Most of the time I think we’re all just getting by. There are always problems, frustrations, people telling me how much they’ve given up to be here, how much they’ve lost, how much better they could have it (bigger apartment, reasonable rent, less stressful job) if they just forgot about this big, dirty, foul-smelling place and moved somewhere more practical. And I get annoyed just as much as the next person living paycheck to paycheck and wondering what’s the point of all this effort just to get by, wondering what is the matter when you call home the same place where people sleep on subway cars and in stairwells and you sit next to them and walk over them without even thinking twice.
Starbucks closed stores all over the country this afternoon so all of its employees could re-learn all the things they’ve started to forget (like the people on Hudson Street have forgotten the overall difference between a caffe latte and café au lait). So I got my fix early and passed quiet corners on my way home, the windows darkened, the chairs empty, and started to wonder if perhaps all of us need to just shut down for a while. Just a few hours to re-learn all of the things we’ve started to lose, all of the things that used to be important, used to mean so much, that have now faded into the far off distant past of what it meant to live in a place like this without just getting by.
Because I have forgotten things like keys, my subway pass, clothes at the dry cleaners (this time almost two weeks!), how to take a chance and what it feels like to be happy . I’ve lost things like my patience, my mind, hope, my savings, my ability to let people in. But in a place as big and dirty and un-practical as this there’s no getting away from the things that every day make us question why we don’t just pack up and go. So what’s important, I guess, is to remember the reasons that make us choose to stay.
I think that at the end of the day there certainly are a few things I too, could stand to learn how to find again.
February 26, 2008
February 21, 2008
Door in the Floor.
There was a door, painted white, chipped, fading, lying on the corner of 74th and 3rd. There it was resting flat against the wet pavement near the dark green Do Your Part garbage can that was nearly overflowing, illuminated by the stark street light in the Manhattan night. People kept passing by without even noticing, walking fast, heads straight up, their eyes on a fixed mark in the distance (everyone here with a place to go, someone to go home to...). But I walk around a lot with my eyes on the ground because sometimes I’m too tired to look up at everything around me in fear that I might not like what I see. Don’t you ever ask yourself: what has become my home? People pass and look me in the eye and I wonder if I should know them (want to know them, can’t I know them?) and I know that I never will. Strange, isn’t it, so many of us and all of us strangers.
As I looked at the door, painted white, chipped, fading, and lying on the corner of 74th and 3rd I wanted to reach down and grip tightly the black shiny handle and pull it open, walk down the steps beneath the descending depths of the sidewalk that would take me somewhere else, far away to a world where I could get what I wanted when I wanted it, where I could control time and love and people and fate. Those steps, (I wanted so badly for) those steps to be there, like the hope I have in those split seconds every morning after I wake up from a dream where everything is OK, where the world is just as it should be. Those steps, (I wanted so much for) those steps to be there, so that I wouldn’t have to keep walking into that feeling the comes after those split seconds dissipate into realization of the truth and the painful remembrance (yet again, stinging disbelief every morning before coffee) of all that’s been lost.
But I Did My Part and left it behind, kept walking (like everyone else) with my eyes on the ground wondering why someone would leave behind something with so many possibilities (we never take the time to look), wondering why some of us (no matter how much we hate it) can’t seem to help but be the ones who are always left (chipped and fading...) behind.
As I looked at the door, painted white, chipped, fading, and lying on the corner of 74th and 3rd I wanted to reach down and grip tightly the black shiny handle and pull it open, walk down the steps beneath the descending depths of the sidewalk that would take me somewhere else, far away to a world where I could get what I wanted when I wanted it, where I could control time and love and people and fate. Those steps, (I wanted so badly for) those steps to be there, like the hope I have in those split seconds every morning after I wake up from a dream where everything is OK, where the world is just as it should be. Those steps, (I wanted so much for) those steps to be there, so that I wouldn’t have to keep walking into that feeling the comes after those split seconds dissipate into realization of the truth and the painful remembrance (yet again, stinging disbelief every morning before coffee) of all that’s been lost.
But I Did My Part and left it behind, kept walking (like everyone else) with my eyes on the ground wondering why someone would leave behind something with so many possibilities (we never take the time to look), wondering why some of us (no matter how much we hate it) can’t seem to help but be the ones who are always left (chipped and fading...) behind.
February 19, 2008
Funny, isn't it...
How the same ole same ole
can still surprise you.
How you can believe in Change all you want
but some people never do.
How you can tell yourself the same thing
over and over and over again -
and you still can only get away with lying to everyone,
but yourself.
can still surprise you.
How you can believe in Change all you want
but some people never do.
How you can tell yourself the same thing
over and over and over again -
and you still can only get away with lying to everyone,
but yourself.
February 18, 2008
springwinterweatherday.
So warm in the city today that I know my friends from out-of-town up north or out west will be pained to hear about it. But I like it in the city when the weather’s warm and people come outside in short sleeves and short shorts in the hopeful gesture of belief that spring really is just around the corner.
And after the long cold rain of the weekend the sun peeked out and I ran through the park and passed them all - the people in short sleeves and short shorts all pretending it was 70 and not 40, wanting to take a quick shortcut from February to May. Because there’s not much we can do to change things, but when the weather’s warm we sure can hope.
As I ran the mud from the Central Park pavement was kicked up (don’t you hate that?) and splattered dark dirty spots of December up onto the backs of my legs. I like it in the city when people collide and come outside and remember why they live here and speed on their bikes and walk with their children and play football on the Great Lawn.
Because it’s easy to feel like you’re starting to lose days the longer the sky is grey and the air stays cold. But New York gives us chances, winter windows of opportunity that we’d be fools not to take - though at the top of the park our chance was up and the sky opened to a great big tedious downpour that jolted us all back in to soaking reality.
But I like it in the city when the weather’s warm, because there’s not much we can do to change things (not even the rain), but it’s nice to be reminded (even if just for a day) that we sure can hope.
And after the long cold rain of the weekend the sun peeked out and I ran through the park and passed them all - the people in short sleeves and short shorts all pretending it was 70 and not 40, wanting to take a quick shortcut from February to May. Because there’s not much we can do to change things, but when the weather’s warm we sure can hope.
As I ran the mud from the Central Park pavement was kicked up (don’t you hate that?) and splattered dark dirty spots of December up onto the backs of my legs. I like it in the city when people collide and come outside and remember why they live here and speed on their bikes and walk with their children and play football on the Great Lawn.
Because it’s easy to feel like you’re starting to lose days the longer the sky is grey and the air stays cold. But New York gives us chances, winter windows of opportunity that we’d be fools not to take - though at the top of the park our chance was up and the sky opened to a great big tedious downpour that jolted us all back in to soaking reality.
But I like it in the city when the weather’s warm, because there’s not much we can do to change things (not even the rain), but it’s nice to be reminded (even if just for a day) that we sure can hope.
February 13, 2008
love reservations.
People will be at restaurants all over this city tomorrow night for all sorts of reasons. Business dinners, catching up with old friends, birthday celebrations, the chance to be at the hot-new-place in the neighborhood-of-the-moment. But mostly, they’re dates. Couples all sitting together with a small candle illuminating their menus and faces and relationship - and they can’t help thinking (through the first course, second course...) how it’s always so easy to love someone when they’re right in front of you.
How easy it is (even over a nice Pinot Noir), for your mind to...drift. And amidst the overwhelming smell of cheap cologne and expensive perfume you can tell when another person has fallen out of love. They excuse themselves from the table, leaving their steamed artichoke exposed near the heart, the discarded leaves with teeth indentations still sitting just off to the side, neatly stacked.
How easy it is (even over a nice Pinot Noir), for your mind to...drift. And amidst the overwhelming smell of cheap cologne and expensive perfume you can tell when another person has fallen out of love. They excuse themselves from the table, leaving their steamed artichoke exposed near the heart, the discarded leaves with teeth indentations still sitting just off to the side, neatly stacked.
February 11, 2008
10 Degrees and Dropping Fast.
We’re officially settled into February, the unreasonably cold month of February that’s always there waiting for us and lasting just long enough that we start to wonder if spring ever will come our way again.
People are walking faster, hunkering down, hands digging deeper in pockets as The Chill freezes their feet and numbs their noses, all just trying to get through while wondering - what do the days really mean when you can’t feel a thing?
And the weather feels unreasonably unseasonably cold even though we know we should expect it, and we all can’t help but talk about it because we don’t want to talk about the other things that we’ve been feeling numb about for a while now too. So we talk about the wind chill and the upcoming storm, pending, hovering, working its way toward us about to strike. We go to bed wondering if the weather report is right, if we’re going to wake up in the morning to a blizzard, to delayed busses and stopped subways and snow-bank lined streets...
We’re officially settled into February, biding our time until it ends (and it does eventually), twenty-nine days and the hope of it being just one last hurdle we have to overcome, get through, survive, before we can move on, move forward and begin to feel again.
People are walking faster, hunkering down, hands digging deeper in pockets as The Chill freezes their feet and numbs their noses, all just trying to get through while wondering - what do the days really mean when you can’t feel a thing?
And the weather feels unreasonably unseasonably cold even though we know we should expect it, and we all can’t help but talk about it because we don’t want to talk about the other things that we’ve been feeling numb about for a while now too. So we talk about the wind chill and the upcoming storm, pending, hovering, working its way toward us about to strike. We go to bed wondering if the weather report is right, if we’re going to wake up in the morning to a blizzard, to delayed busses and stopped subways and snow-bank lined streets...
We’re officially settled into February, biding our time until it ends (and it does eventually), twenty-nine days and the hope of it being just one last hurdle we have to overcome, get through, survive, before we can move on, move forward and begin to feel again.
February 10, 2008
why is it -
that we only recognize
the exact thing we want/need/have been needing
at the same exact moment -
(because of life/circumstance/timing that we missed/keep missing/lost)
we realize we can’t have it.
the exact thing we want/need/have been needing
at the same exact moment -
(because of life/circumstance/timing that we missed/keep missing/lost)
we realize we can’t have it.
February 4, 2008
Happy hours.
There are few things more awkwardly self-revealing than being in the middle of a slow moving pub by yourself, waiting for someone or something to show up.
It’s small, the kind of place where there’s a pretty good chance that everyone really does know your name, and tabs run high and so do emotions and when you show up as an outsider to a place like that you can feel it, a distinct change in the atmosphere as though you’ve just entered a foreign country where you hardly know the language at all.
And there’s a lot to talk about, what with Super Bowls and Super Tuesdays in the air, and everyone agrees or disagrees about plays and politics, but it doesn’t matter to them because they all know each other and what they’re there for and playoff or primary, every day is a big day for New Yorkers.
You can tell easily enough, those who have been there for hours, whose day didn’t include (from 9-5) being trapped behind office doors and bright and blinding computer screens. They are trapped in different ways, perhaps. Their lives...well, you never do know, do you?
It’s in a place like that (where better?) that you can sit by yourself and drink your $3 pint special (from 5 to 7) and think long and hard about who you really are in those ten minutes you have to yourself (the only ten minutes of your whole day it would seem) before someone or something shows up. And if you’re like the guy next to me who had two too many two or so hours ago, you’re sitting there with your mouth open and eyes closed probably dreaming of a time when things made more sense.
Because when you suddenly find yourself in a foreign country right smack in the middle of your hometown, you may find yourself questioning what exactly you’re waiting for and why - and the answers to those kinds of questions never do seem to be there looking up at you from the bottom of your glass when you’re ready to go home.
It’s small, the kind of place where there’s a pretty good chance that everyone really does know your name, and tabs run high and so do emotions and when you show up as an outsider to a place like that you can feel it, a distinct change in the atmosphere as though you’ve just entered a foreign country where you hardly know the language at all.
And there’s a lot to talk about, what with Super Bowls and Super Tuesdays in the air, and everyone agrees or disagrees about plays and politics, but it doesn’t matter to them because they all know each other and what they’re there for and playoff or primary, every day is a big day for New Yorkers.
You can tell easily enough, those who have been there for hours, whose day didn’t include (from 9-5) being trapped behind office doors and bright and blinding computer screens. They are trapped in different ways, perhaps. Their lives...well, you never do know, do you?
It’s in a place like that (where better?) that you can sit by yourself and drink your $3 pint special (from 5 to 7) and think long and hard about who you really are in those ten minutes you have to yourself (the only ten minutes of your whole day it would seem) before someone or something shows up. And if you’re like the guy next to me who had two too many two or so hours ago, you’re sitting there with your mouth open and eyes closed probably dreaming of a time when things made more sense.
Because when you suddenly find yourself in a foreign country right smack in the middle of your hometown, you may find yourself questioning what exactly you’re waiting for and why - and the answers to those kinds of questions never do seem to be there looking up at you from the bottom of your glass when you’re ready to go home.
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