A Different Start to a Different Day

My arrival into LAX was usual, except for having to collect my bag at the baggage claim because Delta had me board the overbooked plane so late, waiting until the last minute to decide they didn’t need my volunteered seat. While I kept one ear out for the moan of the carousel starting up, the whir of bags whizzing by and passengers leaping to retrieve them, I chatted with the Australian who’d been seated on the aisle of my row, previously distracted by a chatty Californian woman between us. He’d just spent three weeks in New York and was dying to talk to someone – especially someone who’s lived there for 13 years like me – about it.

I explained my mixed feelings about it, largely because of having spent so much time there, so he asked me what I was doing in California. I gave him the standard reply of client meetings / informational interviews instead of saying, “Getting away from New York.”

But the real answer is the latter.

I woke up this morning to the bright gray-white overcast pallor of Los Angeles morning skies, where you can rarely actually see the sunrise and usually have to wait for the low-hanging cover to burn off and clear. It makes it harder to get up in the morning, but still easier than in New York. It helped that the birds were chirping, the same annoying screech as the birds I’d seen near Fryman Canyon off Mulholland Drive. And I knew there’d be a kitten downstairs who’d be happy to see me, as happy as I would be to see her since I realized she’d left the comforter on the foot of my aerobed to go sleep in her own, in her master’s bedroom. By then, she’d already done her job: her purring had lulled me to sleep in a new place, on a new bed, in a new time zone with a host of new anxieties about things like car rentals and renting out my apartment at home.

Now the kitten is curled up on my lap, lulled to sleep by the muted clicking of my keystrokes, having thoroughly cleaned herself with impossible acrobatics, and intertwined her legs in a most unnatural way. Her tremendous, pointy ears might twitch, but mostly she is still, calm, breathing, no longer purring, creating a spot on my lap much hotter than I’d expect for such a slight, lithe animal.

I’m thinking of the hikes I want to do, the groceries to buy, the wifi hotspots to seek (as my laptop doesn’t seem to jive with the house’s wireless router), but for now, I think I’ll just sit here and watch Puzzles breathe. And if she wakes up, I might let her bite the tips of my fingers again, one by one down the line of my left hand, until she doesn’t realize her own strength and really hurts me. But, you know, it doesn’t really hurt all that much. How could it, when she is so teeny?

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Back to LA

I'm headed back to LA tomorrow.

People keep asking me, "Do you like LA?" and I say, "Well, I like California..."

Inevitably, the reply is, "Well, that's different."

But still, how could I turn down the chance to return to Southern California to housesit for yet another friend, this one in a totally different part of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area that I have yet to fully explore? So far east - past Downtown LA - that it might actually be a bit...not like LA at all?

My trips to California this year keep getting longer: the first one in March clocking in at about a week, my last one in May about 10 days, and this one just about two weeks, only three weeks after having returned from the last trip. Still, it's nothing compared to the month I spent in Joshua Tree last summer at this time. And that month was nothing compared to when and if I actually move to the west coast.

What will I do in two weeks' time? Connect and reconnect. Look for work. Hike. Photograph. Write. Drive. And take care of a friend's newborn kitty that likes to get itself into trouble.

What more can I expect?

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Trying to Unhook Myself

At the end of last week, I called Time Warner Cable to cancel my digital cable service.

Ever since I spent a month in the California desert last summer, when I had no TV access at all and watched just a handful of shows on my laptop, I haven't been watching much television. In cold months of deep depression, I might troll Turner Classic Movies or Classic Movies On Demand for some Cary Grant movie to transport me out of my apartment and into some exciting, exotic place anywhere but here. But now that the weather is nice, Guiding Light was cancelled, LOST was a big disappointment, and VH1 plays music videos too early in the morning for me to catch, I don't really see the point of flipping through the channels to find something remotely interesting to distract me from my own life, or to just have noise on.

I'd rather write, listen to music, or start packing up my apartment.

So why, then, when I was actually on the phone with Time Warner, did I allow myself to be convinced to keep my cable?

On the surface, the argument the phone representative made was compelling: if I kept my internet service through them, that was already $45 by itself, and paying  an additional $18 for the broadcast and public channels wouldn't actually save me that much money. I might as well take advantage of their current promotion which would reduce my bill to $99/month, and I wouldn't lose any services.

I acquiesced, figuring saving $12/month was better that saving nothing at all.

But still, I sit here in my apartment, staring at a television which is more often off than it is on, and I start to think the prospect of saving another $36/month actually is that much money. And I would still get to watch General Hospital and say goodnight to Craig Ferguson every night before tucking in.

It's hard to let go, though. Television was my only periscope to the outside world as a child, and all those hours of sitting on the living room braided rug in front of MTV as a kid eventually helped me win the game show Name That Video. When we moved into our first apartment in Brooklyn, my roommate and I were trying to save money and decided to forego cable, but after a few months of watching M*A*S*H and The Box on a tiny, scrambled screen in my bedroom, I signed us up for the full package and paid the bill myself.

The prospect of living without cable now - even if I don't use it - feels like reliving that terrifying level of poverty I had in my early 20s in New York City, a level of poverty I didn't even have as a child.

But what's the point for paying for access to something you don't use?

The scared little girl in me that feels trapped in this place would like to know that there's still that periscope, something to show me what the world is like outside....

Cross-posted on Extra Criticum

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Photo Essay: Riverside Park, W. 125th St. to W. 59th St.

I'd been wanting to check out Riverside Park for a while now, but it turns out that today, I only got to see a little sliver of it.

The park itself is bisected by highway 9A, which splits the park into a riverside greenway and a more forested park along Riverside Drive in upper Manhattan.

I stuck by the water. Walking along the Manhattan side of the Hudson River is like gazing through a window into the rest of the world. Everytime I looked up to my left, I felt the claustrophobia of the city closing in on me. By the river, the boats, the driftwood, with the sun burning my exposed right ear, I felt...open.










This is one of the few outdroppings of driftwood that hadn't been piled up into a tower by someone feeling particularly artistic.



The farther south you go - and the farther away from Harlem - the nicer it gets on the greenway, with lots of landscaping and plenty of green despite the proximity to the highway.



And then the park itself splits off from the original shoreline into an artificial boardwalk.



Past the 79th Street Boat Basin, the park starts to get really nice, reflecting the increasingly high caliber of local residents.



Ornamental grasses are planted along a memorial lawn, with interpretive historical signs pointing out the former railyards site and even some deteriorating ruination, including...


an old gantry...


pier remnants...


and a crumbled steel structure that succumbed to a 1971 fire at the old Pier D, clearly visible from the highway.

There are some other historical markers for the various points of freight and passenger railway history, and even an old New York Central train car on display. It's a fascinating visit for anyone who also likes Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City, or even The High Line.

Like those parks, there are plenty of places to stretch out in the sun - either on a bench, chair, stool, rock, pier, or lawn. It's also bike-, pedestrian-, and rollerblade-friendly.

And even though the nearby West Side Highway is rumbling beside or above you as you stroll along, you can forget about the city for just a little while...



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A Father's Day Dedication

Just a brief note to acknowledge my father today, on Father's Day.

We have not spoken for over three years, but I must admit that without my father, there would be no sense of adventure in me, my life, or this blog.

With little money and zero resources, Dad managed to plan family trips to New York State's various natural wonders and historical sites within driving distance from Syracuse, not the least of which included Sylvan Beach, Chittenango Falls, Howe Caverns, High Falls Gorge, Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondacks, and Fort Ticonderoga.

I didn't always understand where we were going or why, but I would have taken any excuse to spend time with my father.

I'd like to think that he'd enjoy some of the adventures I go on now.

Here's the song he'd always play when he taught me how to dance, Santo & Johnny's "Sleepwalk."



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A Little Extra Curricular Activity

I've recently become a contributing writer to the site Extra Criticum, an online forum for artists on art. This is one step further in my attempt to accept that I am, in fact, an artist. Shhh - don't tell them otherwise.

You can see my first blog post, "A Work In Progress," here.

You can ogle my photo and bio here.

You can keep track of my entries here.

Some blogs will be shared between this site and Extra Criticum and will be noted as such, but other ones will be exclusive to Extra Criticum, posting at least once weekly.

Hope you enjoy.

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Life In Transit

I spent the first 17 years of my life doing basically nothing, going basically nowhere, living in the same house, sharing a room with the same sister, eating the same foods over and over again, and riding my ten speed along the same streets and within the same perimeter as on my first bicycle with training wheels and blocks on the pedals.

Then, the long-awaited shakeup occurred: I left home, and went away to college.

Before then, I'd rarely ever spent the night anywhere except in my own bed. My sister and I had shared a double bed at our aunt and uncle's house one night when our parents had to be out late, my knuckles constantly slamming into the adjacent wall, and the frame constantly creaking under our shifting bodies as the sound of trains kept us up all night. Other than that, I'd convinced my mother to allow me a couple of nights over at a friend's house, but my return the next day was always so nightmarish and abusive that it almost wasn't worth it to venture out.

After a year in college, things got so bad with my parents that eventually my father sat me down and said, "I think it would be better if you found somewhere else to sleep."

Little did he know, I'd already done that. Too many sobbing, late night phone calls to my friend Nicki had caused her parents to get a room in their attic ready for me, ready for whenever I needed it. I moved in the following summer, after bouncing around from friend-to-friend's house during the fall break, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and spring break that followed my eviction from my childhood home, a prison from which I was more than happy to be released.

Unfortunately, after only two years, I wore out my welcome at Nicki's house, too, and was back on the market, looking for a place to sleep.

Most of my adult life has been spent bouncing from bed to bed, from couch to couch, sometimes catching winks in conference rooms, cars, libraries, and bar banquettes. I slept on the floor of my own first apartment in Brooklyn in 1997 for a month until I was able to retrieve my childhood twin bed from my parents' house. I moved into a new apartment a year later, into another one three years later, into another one a year and a half later, and into my current apartment, where I've slept for nearly six and a half years, my longest run anywhere, ever, since childhood.

But it's not just my sleeping quarters that have changed, allowing me to get some rest relatively peacefully pretty much anywhere except the bathtub. Since March when I let my gym membership expire, I've taken advantage of every guest pass, coupon and trial membership I could find, bouncing me from various dance studios, fitness clubs, and public pools until my pass runs out and I have to move onto the next one. For the last 15 years, nearly every date has been different, rarely making it past the first one and never really getting used to just one person. Every rental car has been different, making nothing more familiar than the initial orientation session of adjusting mirrors and seat and searching for blinker, headlights, hazard lights, emergency brake, and gas tank. And now in the past month, I've ridden three different kinds of bikes, with various seat heights, gear shifts, bells and brake locations.

Somehow, after having been locked in a tower as a child, my life has taken such a dramatic turn in the opposite direction that nothing is more usual or normal than the new, the different, the unfamiliar, the unexpected, the unpredictable. I just expect it to be that way now.

I think all the upheaval in my life has given me an advantage over those who have dated one person longer, pedaled more regularly but always on the same bike, and driven their own car into the ground. The activity itself is just as - if not more - familiar to them, but only in one very specific context. For those people, if the pillow, lighting, or temperature in a hotel room is just slightly off from what they're used to, they're not getting any sleep at all.

As my lease nears its expiration at the end of August, and I still don't have a plan as to where I'm going to live - which borough, city, state, coast? - I wonder if I have to live anywhere at all. Do I have to sign another lease? Do I have to commit myself to another place, to choose where I'm going to be for the next year or ten, limiting my options of jobs to work, people to love, and trails to hike to only those within the immediate vicinity?

Or is my challenge now once that was very familiar to my young adult self: to simply find somewhere else to sleep?

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Photo Essay: Not Your Typical Jersey Shore

I suppose when most people say they're going to Atlantic City, they plan the kind of debauchery that most people only see on MTV: gambling, drunken beach house antics, tanning, and bottle service at the club.

When I go to the Jersey Shore, I look for abandoned buildings, lighthouses, boardwalks, and hiking trails.

Edith and I wanted to go exploring south of Atlantic City particularly for the historic district of Wildwood, an oceanside resort town that's still somewhat of a throwback to the 50s and 60s, when the "Doo Wop" architectural influence left its main drag lined with glittering neon signs and motels themed after exotic places most people only ever saw in movies. And that was the point - to give common people a taste of not just Hollywood, but Rio, the Sahara, Monaco... It's essentially the same aesthetic that allowed similarly-themed casinos to spring up in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, only a million times bigger, grander, and drunker. Each of these places shares the commonality of not really being its own thing: it's a conglomeration of many different things, like Epcot. Or Brooklyn.

Even farther south is Cape May, the southernmost tip of New Jersey. Cape May is very much its own thing, a New England-style seaside town with lighthouses and Victorian gingerbread houses (many now converted into B&Bs) and a rich history of World War activity.

There's even an old concrete German bunker from World War I on the shore of the beach at Cape May Point State Park, visible and visitable when the tide is low.



The nearby lighthouse shows a good view of it and the surrounding marshlands if you climb its 199 stairs to the top (and pay $7).





Nature trails take you through the wetlands that are teeming with frogs, muskrats, ospreys, red-winged blackbirds, and plenty of bugs.





We had the joy of watching a perched great egret preen itself undisturbed, as we tiptoed past and photographed the scenery.





We only had half a day in Cape May, but we could have busied ourselves for much longer - hiking, biking, kayaking, parasailing, and dolphin-watching.

It was an unexpected treat on our trip, full of simple pleasures and quiet happiness. It makes it hard to return to the clang of the casino where we spent the night, and the roar of the city upon our return.

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Back on the Bike

I was sort of afraid that once I'd gotten on a bike for the first time in 15 years in Palm Springs, I wouldn't get on one again for another 15 years.

The traffic in NYC terrifies me, not as a pedestrian, and not even as a fellow driver, but as a bicyclist. As many bike lanes as this city paints on the street, and as much as the city tries to pretend that it's bike-friendly, there are still a LOT of cars on the streets, driven by people who must get to where they're going no matter what.

The bike messengers and delivery guys riding the wrong way down one-way streets and not obeying other traffic laws just make it worse.

So when I found out about Free Bike Fridays on Governor's Island, a patch of NYC land where vehicles are forbidden (except for the random ambulance, maintenance truck, or golf cart), I was ready to get back on the bike.

Besides, like in Palm Springs, I was excited to explore more of the former military island's abandoned barracks and other support buildings by bicycle, especially since the southern half of the island had been closed to the public the first two times I visited.

Back on another Electra cruiser, I stumbled upon a fenced off swimming pool, full of leaves (one of my favorite discoveries in urban exploration)...





An old military strip mall featuring a barber, dry cleaner, and "gourmet" offerings...



...on a whimsically-named street called "Half Moon Road."



A lot of areas in the middle of the island are still fenced off, but you can ride a bike past them and gawk a bit at what's been decommissioned for a couple of years...



...and wonder when the last time a bus stopped there.



(Most of the other bus stops are wrapped in island propaganda.)

There's even a building that used to be part of Coast Guard housing whose windows are blown out and charred, from FDNY experiments with techniques and apparatus used for fighting fires in high winds. That building, as well as several others, is scheduled for demolition.

And then you find something incredible, a new addition to the island that made it feel very much alive: SWINGS.



As though I didn't feel like a kid again enough on the bicycle, pressing my face against chainlink fence, I soon discarded the bike at the curb and ran over to the red-seated set. I sank myself into the seat and my toes into the woodchipped earth below, tiptoed my way back as far as I could go, and let loose. I swung higher than anybody else, with a huge, goofy grin on my face, staring out into the New York harbor.

I only stayed on the swings for a few minutes, because I had five miles of bicycle paths to explore on the island in only an hour. (You get what you pay for...)

I soon became an expert at ringing my bell, rounding corners, and huffing up cobblestone driveways. By the looks of Manhattan now, it maybe doesn't seem like a very New York thing to do, but it was. Just a different New York, from a different time...

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Almost There

I am 19 weeks into my membership at Weight Watchers.

I am 28.5 lbs down.

My initial goal was to lose 30 lbs, the weight I was able to shed in 2003 in preparation for my high school reunion that no one attended. (I actually lost 33 lbs.)

But now that I'm close to that goal, and I realize that the published BMI index of healthy weight for my height is actually more than 10 lbs lower than that initial goal, I wonder how far I can go.

It feels good to be good at something, to succeed.

So why not keep on, keepin' on?

I feel harder, better, faster, stronger, and that I could do this forever. It's not about being skinny. I don't think I'll ever be skinny.

That which doesn't kill me can only make me stronger.

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