Riches and Wretches, Books 25, 26, 27, and 28

After graduating from grad school in May 2003, I got to New York that August, and over the course of my first year, I lived in four different dwellings. Today I’m covering the content in the four notebooks that span that year in New York. You with me? One year. Four apartments. Four notebooks. Cool.

I’d like to say what follows is a love letter to New York, but if so, ours is a complicated love. It’s a relationship, to be sure. New York City has so much personality it’s practically human. A smart, fast-paced, important human that smells a lot like pee.

~ ~ ~

NYC Apartment 1, a free sublet in Washington Heights because my friend Darron was out of town and really generous. It allowed me a rent-free month to search for jobs. (Thanks, D!)

Sept. 4, 2003 My legs and butt and back feel tired all the time and my feet never really stop hurting.

Sept. 5, 2003 It’s so easy to exhaust oneself in this city.

~ ~ ~

NYC Apartment 2, Upper Westside/Morningside Heights. I took over the shared rent of my friend Todd who was performing out of town. I roomed with The Great Joey Collins for a few months and he has become a lifelong friend. However, neither Joey nor Todd felt it necessary to tell me that their particular block on 109th Street ranked as one of the city’s most rat-infested. Thanks guys. Love you.

12-2-03  It’s bitter cold out under a mask of sunshine. It’s like being smiled at by the guy who punches you in the stomach.

12-26-03 I found myself in a church around 9:00 a.m. on Christmas, still in tennis shoes, the proper wear for my otherwise typical religious ritual. I had completed a weak and rocky run. My footsteps were soft and timid. A kind Black security man beckoned me in. He was, perhaps, an angel. Someone was vacuuming. In preparation, I guess. Two people chatted softly behind me. I said a couple of homemade prayers for my family, stared at the Cathedral ceiling, released a couple of well-earned tears, and turned to go. The vacuum started up again. The stained glass seemed to have an eye on me. 

So this is Christmas in New York? 

Little Christmas, little me. 

1-2-04  I sail the air, I swim the city wide, make myself at home in everyone else’s city. It’s their’s and it’s mine and neither of us complains when I kick off my tired shoes and sit on the community couch. Stretch out in the subway. Eat my sidewalk lunch. This city is OURS.

1-26-04  Hustle. Hustle. People in the cold, shoulders hunched up against the cold. Contract up. Try to spare ourselves the sharp strike of winter air. Cuts through, reminds us that we are thin. Cold air can walk through walls.

2-7-04  

chew on your good times

bite them to shreds

pull them through

the spaces in your teeth

press them to 

the roof of your mouth

savor

and don’t be a picky eater. 

~ ~ ~

NYC Apartment 3, Studio on the Upper Eastside. For $794 a month (2004) I subletted from a subletter who subletted from Rolf who was subletting from a rich client, but out of the country for a while. (All three of us were personal trainers at the time.)

3-25-04 Re. a personal training client of mine: 

That crabby crabby woman told me that –and I quote– “your life is not as complicated as mine.” I nearly pushed her off her 3.5-speed moving treadmill….

Go pee up a tree and leave the hard stuff to us.

4-10-04 I felt like I got some real sleep for the first time last night. Dead sleep. Wine-induced. Or wine influenced. Wine-encouraged sleep.

4-17-04 Saturday morning on the Upper East Side.

The apartment I am referring to as

“Headquarters East.”

4-25-04 I love this apartment. Love it. I am so happy here; I don’t care about the funny smell on the third floor of the stairwell, the broken closets, the patched up toilet, the breaking of the law… None of it matters when I wake up on a weekend morning, sprawled across a bed to myself and note the sunlight and the quiet of the space. 

Golden time.

Beautiful time.

My time.

5-22-04 Re. My NYC Friends:  

… we the tired, the sore-footed, sure-footed, they savvy, the sad, the broken-hearted with high expectations but seriously low standards. We aim high and then accept low offers … we walk everywhere. We run. We try to avoid talking on our cell phone too much or too loud or too often in public places, but sometimes we place it to our ear and pretend that there is someone on the other end of an imagined cellular connection who cares and who is large in stature and eagerly awaiting our arrival in a shared apartment not too far away –just two blocks actually, he can probably see me on the sidewalk from where he stands right now in the window– so that loitering guys standing in shadows in front of store entrances will be less interested in our bare legs, our long hair, our confident strides. We are champion pretenders. The best in the country perhaps.

~ ~ ~

NYC Apartment 4, Sunnyside, Queens. A very spacious apartment I sublet for about a month from my friends Uma and Christian. A great place. My commute into Manhattan for 6:00 AM personal training sessions were brutal.

5-29-04 

New York 

with your riches

your wretches

your streets

and your stones

my feet

and my bones

plunder and pound

this dirty old town

the bricks

and the stones

and I’m not 

going home

…

I stumble

I stride

with defeat

and with pride

I run on your roads

I breathe in your smoke

your riches

your wretches

success

and kvetches

the baggage

the trash

the dresses

the flash

carriages, cars

people leaving the bars

tuxes and dresses

bums on your benches

your streets are all wet

your subway of sweat

you’re big and you’re mean

and I never feel clean

you laugh in my face

but admire my pace

your bricks

and your stones

your streets are the homes

to so many souls

who are paying our tolls

and you just keep on taking

and we keep on making

our way through your streets

your sours, your sweets

your bricks

and your stones

and I’m not going home

til I get

what I came for

a piece of my own

6-10-04  Re. a highly self-centered perspective about a song by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole on a mix tape from Amy that she got from an ex-boyfriend named Jeff:  

Did this Jeff guy put this on here so I would hear it? This day? At 5:20 AM? Could he have known that I dreamt of Somewhere Over the Rainbow too? Did Israel Kamakawiwo’ole? When Israel recorded this song, could he have expected it would reach little insignificant me at this moment in time? Fragile and unsuspecting, I sip my coffee-with-milk on a sidewalk in NYC and feel totally chosen.

6-27-04  My 30th Birthday.

I had a small panic attack in the middle of the night that time is not going to slow down and I am at its mercy. 

7-17-04  Re. Riding the 7 train from Sunnyside, Queens into Manhattan at 5 AM:

I sip coffee I’ve made the night before and study the faces on the nodding heads around me. These are a tired people. I am tired, the bags under my eyes evident in my reflection in the window of the subway car. But these people are TIRED. I love them. I squeeze between two workmen guys. I am grateful that they wake up enough to make room for me. I am grateful for the warmth of their denim legs next to mine. We are in agreement, “I’ll make room, you be quiet.” “I’ll be quiet, you be nice.” “I’ll be nice, but no talking.” Sometimes a rider on our subway breaks the agreement. They are noisy and laughing. These people, we assume, are not from here. 

…

I keep my eyes open on the train. I feel my knees against my neighbors knees. I watch behavior. I study lines on faces –the more wrinkled, the deeper those wrinkles, the more beauty I see. I am alone and surrounded. I look for signs of light in the sky. I get to see the sunrise because I am awake. This is my New York. This chip. This slice of time I collect every morning will go toward the sculpture as a whole. I have no idea what it will be. What it will look like when it’s done. But it will have deep wrinkles. That is for sure. 

July 2004. This whole month has been nothing more than a sneeze in the common cold that is my life. 

~ ~ ~

I am going on twenty years since my move to New York. Twenty years is longer than the previous record, the seventeen I spent in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio. But I still feel more like an Ohio girl than a New Yorker. Maybe that’s because during that twenty years there were at least five that I spent on tour or teaching at a university in Michigan. Maybe in another half-decade, I’ll call myself a real New Yorker. But maybe not. Maybe I’ll continue to collect impressions of this spectacular city, impressions that judge, assess, glorify in a way that prove me an outsider looking in. As long as I’m here, I’ll never stop studying you, New York City. Watching you. Waging war with you and against you. You wow me … and not always in the good way. You are never just the backdrop. You are a character in this story of mine. Today, you are the main character. You are the lead. 

~ ~ ~

Then I traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland for the big Fringe Festival.

Aug. 1, 2004.  I am off with a very clean slate! Edinburgh here I come! I am ready for an adventure. Obstacle courses. A safari. I know I’m going to be worn out, stressed out, strung out, but I’m ready for it all. I am desperate for a new life. 

Change me!

Make me wiser or stronger or smarter or humbler. 

Teach me!

…  I’ll tell you about that next time…

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