Still no time to write. Forgive me for being a bad blogger but right now, wine, dog and dinner await and it is already after 7 (good god, did I just refer to “7” as late? What’s happening to me!!??!?!?). However, daylight savings + time change and it’s already 11 PM in my head.

All is well, in a way, but I’m still too busy to notice whether all is truly well. Also, there is only dial-up access at my dad’s so there simply is not enough time in the world to get the stuff done online that I’d like to. Although maybe it’s good; I haven’t had at TV for years since I know I will lose my life in front of it, but my computer and the internet certainly replaced it.

That being said, I’m gonna go cook some veggie burgers and watch cable. And go to bed at 9.

I know I should have at the very least written a blog by now, but I’ll tell you this: there are two written, sitting on my not-remotely-working laptop. But here’s the quick rundown:

Working already, nice people, terrific wine, overwhelmed, exhausted.

More later!

Turn your clocks back an hour!

My apartment is empty and clean. It always bothers me that I will clean more thouroughly for strangers than I will for myself. I like this place empty; it feels as though it was too cluttered the whole time I lived here. Of course I had an ailing cat, whose cage was larger than anything but my bed, but I think I also just tried to fit too much stuff in here. It’s such a beautiful space, regardless of the absurd rent. If this place were about $500 a month, I’d say it was perfect.

All last winter, I froze. The heat in this building was never high enough to be comfortable, and every night I slept not just under two quilts but often also had a wool coat or two thrown over the top. Tonight? My last night in this space? Well, our landlord has graced us with his presence and now my room is so hot the windows are wide open.

Today I saw some of the friends I’m really going to miss, and missed some friends who I was supposed to see. It was a hectic day. But tonight, with Mac, Jordi, Mike J., Jon F., “Tess”, and Seth, I saw a play that Jordana wrote (terrific) and another play where Sean was brilliant- too brilliant to be doing anything other than, well, stuff the quality of Mr. Mac Rogers. It was terrific to have so many Virtual Cribbers (a years-old email list) in one place.

I saw Ian for a few minutes today when I loaded yet another box (and a borrowed TV) into the Land Rover. He was headed upstate to unload the boxes, quite literally in a snow storm and all by himself. Sean came by to pick up a case and a half of wine and about a hundred pounds of food. And then dinner after the show, with everyone above, but most importantly with Sean, Jordi, and Tessa, who with Ian have become a family so dear to me I can barely leave them. On the way home, I tried to tell Tessa how important she is to me, for a hundred reasons, how happy I am to know her, and to know she loves my brother, and how thankful I am to have her in my life. I also told her that Ian has become one of the most willing and giving people I know, that he wants to be the guy that comes through in a jam, and that the orbit of people who surround him are a testament to the kind of guy he is. He is the guy who brings people together.

But my goodbye with Sean and Jordana was short. Sean is the best actor I know. With the best wife-to-be I know. He will always come through even if it is a royal pain in the ass. He will always treat you like you are worth it. He will always welcome you. And Jordana, god, I can barely begin. She has embraced me, been good to me on a level that far exceeds family duty, and she’s not even officially family yet. I trust that Sean will be okay, and most of the time amused, if she sticks around. She is also one of the best actors I know. I can’t believe how lucky he is. I can’t believe how lucky I am.

The best, most interesting, most funny and kind, most talented and most fascinating people I’ve met have been through this lucky foursome I call my New York family. Chip, Mac, Scott, James, Lori, Jon, Kellie, Salem, Rick… there are a hundred more. These names may mean nothing to most of you but they mean the world to me. These people and their families, and their friends have made a lasting impression on me of the kind of people I want in my life. I can call them my friends only because my brothers and sisters called them friends first, and I am so thankful, so ridiculously grateful.

And now I’m off to do a final 1 AM cleaning, a final trying to shove everything in my mountain of a bag. (Which reminds me- I promise not to tell anymore dorky stories like the one from yesterday about the novice photographer. I mean, you can’t take me seriously if I do.) In six hours I will say a final goodbye to this apartment, and my time in New York, and though I know I’ll be back, it won’t be until I have a damn good reason to return.

So, like I’ve mentioned, I’m working on a novel. There are theories floating around about the content of my novel, but I haven’t actually told anyone. Which brings me to two little stories. Forgive me if I’ve told them before:

There was once a novice photographer who was apprenticed to a great master. Every year the novice would bring a stack of photos for the master to approve or reject. As the years passed, the master chose more and more of the photos, and the reject pile got smaller and smaller. But there was one photo that the master saw year after year, even though each time he tossed it to that pile. Every year, the novice would slip it back into his offering to the master. Finally, after ten years of rejecting the picture, the master held it up to the novice. “I’ve rejected this for years, and yet, you keep asking me to look at it again. Why?” The novice, abashed, looked at his toes. “Because I had to climb a mountain to get that picture.” “Doesn’t matter,” said the master. “It’s a bad picture. Doesn’t matter what you had to do to get it.”

Story #2, from the New York Times:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress is set to ban a specific abortion procedure, a legislative landmark that could lead to a fierce legal fight affecting a woman’s right to end a pregnancy. The ban on what opponents call partial birth abortion is likely to pass by a wide margin when it comes up for a vote scheduled in the Senate on Tuesday.

So what, pray tell, do these stories have to do with one another? And with me? I recently read the fifth chapter of my book. And I had a great and disappointing revelation: my book is a sweet little story, but ultimately, it means exactly nothing to me. It’s not even the stuff of a short story. It’s something you might tell your friends as you are road-tripping across Nebraska, and I say this without even knowing how it was going to end.

But I had to climb more than one mountain to get as far as I have in this book. It’s been a difficult thing, to let go of it, to realize that it is not the story I am burning to tell. Reading the New York Times every morning reminds me of what is terribly, terribly important to me. I don’t even feel the need to write down every stupid evil inflicted on my country by the current playboy in charge. But I do need to write something that matters to me, that drives me. I may keep parts of what I’ve written; I don’t know. I do know that there is a better story out there, waiting for me, dancing on the periphery, begging me to sit down in front of a blank page.

It might be yet another mountain to climb, but eventually I’m bound to find the right peak, right? Geeze. I hope so.

Two more days. I’m grappling with overwhelming feelings of thankfulness, so much so that I barely know where to begin. I’m moving to California where my father and stepmother have opened up their home and life to me, where I have an instant support network when things get hard, where I will never go hungry, where, for at least a short time, I won’t have to worry about affording the very roof over my head.

I have my mom, who I’ve called several times between 2 and 5 AM because I know I can, who has talked me off a theoretical ledge more times than I can count, whose first impulse is to give and help and say yes.

Ian is showing up for the second time tomorrow to help me manage all of my stuff. And Sean, who is even *thinking* about taking me to the airport early Thursday morning, even though he has a show the night before, and one the night of, and that he will have to drive all the way to Brooklyn from Queens and then to JFK and then back to Queens. That he didn’t say, Seriously? You want me to do that AGAIN? Because he’s done that very trip so many times before.

I called the folks at my new job today, just to check in but really to find out when I will get my first paycheck (as I’m down to $19). “We were just talking about you!” the HR person exclaimed. “This Friday, right? You are still coming? We are so excited!”

So many people helping me, so many people believing in me, and while this is a lot of pressure in a way, it is also a confirmation of what I already know:

I will not let these people down.

Only three full days left in New York. I spent today with Hayley, brunching and wandering first Park Slope, then the East Village, and finally at the Living Room to see Heather Greene spin her singer-songwriter magic. If you haven’t heard her, you really ought. It’s one of those things when you are so glad your friends are talented. I mean, what are you supposed to do if they’re not?

I am really thankful that I had insurance this year. My health issues have been well documented, and the Peace Corps even reimbursed all of my related co-pays. However. I’ve had a brand new problem lately and it is starting to get scary. If you are a New Yorker, you’ve seen the ads on the subways that say, “I can live with foot pain. But why should I?” and there is some hotty blonde holding on to her four-inch high heel in one hand, balanced, foot in the air behind her. I’m starting to learn something: you can’t actually live with foot pain. Not when the pain is suddenly so terrible you find yourself crying out.

I’m pretty sure I have either PLANTAR FASCIITIS or HEEL SPUR SYNDROME, according to my online research. This is what it warns:

Plantar fascia pain usually begins as a mild pain to either the arch area or the bottom of the heel.  The discomfort in the foot is usually most noticeable with the first step in the morning and seems to improve after a period of “warming up” the foot.  If untreated, the pain can become intolerable…Because Heel Spur Syndrome and Plantar Fasciitis is an inflammatory condition, early intervention is essential to stop the repeated scarring of the Plantar Fascia that can lead to irreversible shortening of the Plantar Fascia, nerve entrapment and the formation of a painful adventitious bursa.

Yikes! I don’t want an irreversible shortened plantar fascia with a painful adventitious bursa! Christ! I’m only 31 years old! The hemorrhoids were my fault because of the cycling. My cervix ended up being right as rain. But my poor feet! I wonder if it is again related to cycling, or perhaps my cycling shoes, but I can’t really figure out what I changed in the last three or four months that would create radical foot pain. And radical it is- sometimes when I’ve been sitting I get up and simply cannot stay up because my feet scream. Methinks that insurance or no, I must get to a podiatrist. I’ve been trying the home remedies but my angry fascia is having none of it.

My landlord still has not turned on the heat. I can almost see my breath. This week in California? 85 degrees. Heh heh.

“I see your money on the floor, I felt the pocket change.

Though all the feelings that broke through that door

just didn’t seem to be too real.

The yard is nothing but a fence, the sun just hurts my eyes.

Somewhere it must be time for penitence. Gardening at night is never where.

Gardening at night. Gardening at night. Gardening at night.

The neighbors go to bed at ten.

Call the prayer line for a change.

The charge is changing every month.

They said it couldn’t be arranged.

We ankled up the garbage sound, but they were busy in the rows.

We fell up, not to see the sun, gardening at night just didn’t grow.

I see your money on the floor, I felt the pocket change.

Though all the feelings that broke through that door

just didn’t seem to be too real.

Gardening at night. Gardening at night. Gardening at night

Your sister said that you’re too young.

They should know they’ve been there twice.

The call was 2 and 51.

They said it couldn’t be arranged.

I see your money on the floor, I felt the pocket change.

Though all the feelings that broke through that door

just didn’t seem to be too real.

We ankled up the garbage sound, but they were busy in the rows.

We fell up not to see the sun, gardening at night just didn’t grow.

Gardening at night. Gardening at night. Gardening at night”

Wow. One of life’s mysteries solved for me, seventeen years later. Sean and I saw REM at the Felt Forum on November 7th, 1986 (http://www.geocities.com/brettlowman/remshows1986.html). I just listened to “Night Swimming” and am left speechless in a room full of boxes. That song reminds me of what I thought possible then, that maybe I still think it could still be.

The only problem with quitting my icky and very short-lived former job is not being up later than Ian anymore. It’s almost 3:30 for chrissakes and he hasn’t posted his blog yet. I, however, am. Posting my blog. I’m also up. With a cat on my lap.

Kellie and I had dinner at the… uh… it’s a culinary school that does a dinner every Friday night but it’s all vegan! I’ll give props where props are due when I can figure out where we were. It was a spectacular dinner, and I brought two bottles of wine, both from Ian’s and Tessa’s wedding (one rehearsal dinner wine, one reception). Kellie and I were munching on mushroom casserole and then a pear tart when we decided that she would call in sick to work tomorrow and that we would grab our camping gear and go upstate. Then I remembered that my camping gear is in a box moving slowly towards California, and that she brought her gear to her parents’ house some three hours away.

So, instead we went to McSorley’s where we were instantly thickened by a bachelor party of twenty men. They were everywhere, surrounding us, prodding us, buying us beers when we hadn’t breathed on our first. One guy draped an arm around me and then put his mouth to my ear, and within seconds I had found out that he was the one to be married in a week. I grabbed Kellie and ran for my life- but not before I was grabbed by a man from my past. Mr. Republican Pro-Life Pro-Rich Pro-Death Penalty grabbed my arm as we fought our way towards the door. I hadn’t seen him since the fateful night when we discussed politics and I left him standing outside a restaurant in the East Village. He was distraught that I never called him back, begged to be given a second shot. I said, “Call me if you change your politics, and besides, I’m moving to California”.

And now, home, in my apartment where my landlord seems to keep forgetting to turn on the heat. Four blankets and a warm cat await. Things could be worse. It could be four blankets and a cold Republican.

Sean and I moved at least every two years, sometimes every year, growing up. You could say that it was my family, or fractured parts of my family, that did the moving, but ultimately every time it was Sean and I, in the same school or not, trying to live through childhood and adolescence. We had help, sometimes, and a place to lay our heads. But the true surviving was figured out at school or in the middle of the night when one of us thought we might go mad, and asked the other to talk us out of the nightmare.

There were patterns of behavior each time we moved. Sean usually stopped going to school pretty quickly, I would get involved with the wrong guy as soon as possible. At some point during our stay, we’d turn to each other and say, “What if we left right now?” and the answer would often be, “I could leave without saying goodbye.” What this meant was there was not one person we cared enough about to say goodbye the next time we left. This would change as the year or years went by; sometimes we’d want to take several of our friends with us, sometimes just a girlfriend, sometimes even a park. A place would start to be dear to us. There was Anne, there was Russ, there was Coleen and Craig, there was Ho and Brynne. There was Southard Park.

But it wasn’t exactly that we didn’t care enough about these people. More, it was that leaving was what we did, and when you learn to leave, you also learn to make quick, passionate friendships that will easily burn out before it was time to go. So there were no painful goodbyes, no sore hearts from missing our friends.

We got too good at this. Or, at least, I did. This ended for Sean when he hit college and made friends he still hires to sing for him today. And then it was walloped and sent out of town forever when Sean moved to North Carolina. All of his good friends, and there are many, he’s now known for years. He takes people with them, he keeps them, and he will know most of these people for the rest of his life.

Me? Well. My best friend I’ve known for thirty-one years. Her mother started babysitting me when I was 10 months old. My other great friend I’ve known for seven years, and perhaps only because we’ve moved three times together. And then the next closest to me is a woman I met four or five months ago. I’m not counting my new sisters, since they are stuck with me as family; I can’t help but keep them, lucky, lucky for me. But I realize that I never quite recovered from this nomadic habit. I lived in Hollywood for over two years: no one. I went to my last college for two years: not one single soul. Citrus Singers, two years: no one I stay in touch with, although I have love for several of them. High School, three years: nope. Other high school, arguably one of the most important years of my life: nope. Kansas City, a year and a half: nope, although complicated, because when my boyfriend abandoned me he took my friends. Other than my seven-year friend. Chicago, one year: nada. New York: remains to be seen. There are four people I’m holding onto tight, and they to me, and there are two others who might still be my friend in a year. Even if I keep only those four, that’s a new track record.

I did not have the college experience that my brothers did. I do, however, get to reap those benefits, since some of the best people I’ve met have been through Sean and Ian (and, therefore, Tess and Jordi, so the numbers get exponential). But as I look at another move, even one that is supposed to be temporary, I’m thinking about all of this again. This time, I want to say goodbye to everyone I love. It’s not a crowd, but it is a collective, and I’m going to do the best I can to hang on.

But I’m concerned that, in a way, I’m running again, like Sean and I did whenever things got sticky. My life is not sticky, not right now, but there are things I’ve done that, sadly, make it better if I go away. Friends who stay apart because I’m there. I’d rather not be a part of that.

But if I am running, I am also running towards possibility, to change. Maybe I running to a place I actually want to be.

Ah, Christ, I’ve done it again. I barely know where to start. I’m learning a thing or two about writing in so public a place as this. I have a terrible habit of referencing things, in a vague way that is entirely open to interpretation, and sometimes that truly does get me into trouble because my words are taken the wrong way. A few days ago I wrote a blog, and mind you I was drunk, referencing truth and stories and wives and “sad men”. Ugh. Here’s the thing: I was writing of people completely outside my world of friends and my brothers’ friends. I have had a terrible rash of married men, men that I’ve met outside of the life that exists in my family, who seem utterly cavalier when it comes to their marriage, and it makes me so, so sad. Mad, actually, truly angry since I think they are so incredibly lucky to have love in their lives and yet they deny it. I tell you, this happened to me again LAST NIGHT- two different married men in two sets of people I met made it very clear that their intentions were not remotely pure.

These are the sad men I was writing of. I know that it was a stupid thing to write, considering recent events, oh my god DUH, but even in the haze of amazing red wine I would never, never be so cruel or ugly towards anyone I care about. I did not, and will not attack anything like that unless the people I’m referencing don’t read this blog. And the blog I wrote the other night will never be read by the men it was directed to. They don’t know me, they don’t know my family. They are strangers. There is just too many of them in this city, and they seem to find me.

I’ve met a lot of men, really good, true, wonderful men, who came upon a difficult choice and ultimately made the right one, even if there were slips and falls along the way. We are not defined by each choice but by the whole, and god knows I’ve screwed up worse than anyone I know. I screwed up three days ago by not being clear.

Things are as they seem, not as they are colored by a misinterpreted blog. I’m proud of the people I know who have made good choices to work things out. I’m glad that I am right here, today, having had the experiences I’ve had because hopefully it takes me one step closer to love in my life. I learned this summer that I can love again, that all it takes is the right person to come along. I didn’t know that before. I didn’t know how closed off I was. So thankyou, for anyone who has taught me that, and seriously, let’s be done. I promise not to be vague and sucky anymore.

My book allows me to write about all of this, this single silly life, clearly, with perspective, and with history. I can research things, go back and edit, and best of all, use my very rich fantasy life. I’m not nearly so clear on my blog sometimes. But I guess I deserve some forgiveness, too.