Pent Up

I can't stand being cooped up in the apartment much longer. I feel cut off from the rest of the world, as if there are islands of people I know and love and in order to get to them I'd have to swim (or, in this case, walk) a really long way. New York without public transportation is like being a marathon runner whose fallen flat on his face during a race.

I miss the freedom of being able to go outside and be outside all day and do whatever I like, like see improv shows and visit friends. Being inside has made me restless to the point of wanting to do stupid things just to keep myself entertained with the possible outcomes of said stupidity. Like, all I can think about is wanting to text Kismet. I don't even know what to say! "How about the weather recently, huh? heh heh, I really like you. HA! Joking! But, not if you like me too." Fuck. Even if I were to get a conversation going I don't know how we'd meet up. It'd be such a heroic force of will (going from Manhattan to Queens right now is pretty hard).

I'm getting frustrated even while watching the animated series called Avatar, an anime from 2005 that I've recently discovered as my new obsession. (It's a fantastic show!) In it, among other amazing plot lines, two of the main characters have a lot of feelings for one another and they dance around the subject of confessing their love. I keep watching this tantalizing love dance and almost pull my hair out from the angst it is causing me! Then, on top of that my room mate has his girlfriend staying with us and listening to the two of them giggle in the next room as I try really hard not to listen and feel obnoxious about my existence, is, well, the aftermath the hurricane has provided for me to deal with.

I need to get out of the house! I want my life back! C'mon New York! Let's get back on our feet and move again! And Kismet: Show me a sign! I'm dying for attention over here!

Aftermath

The silence now that the storm is passed is filled with the chattering of human voices, as the neighbors emerge from their houses and take photos of the damage. I peeked out the window before leaving the apartment this afternoon and marveled at the number of families trotting down the middle of the street that would otherwise be busy with city traffic.

The sidewalks are covered in a thick blanket of leaves, branches and shrubbery. Then, there are the downed trees. I am shocked by what I saw while walking around the 4 blocks we explored today! My street, 48th street, which connects Sunnyside to Astoria, is lined with old London Plane Trees that are pretty old for New York City trees. They swayed in the winds of the hurricane like little baby saplings in a breeze last night. And today when we went out to look at the damage, these monster trees simply fell, over pulling open the concrete and smashing everything underneath. It's an awesome sight to see. There are 4 toppled trees on my block alone!

I haven't ventured out of my area yet, but the photos I am seeing on the flooding and destruction in Manhattan is really scary. I can't imagine looking out my window to see several feet of flood water. I remember wading across water that got to mid thigh here in Queens and being totally floored and jarred by the experience, but to have an entire neighborhood under water!?

I hear many people are still out of power, many are stuck in their homes until the water recedes, and many have lost their livelihoods to floods and fallen trees. I feel like all of this is somehow fake, like it's some big  joke that will go away when I wake up tomrrow. I remember, in college, watching the movie "Cloverfield" with my then boyfriend and friends. The movie is about a huge extraterrestrial monster destroying New York City Gozilla-style. Watching that film in theatres I remember thinking how unimaginable it was to think that the seemingly indestructable city like New York could be destroyed. Apparently all it takes is a lot of wind and a 12 foot storm surge...

Sandy

The winds are whipping outside like I've never heard them before. The 80 year old trees that line our block are swaying like grass in the wind as the 6 of us: my roommates, friends, sister and I watch for the trees and the close proximity the branches have to our windows.

It was laughable when the storm first started. Now since the sun has set the night has gotten creepier as photos from flooded streets, fallen trees and deaths begin to crop up on the Facebook newsfeed. The group and I have been watching TV, playing games and dancing to music to make the time go by, but the storm provides the most amount of entertainment.

Our lights are flickering, the wind sounds like a truck engine, a tree collapsed across the street, and the empty stillness of a usually busy sidewalk is eerie. Halloween can go suck an egg, this storm trumps the scary contest this year.

Still, in the bands of wind and rain, there is a simpleness to life here in the apartment that I haven't found in a while. I did Yoga with the girls of the house, flowing through a sun salutation and working up a sweat in our living room. The boys are playing chess, we watched about 3 hours of Avatar, and we've all played a game of Monopoly. I find that the uneasiness of being cooped up all day has forced me to finally turn to projects I have otherwise put off, like editing movies I've filmed. Oh, and drinking sangria and Hot-Totties has helped as well. My sister is making cookies and we'll all rally around another game of Monopoly later, I suspect.

I worry about the flooding areas of the city. I hope those people are doing alright. Here in Queens the odds of a flood is pretty low as we're on much higher ground than a lot of the rest of the city. I also keep checking the status of the mass transit system as well: no nothing. If you need to get somewhere: don't go. Although, my sister's friend chanced that theory when he took the 20 minute walk from Astoria to get to Sunnyside this afternoon. The guy's about 100 pounds, it amazes me that he wasn't blown away! But, it's nice having 6 of us here to keep each other company. Safety in numbers, no?

Pink Eye (Almost)

Me. 6:30am. 3 hours of sleep.

Sitting bolt upright in bed: "Oh my god. I have Pink eye!!" (To no one in the room because sister is sleeping over at a friend's.)

Throwing blankets off of me, I run down the stairs to the bathroom and splash water on my face. I look in the mirror at an exhausted and frantic looking girl. Oh my god. What will I do?! Both eyes are pink!!

I run back up to my room, throw open my laptop and begin to search for doctors in my area who would have an appointment open for me on a Sunday Morning last-minute-notice-and-all. I come up with a full battle plan involving my entire family and going to a hospital in Central New Jersey. I have to text my Work-Husband and let him know I can't work today. I reach for the phone, knowing full well (because he's my work-Husband a.k.a Co-worker Extrordinare) that he's awake.

Text, text, text. Freak, freak, freak. I'mNotComingInToWorkTodayOMG. Co-worker says: Just let me know if in a few hours you still feel this way... (subtext: Go to sleep you silly, sleep deprived human.)

I lie back in bed and think about my life choices. No, I was not sticking poop-covered fingers in my eyes, c'mon, gross. My manager came in with pink eye a few days ago and, being the anxious Hypochondriac I can be, I assumed I had gotten it somehow.

I fall asleep and wake up feeling groggy and incredibly embarrassed. Did I just dream that whole thing, or was I really convinced that I had pink eye? I haven't had pink eye since I was a little kid!

I imagine all these scenarios in which the Pink Eye would eat me alive socially. I'd have to wear sunglasses for a week straight! I'd have to put all these eye drops in my eyes (I HATE eye drops!!). I then see all my friends shunning me like they would a diseased and flea infested mongrel. Then, the real kicker: I imagine all the guys I have ever kissed, ever, and what their faces would look like, if for whatever reason, they were making out with me and I suddenly developed the nastiest, crustiest conjunctivitis the world has ever seen. EWW!! Oh my god how mortifying! "No! Please, ________, don't leave! It's just allergies, I swear! Where are you going!? Nooooo!!" and then, in slow motion, I am turned into a Monty-Python cartoon of myself and thrown off a cliff with a little talk bubble trailing me with "No!" written on it.

Run-a-way imagination, much?

Try living in my head for a few hours. Yeesh. So much racket I can't even get a full night's sleep these days.

Pat

My babysitter, Pat, was the neighbor on the 2nd floor of the building I grew up in. I remember her as a big, tall woman, smoking a cigarette, all in black, and she had long dark hair she'd wear pulled into a ponytail at the base of her head and she always walked with a hunch, carrying her over-sized canvas bags over her back like a desert explorer might when the camel died of thirst. Pat used to be a Montessori tutor, so my Mom figured she'd be a good match for my sister and I when we were done with school and had several hours to kill before our parents got home.

Pat's apartment was unlike any other apartment I had or ever have been in since. Her husband, Bill, had painted the entire place from floor to ceiling, furniture included: with renaissance style murals. There were leaves and faces and trees and birds and white fences and flowers and clouds all over. The unit got very little sunlight so everything was shrouded in a twilight when one walked in, and because Pat and Bill smoked constantly the air had a heavy tobacco presence, giving the dimly lit murals even more of a mysterious air when, in the long afternoons, my sister and I would go exploring, tracing our fingers over the brush stokes and envisioning ourselves mapping out new territory.

The living room is where we spent the majority of our time. Pat and Bill had big maroon velvet sofas planted underneath victorian-tasseled lamps that were hand made. Because of all the cigarettes, everything stank of tobacco, including my clothes, which always had to be washed after a visit. I remember one day, while tracing a mural, I discovered a basket of crystals trucked behind the love seat I had been sitting on. In my young age, I thought I had discovered a basket of diamonds, and remembering that someone had told me diamonds were the hardest substance on earth: I stole a crystal, coveting its smooth, hard surface and wondering how I could test that claim. Later that evening, after I had been brought home for the night, I stole into our bathroom and after a few minutes of debate, dropped the crystal into the porcelain tub where it promptly cracked into 3 pieces. I stared in horror at what I had done: not only was that theory not correct, but now I could never return that diamond without someone knowing it was broken! I still feels pangs of guilt 20 years later when I think of how I carefully placed the pieces back in the basket of crystals and prayed no one would notice.

Pat and I spent long hours with each other. I remember Pat's low gravely voice, her southern drawl and her smoky breath. She always had new projects for me, pulling materials magically out of the shelves that lined the long hallway of the apartment. "Today we're using popsicle sticks, Honey." She'd announce. Or: "Draw with these crayons, they're brand new!" One day she said we were going to sew. She pulled out a bag of fabric and asked me to choose my favorite piece. I picked a lovely pink silk. I watched in awe as she cut the piece and then fitted it onto a wooden frame. "We'll be sewing on this, Honey." We spent hours hunched over the fabric, my young fingers clumsily working with the blue embroidery floss, Pat untangling knots and patiently rethreading my needle. I had gotten ambitious and wanted to sew "Daddy", but after the last curl of the second 'D' stopped at Dad. Pat taught me to embellish the word with a couple of flowers and I suddenly had the best present I had ever made sitting in my lap like a prized trophy. She looked over my shoulder at the cursive and smiled. "Great jawb, he's gonna luv it." She moved to get off the couch and then yelped. I jumped about six feet, I'd never seen a grown-up yell like that before! "Heavens!" She chuckled, pulling my needle out of the palm of her hand. "I must have scared you half to death!"

It was about a year later, as I was running down the staircase of my building to get to the lobby when I stopped suddenly at the door to Pat's apartment, my eyes drawn there by a white piece of paper. The paper announced Pat had died. I knew she had been sick, in the hospital with a brain tumor for a few months. But, there, taped on her door in a tiny matter-of-fact way was an announcement that Pat was no longer a person I would ever see again. I stood in the hallway for a minute processing this news. Pat was the first person I had ever known, ever really had a relationship with, who had died. I stayed rooted to the marble of the hall for a couple seconds before running on, as if by running faster I could pretend that the news I had just read wasn't true. She was dead. I thought only fish and gerbils died, not people, not Pat: the cigarette smoking, dark haired lady on the 2nd floor! It wasn't until her funeral did I really understand that death meant forever. I'll never forget Pat, and sometimes when I'm coloring a picture in, or threading a needle I think of her as a chapter of my childhood that even 20 years later I go back and re-read from time to time.

RIP Pat.

Ode to a Chair

I walked past the broken chair sitting liked a hunched bum on the sidewalk. The worn yellow stripes with the water stains at the bottom and the threadbare arms reminded me again of how much I had disliked that piece of furniture. It had been sitting in the apartment with a comforter thrown over it and had therefore given the impression that there was a far more comfortable seat under there. In fact, if one didn't know what was underneath that comforter to begin with, one would sit on that antique and for a split second think they were relaxing, until a lumpy spring began to poke into a butt-cheek.

In the daylight, in the heat, on the sidewalk, however, that seat sat like a faded bulge of yellow, exposed to the elements and left to its fate. I watched as a small sparrow flew off of the derelict, decrepit, crumpled (dare I say self-pitying?) chair and into a low hanging branch. I wouldn't sit there either, I thought. I knew that chair once as it had been when it was sitting in the still, dark apartment it lived in. It was given a second chance, taken off the streets in the hopes of providing a home with a more comfortable environment. It failed, however, moving from the living room, to the foyer, to being covered up with the comforter, to finally: the street again. That thing would probably be carried off to a garbage dump in Staten Island or maybe: some other poor sap would come along and, seeing only the possibility of how charming those little yellow stripes would be in their apartment (and ignoring the glaringly obvious water stains at the bottom) they'll pick that chair up and take it home. Who knows. After a second glance at the thing I didn't really want to find out what happened to it. It's a piece of New York City history at this point, it's moving on to another place.

Goodbye you poor pathetic chair, good luck out there in the world! I won't really miss you, to be honest, as you were not very comfortable, nor were you very stable. You were pretty, once. And even with your arms worn thin by the hundreds of times people have rested there, and the lumpy cushion were once, in your better days, you provided a comfort for those needing a break from standing, you still can give off an impression of a cute, unassuming, slightly sad looking, take-me-home-and-love-me vibe which I am sure will serve you well if ever a time comes when you're fished out of the dump and used again.

Adieu.

Summer-Filled

It was the beginning of the summer break. My Dad, Sister and I were living on 72nd street in a tiny one-room sublet that my dad had found for July and August. It was a single room studio that we were all sharing for a few days before my sister and I were to fly out to Florida to spend a month with our cousins in July.

School had ended only a few days before and the sweet, sweet freedom that candies the air of summer was wafting through my nostrils as I flopped down onto the Queen sized bed in the corner of the Studio. I looked up at the ceiling and counted the shadow-bars left from the blinds that cut through the orange light that came in from the street. I heard the sound of foot traffic going on underneath the second floor window of the apartment. I felt my belly rise up and then down as I imagined the sprawling weeks and months ahead of me before I had to go back to school in September. This is what living like a King feels like. I thought. I have nothing but time ahead of me and I can do whatever I want. I imagined the things I could and would be doing in Florida with my cousins and Sister. I imagined the road trips that were going to happen, the secret all-nighters I was going to pull while reading the latest Harry Potter when I should be going to sleep. I imagined the hours of The SIMS I was going to play on the computer, and the games of Barbies I was going to play and the ice cream I would have to lick off my fingers, and the rain I'd have to run through and the hot dogs I would be eating.

I lifted my hands up under my head and breathed deep. Summer. Oh, summer. Your anticipation is almost better than your actualities, in many ways. But, there is a wondrous mythical flavor to a season that you know will end with more school in the fall. That another year in your young life will be dawning on a new stage in your education, but only after weeks and weeks of girdle-less days spent getting sunburnt and swimming in Chlorine.

Fast Forward: Tonight I was lying on Serendipity's couch listening to the rain fall outside when I thought back to the moment I just described. I reflected on my life and thought of the Me two years ago when I got back to New York City and didn't know what I was going to do to get my life started. I remember, back then, that suddenly I felt as if my life was like a Summer break, except the time just stretched on and on into infinity, with no clear idea of when my "school starting in the Fall" was going to happen. I remember panicking over that idea. Now, 2 years later, I am back on that preverbal bed on 72nd street, listening to New York go on outside, and I have a huge smile on my face: Summer. Summer is my life. This is what living like a King feels like. I think. I have nothing but time ahead of me and I can do whatever I want.