I don't need a car in NYC

I sold my '98 Volvo. My beloved silver Volvo station wagon with the heated leather seats that felt like my ass was ablaze; the distorted speakers; the handy coffee cup holder; the not so great brakes; the engine that started in the morning like it was waiting for me all night. I want to lay down in the driveway and weep.

I had no idea I would attach such meaning to a car. I've sold cars before and didn't care. It's where my son learned to drive; where I took the kids to and from school, friends' houses, camp. It's taken me to PTown, NYC, and points in between. It's been cried in, loved in, laughed in, sang in. It's what the poodles run to from the park with Weetzie at the helm.

Home

What will I miss about this house? I want to say nothing. This is how I feel about a house: it is not home but the return-to place for the people, the dogs, the plants, the objects, the familiarity of a kitchen, the geography of a place, the exclusion of strangers, where there's light and dark, shelter. Home, on the other hand, is everything that gets into my heart. California desert and ocean are home, even the 405 to the beach and the smog-infused sunset. My children are home. Friends. The poodles. Streets in Manhattan. Familiar emotions. To be known also feels like home.

I raised my children here partly. They were 10 and 13 when we arrived like immigrants coming to lesbian land for acceptance and approval. It turned out not to be that way. New England is as cold in temperment as its winters. Theo flourished here. He made good lasting friends, did well in school, started his acting career. Rae was saved from the homophobia of Long Island but she's not an easy fit, like her mother. That's Theo's growth chart, above, from inside his closet. Rae's is at Russell's in the city. Now I'm taking that with me in a photo, so there's nothing left here that I need.

Last days in NYC as a Northamptonite

I got off the F train at 7th Avenue, Brooklyn. It was hot and I had been walking in Soho since morning waiting for Theo. He and I had a quick and tense lunch. I want him to help me move and that just disrupts his whole life. The F was not the right train to take because it was a long way from 7th St and 7th Ave, one block from the apartment. The "7" is what threw me. When I hit the number streets I thought, "I'm almost home."

I am almost home. NYC is my home.

That was on Friday. What a tiring day that was, and having to fill out financial forms for the landlord made me a nervous wreck. I started spinning in the gloom cycle: my credit will suck and I won't get the place; the buyers in Northampton will change their minds; the poodles will cost a fortune to groom here; how will I sell my car; what about health insurance when I'm old; why can't I remember the name of that nail polish color; etc.

Saturday was the most glorious day. The sun was brilliant. I went to the farmer's market in Grand Army Plaza, then stood in the Brooklyn Public Library taking in the smell of books and feeling at home because a library always grounds me to a place. A library card is one of the first things I get in a new city. When I have my library card; I'm home.



Next I went to the Brooklyn Museum to see a show of the best pieces from their collection of fashion design in the US from last century. Exquisite. The young woman who took my photo in front of the museum was adorable. She was with her mother and friends to see the show and was dressed as high style as she could. She wanted to take a really good photo of me and while I was just me in a kind of shleppy outfit, she posed like a fashion photographer, crouching down, her long legs impossibly wide for just that right shot. Fabulous.



The rest of the day was the best time. Theo and Kayla met me on 6th Ave and 4th St. We went for lunch at French Roast and then over to Chelsea. Kayla had never been to Chelsea Market or the High Line. Theo wanted to show her everything. I feel very fortunate to have a son who says, "We HAVE TO go into the fish market. I LOVE the fish market." He's such a mensch.





That night I took the train back to Northampton.

Not a good moment

Something always triggers the anxiety. Yesterday it might have been a sick girl in Soho and I have a phobia of people throwing up. When I see that, I dissociate. Self-doubt, always lurking at the side of my mind, creeps in and I start ruminating.

"What if my credit is awful and I don't get the apartment? What if no one helps me pack my things and I have to pay thousands for a moving company? How am I getting the poodles to NYC if I sell my car? What if the buyers change their minds? Who do I think I am to live in a fancy area like Park Slope? What if I never work again? Why am I not married? What if I spend all the money from the sale of the house and am middle-aged and destitute? Why am I middle-aged and have no retirement? What do I do for a living anyway? Am I a fraud, an imposter, an uncredentialed phony?" and so on and so on and so on.

Today is a gorgeous day. I feel much better. I may go back to Northampton, but I would love to stay and spend the day with Theo. I'm leaving J.'s. She has to work at home. I'll go to a cafe and the Brooklyn Museum. I'll see if I can stay overnight at Theo's and drive back to Northampton with Leah tomorrow.

Park Slope, ho!

I'm up at 6am. My mind is racing with logistics and decorating ideas. When I lived in Manhattan, Park Slope was where wealthy faux-bohemian white liberals lived. Now I'm one of them, though I'm a faux-wealthy, non-bohemian, white Jewish middle-aged liberal. The apartment is grimy, a little dingy (dingey? it's not a small boat. that would be "dinghy," i think. like I said, it's 6am).

I'm not even a block from Prospect Park. It's a beautiful park. Very manageable as parks go, unlike Central Park which is like a patchwork of small countries. It's trying too hard to be something to everyone. Yesterday on my way to and from meeting my new landlord I walked through the park. I saw a mom's exercise class next to a playground for toddlers only, adorable!; men speeding around on zillion dollar bikes; rollerbladers (still?); dog walkers, that will be me. It all made me so happy!

There's a lot of work that has to be done to the apartment. I will not live with dirt and grime. I'm not a broke grad student. But I'll make it happen. I'll make it lovely.

My new apartment (windows lower left):

apartment pain

I found a place and gave it up. It was a little too on the outskirts, a little too expensive for no good reason, a little too little, a lot too dark. I rented it because I was afraid I wouldn’t find anything. All day realtors showed me places too teeny, too makeshift; apartments that screamed: you’re sacrificing everything for the neighborhood.

After I signed the lease I went to dinner for Mother's Day with my sweet boy Theo, and J. After Theo left, J. and I got into a conversation with a couple of slick characters who were a little high. The woman, who chewed big hunks of steak like a cow, gave me long looks with her heavy-lidded eyes and told me she was a writer. “Google me,” she dared. The guy was a lanky redhead with a not unpleasant face but a gaze like a horny eagle. He was from "Europe," he said, without being more specific. Europe and hipster-hangout, Williamsburg, apparently. They were both on the prowl.

It didn’t take long before their cryptic self-promotion got tedious -- especially after the Banksy film the night before -- so we left. When I did look them up I found that, in fact, they were a writer and a filmmaker. They reminded me that NYC is a place where you can make it if you have the confidence and determination.

******

At 4am I was staring at the ceiling cursing myself for signing that lease. I don't have to act from desperation and fear. I'm going to be alright. I'll make it again in NYC like I did when I was 25. I have to have confidence and determination. At 8:15am I called and cancelled the lease and the owner was obliging. For years now I’ve been scrambling, trying to figure out how to make the right decisions without much guidance. I know I have to heed my hesitations; trust that when something doesn’t feel right, it’s not. I’m wearing a necklace right now of the word “trust” cut from a dollar bill and set in a small glass charm. I’m not going to panic; I’m not going to settle.

22 days left.

argh!

This morning I was so sure I would find an apartment. The realtor's enthusiastic pitch seduced me. (I never could trust a salesperson.) All the apartments I was excited about were rented. The bottom line is that as soon as a nice place comes on the market, it's gone, this being NYC, the island of sharks. I can be a shark. I just have to be a local one. I don't know how I'm going to find a place to live all the way from Massachusetts.

So instead of watching me mope, J. suggested we go to the movies. We saw Banksy's faux-film about renegade street art: http://www.banksyfilm.com/ at BAM's Rose cinema

Street art makes me hungry for NYC again. Street art is unifying. Everyone who sees it is connected to one another as an unwitting audience. Maybe that's me being sentimental.

(These 2008 photos of the tanks and the bunny are Banksy; Obama's poster is Sheperd Fairey)






24 days.

Fingers crossed and 25 days

I'm in Brooklyn with a kickass $10 manicure. That's one of the things I love about the city. That, and fresh pasta in a flour-dusted pasta shop, walking through a cloud of salty smoke to buy mozzarella, fish on ice in Chinatown, Indian sweet shops, coffee that is never weak, crispy croissants.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


J. and I are going into Manhattan soon to wander and have dinner. Getting dressed in NYC is not like it once was. At 26 I didn't care if my feet my hurt hours later or if it got chilly in the evening. Decades of high heel-wearing later, I couldn't give up heels entirely despite foot injuries from years of running. So now I have my trusty Nine West low-heels in several colors. They're not exactly stilletos; they're the sneakers of my heels.

where I sit sometimes and what I see

26 days

The dogs and I were in the same corner park we go to everyday at about 4pm. Unless it's iced over, we're there. Sometimes other people are there; kids in the playground, guys shooting hoops, the roofer who says "hiya", the handsome biracial man from the gym -- but more often there is no one there but me and the dogs.

Today I saw an ordinary schlubby guy; rounded shoulders, potbelly, white t-shirt, shorts, sitting on a picnic table eyeing us. I let the poodles run free, threw the ring for Weetzie, watched Roxy snatch it from her and take off. It's a beautiful day. Warm, no humidity, breeze, clouds. I smiled, wanting to be relaxed but this is not a relaxing time.

Then my friend over there on the table started in, with a grating whine, about the economy and how rich people like me kick him down. He followed us around the park, at a distance, but close enough so I could hear his rant. Anyway, it interested me. I'm always a little interested in what crazy people say.

But there's this problem with Northampton crazy people, who generally seem pretty smart and often blend in and are usually not homeless: They're the most entitled crazy people I've ever come across. The New England reserve doesn't mix well with excess, things out of bounds, extremes of any kind, so the "ordinary people" make the crazy people into local folk heros, which I guess is an attempt to make them cute eccentrics and not the symptom of society gone wrong. The result is that a ranter expects others to be polite and give him space and let him rant. Crazy entitlement. They know what they're doing.

But this guy annoyed the hell out of me because I'm not rich, "with money in my purse," as he said (I was carrying a lime green environmentally friendly reusable shopping bag with dog stuff in it). So I didn't speed up my pace or change my direction to avoid him. In fact I walked toward him but he scurried away from me. Maybe he detected that I could be crazy too; that I was on the edge of something.

When I got close enough, Roxy ran over to him to play. That guy sprang straight up into the air like a jack-in-the-box, knees to his chest, feet way off the ground. I never saw anything like that. Then I called Roxy and said, "I'm sorry my dog ran to you," like a nice person does, and it broke the spell and he knew I was just another ordinary person.

Grass 2 tall

This is my lawn and it's only going to get worse because I don't know how to start the lawn mower. It's a gas mower and the guy who said he'd help me take the armoire from the attic to the garage if I give him the broken air conditioner to use as scrap metal said he'd give me $50 for the mower. I put it on Craigslist for $75 but no one is biting. Gas mowers are passe these days. I sold the push mower in a second.

post garage sale

This is my garage after my garage sale last Sunday. I made $370 and I don't know what's missing. I need to get rid of all this stuff.

Counting down

Twenty-seven more days in Northampton, MA.

The awful buyers finished their last round of contractors today. The car I stupidly leased for someone else is going to be returned on Friday. I've been feeling so powerless, played upon, so broke. Knowing the buyers are actually going to buy the house and stop being entitled brats and that the car is being returned, though it's costing me a lot, seems like such good news in comparison to the uncertainty of days prior. Stick and rubber band.**

I walked around the town today. (Northampton is really a city but there's nothing city-ish about it.) I tried to feel like I'm going to miss it. The wide-opened sidewalks with few other passersby, the cute cafes, the trees everywhere, texting across the middle of the street without getting hit by a car. But I couldn't well up that feeling of nostalgia. That's what longing for a place is about.


** "stick and rubber band" comes from the Crosby Street loft days when I was married to Russell. The landlords wanted the low-paying grandfathered-in artists out and so they would not fix anything as a form of harassment. The elevator barely ever made it to anyone's floor without lots of opening and closing the metal gate doors and fiddling with the gears that made it run. Someone had the big idea of putting a stick in a faulty lever and holding it there with a rubber band. We thought this was brilliant until an upstairs neighbor said, "We've settled for a stick and rubber band?" That's become my analogy when I think something's great but realize I'm settling.