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.