wherever you go, there you are

...here i am. I live in New York City!

As I mentioned, the past couple weeks were surreal. I moved out of my apartment, waiting to do the bulk until the last few days, which proved to be extremely stressful and challenging. I said goodbye to quite a few people I love in those last few days, while attending a close friend's wedding, completely dismantling and disbanding my home, and working up until the evening before my flight cross-country. I was packing the entire night through, until an hour before my flight.

I made the flight, however, using my first-class upgrade to zip me through the line, and then was actually able to recline in my seat and fall asleep (after warm nuts, a four-course meal, and a couple of those lovely complimentary drinks to fill me up and knock me out). A few hours later, 4:30 am EDT, I was sleeping between my best friend from high school and an exposed-brick wall in a 400 square-foot two-bedroom apartment in the East Village in Manhattan. My three suitcases and I were officially living in Manhattan.

I spent that entire next day in bed as I'd somehow pulled my neck removing shelves from the wall in a fury the hour before my departure, and dropped a solid-wood butcher block table on my bare foot the day before (a lovely wound to show for that), in addition to oh yeah, not sleeping for something like forty hours.

When I finally rose and left, around seven thursday night, it was to go out for cocktails.

And I didn't stop drinking until today. Night after night of meeting up for drinks- the ten-dollar manhattan-priced well drink, the huge Halloween bash (this city really knows how to do Halloween, be it full of some really shitty made-in-china, slutty-fill-in-the-blank costumes, or creatively fabricated ones, everyone's decked out)... or the Halloween bash the following night, or the multiple election parties... I have been going and going and going and if I don't slow down I'm not sure what will give first, my dignity, my liver, or my finances.

I located two unique Manhattan sublets after almost no luck finding a good permanent place to live, minus one scary tiny dirty West Village "two bedroom" that had a frightening bathroom and no common space or real kitchen.

One was a room I'd be renting from an eccentric indie movie producer traveling to India for work. He has been purchasing the top floor of his old and dilapidated tenement building in the East Village over the past ten years, a sunny and bright but nearly unfurnished space with exclusive access to a giant roof terrace rented to Google and political candidates for aerial advertising. He was wry and intelligent but also kind of a savant- extremely opinionated and emotionally needy. In the hour he trapped me there (I'm so stupid and polite, the walk-through took ten minutes), he told me all about his ex-girlfriend and how difficult she was and how he'd let her walk all over him, and how horrible and consumptive americans were, and how he didn't have any friends. The floorboards had half worn off their paint, and the light from the tall, narrow windows, and the giant skylight was reflecting off of them and the bare walls.

The kitchen was pretty scary, though he blamed it on the maid not making her twice-monthly visit, and the bathroom was scary, as New York bathrooms are, too often. The second place I came to see was on an edge of SoHo, not quite yet to TriBeCa, in a large, huge, old building. Something like an old manufacturing-esque building, the scale was very large for lower manhattan, and when I found and knocked on the kn0b-less door, I was greeted by a thin girl with an afro, a fiftyish male photographer, and a very large Newfoundland dog, all British.

The girl was showing the apartment for her friend (also travelling to India, oddly), and I currently live with the dog and the photographer who takes care of him. The space is huge, with fifteen-foot ceilings, 42-inch diameter (min) concrete columns breaking up the space, walls set at odd angles, and a random hodgepodge of manor-esque wood and leather furniture grouped about the common areas. Supposedly there's a guy that occasionally comes home, and rarely emerges from a back room. Hopefully I won't meet him. My room has a column running through it, and high windows above to let light in from the common areas, as it's precariously set at an angle within the center of the loft. The girl I'm subletting from travels for work and has a love affair with Paris, so her room is furnished accordingly- red, black, Chat Noir poster, and Eiffel Tower pillow included. I'm right at home in cheesy Paris memorabilia.

Unfortunately, feeling right at home here took three days of running all over lower manhattan trying to figure out how to get 2600 bucks to someone in Canada when my account was frozen for fraud investigation. 5 lost hours and a couple blisters later, and repeated encounters with the flighty but friendly and patient afroed friend, including one in the SoHo loft where she is an assistant to an artist selling paintings for over 10,000 dollars a pop (yelling coked-out red-eyed, potbellied artist blaring extremely loud music included with bonus tiny Pug-Chihuahua mix with glaring erection standing on hind legs air-humping me for fifteen minutes straight), I have keys and a bed, and cooked myself a real meal tonight. This was after spending sixty-five bucks at whole foods, so cooking wasn't a money-saving success in this instance.

How does the city manage to do that? I bet I'll somehow manage to blow fifty bucks in Central Park when I finally get back there this weekend, at this rate.

I figure that given the culture in this neighborhood, which is really cool and unique and glamorous/ arty but extremely chic and somewhat too commercial/snobby and generally beyond my means (full of who's who's), it will be a fun experience for a little while, but maybe only something that's right for a short time while I look for the right lasting neighborhood/apartment. Fingers are crossed. The options are greatly narrowed with pets.

Damnit, I'm up late again, and this evening I even stayed in to get to bed early. Ciao for now.

note- Afroed friend had to cue me in on the coked-out status of her boss, which was supposedly no big deal so I just went along, like, oh, of course... (It's how I work, too. I just can't draw perfect paving section details without inspiring myself with a little something extra in the ladies restroom at work...)

celebrate good times

a link to images of the good times had by most throughout the city last night, via Gothamist.

exciting times

It has been an incredible past week (or two weeks).

Today's sea change was an epic moment in our generations' and country's history. For the first time -ever- I can say I'm proud, maybe even excited to be American.

It's a great day to be a New Yorker, too. There is some wild celebrating happening in the streets. Some passionate excitement. Maybe even trumps that in the streets of Paris that I got to experience after the French national team won the semifinal in the World Cup.

Unfortunately I am a working stiff in my first week at the new office so I can't be wild tonight- had to leave the party to people who looked like they could rise to the occasion of partying for them and me.

I've been on a blog hiatus, totally overwhelmed with socializing every night since I flew in, and settling (well, beginning to) in The City. I moved into a 2-month loft sublet today (in SoHo, oh my), however, and actually landed in a space with lots and lots of room (and a photography studio complete with live-in Newfoundland dog), so I'm going to detox and relax a bit now that I have some personal space again. Fun as bunking with close friends is, it's nice to not be constantly stuffing wads of clothing into my suitcases to keep a tiny bedroom maneuverable, an then reapplying those same wads of clothing for work in the morning.

Stay tuned for Gotham Adventure Reports...

crybaby

I am so overwhelmed with moving. I tend to do this to myself every time, pushing things until the last minute and not taking enough time off to do it sanely. Per usual, I'm doing it alone, not very good at delegating or asking for help.

The physical exhaustion of doing it is one thing. But now I'm layering on top of that the emotional stress of saying goodbye to people I love. And I value my people so deeply, I'm so sentimental, that it's really, really hard for me to do it. I just had a weekend full of dramatic goodbyes- saying goodbye to someone I'd had an intimate relationship with, and also to a huge group of friends at a wedding, with the bride being my own good friend. I feel like my default is to cry right now.

I'm also feeling unsettled by the house in state of disarray. It's adding another layer to things to have me, very defined by and in tune with my environment, exhausted and stressed and in a torn-up home and no new one to look forward to.

I'm trying to envision the endless awesome options awaiting me, but right now I just want to draw all my people in close to me and hug them. Or cry some more and go to sleep.

things i have learned so far in packing for this move

a series of observations

• I have (had) enough clothes to fill twelve to eighteen 18-gallon Rubbermaids.
• I have nearly the same amount of cat hair tumbleweeds rolling around my closets and corners.
  
• Cats will recoil in horror and then flee upon encountering orange extract as though you were coming at them with hatchets and tear gas.
• No one needs or wants CD racks anymore.
• Craigslist is a complete crapshoot, both on the selling and searching ends. You are likely to encounter both morons and a-holes.
• I will never own a white shag rug again. Not a white rug, not a shag rug. I suggest anyone who has pets, or actually lives in their home doesn't either. Crumbs and hair will impregnate the depths of the pile if you do, and gross you out to all extent when you go to spend a couple painful hours vacuuming on hands and knees.
  
• No matter how many grocery/shopping bags one accrues over their stay in a home, they will use them all up moving.
• I hoard scented tea lights, fancy soap, and almond extract.
• A force larger than myself prevents me from getting rid of my university notes and textbooks, and design school art supplies.
• 60% of my wardrobe is black.
• By the looks of my catalogs of museum stubs, old newspaper clippings, and concert tickets, someday I will have the largest collection of scrapbooks one adult ever amassed.
  
• Kind and thoughtful friends and family are invaluable.
• Late night television did not cease to exist after college when I ceased to be able to stay up that late.
• Manually removing cat hair from a hundred balls of stockings after cats have nested in the storage basket all summer is one of the least pleasant tasks ever.
  
• I actually despise all 26 boxes of my books.

cats

little things

I'm packing and liquidating my apartment, bit by bit every evening. I'm downsizing; sending some stuff to charity and other things to the recycling bin.

I've gotten to this place, a life full of vintage postcards and ticket stubs and playbills and birthday cards, by attaching memories to everything. Even mugs I used in my first apartment in college remind me of drinking Oregon Chai late at night in front of Conan O'Brien when I used to be able to accommodate the Late Night.

Purging physical and emotional baggage is a great and important exercise, but man, it's challenging for the sentimental. It's great for clearing the mind in the end, but right now my mind is just strained from all the moving-related hoops. Time for bed.

dachshund

an observation

Yes, I have cats, but I definitely think puppies are cute. Also, I normally am not a big dachshund fan- something about their body proportions feel unnatural to me, like an old, overweight man who has to have his jeans altered shorter due to his disproportionate barrel-gut-to-fred-flinstone-legs-relationship.

However, I was waiting at the bus stop this fine autumn morning (we're having a good season, so crisp and sunny and colorful), and a couple walked up with a tiny dachshund puppy on a leash. It was so small, it was gerbil-sized. It was so incredibly cute.

I think somehow the combination of the tiny, near-legless body, with the large, youthful-and-not-yet-too-pointy head, and also its unbounded baby energy, was what made it so cute. It was like a little cartoon. I just wanted it to raise its flappy little ears and flutter around the bus shelter.

the beginning of the end

I've been getting together with friends a lot the past week- starting to say goodbye. It's hard, and I think it didn't actually set in until recently that I have so little time left.

I've been in serious denial about moving my stuff out. The liquidation of eight years' worth of Seattle possessions, enough to densely fill a decently-sized one-bedroom apartment, is no small or even remotely pleasant task, and I've been totally putting it off. There's something very depressing to me about deconstructing my home. My environment, perhaps as I'm a designer, I dunno, has always been quite important to my happiness, and I have a very hard time breaking down and tearing apart my own territory. I always tend to leave it until the last minute, stressing out and staying up late to finish packing at the end, so I don't have to live in a war-zone of half-packed house any longer than is imperative.

I think it's especially hard this time, given the extremity of the move. I'm not going to any definite domestic environs in NYC initially- no new personal space to look forward to as of yet. I'll be sleeping at friends' places until I find my own, and almost all of my Seattle apartment contents will be dispersed via friends and craigslist or go into storage here :( . I'm also trying to enjoy my last moments in Seattle and have been prioritizing social time over practical time. That's a major procrastination tool. Every night when I come home, most often late and tipsy, I look at the apartment and gulp a little.

I started going through things this weekend and feel a little better having started, but of course only after you open the can of worms do you realize the nature of its contents. Yikes. I got rid of a few boxes of books and cds and christmas decorations at my mother's house when I headed down to the going-away party she threw me this weekend, but it's only the very beginning and I know I'm going to be pulling some late nights in the coming week.

So if anyone wants to help pack glassware, or needs a good houseplant, or likes the challenge of coaching a distractable individual to organize, prioritize, and complete tasks, dial me. I'll be sitting on the hardwood floor in my sweats shuffling design magazines and ramekins around until 2 am every night.

crept in on little cat's feet

The plan tonight was to go home after a quick stint at the gym and start packing (which I've been saying I'll do every night for quite a few days now). Instead it's past eleven and I'm just getting home after taking a detour from the athletic club to Capitol Hill for dinner and drinks (oops).

The result was me spending way more time than planned outside traipsing about the city this evening. In a short skirt, thin calf-length leggings, tiny ballet flats and a light jacket, I am downright amazed at how cold it is out there; I was cursing... well, I'm frankly not sure who I should have been cursing, but I was definitely cursing on the way home between busses and doors. It made me think of the Sandburg quote I mentioned above- granted it refers to fog, but the cold weather has done the same: crept in quietly when we weren't looking. A major briskness has taken over Seattle in the past two weeks. I don't even know where my cold-weather clothes are.


Leaving the Seattle Athletic Club, I detoured my usual route north through Belltown toward Queen Anne and went south through the market to catch a bus up to Capitol Hill. There is something magical, and totally different, about The Market in its off-time. And at this time, a weeknight past dark, when it's late enough to have shut down but not late enough to be still, it had the great quality that piazzas all over Italy have late in the evening... the lazy meanderings of people passing by and through, gazing about places meant to be full with people. The Market, like Campo de Fiori, the Spanish Steps, or Piazza Navona in Rome, seems, late at night, to be begging to be visited- aglow with light, open and waiting for visitors to flood back and bring it to back to life. It's like it's smiling its brightest smile to draw people in again. Lights glow above, and from the edges with people's condo and apartment homes, and restaurants. Neon signs beckon as well, both in the alleys and streets, and within the turn-of-the-century market stalls and walkways, gutted for the night down to the white walls, sterile steel counters, and nightly pressure-washed rust-brown tile floor. You don't notice the beautifully repetitive green columns and industrial pendant lights until you clear the place down to its skeleton.

As I walked under the overhangs of the food vendors lining the street (soundtrack- Fleet Foxes, Mykonos), passing beneath sign after hanging sign, the hectic, colorful nature that characterizes our views of the market at day gave way to the quiet rhythm of the place at night- rows of columns; light after hanging light; globe lights studding moulding like neverending dressing-room vanities; signs lined up like pinball gates; feet passing over cobbles.

On my way up to the market, I'd stopped to marvel at the sunset over Elliot Bay and the Olympics. Now, plugged into the moment with music and solitude, I noticed the blur around a streetlight that accompanies cold, dewey nights and I was happy despite the cold. Makes for a nice memory.