Turbulence

For the second time in as many months, my fellow passengers applauded shortly after our safe arrival at Newark-Liberty International Airport.  It's not because we were all so delighted to be in Newark; then again, maybe it was, I didn't exactly take a survey.  I do feel reasonably confident attributing the applause to the 'safe' part of the arrival following a choppy approach.  Two months ago, it was Sandy.  Tonight, it was a low visibility approach through Wintry Mix.  Both times, my fingers firmly acquainted themselves with the adjacent armrests.

The situation lends itself to superficial interpretation.  Was the city, with its black clouds and angry winds, making it unmistakably clear that I was no longer welcome here?  Was the Great Spirit suggesting a little extra reflection with its application of minor terror?  Is safety not in flight but in l'atterrissage?  

Enough of that.  That's not what I was thinking.  I did put my book down, an absorbing one at that, but I was not scared.  Shaken, a little.  But I gazed out above that bouncing, obscured land below, sleet pouring in sideways over the engine and illuminated by the modest wing light directly out my window.  I thought about the professionals inside that cockpit.  I thought about how I've been on a lot of these flights, seen a fair bit, but not like these guys.  They've been in Situations.  These guys napalmed 'Nam or spiraled their way into Baghdad, been manning a 'copter in a Perfect Storm while their Coast Guard buddies dangled on a line above an Atlantic raging a few feet below.  This was flight 1205 to Newark and it probably wouldn't even merit mention over beer.

And then I thought, what would?  On those nights when they're not seducing in hotel lobbies or saying early prayers, when they're with a colleague at some far-flung bar and having a good ol' fashion Drink Up away from the missus, what do they talk about?  What were the real harrowing times, the ones where they thought they might disappear off the map forever?  the ones they can't share with you or me, the ones we'd appreciate but could never properly understand because we hadn't Been There and have no proper frame of reference?  And I thought about how I have those.

Not those, at least not the ones where I was in The Shit or hanging by an ice pick on K-2.  I won't pretend I've got anything near it.  I say those in the sense of having Been Somewhere else, been an odd bird and deviated a little bit away from the prescribed path.  Maybe at some point turned a couple heads or received some odd variant of acclaim, or what passes for acclaim according to my own idiosyncratic currency.  What do I talk about?  At that bar.  What am I slurring about to some kindred spirit when the bartender is still reluctantly serving?  What's inside of me that doesn't or can't come out everywhere else in the day-to-day?  Who is that kindred spirit? 

I suppose we keep flying, just keep going to wherever it is we think we're going and pass through as best we can whatever turbulence lies in the way.  We bag the story, compare it to the others, bring it to light after a few cold ones if it's particularly deem-able.  And, shit, I guess the path, not just the Flight 1205 path but the whole path, with all it's little air pockets sprinkled throughout; that whole path just really makes you question if you want to get to Newark.  Do you want to make it where you are going.  I smiled because I did, and because I felt there was a reason I was supposed to make it.  I felt protected.  I just hope it's because of the kindred spirit.

A pause

I didn't want to come home for the holidays.  Not owing to anything against Home per se, mostly the hesitancy against leaving my other home so soon before really leaving for my next home.  There were a handful of Goodbyes already accomplished and departure does involve a certain momentum.  Being gone for one week felt like an off-set lunch break in between grueling takes in the film's most dramatic scene.  Who am I again?  What's my motivation?

It hasn't quite been that way.  Coming back to one of those places that is Not New York affords some simple vanities, like time to think.  Entire hours pass when my only movement is to play some smart phone chess or choose a new tabletop magazine to mindlessly flip through.  That's not all I do, of course.  Ionized by a millenial's attention span and a New Yorker's need for action, I walk the dog more than its accustomed to and use any excuse to drive and surf satellite radio for some new tunes.  I fly past old haunts and drum along the top of the steering wheel and think about this that and the other.  Life seems far less haunted than it did on the other side of that most recent plane ride.

Part of the reason is the new park I read about.  It's long and leans on the Mississippi with one of its two points of access just a few blocks from my next home in the Bywater.  It doesn't appear to be open just yet; then again, I've seen no signs that it's closed.  This was just something I looked up online and served as fodder for a very lucid vision.  Or, to be more specific, a very lucid and five-sensed projection of my very soon-to-be life.  Then I looked up Storytelling, because I might want to get into that.  Farmer's market locations.  Dive bars and coffee shops.  Nearby restaurants.  I probably spent a good half-hour looking at various maps and satellite projections to better appreciate the next labyrinth I'll be biking through.

Which is to say I'm excited.  Which is to say I will be, once again, some moment in less than two weeks when the wheels are pointing south and The Great New York Experiment is fading in the rearview.  Before that time is anyone's guess.  I'm not much of a crier, but I'm damn certain the causeways will spill open for some saline as great friends and good times come to their adieu.  I'll likely drink too much some nights in revelry, others in convenient escape from the emotions still a bit too raw for scabbing.  It might not make for great television and may not be desired, but every now and then you've got to put your soul through the wringer if it doesn't come along frequently in its own right.

And these are all just guesses.  That park might be filled with pederasts and dirty winos and I may find in the storyteller crew just another group that does not reply to my emails.  The bus could break down and I could leave Brooklyn one week before I would have met the enabler to make me the Next Big Thing.  I might end up in penury and heartbreak and the perfect manifestation of all those who never bothered to consider me.  These are all possibilities and not to be lightly considered.

But it's Sunday.  We've got a big holiday coming up and I'm little more than one week away from actualizing another one of my Crazy Whims.  I said "I'm moving to New Orleans" last March and after nine months, three addresses, one savings account, and a whole mess of Life Matters that are worth getting into but not for purposes of concluding These Thoughts, I'm here.  I made my decision, I stand by it, and I'm going to do it.   After all the legwork and emotions, the acquaintances great and small, the goodbyes tender and brief, the myriad experiences of a peculiarly average nine months in my peculiarly average life, I feel calm.  And I feel good. 

  

Earbuds

The cinephile in me wishes I was citing something by Jim Jarmusch.  David Lynch.  Ingmar Bergman.  Alas, for this one, we're going with Penny Marshall and a vehicle driven by a pre-A list Tom Hanks.  I can't help being swayed by what sways me and will not feel ashamed if this particular body of water is more Great Salt Lake than Angry Pacific.  That's the sea and this is my boat.

That final scene of Big is remarkable.  Not only did Marshall manage to show a grown man in an overcoat staring at young children and not evoke anything with the -pedo prefix, she made it sentimental.  In this case, and on these days, I feel myself transported directly into the same heart chord as the protagonist.  He's there, in the same physical space as the world he is witnessing, but he's removed.  He's staring at a world that once was his and soon will be again.  He's in a body that will soon disappear only to emerge some distant day in a different context.  His timeline's been interrupted.  His present is uncertain.  The Big Damn World is just doing what it always does and pays no mind to the landscape of the displaced but all-too-present foreigner in its midst. 

Yesterday I'm in Prospect Park for perhaps the final time as a resident of the borough of Brooklyn.  There are a handful of joggers, a couple dogwalkers, a few tourists snapping photos of denuded trees.  The sun is out, so there are some other amblers.  It's a weekday morning and the air's got that late-autumn chilly snap to it, so it's no surprise that I follow some of those sinewy trails without seeing another soul.  There's the empty green space where I ate mushrooms with friends a few months back.  There's the knoll I rested on to read the New York Times with my ex-girlfriend and a thin blanket so many Sundays ago.  I've covered that ground and my shadows are still out, nudging me into one final sense of appreciation.  I've got my earbuds in, the playlist on shuffle, and somehow DJ Algorithm is hitting it just right.

O, to walk.  The anonymity of New York City is frequently cited disparagingly.  I have it as an asset on my ledger.  I see the counterpoint, the whole idea of this being a heartless place what with all our ignoring of the homeless, the indigent, the star-crossed lovers we pass by unawares.  But do these detractors see the beauty in sauntering with a soundtrack of our own designs, fodder to exercise our semi-conscious on the treadmill of self-reflection?  Do they see the good of escaping into our own mind even as we stroll through overwhelmingly public places?

I'm all too aware that I will relocate to some strange place where people greet one another.  Family, friends, strangers alike.  There's something beautiful in acknowledgment of someone never before seen, if only to offer a Hot Enough For Ya.  I'd file it under Community.  But goddamn it's been beautiful to walk straight through the belly of the beast and have it leave me well enough alone.  For all the talk about this place being heartless, it sure does seem to understand the concept of Me Time.  And that I appreciate.  Always will.  And so I'll soak up a little bit more of it in between these Fare Thee Wells and goodbye dinners and soggy-eyed gatherings that pass for parties.  I'll likely need it.

Address

August 26, 2005 was hot enough for me.  I arrived from LaGuardia and did little more than set my bags down when I got to that loft on 1st avenue at 20th; I had a friend in town and packing could take place later.  It was a good thing too because by then end of that weekend one of the Dartmouth Kids called to tell me they found someone for the room.  Not to worry, though, they had agreed I could stay there beforehand and I could avail myself to one of the two massive leather sofas facing the dark dinousaur-silhouette of the big screen tv.   I could keep my bags in that perch above.  I need not worry about rent.  It was all well and good until a different Dartmouth Kid had made enough suggestions about Brooklyn and Chinatown to get the writing on the wall.  I didn't quite take his advice, at least not yet.  But I got going and by the end of September, that year,

......I had a weekly sublet on 149th between Broadway and Riverside.  Just until I could find my proper spot in the East Village.  I already had a job, so at least I wasn't worried about that.  I could be selective in my choosing, which would have to take place evenings after my commute back from the Bronx.  Arrange to see an apartment each night of the week, knowing that one of them would choose me, had to choose me.  I could see a movie or visit a bar afterward.  And then get back to my place, being real quiet and modest with the light, what with my Dominican subletter and his wife asleep on the bed in the living room, and catch another good night's sleep before class in the morning.  Fortunately, the Dominicans arose at the same hour, so I didn't have to worry about needlessly waking them.  They would fold the bed back up, reassemble their living room, and go about whatever they were about to go about.  As long as I paid in cash by Sunday night, we need not say much more than pleasantries.  And then of course explain that I would now, and this must be about the end of November here, I would now explain that I had found a new place

.....in the East Village, on 5th between B and C, which was really more like D because 5th street does not go through at B, because there is a school there, so one must really walk to C and around the block to get back to my apartment building, which was right behind the school.  I love walking anyway, so no big deal.  To tell the truth, it was a challenge.  Initially.  I'm about as big a champion of every liberal cause to grace a website or a petition in the Real World, but was far removed from being able to deal with that in my own home.  Of course, it never turned out to be like that, and I think it's rare that it actually does.  So I played it cool and put on my headphones those weekend nights when Ben's boyfriend would be staying over.  The walls were thick enough, but I needed the precaution.  My virgin ears and sentiments didn't want to quite hear male penetration coming through the adjacent wall.  And they never did.  It was a really clean home and Ben was a pretty nice chap.  Still, that dog never did take a shining to me, and I took less to him, and $1000 was way too much to pay for a square not much bigger than my own bed.  I'd just as soon go away over the summer and find a place in

.....Prospect Heights, like the one I landed in on St. John's at Washington in October 2006.  My only real anchor to the neighborhood was the museum and The Islands, which is enough to keep a body in this city if you hear me tell it.  I could discover more, maybe track down those legendary nights of funk music and sultry marijuana inhalations from the year before.  That place where the colors collide under harmony and let that borough of beggars, braggers, and post-modern racial reincarnation move our feet for us, let are hips sway like they're bearing the weight of seven waves of immigrants.  I saw it, sure enough.  There was this great place called Prospect Park nearby with grass as suitable for reading a novel as any other under that sharp afternoon sky.  I could walk past stately architecture, past young families and fellow post-scattered contemporaries in the urban dream without any verbs like "hurried."  It was something all right.  And I was more than content to survey it with the one roommate with the leg tattoo always playing video games.  He was a good dude, really meant well, but I wasn't quite ready to cast myself into iron as a homebody.  Not in this place.  If the girl with the huge head and loud voice, loud walk, loud door opening and closing, loud being had been there more than ten minutes each night, it probably wouldn't have taken me so long to move in with my girlfriend

.....in Boerum Hill in August 2007.  Really nice place, home-y as home-y could possibly be for a one-bedroom in a five story with a window looking out on the back of some austere construction site.  This was a pre-war.   Fantastic molding.  Back when builders were craftsmen, when work was done with pride.  And the neighborhood?  Wow, the neighborhood.  I guess I liked it before, but maaaaaan, I loved me some brunch after living in that place.  The Israeli place killed it with the Mediterranean Crispy Dough and it felt so refreshing to be walking arm-in-arm down Smith Street with a hot cup of freshly roasted coffee.  That little lounge tucked between Atlantic & State on Hoyt had a drop-in bluegrass band on Sundays, perfect for a beer and a listen.  That Thai place was great on the wallet, if crowded on the weekends.  Seemed like we only splurged at that sushi spot when times were tight.  It was all worth it.  Of course, I moved in with her, so when I make the decision to stop being we, it is incumbent upon me to pack my bags, two of which would go with me

.....while I shuttled between one friend's couch in Washington Heights (on the weekend) and another in Carroll Gardens (weekday) in October of 2008.  One bag had clothes, seasonally appropriate, while the other had my necessary texts and notebooks for grad school.  So much is done online these days that I really did not have much of a weight burden with the school supplies.  Friends in the rooms around these couches were so good to me, didn't ever hold my feet to the fire.  I still had it underneath.  So much so that I refused their offers of more time to

.....relocate to another weekly sublet in Harlem, at 147 on the opposite side of Broadway less than one month later.  At least this time, the family members had their own bedrooms in the apartment.  They had wifi, so I could search for apartments, in Brooklyn this time, wherever, as long as it wasn't the Boerum Hill/Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill area.  That was verboten as per my ex one month prior.  I wasn't too particular about the particulars.  I really couldn't be.  Midterms were approaching, my student's budget not quite able to reach the top shelf if you know what I'm saying.  Just a roof over my head.  Close enough to the train.  Somewhere safe and cheap, and maybe, interesting?  What do you know if I didn't find just that

.....in Sunset Park in November of that year, right on 58th street, and right near the express N train.  The room was tiny, the twin-sized bed took up more than half.  But it was $400!  Incredible.  Goddamn I loved to get reactions out of that one.  In a brownstone.  I had huge bay windows and two guys sharing a room on the opposite side of me.  The Palestinian was a bit off his mark.  But the Japanese guy, fuck that Japanese guy was cool.  We could talk about the world, our travels, that feeling of being foreign in the dark kitchen as I made my tea.  For once, I had a roommate who was gone just as much as I was, but intersected at home in the same hours.  And he was interesting.  We would talk for ten or fifteen and then go back to our quiet rooms on that quiet street, sleep well even if there was a street light just outside our windows.  The girl from Washington was on the other side of the apartment and inclusive in party invitations.  She was (still is) pretty, but not my type.  We hit it along famously until she left and Maria took her place, that sweet Spanish girl.  She overlapped with my Japanese friend, and, soon, his pregnant girlfriend, who had taken the Palestinian's spot.  I remember we missed the Super Bowl that one year (Saints-Colts) for one last dinner before Maria had to go back home, to be replaced by that sweet Russian man.  Of course, by this point, our Japanese friends had found a spot to raise their son in Jersey City, so I had them find Nobuyuki.  Not that I asked them to find him, so much as a him that would turn out to be such a great friend.  He was

.....on the other side of my new room which is to say my old room, same address, and not so good with the Engris.  I taught him.  And introduced him to pot.  And got him really drunk with my friends where he would say some pretty funny shit.  At first it was funny, and it still is, but it eventually got to be so beautiful.  When a person speaks a second language and they don't speak it well, but know enough to carry across their meaning, there is absolute poetry there.  Forget the grammar and the syntax and the subject-predicate agreement; hearing them speak is to hear human expression in its purist form.  It was insight into the human spirit and all the more wonderful because it came from a friend.  And a great insight into language.  Or at least I reckon.  I likely have this association because he was on the other side of the wall on those nights, at least four per week, when I had one lamp going and my laptop in front of me, placing prose in my Great Life Venture.  I played soft, sad, rhythmic music, because of the three breakups of the previous two years and because it set the mood.  Against these solemn notes I could compose.  Pour out my fragile heart and delicate dreams into something that mattered, something that was me, something that could define me were I so fortunate.  A man at work on his life's work and I would do the bare minimum of part-time jobs to keep that going.  I just needed 500 words per night.  I got over 2000 one night, but give me 750 and I would go to bed content.  And I was ready.  The wine and marijuana catalyzed the somnolence, but all credit belongs to The Process.  Each night was a marathon and the only ribbon I could run through was the promise that I would do the same the following.  The downward motion I made to the bed each night, for fifteen months, could not be described as anything other than "collapse."  It was total.  And it was endless.  But night after night, over and over again, till the words were north of 100,000, then north by another 40g's, I pounded the letters.  And on my own laptop, the keys battered and bruised, now sits a work of fiction that represents the total exertion of one modern man.  That's something, even if that's all it is. 

It seems like my own date of departure got set the minute Nobuyuki told me he was moving out.  It didn't happen for almost another year.  But the seed was planted.  The novel was done and I needed a break.  From this.  From the disappointment of not being published and frowning away the daylight hours at tasks I not-so-justly deemed beneath me.  There would be an exit, but not without -plan or -strategy, and damned if my own wouldn't get Style Points.  I had to travel, so I did, including a stop to see my friend, and when I got back I decided that I'd had enough with a lot and resettled in

.....Bed-Stuy, where a friend had a small bedroom for me while his girlfriend was away in the summer of this past year.  It was difficult moving from such large quarters (my second room in Sunset was like a spacious studio) into another closet.  The double bed was a squid that ate half the face of that room.  All those bookshelves and chests of drawers accumulated, the nightstand and the glass coffee table, couldn't exactly be laid out.  So it was stacked.  At the foot of my bed.  Another few months and it could have been messy enough to cameo on Hoarders.  The understanding, which was that this was a sublet, kept me through.  I would move on after the summer so there was no need to worry about not settling in, or vice versa.  And who settles in during the summer?  That close to Fort Greene Park?  What with the Euro games on by day through June and the daily opportunities for beach, beers, a free concert in the park?  I didn't feel comfortable in that room and damn right I shouldn't have.  There was no sense in not taking advantage of finally living within a bike ride of going out, a drunk ride back to sleep in my own bed.  It was summer, I had goals and they needn't be reached now, so why not work hard and live well while I was at it.  And just so serendipitously, one of those nights, I learned

.....about the upcoming vacancy at this place, in Crown Heights, beginning in September.  I wrote about it then.  It has lived up to its promise.  It's arguably the most comfortable, aesthetically, of all the places I've lived in New York with soft lights overhead and smooth wooden floors throughout.  It's home-y in the living room, in the independent female sort of way, owing to my three independent, female roommates.  We get along just dandy grand and the whole logistics are copacetic since my arrival and departure are bookended to complement everyone else's.  I really have liked it here.  And I reckon

.....that I'll like it in the Bywater, at that place I'm renting on St. Claude starting in January.  I'll have the big room and Laura assures me it will be great.  She told me that it is an old Victorian, formerly a Catholic convent, that was converted sometime last century into a school for boys.  Or maybe the other way around, I'm not sure.  I just remember her saying that there is a theater in the backyard, with a backyard behind that, and then behind that another backyard with a grill set up.  She added that there's a front yard too.  It all sounds so well and good, and well, I guess I'll have to see it for myself. 

Signs

I really hate the debate.  Predetermination can go fuck itself, for all I care, and still there's something so naked, in a vicious and raunchy way, about the idea that we're all just spinning our wheels on a destination-less highway's shoulder.  Get deep enough into the process and it's hard to find the desire to look beneath life's hood.  The scenery is catching at times, and some of the rest stops provide ample nourishment.  Still the miles go on and your concerns inevitably regress to Making Good Time.

And yet, if it all does matter, gee it sure would be nice if any greatness was of our own doing.  In this one instance alone, I'd like to think of a benevolent Great Spirit dangling an uber-subtle fishing lure leading to that One Great Destiny.  There's some fate involved, but we have to pursue it.  It's the same feeling a socialist would get when they win the award for being the Best Socialist.

In all likelihood this is my instance of getting mired in the quicksand of narrow-objective attention.  I make a decision, dig my fingernails into the armrests and look frantically around for confirmation that I'm doing a not bad thing.  I'm sure my behavior could be easily explained.  Psychology, being the wet blanket of sciences, is worthy of convenient dismissal, which is exactly what my present circumstances call for.  I know that if my conscious is privy to some armchair psychoanalytics, I rest comfortably that I've at least by now reached by own conclusion. 

Signs, I speak of.  Not quite semaphores on the Santa Fe, yet neither the tea leaves Aunt Trudy reads ever since she had The Incident.  Isolated, they are meaningless.  Together they are something, if still not the forward motion of an attentive Gestapo agent directing traffic.  They are selective, random, small, and timely.  They may be no more than the image of the white rabbit's tardy ears as he bends another corner.  But we've followed him this far.  And he seems to think we should keep going. 

First one came via the screen.  I have only shilled for the cinema a handful of times this year, literally five, and three of the movies have been taken place or reached their denouement in New Orleans.  Beasts of the Southern Wild is not on this list and I have been unaware of the Bayou connection each time.  I sublet a friend's spare bedroom for the summer and the only thing adorning a wall when I entered was a picture of New Orleans.  Everyone I meet, everywhere I turn, there seems to be some reference to Louisiana.  If I want to go Close Encounters of the Third Kind on you, I'll mention where the upcoming Super Bowl will be held and tell you I'm starting to sculpt.

And then there's the financial.  I returned to Brooklyn following some soul-enriching or -whatever travel with enough to pay a couple month's rent.  The old job I performed middling- to, um, -middling at wanted me back and I could start right away.  One month later when I realized I needed extra income to afford the move, the very day I set out to look for an additional source of employment, the very moment my email uploaded at the coffee shop, there was a message with a friend's unsolicited job offer that complemented my schedule.  I could start right away.

I held this image in my head.  How Perfect, I thought, would it be to buy an old VW bus in Maine and drive it down to New Orleans.  It would be like doing the last thing I haven't done out here, plus the geographical significance of taking something from one of the northernmost states, down to the one of the southernmost, with a guy hailing from somewhere in between behind the wheel.  I pictured it light blue.  And then last month I found one, and last week I bought one, and it all fits snugly within that little budget allotted by that serendipitous job offer.  Timely, too.  True to form, I trust the mechanic's assessment that she'll be a dependable vessel.  True to form, she's unnamed as of yet, but she's light blue.  As for Maine?

As for Maine, well, I'll take her there.  Next week, after I retrieve her from the mechanic.  I know that doesn't exactly abide to the aforementioned imagery.  I won't pretend it does.  But she'll get to Maine, and we'll both get to New Orleans.  As of the last few weeks, I know I'm ready.  The mechanic assures me that in a week she'll be ready.  And I will start that part of the dream the morning I arrive where I bought her, it's just outside of a little town called Providence.

A writer's life for me

A man with base instincts, I pride myself in probity.  A man with salty lips for the drink, I'll tell you I'm fond.  Good intentions and soothing words galore, I'll be the first to tell you I come up short in the Friend Department.  I don't see nothin' wrong with an unrighteous shortcut to a Good Feeling and I likewise won't bear false witness about the method and means.  I run polar to the bombastically sanctimonious and on meridian with the most noble in the alley, in more ways than I'm terrified to admit.

Upon this mantle of self-bestowed honor I am building a nest of lies.  I am asked the purpose of my relocation to New Orleans and I invariably respond about the seven-year itch and the need for more space.  The chance to belong to a community and maybe the taste of dad-gam delicious Cajun fare.  If we're really talking, I just might mention that I want to fall in love.  But so convinced in my own deceit do I become that even I forget the true reason.  At least in conversation.  Every now and then I get those Quiet Nights, the ones where I put on a little music, pull a little bit from the pipe, exhale and stare out at a quiet city downwind; the ones where I stare into the still pond and see my reflection from the outside.  And I remember.  It's just one I don't really want to tell.

I decided to write my first novel with the same glee my younger version would have received 50-yard line seats for a Buffs game, the whole endeavor teeming with excitement and entitlement, not a little pride and fear.  There was a sense of purpose and identity.  There was an engineer's trust in the machinery and a pioneer's faith in the destination.  There was an agent who showed her own confidence in my thought bubbles and a few friend's lent their paddles for encouragement along the way.

And then I saw how the sausage was made.  Not the writing, at least in terms of production.  It may not have rolled off the assembly line with a degree of efficiency pleasing to Mr. Ford, but it did roll, and I'll be goddamned to hear anyone say that thing don't got a gas pedal and a passenger seat.  I just don't know if I rolled out a pristine 1934 Bentley or a rust-colored and blood-stained 1984 Chevette.  The market is supposed to decide that for me.  But the market is not deciding.  Or, better said, my salmon's not yet allowed to spawn in that stream.  I've not been given clearance from the tower and entry into the Big Presses, the sidewalk rags, the urban journals we're all supposed to have read before having brunch with the Sleek-Framed Spectacled of the learned world.  My only remnants are odd blogs and the giant manuscript taking a giant shit on my hard drive.  It's lonelier than sad masturbation and piercing like divorce with the same exact, aspired and unattained middle that towers above the two each time.  Say hello to the writer, working at his day job.  Say hello to the writer, feeling sorry for himself.  Say hello to the quiet one agonizing over his existence and ordering another drink.

Somewhere in these depths I saw another novel.  Set in New Orleans.  Written in contemporary times.  There is no other mind that could see or voice that could deliver, so I, north of thirty and inching further, had to decide if It was going to be done.  It could just be another fuel-inefficient,  busted mid-80s domestic with a negative Blue Book value; could be the first feasible electric.  All I knew was that I was the only automaker with the blueprints. 

So I decided to write and that implied the relocation and that has led to all sorts of life disruptions and disassociations.  And my well-concealed shame at not actualizing the dream the first time around means that I'm not quite comfortable telling the body public.  Better to talk about cost-of-living and year-round okra.  In my guise and soft untruths and unmooring from home port I have at least not forgotten my purpose, if only on these Quiet Nights.  When the bus arrives and the bags are unpacked, I will appreciate the space and the chance to read my book by porchlight.  I'll manufacture the rent and learn a strange custom or two.  And when the time comes, the destiny returned and words sweating off my tongue, I'll sit down and pound the keyboard each night for an hour or two, see what comes out.  For a couple years at least, I'll be content to be a work in progress and a rare among the Gray Hairs to keep chasing them silly flies called dreams.  O a writer's life for me. 

Bucket list

Still never been to Lady Liberty.  Walked past that subway museum on Livingstone a hundred times, always marveled at the entrance, not once stepped down.  People speak highly of the Brooklyn Brewery and apparently Jackson Heights is the hottest thing since silicon tits, but it's the same refrain.  We're approaching some serious T-minus territory here and the thought looms about some great, existential checklist for Things To Do in New York City.  God forbid I move from here and somebody shames me for not doing the pantsless subway ride.

I've uprooted my life with less planning that many people put into a picnic in the park.  More like, there's some careful deliberation that goes into making the decision, followed by the implementation of the necessary ingredients, but there's no pen and paper and chin-scratching.  Step one and done: Set a date.  Then do what has to be done. There are details, but those are just details, and they fall under what I just said.

So it should come as no surprise that I have no Bucket List for the Big Apple.  I will go to Ellis Island and I will go to Maine to eat lobster within view of a lighthouse, but that's about it.  If there's something I haven't done, and I've had seven-plus years to realize it, it's hard to say it belongs on any sort of list now.  It is no more than a momentary distraction, an opportunity for accomplishment when everything going on around me is about loss. 

The whole goddamn concept of a Bucket List, be it before a departure or death, is a persuasive Exhibit in the proceedings for what is wrong with this society we live in.  Like forgiveness and atonement, it is a powerful tool to feel better about the person you could have been but were not; the things you could have done but never did; those words that should have been said but never came out.  Going to the Meatpacking District after a Knicks game won't be my opportunity to Do It Right.  Ain't nothin' hanging on the walls of the Whitney that's going to make me a better/worse friend than I've been.  There are things that matter; the rest is comprised of one giant, fragmented distraction.

The final sands of this time have me feeling like an old dog.  Prospects for adoption aren't looking too good, so maybe it's best to just find my trusty place in the rug and sniff the familiar pant legs of the ones who take care of me.  Maybe these owners will take me on a familiar walk, and maybe they'll engage in my sentimentality for what it was like to walk that trail years before.  Eat some familiar chow.  Get my ears scratched.  Sit in my own shit for a little while.  Ain't no sense running this old hound any further.  Just let the days pass and the eyes sink 'til it's time to move on to the next place.  There's a list for ya.

Predictions

Election Night 2012 was far from the bloody Apocalypse we all feared, though no nearer to the elated and unhinged Fuckfest the best of us aspired for it to be.  In the executive race, the black guy edged out the very personification of evil with the political equivalent of securing a close victory with a last second pick-six.  In the upper chamber, one side couldn't entirely toe the Anti-Rape party line, so the Good Guys picked up a handful of cushiony seats in the world's most useless institution.  If you think a modest advantage in a body designed to protect slavery will make a difference, I hope you end up on the other side of my next automotive transaction.  As for the lower chamber, that sweatbox has been gerrymandered to a point of predictability that even Bruckheimer would find trite and offensive.

Which is all to say that it's exactly the same.  We'll have fewer commercials and some of my bookmarked websites will see fewer clicks, but the architecture remains.  The status quo preserved.  The same hands grasp the same levers.  And yet it was a monumental election.

Not in the sense of Abe or Franky, but something more akin to the election of Reagan or the end of Reconstruction.  It will be the end of one of those chapters at the end of the textbook that students will not see because History classes rarely even make it to WWII.  But it will be in there.  Last Tuesday was, officially, the end of the George W. Bush era, which was, ostensibly, the grossest and ultimate in the Ronald Reagan era.  A Black man ran for a second term with an 8% unemployment rate and a pledge to raise taxes while every single citizen had resigned themselves to the reality that the rest of their life will be worse than had it occurred a generation before.  And he won.  Not because Americans had some epiphany and saw that the Mormon would do the same shit that got us into this mess, only worse.  After all, stupid is as stupid does and it ain't no accident that movie was a sensation in this country.  He won the first term because he won the semifinal with Hillary that put him in the place to be where any Democrat would win.  He won this round on his own, even if a larger chunk than we'd care to admit pulled his lever with their noses plugged.

Which leaves us with the future.  Obama's second term?  He'll solidify Obamacare, which should be a huge hit for the coming generations.  He'll appoint one or two more female justices to help overturn Citizens United in the immediate future and serve as a sturdy firewall against numerous potential disasters in the long game.  He'll get the wealthy to pay higher taxes, likely win a battle on the defense budget, and oversee enough modest economic growth to retire as the President Who Got Us Out Of The Recession.  He'll be remembered as another Clinton or Eisenhower, maybe higher because he's Black.  On merit alone, he won't deserve Rushmore.

The sodomizing finance industry will largely stand when he's done.  Employment will continue to be tied to corporations and boards of directors.  Our infrastructure will see no injection of care.  New York and California will look a little brighter.  Detroit too.  Places without oil or any meaningful resource or economic sector will shrivel and become sources of strange violence and weird culture.  Some of the latter will be bad.

But I started talking about the Pivot, didn't I?  That comes in 2016, then really in 2020, when Democrats have a couple more wins under the belt because Republicans can't quite shake the Let's Be Total Cunts strategy.  They'll get close, but modest electoral gains in 2014 will reinforce their obstinance, when it's really owing to the backwash comprising the off-year electorate.  They'll keep Obama's greater ambitions in check, but will really be digging their own grave for 2016, when they lose the next Big One.  That President will be white and win by huge margins, and therefore have a mandate.  Their mandate will do Real Good, and they'll be rewarded by huge swaths in the off-year of 2018, then in their reelection in 2020.  And that's when new House districts will be drawn. 

The ensuing ten years will be an era of Progression such as we have ever known.  So long as the India-China Resource War doesn't kick off, drawing in alliances from several other simmering conflagrations further exacerbated by The Warming of the Planet, all of which is probably the safe bet, then Prosperity will ensue.  How's that for a good night's sleep?

Election

If I'm really being honest, and if I can shed my accumulated morality from years of participation in the American human experience, and if I could conveniently ignore my quotidian hours' long poll-watching fetish, then I could fill in the starting lineup for the ideal United States government.  Not in a vacuum, but in praxis.  File this under: Shit done, gettin'.  In this exercise, both the House of Representatives and Senate would be overwhelmingly liberal.  The Senate majority leader would be from Vermont, that of the House from any one of California, Oregon, New York, or districts representing either Austin, Texas or Madison, Wisconsin.  All of the swing states would have Democratic senators, but they would be low in rank and influence.  The conservative congressmen would be from the most conservative states and not a single one of them would serve more than one term as they would be voted out for not being conservative enough.  This way, the collective attention of the Alabamas, the Tennessees, the Idahos would be so consumed in vituperative local primaries that they would have scant energy and focus for the broader races. 

The ideal President would be Republican.  A Democratic President would be too consumed with the fear of going Too Far, playing themselves Out Of The Map, that they would have to hold back.  A Republican President, on the other hand, working with a long-haired-and-Molotov-cocktail-throwing Legislative Branch, would go down in the annals as the Greatest Modern Leader this country has seen.  Stymied at every possible move, from the budget to ethics hearings to nominees for everything from the Supreme Court to the Commerce Secretary to the Asst. Postmaster General for the Northern Rockies, the Republican President would have no choice but to play ball with the two chambers.  Being a Republican, he (because it'll always be a he) would be so vainglorious as to not give three shits from Thursday about having to compromise his supposed values in executing the tasks which would be his charge.  Even his token vetoes would be overruled by the supermajority in both chambers, so he would know it could never matter. 

But he would still sign.  By his second year, he would sign anything and everything that came from the Capitol because they would be the most beautiful pieces of legislation.  His knees would be bloody from begging around the rotunda for more bills, more ceremonies, more hand-shaking on podia.  The American way of life would improve exponentially and this Republican, this cocky, shitbag of conceitedness would bask in being the one at the helm when we finally got it right.  He would win reelection on a crest of approval in the high 80s and it wouldn't matter if he spent the whole election introducing a scale for the gradients of rape.  He would speak to the base, work with the chamber, and sop it all up like it was the last morsel of naan going into the final smear of curry.

But we don't live in an ideal world, do we?  We thought we had The Guy, then reality set in.  After eight years of drying their bloody grundles on every civil right earned over the past century, then receiving their comeuppance at the ballot box, the Republicans introduced a brilliant strategy.  They would become Total Fucking Cunts.  Every step of the way.  They voted nay, they filibustered, they even explicitly told the press that they would spend the next four years being such total fucking cunts that the American people would vote them back in.  Checking the polls on Election Eve, it appears as though they were wrong.  But not by much.

I actually think Romney would be an okay President, in the short run.  With Democratic chambers, he would probably revert to his role as a moderate and do everything to ensure the government made him look good.  In the long game, he'd be more like Reagan in furthering a steady course to ruin.  That wouldn't really affect him, so long as the opinion polls in the present were north of the equator.  The Gipper showed us all that projecting strength and affability, on top of some modest contemporary appreciation, was sufficient fodder for the forebears to write the revisionist history upon which good posterity rests.  This man has no vice, except himself; you have to almost respect a man so transparently shameless. 

Alas, I will not be voting for nor wishing in any way, shape or form for a Romney Presidency.  If there's one way I can sympathize with Obama haters, by which I mean people who hate Obama, it is in my imagination of a Romney presidency.  Because I hate his voice.  I hate his fake smile.  I hate everything about his myopic worldview and douchebag religion and raising five hindered sons who look like they still run lemonade stands well into their 30s.  Having Mitt Romney for a President would be like taking a four-year cruise with some clingy, desperate bitch that attended every bingo game and cocktail hour and Meet the Captain in a mink coat and raspy voice with skinny cigarettes and insisted on asking every stupid question at an obscenely high decibel.  You could tell the other passengers that she wasn't really accompanying you, and many of them would quietly sympathize and understand.  The best you could hope for would be pity.  The worst would be those quiet hours when the casino has closed and you're too worn down to even drink; you're sharing the tiny bunk and the only light comes through the porthole above your head.  She's obnoxiously snoring beside you and hogging the blankets as the ship cradles back-and-forth in a gentle heave-haw, and just when you imagine that it couldn't possibly get any worse- she opens her eyes.  She turns to find your own and there's a pause.  And just then, at the trough of your existence, with six more hours until breakfast, she figures it'd be a good idea to have a chat.

Sandy

I, Solipsist.  Where were you when.....the Challenger exploded?  .....9/11? ......the Black President was elected?  We chain ourselves to history with exaggerated tales of what we did and how we felt when events far greater than our meager, insect selves transpire far beyond the ant house.  We cling to it because we want to matter.  We want to be safe in the moment, threatened in hindsight, and greeted with open jaws and wide eyes when we spin our tale in the future.

I have to admit: I had a pretty good hurricane.  I can check the box for being in the storm, and I'll have the opportunity to embellish the wind's howl and light's flicker.  I won't admit to being scared, mostly because I wasn't, but also because I slept better that night than I had in at least the previous month.  I'll tell anyone willing to listen about watching the live feed of images on various websites showing that many of my citizens were having a far worse time of things.  I come away with only praise for BBC's Sherlock.

For all the pant-staining induced by the storm itself, it is its wake that inspires true fear.  We sit up in our foxholes, life and limb intact, then stand to survey who in our ranks was not so fortunate.  With Irene, it was the fellas Upstate.  This bitch Sandy will give steady work to every appraiser in Jersey for the foreseeable future and, closer to home, tore a worm-hole into the Big Apple that will not soon be repaired or forgotten.  And here in Brooklyn, or, at least "Brooklyn", we get to raise the All Clear flag.

This I saw the day after, chasing the drowned carousel or Superfund waterway spilling onto its neighbors.  Beyond the clutter in the bike lanes, there was not much disturbance in the force.  So I turned in a Big One, overindulging in marijuana and losing at dice in a not-entirely-cold backyard to some bar in Williamsburg.  Had that been the extent of My Storm, I would not be writing this.

Because the next day I looked from light to dark and saw that this was more than just a place of residence.  Lower Manhattan was without power, but the bridge was open and I'd just shilled out $30 for a new wheel on my Schwinn Varsity.  I went with one friend inside the dark belly of the beast and all we found was electricity.  Ever rolled through Mulberry Street and not seen a single soul?  Ever only been able to distinguish the street signs in the Financial District because of the full moon?  Ever stepped into a candlelit dive bar and known it was ready right then and there to be filmed for a Gangs of New York prequel?  Lower Manhattan was like Williamsburg in the early 90s, but with a massive police presence.  All the pencil pushers and post-fraternity jabronis fled to higher ground and neighborhoods like Soho, the East Village, and TriBeCa were......authentic?  Authentic!  Yes! Yes they were!  I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on international travel and rarely been so rewarded as I've been the past two nights with my bicycle and a trusty companion.

And as I write the power is back on, the subway is gradually coming back and a massive relief effort is underway.  I'm left to wonder if it was all a dream and, if not, then I'm quite confident I'll have one of the better stories when school resumes and we all tell each other What We Did During The Storm.

    

A not quite dry run

An additional bullet point to an already long list of Not Great Decisions was added last night.  When the good people at Delta Airlines informed me I would not be flying from the Peach State to the Big Apple, I went to the airport earlier.  It did not matter that I'd had enough drinks over the previous 36 hours to satisfy Blackbeard's officers; that I would be flying slightly in advance of a deadly hurricane; that work was cancelled for the week and I did have options for alternative places to stay; I stood by for the earlier flight and came regardless.  So here I am savoring the potential final hours of electricity and clean water by election.  I very deliberately flew into my own cabin fever.

Does this say something about me?  Does this portend anything about my Impending Move?  Why would someone insistent on leaving go through so much conscientious effort to return to Rome just in time for its burning?

All potentially good questions.  Perhaps the egg is fertilized but not quite ready to hatch.  We're early in the third trimester and the womb is still warm, despite whatever acid-reflux tropical storms might throw our way.  It may be best to just stay the course until biology and suggested timelines reach agreement.

The question, the deliberation, the 9th hour incident of second guessing, none would be so relevant were I not just returning from the belly of the beast.  Not New Orleans, exactly, but Alabama.  If my weekend away in Dixie did not make me reconsider relocation, it did give me pause.  A little How you doin', as it were.  See, to leave the leafy confines of Brooklyn and go to, say, Upstate New York or Providence or even suburban Jersey, is a bit of a displacement.  The coffee may not be Stumptown or precision roasted (whatever that is, if that's a thing), but there're reasonably congruent establishments.  The people may drive SUVs, but they may not behave altogether differently inside a voting booth.  They are different.  They are, to me, less desirable.  They are not home, but I could live there under circumstances resembling only slight duress.

But New Orleans?  My God do I want to hear that town blow jazz and serve me sazeracs until the sky falls.  Beyond the city walls?  Well, beyond New Orleans is Louisiana.  Beyond that is Mississippi and Arkansas.  Road trips to Austin are tempting, though that's still a good five hours and there's a whole lot of Praise Jesus in between.  I suppose that I'm just coming out of Wedding Season and while still keen on the bride, I'm having some consternation about the bridesmaids.

Or maybe it is the storm.  Outside, the wind is howling and the burnt colors on once-verdant leaves will line the gutters.  Some neighbors are already flooded and the worst lies yet ahead.  I suppose it's apt preparation to stack the sand bags and fortify the castle.  Like my future residency in New Orleans, I'll ready myself to defend the precious interior from the Dangerous Elements lurking outside.  Certain things we can't control, others we can't avoid, and still a decent number we can place our warm selves next to and appreciate.  We can plan all we want to, but the best we can do is just tap our feet to keep up with the beat.  Time to put myself in a safe place, howl out to the Great Spirit, and play a little bit of jazz.

Graduation

School always made it so neat and clean.  Transitions were negotiated long before and promulgated well in advance via the calendar courtesy of your friendly PTA.  The school year ended on a fixed date and if you were in the eldest class, you knew it would be your last day.  Tell your secret crush you love her.  Pass along the yearbooks for final signatures.  Shed a tear as the bus pulls away because the public school is a bit too public for the likes of Mom and Dad.  Next year, you're in with the nuns.

Life does not accommodate so neatly once we're outside the purview of credit hours.  It seems as though most transitions are imposed rather than anticipated.  You work at a place until your salary gets too swollen for the Bottom Line and your new Friday task becomes cleaning out your desk.  Relationships don't end because Becky's dad got a new job in Minnesota; they end because Becky made a new friend at work and you're scheduling the couch you'll sleep on next week.  The landlord raises the rent.  The dog gets hit by a car.  Mom breaks her hip.  We live day-by-day until some new shifting of the currents throws us off course and has us regazing at the stars. 

I should consider myself lucky, I suppose.  For the whole White Anglo-Saxon, sure, but more topically that I get to point my finger to the outfield and call my shot.  January 3, I said, and January 3 it shall be. The foresight accommodates Last Hurrahs and all the minutiae necessary for my future Gas Food Lodging.  It also suits the arrangement of goodbyes.

We're still A Couple months out, but no longer A Few.  It's too far out to start calling in the salutations; it feels odd to even imagine doing so when it is that time.  But it's already been on the minds of others and therefore imposed on me. 

Let's get together before you leave.
You're going to have a goodbye party, right?
Wait, when do you leave again?

The anticipated post-mortems make me the ghost of my future departed self.  I want to scream that I'm here now, but we all know that the knot is about as tight as it ever could be and there's only unmooring ahead.  Departure's got us all in a holding pattern and all we can do is enjoy the fleeting moments and wait for the yearbooks to come out.  And after that, we'll reassure one another to have a great summer, and to don't ever change.

Twenty-seven

One week ago today, I watched my sister pledge the rest of her living days to one man.  It was in a mountainous part of America, a bit chilly, with many attendees and, in my opinion, a little light on the hors d'oeuvres.  I wore a suit.  If you've witnessed an immediate family member swear their soul to the guy (or gal) taking up the fifth placemat at the dinner table, you get it.  Nostalgia, pride, joy, all of that.  Well-wishing.  I even shed a few tears. 

And of course there was family, as were family friends.  It was the horse stable of all the stable relationships that existed and formed around me in my formative years.  A few new ones too.  And it went without saying that I would not have a date.  And it went without saying that my unique forms of employment were, um, interesting.  And it went without saying that uprooting to move to New Orleans on a whim would not elicit approval from your dear grandparents may they rest in peace. 

I'm the prodigal son, not quite the black sheep, but definitely the apple that fell from the tree, found the steep embankment and just kept rolling on and on and on.  I know it, I own it, my family makes a genuine, heartfelt effort to tolerate it.  None of this will likely change. 

Or, will it? 

I watched my sister, seven years my junior, do the second-most adult thing a person can do and reflected on the fact that more than half of my net worth has a power button and an Apple logo.  She's well on track to make me an Uncle during the next presidential term and I cannot even commit to buying health insurance.  Which is all to say that we have differences in personality, and these differences have manifested themselves through lifestyle choices.

I could embark on the solid riff residing in my heart about the dangers of consumption and the emptiness it leaves behind; I have it in there.  It's not that I want to start looking for meaning in conventionality and I know there's not a living room set that will help me achieve Nirvana.  But there's something to be said for Stability, planting one's roots besides the other willows and saying I Shall Not Be Moved.  Committing to a course and seeing what other chips fall as they may around me. 

Bear with me, a Tangent (I'll bring it back around):

I have this theory that every adult without children in New York City is twenty-seven years old.  Those that are younger in age are forced to adapt to a more mature lifestyle because this city's mechanism for Natural Selection will cast out the Weak Beaks.  Those that are older parade around in the delusional fantasy that they are younger better smarter and more gorgeous to boot, fueled by red wine, fashion, quaint eateries, and the amorphous notion that they are the first to be informed.  It all adds up to a feeling of superiority.  Show me a frat house in revelry or a sotted hobo in the street, and I'll point to the crowd slothfully exiting the black tie after party of a Lincoln Center performance.  Because they're all drunk, they're all escaping, and they're all the same.  Put me in that lot as well.

So what I think I'm trying to say is that I just spent enough time outside the Twenty-Seven Bubble to feel like the shoe no longer fits.  I am thirty-two, and while I aver that I will never be that old, however old that happens to be and act whatever the norms attendant, I realized that I'm also not so as much into post-collegiate Arrested Development.  Maybe it's time to make it unmistakeably clear to everyone that I've gone from Boy to Man.  Which is all to say I'm going to get a dog.

Love and Honor

I will try not to watch tomorrow night as Drunk Uncle Joe stands across from the young whippersnapper in America's least relevant dick-measuring contest.  One of them will be one clogged artery of Destiny or a .22 trip to the temple away from sitting in the Big Chair, but there's no need to get carried away.   Even those of us non-swing staters without televisions or cars have heard all we need to know.  And that includes from the number twos.  I'd rather see them smile and bake chocolate chip cookies together, using the oven time to tug each other off under the counter top while a list of their policy influences and major donors disappear atop the screen like its the opening credits to Star Wars.  Two men blowing hot air and Key Words into the klieg lights and Camera One until our minds die is not my idea of a Fitness Test for the highest office.  I could learn all I need from a dossier and color photo of the candidate at twenty-five.  That, and their porn preferences, and consider me to be an informed voter.

I already have one of those mental dossiers preconfigured.  It is not from MSNBC or Fox, from the Times or the Post.  Not the print nor the magical color box nor even the great big interwebs had to tug my ear and say, "Let me tell you a story."  Because I attended Miami University, and I know Paul Ryan.  Maybe not him, but I knew dozens like him from my years between the red bricks and under the stately trees.  He was skinnier, hair about the same, maybe wore some Russel Athletic sweatshirts to morning class.  He was a Delt, so he definitely got pretty drunk and probably played along for those parties where they put a bunch of sand in the basement.  He was the guy who bought a table-full on Quarter Beer Night at Attractions and refused to give one to somebody outside his crew.  He cut in line late night at Bagel & Deli and then smirked at you when you bitched.  He was the guy with the car who said he was too busy to drive you to the airport, then spent the next few hours blasting his pecs at the Rec.  At least once per semester, he offered some form of support, be it moral, financial, or in understanding, to a date rapist in the best interests of Brotherhood. 

He will do quite well tomorrow night, I imagine.  After all, he was the kid in Econ 101 who scoffed at the professor.  He has always liked to challenge authority in the name of an authority more strict and irrational than anything that ever wore buttons.  He will channel Hitler's economic policies with a blue-eyed twinkle that will have every grandma from Oshkosh to Walla Walla wishing to pinch his cheeks.  It won't really sway the election, but people will see the Antichrist and think him a Nice Young Man.  Those of us who care about politics will decipher its minutiae for weeks, while the fate of the free world will actually be decided by the reaction of one man in Toledo to the gas prices on November 6. 

So I know that if it matters, it won't be worth watching.  If this two-man regurgitation is talked about in one weeks' time it's owing to some shitbrick Uncle Joe laid while ad-libbing.  Millions and millions of people will be willing to dismantle every civil, social, and economic privilege they have because the Good Guy has a big nose or abandoned The Script for one fatal sound byte.  The stakes are high, the value is low, and it's right before the Colorado-Arizona State kickoff.  They've been real shit of late, but they're coming off a bye week and the freshmen are starting to come around.  Plus, they're getting their safety back, and we all know Thursday night leans to the home team.  And they are playing at altitude, so, with any luck.....

And I'm already off track.  Which, is a case in point.  My heart can only take so much; time to step away from the politics, if only for a moment.

Sound barrier

If something happens somewhere, anywhere, outside the Five Boroughs of New York City, does it make a sound?

Kinda sorta, but not really.  Sound bytes and speech clips can sneak inside the walls of the steel canyon, so too a few choice quotations from some man-on-the-street.  But for all the politicians' pronouncements about Potomac Fever, there is no place so enamored with its own voice as the Big Apple.  So much so that there is no irony in the Brooklyn Industries t-shirt featuring the two vowels replaced with headphones.  We seem to only engage with others when we turn off the iPod to tell those surrounding us that we liked that last beat. 

Nowhere is this more apparent than outside the echo chamber, which I have been for nearly two entire weeks.  I have found that the oxygen is plentiful and the water clean.  The night sky has stars and the air below is devoid of the ruthless banging noise comprising so much of daily life in Gotham.  Not needing to be heard over taxi horns and scraping rails and police sirens, fighting neighbors and car stereos and ice cream truck jingles, cell phone conversations and Chinatown chatter and Puerto Rican barbecues, the rest of the nation can speak a little softer.  It pains me to tell you they speak slower and are probably heard better as well.  And they really don't care as much about Brooklyn as we do.

None of the above is news.  Or new, even to me.  A cursory familiarity with population density is enough to understand the acoustics.

What is new is being outside the castle walls and realizing that this will soon be more than conditional.  Just like the past ten days, there will be no texts or infrequent calls inquiring into Evening Plans.  I'll delete but not unsubscribe from the nonsenseNYC listserv.  The barbs and inside jokes traded on Facebook's walls will be old if not tired and both parties of the exchange left wanting for opportunities to make fresh material.  I'll be reduced to recognizing its landmarks on serial programming.

There will not be may sympathizers in the world Out There, as I have discovered.  For many, NYC is a place they do not want to be for the perceived frostiness of its people and the unsolicited noise of the aforementioned sources.  I'll remember that the taxi horns and scraping rails brought me to and from epic shows and raucous nights.  Fighting neighbors made for great stories and some of those cell phone conversations were mine.  Chinatown meant dumplings and I'll be damned if an accidental run-in with a Puerto Rican barbecue didn't both fix my bicycle and initiate fruitful access to marijuana.  I'll be leaving in search of quiet, so long as it's not too much.

Love & the Interregnum

Living one's life so as to avoid meaningful companionship is the vermouth of the self-loathing cocktail.  The gin or vodka portion should remain proportional.  One goes about their day the same, but certain conversations are curtailed and ideas tempered lest they interfere with tortured notions of manifest destiny.  Considering that a great number employ this as their modus operandi for the entirety of their lives, seven months shouldn't be considered too bad. 

This latest loveless interregnum is a product of the decision to move to New Orleans and the requisite time frame to wait out potential hurricanes and save some seed money.  It has been a semi-fulfilling  rebuttal to any aphorism in the vein of carpe diem or 'no day like today.'  There is more of the present I could be seizing, but it's some comfort to be in my third decade and following a dream while so many see their own expire years earlier of SIDS.  That's the sexy part.  The nuts and bolts of this life pause are not worth growing rubbery over.  There's the extra job, for one, cutting into Free Time.  Living transiently is another.  Anyone over the age of thirty with stacked boxes in their bedroom who tells you Life is Great is nothing if not entirely full of shit.

Playing a bit role in the whole production is the avoidance of intimacy.  It's not as hard for me as it would be for most.  Being overly sensitive, fiercely independent, brashly entitled, and frustratingly insecure does not hurt.  Neither does alcohol and contentment with sitting in front of a football game.  But even I know this is no way to live.  Because the books and songs all seem to point to something, that something that comes with giving oneself up for another.  And while I haven't felt It, necessarily, over the past few months, there have been hints and suggestions.  Every now and then I've reached the point in conversation where She would look at me with this-is-the-part-where-you-ask-for-my-number eyes.  Someone a little more involved in the day-to-day will occasionally do Something that makes me think a how-bout-that.  I always play aloof. 

It's not because there's no interest, because there is.  I want one of these Hers to burnish a signed contract good for Brainless Fucking that will expire at the end of this calendar year.  We'd get the occasional bite to eat and send a few texts in between for good measure.  But do I want to take some girl out on a Date?  Do I want to get to know someone and let them know me?  Most certainly not.  I don't want to spend the money/go through the history/relive the insecurity/avoid the Questions, and God forbid I actually grow to Like this person.  That would be a disaster.  Because I have plans.  And they don't involve Here, and that most certainly implies that they don't involve Her. 

Before every physical departure is a mental and emotional one and it's already hard enough to pack the luggage I already have.  Even if her smile is nice and those eyes are kind, they're sure just to take up room and I cannot sacrifice the space what with all the baggage fees nowadays.  The surest way to give something up is to never take it up in the first place.

So it's give nothing.  Take what's mine.  Earn as much as I can, spend as little as possible, then head for the exits and leave everyone else behind.  You can't say New York didn't teach me anything.  And you can't say I'm not a Carpetbagger.

Tip off

When discussing the Left Bank or Haight-Ashbury, historians of all persuasions will agree on some basic arteries of truth to the Big Questions.  Where and when did it exist?  What were the major causes?  What were its lasting effects?  When the dust is through scattering and settles, early twenty-first century Brooklyn will still emit light to those looking back down the road of time.  I can see the talking heads decades before they speak.  "Brooklyn" will be in Williamsburg, primarily, but honorable mention will be given to anything serviced by the L or G.  "Brooklyn" will be a movement against consumption, a re-imagining of urban America and post-racism running in perfect concurrence with the Obama Era.  "Brooklyn" will be the model for new Bohemia's twenty-first resurgence in cities riddled with post-industrial blight. 

Of course, the capillaries will be subject to debate.  Some will overemphasize "Brooklyn", others will be too dismissive.  Some will ascribe certain influences and influencers too much meaning, others too little.   Some will think it started in the '90s, others will go with 9/11 because that makes for most convenience. 

As for the Final Curtain, this is a rare instance where we know the exact time and place of a cultural touchstone's coup de grace: Friday, September 28, 2012 at the intersection of Atlantic & Flatbush. 

I speak, of course, of the Barclays Center, that faux-rusty oval that bathes in the light of the Best Buy at the Atlantic Terminal.   The developers convinced the government to kick out the residents, under-deliver on sustainable jobs, and destroyed more than a few neighborhood fabrics along the way.  This is already sufficiently documented.

The true meaning of the Barclays Center is Entertainment.  "Brooklyn" came about because a generation of the world's best & brightest did not want the friendly sponsors of Must See TV to decide their hours of leisure.  Together, they decided that could be done in-house.  "Brooklyn" was a back-to-basics with little things like human conversation or witnessing the performance of music in the same room.  You met the artist, shook hands with the chef, and read the blog of the person you went to school with.  It was still Entertainment and privy to the same critique as being all window dressing and distraction while the rest of the world imploded, but there was some authenticity there.  We put a name and a face to our favorite forms of escape.

Now, Brooklyn will have it piped in via the Beast of Convenience.  We can buy our season tickets to watch big men run back-and-forth.   We no longer have to leave our borough to see concerts featuring elaborate choreography on stage.  We can make a quick pass through the mall before going home, just in case we need anything.  For the moment, that's not really us.  But the people for whom that appeals are coming.  And they're likely going to want a parking space.

Does this mean that it wasn't in motion beforehand or that its vestige will entirely disappear?  Of course not.  Brooklyn (not "Brooklyn") is on the doorstep of being the hub of the entrepreneur and creative professional.  Before, "Brooklyn" was the type of place marketers in rimmed glasses and slim cut-shirts would call "edgy" and "hip."  Now, Brooklyn will be where those marketers live.  The artists and Bohemians are leaving town.  Artisanal pickles and bike lanes will be the last remnants of The Circus.  I can see the handlers locking up all the tigers and elephants.  The clowns are taking off their shoes.  It's time I grabbed one more funnel cake and got back in line for the Tilt-a-Whirl, just for nostalgia's sake. 

Counting

It happens this time of year.  Autumn, in both nickname and manipulative manners, is entirely geared toward descension.   The leaves fall.  The temperature drops.  The light dims.  We turn our calendar pages until but one remains.  And then.  And then.  And then.

This is one we actually don't think about.  Okay, New Year's Resolutions matter for the forethought, but nobody really follows through with them except sadists and the overly religious.  People are generally more concerned with where they'll be New Year's Eve than they are for the first three months of any given year, unless they're about to give birth.  And Spring?  It is lovely, except that it's never quite hot enough for those most miserable during Winter, and they're always the most vocal.  Summer is unequivocally cruel and only celebrated by those in educational institutions and the clinically stupid.  Show me someone who enjoys humidity and temperatures north of 90 and I'll show you the who's who of most likely to camp out for the newest iPhone.

Fall is the only time of year people do not want to end, die-hard snow-sport enthusiasts excepted.  The next day will likely not be any better than today.  There will be less light and more cold, but it's not that we're dreading tomorrow; conversely, we still have a few major holidays remaining.  The Good Ones.  With our families and shit like that.  So we stand in the one time of year that we're content enough to just let it be today.  The sales of Nativity calendars are nothing if not pure irony.

So then I found myself drumming on a steering wheel yesterday, counting the days remaining in this particular post.  Eight.  It's a once-per-week gig, and I will miss one day for "vacation", so it's expiration is not all that imminent.  I'd be lying if I said the counting was entirely arbitrary, because the act was in anticipation of The Big Move.  I'd also be amiss were I to describe the act as a desperate bargaining act for deliverance or some self-pleading for assurance that it would all soon enough be over.  I like the job fine enough, even if it doesn't make me wet and lustfully ripping off my garments.

Maybe that's just the metaphor for Life as I happen to find it right now.  It looks super great and we're all having fun, but maybe there's something lacking below the surface.  Not that I wish it to change right now; I might even be in the autumn of my New York Existence for a nice little bit.  I just might take a little more time to appreciate all those things that should be given a little more time to be appreciated.  Good friends.  Late night bars.  People with whom I agree politically on every street corner and nook and cranny in between.  Let's throw museums in there, even if it's disingenuous. 

And I'll keep counting.  Some days it will be in anticipation.  Others in sheer terror.  The one certainty is that it will always be down.

I was young

Every time one returns to a place they were formerly is an opportunity to gauge what hath time wrought.  We can wax nostalgic about the smell of a baseball glove or out-of-body ourselves when the radio sounds out that same tune playing when we got our first backwoods handjob.  Any place we've been is a place of memory, thickness varying.  And when one knows of their imminent disappearance or departure, each moment might as well be sealed in amber in their own mind's eye.

Is there anything special about Brooklyn's 7th Avenue?  Arguably, I guess.  It doesn't belong in the guide book, but there are far worse places to drop your kids off at school or do your grocery shopping along.  It's also one whose pavement I know very well, not from having lived along it, but from years of commuting by bike or patronizing its bars or stopping into one or another of its establishments for any one of a number of things.  It is there, just like I was, over the years and again last evening.  It will be there like I soon will no longer.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  I will not be the sole party breaching this contract of memory.  7th Avenue has changed since I first saw its pavement, though less than the rest of this Great Goddamn Apple.  This city has more identity crises than to be found in any returning soldier, a product of the millions of delusional dreamers and quixotic outcasts who stuff themselves into micro-living spaces in the name of personal freedom.  We roll in like thunder and leave like the last drops of rain caught on post-storm branches; even when we fall, we still find ourselves clinging.  And while we're stuck on that branch, if we take the time to look around, we see that the world has changed around us.  In shades and nuances, sure.  But when we're a part of the bigger storm, some of us find that the difference is worth remark.

When did you live in New York, they will ask.  2005-2012, I will respond.  2005-2012, they will repeat, mostly to themselves, and they will stare up at the ceiling deep in thought.  I will wait a few seconds to respond, out of courtesy, and when they have not been able to hazard a prompt reply I will then inform them:

I was young, once, and I moved to New York in the latter stages of the Boutique Dumpling Phase and the onset of the Falafel Craze.  Cupcakes were still in high fashion, long before the advent of the Mini-Cupcake.  I worked hard and paid rent and lived my life well through the Banh Mi Sandwich Explosion and the Ramen Age.  I reasonably partook in Meatball Mayhem, saw the Meatpie Emergence for the sparkle and fade for what it would be from the get go.  I always respected the food truck and remember fondly the days when coffee shops had couches and acoustic rock, before it was fashionable to transform them into Scandinavian industrial spaces.  There was but one Chipotle that I knew of.

Back when I moved here, compact discs were still sold inside stores, not exclusively on sidewalks.  Smart phones were non-existent, so I saw the last days of New York's See-And-Be-Seen Era, before it became Check-In-To-Be-Checked-Out. 

I lived in the East Village during its great epoch between AIDS and needle-sharing and its resurgence as post-fraternity row.  I had nights out in Williamsburg and Greenpoint back when there was a discernible difference between them.  I lived in Prospect Heights when one couldn't find a bagel, but had several options to get their hair braided.  I was here when Park Slope stayed open past midnight, when Crown Heights was a No Go, DUMBO was for artists, and remember that, sometimes, it felt like I was trying to gentrify Sunset Park all by myself.  I lived in Brooklyn before the French started saying tres Brooklyn.

I was surprised by the inelasticity of the mustache and never quite got swept into flannel.  I never wore a pair of jean shorts and stayed away from tank tops and neon-rimmed plastic sunglasses.  I always went for the beer-and-a-shot, folded my slice properly, smoked weed in bar gardens, pissed on shiny condos or abandoned lots (never single-family residences or architectural gems), told people I was a writer, Shazam'd good tunes, read The Onion on the shitter, drank from The Turkey's Nest in McCarren, and was down to go where you were in case it offered something better.  And through it all, there I was: earbuds in, a full beard, riding atop an old Schwinn, comfortable inside my hoodie.

I was young, once.

Never forget

There's not much that makes the Big Book.  Under the bold assumption humanity will not have self-immolated entirely by then, students of American history two centuries hence will still know 1492.  Lexingon, Concord.  Abe and the First World War, if only for the great prelude to its more captivating sequel.  The Cold War will be a highlighted term, but not a subject that receives even a full class period.  Obama's picture will be there and George W. Bush will be mentioned.  Ditto Iraq, Afghanistan.  On the syllabus these latter four will all fall under The 9/11 Era.  If truth is objective and we set aside our fears of third rails and conversational bogeyman, we are left but no choice than to give credit where it is due.  Osama bin Laden claimed that he would bring America to its knees.  He was right.

This is the one where I unequivocally state that what happened on September 11, 2001 was terrible, horrific, tragic, or any other adjective that seems woefully inadequate.  I'd use them all, but you get it.  Burned to death by ignited jet fuel at a white-collar job on a Tuesday morning ranks right up there for worst ways to go.  The dream is to expire in close proximity to ones you love, painless and complete.  Many of these people spent their final hour on the PATH train at rush hour. 

With my sympathy credentials established, we can resume talking about the great villain who, in all his hubris and prescience, predicted that he would get the biggest domino to topple.  The statement was pure bluster and I'm sure even he was astonished at what ensued.  There had to be several follow-up questions to those with news of the outside world while he was holed up in Tora Bora: 

They did what?!
Really?!
You've got to be fucking with me.....really?!

A good quarterback always thanks his line and so too should Osama have given proper acknowledgment to his supporting cast.  We all know the story.  America's first special needs Commander-in-Chief with Dr. Strangelove calling the shots at Number Two.  White bread simpletons manning the levers of executive oversight, channeling some bizarre bloodlust that breeds in two-stoplight towns.  Corporate America wrote the checks, cashed in on a generous net, and everybody did their part to help the free press stuff its nuts down the part of the throat where the truth is supposed to come out.   We doubled-down on consumption and discovered that, oddly enough, having millions of the country's Best & Brightest flipping real estate in the sunny states or watching numbers scroll on computer screens as their principle occupation was not exactly the cornerstone of a robust economic model.  There've been a couple other things too.

The unspeakable tragedy of September 11 is the tragedy of what is not spoken about.  Somewhere in the past eleven years our Great Leaders made a killing off our sucker bets in the Shell Game of our iconography.  We traded the good parts of the Bill of Rights for the unadulterated reverence of a pair of office buildings. 

I would say it's propaganda, but I don't think it's deliberate.  The irony is simply too thick, even if the projection is so painstakingly simple: Let us mourn all those who died in the office buildings.  Let us never forget the office buildings.  Let it be known that we will not allow our office buildings to be attacked.  Let us now build more office buildings, and we will all work in them patriotically.  Except for the ones we need to go do the dirty work.  We'll think about them while we're reading our cell phones at Qdoba.

And it's eleven years later and tomorrow we will talk about how we are all victims again.  Those who actually did lose a loved one, whether it be that day or in the conflicts our Great Leaders leveraged out of our fear, will find the grieving grounds a little crowded.  Sometimes the bumper stickers don't sate our need for attention.  We'll all be happy to know that history is taking note.

Moving day

Not the Big One; we've still got to flip the calendar for that one.  This was of the relocation variety; more something that occasions a gripe on Facebook than a warm and fuzzy personal missive to all those known and others that could have been known better.  Just put out the bulletin and see who wants a couple Friday evening beers in exchange for hauling some rice bags stuffed with hangers and neglected shoes to the fourth floor of the next place you will never truly sink into.  Ah, home.  Or, the best approximate for what a home could be for someone transient even by Brooklyn's loose standards.

What floor was it on?  How many guys helped out?  How many have you done?  This sadistic act of swapping living spaces is the Big Apple's national sport.  If the ancestors could picture me sweating in a stairway, laboring over a Case Magic stuffed with CDs I haven't listened to in a decade, they would've toughed out the Potato Famine.  And the Bolsheviks.  The reprisals after the Spring of Nations would have been nothing compared to this sad envisioning of their progeny. 

This is what keeps us packing light.  This is what keeps us vigilant.  This is what makes us truly New Yorkers.  Moving in New York is the only thing that makes you feel more naked than the day you were born.  At birth, you're bald, covered in blood, slathered in acne, and more resembling a Mongolian appetizer than a living soul, but at least you haven't developed your conscience.  Stand outside a brownstone next to the same flannel bedspread you used in your college dorm room brushing against the urine-soaked pavement, beside a crate full of books that include the Spanish-translated Harry Potter series, and then tell me you could possibly feel more vulnerable.  Throw in the fact that it's all in a borrowed Volvo that won't start and you've just promised food to a half-dozen and things can get a little tense.  Not like September's hot enough as it is.  Fortunately, we're resourceful, New Yorkers that is, so we know to go down to the auto yard at Clifton and ask if they know someone with a van.  He's Franky and he'll show up in a half-hour, and the next thing you know you're out $60 but it's nighttime, Evan Williams sitting beside you, and you can stare out at the bags containing everything you own, and you know that you'll unpack most of them.  You might even hang one of the framed pictures.  But not too many.  Best not get carried away now.

Temporary digs for temporary people.  People do not move to New York and have their Oklahoma Moment: stick a flag in the ground, spit against the wind, talk about where they'll milk and the strong farm hands they'll breed.  This is the city for the tortured souls, those who want to treat their life like a concrete Slip n' Slide with a broken hose.  They hand you beers along the way, but the only certainty after the experience is that you went on the ride and that you're somehow better off for it.  It's a bit like the military, but our tattoos are not supposed to have a common thread. 

Which is all to say......something, but What Exactly seems to be a bit elusive.  All I really know is that I should be having Poignant Thoughts about how this will be my Final Apartment in the great New York City Experiment, but that still feels a bit too early.  Or too late?  By this point, I don't even know.  I'll just stare at my books and think about how I really don't want to read Faulkner.  I'll look at an African mask and think about how I don't want to hang it.  I'll look at my sheets and think about "making my bed", but I'll just refresh the Evan Williams and give myself a mulligan.  I just got here, after all.  Best not to push myself too much.  I'm newly born and fully exposed and feel like, for at least this night, I can be a thumbsucker once again. 

For those keeping score at home
0 for 3 last week, including a Buffs loss.  I didn't get laid, but might as well check to see if I got the clap by some vengeful deity anyway.  Fortunately, Sportsbook.com gives a bonus registration credit and I've got $15, all of which will go to Oklahoma State (-10.5) over a shaky Arizona squad.  It's still Alabama's title to lose, and this feels like the week A&M justifies its conference presence with a Solid Win over the Gators.  Georgia's good, but they're consistency is in the early season choke job and that just might come at Faurot Field.  Buffs, unimpressively, by 17.  LSU mauls the Huskies.  Don't be surprised to see Sparty fall.  The game slate is shit this week, so, in other words, a great one to spend outside.  You'll find me on a barstool anyway.  And never, never-fucking-ever, wager confidently in the first week of the season.  It's time to get professional.

On hurricanes

A tree grows in Brooklyn.  A willow weeps in Louisiana.

Let's allow our subject to broaden to growth and survival.  Time and place.  Let's speak of life's ephemeral moments and its indelible permanence.  After all, we now face the onset of autumn, our annual changing of colors and the subsequent arboreal casts' shedding in preparation for frozen winter.  A practice since long before Whitman, yet one that seems new each time around the bend.  If you recall, Whitman did see a live-oak growing and I can't seem to remember just why I began writing about trees.

Ah, yes, Louisiana: that's where he saw it growing.  That's also where last week's radar projected a giant windy cinnamon roll would reach this continent and wreak some serious shit on man and sedentary nature alike.  There was some attention paid.  We're talking multiple refreshments of The Weather Channel homepage, over-the-shoulder glimpses of televised weather reports in other people's homes, and a few attempts to see if Twitter had Isaac trending while I was relieving my bowels.  It most certainly was and they most certainly were.

My first thought was for the health and well-being of all who lay in its path; their safety primarily, the preservation of their possessions and surrounding environs a not-insignificant, albeit distant, second.

As if.

I was thinking about me.  True confession suggests noting that I wished Hurricane Isaac would not destroy New Orleans before I lived there.  Bear in mind, never did it cross my mind that I hoped it would not destroy the crescent city while I lived there.   After all, that would be a story.  The hurricane leveling a great city before I could live there would be like talking about not seeing my favorite band because I couldn't swap my shift at the California Pizza Kitchen; like turning down sex with Dream Girl because I couldn't resist masturbating to a rerun of Silk Stalkings.  It's describing something you would have done, but never did, and the whole moral of the story is that you'll seize any opportunity to tell a story. 

I didn't want to be the guy who was going to move to New Orleans but then it got destroyed.
I didn't want to be the guy who thinks of another place to move just to keep in accordance with his calendar.
I didn't want to be the guy who gets lost any further.
I didn't want The Great Spirit to send me an additional, unequivocal semaphore that my lofty ambitions are entirely fucked.

But then, it didn't.  And then, the clouds parted to reveal the post-storm landscape for what it was, and what it still remains.  And we're not talking about a desire to wade through waist-high shitwater for its own sake, or for bragging rights as the experience's derivative.   The point is that as I sat in air-conditioned coffee shops and condo-shaded wine bars, I saw a tree growing in Brooklyn.  Several of them.  For a few, their roots splintered the pavement at just that right distance between the curb and someone's front yard.  For others, they were of middling height and undignified stature and placed as though they were the final answer of some coffee-addled Yale landscape architect's senior thesis.  New York campaigns to plant one million trees.  New York tells its dogs not to piss on this one here, that one there.  New York sees a tree as an appreciable asset; something to dull the neon din of that goddamn Duane Reade across the way.  In Louisiana, if it can remain through a Hurricane, so it shall remain. 

And we're stepping back here.  Projecting.  Because there is the city where trees are a part of some vision for the next urban aesthetic, and there is the city that just wants a reminder that something can survive.  The city that reinvents and the city that rebuilds.  The city trying so hard to become that urban planner's wet dream, and the city that just wants to get back to what it was.  Both are so desperate.

But then again, so am I.

And so I see a place where people live because it's close to the F train.  And I see another where life must be so great that they would rather spend weeks bailing out the shitwater of dead neighbors than moving to higher ground.

Never eat in an empty restaurant.  A teetotaler is not to be trusted.  Aberrations abound, but show me the city nobody would ever struggle to live in, and I'll pull out the atlas and point out one million places that aren't New Orleans.

Bring on the shitwater; I see a Live-Oak growing.