Autumn in New York...

A very picturesque scene of the Central Park Mall - It actually looks even more charming in person...

Perhaps it's due to the fact that I'm somewhat of a curmudgeon at heart, but the autumn is my very favorite time of the year. Ever since childhood, I would look forward to the leaves changing colors and flying through the air in dancelike patterns until falling into the community of their previously fallen compatriots, already stuck on the ground, which depending on how you look at it, can be either inspiring or really depressing. In New York, a city known for its fashion-savvy residents, it is safe to say that even the trees seem to be modeling some trendy sort of seasonal wares this time of year, competing with the other trees to be the most outstanding, not unlike their human counterparts turning the sidewalks of the city into runways and catwalks of extravagant outerwear...

My Stupid Hat

Recently my office moved to a neighborhood near Penn Station known as the fur district. It's a rather dingy little section of mid-Manhattan with an abundance of tired looking gray industrial buildings in need of sandblasting and lacking very many good places to eat (I am most affected by this aspect of the move). There are more fur suppliers, resellers and designer fur-clothing manufacturers concentrated in these few blocks than any other place on Earth. I am not surprised at how many of the fur merchants seem to be surly Russian mafia members, but I'm definitely surprised that the streets aren't overwhelmed with PETA protesters holding overburdened paint cans, ready to for action. Being neither an angry animal rights activist, nor a person of wealth, I recently purchased the most ridiculous giant faux-fur winter hat I could find. Aside from looking like a reject from the Sonny and Cher collection, it keeps me warm in the oppressive New York winds that blow through the narrow streets between the buildings. My bargain-priced fall fashion decision earns me disdainful glares from the beady-eyed shop keepers surrounded by their menagerie of animal carcasses. They can notice from a mile away that my hat is both fake AND stupid-looking, as I blithely make my way down the sidewalk in search of lunchtime burritos (ah, Chipotle barbacoa), enjoying their squirms and malignant disgust.

Coming up on "the holidays," I have taken an extra seasonal job in retail working at a clothing store on 5th Avenue at Rockefeller Center. As glamorous as that may sound, retail is retail no matter the setting. The store can best be described as a more drab and less-edgy European version of the Gap (if more drab and less edgy than Gap is even possible). Being as "fun sized" as I am, the employee discount program is not extremely beneficial considering few of their garments even come close to fitting well on my impish frame, so my favorite perk of the job is the opportunity to observe a steady trickle of confused tourists who try to avoid salespeople, like myself, at all costs. I'm learning that I am unable to convincingly lie to strangers to get them to believe that they look "great" in faux fur-hooded parkas that would look strange on even eskimos. I blame my mother for my inability to successfully tell mis-truths as I was never allowed to get away with it when I was younger which killed my chances to hone the skill. Instead I have to find unrelated statements that will sound better, like, "I bet you'll be the only person back in Arkansas with a giant man-bag like this one," or "I'm sure you'll really stand out in that plaid hat when you go back to Japan..." Perhaps if I really believed in what I was selling, I could more convincingly lie about it, much like a politician or televangelist. We'll see how far I go in my sales career, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hope that I make it through the season unscathed.

Retail and unfriendly Russians aside, when all is said and done, New York is a beautiful place to be during this transitional time of the year, even when getting the stink eye from passersby, comparing outerwear. I now can vouch for all of those cheesy movies and songs based on this very phenomenon in the city. Between the beautiful leaves lining the gutters, preparations for window displays on 5th Avenue  and the smell of "a little something extra" in the coffee cups of certain businessmen walking out of Penn Station, there is a magical crispness that makes one feel truly alive.

Central Park Photo taken from http://www.kiamoy.com/?p=144

The wilderness lady in the Big Apple...

My mother in Rockefeller Center absorbing the essence of Al Roker...

No matter how far one may roam, it seems like remnants of your past are never very far away. Now, nearly two thousand miles from the tiny rural town where I grew up, the first instance of my old life colliding directly with my new one occurred recently in the form of my mother taking on the big apple...

My mother is a "real hoot," and she would be the first one to tell you that. Being a self-proclaimed city girl at heart (having grown up in Washington, D.C., - the daughter of a Pentagon accountant), living in rural Colorado for the past three and a half decades, teaching wilderness survival and baking thousands of loaves of homemade whole-grain bread to sell to the masses in her little town has definitely been a dramatic change from her upbringing. Even while butchering chickens on mountain tops and finding endless ways to prepare various bean-centric dishes over a smoldering campfire in the wind and the rain, she would always find opportunities to bring in saucy anecdotes about her former city life. She was always so very proud of her teenage exploits, whether they were stories of being chased by security guards down the banisters of the Lincoln Memorial or dancing around in public fountains with her psuedo-hippie riff raff friends. She was a non-conformist and in her ultimate non-conformity, she chose a life of peaceful obscurity in the wide open wilderness of the west, far far away from the noises and lights of the big city...

As a child, I could never quite actualize the stories my mother would tell of her former life surrounded by so many different people from so many different places. Considering that my parents took me on my first wilderness survival program in the mountains when I was just several weeks old, my world was quite removed from one of diplomats, generals and socialites all thriving together in one place. I lived in a world where feuds between ranchers of cattle and sheep generated the juiciest of gossip available. For my parents, our tiny house with its menagerie of non-functioning automobiles and our proximity to so many wonders of the natural world were much more appealing than living a fancier life anywhere else. Even in self-imposed poverty, they had chased after their own dreams and found themselves right where they needed to be; nestled comfortably in the heart of the middle of nowhere. Over the last thirty-some odd years though, living in her own private version of "Walton's Mountain" has softened by mother just a bit.

My mother recently made her first voyage to New York since 1972 as a means to cash in on an expiring airline voucher and also to inspect my new life, in person. On our first morning out in my neighborhood, she made it clear that she was to be the solitary member of the Morningside Heights neighborly greeting committee, and say "hello" and "good morning" to every soul she passed on the street. Despite my attempts to explain that people just don't do that here, she boldly walked ahead of me and made her wholesome small town gesture to all of Amsterdam Avenue in opposition to the puzzled looks on the faces of the people whose mornings she'd just interrupted with her mountain-fresh effervescence. Like a good son, I walked 5 paces behind her as she intentionally did her best to get the better of me, and I could tell she enjoyed every second of it.

Touring the city with her was like seeing everything through the eyes of a stranger deserted on an alien planet, and I enjoyed that. I thought she was going to disinfect the entire city with hand sanitizer before she left, but she seemed to take in every moment as a memory to be kept for later use. From the gilded doorways of Saint John the Divine to the dingy mosaics in the subway stations, everything was an object of interest to be admired. It would have been almost cute if not every single pebble on the street was seen with audible "oohs" and "aahs" coming from her direction.

One of the highlights of the visit was our trip to Rockefeller center. For some bizarre reason, my mother watches the Today Show devoutly and has always had a huge crush on Al Roker. Although seeing the darkened studio in mid-day through the windows on the street wasn't as exciting as being among the mob of early morning fans (I think I would rather be dead than to have to endure such torture), she was pleased to at least actualize the location of her early morning television nostalgia. This and many other little scenes of notable New York locations compounded into what seemed like a waking dream in my mother's outward reactions. Whether it was going to the Met's Egyptian collection, eating confections in Little Italy or seeing the inside of a real Broadway theatre, my mother's child-like excitement brought the city to life in a way I did not expect. Leading her through a new world and watching her discovery of it all made me feel, for one of the first times in my life, less like a child and more like the "grown up" in my mother's presence.

By the time my mother went back home to the mountains, I felt like we'd shared something unique. In coming and seeing this place that I've worked so hard to be able to live in, and actually enjoying it, I feel like my mother was able to understand me in a new way that she hadn't before. I think it was definitely a relief for both of us when she arrived back, safely, in her cozy quiet little mountain town, but she definitely left a piece of her heart in the big city...

Namastinkers

A herd of trendy exercise-buffs, similar to the likes of those found in Brooklyn...

Twenty years ago, I'm sure if a businessman (or woman) would have pitched an idea involving grown people paying lots of money to get together with groups of strangers, being forced to get into ridiculous and sometimes painful positions for prolonged periods of time while either being publicly half-naked or clad in bizarrely over-priced outfits, the aforementioned individual would have been thought to be describing a common and recurring nightmare rather than a cogent business opportunity. Now this adolescent nightmare is a billion dollar industry known as Yoga, and it's hit New York like a malignant cancer...

It's hard to walk a few blocks in the city without seeing some sort of yoga studio, even if on the 3rd floor of a condemned building with a string of Tibetan prayer flags hanging out the window. When you can walk down a crummy street in the Bronx and see posters for Bikram Yoga, you know that gentrification has extended its grasp and soon middle-class white people with baby carriages and small dogs will be roaming about the streets talking on their iPhones about fair trade coffee and the trials of knowing what's best for everyone else. This in no way is meant to imply that I'm denying the inalienable rights of bourgeois people to overtake distressed neighborhoods, strip out all the unique cultural characteristics, raise the rent, and push all the original residents out in the name of affordable "re-purposed" loft apartments. Luckily, in many such neighborhoods, there are already well established yoga studios waiting for these folks upon arrival.

On the weekends, I work at the front desk in a very posh and swanky yoga studio in Manhattan. It's a rather pricey and very exclusive studio open to members only. My job is to calmly and soothingly check people in and direct them to their yoga classes while wearing a T shirt with the word "namaste" printed in Helvetica Bold on the front. "Namaste" is an ancient Sanskrit word which originally had very important spiritual meanings for several cultures. Now it's been diluted to a trendy salutation that is commonly screen printed on mass-produced plastic objects for consumer cultures in order to make people feel alternative and spiritual. Our clients tend to be folks who don't really need worry about money, but do anyway. In fact, many of them seem to manufacture a great deal of unnecessary things to worry about as a way of keeping themselves occupied, and then using Yoga as a method of coping with self-induced stress and tension. Sometimes, this coping process involves maltreatment of unsuspecting customer service professionals, such as myself.

For some folks, there is no amount of combined stretching and breathing exercises in existence that would turn them into agreeable human beings. We have our favorites that make all of the employees brace for impact upon arrival at the front desk. For some people the studios are never the right temperature, for others the towels in the steam rooms aren't white enough, for others the scheduling of their favorite class is always inconvenient and for a select group, there is nothing remotely pleasant about their experience at all, and their masochistic tendencies must be why they insist on coming back, time after time, and prolonging their misery. I'm sure anyone who has ever worked with the public in any capacity has similar observations. It's always something...

One night when I had been working an extended shift to cover for a friend, one of my favorite clients showed up, in a huff, as usual. This lady could be described as the Upper West Side picture of pretension from her frail leathery figure, to her absurdly stretched facial skin causing a look of eminent surprise to be ever present on her sour face. She plodded down the stairs complaining to someone on the phone about the difficulty of catching a taxi, which had obviously placed her out of sorts. She set her giant Louis Vuitton bag on the counter, took out half of its contents until she finally found her membership card, and shoved it in my face (all this while continuing her phone conversation). I checked her in for her class, which usually gets people on their way, but she decided to linger in front of me while finishing up her phone call. When she finally told "Peg, darling" goodbye, she asked to buy a bottle of water, as she commonly had done before. She seemed rather annoyed when I asked for the $2.50 we charge for luxury bottled water, rummaged through her over-sized bag some more and then, for the first time since coming into the studio, she stopped and looked at me. I knew this was not a good sign. "Look," she said, "here's the deal, all I have is two bucks, I can't find the fifty cents, so you're just gonna need to figure this out..." as she tried to grab the bottle from my hand. I pulled the bottle back and felt like saying "what, figure out that you're a wretched awful person?" but I let that go by. Her sense of entitlement had superseded any shred of social propriety she may have had, and she kept on acting like I was the one who was causing the problem by asking her to pay for her water. Begrudgingly, she rummaged through her bag some more and miraculously found the change she needed for the water, slammed it down on the counter and snatched the water bottle from my fingers. As she walked away I muttered "namaste to you too" under my breath.

In general, I do like working at the yoga studio, in spite of the some of the crazy people who come in for healing, relaxation and rejuvenation. I suppose it's a good thing we are part of their lives, especially when contemplating how much worse they may be without the aid of costly non-religious spiritual direction. At the end of the day, without them, who would I have to write about?

The scientific method...

Figure 1.3: Study specimens ignore the idiot in the subway...

In my previous life before New York (which is what it now seems like), I would look forward to Thursday evenings in my studio with Gabriela, my very insightful drawing student. Gabriela was an Italian transplant finishing her Ph.D. in Ecology in Colorado (and I'm still not quite sure what that means exactly). In addition to science, she had a very artistic streak, and we'd spend one evening per week exploring that whilst discussing the connections between the artistic process and the scientific method - conversations that were nearly always accompanied by friendly libations (or "art supplies" as I call them). We never came to any definitive conclusions, which wasn't really the point, but it has made me view many things in life since then as mere opportunities for pseudo-empirical observation and testing using unaware human subjects and then making unfounded claims based primarily on my own opinions (or what FOX News does 24/7).

The streets of New York are like a giant petri dish for the social sciences; so many tiny little people all shoved into a big maze scurrying about in search of food, sex and money - some even wearing articles of clothing resembling rodent fur (thank heavens fashion week is over!). Part of the brilliance of living in a city of 8 million people is the anonymity that provides when doing really dumb things. Unlike my non-populated hometown where everyone knew everyone else, you can urinate in public on the city streets here, and nobody will tell your mother - they don't know your mother, nor do they have the time to care that you have one (too many people take advantage of this here, especially on St. Patrick's Day). Although the majority of folks wouldn't expose themselves in a subway station, it's always an option, not necessarily the best, but an option none the less. A side effect of this abundance of social impropriety is the fact that the "regular folks" are so desensitized that these events are easily ignorable, thus adding to the allure of doing really dumb things without the fear of permanent social ostracization. 

Sometimes I like to be evil.

On more than one occasion, I've been known to disrupt morning rush-hour sidewalk traffic by walking against the flow, just to see how many people would adjust their course to avoid me, and how many briefcases jab me in the ribs. I've since decided this experiment is not interesting enough to justify the bruises involved, but on a masochistic whim, I may take it up again. Another fun game to play is finding a subway car with an abundance of empty seats and then sitting right next to the only other person on the train; it's almost as exciting as the equivalent game played with urinals in the mens room. My very favorite social experiment is to do something that is rather bizarre and foreign to most New Yorkers, but was second nature to me growing up: holding the door open for strangers. I like to spice up the game a little, and hold the door open for several strangers while smiling AND nodding. As I don't have a uniform with stripes running down the legs, it makes people uncomfortable, especially the smile. They don't know whether to thank me, tip me, or report me to the authorities for being some kind of lunatic. Some just ignore me altogether, as a reflex acquired by exposure to constant over-stimulation. I'm not quite sure what any of these little activities prove, but they are definitely great ways to make the morning commute more engaging, and I get to live out my unrealized scientific dreams.

Although I don't urinate in public (at least during the day), I notice that I do take advantage of these unique social liberties more than I would elsewhere because I know that aside from a scowl or a suitcase to the rib, little more will ever come of my being an ass, and I like that. I'm able to let loose and be "the real me," or at least the me that I decide to be in a given moment. It seems that science has been teaching me much more than my junior high school teachers ever would have though I could possibly absorb. Using science to justify self-indulgent behavior really is changing my life. Thank you Gabriela, and thank you New York!

The view from the middle...

The view from my office window (à la my phone)

I'm pretty sure the tallest building in my rural hometown in Colorado was the hospital, which stood a whopping 4 stories in one of its small "wings." It was always exciting to visit sick or injured friends because of the rare opportunity to ride in an elevator, which was quite a novelty in a town full of staircases that only reached the second floor. I had heard rumors that if you jumped up and down while the elevator was descending, you could achieve weightlessness for a split second, but sadly, there was always some sort of "grown-up" around to thwart my plans of testing out this theory. I remember riding my bicycle past the towering structure, looking up to the very top and admiring its majesty. I wondered what it would be like to see the world from such great heights, in a room of one's own...

Structures like the Empire State Building were things only conceivable in films or the books I would read. I remember watching An Affair to Remember as a child, seeing Cary Grant wait and wait for Deborah Kerr on the observation deck while she lay crippled in the street down below, not knowing until the very end that she had tried to meet him until a car mangled her plans, as well as her legs. The thought of being high enough away from the street in a building that an event as big as a car accident could go unseen was unfathomable to my 5 year old brain. Sure, my hippie parents had dragged me up to steep mountain tops and pushed me off the sides of cliffs dangling from ropes, but the view of the endless San Juan mountains was vastly different than the cityscape of Midtown Manhattan. Had Deborah Kerr agreed to meet her clandestine lover on the top of Mount Sneffels, I'm certain she would not have been hit by that car, but something tells me that good ol' Debbie wasn't really the rugged type.

 A few weeks ago I began working in an office just a couple of blocks from Herald Square, with a great view of the Empire State Building right out the window. If you look really closely in the afternoons, you can see all of the tiny little people moving about on the observation deck, hopefully not waiting for injured lovers to whom they've made unrealistic promises. I see the world from a little perch on the 15th floor of an old brick office building whose 24 stories pale in comparison with many of the other mightier skyscrapers around it. The endless sirens and car horns from 6th Avenue act as an unsettling backdrop to my days, but never cease to keep me awake when my coffee buzz begins to fade away. Sometimes, when talking to clients on the phone, they ask if some catastrophic event is occurring just outside, and I simply explain that it's just a normal weekday in Midtown.

There are days when I pull myself out of my work coma and ponder what my 5 year old self would think about my life and my daily routine now. Waking up early, catching the express train in Harlem and coming up from the ground outside of Bryant Park is now just a way to get from point A to point B, but to a child would have seemed like a daily adventure. When I see children on the train, watching eagerly as the doors open and close at every stop, the contagious sense of amazement can make it through my impermeable exterior, if I allow it to. Most of the time my only amazement with the subway occurs when track maintenance or garbage fires stop the train underground, in the dark, for extended and unannounced periods of time. Perhaps I ought to search for my inner-child, or at least buy him an ice cream cone every now and then. Sometimes I still have the urge to test out the elevator theory while speeding down 15 floors, but now that I'm a grown up myself, I've become rather dull and predictable.

The world I inhabit now is one I'd never have imagined was tangible while watching classic films on our old black and white TV set (my parents were proud Luddites in their own right). Things seem so different when elevated so high above the ground, and I've only made it to the 15th floor. Although the view from the middle is grand, I'll be anxious to one day see the view from the top.

Womanizers on a train...

Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn: a really great way to make Southerners become awkward and defensive...

After the Civil War, I believe a council of boastful Yankees must have been formed solely for the purpose of erecting grandiose monuments in New York City intended to make all Southerners angry. There are 39 such monuments maintained by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation alone, and scads of others littering public spaces in every corner of town. Now that most of the world has moved on, the responsibility of dwelling in the past over the "War of Northern Aggression" rests heavily on the shoulders of red faced tourists and/or involuntary transplants from below the Mason-Dixon line.

One night this week, I found myself in Brooklyn at Grand Army Plaza, which features an abundance of fierce looking bronze figures perched upon a fantastic triumphal arch and verses etched into the stone immortalizing Northern victory. As I am not Southern, and I am a sucker for gaudy remembrances of historical events, I enjoy going there. For Yankees, I believe these places provided a sense of camaraderie at one point, making everyone feel like they were a member of a winning team. Being a winner is only shiny and new for so long, but as the convictions of our drawling neighbors from the lower latitudes seem to suggest, being a loser is difficult baggage to be rid of. If ever I am feeling like I'm fighting a losing battle, I can find one of these numerous Civil War shrines dotting the landscape of the city and remember that no matter how bad things may seem, at least I don't live in the South.

After the novelty of borrowing the essence of proud Northern victory became more than I could handle, I decided to get on the number 2 train and take the long ride from central Brooklyn back to Uptown Manhattan. It was night time, which meant the trains were running very infrequently and making every local stop, so I found a seat on a bench and began to pull out a book when a pair of rather peculiar men appeared on the platform, making me forget all about my anthology of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The pair was comprised of two very charismatic, although scrappy, Latin men who appeared to have been pulled directly from a New Yorker Magazine cartoon sketch. The younger of the men was tall and lean with very sharp features, deep set eyes and a neatly kept pony tail. The other man was at least a generation older and seemed to be a walking public service warning for what happens to a person after too much sex, drugs and rock & roll during a prolonged bohemian adolescence. His glazed eyes, framed by abundantly overgrown brows, seemed to have almost an innate mechanical ability to detect, with laser precision, any woman within a mile radius. After taking inventory of the platform, the old hippie in his orange caftan approached me on my bench.

"Do you speak Spanish?" a mumbly surly voice asked me. "Oh, not very well," I responded, sensing his disappointment. He then beckoned his younger friend over, who obviously hadn't found any women attractive enough to devote any attention to, and the three of us began a very cordial little dialogue, in English (much to everyone's dismay). I found out the the older man was called Alfredo, and he was from Ecuador, but born in Argentina (for some reason he seemed very proud of this and repeated it several times). He was a photographer (of female nudes, no doubt), and had lived all over the world. He reminded me of an artistic, darker-featured version of Ozzie Osbourne with his slurred speech and rapidly decaying mind. He seemed completely full of shit, but he was friendly and I had nothing better to do than indulge him. The younger man was called Erwin and was from Mexico City. Apparently he was a sculptor of endangered animals, and also a photographer. He lived somewhere on 23rd Street in Chelsea, and thought it was peculiar that being an artist myself, I'd live all the way up on 123rd Street (I'm still not quite sure why).  Every time a woman would walk on to the train platform, they would both stop in mid-sentence to make an assessment, and then come back to the conversation.

By the time the train came into the station, we had become casual buddies and all decided to sit together in the same car, talking more about art and Alfredo's many travels. The conversation circulated to the subject of living in New York, and both Alfredo and Erwin told me about how much they enjoyed the many different types of women in the city. "White ladies, Latin ladies, Black ladies, Asian ladies, and not bad ones, really..." Apparently, the variety of women is much broader in New York than most other large cities in the world, according to these two men, who had obviously been around. When they began to ask me my thoughts on the topic, I quickly changed the subject...

Everything went well for two or three stops, and then finally a small group of attractive young girls, no more than 20 years old, entered the car next to us. I could see the two begin to salivate with a more than healthy appetite over the "cuisine" just one car over. Alfredo's speech became choppy and short, gazing longingly at the bottled blonde hair and cheap perfume that could be detected through the glass. It was clear that our lively conversation that was engaging enough just minutes before had lost all of its luster. As the train lurched to a stop in the next station, without skipping a beat, in mid-sentence both of the men bolted out of our car and entered the next. For the next 6 or 7 stops, I watched the unsuccessful attempts of Alfredo flirting with girls old enough to be his children, while his suave and younger side-kick obviously triumphed. Although I could not hear the high frequency giggles from these hollow headed girls, their stupidity was as buoyant as a beach ball on the Hudson and permeated through the cars. Eventually the girls reached their stop, and I saw the two men move on to fresh prey.

For the next 20 minutes, I sat digesting the experience while the train slowly made its way to my destination. I laughed a bit, glad to have met these rather comical men, but I also envied their ability to easily talk to strangers and have no shame in flirting, even against the odds. Being neither old, nor a product of one too many bad acid trips, nor a Southerner in a land of Yankees made the dreaded walk up my 5 flights of stairs to my apartment all come into perspective...

The Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Cathedral to Fine Art and Free Air Conditioning...

Whenever I'm feeling like life is getting the best of me, which happens quite regularly, I often find myself wandering about the pathways in Central Park, avoiding sticky-fingered children and foreigners with guidebooks as much as possible. Many times, as if willed by some greater power, I find myself facing Cleopatra's Needle directly behind the massive stone structure that is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or "the Met" as it is called for short. My attraction to this place, especially in contemplative moments of self-indulgent pretension, is likened to the following scenario between Holly Golightly and her unsuspecting upstairs neighbor in the film adaptation of Truman Capote's novella, Breakfast at Tiffany's:

"Listen...you know those days when you get the mean reds?"
"The mean reds? You mean like the blues?
"No... the blues are because you're getting fat or because it's been raining too long. You're just sad, that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?"
"Sure."
"When I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump into a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away."

Although I can never justify the cost of cab fare (or the risk of personal injury and/or death that may result from riding in a New York City cab), I find that wandering on foot through the meandering walkways from the west to the east side of the park works sufficiently well. Furthermore, although both Tiffany's and the Met have many treasures that sparkle and shine, I prefer those which can not be purchased on platinum cards from any major carrier. There is something to be said for beauty that is truly priceless. These, and several other minute details separate me from the swinging socialite character of Miss Golightly, but our common need for a resplendent refuge from the cruel and unrelenting world unites us in spirit.

One of the most wonderful things about the Met is the fact that admission is by a "suggested donation" policy. They suggest that a reasonable adult should be able pay $20 for the buffet of culture that is offered, or even more if the aforementioned individual is really classy. Perhaps one day when I am, indeed, a reasonable adult, I will gladly pay such a fee, but whenever I get up to the desk and look at the unamused face of the fatigued attendant behind the counter, I flash a crispy $1 bill, and he or she who happens to have the privilege of accepting that generous donation from a starving artist, such as myself, hands me a brightly colored button with a rather decorative "M" stamped to the front that is to be worn at all times while navigating the maze of numerous galleries and great halls housed inside.

In addition to my love of art, there are two other primary attractions that keep me coming to the Met at least 3 times per month. One is the abundance of guaranteed free air conditioning. In July, we had a heat wave so bad, that I went to the museum 3 times in one week during the worst of it. I believe that many other broke artists did the same, as I saw more genuinely tattered clothes and bony scabby knees in those days than any other. The other attraction is the abundance of foreign tourists who seem hell-bent on perpetuating every stereotype about their respective native countries. I know that we Americans have a quite a reputation throughout the world as being rather obnoxious visitors wherever we go, but all those places seem to be evening the score and getting back at us by sending the worst possible delegates from their own homelands to the museums of New York. I can't forget to mention the middle-American families, clad in matching cargo shorts and fanny packs, always dragging some dejected floppy-haired teenager about while loudly mis-pronouncing the names of even well-known American artists. I believe that their job is to make the Europeans feel more important, and even more European. The presence of this unavoidable human theatre always provides a healthy dose of entertainment to add to the flavor of the Met experience.

All sarcasm aside, for me, the Met has become similar to a holy refuge in the vast chaos of New York City. I suppose that I use it as a spiritual center, the way one might attend services at a church or synagogue in the hope of obtaining a sense of meaning or the feeling of being grounded and resolved about the daily struggles and torments of adulthood. When all seems doomed and hope seems out of reach, I can take my "medicinal stroll" through the 19th century painting collection and see drawings by Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec or paintings by Van Gogh and my wilted demeanor perks up a bit (although when I pass Gauguin in the Van Gogh galleries I have to fight the urge to become spiteful and vindictive, but that's a tangent for another day). Perhaps seeing such beautiful work created by such flawed individuals resonates within me in a meaningful way that proves to always be uplifting. I've an attraction to the human will to create, and museums such as the Met function as cathedrals to that holy act of creation and human determination. When I'm at my worst, I can always drag myself into my very own version of Holly Golighlty's Tiffany's to regain, in true Truman Capote fashion, at least a few ounces of faith in life - enough to continue until my next episodic meltdown.

Monks of the Order of Saint Marilyn...

Marilyn Monroe in a moment of divine revelation...

People often use the phrase "only in New York" to explain or pass off certain bizarre or peculiar things that, in any normal context, wouldn't happen. For instance, if you see a woman casually walking down the street wearing a pair of shoes on top of her head, you can awkwardly shrug and shake your head while saying "only in New York" as a means of both acknowledging and attempting to validate the experience. When the lunatic in the subway assaults himself in a manic state of paranoia, and then chases rats up and down the train platform while talking to God, this is another appropriate time to say "only in New York," as a means of dealing with the event. Recently, I was exposed to an apartment that chilled me to my very core, and the pair of old queens who inhabited it. Upon reflection, the only way to adequately deal with the trauma of the situation is to pass it off as an "only in New York" scenario...

During a brief period of non-gainful employment, I was required to spend two days per week in the home of two rather peculiar men. The environment one creates to live in can tell you a lot about somebody, or in this case, two somebodies. Generally, upon entering someone's apartment, one might notice an eye catching accent like an antique lamp, an oriental rug, a reclaimed barnwood table, or even a copy of Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard sheepishly tucked away on a bookshelf. In this particular apartment, the first association that entered my mind upon walking in the door was Liberace. Actually, I wondered if the person responsible for decorating this apartment had been possessed by the angry spirit of Liberace whilst indulging in a cocaine binge. There was not one single surface left unscathed by some sort of hideous object that was either golden, jeweled or red velvet and tasseled. Proudly admiring his monument to new money and poor taste, one of the inhabitants of the apartment who was bald on top and had a sad greasy little pony tail the size and shape of an arthritic thumb, explained that he and his partner are "collectors," which is just the term that the wealthy use for "hoarders" of very expensive garbage.

Each room in this palace of kitsch had a name, and I was to know the names and always use them when referring to various locations around the house. There was "the Library," which was really just a living room containing bookshelves filled with every volume of Danielle Steele, every 20th century film reference and various books on art history scattered about to give the suggestion of dignity and pretension. The perimeter of the room was lined with statues and figurines that grew up from the carpeted floor like stalagmites, making it impossible to maneuver in a straight line from one corner to the next. Any of these sculptures that had arms or other useful appendages had been either draped in strings of glass beads or covered in used pieces of masquerade ball costumes. Apparently these men would spend months each year planning and preparing their trips to Carnival in Venice, which was evident in the abundance of sequined masks littering any available space on the bookshelves not already inhabited by a figure of a fairy or a member of Alice's tea party.

There was also "the Garden Room," which was home to a number of potted ferns and dusty silk roses. The walls had been hidden beneath floor-to-ceiling beveled mirrors to accentuate the illusion that the abundance and importance of the home was indeed infinite in the reflections. Like the Library, there were hundreds of gaudy sculptures, many made of acrylic resin, that seemed to multiply themselves in the mirrored chaos. Even the windows had stained glass pieces stuck in front of them. The theme continued in "the Theatre" which was covered entirely in red velvet curtains draped between golden columns on each wall. An enormous blown-glass chandelier, much too large for the room, hung from the ceiling, and also had colored beads and feathers hanging from its massive arms. Three rows of actual theatre seats were crammed into this space, two rows being occupied by over-sized plush animals, and oddly enough, a bronze replica of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The prized possession of the room was an original movie poster for the Italian release of "Some Like It Hot" with Marilyn Monroe, which had a special spotlight on it to amplify its significance. Among all of the collections of objects stockpiled in this one home, the only unifying facet of all of the rooms, aside from poor taste, was the presence of Marilyn.

From bits and pieces of conversations I had with the gentleman of the house, I was able to piece together reasons behind the necessity for dwelling in a world of fantasy. These two men, now in their sixties, seemed to be running away from some sort of disappointing and inadequate past while grasping on to a world of endlessly fabricated childhood dreams, now made attainable by a large disposable income. This home and these collections of hideous things were a Neverland, of sorts, and these two old men just lots boys caught up in fantasy. They revered their home as a cathedral, and as such, it was one dedicated to Marilyn: patron saint of lost boys. Her presence was like that of the holy virgin, ironically enough, and her elevated status of deity was unmistakable. From every corner of their home, she looked down from collectible plates, magnets, magazine covers, barbie doll effigies, photographs, coffee mugs, letter openers and even cookie jars smiling and offering hope. They even had a collection of ceramic Marilyn heads peeking out from between books in their Library shelves. This home, and all the objects in it, were a pretty hefty bandage meant to heal some type of pain I hope never to know in my own life. Although my time working in this home gave me a slight twitch, it made me grateful that I have not yet found the need to seek comfort in the arms of a dead movie starlet whose likeness can be purchased on the home shopping network in thousands of different forms. It also made me appreciate that, while I currently have nearly nothing to speak of, my living space does not induce visual migraines in myself or others. Like my mother always said, "money don't buy class..."

"White people really DO eat fried chicken..."

"Harlem Grandmothers" circa 1910, a decoration in the 125th St. & St. Nicholas Ave. subway station.

Harlem is a world unto itself, a world that is slowly becoming more and more familiar to me. I live just on the cusp of Harlem, in a strange little bubble that is created by and surrounds Columbia University. My street is rather quiet, mostly full of Columbia students or retirees, but a mere two blocks away lies 125th street, which is where Columbia ends and Harlem officially begins, at least west of Morningside Park.

Coming from my rather sheltered upbringing in my tiny mountain town, 125th street is still quite a novelty to me. For example, growing up in Colorado, I had never seen a sew-in weave shop, and on this one street, there are at least 20 of them that all offer affordable miracles in the matter of an afternoon. The ladies who come out of these establishments seem to glow as they walk out into the world, admiring their new lovely styles in store window reflections as they pass. The world on the street, aside from being filled with fashionable Harlem ladies, is a confluence of so many sounds, sights and smells that it can be a little overwhelming. For as many weave shops exist, there is an equivalent number of soul food restaurants and fried chicken cafés that offer hearty aromas as you pass by.

A few days ago, while running some errands on 125th, I decided to stop in one such establishment and sample the local cuisine. As is true most of the time when I'm out and about in this neighborhood, I walked in the restaurant and looked like some sort of albino in comparison to all the other people around me (I blame all of my ancestors for being from cloudy places and having no reason for pigmentation). One thing that applies to most situations in Harlem, is that rarely is anyone ever quiet or reserved in public. Everyone just shouts their business to everyone else in full voice, and that's just the way it is. Over the rumble of the crowd, I ordered my small box of chicken strips and went happily on my way. Everything in the world seemed pleasant enough; I had finished my errands, I now had a hot box of fried food to eat and while in line at the chicken place, I had just heard a very juicy story about a man named Terrell and some woman with a name that sounded like the combination of several small countries, all slurred together.

As I walked back toward my apartment, a man on a street corner, sitting with some of his friends, started to point at me and laugh. My first instinct was to look down and make sure my fly wasn't unzipped. All clear there. I then licked the inside of my mouth to make sure I didn't have a hunk of biscuit wedged in between any of my teeth, it wasn't that either. I wondered what it could possibly be. All sorts of strange emotions and junior high school flashbacks started flooding into my head; memories of embarrassing traumas from gym class or awkward social situations (of which I had many). Why was this man pointing at me and why were all of his friends laughing? Finally, he stopped laughing long enough to utter a few words, motioned to his friends and said "See, I told you. White people really DO eat fried chicken..." As they continued laughing, I walked on holding my box of chicken and breathing a sigh of relief, having avoided any embarrassment other than being quite noticeably white.

Although I often stand out here, I enjoy the neighborhood. I love seeing ladies in colorful flowing dresses wearing beads and cloth head dresses majestically gliding down the sidewalks. I love the little carts on the street selling coco helado on hot days, and all the little kids with their pocket change swarming around them. I love the park on the way to the subway that has the same little group of old ladies socializing each afternoon. I've picked out a favorite old lady of the group, she is always wearing a fancy hat of some sort. I look for her, specifically, every time I walk by, hoping to see which hat she decided to wear that day. I wonder if eventually I will become a routine part of the little neighborhood scene that people will see as a familiar piece of their day. All I know is that, so far, I have at least been able to confirm one man's theory about the dietary habits of my own people.

Shiny Sparkly Things...

Family picture in Dominguez Canyon circa 1989, dressed in our desert finest.

Sometimes I like to walk down Fifth Avenue in the evenings, in moments of Holly Golightly-inspired nostalgia, and look at the window displays in all the magnificent shops lining the streets. Sometimes this can be very difficult to do without becoming involved in an incident of physical danger brought on by directionally challenged tourists and bad camera angles that just happen to always intersect with your rib cage or chin at the wrong moment. More than once, I've had my brushes with near doom at the hands of cute Asian families or high school students exiting tour buses and flashing their cell phone cameras at everything. Even with all of the perils involved, when I am too antsy to go home for the night, but too poor to do anything that costs money (which is nearly always), I take my chances on the hazard-filled sidewalks and admire things, through the glass, that I could never, in a million years, justify owning myself.

I like to walk up from St. Patrick's Cathedral, all the way to Central Park South (avoiding the horse excrement) and then head toward Columbus Circle, looking at shiny sparkly things and the shiny sparkly people who actually buy them. Part of the fun is judging these people, and telling myself that it's much better to be poor and simple, staying grounded in reality, than it is to have everything in the world be actually attainable. It's always nice to be deluded about things like that, telling yourself ridiculous lies about how miserable these people probably are with their chauffeurs, fine dining, extravagant homes, health care, etc...  Feeling the hunger pains in my belly while walking by plates of food worth more than my whole life somehow seems like a triumph after enough of these little proletariat truisms run through my head. Money can't buy happiness, after all, or so say the people who don't have any of it...

One day, I ventured inside of Bergdorf Goodman, deciding for once to see what things looked like in these high-end stores without the glass barrier between. Aside from the mother and daughter from Jersey City who yammered on behind me, it was like entering a world where everything was bathed in some sort of heavenly glow and and joy was tangible and available to anyone with enough credit. When I made it to the top floor, home furnishings, I saw an older lady with her daughter examining several china sets and debating over which would be the most appropriate on their Christmas table this coming year. When I was a kid, we had a special set of Christmas Tupperware cups we would bring out each year for our festivities. Half were red, half were green, and they all had some sort of kitschy little white holiday design stamped on the sides in true 1970's fashion. We would fill them with store-bought "Holiday Nog" that my mother lovingly diluted with skim milk. The only debates that arose were generally less about the fine dinnerware, and more about who got to drink the olive juice left over in the can. I wondered if these ladies in Bergdorf's ever argued about who got to drink the last of the olive juice.

As I continued further through the home furnishings, I saw a married couple admiring a very lovely kitchen table and discussing the pros and cons relating to how the table would effect their living space. To me, the table looked very nice and quite sturdy, and then I thought of the table in our kitchen that my father used to support the engine of a broken-down Volkswagen microbus one bitter winter. It was extremely cold that year, and I remember there being a lot of snow that never seemed to stop falling. Somehow, my mother gave in and allowed the rebuilding of the engine to take place over several days in her kitchen, where she just sighed and looked the other direction, ignoring the thick black grease that ended up covering every surface within 5 feet of the pile of mechanical parts. I wonder if the husband in front of me was taking scenarios like that into consideration whilst admiring the craftsmanship of this fine dining table before us.

After I'd seen enough pewter and mother of pearl to last me for a good long while, I headed back down the series of escalators to leave the store. On my way down, I was accompanied on the moving staircases for 5 floors by two teenage girls discussing their upcoming summer vacations and what they'd have to buy in preparation. They went through a list of all the essentials like shoes, jewelry, more "seasonal" designer handbags, cocktail dresses, etc... The only summer vacations my family ever seemed to go on were backpacking trips in the desert. I remember to get us excited about it, my mother would surprise us with things like new flannel shirts, neon-colored flashlights or wool hiking socks. I think it was the flashlights that worked the best, especially my "hot green" flashlight that fit perfectly into my awesome "hot green" fanny pack. I imagined what these girls would do on a backpacking trip and how they'd look roaming about the desert in their cocktail dresses and new Jimmy Choos.

After a little chuckle under my breath, I finally made it to the ground floor. I said goodbye to the crystalline counters filled with beautiful little objects that shone brilliantly like mountains of diamonds under a sunset of heavenly-crafted lights. Although it's good fun to take a peek at this strange alternate reality every now and then, I am always quite happy to exit back into a world where things don't sparkle and shine quite so much.

Employment and other forms of self-betrayal...

"The Subway" by George Tooker

I can remember the excitement of having my very first summer job when I was 15 years old, back in my tiny hometown in Colorado. I still recall the giddiness of going to work for the very first time (I think my mom dropped me off), wearing my new and untarnished uniform complete with the clip-on name tag and over-sized bubbah hat, not to mention the thrill of conceptualizing making my very own money at a whopping $5.00 per hour. That lasted for about 5 minutes, and then the dinner rush started and I couldn't shove fried chicken into boxes quickly enough to satisfy the insatiable appetites of white trash families with rancid screaming offspring who critiqued my performance at every turn. I realized that day that sometimes being employed can be more important than having dignity...

Since moving to New York, I have applied for at least 200 different jobs, everything from being a gallery assistant to working retail to dog walking for rich white people. After dozens of interviews and correspondences with potential employers, I have come to two conclusions: I've over-educated myself beyond any possibility of practical employment, and I'm too inexperienced for anything that I'd actually enjoy, or hope to enjoy doing. I've also learned that I'm horrible at interviews and I'm not convincing at improving the truth.

One morning I found myself in an area of Brooklyn called Dumbo, which rests cozily beneath the great stone arches supporting the Manhattan Bridge. I walked down some newly gentrified street lined with once productive old industrial buildings now converted into "lofts" and bourgey retail spaces, approaching a job interview with a company called Royale Concierge (yes, spelled with the "e"). I knew it was a bad sign when the first thing I saw upon exiting the elevator was a piece of paper taped to the wall that said "Royale Concierge applicants wait in elevator area, DO NOT sit in the guest seating area." So I waited, leaning against a brick wall, trying to muster all of my good job interview charisma (which was not much) until a thin abrupt-looking man came out and hastily prodded me over to a small glass room where he and his stern-faced associate proceeded to ask me a barrage of questions about why I felt like I deserved to exist, much less seek employment as a desk attendant in a luxury condominium complex. By the end of the interview, feeling a bit violated, it was surmised that I am a person with "ambition," and people with ambition do not make very good front desk attendants in luxury condominium complexes.

Being ambitious, and desperate, I decided one day to attend an "open interview session" with a very trendy and upscale hotel in Chelsea next to the High Line. I had sent in a resumé in advance, and the posting mentioned "headshots appreciated, but not required," which should have clued me in a bit on what I was getting myself into. When I got to the building where the interviews were to be held, I was corralled into a room full of at least 100 of the most beautiful people I had ever seen up close. I was suddenly very self-aware and very conscious of my thrift store shoes, vest and tie that I had worn to look "professional" amid a sea of very up to the minute designer fashions. They brought us in groups of 10 at a time to a room with a long re-claimed barnwood table and two very suave-looking gentlemen sitting at the head. After making polite introductions, they explained that they were looking for people with "personality" and a "unique look" to match the character of their hotel and its clientele. The next few minutes seemed like some sort of bizarre Real-World audition special when they asked us to go around the table and tell them "our stories." I found out that a lot of out of work models and actors seek employment in hospitality and that in many cases, everything you were taught in grade school about inner beauty and self worth is bullshit when trying to obtain employment in Chelsea. Needless to say, I am too short and have too much of a receding hairline to have ever been considered as a viable contender.

It is amazing to find the limit of the depths to which you are willing to stoop when trying to become "employed." You really learn the amount of abuse you're willing to take before you just snap and run out of a room crying and cursing the day that money came into being. You also, at least in my case, learn just how many people from New Jersey are willing to commute long distances into the city, just to say they work in Manhattan. All in all, my great struggle paid off. I've finally obtained the title of "employed." I'm now selling my soul, 7 days a week, split between 2 jobs, to make enough money to pay my rent and eat sparingly and occasionally, sometimes. Thus my New York cliché continues as I starve myself into a loosely-sustainable Manhattan lifestyle. Ah, isn't life grande....

The romantic misadventures of Ernest, and other Subway tales...

A lovely heart shaped map of the NYC Subway system, illustrating my affections.

In my relatively short time as a resident of New York, I have come to the conclusion that riding the Subway is better than having cable TV (which, for the record, I do not have). In no other place do all of life's idiosyncratic and bizarre tendencies come to a head so abundantly, than in a crowded subway station, especially after 11pm. I have come to relish the entertainments the Subway affords me each day, and have come to think of different stations in different neighborhoods as simply a way to change the channel and pick my own genre of live human theatre.

One of the many charming features of the Subway, aside from the specific and pungent aroma of the stations in the heat, is the fact that one can see everyone from beggars to bankers to aspiring socialites all crammed together like over-sized pickles in an inadequate jar. Men, women, children and the folks somewhere in between, all are forced to interact without acknowledgment, trying to maintain each of their quasi-unique socio-cultural/economic identities as they also attempt to avoid any unnecessary molestation. Much of the time, a quiet sort of Puritan reverence is observed by most passengers, just trying to make it to their next stop without having to make eye contact with another living soul. This is all a noble hope shared by many, but if one is to ride the train for more than about two stops, there's always some character who ignores the awkward, vacuous and utterly impersonal rules of the American personal space bubble and this is when things get interesting.

A couple of weeks ago I was waiting for the train in the elevated station near my building. I sat down on a wooden bench next to a fatigued looking woman and her three equally fatigued children, ranging in ages from about 4 to 10. Soon the sound of athletic shoes on pavement bounding toward the bench caught my attention. The shoes and hasty footsteps came from a man, panting and out of breath, dressed in a very fabulous lime green velour track suit now approaching the emaciated mother of three. She rolled her eyes as he said "Yo, baby, we gotta talk!" The unamused woman responded back, "Ernest, I ain't got no more words left for you." For this, I turned off my iPod, knowing that the show in front of me was much more interesting than my current playlist. Ernest, who's name was shouted loudly and repeatedly, and the nameless woman proceeded to argue for several minutes about the perils of their short-lived romance, which, obviously, was on its way out. Apparently there was some dispute over train tickets from Yonkers, a trashy gift unworthy of a lady, AND another woman whom Ernest protested (a bit too emphatically) that he didn't actually know. As the happy couple argued, the three forgotten children seemed to melt into the bench, obviously a routine they were well accustomed to by now. By the time this mini telenovela-esque episode dissipated, I came to my own conclusions that neither party had argued their case effectively, and subway voyeurism is wonderful. Without resolving anything, Ernest ran off in a huff yelling "forget you!" to the the scene behind him.

Another day I was taking the train down to the Lower East Side for my internship, when track maintenance ensued and an entire train packed with mid-day passengers was stuck in the middle of the tunnel for at least 15 minutes. There was an old homeless woman in the back corner of the car, directly across from me, precariously perched like a pigeon on a makeshift throne of garbage. She was literally shaped like the number 7, her neck and shoulders came to a sharp 90 degree angle with her weather-worn head bobbing along parallel to the ground. She was dressed in rags and was filthy. What she was doing with her garbage throne, is still a mystery, but just as the train lurched to a stop, she woke up from her trance, and ritualistically produced a bottle of rubbing alcohol from one of her bags of garbage. With a theatrical flair, she began dumping rubbing alcohol on herself, the floor of the train car, the seats, the walls, her garbage throne, and the feet of innocent bystanders. She then proceeded to wash the entire affected area with her disgusting, claw-like hands, taking the utmost care and insuring that no surface was left un-cleansed. Half the car immediately moved to one side, gasping for air as the rubbing alcohol fumes permeated the static prison that now kept us under this old woman's dominion. Once she felt satisfied with her work, she then resumed her silent perch atop her piles of trash, taking little notice of the bewildered stares from the other passengers.

Along with these more notable scenes are just the average, everyday rantings of drunks, lunatics, religious fanatics and people who have just stopped caring about the consequences of social impropriety. Riding the trains is not only a mode of transportation, but a rich and unique cultural experience that only New York can afford in such a particular manner. Just like everything else in this city, there is never a dull moment when riding the subway.

A refugee from another reality...

I did not take this photo, but it is sadly accurate...

As the days pass in my new life, more and more of the strange things I see around me are blending into some semblance of predictable normality. Now seeing the same homeless woman on the subway telling her same sad story and crying at the same part (10 shows daily, 12 on weekends) is a welcomed piece of familiarity, rather than a mere annoyance (although I think it's odd she chooses the same line and the same stops each day). Hearing loud music in Spanish blaring out of my neighbor's window each afternoon, overpowering the sounds of the arguments proceeding in the kitchen seems quaint and picturesque. Getting harassed by school children as I walk to the train is starting to bother me a little less. These, and many other things are now becoming pieces of my life, however; there are some things that will take much more time to adjust to...

There are times when I feel like I came from another planet, and I think all the people around me get the same idea. Although I've visited New York on numerous occasions before moving here and feel somewhat familiar with the city, there are certain things one doesn't do as a visitor, such as buy groceries and day to day necessities. I am used to giant glistening white cathedrals to consumer products, filled with more items than anyone could ever need or want and overly-friendly employees offering assistance at every turn. In these beautiful monuments to domestic bliss, everything is clearly labeled in wide aisles containing products that seem to leap right off the shelf into your giant shopping cart. You can get everything you need in these mega-stores from bananas to toilet paper to postage stamps. Establishments in New York do not resemble this model in the least.

One of the main differences between shopping here and other parts of the United States is that there is no such thing as a "one stop shop" for anything. In my neighborhood there are at least 8 markets within a 2 block radius of my building, and they all provide different products. If you just want something easy like apples or soda, you go to one of the little deli markets. If you want things like toothpaste or light bulbs you go to the Duane Reede drug store. If you need envelopes or stamps, you go to the stationary store. If you want a bread, cereal, canned beans, etc..., there is this horrible place called the Met Foodmarket that I have grown to despise.

Unlike the Utopian grocery store model I described before, the Met Foodmarket seems intentionally designed to induce seizures or at least a severe anxiety attack. As soon as you enter, you're greeted by the smell of sticky floors and old shrimp. In the labyrinth of aisles, too narrow for more than one person to fit through at a time, much less a shopping cart, you feel like you're walking through a game board from chutes and ladders. For some reason, there are 4 different sections for chips scattered about the tiny store, but nowhere to find paper towels. You'll find things like tea next to the sausages, tampons next to the pickles and bread next to the popsicles. If you'd like to ask for help from one of the vest-clad employees, they will probably just run over your foot with a cart and then wander away muttering non-English curses about you under their breath.

It's not necessarily the shock of what is here, but it's the expectation of something quite different that will take time to subside. I feel like a refugee from another reality, just sort of floating about like flotsam in the rising tide of this place. I'm sure one day, the Met Foodmarket will also seem familiar, and perhaps even charming, but I believe it's a good benchmark that I have a long way to go before I can don the title of "New Yorker."

My New York apartment...

My bedroom window.

One often can fantasize about fabulous New York apartments when reading magazines, watching movies and unrealistic TV shows (actually filmed in LA), and have a completely skewed view of the spaces New Yorkers actually inhabit. Reading such examples of journalistic excellence like People magazine, Vogue or Cosmopolitan, one could assume that Manhattan is full of nothing but gorgeous little "pied à terre" units on cobblestone streets with bright red doors and flowers adorning ivy-covered window boxes. As this is true for a select group of the glamorous few (and I can vouch from personal experience that these "humble little flats" actually do exist), I will reserve my nastiest judgments for other much more bold misinterpretations of the truth. In any case, for the majority of New York living situations, I am here to set the record straight...

I live in an area of Manhattan called Morningside Heights, which is just really a nice way of saying "nearly Harlem." I'm right next to the Columbia University campus, General Grant's tomb, and The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (a.k.a "the Rabbi factory). It's a quaint little neighborhood with rolling hills, tree-filled parks and loud angry people. My building, like most others on my street, boasts a lovely red brick façade with a green canvas awning, brass light fixtures and a toothless bald man who always seems to be out on the front steps during all the sunny hours of the day. Once inside, one immediately notices the five flights of rather narrow stairs leading up to my apartment (conveniently located on the fifth floor) with no elevator in sight. Upon entrance of my humble abode, one also may notice the apparent lack of air conditioning the building (built sometime in the first decades of the twentieth century) has to offer. Luckily, we do have such amenities as beautifully high ceilings, hardwood floors and paper-thin walls, through which anything and everything can be heard. For a small fortune each month, I am able to live high above 123rd street between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway, looking out over the world below and reveling in my newly obtained New-York-ness.

I call a small hexagonal bedroom home. It's not much, but it's a peaceful place of my own in the middle of the chaos and the violent force of the city. On one of the diagonal walls of this room, I was lucky enough to find a small cupboard, which is merely an insinuation of what a closet should be, but it holds the few worldly possessions I now obtain, and quite comfortably so. On the opposite diagonal wall, I have been furnished with a rather tall window that looks directly into the building next-door. The line of sight from my bed is directly into the stairwell of the neighboring edifice, through which I can see a myriad of comical things. I have woken up in the middle of the night to scenes of fumbling men chasing suitcases down the landings. I am lulled to sleep each night by the funny little sounds coming from the open windows all around me (hoping to release some of the early summer heat), many of which are voices in no familiar tongue I can distinguish. I have never felt so small or insignificant in my whole life, but there is something charming and quite humbling about such a feeling.

I am slowly coming to the realization that this is really my life now (I haven't just daydreamed or falsely-willed it into existence). I am no longer in the mountain home I came to know so well. Now I am one of a great many, trying to find my way in a vast world beyond my own comprehension.

From a Tipi to Times Square...

A Real Life Photo of my Childhood (I'm the Baby)

As all stories must have a beginning of some sort, so will this; the story of how I ended up an intentionally unemployed starving artist with two very non-lucrative degrees in a city full of poor idealistic saps just like me. I suppose it all began when my two hippie parents met and decided it would be a great idea to move to the Rocky Mountains to teach wilderness survival...

My name is Forrest Harrison Gerke. I was born one very snowy day in a tiny town nestled at the foot of the San Juan Mountains in Southwestern Colorado, which is about as culturally far away from New York City as one can get without leaving the United States. My parents were bohemians who raised their children living in a Tipi during the summers, wandering through mountains and canyons with groups of weary strangers, teaching them how to live off of the land all around. All of my earliest memories involve being out under the enormous Western skies without any trace of civilization in sight for miles.  I know that most people my age have memories of their families sitting in front of color TV's eating microwavable meals on foldable TV-dinner trays, but my parents were different. My parents had a dream, it's true. Both of them grew up far away from the mountains of Colorado in very suburban settings back east and had every opportunity to lead boring normal lives with steady paychecks, health insurance, retirement planning, etc... Rather than becoming carbon copies of their peers, they moved to the mountains to pursue their dreams of running a wilderness survival school, firing their own pottery from natural clay and raising their family completely on the fringe of "normal" society. Although not every component of their 20 year old idealism was realized, they never stopped trying.

Now, this all sounds quite lovely, and it truly was, but there were some practical matters that perhaps my earth-loving parents had not planned for when taking us on their unique life's journey. While my peers spent their summers playing video games, watching Saturday morning cartoons and drinking sugary soft-drinks, I occupied myself by digging latrines, wading through muddy river beds and identifying edible plants. When I was at home, in my cable-TV-free environment, I spent much of my spare time riding my bike to the library and sitting on the dusty floor of the art history stacks for hours looking at books that were too heavy to carry home in my tiny backpack. The closer I found myself identifying with various dead artists, the further I found myself from relating to the people around me in the tiny little cow town in which I lived (the fact that we had a library at all, much less one with a small art history section, was a complete anomaly/miracle). Rather than sitting around on sunny days burning ants with magnifying glasses as many of my peers did, I would take a backpack full of books and my stuffed bunny (who was cleverly called "Little Forrest") out to a trash heap island in the middle of the irrigation canal conveniently located at the end of my dead-end street, and imagine myself in far off places doing exotic and bizarre sorts of things.

Stranded in the middle of a barren intellectual wasteland, I developed my own methods to amuse myself. I would tie Little Forrest to the handlebars of my bicycle, his long canvas ears flailing about in the wind, and together we would ride off into the adobe hills and pretend we were exploring undiscovered countries (even though they had been clearly discovered by hormonal teenagers who left the traces of their rural fornications behind them, as well as cowboys looking to unload their old junk, but unwilling to drive it to the landfill). Together Little Forrest and I lived out many extravagant adventures, that sadly never actually happened. I knew from the very beginning that I longed for a life dedicated to the pursuit of genuine beauty in the world. At the age of 3, my favorite book was HW Janson's "The History of Art," and by the age of 4 I had decided that I would be an artist one day.

Being a wildly vivacious and eccentric child only lead into an extremely eventful adolescence. As I've spent the years since trying to block out much of that time in my life, I'll skip ahead to college. In college, I finally found my niche. I enjoyed being part of the riff-raff sequestered away in the Visual Arts Building of Colorado State University, pushed to the very furthest corner of the campus. Although college made me realize how unique and strange my childhood had been in many respects, I realized that, as a whole, many clichés about art students are quite true and I had found my people. Earning my undergraduate degrees in Painting and Art history provided me with many of the happiest times I've had to date, but early-post-adolescence only lasts for so long, and before I knew it, 6 years after I had started, I was a college graduate at the height of a recession with no useful skills and absolutely no prospects for a job.

After starving myself to afford a studio space for a while, I realized that the only logical next step would be to really starve myself for an even more expensive and much smaller space in New York in search of my fame and fortune in the art world. So, armed with only my cunning wit, my two art degrees and five thousand dollars in easily depletable savings, I consolidated everything I own into two suitcases and set off into a much bigger and more crowded world, leaving the mountains, big skies and wide open spaces of Colorado far behind me. I don't know what will come of my rather irrational and unscrupulous decision, but this is where my New York story begins...