Gabardine Sleeve of Hope.

Relationships in New York aren’t in any way necessary. If you ask me (and I guess you didn’t) spending all that time trying to make sure someone else is happy in this city is just a big waste of time. New York is a place where you can really only be bothered with having to look after yourself (and who can afford dates anyway?). I’m lousy at talking on the phone and I hate holding hands and don't understand the pressure to rehash all of the trivial details of my day to someone who will inevitably leave me for someone prettier, more clever and less argumentative in the long run anyway.

That being said, I'll be the first to admit that this city can be a hell of a lonely place when it wants to be, and like most New Yorkers I'm always looking for something better than what I already have - which in this case, happens to be nothing at all.

So when I was standing in the rush hour train at 8:50AM holding on for balance with one hand and propping a 250 page book against my stomach with the other, (overwhelming scents of perfume, shampoo, body odor and aftershave taking up half my concentration) a navy blue blazer arm pushed past my ear and grabbed hold of the bar by the side of my face and suddenly I started to wonder. There it was, awkwardly one inch from my cheek with seemingly no body attached, and as I stood there trying read and picture at the same time what the rest of him looked like, I caught the lingering scent of cigar smoke and coffee and for a moment (this city is full of dreamers) wondered if this could be someone great.

Of course we all know that forced moments on the subway never go anywhere (do they?) but it’s always nice to see that they exist, that there are some men who carry with them the possibility of hearing the mundane details of what I had for breakfast (this city is full of hope).

I can’t say that I’m asking for much, but is it really so much for you to find a tie that matches your shirt? Is it necessary for the first contact I have with your eyes for me to see your own glaring everywhere other than my face? Does the first time you talk to me have to be you drunk on cheap beer at a bar uttering monosyllabic things like "Sup?" Is it really too much to ask that you have read a newspaper or book recently? To call when you say you will? Is it possible for you to not have "Tommy" tattooed on your upper right arm causing me to wonder if you put it there in the off chance that at any given moment you might in fact, actually forget what your name really is?

No, I’m not asking for much. Actually at times it appears as though I’m not asking for anything at all - which is why there’s nothing like a foreign navy blue sleeve in your face at 8:50AM to jolt you out of the reality that is your life and into that always exciting realm of possibility that is nowhere greater in the world than it is on a Manhattan subway. Could this be the sleeve I’ve been waiting for?

One small glance up from my book as the doors opened at 42nd street I could see the navy blue sleeve was in fact attached to a man about twice my age, with a protruding gut, yellowing teeth, and a striped tie just didn’t work.

Damn.

I will tell you what I know to be true.

I know that life is short and that the moment I start to recognize the sad but blatantly real truth about time and how fast it passes (August already?!) the sooner I’ll start living my life the way it’s meant to be lived.

I know that there’s no real point in getting up every day and trekking to work (cross-town bus, downtown 2/3 to 14th street, 1 local to Houston...) in order to do a job to pay the rent for an apartment I can’t afford in a city that often turns its back on me, only to come home and go to the gym and sweat and struggle (all mice on our wheels) trying to become a better version of myself - but I do it anyway because that’s just who I am and there’s nothing like hope to get you out of bed in the morning.

I know that people I care about always end up leaving for one reason or another (sometimes it’s forever), and no matter how much I want to, (boy I hate change) I can’t stop them.

I know that there’s nothing like leaving New York for seven long days, traveling to six different cities in order to make me appreciate what I have right outside my doorstep on a daily basis. What a shockingly strange reminder that in other places across the country restaurants close at 10 (what?) cabs cost exponentially more to get you from one place to the next (being that everything is so far apart) and the chance to meet someone new and interesting on the way to get your morning coffee is nowhere else as palpable as it is in Manhattan.

I know that when I heard the bus driver on the M72 this afternoon on my way home from work (a job I have in order to pay for the apartment I can’t afford...) talking to a friend of his who was perched on the seat by the door about the woman in his life who he let get away ("she doesn’t know how much this is hurting me, how much this is tearing me up inside") - I realized that there’s no point in love unless you can be honest about it, and that there’s no point in life if you’re not.

I know that I don’t know half as much as I should about things in general at this stage in my life, (how is it possible that I’m still making so many mistakes?) but there’s no fun in knowing it all (who ever wanted to be a know-it-all anyway?). I’m a knows-enough-for-now, and I figure that’s good enough to at least get me through tomorrow.

People tell me things.

I didn’t do anything this weekend,
and by Sunday night I was more tired than ever before.

Don’t know about you, but I really can’t afford to leave my apartment this weekend.

Last week he told me he couldn’t talk to me anymore
because his girlfriend was getting mad and wouldn’t allow it.
Yesterday they broke up and he sent me an email.

I got bit on the lip by a spider while I slept last night.
It scurried out from under a pillow while I was making the bed today.
Killed it.

I’ll definitely have kids in the next five years.

I have been on the crosstown bus at 23rd street for 15 minutes,
and have gone only two blocks because someone in a wheelchair wanted to go one block.
You are already on wheels. Go.

Since it’s raining does that mean I don’t have to go to Brooklyn?
Please!

Tell me about it. I know. Falling in love in New York
is like hitting the lottery. You have to be in the right place
at the right time, and most of us have horrible luck.

Vertical New York is making it hard to see.

I don’t know when things changed and everyone started to lose sight of themselves in the haze of other people’s lives. All the time is the constant humming of other people’s lives in our ears, sometimes loud, sometimes drowned out by our own questions that have been testing us.

Because we deep-down-know, (don’t we?) that we’re just another face on just another subway, holding just another railing, hand over hand, the railing that helps us up and helps us along, helps us out of the haze. Lost, (aren’t we?) even after so much happens, that at times we can’t help but look back and wonder how we ever made it through, how we’re still here, right now putting foot in front of foot, walking forward, walking home. But we can’t really forget, (can we?) who we really are in the midst of all the confusion.

Being in New York it’s easy to feel like you’re not measuring up, like you’re not as good as the next person, not as pretty, not as successful, not as important, not as smart, (and) without the: better bag, better career, better apartment, better boyfriend, better reservation at the better
restaurant...how are we, in a city full of so many people who know exactly what they want, supposed to fit in and find a place of our own?

Seems like things pass so fast here that if you spend too much time thinking about what you really want you’re going to miss out on it to the one’s that already do, (and they do, don’t they?)They know and you don’t know why, or how, or what led them into the arms of such extreme clarity that they’re able to go through each day with it all seemingly figured out.

Wish we had our own personal copy of TONY delivered secretly to our apartment door every week that would tell us exactly where to go to get everything we want: Time Out New York would suddenly become Time Out [insert your name here].

Maybe that’s the thing about this city that makes you start to lose sight of yourself in the haze of other people’s lives, makes you want to skip town altogether and find a place that isn’t so threatening to your dreams - too many people all wanting the same things always means that someone is destined to end up blind and empty-handed.

I don't feel like I ask for much.

In fact, I think I'm someone who has gotten pretty accustomed to being disappointed when it comes to most of the things in my life mainly due to my altogether too high expectations. This character trait if you will, prompts most of my friends to call me things like "bitter" and "pessimistic," forcing me reply that I'm simply quoting the reality of things, (and trust me, I don't enjoy having to do it). The thing is that in the end I can't help but feel that most of the time there's really no escaping things not turning out the way you want them to.

So, on this dark and rainy Monday, getting up in a lazy weekend-induced stupor, paralyzed at the idea of having to go back into the office, I was struggling to keep focused by the time the clock struck 3:24 PM. 3:24?! The worst thing that can possibly happen to a person on a dark and rainy Monday is when you go to look at the clock feeling more than 100% sure that it's at least a quarter past five, and finding that it's merely 3:24.

Actually, the worst thing that can possibly happen to a person (me) on a dark and rainy Monday is that when the clock strikes 3:24 and you think it's a quarter past five and you go to your local distributor for your much needed fix and come to find when you order that grande Pike Place (all while knowing you can't really afford it but can actually taste it standing in line and listening to Sinanta croon Don't Get Around Much Anymore) - they are out. (the horror!)

Starbucks, I'm really trying here to turn over a new leaf of understanding, patience and overall optimisim - but it's really too much to ask of me to not be bitterly infurated when you, the largest coffee chain in the country, are actually in fact out of the very thing that you proclaim to sell, at the exact moment I need it most.

"Do ya want...decaf?" the barista behind the counter asked with mild trepidation. Decaf? I was about to look behind me for the candid cameras when I closed my eyes, counted to three, took a deep breath (all while thinking of those friends, you readers out there, who keep telling me to try to be more patient, to calm down) and told him no thanks.

"Well...what do you want instead?" Instead. That word. Really the worst word in the English language. Instead. What I wanted to tell him (yell if there hadn't been so many people behind me in line) was that what I wanted was the chance, in this most patience-testing city in the world, (what with people stopping at the top of staircases, infront of subway doors, right infront of you on the street to take a picture or answer a phone or write a blackberry message, all impeding your life from happening at the exact pace and flow that you want it to. What with seemingly every person around you all competing with you for a better job, better seat on the bus, better apartment, better friend or better lover) - was to for once, have someone to be able to give me the exact thing they're supposedly offering, the exact thing I deserve really, without my having to settle for something...less.

Instead.

I am bitter and pessimistic for a reason.

"I guess I'll have a latte," I said. "Not decaf."

How pressed for time are you really when you feel compelled to clip your fingernails on the subway?

Of course the real question here is about luck, bad luck mainly and the law of probability and how after a long day back at the office that nice gentleman had to sit down next to me (how lucky I thought I was to score a seat during rush hour!) and after taking a deep breath he pulled out the clippers and started snap snap snapping away.

Little bits were flying everywhere, and as we all looked on in disbelief I sat for a while contemplating my options:

sore feet (new shoes I can’t afford) and a seat where I can comfortably read my book
or
stand safely outside the nail-fly-zone.

Where else is one forced to make such decisions on their journey home?

It didn’t take me long. I was up and away just before he started to remove his shoes.

If you live in New York City...

...it’s only a matter of time before you find yourself
on your hands and knees
wearing yellow plastic dish gloves
scrubbing ever corner of your apartment at 11 o’clock at night
half drunk on a bottle of wine
blasting The Rolling Stones
and cursing under your breath
because you saw a cockroach scurry across your floor earlier in the morning.

You can’t always get what you want, indeed.

when it rains, it pours.

Its been raining in New York for days now and the streets look the way they do in all the movies with the lights reflecting and the people running with umbrellas over head, and newspapers and coats. The tourists curse it. He/she/they say it’s bad luck, bad timing, bad news. Rain in June? they ask. And their maps get wet and they’re slowed by the rain and so are the cars and the busses and my commute home.

All tourists do when they come here is spend too much money on stupid souvenirs, all that crap from junk-filled stores to try make the memory more real. I take home matchbooks and napkins I’ve written notes on and mental pictures of faces and distinct sounds of laughter, and figure I have legitimate mental souvenirs of every place I’ve ever been.

And you can find yourself sheltered from the storm in a little coffee shop and realize that you don’t need a map to get you to the places in life that you need to see. And you don’t need to spend money on anything more than a café latte to strike up a conversation with a normal person with a normal life to realize that New York in the rain is just as good as New York when it’s not.

Because you can never have too many chances.

One of these days I'm going to finish something (and I don't mean drinks or boring phone calls or bad movies). I mean one of these days I'm going to follow through with all the things I think about doing and talk about doing and feel in the pit of my stomach that I should.

But I keeping losing time. It flies, doesn't it? Like flies that float and land on burning lamp bulbs and disintegrate or get squashed and disappear.

For too long I have thought I have an infinite amount. And that's so easy, isn't it? With clocks everywhere counting down your every moment, quantifying and qualifying every part of your day, your everyday that never seems to change. And there will always be more vodka sodas and boring phone calls and bad movies - but not chances. You can never have too many chances.

Because one night you can go to sleep and wake up in the morning and find that time has caught up with you. And clocks stop and you don't want them to (you never do), then there you are in the middle of a sea of crowded minutes, hours, days, all struggling against the drowning chances that you know you've missed, swimming in the regret, suffocating in the always too-late realization that it’s a silly time to learn to swim when you start to drown.

To the girl at the corner store.

I know it’s tough, it has to be. Every day it’s the same, the same people asking for coffee, asking for change, asking for your number.

They’ve been coming in with their large coats and pressed suits knowing that every day it will be the same, that they will come in, and you’ll be here. I know it won’t be long, and soon they’ll be coming in with their flip flops and tanned faces from their weekends at the Hamptons and they’ll find you’re gone.

You feel your life is on the other side of the world, that no one here understands you, and you wish you had someone to count on. Count on. Count faces, count names, count Burberry scarves and Dior sunglasses, count missed chances and glances and lost lives.

You think that in time, they’ll remember, once you’re gone, once you’ve taken the chance to start your life somewhere else, out from behind the counter of this city that moves too fast for you.But you don’t count on it. You’re tired of counting, so you smile and say good morning and good afternoon and good bye.

Because you know it is easy to love people in memory, the hard trick, is to love them when they are there, in front of you.

Quiet, please, and I'll tell you everything.

Leaving Manhattan is supposed to be an altogether peaceful adventure, parting ways for a few days with the noise and craziness to seek out vast horizons and lush trees (well, as vast and lush as Albany can muster).

So I sat down on the most inefficient, poorly run, overpriced and never-on-time piece of transportation in the country - Amtrak - to leave above mentioned city for the weekend. And already seated, I watched as those who boarded played the game on the sold out train of eyeballing everyone to deem who looked the least offensive to sit next to.

Of course the man who sat next to me was quite possibly the most ridiculous person I’ve ever encountered to date (and I’ve encountered some pretty ridiculous people in my time). He was Dwight Schrute meets Robert Goulet. He was middle-aged with dyed jet black hair. He was lumbering, awkward, cumbersome, and asked me "can I sit here?" while already hefting his bag into the overhead compartment. He sat down with the full force of a fighter jet, causing me to wonder (as I read a book pressed against the window trying not to make eye contact) if he'd ever sat in such a small confined space before in his entire life.

(What is it about people on journeys going somewhere or coming back from someplace else, that compels them to talk? I'm not here to entertain you, or tell you my life story, or answer ridiculous questions. All I want to do is sit and not talk. I think not talking is totally underrated. Sometimes it’s nice, isn’t it, to just be able to sit and not say anything for awhile and just let the world and the people around you marinate).

I thought I was out of the woods until I realized that Dwight Schrute Goulet didn't bring anything with him for the two and a half hour train ride to entertain him but the video he took on his cell phone that he'd filmed that day of Times Square (of course). "Here we are in the famous Times Square..." the speaker-phone blasted his best flight attendant narration. How do these people find me?

It was really only a matter of time before his attention would turn to me with:
"I'm in programming, what do you do?"

I closed my eyes and sighed deeply. Here we go.

I tried to answer as briefly as possible as not to incite any excitement or false hope that this sort of line of questioning was going to continue for the remainder of the trip. He took notice, I think, but him being him he decided to ask questions with his own answers in order to propel things forward.

"Where are you from, are you from Albany?"
"Yeah."

"Where? Glens Falls?"
"Yup." (a lie)

"Where do you live now, the city?"
"Uh huh."

"Where in the city are you, downtown?"
"Yup." (lie)

"Where did you go to school, SUNY Albany?"
"Sure." (lie)

After a while I warmed up to the questions and admittedly liked pretending to be someone else for a while. And there's nothing wrong with telling little lies to strange people you're never doing to see again, is there? They're people who don't really care about the truth anyway. They're just looking for a quick fix, the need to not feel alone, the longing for conversation, for the comfort of...words.

By the end of the trip I was a waitress-cum-television producer from Glens Falls who was engaged to a guy that works in investment banking who I met on a blind date through the internet. (how fun!)

"That's how everyone meets these days, just meet and fall in love, isn't it?"
"Basically."

Sometimes it’s easier to just tell people what they want to hear.

Sh!t Show.

It was only a matter of time before I got onto the wrong subway car (again!) where there was literally shit all over one of the seats. And (the irony!) with The Times Op-ed page having been used and left behind as toilet paper (speaks volumes).

I suppose I should have thought something was up when I noticed everyone in the packed rush-hour train was trying to stay away from one end of the car. "Don’t go over there," they’d say or "I wouldn’t do that if I were you." But this is New York. Underground. During rush-hour. No one ever pays attention to what people are saying to you in such a heated and high-pressured situation.

I’m destined to always learn the hard way. So, this is what we’ve come to then? This is, like, where we are now as a society and we're OK with it? I was thinking these and many other thoughts standing there trying to read my book but unable to concentrate due to the smell. Everyone packed into the car was pushing incrementally en masse away from the scene of the crime. Of all the subway cars in all the city...that nice guy (and I’m taking a guess here as to the sex of the guilty party) had to go and shit in mine.

I suppose you could say it was only a matter of time before I got onto the wrong subway car (seriously, what is with my bad luck?) with shit on the seat when the dreaded "we are stopped momentarily due to train traffic ahead" announcement would come on, keeping me trapped underground (between 59th and 68th! One stop from home! One stop until I can breathe again!) for what could have quite possibly been the longest ten minutes of my life.

New York: just when you think you’ve seen it all - it’s only matter of time before it sets you straight.

The Heat

Everything in New York is a little less clear when the temperature rises. Something about the suffocating air makes the city itself seem more unbearable than ever and you’re walking down the street feeling the sweat drip down the small of your back and you can’t remember for the life of you why you’ve chosen to be so surrounded by so much pavement when it’s topping out at 100 degrees.

We are never satisfied of course, as people who are always looking for The Next Best Thing, for something more - and the weather is no different. Too cold in winter, too hot in summer - when is it ever just right? Well it never is (though we refuse to accept it), and we are rarely prepared for life’s elements - we never remember to bring that umbrella for the sudden downpour, or a cardigan for when the sun goes down and The Chill creeps up from the ground and surrounds our ankles and starts to swallow us whole.

The Heat is starting to be a little much. All I want to do is lock the door and stay inside where the air (and my thoughts) are more level. Believe it or not I can think of a few things that are more fun than packing myself into a crowded downtown 1 train (really what are the odds that I happened to find the one train car without AC??) early on a Monday morning unready to start a week of heat-induced fuzzy attention to detail.

Could this be the week I lose my job? I couldn’t help but think sitting there almost unable to breathe. No, certainly it’s that guy who just woke up across from me with pit stains seeping out onto his light pink dress shirt who most definitely just missed his stop - and from the looks of it the start of a very important meeting - who’s on his way out. "Out of my way!" he shouts as he pushes himself off the train.

Well if he doesn’t lose his job, he really should.

But I won’t complain too much about The Heat because there will inevitably be something wrong with what’s next (mid-80's but too much rain? A sudden drop to a windy 60's and too cold?). And it’s good to not be able to think so clearly sometimes. It’s good to have a break from the crisp clarity of more reasonable temperatures and give yourself some time to let your mind wander. We forget (don’t we?) what we really want when we have so much time in more comfortable climates to over-think things.

So until this breaks (and it will, it always does) I’ll stop thinking for a while (and be OK feeling overheated and uncomfortable...) and just let the humidity fall where it may.

And I’ll try my best to get off the train in time.

Street Affair.

The man running the coffee cart on Hudson and Morton was watching me as I approached, then looked me in the eyes and told me he loved me.

For such a declaration, was it callous of me to just laugh and keep on walking?

When strangers profess love I don’t know the proper etiquette. It’s polite, I would imagine, to at least say "thanks." After all, it’s not a thing one gets to hear every day.

Maybe next time I’ll respond (I don’t need an explanation). Though I could never love a Cart Guy - what’s to stop him from just picking up and leaving at a moments notice (boredom, better traffic, prettier customers)?

(SIGH). Men. Always different street corners, different girls. Always love-me-then-leave-me.

And here I thought it was meant to be.

Home is what you come back to.

I’m pretty sure that New York makes more sense coming than going.

What is it about that skyline that somehow, through the clouds and setting sun reflecting off the Empire State building, screams home? Because you have to leave a place sometimes in order to remember how much you love it (absence really does make the heart grow fonder?).

3,000 miles away across the country for a few days was long enough for me to realize that I am, and always will be, in a New York state of mind. Distant cities always hold the possibility that I’ll find what I’m looking for once I get there, but somehow I’m always let down (so much expectation and disappointment you’d think I’d have learned by now).

Sure, after 5 and a half hours smashed against the window next to a woman who does nothing but snore and kiss her girlfriend and hold her hand during turbulence, and constantly adjust herself and ask you ridiculously personal questions ("No, I don’t think your friend should be pressuring you into having baby just because you’re nearing forty," and "I guess I never really thought about falling in love with someone who already had a kid," and "Yes, you did just elbow me in the arm...again,") - you can be ready to jump out into just about any city in the world.
(What is it about tight enclosed spaces that makes people want to become best friends? I’d much rather spend that time floating at 29,000 feet with my life hanging in the balance, looking out over the passing states - Pennsylvania, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada... - and have some time to myself. think).

And California is too sunny with too many barren hills and too much open sky that it makes me feel uncomfortable. Where are all the tall buildings? Where are all of the angry people with purpose? Why does everyone walk so slow? Why doesn’t anyone honk their horns here when they drive? I could never make it. I’m much too cynical and bitter and realistic to ever be happy in such a place.

All I know about home is that it means a whole manner of things depending on who you are and where you’ve come from. It’s always shifting, roots uprooting and replanting in different cities and houses and apartments and rooms and streets all over the world (though I’m pretty sure that we’re all looking for the same thing to return to at the end of the day). I figure I’m always disappointed because I’ve already found my place.

Grass-is-greener isn’t always a good mentality to have, because you can spend so much time looking for something that might be better, that you lose sight of how great you’ve already got it. Give me the powerful streets of Manhattan, with their endless, streaming chorus of strong voices and passions any day.

Like anything else you choose to come back to in life, Manhattan makes more sense coming than going (what a thing to miss something that's been under your nose the whole time!) - and oh how happy I was to be home.

“Honey, there’s a spider in your bathroom the size of a Buick.”

I can understand that after so many years in New York there suddenly comes a point where you no longer want to wake up to the sound of traffic outside your window anymore, when you prefer birds chirping to car horns. I can understand, that after so many years of living beyond your means, always being pushed up against strangers in subways and elevators, always rushing to the next big thing - that there comes a time when there’s nothing left to do, but leave.

I’m not there yet. Most of the time I don’t think I ever will be, because at this point there’s no other place I’d rather go (despite frequent outbursts to friends that I’m going to move to Tulsa where I’m convinced everything is somehow much easier). There’s no other city in the world where you can experience the amount of culture that’s available to you on a daily basis, which is reason enough to stay. However I understand (the longer I’m here), how important it is to find meaning despite the number of museums and galleries and theatres and French-Brazilian fusion restaurants that are available to you. In the end what’s important to you is what’s important, and if you can’t find it here, you have to find it somewhere else.

That’s why I went to Brooklyn for a going-away party of sorts (downtown 6 to 14th street, 14th street to the L, the L to Lorimer, Lorimer to the G - am I there yet?!) for a friend who is skipping town next week in search of something more. By the time I got to Clinton/Washington Ave I was about ready to leave New York myself (surely it shouldn’t be this difficult just to get somewhere on a Sunday night?), and as I sat there in the small plastic chairs in the pebble-strewn backyard of this bar that touts its own grill (you bring the meat) drinking more than I anticipated (can you ever really anticipate?), I started to think about this city and what makes us stay.

We’re all drawn here for our own reasons, we make the conscious decision that this is the place that’s going to shape the rest of our lives. It will give us the opportunities we need, help us meet the people we want, enable us to become something we hope and dream to be. But thing I was realizing sitting there with the large colored lights strung upon the fence to illuminate my thoughts - was what do you do when you come to the point when this city is no longer enough? And (much more to the point), is that even be possible?

Well of course it is. Like anything else in life things change, and the idea of what you want and who you are and what’s important to you can shift, seemingly behind your back. It’s easier than you think to find yourself in the middle of a foreign street in Brooklyn far from home wondering how you got there. So at the end of the night when people were all heading home, (I was the only soul to venture back to Manhattan) this time (walking four extra blocks to the A, the A to Fulton, Fulton to the uptown 6...) I had a lot of time to assess that tricky and ever-changing question: what do I want?

In the time it took me to get home I'd found my answer, and the answers is really quite simple. It’s like in Annie Hall when she calls Alvy over to her apartment in a panic just to kill the huge spider in her tub. I hate spiders (always have) and have a terrible time working up the courage to dispose of them, but after a few years here I know that I have people I could call in the very instance that there was a spider the size of a Buick in my bathroom.

So yes, life and what we want changes all the time and it’s a good idea to keep asking yourself that question in the middle of such a busy and fast-paced place where it’s easy to lose sight of what’s important. But for me, what I want is just to be here (no matter how long it takes from Brooklyn) with people I can count on. So unless and until I no longer have someone in New York who I can call in the middle of the night to kill a spider in my tub - I figure I’ll stick around.

morning solitaire.

In the morning just before dawn, the streets of Manhattan take on another feel. There’s nothing like it, the calm before the storm of the day, before people are out on sidewalks and cars are out in streets all rushing to get from one place to somewhere else. There’s nothing like New York in the morning, (nothing like life in the morning!) before everything has a chance to get in the way and change it, change the stillness of the air, of your heart, of your mind.

In the morning just before dawn First avenue of Manhattan on 72nd street is quiet, the street lamps seem to flicker and change in a soft slow beat: Green. Orange. Red. Then everyone stops and I open the front door of my apartment and go downstairs (mind still quiet, still half asleep) and push out into the cold morning air. It’s like opening the door to a still and foreign world that is familiar yet altered.

The street is quiet but isn’t usually, however I have long since forgotten what the loud voices of its patrons sound like. They (like the city) have become second nature to me, have incorporated themselves into my life like anything else. They are automatic, constantly in the background of most of my waking evening hours (and sometimes early morning) and I’ve come to take a comfort in them in the same way I have knowing that this city is outside my front door.

Green. Orange. Red. I take off in the direction of the Park because the air this morning is cold and makes me think that the wind on the East River will be unbearable. I try to keep my mind quiet in the early morning hours, in the calm before the storm when I can feel - over Second, Third, Lexington - like this city is meant just for me. When else are the streets so bare that it’s easy to think that this great stretch of concrete is my home and mine alone? As I pass - over Park, Madison, 5th - I look up at the buildings with curtains drawn over windows and picture the people all still asleep, eyes closed in their warm beds still dreaming in their own quiet worlds unwilling to face the day.

I picture big Park Avenue beds with couples far away from each other on opposite sides. I picture small third avenue beds with couples entwined, with feet hanging over the side, arms flung over heads and warm slow breaths hitting someone else’s ear, the side of their face, their hair. What do they dream when they dream? What do they think of their lives when they’re awake?

Inevitably I’ll seen them all later. I’ll sit next to them on the subway and walk with them on the sidewalk, and sit in the office next to them. I’ll be a part of their lives (and they a part of mine) in the next few hours, and here I am out in the cold checking my watch and wanting the day to begin because I can’t help but think that I may never quite be that couple on Park Avenue or Third.

At 5th Avenue I take one last long look down that vast and open stretch of road that takes everyone everywhere, from so many places to so many other places all the time. To things they never expect, to people they never thought they’d meet, to distant future days that hold surprises and difficulties and all sorts of bad luck (I wonder: would we take certain roads if we knew in the end where they’d end up?). But for now everyone is asleep in their beds still unaware of what’s to come, still protected from the unknown.

Green. Orange. Red. I cross over 5th and pass over into Central Park. Picking up my pace I can hear, through the intermittent sounds of cabs whirring by - whoosh! - the faint patters of my feet hitting the pavement more quickly, moving me forward.

In the morning just before dawn, the streets of Manhattan take on another feel. It’s the same thing every day, it’s the same journey with different sets of thoughts through different sets of lights, but at the end of it I’m still the same person I was when I started out. Almost an hour later when I finally reach 5th again I walk back - Madison, Park, Lexington -and pass by windows with curtains now pulled open, (eyes wide awake), until I get closer to home.

Backyard BBQ

"Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?"
She said as we got off the wrong stop on the L
heading to a friends place I’d already been to before.
I’m the exception to the only-men-never-stop-for-directions rule.
*
It’s inevitable that on a stretch of concrete patio
in Williamsburg, that I will meet someone who lived
down the street from me when I lived in Boston, and
now lives two blocks away from me in New York.
*
Why is it that grown men always stand over the grill
and stare down at the flames in an almost-trance,
each one of them always acting like they know best?
It’s done. Give it 5 more minutes. Someone hand me the spatula!
*
Afternoons always pass much faster than they should
when the sun is out and you’ve had more beers than
you were ever planning when you started.
*
He didn’t say much and didn’t have the slightest clue
as to what I was talking about, so I just kept right on talking.
Most of the time when we go out looking for it,
it finds us and we hardly know the difference.
*
After all this time in New York, nothing surprises me anymore.
I think I could stand for a change.

I've lost, therefore I am.

It’s funny how much you can realize who you aren’t the more you lose things. You know you aren’t someone who is in a relationship when you lose a boyfriend or girlfriend. You know you aren’t someone who is going on vacation when you lose your entire paycheck to rent. You know you aren’t someone who is getting into your apartment when you lose your keys on the bus (pls. see previous post). And you know you aren’t someone who is going to fall in love any time soon when you’ve lost your propensity to trust.

So somehow, the more you lose the more you realize the person are not, (and perhaps even the person you once were and no longer are). We lose things like years and chances and people and love (and keys) all the time, and these loses are constantly defining and re-defining our lives. But I wonder (daily, painfully, eagerly...) how much do we really have to end up losing along the way in order to find out who we are?

It’s amazing sometimes to think of the things you can never get back to. You can, at the end of the day, always take the subway home and get back to the place where you can rest your head and let yourself dream - but sometimes it’s those very dreams that you can’t help but lose over time. They too get lost and fade away along with the ideas you had about who you wanted to become.

Survival of the Fittest.

I was on the bus and heard the sound before I really knew what was going on. I was reading intently the New Yorker like the good little New Yorker that I am, so absorbed that I hardly realized just how far the bus had traveled (that early in the morning without coffee we could have been in the Pocono's and I’d have had absolutely no idea).

The point being that I feel about it about and I’m the first (or second, or third...) person to admit it when I’m wrong about something. I was wrong when I heard it, the hard abrasive sound of his janitor-like keys fall from the back of his maroon Jansport (faded and marked with inky scribbles) and fall to the ground - and I didn’t say a word.

I didn’t say anything at first because surely with a sound that loud and a weight so large suddenly being alleviated from his backside, he’d have at least noticed something was wrong. I didn’t say anything at first because surely that woman who was literally three feet away from him (and there was me, rows and rows away) would pipe up and do the right thing. I mean her and I were both looking at the same thing, the same pile of metal on the dirty floor, both starting to realize that time was passing faster than it should, and the longer we waited to act, the more lost this opportunity was going to become.

I watched in paralyzed horror as Jansport kept walking, took a sharp right turn at the front of the bus and bounded down the steps. " --------." My mouth was open and nothing came. I was really ready to shout (really), I even cleared my throat in preparation to get the best projection, but by the time I was ready it was too late - he was gone. For an instant, poised on the edge of my seat I had a brief flashing image of myself pouncing on the keys and jumping off the bus, running after him and returning his keys in a very saving-the-day kind of way.

But I didn’t. I didn’t say anything. What is it about doing the Right Thing that has the power of stopping us dead in our tracks? I sat back in my chair and thought about how horrible a person I was for not doing the Right Thing in that clear distinct window of opportunity. I glared at the woman up front who I decided should really take all of the blame. Our eyes met and she saw my look: Yeah you, my eyes said, you totally dropped the ball on that one.

After a few blocks however, back reading my New Yorker in total caffeine withdrawal, I felt a little better about the situation. This is after all, New York City , NEW YORK CITY, a place where you have to have it together, where you have to know where your head’s at, (and your wallet and your bags and your keys and your subway pass and your phone...) at all times, or else you’re simply not cut out to be here.

And perhaps when Jansport got home that night and, unable to get into his apartment where his couch and food and cat and bed were, he decided it was time to go.

Thing great thing about New York is -

you never know who you’re going to come across
on a random street corner.

You can bump into someone from a distant city of your past
on the corner of 14th and 6th as easily as you do,
a total stranger.

Suddenly, in a sea of crowded people you feel reassured that
(despite all signs to the contrary)
you are on the right path.

The great thing about New York is -
once you here you’re part of the city’s plan (like it or not),
and there’s no going back.

Runner.

Every day in this city I meet someone new - every morning, every minute. Because walking the streets of this city you pass the lives of so many people in one moment, so absurdly and closely encounter them brief and blindingly fast like the beams of the headlights that buzz by - and then poof! They’re gone.

They’re all wondering (aren’t they?) the same things as they walk. All worried about bills (too many) and promotions (not enough) and success (too much?) and love (not enough?) and whether or not they turned off the coffee pot or the curling iron in their rush to get on with their days, to get on with their lives.

We rush here because we have to, because we sleep listening to the cars and cabs outside our windows, the echoing voices in the distance of people we hear clearly but will never meet. There is something comfortingly lonely about a place where every day, every moment, every block you experience a little piece of someone else’s life. You look them in the eyes, you smile at them, overhear the piece of a phone call, catch a glimpse of their happiness through their laugh, or see the sadness of their tears.

The more time I spend here the more I feel like we’re all the same. Like the man who I see every morning when I wait for the bus. He’s there waiting too, a familiar but nameless face in the crowd who then sits a few seats away as we speed across town. We pretend not to notice each other when we stand together on the sidewalk waiting to cross at 72nd and Broadway and then both wait for the same downtown 2/3 express train. We pretend not to notice again when we see each other at the gym, or when we find ourselves in the cereal aisle together at the corner market. We look straight ahead as we pass on the street when I’m walking towards Central Park for a jog, and he’s just on his way back.

So strange that we’re all here co-habitants of a place so small that we want so desperately to be our own. We all of us see each other and think: if it was me on that side of that street going in that direction, that could be me. The person crossing that street or hailing a cab or walking the dog or kissing that person on the corner in a passionate embrace - I could be them, we think, and them, and them and them....

But like everything in this city, these moments of clarity of our existence in a place so crazy come and go quickly. They pass with regret, with lost opportunity, with the realization that we only are who we are because that’s who we’ve chosen to be. So we keep passing each other like clockwork (bus and gym and grocery store...) day after day, morning after morning, moment after moment, running away from each other and pretending that we’re the only ones who exist - and then poof! They’re gone.

Lists.

The man sitting next to me on the uptown 6 train after work was intently making a list in an old beat up spiral notebook. He learned forward with his elbows on this knees and thought carefully before adding to the list in doctor-like scrawl:

McCain
R. Ray
NASCAR
Spitzer
rice pudding
Yankees

Each addition took time and care, deep thought and commitment as though once he wrote them down they would set the wheels in motion to change his life forever. He looked normal with khaki pants and a North Face jacket with a white earphones cord that disappeared into his pocket. I looked over his shoulder (something I try not to do) intrigued. What was the thought process behind this list? What did it mean? I tried to think of a common theme: Things he didn’t like? Favorite things? Pet Peeves? Reasons to keep going on?

For six stops he sat and pondered (as did I) until just before he stood up to leave. I watched as he wrote one last thing three times in a row that completed (perhaps) the list of all the important things that had been on his mind: Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer.

The Hat

I was standing there just waiting for the crosstown bus in the rain. Today was a cold and rainy morning during the rush to get to work, and I understand, I do, how people here only ever, (and usually only can) think of themselves. I have to get to the office. I have to catch that train. I have to get into that restaurant on Friday night. I have to get those shoes. I have to get tickets to see that play. I have to I have to I have to.

That’s one of the things that drives me crazy about New York - so many people with so many different wants and needs all on one little island all intersecting all the time, that it makes it difficult sometimes to feel like you belong, always leaving you to wonder: where do I fit in?

I was standing there just waiting for the crosstown bus in the rain under one of the construction overhangs (that are everywhere in the city) making for a nice break from having to use an umbrella (all of mine are maimed anyway, broken and open with crooked metal veins). Yet there on the Upper East Side was a woman who was determined in her early morning I have to, to push past me with her umbrella wide open regardless, unaware of anyone but seemingly herself. She clipped the edge of her Burberry umbrella against my head as she blew by, the pointy edge catching my knit winter white hat (my favorite white one with the flower on the side that I usually never let myself wear because it’s too nice) taking it with her, right off my head as she passed.

I watched, startled, as she began to walk away with it swinging, almost suspended in the air by her shoulder. I opened my mouth to speak, to yell (I was furious), but nothing came out. Did that really just happen? Truth is I had a feeling it was going to happen. I could sense her walking towards me the way you can sense a winter snowstorm just before it’s about to break. But I didn’t move. I made the conscious decision to stand my ground because surely, right there on that large sidewalk, she had more than enough room to pass leaving me unscathed. Surely in all the city I can still at least stand in one place, I can still have one small piece of sidewalk, one mere bit of pavement to myself, even if just for a few minutes, that’s unobstructedly my own.

The anger of realizing that no space in New York is ever really just your own, made my finally say, "Excuse me!" in a voice much stronger than I was expecting. At the sound the woman then stopped and noticed the unfamiliar small white object that had now dropped to her shoulder and rested there peacefully. The other people all waiting for the bus watched as this whole little tableau began to unfold, and I wondered what they were thinking as she stopped, confused, and turned to me, "But this isn’t mine!" she shouted in disgust. And with one quick sweeping motion she flung the hat from her shoulder with an abrupt flick of her wrist. I watched unmoving as my little white hat with the flower on the side that I never usually let myself wear, flew in slow motion through the air until it fell into a puddle on the side of the road.

My eyes drifted from the hat on the ground to the woman (she still didn’t understand, her cheeks red with confusion now, her eyes still shouting I have to I havetoIhaveto) and for a moment I couldn’t move. The look on my face must have been what made her stop and not simply keep on walking, must have been what made her stand there (along with everyone else), watching and waiting while I suppressed the overwhelming feeling that was pushing its way up around my heart -the feeling that somehow everything, no matter how much you try to protect it, always ends up getting tainted, ruined, taken away from you against your will. "I know," I said, pained as I walked over to the hat, now soaking and dirty, and slowly bent down and picked it up before looking her in the eyes. "It’s mine."

Set Theory.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s a bad thing when you recognize as you’re standing at the corner of a certain place in your life, that at one point in the past you’ve stood there before in a way you never can again.

I was at the corner of 68th and Lexington on the way to work, pushing through the morning crowd all hunkered down in a silent hurried rush, and for a brief moment my eye caught sight of the grey pavement of the sidewalk littered with old gum, the newsstands of The Village Voice (on Wednesdays) The Onion (that I never read) and AM New York, and I saw myself and how I’d stood at that corner near the street sign at past moments in my life that I can never get back again.

The paths of our lives keep stretching out in front of us at different dimensions in so many different places and cities -that at one point, at some point, they have to eventually intersect and catch up with us (even on a Tuesday morning during rush-hour).

Because I’ve stood on 68th and Lexington waiting to cross the street feeling that naive newly-arrived-Manhattan feeling that I can never get back after so many days of dealing with the harshness of its reality. I’ve stood there being heartbroken over a love that’s long since faded. I’ve stood there with people who at one time were a strong presence in my life but no longer are, along with those I still can’t fully accept that I’ll never see again. And yet, the corner remains.

It is perhaps at the fastest moving moments of our lives that we can’t help but reach out to try to make sense of things, to try to find the right angles at which to see the world. Most intersections of life don’t make much sense as it’s in a state of constant flux. Like the woman who was interviewed on NY1 on Saturday having left her apartment on 51st and 2nd just moments before the crane fell and crushed the building, killing many nearby. I was just there, she uttered in shocked disbelief to the reporter, to the camera, to the city. I’ve lived there all my life. I’ve lost everything I have.

There are (aren’t there?) so many corners in life that hold so much of what was, that it’s hard sometimes to make sense when you walk passed them (either just in time, or a moment too late) of what will become of them in the future.

Let's stay together.

At the end of the day there’s nothing New Yorkers want more than to get home. We work late nights, long hours, and suddenly our days are gone before we even had a chance to notice. So when we’re on the subway half asleep we’re not really focusing on the article we’re reading in the latest issue of The New Yorker (is Michael Chabon right? Are superhero’s costumes overrated?) -we’re dreaming of the feeling that will come when we finally put our heads down on our pillows.

I was on the uptown 6 train on my way home tonight, staring at my reflection in the window because I was too tired to pretend to read as we sped from 42nd to 59th. When you’re not pretending to read on the subway you’ve really got nothing else to do but look at other people. And the more you try not to look at other people the more you think about how you have nowhere else to look. I spent one too many times trying not to look at the pinstripe suit who was standing with his back against the door holding a faded leather briefcase, that I think I ended up looking at him more than I should have. What can I say, he was cute.

Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing else we can really do in New York but force moments with strangers in the hope that perhaps that one of them will reach out and ask for our numbers in that great New-York-romantic-moment you only see in the movies. Sure you realize after a while it’s ridiculous, but what else are you supposed to do when you’re bored on the subway? And let’s admit it, sometimes even the most independently single can become inwardly desperate.

But the whole point is that when the doors opened at 59th street a man got on the train with his guitar hoping for some late dinner money and announced he was going to play a song. When the first lines of Al Green’s "Let’s Stay Together" started to come out of his mouth I burst out laughing. It was automatic because it was so ridiculous, because such an intimate sounding song with all of us half asleep workaholics forcing moments with each other or staring at the floor - who could help but laugh when he, in his fedora and out of tune guitar cooed the opening sultry words "I’m. I’m so in love with you. Whatever you want to do. Is alright with me."

Fortunately I was the next stop and fled because, as always seems to happen at the most inopportune moments, once I started laughing I had a hard time stopping. I smiled on my way out (just missing the last verse) to the suit, who smiled back in a very you’re-ridiculous sort of way and not in the let’s-grab-dinner-on-Friday-night way I’d been secretly hoping for.

Another New York moment gone in a flash, sure, but it’s always nice to know that even when times are good or bad, happy or sad -you can’t help but want to stay together with the only city in the world that refuses to give you anything but an ordinary Tuesday night.

Get Home Safe. (and remember to look both ways).

I realize that you can stay in one place long enough that you start to forget that your life is actually happening to you. Tonight I was standing on the street corner in the rain, the one that I cross every day to get home, and as the rain poured down I could barely see through the flood that passed in front of beaming cab headlights and bounced off the pavement. As my coat officially became soaked through (and I cursed myself for not having an umbrella), I actually had to remind myself that I was standing there.

I got lost in the city (it’s easy to), waiting for lights to change and cars to stop passing and for the white walk sign to flash telling me it was okay to proceed. I got lost in the sea of black umbrellas (they’re all black in New York) and the white fog the escaped everyone’s mouths from the cold and seeped up through the sewer drains and took hold of our feet.

That’s the thing: living here becomes automatic, just like breathing, and sometimes we can forget that we’re doing it. On the uptown E train coming home from work (give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...) I stood holding the handle under the yellow-fading lights and I saw the distant faces and recognized myself in them. Here we are, every day all breathing the same air, looking into the same nothingness, waiting, waiting, waiting for something (I still don’t know), and forgetting why we’re doing it.

Because even static things can spin fast beside you, spitting you out as it did me on the corner of 72nd street wondering for a moment how I got there. The familiar can become foreign sometimes, creatures of habit who crave repetition and routine for a sense of comfort in an overwhelmingly off-kilter world, we are sometimes jolted by something (the sound of an early March downpour?) that forces us to open our eyes.

New York is bleeding me dry.

I know that we pay a high fee to live here (both monetary and emotionally) but this is getting ridiculous. Is there any other city in the world where people have better jobs and are still struggling just to get by? Every week it’s another twenty some odd dollars disappearing for groceries that aren’t eaten, late bills, superfluous drinks, late-night cabs, bad movies, small dinners and impossible-to-see-it-all-anyway-museums.

After two years of living here I don’t know where all those twenty some odd dollars have disappeared to, all in their small way contributing to my life here, all paying for things to keep reminding me why I stay. Because money buys us memories, (doesn’t it?) it’s just tough when you recognize that you might not be able to afford (especially after rent) to go out and make too many more.

live from new york...

There’s perhaps nothing that epitomizes New York more than the Saturday Night Live institution. People all over the country can tune in and watch through the opening cast montage scenes from a fast-paced and blurry-lit city that is true to reality. And while everyone watches SNL on television, few people actually go, especially New Yorkers. We understand that there is a huge discrepancy between the New York that is portrayed on the screen and the New York that we see outside of our windows on a daily basis.

But just this once, as the opportunity presented itself, I went to Rockefeller Center and took the elevator up to the SNL studios and walked the halls lined with framed still photographs from episodes gone by. Like most things you only ever seen on television – actually being there was a bit surreal, and the same disclaimer always applies: everything is smaller in real life.

It was interesting to be there of course, seated a few seats from New York newsman Brian Williams (is he always in a navy blazer?), watching New York politicians Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani take their turns at making fun of themselves. I laughed when things were funny, applauded when the bright flashing signs told me to, and complied eagerly when invited to the after-party.

The funny thing about New York is that we’re all here trying to make something of ourselves, while at the same time being surrounded by people who already have. So when I saw one John Krasinski of The Office fame standing in the corner in a back hat eating copious amount of sliders from one of the tables without barely taking a chance to swallow, I went up to say hello. Because it’s always good, almost necessary even, to reach out to people you admire (and who you may or may not have an entirely huge crush on) in order to experience a change in perspective. So I told him I was a fan and when he shook my hand and asked me my name, I told him. His response of "my name is John" made me laugh. Yeah, I know, I wanted to say. Your picture is on my fridge.

I talked to him and Colin Hanks (would it have been rude to tell him that I think his father the Jimmy Stewart of this generation?) who told me how much he loved New York but said he didn’t like it when it gets to be so cold out. And SNL cast member Bill Hader told me how much he loves New York too, and agreed that the studio itself is really small in real life, and how its television-to-reality-ratio still surprises him. It’s a strange thing talking to people you feel like you know when they don’t know you at all - the city itself is our only common bond.

But that’s the thing about New York, we are all trying to make something of ourselves, trying to find our place, and perhaps that’s why we admire the people we see on our television screens to begin with - because they’ve all already accomplished what they want to do while we're all still struggling. So it’s good to be able to see it up close and personal in order to remember that anything really can happen in a city where everything is possible - even if at the end of the night you do take a cab back home to your real life, with the inevitability that next Saturday, you’ll be watching from home.

One part coffee. One part steamed milk.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Pick up, your life's on the line.

It’s so easy to take for granted the simple sound of a ringing phone. Your whole life it’s there as a recognizable sound, something you run towards before the machine picks up, the way you keep checking your cell for vibrating pulses in your back pocket because you could have sworn you heard it, felt it, sensed it.

There are moments when you long for it, stretches of time when you’re just waiting for someone to call, hoping for someone to be thinking about you at the exact same moment you’re thinking about them, knowing you’re both so far apart and yet needing to reach out to each other across miles.

However I think that when it becomes a year, a whole year of you being afraid of the sound of a ringing phone, having long since forgotten what its shrilling rings used to represent before - hope, excitement, your future (and future dinner plans) - I suppose you can’t help but wonder sometimes if that feeling will ever entirely go away. Or will you always be thinking in the back of your mind that the phone could ring any minute and once again your life will be turned upside down?

That’s the chance you take every time you make that conscious decision to venture out into the unknown. Each ringing phone and street taken, each corner turned and person met there it is, chance, looming over you like an overcast sky. And it’s so easy to take for granted the things you had before you picked up and everything fell away so quickly.

But it keeps ringing and pulsing and vibrating in bags and pockets and on kitchen walls and lives keep changing because of it, and you think - if only they could just invent a phone that could reach out across time and space and dial you back into your past, back to the way it was before you were forced to ever have to make the decision to answer at all.

Everything is up in the air.

You’ll never hear anyone on a Sunday night saying that the weekend was far too long. You can sit at a Starbucks from six to nine writing and sipping coffee (decaf) and watching the people walk by Lexington Ave and you won’t hear one person talking about how much they’re looking forward to the upcoming week.

You’ll hear them talking about how fast it disappeared, "boy how it flew," and "is it really Sunday already?" The question is everywhere and we all think we’ve never seen 48 hours pass so quickly. I don’t know what it is about time and work and the way our lives are mapped out that makes us dread most days, makes us question Monday through Friday and where does the time go? Monday through Friday and where did our lives go?

This city is so full of so many people who are all looking for something that we just can’t put our minds at ease. We are planning ahead, thinking of the future and whether or not we’re prepared - business lunch, morning meeting, promotion, our dreams, love, February rent- what do we do, we wonder, when one of the balls we’ve been juggling up in the air for so long suddenly drops? Because it’s easy for one to fall, even easier to let it get away from you, so far it seems at points, that you may never be able to pick back up again where you left off.

Or, you can just be like the older man who was sitting next to me, sipping tea and reading the Times over the tops of his glasses, his sweater smelling faintly of moth balls and cigars, who told me he reads all of his Sunday newspapers a week late, because it makes him feel like he’s doing his part in keeping time from moving too fast, making what small attempt he can at not letting Monday through Friday catch up with him too quickly.

New York People

When it’s as cold in New York as it was today, no one wants to be out on to the streets. They stay inside where it’s warm in their little (or big) apartments and take comfort in the fact that at least for a day, they don’t have to venture out into the big world outside their windows.

Because I pass so many people all the time on the street that I think I’ve seen before. But what it is, I think, is that we all have the same feelings about the city so are all, in a way, the same. We are all dreading going home and waking up tomorrow and going to work. And we’re all tired and worrying about money and our relationships that just can’t seem to work out. We’re on the subway together speeding towards our jobs trying not to stare at the person crammed in front of us whose arm is reaching past our nose to grab hold of the bar, (smells like...cigars and...comme de garçons?) and when they catch our eye we look away quickly and pretend to read the If You See Something, Say Something, warning posted by the door that says: caution, do no lean while car is in motion.

And you want to say: I see it all! You see the half-asleep eyes (and fading dreams behind them), and the lost chances at love, and the regrets (oh, the regrets) all around you, packed in tightly, so close but all strangers, each having the same feelings about the city in a silent communication.

When it’s as cold in New York as it was today, when you can see your breath in such large puffy clouds in front of you with each step, the more you’re reminded of just how alive you are. There it is - each white puff of your life spreading out into the air around you being consumed again by other New Yorkers. So in the end that’s why we all know why we’re inside our little (or big) apartments and pretending not to stare at all the windows across the way, filled with television-lit living rooms and motion-filled kitchens - because we all know what’s out there and how it feels and when we get the chance to stay at home where it’s warm and safe from worry and all that we think and long for, we do - and we all know why, without ever having to say a word.

Where are you going?

It’s the calm before the storm here in New York these days. It’s what you can’t help but see when you walk the streets and see the lost discarded Christmas trees all lining the sidewalks, the bright hopeful glow of their lights gone, leaving them naked and exposed and without a home. From the Village to the Upper East Side - their time has come.

I finally took mine down tonight, a project I’ve been meaning to tackle, but like all things you don’t want to deal with, I put it off until what felt like the last possible minute. So I struggled alone, hefting it out of the apartment and out on to the street to join its outcast friends, leaving nothing behind but a trail of dry browning branches on the floor.

Now there’s nothing left to do but settle in for this next leg of winter that is about to befall Manhattan. The Chill is here and we don’t want to leave our apartments in the morning or venture outside to return to them at night.

What I want to know, is what The Chill means to the man who sleeps in front of the church on 72nd and 2nd, who every time I walk by asks me, "Where you goin’ fine eyes? You goin’ somewhere good?" And every time I pass him I smile and resist the urge to tell him that I’m not really sure where I’m going, or if it’s going to be any good - but I figure that at least that I’m going home, whatever that means, and how we all forget (oh, how easy it is to forget) that as bad as things can become, (and boy can they get bad), we’re not as lost as a discarded tree out on the sidewalk, all alone in the cold.

Sometimes it seems like certain things can’t help but disappear.

You can do what I do, always backing things up on your computer for a false sense of technological security. Having two, even three copies of the things I’d lost before on disks and key drives and emailed to every account I’ve ever had.

You can be like I am, and just become so afraid that everything you have, (my whole life’s thoughts and ideas, all written and saved into thousands of Word files), will just disappear into thin air...as though if the words weren’t right there on the screen looking back at you to prove it, then the feelings themselves didn’t exist at all.

But now I’m tired and thinking of giving up on backing things up altogether. Because I don’t see the point in making sure you always have so much security when you’ll eventually one day just have no warning when the blue screen of death decides to strike anyway - with is cryptic language and menacing neon glare, and suddenly, all of a sudden, everything is lost before you even had a chance to try to save it.

It’s like a last look in an airport or on a street corner or when a subway pulls away from the station and you know it’s a passing moment you just can’t save no matter how much you want to. It is destined to forever be lost, and no amount of saving (or saving as) can change that —(ruined hard drive, email obliterating virus and corrupted mainframe...poof! ). So then what’s the point in the end in going back and going back to all of the lost last looks of a life gone by, when in the end you are powerless to their eventual disappearances, as they sneak out the backdoor, seducing the hangman on the way out.

new years revolutions.

The gyms are packed and the speed-dating courses at the 92nd Street Y are full.

Stores in Soho are empty as newly financially responsible shoppers are keeping their wallets at bay.

Bad foods and alcohol and cigarettes are being thrown away all over this great city.

But The Chill is here (hands digging deep in pockets and faces stinging) at 12 degrees (and dropping fast) can we really all be expected to give up our vices and resolve to be better people, people we’re not?

Soon the gyms will be empty and hearts and hopes will be dashed.

Spring clothes will appear in windows and new credit cards will have no choice but to be opened.

Burgers and beer and Basics will start appearing on kitchen counters.

And The Chill will be gone, and we’ll go back to being the people we’re meant to be.

Do you take the non-believers?

It had been cold and raining all morning and walking down Lexington the rain fell on my shoulders and over the tops of my shoes and washed away all of the things from the year past that I couldn’t change. It all, (most of it), fell away and was soaked up by the sidewalks and pavement of the city with everyone else’s dashed hopes and dreams never realized, taking root under its tall buildings, its people-filled streets, tucked away and kept there safely until one day, (soon, we hope) they can come true.

You just have to believe, I guess, that if you keep going about the daily chores of your life with your dreams underfoot, (and if you’re in exact right place at the exact right time), it can all (most of it) work out eventually.

But I wonder if we all lost the maps of our lives if we’d still find our way to the place we’re supposed to be. If suddenly all of the streets started to run North to South and the avenues East to West, would we still know in our hearts our true bearings? Would we still be able to find our way home? Or perhaps you just have to believe that fate and life will inevitably take you to the place you’re supposed to end up - no matter how much the topography happens to shift.

The grid pattern of this city is straightforward enough for anyone to follow, but there are still times that you can’t help but get lost (where exactly is Little West 10th?). Busses and subways and taxis are all always moving us from one place to another - but time and change and obligations can stand in the way of an express-stop to experiencing all of the possibilities of where life could take you.

But this city takes the non-believers, which is a good thing because I’m one of them. I’m a non-believer who will never know every corner of this city and will never know what’s supposed to be. Supposed. Supposed. Supposed. I just keep taking busses and subways and taxis and wait to see if after the rain storm the sun comes out. And after I walked through Central Park, through the throngs of photo-taking tourists, determined resolution joggers, and the thick smell of cart-sold chestnuts, I saw it as it reflected warm orange light off the windows of the high-rise apartment buildings along 5th avenue - exactly where it should be, making it easy for me to find my way back.

New Year(s).

What is it about New Years that always leaves me feeling as though things simply aren’t as they should be? I guess when you place too much expectation on anything you’re bound to be disappointed - but I think with New Years it’s just that we’re all so ready for something new, for a fresh start where we can erase all the mistakes gone by (for there are several) and escape the regrets (for there are many) and the things that slipped through our fingers (too many to count) that we’re now so hopeful we’ll grasp them and get it right this time around.

We are eager, I think, to start over, to wipe the slate clean, because there is no other time in the year that has a change so large (we think), so significant as New Years, one year rolling into the next, to make us realize the things we’ve yet to realize, to look at the passage of time as something that doesn’t slow down for anyone. And in the time it takes for 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 to flash past you, you think you’ve been given back your chance to change the things that aren’t as they should be.

It is hope, I think, that we’re eager for, swilling champagne at over-priced bars with people we don’t know, or in a sea of thousands in Times Square, (cold and with a full bladder), just because we think we should, all to watch a ball drop from the top of a pole to the bottom.

And in the time it takes for 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...I’d like to think that all that matters is who is standing next to you when one year rolls into the next. Because you never do know, (do you?) what will happen between that exact moment after you count out 1 this year and before you start over again with 10 the next.

New years aren’t always so happy as we’d like them to be, but it’s hope after we count down that makes us yell it, scream it from the top of our lungs, happy, happy, happy (!) because we’re longing for it, crossing our fingers for it, praying for it under our breath. Please, please, please.

So Auld Lang Syne and raise your glass to hope and the eight-thousand-and-a-half hours between now, and when the countdown will inevitably (hopefully) begin again.

All that I want.

It is raining, turning the snow into melting piles of slush. There is white covering the ground all around and as the fog thickens and the rain falls harder it slowly begins to fade away.

The untainted purity of it is slowly becoming tainted the way the harsh realities of life can cloud up the sweet memories of yesteryear. It’s funny what you miss - simple smiles and the sound of a voice that suddenly become so distant that you struggle to reach out into the void of all they’ve left behind to get even just a small piece of it back.

Growing up you want to ask for all the impossible things for Christmas – all that you want is what you know you cannot get - like more time. All I would have wanted was more time before the snow (and everything) all melted away too soon.

Christmas in New York.

There is something about this city at this time of year that makes me feel hopeful. It’s the subways and sidewalks packed with people of all walks of life trying to budget the best ways to make the people in their lives happy.

I have bags packed with gifts and I’ll be bringing them away from the city and its hopeful lights to recognize that love can’t be bought, wrapped or returned.

Because time goes to show you that no matter how much things change (and they always do), life keeps moving forward as though nothing has changed at all.

Christmas with its cards and trees and packages is predictable, along with the New Year marking all that’s happened (how much!) and so quickly (how fast!).

When everything changes, I suppose that means we have no choice but to change with it, and maybe recognize that the hopeful lights of Manhattan (if you’re lucky) can follow you home.

Tangled up in blue, indeed.

On the bus this morning a woman, middle-aged yelled at the driver calling him an "insensitive man," because he failed to let her in at the stop light a block earlier, therefore making her run to the next stop. "You’re an insensitive man!" she yelled as she boarded, breathing hard from the one block run. As another passenger "Shhh’d" her the driver simply responded, "Well, you crazy, lady."

On the other side of town a cell phone that had started ringing somewhere in the bus behind me still wasn’t stopping. Finally someone said "Is that yours?" another said, "No." Then someone else asked, "Well is it yours?" to someone else. They said no. By Central Park West the entire bus came to the realization that someone had left it behind. The woman sitting across from me took it upon herself to pick it up when it rang again. "Well I don’t know who your boyfriend Rob is but he seems to have left his phone on our bus." The woman told Rob’s girlfriend that she lived at 77th and 2nd and would leave the phone with her doorman within the hour. "You tell Rob he’s lucky I’m so nice."

On the downtown 1 train the little girl sitting next to me lost her earring. She asked her mother where it went, repeatedly. "Do you see it?" she asked her. "Do you know where it is?" The girl was devastated. She was about nine and she said it was a Minnie Mouse earring. I tried my hardest not to get involved, seriously concentrating on my book until the girl literally got down on the floor of the train and started looking under my legs. "Excuse me?" I asked. "But my Minnie earring," she said looking up at me desperately. Her eyes were pleading and her mother, who seemed only willing to keep asking things like, "Well are you even sure you put them on this morning?" obviously wasn’t going to help. I’ve lost so many things that the sadness in her face over this one little thing made my feel obligated to help. So there we were, me in my skirt and her in her jeans, kneeling down on the floor of the downtown 1 train looking under people’s legs.

We finally found it right before she got off the train at 28th street. "Thank you so so so so so much," she said, and I just smiled and thought that it was nice to know that sometimes not everything get lost forever.

On the way home I got off the 6 train (how many trains in one day!) at 68th street and the guy behind me was singing. I had already been wedged into the train, pushed in really, at 51st street next to a man in a dark blue pin striped suit who overtly placed his entire right hand over half of my backside with a feeble excuse of, "Oh, sorry," as though it was a mutual understanding that in crowded situations something like that was bound to happen by accident. I gave him an oh-sure-save-it-for-your-wife eye roll before we parted ways.

But as soon as I hit the stairs on the way up towards the fresh cold air of Lexington Avenue, I heard it begin. It was a little screechy and totally out of key, She was workin' in a topless place, and I stopped in for a beer. I just kept lookin' at the side of her face in the spotlight so clear...

And so he sang Bob Dylan, poorly, and was of course going my way. Everyone who passed us couldn’t help but laugh at his horrible voice, obnoxiously loud and blatantly butchering a classic as he trailed behind me.

And later on as the crowd thinned out, it's just about to do the same. She was standing there in back of my chair said to me, "Don't I know your name?"

I turned around, exasperated, wanting to gauge exactly how much longer this was going to go on for. At which point he smiled, stopping singing and said, "Muttered somethin' underneath my breath, she studied the lines on my face. I must admit I felt a little uneasy when she bent down to tie the laces of my shoe..."

After a yelling woman and ringing cell phone and lost earrings, I wasn’t at all in the mood to be tangled up in blue.

"Maybe some other time," I said (and he laughed) because commuting today had been enough.

“I never thought it was such a bad little tree. Maybe it just needs a little love.”

It seems almost ridiculous now, buying a tree just to put it in your living room. Those things that are rooted to the ground are supposed to stay that way, surely.

Each year the tree in Rockefeller Center still seems too large to be real (much like the city itself), but there it stands regardless, and when I make a quick stop to 49th street and 5th to pick something up after work I can see all the people standing and looking up in awe, and I can’t help but turn my head as I pass too, letting its light reflect back on me.

Every street corner in Manhattan is adorned with tree stands, tall and green leaning against buildings, and as I walk by and breathe in deep the scent of pine I note that the uprooted trees have taken up a new and foreign home on the pavement of New York, (much like the people who pay far too much for them).

What must it be like to grow so much and for such a short time (too short, really) only to be cut down in the prime of life? (We all have our purposes in life, I suppose). And it means so much every year to pass the apartment windows of Manhattan and see the lights emanating from within. What would 49th street in December be without them? Each tree (little or big) serves its duty (and means different things to different people) until in the new year the streets are filled with the fond and dying memories of a job well done.

So we chop them down and put them up in our living rooms because the world and us in it are getting older every day, and all that we ever really want for Christmas, all that we ever really need, are roots of our own.

Check, please.

They're just not right when:
you’re sitting across from them at dinner,
packed in like sardines
and they're talking talking talking and you can’t,
(for the life of you),
stop paying attention to the conversation
that’s happening at the table next to you.

Surely love is more (interesting) than, say,
two twenty-five-year-old-boys talking
about booze, baseball and babes
over spicy coconut chicken.

Snow.

New York is cold. Getting out of the subway at nearly seven the sky is still almost light (as it’s never entirely dark here) because of the city’s life and the fog that has crept in making it a soft grey, the kind that encompasses you right before a snowfall. Walking down Lexington towards home it’s easy to still feel like this place isn’t really home at all.

There are of course the same buildings and the same street corners and the same kinds of people that I pass just to make it through those blocks, all those long stretches of pavement so I can climb the stairs and open the door to the place that’s supposed to make me feel safe. The place that has all of my books and clothes and shoes I can’t really afford. It has my computer and photographs and records. But what does that even mean? Can home really just be the place where the tangible objects of your life are? Can it just mean to be walls and a roof and a place to rest your head?

Certainly, (I thought as I walked closer to the place that had been mine for nearly two years now), certainly it must mean more.

For the beginning of December the air is chill and the snow is falling softly. I dig my hands deeper into my pockets as I walk, (a gesture being recreated all over this city) passing people together holding hands or walking dogs or pushing strollers. They have all come from somewhere and are going towards somewhere else. Eventually, as the hour inches later, (past dinner time coffee and cocktails), they’ll all be wanting the same thing - they’ll all be wanting home.

Seasons are strange, aren’t they? In summer it’s never hot enough until is, and then it’s unbearable. In winter it’s always just too cold, a chill that seeps deep into your bones and doesn’t leave ‘til spring. But not now. Now as I walk towards nowhere in particular it feels like the change of the seasons and their inevitable inability to never be what you want them to be at the exact moment you think do - reminds me of home.

Home is the most important place in the world, but its an ever-changing place on unstable ground, and its meaning shifts with the passing of time. (Could it be?) every second of every minute of every day what happens and what decisions are made, (the verdict of luck that is drawn with or without our approval), all take part in taking the definition of the one place that is supposed to make the most sense in our lives, and forces it to take on an entirely new and unrecognizable shape.

I’m not ready for snow. As a kid you always were and knew when it was going to strike, an ability of detection that was inherent. It was a sixth sense of internal excitement because snow meant then so much more than it could ever mean now. Then, it was snow without jobs without stress without bills without rent. It was snow without heartache without loss without loneliness without pain.

Now its whiteness falls on to our tainted grown-up world and rests there as a mere memory of all that we can’t get back, of all that we’ve lost. If only, snow makes us think now. If only, if only, if only.

Snow now, I suppose (no matter where you end up at the end of the day), is hope.