In Between Settling and Shouting

I had thought it, typed it, tried to publish it, and lost it. Something today has been magical, so it comes as no surprise that a post which had been temporarily lost did in fact make it public. The blog doesn't seem to need me anymore!

What I really wanted was to find an emotion or memory from each of my 71 days. A summary of sorts. But things have moved fast, or rather, I have sped up the pace of my life since returning. I haven't given myself time to process what I just went through. While the gains have been great in the past few days (I have an amazing place now in the East Village - more on that soon!), I haven't been able to focus my thoughts and reflect before bed like I did nightly in Costa Rica. I wanted to spill out a summary onto these pages before daring to shift my mindset to stateside challenges, and that hasn't happened. I'm afraid of experiences slipping away and changes reversing. They won't. You won't let me let them go. This is good, actually. I'm using what I've learned already, unknowingly, sitting here relaxing in the Upper East Side. I came home and immediately attacked my next goal - finding a new home. It's not what I wanted to do, but it is what I needed to do, and knowing it had to be done and knowing I could do it (though I was intimidated), I stopped thinking and started acting. It's done now, and what has come to me is beautiful. Digressing, perhaps a more comfortable way to look back on the past 10 weeks is to observe how my memories come back to me, unexpectedly and randomly. I'll be on the subway, in the park, in front of a computer, in a remarkable and superfluous 10 story department store - what will I remember at what times, and why?

It may have escaped me to mention anything about my last week in Costa Rica. It may be that I'm just not ready to write about it. It was a much more private week for me, a delicate week spent with a person of great strength, spent in various situations that demanded strength in various forms - forms we didn't think we had - the least of which was determination to trek to the summit of a 12,700 foot mountain. If you could have been there - maybe you would have been standing behind my hot chocolate, or peering out from behind my tightly wrapped blankets as I was shaking and weak - if you could have been there as Rosa burst in through the hostel doors, into the hallway and towards my table with the energy of a woman who had just spoken with God - if you could have been there, dying to drink from her energy, wide-eyed and ready to know what she knew right then, you would understand why I can't quite put it all into words, not just yet.

Here in New York, well-intentioned people have commended me for making such a quick transition from rural CR to the grandiose city with questions that allude to culture shock. In reality, I've felt almost no sort of awe in being here. I notice three things: First, the incredible diversity of people - diversity of race and particularly of height. Second, the cleanliness of the city given its size and population density. GT pointed out to me that I may be the first person to ever praise New York for its cleanliness. Maybe so, but unlike San Jose, buses in New York don't force clouds of black diesel exhaust into your tear ducts and down your throats as you try to walk from your hostel to the automercado. Third, people and their accessories look silly. The massiveness of the buildings, the expansiveness, the enclosure all have caused little to no emotional response.

A short story is incubating in my head involving a man named Brian whom I met yesterday at the 'open house' he was hosting. He was open about a lot of things, I guess, which amounted to one and a half hours of remarkable storytime that no property owner should ever share with a prospective renter. Telegram for Brian: If you want someone to rent your room, don't tell them that you once thought of putting a Mafia hit out on a tenant. And definitely don't spend the next five minutes excitedly justifying it. And DEFINITELY don't end it by saying you wouldn't think that way anymore. You might also want to be a little more hush hush about the 'brake dust and tire scum' that floats into your building's open windows from the nearby highway, the La Guardia flightpath overhead, the hookers you've had as tenants (tenants!), the 16 year old girl you impregnated, your company's annual negative income, the "debate" over the origin of a black woman's pubic hair in the bathtub followed by the revelation that you're sleeping with one of your 23 year old tenants and you're 40, the old skinny Italian man next door who you pay off to "watch" the apartment and not to "break into the apartment and steal a stereo," and you know, details like that. Good luck though, renting that room out.

But for all the folks in this city who are maybe just a little too eager to share, or let's call him Troy, whose clear deep eyes grew a little too vertically wide and whose monotone voice boomed a little too nasally sharp when declaring that Williamsburg is the cultural envy of all New York these days, there are the rare few who you find on craigslist at 8:35pm, whose tones are instantly soothing and relaxed, equally relieved to hear normalcy on the other end of the line, who say "hey, if you want, why don't you just come by tonight once we get back from dinner, say around 11?" whose mere act of offering just that, whose genuine inquiry about the places you've been and unrequested honesty about the size of the room in question tell you that Yes, this is going to be right. And then you know this, even before you step foot out of Lauren's Upper East Side apt. to make your way down to meet these girls. You just sense that the needs and interests have matched up, that new friendships are about to be made. Somehow, this trust is established over the phone, and the rest becomes almost superfluous, equivalent in feeling to coming home after a long long time away, a time full of uncertainty, and that finally you will have stability and encouragement and a youthful idealism and goddamn! you are so ready to begin.