Is it cold or is it hot? Is it raining or is it not?
Today
began as a fabulously beautiful Fall day in New York City, 55 degrees and sunny. A perfect day to run the New York City
Marathon. I watched the race start on TV
from my couch while eating Pop Tarts. I
toasted the runners’ vigor and motivation and courage with a frosted raspberry
toaster pastry.
In
the afternoon I went to Midtown and bought a digital piano. Did you know that Manhattan has a piano district? I love New
York!
Purchasing a piano is perhaps not the wisest move for someone who was
just laid off, but I have wanted a piano for so long and now I will have the
time to practice. It will be good for my
soul to play again. The piano will be
delivered next week. I’ll have to find
some sheet music. I hope I can remember
how to read sheet music! I’ll have to
take lessons. Yay!
The
piano is a Technics SX-PR603, with a sort of cheazy-looking simulated
wood-grain veneer cabinet (which is why I opted for the fake black instead of the
super-fake cherry) but the weighted keys have great action and it has 24 piano
sounds, all fully customizable, a 16-track sequencer and an 8-track
composer. There are 32 drum kits
preloaded, a great selection of instrument sounds, complete accompaniments and
endless other things that will take me years to figure out how to use. And the concert grand piano, large hall
effect heavy on the reverb, sounds incredible in headphones and impressive
enough through the four “on deck” speakers.
Yay!
After
buying the piano I took the R train down to Astor Place to see some friends about our
upcoming Thanksgiving trip to Bear Mountain. Thanksgiving at the Bear Mountain Inn means
obscene amounts of food, ice skating on the outdoor rink, brisk walks around
the lake and warm, crackling fires in the lodge.
It
was too early to see my friends so I loitered on Astor Place. I called my ex-boyfriend and still dear
friend, Jeff, to tell him about my bold piano purchase and went to Starbucks
twice. Two different Starbucks, at
least. One across the street from the
other. No joke.
It
was night when I left my friends. The
police had blocked off the streets surrounding 9th Street and 4th Avenue. A suspicious package, I was told. The bomb squad was just showing up. I stood for a few minutes, waiting for an
explosion and talking with other bystanders.
“How
do you pick out a suspicious package on a sidewalk in New York City?” I asked. “It’s probably someone’s laundry,” a woman
said. “Or a homeless guy’s bedroom set,”
someone else said. “What a sad state of
affairs we’re living in,” the woman said.
I stood a little bit longer with them before walking around the closed
off blocks to view the action from the South side. The closed off blocks included 770 Broadway, one of my
former offices, the headquarters of the division that just gave me and 130 of
my former fellow co-workers the boot on Halloween. I wondered if one of the casualties of this
lay off was disgruntled enough to drop off a suspicious looking package outside
the building… ?
I
didn’t like that I could envision from experience a building exploding and people
falling to their deaths and others screaming and running in the streets. And it bothered me that I was just standing
there on this night, in front of the evacuated Kmart, waiting to see it all
again. Thankfully, the thought finally
crossed my mind that if there was going to be an explosion, I probably did not want to be standing in the street gawking at it. This would not be a wise tactical battle
maneuver.
So I
went into the Kinko’s next door to get four copies of my script made. Since it was going to take an hour, I went
across the street to Barnes and Noble. I
looked at the new 2002 calendars of Zen sayings and eerily disturbing Salvador
Dali paintings. I read a little of “The
Oregon Trail” and flipped through picture books of Egyptian pyramids and a
handy little “Jane’s Military Helicopters” guide. I want to be able to recognize what type of
chopper is hovering outside my window, in case I need to reference it in
conversation. Is it a Huey or a
Chinook? Is it an Apache attack
helicopter or a Commanche? Is it even
American?!
Barnes
and Noble was closing so I went up to McDonald’s. McDonald’s on Broadway (any of the ones on
Broadway, really, but I’m talking about the one nearest NYU) ranks as one of
the most repulsive dining environments I’ve ever been in. It’s high volume, to say the least, and dirty
with muck on the floor. Unfortunate
people who have no place else to be sit in the restaurant for hours. The odors emanating from some of these people
makes eating a Big Mac challenging, like eating trash dump worms on a
dare. So I took my Big Mac and apple pie
back to Kinko’s.
There
was no place to sit as usual so I ate standing on the sidewalk between Kinko’s
and a pile of trash in the street. I
kept an eye on the trash pile for one of the “aggressive” rats that NYC is so
famous for. A giant rat suddenly lunging
for the apple pie in your hand is not such an unlikely thing to happen
here.
I
finished my apple pie without incident with rats or unfortunate humans when it
started to rain.
The
guy at Kinko’s boxed and wrapped my script copies upon my request, although he
didn’t believe me that it was starting to rain.
“Probably water from the air conditioner,” he declared. I just laughed at him. How ridiculous is it not to believe someone
who says it’s raining? Do I look like a
person who can’t tell a few drops of condensation from a bazillion drops of
rain falling from the sky?? Sheesh.
The
bomb squad had cleared out and traffic was flowing normally when I left Kinko’s
with my bundled copies of hope for a fulfilling future. I took the N train to my re-opened City Hall
stop. The wind and rain was picking up.
Walking home from the subway station I passed a group of firemen who had been
“congregating” as one of them was saying on his cell phone. Not sure at this point if they were
congregating to honor or to protest something.
Or to loot. God love them.
At
least I can walk down Warren
Street now, which is the most direct route to my
apartment from the City Hall N/R station.
The walk was dark and lonely.
There are not many people out Downtown at night these days. Alone on the Downtown street, I engaged in one of my favorite, rather obsessive-compulsive, walking games, which was to identify the best sniper positions in nearby buildings and the
best corresponding places to duck for cover if any shooting or exploding was to
start. The song played in my head
repeatedly from that fifties school film about atomic bomb safety, “Duck and
Cover”. “Duck! and Co-o-ver…”
Even
my dentist had told me to seek therapy.
Crossing
Westside Highway
at Warren, one
block South of Chambers where the new Ground Zero no-entry line has been
established, is dirty and can be hazardous.
The enormous empty dump trucks come skidding out of the mud pits that
once were our beautiful baseball fields, basically heading directly for
pedestrians in the crosswalk before turning to go South two blocks to the
still-smoking Pile.
The
loaded dump trucks heading North out of Ground Zero are hosed down at the
opposite corner of Warren and Westside
Highway, right at the crosswalk. The truck drivers and guards wear
industrial-strength respirators and the men washing the trucks wear full hazmat
gear. Makes me feel naked walking by
them, just sucking in all that unfiltered air.
I wonder, how is it that these people standing one block from my home
are in danger of breathing bad stuff but they tell me I’m not? Do the lethal particles try to avoid
collateral damage to innocent citizens as our bombers in Afghanistan
do? If so, I don’t think I like those
odds.
An
armed National Guardsman in full camouflage and respirator stopped me as I was
maneuvering between the incoming and outgoing dump trucks and contemplating
smart airborne benzene spores. “I’ll
have to check your backpack and make sure your cell phone works,” he said. “Uh, okay,” I said, taking off my back
pack. Then he laughed and put his hand
on my shoulder. “I was kidding you,” he
said, “I just wanted to see that pretty smile up close.” Well, I did smile when he said he was
kidding, but really I was thinking “if you weren’t wearing that respirator I’d
shove this phone up your left nostril.”
It
was harmless checkpoint flirtation, but the thing that most bugged me about it is that
I was so quick to agree to show him whatever he wanted and I didn’t think about
questioning his right to search me. Or
even ask for proof that he was actually a National Guardsman.
Of
course, I live in the financial center of the world, which was recently the
target of the most vicious attack on the United States ever
perpetrated. This is war. Under these circumstances I apparently, and
some would say appropriately, have no rights to resist arbitrary search and
denial of easy-access to my home. I have
to do whatever they say when they stop me while I’m walking home.
I
don’t know what to make of this or really how to act. Should I turn to the Constitution or to Miss
Manners for guidance on wartime citizen-to-soldier behavior etiquette? Sometimes I am overcome with anger when the
cops and soldiers say, you can’t go that way tonight, you have to walk up five
blocks and around that way. Or, no cabs
allowed in tonight, sorry Ma’am.
Sure. Fine. Does lugging my suitcases and groceries a
mile through mud puddles, while dodging oncoming trucks and maneuvering around
vehicles parked on the sidewalks, qualify as patriotic? Will Tom Brokaw recognize my sacrifices for
the safety of our nation?
Maybe
I don’t need a therapist, just an attitude adjustment. I really do want to react to all of this
appropriately. I am not usually such a
flippant, self-absorbed person. Okay, I
am usually self-absorbed but not to the point of dismissing efforts for homeland
defense as annoying inconveniences. At
least, I would like to think I am not that self-absorbed! *sigh*
Resuming
the trek home, I stopped at my neighborhood deli to buy milk, bananas, Cap’n
Crunch and cigarettes. Diet of
champions. And me!
One
more block left to go and the wind tunnel next to my building was roaring. Ah yes, visions of winter-to-come in my beloved
corner of heaven on the Hudson. Brutal!
The rain had really started coming down, but I only had a few more steps
to the door.
Once
inside the lobby, the doorman loaded a cart with the box, picture and poster
that had been messengered to me from my former office. Not much to show for my two years of intense
work there. Of course, I got more out of
that job than leftover office knick-knacks, it just struck me as slightly pathetic
wheeling through the lobby with this huge, brass cart carrying a little pile of
groceries, damp script copies and a few sad, bubble-wrapped remnants of my life over the past
two years.
That
stuff from my office is not worth anything and I didn’t even want it, but
leaving empty-handed felt odd. As if I
would be making a statement that I really didn’t care about anything there and
I didn’t do anything important enough to keep.
See what a good corporate citizen I am?
I didn’t want the worthless crap from my office, but I followed lay-off
etiquette and let them bubble wrap and messenger these unreadable notes, desk
toys and music CD’s to me to prove how caring they are of my needs in these
difficult times. Of course, to be fair,
the people who actually bubble-wrapped and messengered these things were
sincere in their desire to make things easier for all of us who lost our jobs.
To
be fair to the whole company, the exit package they gave me is good. It totals about six months of continued pay,
plus whatever bonus I might be entitled to in January. So I will be getting paid at the highest rate
I’ve earned while in their employ (I was promoted twice and given three sizable
raises over two years), to not work
for them for exactly one quarter of the entire time that I worked for
them. This is a good deal, right? I should stop thinking about what a sucker
I’ve been all this time working so hard for them, right? And feeling bad about all the projects I
started that may never be completed? And
worrying about their future business success?
These are not my problems now. *SIGH*
After
unloading, I returned the cart to the friendly doorman. In the elevator back up to my apartment, I
decided that I would not succumb tonight to freakish obsessions with sniper
attacks and exploding buildings, or self-absorbed annoyance at all the little
inconveniences of living in a war zone, or resentment and fear over my new
unemployed status, or even vague discomfort over the National Guardsman’s
innocent joke.
At
least tomorrow, I will have Cap’n Crunch and cigarettes to last all day and I
won’t have to fight my way through wind and tourists to get to the office in Times Square. No,
tomorrow I will look up sheet music stores in NYC, think about how best to
realize my dream of professional screenwriting, take another long bubble bath
and burn candles to add to my little wax scene of Giza Plaza. My Sphinx looks more like a squatting Eskimo
and I made the Khafre Pyramid too small, it’s actually almost the same size as
the Khufu Pyramid. I want to fix that.
So
let it rain.
