2001-11-27 - 4:28 p.m.
This morning, I walked up the subway stairs at 34th Street, on automatic pilot as usual. Halfway up I realized that there was light at the top of the stairs, and for a brief second I questioned myself. "What the? Did my automatic pilot fail me? Am I at the wrong exit?" When I got to the top of the stairs, I realized what was different. The scaffolding, which surrounds the buildings at the mouth of the station, was gone. The scaffolding that has shadowed that station for ages, and I noted that it made everything look completely different. From there I went off into my usual non-linear rambling thought process, which went something like this: It's definitely been there since I worked at Po1o, hasn't it? Yeah...I wonder how Amanda is? It was really lame of me to skip her baby shower, but it was all the way out in Central Jersey on a Saturday, oh, and I'm going to miss Chris' birthday drinks and she'll be mad since I also skipped her cocktail party and I don't really care anyway because I like her as part of a group but we really don't have our own friendship, the street looks so different without that scaffolding, like walking off the train into a different place, and hmmmm, I never did do anything about that story idea I had from the conversation with that woman in the elevator.... and all of a sudden, I realized.This week is my two year anniversary of my new life. Thursday, it will be two years since I signed the lease on my new apartment, since I walked away from the life I knew, the life I expected to be living.
Because, really, I never imagined that, in the short slide into 35 years old, that I would be single, childless, and living in the Village. It never occured to me, not seriously. I thought I'd be living in the suburbs, with my kids making the transition from babyhood to kidhood, surrounded by family and home and animals. That was my plan, you know. And I am perfectly cognizant of the fact that a life plan is, technically, bullshit. Nothing more than a handful of wishes, connected by a timeline. We can never plan life, and that's as it should be. But still. Those illusions die hard. And, as anyone who has been reading knows, I'm far, far happier than I've been in, well, as long as I can really remember.
I remember my first week in my new apartment. I had just started a new job (because I like to do all the life changes at once, don'tcha know..) and I had stopped working 15 hour days, and I'd rid myself of the commute. So that first week, I'd leave work at 6, and be home by 6:15, and I'd walk in the door, still thrilled with the newness of my apartment and my neighborhood, and think, "So now what do I do?" All that time on my hands, and no way to fill it. I was so unused to do things for myself, and here in the city I didn't have anyone else to do things for. There is a certain pomegranate candle, that I sometimes buy at Ricky's, and when I light it it takes me right back to that time. My tiny apartment without a couch, without a table. I'd go out at night and walk around for hours, committing the winding streets of the Village to memory. I'd make mental note of the places I'd want to go, compare the drugstores and grocery stores, check out the parks. Consciously, purposefully constructing what was to be my new life.
And now, two years later, I realize. It may not be the life I planned, but it ain't half bad.
I went downstairs to get coffee just now, and when the elevator came there was a small, middle aged Asian man in there with a very serious expression. As always, I braced my arms behind me on the railing that runs around the elevator car, and lifted myself off the ground, over and over, feet crossed at the ankles. And the man turned around and yelled at me, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Jeez, dude, take it easy.
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last five entries:
done - 2005-09-16
playgroup, my ass - 2005-09-15
late, but heartfelt - 2005-09-13
she lives - 2005-08-18
cheese me - 2005-05-20