The Umbilical Yo-Yo Act (Asheville, NC - Brooklyn, NY)

I'm in my bedroom getting dressed up. Favorite purple velvet jacket, a silk shirt and slacks, I'm not going out dancing, or drinking, or this month's party to end all blah blah blah, I'm taking myself out to dinner. At the new French-Farm bistro restaurant on Cortelyou where married couples with three kids go to feel romantic and elegant in Ditmas Park. And then I'm coming home.

I just came back from a three-day vacation in Asheville, North Carolina. The liberal haven of the South a slice of San Fran in the heart a' dixieland. I vaguely knew a couple people and found a host on Couchsurfing.com (a road-tripper's dream come true) and took an awful 19 hour bus ride + 5 hour mini-van ride with family to get there.

And it's quiet. It's peaceful. And then I get a phone call from one of my employers informing me that I forgot some important paperwork in my last shipment to them.

FUCK! And I thought I was on vacation. So I call home all frantic to get my dad and brother to track down the stuff which was right on my desk and send it for me and while we were chatting, he asked me to cover a tour for him on Saturday. Which means coming home Friday, which means cutting my 5 vacation down to 3 1/2.

I earned this vacation. I worked (and yes, partied) like a dog this summer, then moved out of a crappy apartment just to spend a nice few days in somewhere that was whole-heartedly NOT New York just to get yanked back by the. . . (Wait for it. . .)

UMBILICAL YO-YO!!

The firmest bedrock of my life is my endless gratitude for being raised in such a blessed family and household in such a rich, brilliant city.

But GOOD, GOD!!!! WHAAT THE FUCK DOES IT TAKE TO GET AWAY FROM YOU PEOPLE ONCE IN WHILE!!!!

There was Contra-Dancing! And pretty girls in country dresses who just wanted to DANCE! And crickets, and the most amazing dumpster-diving a budget scavenger could ever ask for, and I swear that the weekend had so much more to offer, but I had to cover. For my dad, because he didn't want to work on Rosh Hoshana.

Now I could make a big deal out of the "fair-weather Jew" phenomenom (his favorite food is shrimp) but that's not the point, the point is, when he needed me to cover for him, I did, regarsless of being 700 miles away because it's family. And in my case, you can only get away, until you feel the cord tugging.

There's another reason. I'm writing this from the big bedroom I graduated into when my older brother went to college. The bedroom I spent the latter part of my adolsence in, living back home. Rent free. Dad's house once again.

That apartment I mentioned before was number 2 of bad apartment choices I'd made in New York, each resulting in Dad taking me back in (always rent-free!) because, well, it's family. We're all in this together.

So tonight's the fancy dinner celebrating my successful vacation, which in total cost less than the money I'm going to make giving directions to a bus driver and chatting up adults from Where'zat?istan to various places throughout Queens for 6 hours.

It's a good life. Even if you have to escape it sometimes.

Coming next: An (abridged) review of Asheville, NC

Day of the Dust Cloud (republish)

This was the post I wrote a year ago. I'm sorry, I'm very blocked and can't seem to get anything down.

It's nice to reflect sometimes

It started like any other Sunday. Later than most of my other days, for which I was always grateful but still a day I had to work, the last day of my five day week: a sunny, yet breezy morning, probably pants today, not shorts. Then over breakfast, my housemate Sean, also a tour guide for Grey Line says to me:

"The first tower was hit four minutes ago." My first response was a flashback. Of someone in my campus dorm, up in Amherst, Massachusets saying something about a plane and a tower as I was brushing my teeth, still shaking the night's crust from my eyes. I then snapped back to today, my second reaction being just an instant of "Oh no, not again." By the third instant I had caught his meaning, and remembered. Today's The Day.

And to be honest, I have no personalized reason to comemorate The Day. I didn't know anybody in the towers, and knew nobody who lost someone. My greiving was the public greiving of acknowledging that my home and my city had been attacked, and in the collective sense, we were all sharing one large wound. I mourn my being removed from the scene. 200 miles away, going through the motions of class schedule and college routine for the next three days until I threw a handful of clothes into a pack and hitch-hiked my way down the I-495 until I was back in Brooklyn and could see The Dust Cloud personally, from across the Fulton Landing.

My life wasn't changed substantially, but the next three years being removed from my city made me feel like I couldn't experience how the city was dealing, adjusting, and preparing to move on. I remember on holidays home from school, walking around the financial district wondering if it was just a psychological block, or if I was just so removed from the experience that I couldn't find the border of the site. In saw the wreckage only once in it's still smashed, war-zone state before I started bringing student and senior groups to the spot so they could snap photos and I could give my memorized speech of facts, events, and praise of our Heroes.

I'm fifteen months out of college now, my first 9/11 feeling finally re-integrated into the rhytms of my city. Watching the rapidly gentrifying over-the-river spots of my beloved Brooklyn. I'm participating in the arts scene in Williamsburg, Greenpoint and the still-rebellous Lower East Side, which is desperately trying to scream away the encroaching Starbucks' and six-figure bankers. I'm laughing bitterly at the meager efforts of the democratic primary, wondering which clown is going to win the 4-runner rat race, just to crumble under Mayor Mike's billions in campaigning and pro-active approach to development and city improvement. Even if it is typical corporate-centric profiteering behind most of the public-works projects Mayor Mike is advocating, I have to say: one of the first things I look for in a mayor is compitence. And he exudes it a lot more than any of the Democrats.

New York City's evolution of the past 20 years has been astonishing, and the past four in particular have showed how powerfully the city has been reborn and continues to grow and evolve for the better. Except in that one sixteen acre depression between Church and West, Liberty and Vesey. A place that has remained for four years as a pit, both literally and ideologically. The tour bus drives past it one block removed on Broadway. Which is a lot less removed than I feel some time. I am a New Yorker, yet I personally have no say what will be there. And I, just like those who are actually making the choices that will change the city permanently, seem to have no idea what should be there either.