So some pretty awesome things I've seen and experienced during the last week in New York City.
-Three thuggish looking fellows get on the subway, talking "n----- this, and n----- that" and acting all tough. They sit down, and the first one pulls out a battered Jonathan Kellerman paperback and starts reading. The second one pulls out the latest James Patterson in hardcover. The third one pulls out Danielle Steele.
-A group of incredibly boisterous loud teenaged boys comes barrelling down the subway stairs next to me, as I'm carrying Georgia down in her stroller, rather precariously. I hear "whoa whoa whoa whoa." and one of the young men says "Are you ok? You need help? You allright?" and a couple of them help me down the stairs with the kid, and then run off being all boisterous again.
-A young girl with huge earrings and a bad attitude gives up her seat willingly to an elderly gentleman on the subway.
-Doors are held all over the city for the kid and I.
-I notice some pretty gooshy looks shot in my general direction when I start kissing my baby's head on the streets or on the subway.
-Some NYOBs (New York Old Bitches) in fur coats and diamonds and shoes and bags that cost more than I made in all of last year offer to help me with doors and packages and the baby, and whatever else I need. (NYOBs are the type who dress in the manner described above and look down their noses snootily at all of the riff raff that they're forced to encounter on the streets. I was feeling pretty cranky towards most of them, but then I started this great game of trying to get them to smile at me when I'm walking down the street.
-Lovely young businessmen on the subway offering to help me out with the kid, or gently assisting older homeless women into seats on the trains, or catching somebody who falls running down the stairs...
This city is so full of love and kindness. It's pretty amazing. I see it directed towards me, and towards others...
Of course, there are the VERY SERIOUS PEOPLE, and there are quite a few of them, but I'm pretty sure that they have hearts somewheres in there.
I'll find them. Really.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
you can't always get what you want...
I've moved to New York City since the last posting. I think when I last wrote, I was very much in denial that this was actually going to happen. And now it has. So here I am.
Many strange things have happened to me since I've been here. More on that after some background information.
I read "Expecting Adam" by Martha Beck, and in it she talks about sometimes feeling as if events in her life were being controlled or influenced by Bunraku puppeteers. She felt as if there was this great invisible force, or forces, that helped her through very tough decisions, life-threatening situations, and the discovery that the child she was expecting was a downs syndrome baby.
And in "The Artist's Way" Julia Cameron talks a lot about synchronicity. Jung, I guess, coined the term. Wikipedia says: "Synchronicity is a word that Swiss psychologist Carl Jung used to describe the "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events."" Cameron writes about it in terms of getting what you need. For example, you decide that your heart's desire is to become a classical pianist. Then the next day you discover that your next door neighbor is a retired pianist with the London Symphony Orchestra, and wants to give you lessons for free.
Personally, when I read "The Artist's Way" for the first time some ten years ago, I thought that the whole thing was bunk. Of course, I was 21, and I thought that the concepts of faith, spirituality, and god were bunk as well, but that can be forgiven. Right?
Eventually, I started to notice synchronicity happening in my life. Probably the best example of it happening when I was least expecting it was when I decided to leave my boyfriend of four and a half years. I remember standing behind the cash register at work and making a very conscious decision to do it. Then I started freaking out about all the minutia. How was I going to afford to move out? Where would I live? What would I be able to take with me? On a 15 minute break, I walked across the plaza to the library, sat down at a public computer, and somebody had left the off-campus housing website up, with a room in an early 20th century farm-house (huge, gorgeous) for a whopping $185 a month and no deposit. It was just sitting right there. I wrote down the phone number, called, and two weeks later I had somewhere to live, fully furnished, within my budget (I was making $5.83 and hour) and full of beauty.
With this move to New York... things have just been going right. All over the place. I haven't found a job yet, and I'm getting a little bit stressed about that, but I also know that I can't really expect such things to happen on the timeline that I want them to, you know? And I also know that I need to hold out for a job that will fuel me, not kill off another piece of my soul. Although, I think I am getting stronger than that.
I want to write for a living. I want to write books. I'm trying to work towards that end. The problem that I'm really facing is trying to figure out what I want to do between now and then. Trying to take positive steps towards my goal. Trying to make this happen. Especially when I've spent the last week of my life being a 24/7 concierge to a 16 month old child, who admittedly, is one of the two lights of my life. The other one being a stressed out 35 year old in Christiansburg, VA.
Things will go right in this regard. I know it. Can feel it...
Many strange things have happened to me since I've been here. More on that after some background information.
I read "Expecting Adam" by Martha Beck, and in it she talks about sometimes feeling as if events in her life were being controlled or influenced by Bunraku puppeteers. She felt as if there was this great invisible force, or forces, that helped her through very tough decisions, life-threatening situations, and the discovery that the child she was expecting was a downs syndrome baby.
And in "The Artist's Way" Julia Cameron talks a lot about synchronicity. Jung, I guess, coined the term. Wikipedia says: "Synchronicity is a word that Swiss psychologist Carl Jung used to describe the "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events."" Cameron writes about it in terms of getting what you need. For example, you decide that your heart's desire is to become a classical pianist. Then the next day you discover that your next door neighbor is a retired pianist with the London Symphony Orchestra, and wants to give you lessons for free.
Personally, when I read "The Artist's Way" for the first time some ten years ago, I thought that the whole thing was bunk. Of course, I was 21, and I thought that the concepts of faith, spirituality, and god were bunk as well, but that can be forgiven. Right?
Eventually, I started to notice synchronicity happening in my life. Probably the best example of it happening when I was least expecting it was when I decided to leave my boyfriend of four and a half years. I remember standing behind the cash register at work and making a very conscious decision to do it. Then I started freaking out about all the minutia. How was I going to afford to move out? Where would I live? What would I be able to take with me? On a 15 minute break, I walked across the plaza to the library, sat down at a public computer, and somebody had left the off-campus housing website up, with a room in an early 20th century farm-house (huge, gorgeous) for a whopping $185 a month and no deposit. It was just sitting right there. I wrote down the phone number, called, and two weeks later I had somewhere to live, fully furnished, within my budget (I was making $5.83 and hour) and full of beauty.
With this move to New York... things have just been going right. All over the place. I haven't found a job yet, and I'm getting a little bit stressed about that, but I also know that I can't really expect such things to happen on the timeline that I want them to, you know? And I also know that I need to hold out for a job that will fuel me, not kill off another piece of my soul. Although, I think I am getting stronger than that.
I want to write for a living. I want to write books. I'm trying to work towards that end. The problem that I'm really facing is trying to figure out what I want to do between now and then. Trying to take positive steps towards my goal. Trying to make this happen. Especially when I've spent the last week of my life being a 24/7 concierge to a 16 month old child, who admittedly, is one of the two lights of my life. The other one being a stressed out 35 year old in Christiansburg, VA.
Things will go right in this regard. I know it. Can feel it...
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