Thirty-three

With the exception of those New Year's babies who have it by way of pure coincidence, there are no ball drops for the Average Joe's personal breathing anniversary.  When we're little, our moms fill the minivans for us and drop us off for bowling or laser tag with pizza and cake waiting at the other end.  Our friends' moms buy us cards and gifts and after a number of years, our own friends have enough money themselves to get us shamefully drunk.  Sometimes we get laid.  Mostly we just hope pictures of the event are not posted on social media.

If one's thirty-third birthday is remarkable for anything, and it really shouldn't be, it would be as one in life's LMNOP sequence.  Like the corresponding Scrabble tiles, the age suggests a potentially versatile and valuable contribution to the Big Board.  It's also indicative of one of those final opportunities to mount an offensive; while a lucky few can score with Q, V, or Z, most are left without a play.

Thirty-three, like LMNOP, is part of an anonymous run.  For the birthday itself, if not at L, then certainly by P, the transition should pass from getting drunk to grabbing dinner.  You take solace in the fact that quarterbacks still playing at your age are at the prime of their game.  You should no longer be in denial that whatever it is you're at the prime of, nobody is paying to see it.  There should be some semblance of a life around you and if you are worth being measured, it is because you have built that life yourself.  Your first notions that you already are Horatio Alger can begin around this age, if they apply.

I muse, I wonder, I reflect, and I still project on these very first few minutes of my own thirty-third birthday.  I have the time.  I will spend it in the company of the one person I am fortunate to know and scan social media to gather best wishes from the rest.  The whole experience will be a reminder that the life I have built, in its immediate form, is still in its very nascent stages.  The Whole Endeavor seems to be a gamble on the end game and we're far enough along that many of my co-players are nervous on my behalf.  Make a show of it, they think.  Quit trying to shoot the moon and just take the points that are resting on the table, they say.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't chewing a bit on my fingernails and guessing what's on my opponents' tiles.

The strategy remains the same.  There's still a few triple word scores remaining, a couple triple letters, and I'm not willing to concede that I haven't already been dealt the tiles and that ZVXQ is not a word.   Happy birthday to me, it's my turn.  I'll eschew the Easy Play once again and keep playing for the big prize.  Sing along, if you wish.

On fish and ponds

Let us speak about their ratio, shall we?

You can be the Big Fish in the Little Pond, or the Little Fish in the Big Pond, but stating that these are the only two scenarios speaks only for poor optics.  We like the metaphors because it gives some illusion of choice in the whole matter.  Yes, my share of the population is far greater in the Crescent than it was in the Apple, but that doesn't mean I'm not still a guy who falls in the three-figure category for budgeted rent.  All politics is local.  Think globally, act locally.  The grass is always greener and I'd be a damned fool were I to believe I was any more consequential because I changed zip codes.  We are all fish of imperceptibly different sizes swimming in one massive, sinuous and connected waterway just downriver from the petrochemical plant.  The wealthy few have the latest scuba gear and are far too indifferent to bring along any laminated identification charts to tell us apart.  Just so long as we don't slow down the turbines, this part of the water is ours.

I would also be mistaken to dismiss the metaphor outright.  This Little Pond has not only smaller schools, but also fewer swimmers worth angling, if we allow ourselves a clearer look at the optics.  Dripping fresh-off-the-boat in a new land with one of the industrial world's worst educational systems is not an entirely bad thing, if we're being selfishly honest about the whole thing.  It's like all the outstanding marks in those audited gym classes suddenly counted toward my GPA upon transferring.  There are still some ropes to master, a little of the Local Nuance, if you will, but I'm already starting a few body lengths closer to the roof.  Being born, for a select few, is not without its privileges.

Still, it's not as if the same rules governing the Big Pond are applicable to this smaller body of water.  My home of yore has a palate for Chilean sea bass and albacore; down here you'd be hard-pressed to find a place without catfish.  To a certain extent, size does matter in both.  But this pond down here is better suited to the three-eyed salamander, the earth-toned bottom-feeder, the mono-finned red snapper.  The grosser the deformity, the least apt for the wholesome New England Sunday dinner table, the better suited one will be.

A rule change this far upstream ain't fair, but this is where I chose to spawn.  Who knows what grotesqueries I've signed up for, what hideous manifestations lay in wait?  Strange Happenings and strong currents all around this riparian zone and I've been advised not to drink the water.  I'm just swimming in it instead. 

West we go

You don't have to go far from New Orleans to reach Louisiana.  For jurisdictional purposes, they might be one and the same within certain contours.  But for those who have been inside the castle walls, the place where grow men sway on cobbled streets with plastic cups is not quite the same as the land that elects the likes of David Vitter.  This here's New Orleans.  That there is something far different.

So I have seen.  The past couple weeks I've been pushing down the handlebars on a rusty green Schwinn through something resembling Real America.  It's the kind of place where the women call you "sweetie" and some whites use Blacks as a noun.  The roads are terrible, the rain is harsh, the radio stations begin with "K," the means of transport is by pickup and people live a proud existence hovering somewhere near the classification of upper lower class.  They are the 18%.

I have been the Stranger in a Strange Land before, but this time I feel both parties have been accentuated just a little more slightly toward our opposing poles.  I do recognize this place, I've let Hollywood and mass media do the set design and arrange the cast for years.  It's a bit like The Truman Show if he had been a viewer long before setting foot inside the bubble.  We all know what stereotypes are, but what about when the papyrus, not just the print, has been set before?  What do we call it when an entire world exists that is exactly as it had been painted for your mind's eye?  That's the West Bank. 

With a little added tension, of course.  To hear one cabbie tell it, Madame Katrina brought some new demographics over the Old River and the residents didn't exactly bake them cookies.  It's not so much that old habits die hard as they live hard, firmly, entrenched into the social fabric of this port town.  For a town accustomed to passing water and itinerant traders, verdant growth from below and hell-breathed cleansing rains from above, it's damn impressive that anything has staying power.  The old formula of poverty and isolation, sprinkled with a little too much credence in Granddaddy's worldview, leaves us with some heel-stompin' racism. 

Of course, that's just my take.  And just who am I?  That's still a work in progress.  Older and firmer than before?  Aye.  But also still subject to the whim and winds around, taking in my surroundings and trying new companions on for size.  A bit cautiously, as you can imagine.  I sure do love the gumbo, but there are a few water-borne illnesses to which I care not to be susceptible. 

Hustle

These things happen.  Not just the writer's block, the writer's pause, the passing of time without production; I'm talking about the treadmill.  This was supposed to be my water break.  Now was the time to raise the chin, open the jaw, spray some fluid in and let the heart beat settle down while scoping out the molded ass of some bored housewife on the nearby machine.  Instead, I'm back on it.  No rest for the wicked or those executing ill-conceived notions about old vehicles.  Odd bedfellows we make, but work we must endure. 

I made it to the Big Easy, albeit with the New York State of Mind.  Not in the sense of wanting to be walking along the snowdrifts laden with cigarette butts or huddled in some trendy coffee shop staring at a screen.  More so vis-a-vis seeing dollar signs everywhere, hearing cash registers ka-ching! at every turn of the ear and whatever onomatopoeia coincides with thirsty creditors with every phone ring.  There is money to be made, money to be paid, and this just so happens to be where I am.  No spare change for the gutterpunks, no drink other than the $2 PBR, no way I'd turn down anything that could generate a little bacon.  I might be downriver and this town may have its own clocks, but we are in the age of global capital.  We're not so different as we'd like to think.

Another city, another hustle.  Another day, another alarm sounding before the roosters.  Another morning of hard-boiled eggs and pushing down handlebars on streets still bereft of cars and horns.  This time, my commute is broken up by a five minute ferry ride across the Mississippi to a point due south commonly referred to as the West Bank.  Once I reach the other side, I get to look up from my gears to see signs advertising boiled crawfish, po boys, and all manner of automotive services.  There are a couple tall bridges and several uninspiring oil refineries.  There are no yoga studios or businesses providing wifi, but I'm sure one or two of them slings drinks for a good three-fourths of this earth's spinning hours. 

It's a chance to see the other side of the muddy tracks at a clip of $20 per hour.  Do something mindless, keep the rent paid, dream about the next job that provides benefits and, if I'm feeling particularly randy, dream about the Big Dream.  That's what the hours are for, after all. 

Tomorrow won't be the same as Tuesday, even if my destination was the same.  Tomorrow I have to hustle back from the West Bank to Arabi with a brief shower in between.  Of course, Tuesday had its own cosmetics via a long overdue hair-trimming as a patron at an otherwise black barbershop in Marrero.  It doesn't really fit into the scheme, be it this brief thread or whatever passes for the Great Saga of my existence.  Except that for some reason, I think it does.

Real Life

No disrespect to Sir Robert, but it's a soft rain that's falling this night.  He's right about the warning thunder, the laughing and the starving, the crawling on the crooked highways.  If there's any vindication to be felt, it's in knowing that the drops fall softer and less frequent than his ominous premonition foresaw.  I could also liken the roof of this second-story balcony to shelter from the storm, but that would be the obvious play.

There is no temptation to read the tea leaves, not that their message could be any less clear.  We're at about that part of the story where we hit the Cue Miss Friends button on the heart every time another hour wanders into the next just a little bit too slowly.  We're at about that time where the true weight of what is left behind is pushing the needle even further to the right, while the what remains hovers near the origin and what lies ahead still too distant to be assigned any value.  Throw in some red ink on the credit card statement, one less zero in the bank balance, and a lot of free time that could otherwise be directed towards reversing the aforementioned trends and the result is something resembling human vulnerability.  Ever the optimist, I'd like to call it a catalyst.

Yes, there have been some thoughts about stability.  This was going to be the move where all the bags were unpacked, those posters finally framed, a tapestry or two unfurled across some newly acquired "piece" of "furniture."  It was this notion of growing-up that most feel at twenty-two finally sweeping over me on a ten year delay.  Something familiar, once pedestrian, suddenly bearing some previously unfathomable sheen.  The vision was so genuine I even contemplated a -gasp!- career.

And I still do, with reservations.  I like the silhouette of myself coming home and setting the overcoat on the rack by the door, a frantic race between the 2.3 kids and the family dog for daddy's first embrace coming into the foreground.  Then the silhouette gets color and texture and I see the bags under daddy's eyes.  The slumped shoulders.  The steak sauce stain on daddy's shirt.  Daddy doesn't look happy so much as relieved, and mommy's about to tell him that Somebody forgot to pay the deductible.

It's life, and it's my misfortune to have visions of it at its blissful worst.  Other people, specific someones from my past, do not share these visions.  They don't share them to the extent that upon relaying the tragicomic tale that is January 2013, they don't see why a bachelor party at a music festival seems less appealing than the one grand said festival's tickets could yield.  Ditto that the connection said yield could do for one's financial situation.  In short, one dear friend who blacks out with frequency and has slept with at least, I repeat, at least one dozen prostitutes is telling me it's time to grow up. 

Maybe Sir Robert was right.

But then one small job began today, and it went as well as it could.  There's the phone interview for fifteen hours of work coming tomorrow morning.  And let's not get too ahead of ourselves here, but there have been two Real Jobs posted for which I have Real Interest and I did apply.  Progress.  Momentum.  New beginnings.

Of course, then the sun sets and the rain does fall and there are no 2.3 kids, no family dog, and nothing to do but cook one meal and look inside oneself.  Today is the first day of the rest of my life.  I spent the last part of it under the porch, watching the rain, flopping down some of them written words. 

I heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin', and it all felt just right to me.

Planes, Trains, & Automobiles

Perspective.  On the surface it's not that great, or at least it wasn't earlier this evening.  The accents had twang, the decoration lacked luster, and the Chinese food was without that certain je ne sais quoi.  Only a cursory glance at the excessive girth of my fellow diners was enough to curb any appetite for a second lap at the buffet.  This is Real America.  And these are the people that decide elections.

It is North Carolina that I speak of, and North Carolina that I find myself in.  As arduous as it was to get myself here, I am left to fear that it may yet be the easier portion of the journey, at least if recent memory holds precedent.  Doubt and inconvenience managed to make the trip, though the former seems to only fully blossom once my eyes meet the Gray Lady like they did this afternoon, for the first time in two weeks.  Writing this tonight is not a man with the at-plate confidence of Mighty Casey.

But it just might be a man with perspective.   As much as I try to appreciate my life and understand its blessings vis-a-vis the slums of India or African dust bowls, I am also hesitant to be so reliant on the comparison.  I have seen destitute places and know that my superficial circumstances will always be better, so I am not assuaged in those moments where self-pity provides the only soothing balm.  I'm having a terrible run and the only comfort I'm finding is in understanding just how terrible it is.

Until perspective finds me, as it did last night.  However bad your day is going, and mine was going relatively bad, try frowning in the mirror after talking about his native Sierra Leone with the friendly cabbie like I did.  His story had to be among the most gleeful to emerge from the country, but that doesn't make it a pleasant experience.  He didn't lose siblings or parents, but he did watch his homeland burn in the scant media attention it received.  I was sure to tip him an extra dollar or two.

Then there's the Amtrak experience.  I tell the conductor Rocky Mount and the stranger besides me parlays my destination into a thirty minute conversation.  I'd guess he's younger than me, enough that I'd put him at no more than twenty-two when he went away to do his five years somewhere west of where I boarded.  He told me the cost of cigarettes ($5), the number of fights he'd been in (four), and the amount of time it took for his wife to tell him she'd met someone else (two months) while he was in the Big House.  I now know what it means to get "browned down" and that spending months on end stealing Blu-Rays from Walmart is not without its consequences.  He says his dad hooked him up at the temp agency and his most reasonable aspiration for the time being is Jiffy Lube or "some shit like that."

And I'm having Car Trouble.

Of course, it works in both directions.  There was some sense of validation the day before when I told the friendly gentleman in seat 12B about the great month of January 2013.  He apologized for laughing; I took it as a compliment.  In fact, I scrolled back through recall to find more anecdotes to pile on, not for an extended run of sympathy, but just to make a good tale better, a fresco more complete.  We can all be someone else's beacon.  From wheels up to wheels down, I was his. 

On money

It has always worked out.  Basic needs have been met, unrealistic whims realized, and my general fancy satisfied when it comes down to the Almighty Dollar and what it could do for me.  That's not to say it's always been easy, and far from it to aver that I let it leave my wallet without a thought.  Being stuck on the sidelines for want of the means to participate is, if not a familiar and recurring scenario, at least not altogether foreign. 

Structured chaos is the appropriate terminology to describe my financial planning and budgetary outlook.  Once I have my cross-hairs set on some long-term target, I do the deeds and sacrifice the lambs necessary to make it happen.  But these aren't houses and tuition and retirement accounts; I could very well die long before any of those come to fruition.  Instead, these by-and-large involve some geographic destination in the not-too distant future where I wish to pass through or find myself relocating for some variable amount of time.  I always make it and it ain't always pretty.  If anything, the appropriate designation is Barely Just.  I do not know of a single achieved instance where I looked back and understood it would have been prudent to work for one more month or save just one thousand dollars more.

The post-college move to Chicago worked out by a thin margin.  More specifically: $12.  That was the extent of my liquid assets after rent and repaying my friend's parents for the security deposit from the month before.   It made for a harrowing sight on the bank receipt and would have been far worse if I didn't have that plum job at a shitty chain restaurant to help blacken the balance sheet in the months to come.

Not more than a year later was the mad quest to pocket six grand to pay for an upcoming year in Southern Africa.  Had to move home for that one.  There was the empty tennis ball canister on the bedroom window ledge to collect earnings from that same shitty chain restaurant (they had a transfer policy.)  I cut out paying for drinks, dining out, ski trips, and basically anything that did not directly go to into the gas tank or pay for parking.  I had to send a certified check by December 1 and secured the necessary funds the night before.  The ensuing month of work was sufficient to pay for the frivolous travel during that year.

In hindsight, I would have moved to New York City with more than three grand.
I would have returned to New York City post-graduation travel with more than four grand or at least one solid job prospect.
I would have secured an additional part time job during the great Novel Writing Odyssey a bit before my bank account sank to three digits.

And I would done any one of a number of things to prevent exactly where I find myself now. 

February looks like it will be all right.  I paid rent and have that all important security deposit taken care of.  My two internet jobs [c'mon everybody, say it with me now: My Two Internet Jobs] will keep accounts current and while I'm not exactly proud to be returning to food service, it should keep me away from the ATMs.  I have a pretty good disposition w/r/t gift horses and mouth inspecting.

Ah, but right now.  Right now.  Well, this is a close one.  I have justenough between maxing out the credit card and my depleted savings to pay for the Gray Lady's repairs, plus the Greyhound fare to get me to where she now rests.  The $25 gift card from dear Aunt Liz will buy one tank of gas, my remaining funds a couple more, and then I'm just banking on the hope that my dear passenger will be able to spring for a couple herself.

It ain't pretty and it sure ain't scripted.  I sit now beside Gate D7 and hope this is the final, happy, hair-of-my-chinny chin chin escape from the fierce jowls of destitution.  All told I'm optimistic.  I simply can't afford to be otherwise. 

Down & In, in New Orleans

O naivete!  O vainglory! O great stupidity self-broadcast for my limited social network to witness in a blazing speed resembling Real Time!

The Gray Lady was fixed all right, new spark plugs and a bug's motor converted and welded into her engine.  The mechanics were pretty adamant about taking a crack at the carburetor, but the issue was idling and I already knew the trick.  Just keep her in gear and feeding gas, even at a stop, and she'd be fine.  Besides, interstate travel does not involve many stoplights or -signs and a couple stalls here and there are pretty harmless.

She met her match on Highway 64, or mile 120, the very morning after retrieving her from the mechanics in Manteo.  I had her floored and 50 mph seemed to be a bit elusive, and after that pause for Waffle House she wouldn't even turn over.  Could be the carburetor.  Might be the fuel injection.  I am pretty much fucked.  With a travel companion already four days late for her appointment with Dear Father, there was no option but to bring my credit card up to the water line and spring for a rental.  The good people at Enterprise took my money and gave me a brand new minivan with satellite radio, space for my limited belongings, and the ability to exceed the speed limit.  The difference between the two driver's seats was forty years and felt like double that.

For those keeping score at home, by this point I am:
1. broke
2. several hundred miles away from my vehicle in Rocky Mount, North Carolina
3. feeling more than a little foolish
and 4. just about to arrive to my new home in New Orleans.

And it was a lovely approach.  Highway 90.  I had satellite radio, remember, so there was a particular stretch of wind-bent magnolias fighting against the morning fog to the soundtrack of The Doors' The End.  Bridges without visibility of the water below.  Obsolete petrol stations.  This was the entrance foretelling years of mystic adventure.

And then I got to my landing pad to find that the landlady was more than a little acerbic, answered to the name Otter, and owned thirteen cats.  The place is clean enough in the afternoon, when she's in the middle of her cleaning rounds, but come morning those felines have had a full ten hours of unadulterated opportunity to shit in every nook and cranny and they have been remarkable in their ability to seize them.  There was a moment, not worth a full recount, involving a pre-shower towel slung over the shoulder and the witnessing of an orange tabby not quite making it to the litter box before a wet and juicy one.  If there has been a lower moment in my life, and to stress that this was not my diarrhea, I cannot truly recall. 

Projecting a Happy Ending is still a bit of an audacious call, but I'm not entirely done either.  I found a new abode for the new month with a balcony and no dander.  The bus should be fixed any day and I haven't given up hope that it can make the second leg of the journey down here.  There's still the credit card to worry about, and food, and gas, and the fate of my employment, but I'll be goddamned if it wasn't over 60 today with a full, bright shining sun. 

The Gray Lady

It was about one month ago that I joined the illustrious fraternity of men who purchase large, used vehicles for the purpose of crossing state borders.  Somehow not having a criminal past does not make this distinction any more palatable.  Even if I'm not hauling some large quantity of contraband or an ex-lover's offspring, it still feels morally ambiguous.  The climate changes, so too the surrounding license plates and signage and accents attached to diner waitresses and gas station attendants.  It is America, and I'm driving through it with all my belongings blocking the rearview with some great promise of Something Better Out There.   Do it at eighteen or twenty-two and the sugar plums of personal freedom and manifest destiny dance in your head.  Do it north of thirty and everyone's thoughts inexorably focus on just what lies behind and why you are rushing so rapidly from it.

I'm reading into that, perhaps not too much, and it's all academic by this point anyhow.  In the end, or at least this particular interpretation of the end, it does not matter how many pieces of auspicious idols I have lined on the dashboard or quixotic dreams adorning the shelves in my head.  What matters are pistons and fuel lines, healthy tires and clean exhaust and an attention span clear enough to make it to the next exit. All it takes is one flash of that Check Engine light on the Memorial Bridge and the next thing I know I'm pushing my life's greatest monetary investment in neutral to Alligator River National Park with the assistance of a great girl and a few kind sheriffs. 

Ever questioned a life's decision?  Sympathize with me as I tell you about meeting mechanics with southern accents explaining the costs attendant to the new motor I just bought, for its purchase and installation.  Imagine my reaction as they tell me it may arrive the following day; watch my face contort as they tell me it could possibly be ready the following day if they have enough time to finish.  Feel my heart beat as I realize that that time necessary to have it ready comes in the form of billable hours with the to whom these hours are billable unmistakeably clear. 

I made a major life decision and it did not go well.  I failed.  I was wrong.  I had some money to begin with, plenty of confidence to spare, and now find myself in off-season coastal Carolina watching myself fall in arrears by both measures.  I'm reasonably confident The Gray Lady will be road worthy once I sign that fairly considerable credit card receipt.  I'm less optimistic this will be the last issue in Dixie, but more than willing to let her prove me wrong.

Still I'm not shaken by The Decision.  It was time to go and nothing has felt so right in a long time.  Part of that is the promise of what lies ahead, however eventual that may be.  There still remains the allure of nights with cold drinks and hot jazz and the promise of having my mind blown by some Strange Happenings in Cajun territory.  I'm also buffeted by the kindness of strangers, be they sheriffs or tow truck drivers or kind strangers leaping out on highways to help a guy pushing a 1971 VW bus on a windy bridge.  Still, if I'm completely honest, it has a lot less to do with transportation and a whole lot more to do with that great girl.

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.