makeshift wings

I’m ready for the win­ter. To be reborn with the first snow­fall that cov­ers the grass, awash in muf­fled seren­i­ty.

Time is mea­sured in weeks, not by the cycle of day and night, and this makes every­thing pass at a blis­ter­ing pace. The good weeks involve bacon break­fasts and peo­ple bring­ing me food and new projects and Magic nights. The bad ones involve bat­tles with my old arch neme­sis, acne, and his side-kick, scar­ring-on-my-fuck­ing-nose.

I’ve been deal­ing with this over­whelm­ing sense that any­thing can change. So much has left me feel­ing like there’s no cer­tain­ty any­more. Maybe that’s why I’ve stopped dream­ing. I have no idea what to expect from the future, and I don’t know if that scares me or gives me hope.

To stop myself from think­ing about it too much, I dis­tract with all the right things and few of the wrong ones. It’s a frag­ile form of sta­bil­i­ty. Some days, the strings, they don’t do enough.

thoughtful things

I’ve always believed the best gifts are things we would want but would­n’t buy our­selves cause we could­n’t jus­ti­fy the pur­chase (regard­less of how much it costs), or some­thing hand­made by the giv­er. Good gifts also hap­pen just because, not nec­es­sar­i­ly due to a birth­day or hol­i­day. Lisa says this ide­al makes me an intim­i­dat­ing gift-giv­er. ____ used to call me a pro­fes­sion­al con­sumer, cause I have a ten­den­cy to pur­chase what I want with­out hes­i­ta­tion, which I imag­ine makes me even hard­er to shop for.

Recently, peo­ple have been giv­ing me awe­some things for absolute­ly no rea­son at all, and each gift is thought­ful, prac­ti­cal, and just my taste. It must be real­ly hard to find presents that will make me hap­py, but that just makes them all the more spe­cial when they do.

cat stuff

These were in my mail­box one night. The event was actu­al­ly a strip-spelling com­pe­ti­tion, and Shawn won “best strip­per”, the reward being the CD of cat purring. The oth­er guy won the “best speller” award and got the book. They had to fol­low him out of the cafe and ask him for it, cause it was total­ly meant for me obvi­ous­ly. Shawn has said I’m a cat for as long as I’ve known him.

double wall mini tea cups

I had tea with Heather G in a cafe last win­ter, and we had a con­ver­sa­tion about design and how sat­is­fy­ing it felt to hold these mini teacups. Somehow, she remem­bered and found them and bought me a set. They’re mouth-blown so each one is unique, and insu­lat­ed by dou­ble-wall borosil­i­cate glass.

book safe

Lisa got me this book safe, made out of an edi­tion of Ernest Hemingway’s Selected Letters, for secrets big and small. The choice of what book to use in mak­ing a book safe is very impor­tant, as it has to blend in with a library col­lec­tion, but also not be so recent or inter­est­ing as to make some­one pick­ing it up.

It has lit­tle mag­nets embed­ded in the frame and cov­er to make sure it stays closed even when stored ver­ti­cal. This lit­tle detail was what swayed her deci­sion to go with this par­tic­u­lar crafter, and some­thing you learn is very impor­tant if you ever try to keep your stash hid­den from…uhhh…cats.

clever people and grocers, they weigh everything

It’s been hard to write, though not from a lack of inspi­ra­tion. Far from it; it seems like there’s a smile or tear hid­den in every lit­tle detail of an Autumn day. The prob­lem is I don’t have the time. I don’t reflect on an emo­tion­al rush until I have a chance to write by a win­dow in the dark, and those oppor­tu­ni­ties are get­ting more and more rare.

That means I’m get­ting bet­ter at putting my feel­ings on hold, though no bet­ter at fig­ur­ing out whether that kind of dis­trac­tion is a good idea. I imag­ine it’ll all catch up to me at some point, and I’ll find out soon enough.

girl in doorway

It’s a sure sign that the Cipralex is out of my sys­tem. I’ve decid­ed that being able to feel is bet­ter than being numb, even if that means not know­ing which way things are going to go. Right now, I’m just appre­cia­tive of fru­gal forms of hap­pi­ness again, my lat­est dis­cov­ery being the feel­ing of a healthy lath­er rins­ing clean from your hair.

Maybe my time away did me some good. I lost a week, but I’m feel­ing recharged. I’ve been pro­duc­tive. I’ve been social. I’ve even been exer­cis­ing.

Now I’m ready to begin again.

Escape from New York, part 2

Check out my short film about being Trapped in NYC.

I walk towards Penn Station, after being uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly dumped along with sev­er­al oth­er con­fused pas­sen­gers at Grand Central by shut­tle. While it’s hard to get a sense of how long it’ll take, the grid gives me the courage to con­tin­ue on foot instead of wait­ing for a trans­fer­ring shut­tle.

I car­ry screen­shots of a map on my phone, which I soon dis­cov­er is a poor sub­sti­tute for an actu­al map when nav­i­gat­ing New York. The roads occa­sion­al­ly run in strange direc­tions or skip num­bers, and it’s enough to throw off my ori­en­ta­tion.

Still, the city feels small­er than I thought. So many sto­ries hap­pen here, told in movies and nov­els and songs, that I’ve always expect­ed it to be a size rel­a­tive to the dreams peo­ple have. This is what F. Scott Fitzgerald must have felt when he climbed the Empire State Building1, saw the lim­its of the city for the first time from with­in, and was left “with the awful real­iza­tion that New York was a city after all and not a uni­verse”.

New York apartment

I passed through here many years ago when I was too young to be scared of what could go wrong, and too much in love to care any­way. That jour­ney — on my way to Jersey by bus — was far longer than this one through Toronto by plane. I sur­vived then, that’s how I know I’ll sur­vive this, no mat­ter what hap­pens.

Continue read­ing “Escape from New York, part 2”…

  1. The tallest man-made struc­ture in the world at the time, a record it would hold for 23 years. [↩]

Escape from New York

Three days and two nights. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Meet Mike at the cor­ner of 31st Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan after the busi­ness part of his trip was fin­ished. Get out of the coun­try, con­nect with a good friend, return with some nice mem­o­ries. That was the plan, but I nev­er caught my plane home.

A day before Hurricane Sandy land­ed, all flights at LaGuardia were can­celled, a theme that would con­tin­ue two more times until the air­line resched­uled my return for Saturday, almost a week longer than I had orig­i­nal­ly planned to stay (and that’s if it’s not can­celled again). Mike made it home to London, Liz and I weren’t so lucky.

They were expect­ing 6–9 feet of water, and we got 14. The pres­i­dent has declared a state of emer­gency. All mass tran­sit is shut down. The rail­road tun­nels are flood­ed. All air­ports are closed. School is out for the whole week. The New York Stock Exchange has been closed for two days straight, some­thing that has­n’t hap­pened since 1888. More than 2.5 mil­lion are with­out pow­er. The death toll is over 100 and count­ing.

Luckily, I have a place to stay. Aside from a brief loss of pow­er, a longer loss of inter­net access, and a few leaks from the ceil­ing, we’re sit­ting pret­ty with run­ning water, heat, and a flush­able toi­let. It’s a lux­u­ry com­pared to what oth­ers are going through at the shel­ters, and I con­sid­er myself for­tu­nate com­pared to those in New Jersey who’ve lost their homes, their pets, their pos­ses­sions, and their lives.

The strange part is that I’ve nev­er met the cou­ple who own this Brooklyn apart­ment. Liz and Mike found them through Roomorama, and they left before the storm hit, leav­ing Liz with the main bed­room and Mike with the guest room. They’ve been gen­er­ous enough to let me stay dur­ing this exten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stance, although the fact that they rent­ed out the guest room to some­one else two days ago means I’ve been rel­e­gat­ed to a nook and mat­tress on the floor. At least it’s cozy, and there’s a spare mat­tress.

Still, I was­n’t pre­pared for this. I’m run­ning out of mon­ey, med­ica­tion, and morale. The only things I brought were a change of clothes, a cam­era, and an iPad. The worst part is the wait. Not hav­ing a com­put­er to be pro­duc­tive, and now a week of can­celled plans. Not hav­ing my cats1 or my gui­tar. Not know­ing when I’ll get out of here. Just wait­ing in a city I hard­ly know, with no way to get around. I can’t be proac­tive; all I can do is be patient.

To keep abreast of the ever-chang­ing sit­u­a­tion, I’ve been watch­ing 24 hour news cov­er­age, hang­ing on the words of Mayor Bloomberg at his live press con­fer­ences for any sign that I may make it out of here.

I came to New York, expect­ing to return home recharged, refreshed, and ready to take on the world. The world decid­ed I was­n’t ready yet.

  1. I left them six days of food, but they go through that in three days when I’m away. A major cri­sis was avert­ed when Aaron found a spare key to my house, and was able to take care of them. The only oth­er per­son with a spare key was Pat, and he just hap­pened to be leav­ing for Cancun on the morn­ing I found out my trip was can­celled. [↩]