52 Degrees and Rising

In four months almost to the day I will be driving yet another Ryder truck packed full with my belongings. This one I've been preparing for for about two years. It's the big one, the return home.

Perceptions of home retain their quality of the things you left for, what it couldn't give you, for no finite period of time. It lingers, in the front of your mind, on the tips of words you are surprised to find spilling out of your mouth to strangers when they ask polite questions about your place of birth. But all the while home remains your identity. I met James last night in the City. He checked my driver's license and asked what part of Texas I grew up in. "Austin" (me). "Born and raised" (him). And do you know what I did? I put my backpack down and gave him a hug. "I can tell you're from Texas" (him). James told me his whole building is full of people from the Lone Star State. I nodded because I understood. We leave, but we find each other out there.

I wasn't able to let go of those lingering perceptions of the things I left for until recently. When people move, there seems to be this great debate about whether one is running from something, or forever searching for something within a locale rather than within oneself. Moving from state to state doesn't seem to be an epidemic, so I wonder why people fear this as a harm to which their loved ones are susceptible. There is purpose in it--moving. Forward motion to give a dream a chance, to go to school, to see how a different environment suits your temperament, or sometimes to leave something behind that needs leaving.

When I left the Promised Land, it wasn't feeding me. I needed pushes in all sorts of ways, the sorts of ways an unfamiliar place can give you. I needed to stand alone, away from my identity for awhile, so as not to rely upon it. I needed to find out what did feed me, because I was good at things, I had friends and family near, but what mattered? I am someone who needs to know what matters, to get clear on that, as a foundation. Some people's foundations are built up nice and sturdy by their families, or maybe they're born with it, an innate sense of direction and self-knowledge. I've been building mine through the experience of the unknown.

The drive to test life isn't at the front of my mind anymore. It faded away, little by little, while other aspects made themselves known, like being close to loved ones. I ventured at first with the intention of relying upon myself. Then, I ventured to find folks I could rely upon. Stage 3: I'm not so much fighting anymore. I've got a lot of inner fight, a quality that serves to help things sit right within. It's like jostling all the flakes in a snow globe and following them as they gently lay down. The forward motion of moving has helped things settle inside; it's helped me be able to acknowledge the irreplaceable spaces where family, friends, and love hold me together. These revelations are with me to take wherever I go.

I'm going home because it's where I come from. The scenes outside the car window, I want to see again.

Last night an old friend of my brother's played guitar and sang at a venue on the Lower East Side. The performance was low-key, sometimes just Amy (the singer) on stage, at other times my sister-in-law joining her on back-up vocals, her husband blending in on piano, and my brother adding in rhythm on bass. Pieces of home. Where you come from. Your history and memory and makeup. Walking through Central Park yesterday winter was breaking into spring, fifty-two degrees outside.

the yard

It's time for some more beauty, isn't it?
(this is more for my non-urban-living friends . . . to partake.)

I live in a fifth floor apartment on a hundred and eighth street in Manhattan. The building is owned by a magnanimous slum lord (heard that word the other day--the m word--and found it funny). And we have just become acquainted with our new roomie, Fredrick, the little grey mouse. (So, where's the beauty, sistra?)

Okay, so I'm sitting here, quietly, after watching "The War" with Elijah Wood, Kevin Costner, Mare Winnigham, and the little boy from "Sling Blade" tonight on Channel 55, and I hear singing in the yard.

Our building is steps from a main avenue, so it is surrounded by neighboring buildings not only on either side, but also adjacent and of course those behind it on a hundred and ninth street. The space behind all of our buildings, where our windows and fire escapes are the view, is the yard. I mentioned the other day that I have no screens on my window. It's a long way down, folks. A glass votive holder slipped out for a peek and took a time to pop. (slum lord) There's a chain-link fence about 5 feet high adorned with razor wire that divides the space on the ground, and it's all concrete. Ugly. I got a close-up look one evening when I accompanied the cable guy out back as he re-juiced the box, but that's another story. It's very clearly a yard, yes?

The yard is always, always dead quiet. People in cities like to portion their space; suburban folks do too; we all do. But tonight a happy man with a clear tenor tone confidently sang out. He sang one song, and then stopped. A lady called out, "Please close your window," pleading loudly, not impolitely. It was quiet for a minute, and then the happy tenor sang again, with the same confidence and tone.

The yard is quiet again. It's time for bed. Goodnight.

I Like the Men Who Say Hi

The men who say hi pass on the street. This is where you will find them. Their language is portioned in phrases and greetings, tiny Tiffany blue boxes with bows floating out their throats like a garden bath that spurts rather than trickles. To open one you must catch the gentleman's eyes. The unwrapping comes in the the nod of acknowledgment, simple.

"Good morning pretty lady," "You are beautiful," Barry White's baritone wafting. Masters of appreciation, lovers, givers. I like the men who say hi.

(dedicated to that guy on CPW last night at about 6:30 and Edwin, custodian extraordinaire)

New York City Crime Like 1968

And here I thought Vermont was retro. But what are we going to do about the Sharpie Bandit Graffiti Artist? He's out there, willy nilly, first with the black chisel tip and then with the blue.

first day online in the new place . . .

It's been a long stretch of homelessness--depending on friends, or just simply traveling around for freedom. But now it's back to setting up house again. Thinking back, this is the seventh place I've had since graduating college. Seven homes in eight years, sounds like a lot, but three were squeezed into a period of 6 months. This new home comes with a new roommate and two family members down the street. It also comes with a lovely park, Central Park. It also comes with a pee-stained, graffitied elevator. Overall, the good outweighs the bad here. We're overstuffed with stuff. The Colonel (roommate's mom) did us right with window treatments, swags, pics in assorted arrangments, even a new threshhold for the kitchen entry where none had been put in. We, I, feel taken care of in this home, surrounded by stuff.

Blue Silos at Night

Last night I went on a journey, a drive through neighborhood streets leading to several open soccer and softball fields, leading to the parking lot of an old grain silo. It took a moment before I could see the silo from the car window. When I did it hovered in the sky, fifteen stories or more of white concrete ridges, worn and marked in beautiful smokes.

Sitting on a burlap potato sack and resting my hands back on asphalt crumbles, the show began. Like a drive-in movie, interviews with longtime Redhook residents projected onto the silo. The interviews started off side-by-side, two close-ups played at intervals; then the voice tracks layered in rounds. Little fairies danced from strings on top of the screen, pushing off of the concrete in deep bends that allowed them to swim in the sky. Dressed like miners, the acrobatic dancers interpreted clashes of old and new.

The final scene projected wheat fields, close-up, swirling in a strong wind. Five fairies dropped down to play in the wheat, swooping, jumping, spinning, and dancing, continuously.

more on Picture Redhook

I'm back again in New York, the life I've made. Last night I was grumpy. Today I'm a - o - k, just accepting things more gracefully. Perhaps Stanley Tucci and Edie Falco helped me tonight, and today my friend Steve. On the plane ride home I was composing a great little ditty in my head entitled "Turbulence" that I hope debuts sometime soon. But back to my hot-a apartment and la vida loca . . .

I was wrong to be judgemental about our houseguests. They're quite a lovely bunch. Tomorow we may all head to Coney Island! See what I'm talking about? (sometimes I don't even know if I'm being sarcastic, but often times I do know that I hate myself for it). Really, they're great. Everyone's great. Calm, concerned for one another's happiness, a connected group I'd say. However, they're off right now at the Brooklyn Inn whilst I sit gloriously alone at my screen's side. Who's the pooper?

Today was something--all over the map. Steve and I started off lunching at West 79th, meandered through the park in the rain, heading towards Frick's house of oil paintings and bronzed sculpture. We meandered afterwards to the Algonquin and then to Frankie and Johnny on Broadway. At the Algonquin Steve and I had one of our famous chats about life, love, lonliness, and, yes, the ever-present search, but this time things were different. We have indeed grown and the fight has lessened. I'm so tired of the fight.

But a new thing to fear came right up in my face that has something to do with my brain and the depths that I traverse, which seem to get in the way of my coveted human connection, especially with that someone special. I'm special. Your'e special, but today the kind of special we all want to avoid was planted on me. It's the kind of special that keeps you from getting picked for kickball or the typing team. "Fingers ready! Go!"

I apologize.

And then I am cradled in a dark balcony seat, first row, by this woman about my mom's age. She spins a good tale--chit chat, but the kind that's like peach pie, making you want to hug goodbye. Frankie and Johnny worked for two hours to climb through a jungle of love insecurity, relationship insecurity. The thrity-some-odd minutes of in-the-flesh nakedness are the perfect metaphor for the play: you have to reveal yourself to love.

In the middle of applause where you hold your breath and take one, stop-motion plunge together with the whole audience, I hear the woman I'd been chatting with two hours earlier say, "I hope you get everything they're dreaming of." And then in my awkward giggle of surprise and thanks it was gone. But the gift of those words planted in me, for me to take on home. Thank you fair lady, thank you Stanley and Edie, thank you Steve . . . gifts of the day.

The doors are a scientific effort to equalize air pressure. Revolvers, as they are known in the industry, prevent the city's skyscrapers from turning into highrise wind tunnels. When cold weather sets in, for example, and a skyscraper's heaters are turned on, hot air rises to the top of the building, leaving a vacuum on the lower floors. If a regular swinging door, or swinger, is opened, cold air is sucked in to fill that void, creating winds that muss hairstyles and blow papers around lobbies.
from Saturday's NYTimes.

Who knew?

It's 8:45 on one of those July mornings when you wake inside a box with the lid shut. But I don't mind. I don't even mind that my eyes popped open at 7:45. That's two hours more than the weekly usual, not bad. The roommate's on the Jersey shore with her Pappy, so the house is quiet. It's all mine.

I have no topic today, just free flow.

My morning view is out into the world of traffic. The block is a quiet one that starts to come alive with the sun. A few people dot their stoops, cupping morning coffee. Many have these little gated areas in front that corral things like weimeriners and toddlers. It's a peaceful comingling.

Last night in the city I got caught up in the storm. Do you know it? It was the one that everyone knew would hit in another 5, but went about their basketball and chess, taunting the sky to break. Bring it on. I made it 3 avenue blocks before umbrellas flipped out and people crowded under awning spaces. When I peered onto Broadway it looked like someone was taking a giant spray hose and gently sweeping the gush back and forth over the crevices of city blocks. An NYU flag that was stuck onto the outside of a building cowered like an animal being whipped into the bricks. This was Chicago wind, no doubt. I've seen it many times. Been pushed around by it until all I could do was turn my back and lean against it with all my might until it stopped. People were having great fun. I saw running and skipping and handholding. Heard lots of outbursts of one simple HA! Flops were lost in the streams that grew from asphalt. Umbrella sales were up!

And today the dow is down. I didn't know. Black Friday?? What's going on in the world? Someone give me the skinny.

What NYC Means to Me--

This fourth of July weekend is my one-year anniversary living in NYC. I ended up here by default. For me, it was being ready to leave someplace but not knowing quite where to go that placed me in the lap of this city. The experience getting here was one that I love--loading up the Ryder (it gives me a great sense of freedom to feel me & all my possessions together as a mobile unit), driving through the hollars and plateaus of this country, seeing cities I’ve never seen before, places like Pittsburgh, wondering what I’d be like if I grew up there. Would I talk funny? Would I scramble to get away all through my teenage years? My brother went with me to Pittsburgh. We started out in Chicago and ended in Astoria, Queens. When I think of long trips, he's usually there too, riding the many windy backroads of Texas with my Dad and stepmom in the front, chain-smoking with their windows cracked an eighth inch, and Jeff and I in the back leaning toward each of our windows like caged birds in the middle of a yellow, hazy coop. But I loved it. I love being on the road. I probably spent half my childhood in a car, going to Richardson, Port Aransas, and Kerrville again and again. All our friends and family were in Texas. We never left the state. Everybody’s there, and I’m in New York.

I’m painting a picture of separation, but in actuality this not being true has given me my sense of belonging since I moved here. The other morning I was walking down my block on the way to work and a childhood friend zoomed past on his bike. I called out and we had a chat before heading off. That’s community. It's smalltown.

That’s what NYC has come to mean to me--smalltown. There’s great comfort where you can simply be, amongst people doing the same. In some places in the city I feel this more. Tompkins Square Park reminds me of Barton Springs, the drag, and Hippie Hollow in Austin. If you walk through neighborhoods you notice the shifts--ten blocks moves you from bohemian to uptight, Arab to Italian--you notice the blends, and a melody of languages. There are not-so-pleasant times when the horns, concrete, and metal tubes underground start to close in on me. I long to be near water that expands to the horizon, or standing in the middle of hills filled with cedar and oak. In these moments I’d settle for not breathing in dirt. But because the city gives me meaning, I'm learning to temper these feelings.

I don’t think I’m having a love affair with New York. It’s more like New York is letting me give it a try. I didn’t expect the city to speak to me. I didn’t expect much at all. When I moved here I had been broken down for awhile. But what it has given me is a sense that helps me attune to humanity. It speaks to me through the many languages and brands of people communing. It is tolerance and fluidity. It never stops.

overheard today:

"vigilance is the price of freedom."

air supply coming from a 5-story apartment building window on a quiet little side street.