Month: May 2002

Long Nights

I can feel myself stuck in the fog. I know part of this is my body, the chemical soup which will slowly be adjusted by the new ingredients I’ve been adding. Part of it is fatigue, my first chance to sit still and catch my breath without distraction since last weekend.

Part of it is real, though. Most of it, today, is real. All week long I’ve had lots to worry about and think about and do. I’ve had opportunities to be reminded about the things and the people I have that I’m grateful for. I’ve been reminded of some wonderful things that I won’t lose. Even when those reminders were tied with the knowledge of new roles and limitations, they were good, and they left me happy.

Last night and today, though, the loss is really hitting me. The loss of what I hoped for, the loss of what I had (or thought I had), the loss of contact and comfort, the loss of synthesis. Last night and today, I’m realizing how much I’m really being forced to accept. I realize how big the hole is and how sad and disappointed and disappointing I feel. Even if we continue on as such close friends, today I’m feeling the boundaries inherent in that word, and I yearn for what lies beyond them that once seemed in my reach, sometimes even in my grasp.

It really, really, really hurts. And there’s nowhere to hide from it right now.

Big City Dreams

I’ve moved back to a cubicle with a commanding view of midtown, facing northeast from my spot on the 20th floor at 34th and Park. After the dreariness of the last couple of days, it’s nice to take a second and shake the typesetting out of my head by staring off at the East River and the Chrysler Building.

Rooster reminded me of detail from Kurt Vonnegut‘s Jailbird, in which the uppermost room under the spire of the Chrysler Building is the showroom of the American Harp Company. A character sneaks up daily and sits listening to all the harps played in demonstration for customers. It’s kind of magical, capturing the way the spires of buildings like that hold the iconic power that the spires of cathedrals once did.

And then there’s also Vonnegut’s Slapstick, set in the near future, when the King of Michigan rules the area stretching east to the Atlantic and lives in the Empire State Building, in the middle of a largely uninhabited Manhattan transformed into a public park called “Skyscraper National Forest.”

In a more mundane way, Vonnegut’s Timequake reminds me of when I worked by the U.N., blocks away from where he was living at the time. In the book, he talks about how he had a crush on one of the women at the corner Post Office, inspiring him to go into a dusty little stationery store nearby just about every day so he could get envelopes and notepaper to mail off. The little routine seems like a quaint anachronism from an earlier time, except that I went to that store and that Post Office just about every day when I worked in Turtle Bay. I used to stare at the surly, tough women who worked at the P.O. and imagine which had inflamed the desires of that grumpy, frumpy old man.

So many books distill these little parts of the essence I love about New York: Up in the Old Hotel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Low Life, and others. New York has always captivated my imagination so much, and given me such a rush of pride about living here, that I get so excited when I encounter books — fictional or not — that really capture the sense of how I feel about its features and its people and its magic.