-08-19T20:29:00.002-04:00

Today I read through all of my blogs in order to summarize my experiences during the 11 weeks I've resided in my new city.

I made a keen observation about my writing today:

I write about crying, sadness and tears quite a bit. The act itself is mentioned at least once in almost every blog I've written. I believe the nickname for people like myself is "Cry Baby."

This entry is to clear the air about that.

I'm not a cry baby. Well, maybe in my heart. I'm kind of a pansy, but the point of my blog is not to make everyone think that.

I have cried three times total since moving here. Okay, four.

1. My first day off the bus. It was scary. I was hung over and incredibly emotional.

2. In the subway station in East New York. I was exhausted and surrounded by police officers and screaming drunks at three in the morning. You would cry too.

3. One evening, sitting in my little apartment writing, I realized that I really did miss my friends despite not having even one second to think about it for what seemed like weeks upon weeks. I still miss you.

4. This past weekend when my boss and I had a heated discussion about how stressed out everyone is with the campaign and the hours we've been working. Those tears lasted about three seconds before I realized sometimes you just have to "hug it out".

So all in all, this is not a bad record for three months. I'm not as big of a baby as I paint myself to be.

But I do miss everyone I at one time saw daily, merely 11 weeks ago. In fact, I mailed off a post-card today, to be sent to a very special someone with a very special place in my heart...

Ha ha. You'll read it soon I hope.

Insomnia in NYC

2008-08-19T16:56:00.002-04:00

Insomnia. I need to write.
Years of time wasted, worrying about life and the what-ifs. Life--something anyone can master. Life is how to sell yourself. New York is about selling yourself. Make people understand you. Inspire yourself. Inspire myself to inspire others. Miraculous. Amazing.

I'm so spoiled that I almost killed myself with boredom. I gave up.
I gave up on life because I didn't understand it. I didn't understand how easy it was to own the world if you want it bad enough.
So I slept. And I drugged. And I waited for things to happen to me. And I let the pain of not understanding overpower me. And I lost sight of the beauty of the world. I let the ugly gray and black overtake me. And I cried. I still cry. And I let people make decisions for me, for years, without having my best intentions. I let the world define me rather than using it to help me.

Clarity can be terrifying. Regrets can be painful. The future can be death-defying. Success can be electrifying.

Nothing good ever came without hard work. So I work hard. I want good.

I awake in the middle of the night, unsure if I'm still dreaming, with memories that flood my colorful consciousness. Childhood laughter, adolescent terror, adulthood of longing.
Pushing myself to jump further than I thought ever possible--to laugh more often, to love people the way I would want to be loved.

And it's not about winning or losing anymore. It's not about expectations. It's about surprising yourself. Each day remembering that you are alive, and by being alive you are capable. I expect every day to be a day of greatness. I expect what I say to be heard.

And I'm lucky to be alive, living in a city that continues to keep me on my toes.

I'm awake now, and I'll never sleep the same again.

Cheers to all the mistakes we've made, because without them I wouldn't be as happy as I am today.

The Hope of Cynics

2008-08-01T10:55:00.003-04:00

It's my last day at my first Brooklyn sublet. Tomorrow morning I'm taking my bags down the street to my next sublet adventure.

I was supposed to be at work 3 hours ago but have yet to leave. I've just finished a glass of orange juice and the acidic taste is still coating my mouth. I'm thinking, I'm thinking. My muscles are aching, I feel as though I weigh a thousand pounds despite having lost at least ten since my move. My stomach is tensed up with premature ulcers and pains shooting through my abdomen. My eyelids are heavy...and I slept over six hours last night.

Obama, Obama, Obama. His face is filling my dreams and thoughts.

I have heard this name more times in these past few weeks than I ever dreamed. I am even giggling to myself as I write this, because saying his name over and over reminds me of the office impressions we do--doing the robot dance while saying "hope change hope change" over and over. It's our one chance to burst into laughter in the midst of what could possibly the most serious chance our country has to revive itself.

We do need hope. And we do need change.

Right now I need to unwind from this hope and change so much it's not even funny. My health is suffering from the long hours, yet I'm addicted to the campaign work. At this minute, having taken the morning off to start my move, I can feel the anxiety ripping through my corps because I can't get my mind or body back to a place of peace. I have no time for anything but hope and change. I have no time for anything at all.

I look at these 94 days left before the election as our one opportunity we have as idealists to get our country back. Because for the last eight years, it hasn't felt like my country at all. It makes me sick to think that I was born in a state that now harbors people like W. And because he is now so disfavored by Americans and the world, he has no choice but to go back to his ranch with an empty look in his eyes, returning to his toys and pets--far from D.C.

It's been a waste of an administration, to say the least.

But my point is, I find this physical and emotional exhaustion to be hard at times, of course. And there are some days I find that I can't move my legs. However, I see what I am doing as an act of patriotism. The last act in our liberal Shakespearian play, and we're not even quite sure yet if it's a comedy or a tragedy. To the thousands of people like myself who are out there, working as ridiculously hard as they can right now, I commend you. We are the Americans that have been disillusioned by eight years of deception, bloodshed, and insane greed. I don't know of anything more hopeful than seizing our opportunity to put an end to all of it. Make my America a home again, because it has become one big heartbreaking mess.

94 days. 94 hours of my week devoted to my last attempt at pure optimism. Because as the years go by, cynicism has been creeping into my heart like a plague slowly spreading across a continent. Idealism and hard work are the antibiotics I'm injecting into my veins, and in a matter of days we shall see if it's strong enough to kill this strain.

I am milking this, America, because if I don't believe in hope and change right now, I don't believe that my country can be saved. I can't believe in much at all.

And when I say that I'm leaving the country if McCain wins, I mean it.

Or maybe I'll just stay in New York, and us cynical liberals can live on a blue island, happily ever after... start a brand new colony.

Why I Should Never Sleep

2008-07-31T11:33:00.003-04:00

It's another busy day at the office.

We've returned from D.C. about five days ago and literally hit the ground running. I haven't had a single day off since I started the job, about three weeks ago.

After a day out in the field, fundraising face to face with other young idealists like myself, I am tired and I am weary. My stomach is empty, but I have no appetite. I'm sipping my fourth cup of coffee for the day, and the caffeine is doing nothing. This is the first week I can officially say I've grown accustomed to my insane schedule, though still wondering if anyone ever really can. I'm talking myself up so that I don't pessimistically think about the immense project I've committed myself to through November.

"So, the deposit's done?"
"Yep," responds one of my coworkers.
"The money's done? E-crews done?"
Yep. Yep.

I take a moment to step out onto our little terrace outside the office window. It's where I go for solitude, and the best place to take in the view of the black and grey Midtown skyscrapers surrounding Penn Station. If you look very hard to your left, you can see a tiny sliver of the sun setting over the Hudson River. Glorious.

I take a couple of minutes to go over the day in my head, reminding myself that there is always more work to be done...we are never "done." Not with an election to win.

I crawl back inside the office through the window, careful not to pull any of my tired, unstretched muscles.

"Michael?" (my boss).
"Yes."
"What do I need to work on right now to expedite the process of us exiting the office this evening?"
He takes a couple of seconds before responding.
"Well," he says, "I really want you to go home and do laundry, actually. Take the rest of the night off."
I just stare at him for a minute.
"What?"
If he's joking, I'm going to kill him. This statement just made my day. After a short meeting with him yesterday I had let him in on a little secret that I'd run out of clean clothes three days prior and felt like I was going insane, with no time to live normally...

"Um, okay."
"Hurry up. Go. See you in the morning."

***

I exit the subway station in my former casa de crashpad neighborhood, beautiful Inwood. I can't decide if I should go to my former host's apartment to gather the rest of my things first, or if I should celebrate with a beer from the bodega, drinking from a brown bag on the street. It's 8 p.m. and I am OFF work. I feel like I'm dreaming.

Beer it is. Wonderful, wonderful. I make it to his place, grab my things, and throughout the evening manage to get all of my laundry done in less than two hours. The world is on my side again. I have clean socks. I am the queen of Manhattan.

By the time I finish and say my final goodbye to Inwood and my friend, it's 11:30 p.m. I'm so exhausted I can't see straight, but I know that the A train is almost a straight shot to where I need to go in Brooklyn. I load my bags onto my shoulders and brave the late night train ride.
Upon sitting down on the subway, I close my eyes in peaceful rest, trying not to think about work...

I hear the train anouncer in a loud voice saying "This is Van Siclen Avenue. The next stop is..." I pry open my eyes and realize that this is not in fact a dream. I am still on the subway, the same subway I got on in Inwood. What time is it? I have no idea what Van Siclen is, never heard of it. I could be in the far reaches of Long Island for all I know. I then realize I have fallen asleep on the train, and it's now 2:30 in the morning.

In panic mode I grab my heavy bags full of clean laundry and drag them off the train. I hear a young man saying "Hey" over and over behind me, and realize that he's talking to me. I've left one of my bags behind, under my seat in a state of sleepiness, and have barely enough time to grab it before it pulls away. Whoa.

The train pulls away, leaving me in an unfamiliar world. I am immediately greeted by the scene of two cops, one on either side of me, on verge of arresting two different men. Oh shit, I think. There's been some kind of murder or assault, and it's late at night and I'm probably in the worst part of town imagineable.

I drag my bags over to the subway map on the wall, and use my finger to follow the A line to Van Siclen Avenue. I'm in East New York--the worst part of town imagineable. I'm over an hour's commute to where I live, and I have no money on me for a cab. I'm trapped in the subway station like a snow bunny in hell.

Sleep-deprived and delirious, my only solution is to put my back against the wall of the station and slump down, dramatically, sitting on and protecting my possessions. I feel a warm tear float down my face, unexpectedly. Another story to write home about if I make it out alive. Silly rabbit.

The cops barely notice me at first, but once she sees the tear on my face the female cop approaches me.
"This is no place for you, sweetie. What on earth are you doing here?"
I whisper to her that I fell asleep on the train, and with no money I have to wait for the next one.
"That could be a very long time, you know. You gotta get outta here. We'll wait here with you til the train comes."
As she's speaking to me the man behind her, who she is in the process of arresting, is shouting things at her, and at me. Her priorities are clear--arrest the man with the knife who has an open forty ounce by his feet, or the protect the twenty-something white girl who fell asleep on the train?

I watch the station wall as a rat runs out of a hole and stops to take a look around, then runs back into another. He's got an impressive little highway route, I think. Then I start to cry again.

The police are leaving, both leading hand-cuffed men to their late night jailposts. I'm by myself in the station, just me and Ratatouille's American cousin.

You said you'd stay and wait with me, I think to myself, but I knew you wouldn't.

An hour later, the subway pulls up. I've never felt so terrified and desperate. I have managed to escape get another close-call situation. What if those cops hadn't been there? What would have happened? I can't think about what ifs, just learn from this and move on. Always have cab money in your pocket. Always have a Plan B if you're exhausted.

When I get home to Park Slope at almost four a.m., I call up my office to leave a message.

"Michael, hey, it's Sarah. I'm going to be a little bit late tomorrow."

Everywhere You Go, Damn There You Are

2008-07-24T20:55:00.006-04:00

So I just spoke to a friend of mine who I haven't spoken to in almost two months. I realized while we played catch-up that my new life here in NYC is actually indescribeable, to say the least. I'm one of those people who wishes I could use my conversations to paint perfect pictures with perfectly chosen palettes of paint to describe a mere hour of my time in this city...

But when you're talking to someone you've known for three years and you have twenty minutes to do so, the palette tends to consist of grays and whites. Not merely enough.

So, my dear friend, things are good, yes indeed. Let me paint a small, abstract portrait. The pen is mightier than the cell phone...

I'm alive. I haven't been mugged yet (supposedly a common one-time experience for those city-dwellers). I'm working for a good cause doing everything I can.

So the question is, what's different? How do you respond to that friend who tells you, "everywhere you go, damn, there you are"-- telling them that actually yes, my life is entirely different!

Because in all honesty, I was in doubt of the move changing anything. So happy that it did.

What what what was it that made me unhappy in my home town?

I have answers:

I was stuck in a comfortable niche. A comfort zone, so to speak. KC is wonderful.
I vouch, I vouch.
It's affordable, the economy is great for job-seekers, the people are more friendly than average bears. In fact, if you're comparing KC to other cities of its size, it's a freakin steal to live there. It's a happy place.

So.

I left KC. I left because of one big reason: if I don't change my environment, my soul will shrivel. Nothing personal, KC, you have my heart. But seeing the same faces and going to the same places every day left me with a sense of longing. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

So I left.
(As I'm writing this, lying on my stomach in my ancient Brooklyn apartment, the subway cars running beneath me are causing the floor to vibrate--fantastic).

I don't know if it was the restaurant work that was killing me or my sadness that hit me all at once, but something was missing for me in KC. Something big. A challenge, a freeway.

Let's solve this by moving to the biggest city in the country, I thought. I have nothing to lose. I want to wake up. Wake me up, wake me up.

With a broken heart from three years of a failed relationship, I saved and scrounged for six months so that I could relocate to the city of fallen angels and rising stars, because--in my heart of darkness--I knew that if I didn't, I would wake up at the age of 35 with regrets.

Regrets are unacceptable. They represent selling yourself short, and with such a short time to enjoy the world...

How easily this can happen.

And now that I've been here for two months, the moving is not nearly as monumental as it was the first couple of weeks I was here, yet it's still a fantastic feeling. The romance is fading, evolving into a whole new level of love, and we (New York and I) are at the point of enjoying our comfortable silences, one on one.

I'm adjusting.

Quick example: I get yelled at at least once a day by a crazy person---walking through midtown by the office, traversing the gloomy subway stations...sharing a public elevator (what a concept) with ten foreign languages being spoken in close contact of my eardrums.

And now that I've been here a while, hey, I sass them back. Why not. I hear their conversations. I put up with no one's shit.

So sorry I forgot to hold the door of the coffee shop long enough for you, making you feel the need to curse at me at 7:30 in the morning.

"Eh, thanks for 'oldin the door miss. Jeezus Christ."
"Well, maybe you're just a slow ass."

"Thanks for bumping into me."
"Go F-"
... yeah, you know.

Most of my responses to the general public in the city are defensive, but it's all fair game in this town.

"Asshole."
Typical.

So yes. New York has sunk its claws into my skin, as it should. Big claws, might I add, being the big bear of a city that it is. I remind myself every day during my solo, morning commute that in this town of claws and bears I'm still the new kid, the teddy bear who is learning day by day to shine and shine bright in a town full of fluorescent lights...

And I will. I will shine. I can't stop.

Since moving here I have seen the best of the best. The brightest of the brightest have shaken my hand, passed by me on Madison Avenue, even smiled in my direction from across the street. Hello, John Turturo. I've learned to communicate with the bastards that run the damn planet, and those who they step on to get to the top.

Because the terrible side of the story is, I have of course also seen the worst of the worst. Every day, almost every hour, walking down the street, I am introduced to a person's horrifying life scenario. I now realize that if I let these personal stories get under my skin, my day is ruined. I start to cry. So I hold my head up high and I blast my headphones. Doesn't mean I don't care, but in this city, the sadness can be everywhere. If you choose to see it that way...
And at the same time, one million amazing moments happen every day.

So, so so so. This entry is an ode to New York City. This entry is an update for all my lovely friends who I miss.

Thank you, New York, for saving my life--waking me up when I was on a path of ambivalence and self-destruction. You're a representation of how incredibly unique and diverse our country really is. You harbor the best and worst, acceptingly, which makes you a saint. You accept me, just how I am, quirks and all.

I will always, at least one day a week if not more, take you for granted--maybe even berate you. But the truth is, when I'm gone, all I can think about is how much I can't wait to come back.

So here's my hat off to you, big city big saint. I'm glad I RSVPed, and actually showed up, because since my big move it's been one hell of a time.

In a world that was once black, gray, and white, I now have a little color.
A little flush to my once pallid skin tone.

A New Perspective

2008-07-19T13:28:00.005-04:00

Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn.

I awoke today around noon, refreshed, in a good mood.

We've established at the office that rather than working seven days a week, the directors will have one day of the weekend be a half day, which means our only workload involves going to the office for planning purposes followed by an hour or two of postering in the city for recruitment. That half day has become my day to write, do laundry, read the New York Times, and perhaps treat myself to an evening of book shopping or street browsing. I need to find a good poker game...

Working on a campaign is fun.

I've met the most amazing people in the past month...some of which I will hopefully keep as lifetime friends. United for a common cause, the energy among our 70 or so staff only builds as November 4 draws nearer.

Though my month anniversary with the company was 3 days ago, I definitely feel like I've been here longer. And less than two months from now, I'll be shipped off to an unspecified purple state (swing state) to work on a turn-out-the-vote project. This six week project will hopefully make a world of difference in one tiny voting district. A field organizer can mobilize 10,000 voters, and seeing how the last two elections have gone in '04 and '00, well, you know.

I may return to New York, I may not. My life is up in the air just the way I like it. The results of the election is the factor in my decision-making, as silly as that may sound.

Because I spend so many hours at my job, my time to explore New York has been limited.
Last night, however, after getting done at the office by 10:30, a couple of us directors were able to make it out on the town for a couple of hours.

A friend who works in the office invited us to come hang out on the roof of what I'm assuming was a country club, some type of athletic club, and we took the invitation happily.

Upon reaching the roof of the 24th floor, we realized that this view of the city was one of the best. A midnight view of Friday night in Manhattan. Central Park stretched below us with lights scattered all across it, surrounded by twinkling skyscrapers and expensive high rises. Seeing the city in all it's glory at night refreshed my bearings. Sometimes I forget that I'm really here.

Such a small area of land with millions of different lives being lived on the ground below. It overwhelms me to think of all the possibilites this city can offer. I start to wonder if New York is really where I'm meant to be in the long run. No matter where I end up in the future this will be a time in my life I will look back on with pride and happiness. Everything is hitting me all at once and I have very little time to reflect as I go. Just my Friday night through Saturday afternoon stretch.

I miss my friends and old faces. The longer I am here the more I realize that this experience is changing me in every single way. I don't seem to have the capability of appreciating things fully unless I can no longer have them. Right now some of the friendships I had for years back home are putting tiny holes in my heart the New York could never fill.

The Sarah who never sleeps is waking up every morning a little bit less of who she once was, becoming more of who she always wanted to be. It's not easy every day, but it's good.

Oh-bla-di.

Dear New York

2008-07-15T22:13:00.004-04:00

New York New York
The island of it all
Surrounded by water
To put out the fire
Of the Manhattan sun
Burning trash on my street
The dust fills my eyes
The tears never come
I'm walking I'm walking
in New York New York
Searching for meaning
Among hundreds of signs
Too tired to laugh
Too happy to cry
I'm lonely I'm surrounded
By strangers and signs
In New York New York
It's gonna be fine
All your dreams will come true
If you dream like you should
And do all you can
My city my land
Is surrounded by water
That puts out the fire
Of hearts and hotheads

And we live underground
And we work for the man

Each day a new batch
Of girls just like me
Step off the bus
We just want to be free

New York New York
Don't you dare break my heart
I'm here and I'll stay
Don't scare me away.

My New York.

Less Money, More Problems

2008-07-15T18:03:00.009-04:00

52 days since my big move.

It's a Tuesday night. Out of the seven campaign directors in our giant office, five have gone home sick with the stomach flu that morning. Heidi and I are left to run the office by ourselves, and together we save the day. It's ten-thirty p.m., our numbers are done, and we've set ourselves free from a double day's worth of work. It feels great.

Despite the fact that we know we probably shouldn't, we walk toward 8th Avenue in search of a night cap to celebrate our hard work. On the way to our little Irish hole, I stop at the ATM inside the bodega, hoping to withdraw some cash. I have a sinking feeling in my corps.

"Insufficient Funds", reads the screen, after I try to withdraw forty dollars. Ouch. And at this point I really can't even blame George Bush for my economic woes.

One of my many problems at this moment is that upon moving here I opened an account with one the most common banks in New York, for the sake of convenience. This common bank, however, wants my account to maintain a minimum balance of $100 for the first three months, being that if you are not from New York City itself, you have clearly never heard of such things like "currency" or "bank account" before. This bank is going to help me learn the ways of money--teacher, teacher. I want access to that hundred dollars more than anything. Why did I agree to this account, why why why...

Because my friends and coworkers are nice, Heidi buys me a beer and I get to celebrate our hard work being over for the day. However, I cannot shake this new anxiety I feel here in New York City. I feel like at any moment, the city could pull everything I've worked so hard for out from under me, sending me hitchhiking back to Kansas. I have to be careful at a different level of careful that I've never known.

I've heard Manhattan described as one giant shopping mall, scattered all over an island. In a way, this is true. So in my case, my days up until pay day are spent stuck inside the best shopping mall in the world with no money, like a child in an arcade with no tokens. At this point, three days before pay day, I've even cashed my server's checks from Kansas City, all valued at less than $2 a piece. $0.92, $0.87, $0.54... My concept of finances in the last two months has changed so dramatically. In the midwest I spent money on high gas prices and going out with friends, and maybe the occassional thrift store binge...here in Manhattan I spend my money on, actually--I don't know. It just disappears.

New York is probably the most enjoyable place (maybe aside from Vegas-different ballpark) to spend your money. We make it that way. The food is incredible. Wine and beer selections are endless. Starbucks and other gourmet coffee shops (well, actually, no that's not true--Starbucks chewed the others up and spit them out) line the corners of every intersection, and if you want that tasty Frappucino in your hand you'd better spend $4.85 to get it.

Anything you want here, you can have, if you're willing to pay the price. And this is why we love and hate it. To be metaphorical and obnoxious, the offer is put out there, but if you take it you may be sorry. This is not a place for the weak at heart.

Whenever I think about spending a crazy amount of money on something I don't need, I remind myself of a woman I hung out with by default on the Upper West Side last week. She was an unspecified age...her face looked like she was in her mid-forties but her body was that of a thirty year old. She looked rough--like the streets had been unkind to her for a very long time. I think she liked my fundraising tactics, because every time a person would stop to talk to me she would giggle like an insane person and light a cigarette, like she was watching a favorite movie. She never spoke to me, but acted as my audience throughout the day. Her little black baby tee read "I've got a killer pussy", with a picture of cartoon cat. When I think of people to not become like, though enjoying her company for the brief hours, I think of her. I'll skip that Frappucino and go for the $0.75 coffee at the corner stand.
(I hope that paragraph doesn't offend anyone. I know some of you reading this have worn that shirt before)

There is good news. Come Friday, my paycheck will be mine and mine only. No more rent due this month, no more cell phone bill, no more groceries to buy for at least a week. But after experiencing le pince ("the pinch") I have definitely learned that there is an art to affording the Big Old Apple. If you want to live here, there are sacrifices you must make. My expensive taste I inherited from years of feeling like "the world owes me everything because I know everything" is slowly evaporating into the thick smog of the city streets. If I'm going to make it here doing the job that I love, I will have to direct my attention away from the short-term pleasures that lead to disagreements with the ATM. I will focus on taking in the sights and sounds I came here for, the reason this city has become so important to me in my lifetime. I will not have a killer pussy.

Manhattan is like the mean Grandmother I never had, back from the grave to teach me the lesson everyone must learn.

Spend wisely.

My New A.M. Life

2008-07-07T23:52:00.004-04:00

It's another morning in Brooklyn. The alarm goes off...it's 6:20. I push snooze twice without even realizing it, and at 6:36 my day has officially begun.

I was never a morning person, but this new life I live in New York City is requiring some drastic changes to what in comparison seemed like years of the easy life. Everything now is fast and less thought out. I have so much going on that I barely have time to do my normal over-analyzed regimen that eventually leads to restlessness and daydreaming. In fact, here in the city, I'm so busy that I forget what loneliness feels like until I experience those last minutes in my subletted room, typing away on my laptop. It's approaching midnight and the silence is deafening.

Exiting the apartment around the sunny hour of seven a.m., I have several options as to where I should get my first cup of coffee...that cup that kicks my brain into first gear in this five-speed existence. Option A: the 24-hour diner next door, where the counter woman seems incredibly irritated that I exist, most likely cursing every customer under her breath, or, Option B: the convenience store across the street, where the unamused Middle Eastern men appear to be more sleepy than me.... I usually choose the latter, seeing how the selection of newspapers available across the street is too good to resist. The Dirty Daily (The Daily News), full of AP stories and pointless gossip, is usually the most my tired mind can handle on these intense weekdays.

I spend the first few moments awake with thoughts streaming through my mind of office averages and fundraising goals. Constantly searching for professional improvement at a time when the age of 25 is all I have in my favor, I know that when I choose a position I have to give 150%. Our 80-100 hour weeks have created within me a certain degree of megalomania (mistaken for confidence?), and after achieving the victory of our campaign, come November 4, I will look back on these tired mornings and sleepless nights saying "I did everything I could." I may not have changed the world, but I activated a few thousand New Yorkers all the while activating myself.

There is little you can do these days in terms of honest politics (oxymoron?) so giving your all for a short while seems to be the answer. The only problem with being twenty-five is that I have lived just long enough to realize that things don't always go as planned, and yes, Mick Jagger, you were right. You can't always get what you want, and maybe what you want isn't really what needs to happen. If McCain wins, I've decided in my mind that I'm moving to Asia to be an English teacher.

I digress.

My commute on the subway is a quiet one, as the morning rush hour crowd is typically in the exact same boat as me: one cup of coffee away from perky, all the while contemplating the hectic schedules of their important New York lives. There's nothing more peaceful than standing in a subway car with hundreds of others, hearing nothing but the soft hum of headphones. Silence is truly golden on the orange F train to the island of productivity.

Exiting the Penn Station subway, I always walk the same route down 8th Avenue, past the cab stand filled with well-dressed professionals commuting to Park Avenue or wherever Chanel lives. Every day a different cab driver parked by the curb smiles and waves at me and I shake my head with a smile indicating I don't need a cab today. Not today--but maybe some day I'll be rich in this non-profit field...

Across the street is the football-stadium sized post office, where I've waited in line with more crazy people talking and yelling to themselves and whoever else will listen more than any other location I can think of. That statement means a lot in New York.

At the corner of 8th Avenue and 30th Street is my little bodega, with much friendlier counter staff than my Brooklyn neighbors. We are starting to get to know each other, and this second-cup-of-coffee-stop is perhaps my favorite of the morning. I always notice the large proportion of customers in line buying or cashing in lottery tickets, something I've never really done but with the state of the economy should perhaps consider.

And then there's the 30th Street stretch to the office, where I typically smoke my last cigarette alone, before my 14-15 hour day begins (I tried to quit and couldn't--I'll try again soon, Mom, promise).

I approach the golden glass doors to my office building, usually around 7:55, after passing the construction workers and European salon personnel. I greet the kindest door man in the world with a quick conversation, what's new, etc., and he pushes the elevator button for me as I prepare myself for a new day of progress for the baby blue Democrats.

All in all, my 45-minute commute to the office is the reason I'm beginning to love mornings...a perfect time to reconnect with the world upon waking.

I count my blessings the way I count the elevator floors going up the tenth story.

A.M. in the city, working in an office to change my country.

Roses for New York City

2008-06-24T23:37:00.004-04:00

Allow me to share an anecdote about public transit that makes me somewhat happy to be far away from Manhattan today.

Yesterday, a lovely Sunday morning and my first day off after an eighty-five hour week, I stepped out of my friend's uptown apartment with bags packed. My first corporate business trip. I gave myself an hour to make it from 196th street down to 42nd St., a reasonable amount of time--or so I thought.

In my high heels, which I now only wear, um, NEVER, I begin walking down the avenue, searching for a cab to hail. You can't wear heels here unless you can afford to pay for cabs everywhere you go.

Little secret. In the far reaches of upper Manhattan, all cars are potential cabs. Generally, it's rare to see an actual Yellow Cab. They tend to be gray or black town cars, also known as "gypsy cabs." Though forewarned that some of these cabs are illegal and therefore should be used at your own risk, my options were limited and so was my time.

I immediately hear a honk once my hand goes up and watch a dark gray towncar pull up next to my pile of bags.

"How much to Port Authority?" I ask, with New Yorker conviction and a subconsciously faked accent. Ha ha.
"How much you want to pay?" asks the smarmy man, giving me no eye contact.
"25."
"30."
Done.
I don't care if I'm being ripped off at this point. I have a bus to catch. Clocks tick at double speed on the east coast.

As he's driving I realize he's taking Broadway rather than the West Side Highway, the typical long route for a cab driver who is clueless about the long commute to downtown.
I check my cash flow and realize that I only have $23, so unless I want to argue with him upon arrival I need to get out at a subway stop. Now. No time for ugly confrontations with men who won't even look me in the eye.

Once a subway line comes in sight I tell him I've changed my mind and ask him to pull over.
"No--I do it for $25," he says.
I tell him it's not the money, I just need to get out. Soon I am freed from the evil clutches of the money scamming gypsy cab, quite relieved, in fact.

Knowing I have very little time to catch my bus to D.C., I attempt to run with all my heavy bags to the subway, only to run right into a pile of yellow tape binding all passenger entry to the station. I look up on the brick wall only to see a tiny sign explaining it's purpose for closing--maintenance. Sunday. Whatever. God damnit.
My bus leaves in half an hour, and I'm nowhere near my destination. Thoughts of calling my boss to tell him I've missed my bus begin to race through my mind.
I feel sick.

Just then a Manhattan bus pulls up at a stop right next to where I'm standing alone, approaching panic mode. I decide at a moment's notice to get on the bus while I think of option number 4 for the Port Authority trek.

Shite.

I stay on the bus for a few stops, racking my brain for the fastest possible way to commute to midtown, considering I have not yet mastered teleportation. I know this non-New Yorker can make it to her destination on time. I feel the sweat beads forming on my scalp, and the women on the bus dressed so pretty for church are suddenly wondering if they can recruit this ball of stress for their religious cause.... That girls need to calm the F down, find some Jesus.

Think think think. I see a red circle on the next corner. Okay. The 1 train. This train stops one avenue away from the station. Do it.

I again jump off my my mode of transportation, and run toward the one train and down the stairs, only to see the train pulling away from the stop, slowly, as if it's sticking it's tongue out and laughing in my face. It's Sunday, and they only run every twenty minutes or so.
Welcome to New York, Dorothy.

I haven't felt this stressed out since moving here a month ago.

I relentlessly at this point resort to my final option, which I should have just done at the beginning had I known better. I stand in the street to flag a cab, searching through the tinted windows for any normal looking (legal) driver who will heed my pleas to "step on it, please please please. I'm a huge tipper."

For the first time that day, luck comes through. The cabbie is genuinely nice to me and begins driving fifty miles an hour, just the way I like it. One hundred blocks south in twenty minutes, all the while talking to his mother on his cell phone in his French-African accent.

I thank him multiple times throughout the speedy drive, and the more I thank him, the faster he drives. Most people are easy to convince with a little sugar coating.

We arrive at the station at 12:01, and I tip the beautiful driver 30%, then proceed to practically fall out of the car into the ticketing line.

C'mon c'mon c'mon.
Get me on this bus before my heart explodes.
C'mon.

When I finally reach the front of the line, the sassy, gum-smacking woman at the counter tells me that the bus doesn't leave until one o'clock. I tell her my ticket is for noon, and she looks at me like I'm crazy, despite the fact that the e-mailed itinerary is in my hand.
I say nothing, and just stare at her like I'm ready to take her crazy and raise it, only because she has no idea what my amazing morning has become.

I force a smile.
"Thank you."
Get me on the Goddamn bus. I need to take a break from this intense new relationship I've begun with a city that manages to kick my ass when I least expect it. Hmmmm.

But I'll be back, New York.
With roses.

I just need some time.

Subway Blues

2008-06-21T10:26:00.003-04:00

I'll share with you one of my favorite New York moments, one of many.

I'm on the F train, on my way to meet Matt in Brooklyn. It's late at night, and I'm so tired that my eyelids are faltering without my permission. My body is sinking into the subway seat and I'm willing the train to move faster so I can find my horizontal oasis.

About halfway through my midnight commute, a group of four Australian "chulas" enter the car, laughing and teasing each other with their thick accents. I can't help but overhear their conversations about Tuesday night out in the city. The ladies are clearly here for a visit to the states on vacation, while I sit quietly, worked to death. Their breath smells of sweet wine and tobacco, and hearing their stories suddenly makes me miss my girlfriends in Kansas City so much that it hurts.

An older, petite black man gets on the train once we've crossed the vast body of the East River, and begins to serenade the exhausted and drunken passengers. "Baby Can I Hold You Tonight" by Tracy Chapman fills the small compartment. His voice is raspy and slow--it is the most perfect version of the song I have ever heard.

All that can be heard in the subway car is his voice, singing behind me, and moments later the Aussies begin to sing along with him quietly, eyes closed. I feel my own lips moving and my eyes are filling up with tears coming from a place in my body I didn't quite know existed. Goosebumps. Moments like these last merely minutes yet are unforgettable.

In my mind, I wonder, who failed to apologize to him that makes his rendition so genuine? And what was it that they did that made this apology so significant or the opposite, so unworthy? Everyone needs an apology from someone they love at some moment in their life, some of us more than others. From someone who has hurt their heart.

Despite the fact that I'm so tired I can barely move or think, I relish in the beautiful subway music. Memories of people who I love who are far across the country run through my thoughts, all the while my loving relationship with New York City is growing exponentially.

He sings the song for three minutes, and then he is gone, off to sing for his next audience.

Sorry
Is all that you cant say
Years gone by and still
Words dont come easily
Like sorry like sorry

Forgive me
Is all that you cant say
Years gone by and still
Words dont come easily
Like forgive me forgive me

But you can say baby
Baby can I hold you tonight
Maybe if I told you the right words
At the right time youd be mine

I love you
Is all that you cant say
Years gone by and still
Words dont come easily
Like I love you I love you

Viva La Craigslist!

2008-06-14T14:41:00.006-04:00

Some days you own the city, other days the city owns you.

Today I claim ownership of New York. This is my town, my kingdom.

It's eight thirty on a Friday night in Manhattan, and I'm at my usual wi-fi cafe in Morningside Heights. I stumbled upon it my first week here and have been back five or six times since. With candles all over the tables and a tiny, sophisticated menu it reminds me of a Parisian coffee house or wine bar, with the relaxed attitude of a university hang out.
I order my usual coffee, sit on my usual sofa, and pull out my black and white "everything" journal to begin the quest that has ruled most of my life since moving here.

The big "A". The apartment search.

The clock is ticking, seeing as how there are unspoken rules about crashing. I'm sweatin' it. I'm about to break the sixth and most holy rule in the bible of couch surfing.

Ahem. Allow me to explain by means of mini-manifesto.

In order to maintain a friendship and good standing with a casa de crashpad host, you must do most if not all of the following:

1. Make the place feel and look better than it was before you began your stay. Need ideas? You can do this by cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, brown-nosing, and taking up as little space as possible, to name a few.

2. Entertain the host. Offer to play games (let them win at least 60% of the time), take them out for a beer every couple of days, and if you know how to play an instrument engage in at least one serenading session. If you're a comedian, make them laugh, especially if they are having a bad day.

3. Do not discuss finances, seeing as they have already agreed to let you "crash" for no fee, but if it does come up offer to contribute small amounts for things like the cable or phone bill. Offering, even if they do not accept, is very important.

4. It's their apartment, not yours, so you have no control over what is on the television or playing on I-Tunes if they are present. This rule is non-negotiable.

5. Always be searching for work if you don't have it already and at least once a day mention your progress with your apartment search. This will leave them relatively stress-free, knowing how temporary your crashing really is.

That being said, I have managed to do most if not all of the above in my living situation, but the truth of the matter is, all good (cheap) things must come to an end. The sixth rule of crashing that I did not list is the most important:

6. Know when to leave.

This brings me to my reason I'm spending hours on a Friday night playing Craigslist detective. I scan through every listing I can find in my price range, as long as the commute to Midtown is twenty minutes or less. Give me a bed, bathroom and secure building and I'm there. I will live anywhere. Just let me stay in the city I love, without having to do the unthinkable (ask the parents or friends for a 'GASP' loan, or even worse, return to the Midwest only to hibernate in some type of attic for weeks).

I have not been to church more than once in five years, and on that occasion I'd had a couple of beers so I don't remember the sermon (forgive me, Oh Lord). I have somehow become the luckiest girl on the island.

"$575, June/July ONLY--Park Slope".

What? Wait a minute. I've been prone to hallucinations before. I read it again.

That's like finding a Ben Franklin bill on the street when you're cocktailed and broke on a shitty Tuesday night. WHAT?

I look at the time of the posting, because there's no way this place is still available, and realize that it was posted 45 minutes ago. SCOOOORRREEE!!!

I grab my phone like Speedy Gonzalez and call the number immediately.

Like clockwork, a human being answers. A real human. I will be the first to view it. He doesn't know quite yet, but this guy is giving me the room no matter what. I'm not going to settle for anything less than a set of keys tomorrow morning. I've learned that in the world of New York you have to decide what you want and go after it without hesitation. Bam.

I have remaining in the bank just enough to afford a decent security deposit and one month's rent, but thinking about this makes me curious about the New York City food stamp system. I mean, I've already quit smoking to save money, and I'm willing to quit eating too if that's what it takes. Just saying.

Matt accompanies me to look at the place Saturday morning, and as we step off the bus I realize I have hit the jackpot. Two blocks from Prospect Park, the biggest park in Brooklyn, it's located directly on busy 7th Ave., surrounded by shops, restaurants and bobos (Bourgeois Bohemians). I had always heard that Manhattan has been slowly migrating to Williamsburg and Park Slope, but today I am sure of it. Posh posh posh posh.

After spending some time with my sub-leaser, a sweet art teacher from Florida, the cash exchanges hands and I am given my first set of New York City keys. I'm on top of the world. Not only is the rent outrageously cheap (I'm paying $775 including deposit for a month & a half), but I get to stay in a furnished room in the best part of town I could hope for. Oh, and there's air conditioning. A subway station across the street. And there are no bugs. Damn I'll miss those little guys.

My crashpad host is probably almost as relieved as I am today.

I take a moment of silence for all the beautiful things Craigslist has done for our country.

Bye bye, Inwood "God Bless You Mami Chula Baby".
Hello, Barnes and Noble triple espresso poodle walkers.

Hugs in Coney Island

2008-06-13T21:37:00.000-04:00

I woke up today later than I had wanted, but then again we were awake until all hours of the night playing heads-up poker at the casa de crashpad. I won a dinner bought by my roommate—we shall see if he comes through with that beautiful prize though. Here in New York we play for events, not cash.

“Coney Island! Coney Island!” I yell, as I jump out of bed and head for the shower. It’s midday, but if I hurry, I can catch the express trains and avoid the hectic New York rush hour, which begins around three here (no joke). Southern Brooklyn is on the other side of the planet from where I live.

I make great time. One hour and 22 minutes later, I step off the subway with a smile on my face, on my way to visit one the most historical landmarks I will ever have the chance to see. I thrive on amusement parks and beaches--what better place to experience the best of both worlds?

My camera in my hand, unafraid to look like a tourista, I start snapping pictures as soon as I exit the station and step into a world of hot dogs, freak shows, and ferris wheels. Magic is in the air as I take in my first real whiff of (mostly uncontaminated) sea water since moving to Manhattan. I’m as excited as a little girl going to the circus.

First things first. I find my way to the beach, which is a city block-length walk from the train, and dig my legs into the hot sand. I am surrounded by people of all different sizes, colors, age…you name it. I realize that I have not sat on an ocean beach in over a year. There is something to be said of the sounds of the ocean waves. It has an immediately calming effect on me as I relax and take in the sun and sounds. A little girl on the blanket next to mine is saying “me me me me me” repeatedly, and this makes me smile. I was once that little girl, I thought, and I turned out alright…Hmmm.

Time to treasure hunt. I gather my sand-filled shoes and bag and manage to brush off about half the sand that is stuck to my pale (soon to be pink) skin. I go over the different things I’ve witnessed thus far that seem small yet significant during the past hour spent in the sand. The seagulls that gathered a few feet from me, about thirty or so, squabbling over the tiny bits of bread a toddler is throwing in their paths. The “ice cold Corona” boys, sifting through the crowds of sun-bathers, peddling illegal alcohol with a whisper and a smile from their black plastic bags. The three teenage boys who have lifted a girl almost above their heads as she protests, dumping her into the cold Atlantic ocean as they all shriek with laughter. I am alone in Coney Island and yet feel as though I play a smart part in every scene of this cinematic play day. I cannot completely relate to the 75-year-old man walking past me in his undersized Speedo…but appreciate his individuality none the less. We don’t wear those in the Midwest. Ha.

I travel the length of the Coney Island boardwalk, passing the old amusement park rides, some of which are still running while others look like museum artifacts. The hair on the back of my neck stands up as the hundred-plus years of visitors’ spirits haunt my veins. Amusement parks can stir so many emotions…that feeling of being an innocent child so easily scared or elated, eyes filled with wonder…the older woman who returns to find that fifty years have gone by since her last piece of cotton candy…it can take your mind anywhere.

A homeless man sitting on a boardwalk bench smiles at me and gestures for me to come over and talk to him. I grin at him but keep walking, knowing I have plenty of time for conversation but no funds to spare. I am still in a way homeless myself, relying on good friends’ couches for shelter in the city.

The highlight of my day is walking through the winding roads of prize games, being one of the only visitors in this land of freak shows and ghosts. Because I am their only hope for a little dough, the men hosting the prize games hoot at me to come and play, speaking in their thick Brooklyn accents. I soak up the attention temporarily…after all I’ve never experienced a world quite as crazy as this before.

A younger man with a big belly and a five o’clock shadow walks right up to me and gently guides my arm toward his game of darts, balloons and cheap stuffed animals. Okay, I think, I’ll provide a little entertainment…have some fun with these guys because clearly it’s a slow day for tourism.

“Hey girly! You married, or happy??”

“Neither,” I reply.

This makes him laugh, and now I suppose the two of us are Coney Island buddies.

“I tell you what. Hee. Take dis dart, throw it a balloon and I’m not gonna chauge you nuthin. The only catch is, I get a hug if you win.”

Without thinking I grab the dart and throw it, what the hell.

Pop.

I suddenly hear a group of old men cheering behind me. I have an audience that came out of nowhere.

“Ah! I get a hug!”

I smile and politely hug him with a little friendly pat on the back. Not so bad, though he smells like cheap 1980s cologne.

“Alright, alright. I’m gonna give you another one. You make this one, I charge you nuthin, but I get another hug.”
Pop.

Repeat the hug.
Cheers from our entourage.

I’m the silliest person I know for going along with this, but it’s harmless, right?

“Alright, alright,” says the dart man.
I’m starting to inch my way away from the little balloon game.

“No, here’s the deal girly! You throw one more dart, and if you make it you gotta go on a date wit me, or at leas take down my numba.”

“I don’t do dates,” I respond, laughing.

I give him one more hug for the sake of our fans, then walk away smiling.

At least the men in New York offer to take you out, I thought. Too bad I’m not an amusement park bride…but I’m learning.

I make my way back to the train before sunset, preparing myself for the rush hour version of my commute to Manhattan.

I sit quietly on the orange and beige seat of the subway, scrolling through the pictures I have taken on my glorious day of Brooklyn vacationing.

One New York destination down, two-thousand left to go.

And the crazy thing is, I want to go back to Coney Island…tomorrow.

Close Call

2008-06-09T15:23:00.000-04:00

I’m finally feeling better, and it’s approaching the evening hour on a Sunday.

To deal with my loneliness last night I decided to get smashingly drunk while feeling sorry for myself. It didn’t start out this way, but nothing ever does. Original intentions: go to an afternoon barbecue in Brooklyn, have a good time, meet new people who love me and want to hang out all the time, and eat some delicious summer food. I could tell an hour after arriving, however, my expectations were a little far-fetched. This was not going to be an easy social networking gig—these folks were going to make me earn my friendly business cards and contacts. Or maybe I’m just slightly tired of being the new girl in town…

I don’t know what it is that was missing, but it led to an air of discomfort and tension I could not resolve in my mind no matter how much beer I consumed. I’m a relatively shy person when among a new crowd, seeing as I’m a quirky writer with a sense of humor that generally throws people off (insatiable wit is intimidating). Not to mention I have nothing in common with these chatty, successful New Yorker types. Not yet, at least. Mid- to late-twenties world is vastly different from early-twenties world. I’m making excuses, I know.

So after attempting to hold what seemed like thousands of conversations with strangers (I somehow made it a miserable six hours), I said goodbye to my roommate and the hosts and sauntered toward the subway, bracing myself for the hour or so commute to my Upper Manhattan abode. It’s nine o’clock at night and I’m wandering toward the subway sporting my sunglasses to hide the drunk stare. I could not feel more despondent and desperate, seeing how alcohol doesn’t really seem to make bad feelings go away. In fact it generally makes everything worse if you are already tumbling into a depressive state of mind. A veteran bar worker should know this, but some nights you just want to role play.

On the subway I close my eyes and lean my head against the glass panel behind me, avoiding eye contact with the Saturday late-night riders who surround me. I somehow open my eyes right as my train pulls up to the 125^th Street station, where I’m supposed to change trains. I am moving slowly because of all the beer in my blood, and I miss my transfer by seconds, which is waiting right across the platform. Oops. Damn. Fifteen minutes of standing in an isolated subway station in Harlem while highly buzzed is probably no good, I think to myself. Keep the shades on, James Dean it.

Without a doubt, five minutes later a suspiciously ominous woman walks toward me, staring me down with the eyes of lioness eyeing her first victim of the night. I pretend not to notice or care, as this is always the best and first defense mechanism in urban eyeball warfare. She is setting her shopping bags down, which look as though they are from a cheap dollar store, and walking toward me. I don’t move a muscle and rather than tense up try to appear at ease. As she creeps toward me I make fierce eye contact beneath my large black shades. None of this is really premeditated on my part, seeing as we have now entered animal world, relying purely on survival instincts.

She comes about three inches from my face, giving me the craziest, coldest stare I have ever seen. I feel her smoky breath on my face, which starts to enrage me. I maintain eye contact, as though telling her “I wish you would. No really. Back the hell away before I break you.” The lion/hyena/woman backs off after my menacing crazy stare outbids her crazy stare. She retreats back to her shopping bags, having lost her motivation to mug me or kick my ass or both in the empty subway station. I may have had a beer buzz, but I’m not stupid and I’ve dealt with crazy people before. This may be one of the only times I will say this, but I’m so glad I was drunk because it gave me the courage to laugh in a fiend’s face.

I made it home somehow, wishing in my mind I would have gone home with a friend and not by myself. People in this city work hard and they certainly love to play hard, but there’s a different precaution you have to take when you’ve reached your limit and suddenly find yourself surrounded by strangers in the subway station.

Drunken people make great victims. You live and you learn, and sometimes you get lucky.

On Love

2008-06-06T17:21:00.001-04:00

Day 12 in New York City. Almost two weeks.
Every day I've been here creates a new feeling in my gut--a mixture of fear and elation, excitement and confusion. I'm getting used to certain things, like riding the subway all the time, which is a good way to stay up to date on reading and current events. I'm not, however, adjusting to all the people you bump into everywhere you go. It's crowded, and that's an understatement. You really learn to tune out your surroundings at your convenience, and I'm getting better at not staring at every strange person who sits across from me on the train--there are many, if you can believe it. Yesterday I was walking around near Union Square and a cackling short Asian man, probably my age, walked down the sidewalk grabbing his penis and screaming. How's that for entertainment?

I went to see the Sex and the City movie the other night, my first New York movie theater experience. Yes, I like the show and the writing, but no, I'm not the materialistic faux-Fendi purse snatcher some of you may assume. Sorry I suddenly felt the need to defend myself. Anyway.
The theater was filled with a sea of young women and gays, just the way I like it. People clapped when the movie started and again when it ended...awesome! The energy of the audience was perfect for the film. I'll save everyone from a paragraph summing up the chick flick, because those of you who want to see it probably already have, and those of you who don't could care less. This is going somewhere, I promise.

One theme in the movie really did strike a chord with me, beyond a reasonable doubt. Carrie Bradshaw and her assistant have a scene in which they discuss people moving to New York City to find love. "Aha moment" for me. I never considered this to be the reason I moved here. Sure it crossed my mind, but I'd pretty much given up on dating a few months ago with the end of my long-time relationship with Mr. Wrong. I moved here to begin my life as a writer, a career woman, and to live in a fantastic city filled with experiences I will never forget. Why didn't love cross my mind until it was brought up by two cheesy characters in a chick flick? If anything I would expect to meet and date lots of crazy guys if only to write about my New York dating fiascos, just like Carrie. I wonder where that Asian man is right now? I'm sure he would be fun to go out with...never boring.

I guess this city really is a romantic place though, as I'm sure many people would say. After all, what's more romantic than moving somewhere far away from your hometown, with absolutely no idea what the island has in store for you? You arrive like myself, alone off a tour bus in Times Square, eyes wide and heart racing. The people who are willing to take this risk have to be at least somewhat, by definition, romantics. I took logic in college.

I moved here with a stitched up heart, almost healed but fairly fragile still. I have been sitting in a pile of heartbreak and looking-back-syndrome for nearly a year and a half, and just recently have come out of my funk to a world just waiting for me to flirt with it. I may not be ready to date yet, but perhaps this city will reawaken the romantic girl that I once was--hopefully killing the bitter sarcastabitch I became for a brief period of time.

How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?, a question sincerely asked by Al Green. I personally don't know, but I do know that once the pain starts to subside, because it eventually does, it's the perfect time to change your life. I can't wait to look into someone else's eyes only to feel that once-in-a-lifetime sense of perfection and comfort that only love can create.

I can't wait.

Vulnerability

2008-06-06T16:56:00.000-04:00

My head is throbbing, my nose is bright red from sneezing, my eyes are watery. I’m so dizzy I feel as though I may pass out if I attempt to climb the stairs toward the 1 train on 125^th St. Is this pure exhaustion, stress, or am I actually sick?
I haven’t been sick in months, despite all the hard work (and play) I put in during my last few weeks in Kansas City. I suddenly feel uniquely vulnerable, walking through the busy streets surrounded by thousands of unfamiliar faces, unable to think straight.

I pass the McDonald’s “Walk-Up” window near the subway stop, a fast food concept very unfamiliar to me, and am waved over by what looks like a normal man but is actually a bum who smiles, winks, and asks me for money. Just talk to me, I thought. I’m not okay. I’m going to pass out. Anyone, anyone?

Dazed and confused, I slowly shake my head and keep walking. He grins at me like he knows I’m about to crack.

Home. I have to get home. I repeat this mantra to keep myself upright, before I faint and am discovered in the street by foreign bandits who want to kidnap me and sell me in a human bondage scheme. Panic sets in and suddenly I am delirious and feverish. I walk as fast as I can though my legs are heavy and weak. My feet are calloused from the miles of NYC streets I have traversed-- I’m shaking and paranoid that people are staring at me. I need to get home. My face is probably as white as my blouse. Two blocks…almost there. I have to get home. There’s no place like home (okay no, didn't go there).

When I finally walk through our apartment door I fall onto the couch, head spinning, muscles aching. I can’t go back out there, no sir. The streets are cold and menacing, and I am reminded of The Doors song “People are Strange” as I draw a hot bath. Being home has made a world of difference, and it's then that I realize that I have officially let the dark side of the city take over me. This is not how I am, I thought. It’s the fever and the sleep deprivation. What was yesterday a playground of parks and trains has become a sinister Gotham, in my mind.

I can’t think of anyone better to call in my state of delirium. Mom/Mama/Mother, the only person in the world who will let me ramble pathetically for as long as I need to without writing me off as a complete train wreck. That’s what being the parent of an adult is about, right? The long distance mini-crises that happen from time to time...

As soon as she answers the tears unleash, like a dam whose walls have been slowly cracking for hours, days.

“I don’t know anyone here…anyone! All I get are mean stares, and I almost fainted, and I could barely walk, and if I had fainted, they would have just stepped over me like New York roadkill and gone about their day….and there’s no free wi-fi at stupid Starbucks…I hate Starbucks...” I’m sobbing uncontrollably at this point.

When she gets the chance to speak her voice is soothing like aloe vera on a nasty sunburn.

Take a deep breath. It’s going to be alright. Just a slight panic attack. Just take some deep breaths and some Sudafed…or some Nyquil…. It’s going to be alright. You have a bad sinus infection. Just a nasty cold.

She listens on the other end as I continue to release the deluge of emotional melodrama. I’ve been here for eight days now and I realize how far from home I really am. The place I knew as home for so many years couldn’t possibly be more different from where I am today. Am I ready for this? I signed up for all of it, afterall, and I’ve promised myself that I’ll stay.

I fall asleep after eating an ice cream bar, something I rarely ever do because I don’t even like sweets (emergencies only), and am sent into a dream world of New York City skyscrapers, taxi cabs, vertigo and ghost-like faces.

There will be good times, and there will be hard times.

Everyone knows that, but you never know what the hard times feel like until they really hit.

Entomology & Zoology

2008-06-06T16:08:00.000-04:00

*Disclaimer: If you have a weak stomach or consider yourself a truly "girly girl" skip to the next entry.

I have a Ph.D. in the reproductive cycle of cockroaches. I have become a live-in apartment ninja who will let no six-legger scurry away without the punishment of death by immensely painful asphyxiation, or worse, a crushed skull. I like to think of it like a videogame that will sharpen my senses and hand-eye coordination.

Who am I kidding? This is disgusting. I can't get used to this. How could you ever get used to this? I did not grow up with bug problems in my home as a child, or adult for that matter. Not only are these guys my least favorite insect (I prefer my apartment to be filled with butterflies), I am developing a complex variation of OCD that causes me to clean incessantly and dart like the Roadrunner across the room for the can of Raid. If my casa de crashpad host read this he might be embarrassed, but I'm not writing this to call anyone out or cause any heartache. I was forewarned by many former and current New Yorkers that I would be signing up for all kinds of new experiences, cockroaches potentially being my first new set of friends in the city.

The best moments I have had are the times I have found myself actually yelling at them, as though I were scolding bad children, like when they veer from their average sleep cycle and get up early to greet me in the shower. I don't realize how ridiculous it is until 5 minutes later....Honey, you were just talking to a bug. Sweet. "How did I get here?" as David Byrne would say.

So let's keep this going guys. You wanna live in New York, you get to experience ALL of the city, the good and the bad, and the really bad.
I have developed a fascination with the sewer rats of NYC. They don't dwell in my living space, so our relationship is much more friendly than the one I have with the aforementioned friends. I have drawn pictures of them in my sketchbook. I showed my friend the other day, his response being "You're weird." He's lived here for seven years though so he can't begin to comprehend my curiosity...
So far I've spotted six, two nights ago being a busy night for rat sightings. As long as they are ten feet away or more I'll keep playing my little game.

1. Big Daddy Rat. Taking the A Train in the 50th St. station, he was searching for his supper along the tracks of the subway.
2. Popsicle-eating Memorial Day Rat. My second day in New York, we walked through Inwood Park on the north side of Manhattan, and the rats were I'm sure having a feast with all the leftover picnic food. The park was packed with families and laughing children.
3. Fashionista/Runway Rat. Walking around SoHo late one night, a big one slowly sniffed around a trash pile underneath a scaffold. I stopped on the corner for a few minutes to watch it do it's rodent duty. I'm sure people walking by were wondering what it was I was staring at, but then again in New York no one really cares what other people are doing. They mind their own business.
4, 5, and 6. New Money Rat. Upper West Side, walking toward 83rd & Broadway, a group of three rats were playing and dancing in the street like happy children at recess. I made Matt stop and watch them with me (again, he thinks I'm "weird"). As we were observing nature's finest an older gentleman walked down the stairs to his basement apartment, and as he did two rats scurried past his feet, maybe an inch away. I watched his reaction--nothing.
Those rats have a nicer place than me, cheaper rent, and a friendly landlord, I thought. No fair.

So to those of you reading this, I may seem sick and twisted, but I like to refer to myself as an urban entomologist/zoologist and professionally trained apartment ninja fighter with a progressively intensifying obsessive compulsive disorder. I clean a lot when I'm home.

A lot.

The Difference Between Russian and Thousand Island

2008-05-30T19:58:00.003-04:00

I'm sitting at an Irish pub in Hell's Kitchen, a neighborhood just west of Times Square. I don't really know how I ended up there, particularly, because my original intention had been to go to the location on the Upper East Side to talk to a friend of a friend about a job. Still unfamiliar with the subway system, I had forgotten I was on an express train that goes from 125th St. to 59th St. without stopping.

Oh well. Most of my days spent in the city so far have been composed of pomp and circumstance, the way I like it. Trial and error, combined with spontaneity.

So rather than going to the UES neighborhood, I pop a squat at the bar and ask for Pete/Peter/who knows. An old boss in Kansas City owns the place but doesn't live here and gave me some connections.

A 19-year-old looking young man (though I'm sure he's at least 25 in real years) is behind the bar, looking relaxed as any New Yorker could be. I tell him I was sent there by the owner, Ron. His eyes grow big and he looks at me like he's in trouble.

"What do ya mean, Ron? You know him?"

I explain my situation and he relaxes.

"I thought you were a secret shopper or something. He's always telling us that he's sending people our way, spies so to speak. Keeps me paranoid."

We both laugh.

Nothing like that!

"Actually, I need a job as a bartender and he told me you could help me out with some connections..."

"Oh yeah! Of course."

He grabs a notebook behind the bar and a pen and immediately begins writing down names of bars in the area.

"You can drop my name here if you like, but not here, they don't really know me anymore. One guy at this place got fired last week so you can check that out if you want."

We keep talking for a bit, chat about the neighborhood and where he's from (Upstate), etc.

Worn out from not sleeping for the last week from sheer adrenaline mixed with running all over the island all day has encouraged me to drink.

"Um, I think I might have a beer, since this is obviously not a job interview."

Brooklyn Lager, the local beer on tap at most places, from my memory of it, is delicious. I'll take it.

After finishing my beer I realize how strange it is going out to a bar for late happy hour by yourself, when you know absolutely no one for miles. I start to get uncomfortable the more relaxed the beer makes me, the opposite effect of what I wanted.

There's no point in going all the way back uptown to the apartment, because I'm meeting a "date" or maybe soon-to-be friend south of where I am in the village in an hour. Gotta kill time.

I order another one then realize if I'm going to hang out in this strange territory I better talk to someone, anyone who will sit and talk to me who won't be creepy...

A man sitting next to me looks approachable, and has since arrival 45 minutes ago downed three large shots of Maker's Mark and two beers. Sure, why not. He's up for conversation.

Not knowing what else to say I ask him if I can borrow his Daily News, which he hasn't touched since he sat down.

"Oh of course!" he beams. "It's a community paper."

Clearly a nice person. Clearly gay now that I've heard him speak. Safe and nice. Good.

We begin discussing the new Sex and the City movie, and the terrible fact that the night before over two thousand people who had flown in from all over the world were turned away from the premiere, seeing as they had completely oversold tickets to the event.

I find myself dishing out random facts about the show that are so obscure I feel like I should be wearing $400 shoes while talking, not the $4 thrift store vintage heals I'm sporting.

We go outside together to smoke and continue talking, and Daniel finds out that I have just moved to the city two days ago.

"You're not like 18 are you? You have some life experience right?"

No he di-ent!

"Thanks for the compliment, but no I'm 25."

"Good. You'll be fine. You seem to have a good head on your shoulders."

He doesn't know me yet, clearly. I moved here because I'm crazy, I thought.

"How do you afford to live around here, Daniel? Isn't it outrageously expensive?"

"A little work and my parents. They still send me money and help out."

This man is 36 years old, as I have learned.

"Oh wow. Cool." I suddenly feel like I know the secrets of all the middle aged part-time actors in midtown Manhattan.

The conversation goes on for a bit longer, but I realize it's getting late and I have to somehow make it to Village by nine o' clock.

I try to pay my tab with Pete/Peter, but he refuses to accept my money.

"Buy me a beer when you get a job," he says with a smile.

I leave a modest tip on the bar, not believing his generosity. Sweet. Too kind.

Buzzed a bit and disoriented from sleep deprivation, I make my way to the subway, heading to W. 4th St. I'm meeting a friend of my roommate's who at my one and only party I've been to since moving here gave me his card as he was leaving. Unsure of whether to call, I put it in my purse for emergencies only. However, my roommate informed me that when anyone in New York gives you a card, you're supposed to call. Networking is the essence of the city. So I called, er, texted. I don't call.

He turns out to be an awesome guy. Luckily my first one-on-one encounter is a complete success. The conversation flows all night, and together we drink all the beer in the East Village. Way too much fun.

The highlight of the evening is outside of a swanky NYU bar, where I meet a drunken, blonde college boy. He slurs to me that at the bar next door the lead singer of Blues Traveller, John Popper, is rocking out on his harmonica. Being my dubious self, I roll my eyes but quickly realize that in New York the chances of a celebrity being 50 feet away is in fact, quite likely.

And he was there. With all his hippy glory, rocking out on his harmonica. My first celebrity encounter, and it didn't cost a dime.

We watched him jamming with some other long-haired Austinites (seemingly), and they sounded great. We did this as long as we could without getting kicked out for being cheap bastards and not buying anything. The cocktail waitress did not seem pleased...

Oh what a night.

On the way home in a cab, we discuss reuben sandwiches... Not sure why beer brings out the most inane conversations, but I like it.

"Russian dressing is just like Thousand Island, minus the relish. You know, the relish represents tiny little islands. At least that's what I think."

"You sure about that?" I ask him as I laugh. "Or is that your creative interpretation?"

The difference between my life a week ago and my life here, I suppose, are all the tiny little islands of adventures I've had through my pomp and circumstance.

It's the little ingredients added that seem to mean the most in the end, but in the end, no matter where you are you'll always have on your same old shoes you've walked around in for years.

"God Bless You, Baby!"

2008-05-30T18:04:00.001-04:00

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Who knew they had cliffs and rolling hills on the isle of Manhattan? Exiting the subway stop from the A train near my casa de crash pad, I am surrounded by enormously tall cliffs to my left. The luscious flora and fauna are a visual spectacle, despite being regularly urinated upon by rodents. The continuous honking of horns on the busy avenue below as my sandals click down the hilly sidewalk somehow cannot cancel out the beauty of the landscape. In fact I'm starting to like the honking in a strange way.

I check my cell phone as a distraction from the Dominican men who are whispering "Hey Mami" to me as I pass the tiny body shop on the corner.

No phone calls. No texts.

This is a common occurrence for me now that I have been a midwest abandoner for six days now. Or maybe I forgot to pay my bill....

I have not been here long enough to feel the pangs of loneliness, though I am prepared to feel them any day now. A part of my consciousness has adopted this soon-to-be gentrified neighborhood as my new set of friends.

There is something to be said of being able to exit my abode to find everything I need within two blocks of where I stand. In the suburbs of Kansas, people have "areas", as I once overheard a woman say of her neighborhood. Her strip mall two miles away was I'm sure included in this vast "area".

My usual errands have included the following:

-$0.75 cups of coffee at the "bodega" (a term for your typical New York corner store), where the young gentlemen always ask me with a thick accent and a grin, "How many shoogahs?".

-the 99 cent store on the opposite corner, whose sign reads below "Or Less Or More". I find this wonderful.

-the grocery store on the other corner (lots of corners nearby) where I can buy three freshly made bagels for $1.09, and they always have the exact amount of poppy seed bagels I need left in the bin. A simple serendipitous event.

-the older, bent over man on the corner who sits with his little white puppy and his cane, humming hispanic tunes under his breath and taking in the sounds of the children laughing in the elementary school play yard.

-the hardware store boys, who already know that my roommate is a snorer, because they helped me pick out earplugs yesterday.

I take note of the all the tiny random acts of kindness, seeing as my goal in life is to prove to everyone that inherently we are all good, despite humankind's progressively negative reputation.

Walking down the street today a man dropped several quarters on a busy sidewalk and four passersby stopped to help him collect his change. A similar event, yesterday at the grocery store the change compartment in my wallet came open and pennies went strewn about the store. The young woman cashier was quick to come around and help me pick them up, all the while smiling at me as though she had known me for years--a sort of flirtatious, disapproving smile. Doors are always held open, subway seats are given up for the young mother with the screaming child, and when I have asked for directions, rather than a simple answer I am suddenly involved in a mini-conversation.

The best thing about my pre-gentrified New York hood is the fact that I don't need a full length mirror to know if I am looking "bueno" that day. All the machismo in the air is my feedback, and though at first I was made pretty uncomfortable by it, I have learned to accept this as an integral part of my daily grind. Granted, only two out of my six days here have I heard several honks and yells from car windows (I count to amuse myself, and yesterday I got to twenty).

I think I'll keep that dress I was wearing yesterday--major success. Now if only the men who are yelling at me could find me a job, be a true friend...

Keeping note of all interesting things people have said to me in my adventures in the Big Apple, my favorite one so far is "God Bless You, Baby!" (random chico suave yelling from the window of a truck).

Maybe after living here a bit longer I'll think of my own awesome thing to yell back to them.

God Bless America.

Fresh Off The Bus

2008-05-29T16:22:00.000-04:00

I exited the airport in a daze, dragging behind me some of the most clumsy luggage a 5'6" midwest girl could carry. Some of us don't need luxurious wheels in our travel adventures. My heart begins to beat faster, and I fumble around in my backpack searching for a cigarette to calm the nerves. Unfortunately, I smoked my last one the night before after driving my parents van home from the bar. Quitting anyway, it's fine. Not fine. It's fine right now. It's hard to believe just last night I was a resident of a little barbeque city, and today I am a sardine in the ocean of New York City.

I stand there frozen on the curb, surveying the never-ending line of cabs and honking rental car shuttles through my scratched up sunglasses. For a moment I contemplate just standing there for hours, observing the different ways people are leaving the airport--are they parents meeting their children? Are they mafiosos? Are they rich? Everyone has more money than me at this moment.

Just when I make up my mind to begin the process of lifting my heavy bags to walk toward the cab stand a tiny Asian man approaches me and points to my bags.

"Weh you go?"

"Excuse me?" I had no idea what he was asking me, still dazed from four hours of travel in a stuffy box of a plane.

"Weh? Weh you go? I take you."

I look over and notice presentable looking people boarding a blue and pink painted bus that offers rides to various Manhattan locations.

"How much to get to Times Square?" I try to ask this like a serious New Yorker, but it comes off like a scared little mouse once the words exit my tired throat.

"Twel dollar. You buy tickeh fra him."

He points to a young black man standing behind me with a stack of dollar bills in his hand.

Wanting to save the extra money I would have spent on a cab, my money exchanges hands with the gentleman and my bags are hauled by the tiny man to the compartment underneath. I'm en route to the island. The glorious and destructive island of Manhattan. Where all my dreams will come true, or I will sink into a hole of desperation I have yet to know.

Times Square comes in sight. It's a Sunday afternoon, and it's hot. I have never been to New York when it wasn't either so hot that you sweat or so cold that your skin is frozen. Extremes for the extreme I suppose. At this point a young latino man has offered me a "free" ride in his hotel shuttle bus from Grand Central Station, where the other bus dropped me off. In the van we discuss working for tips and the difference between driving in New York and driving anywhere else in the country. After we almost wreck nine times in six blocks, or so it seems to me because it's been a few months since I've ridden in a New York automobile, he drops me off in front of my New York friend's music shop. After telling him about my years of waitressing, I add an extra three dollars to the seven I was going to tip him. What kind of jerk would pretend to understand living off of tips then give someone a bad one, right? I smile and thank him, and he wishes me luck. The expression of the week..."Good luck."

And I'm here. I'm alone. I'm standing on the corner of 48th and 6th Ave, and my mouth is twitching into a half smile while my stomach does acrobatics I have not known since the last time I gave a public speech. I can do this. I can make it happen for myself in this city. I know it. I dreamed of it. I moved here to be better. To be different. To find a new version of America that I can love and expound upon. I did it. I'm here.

Tears start to well up in my eyes as it hits me that I have done it. I have sold my favorite things, and said goodbye to my favorite faces.

My friend starts to walk toward me from inside the store, smiling...reunion. I lean in to hug him and break into sobs and laughter. This is one of the best hugs I have ever had.

Welcome.