Back to New York

Suddenly I’m back.

The icons of the New York skyline so familiar through recess of memory and the window of film, now examined through the window of a taxi sailing the BQE.

Displaced.

I want to find my notepad to write all this down, but my girl is nestled into my chest. She’s usually fetal with her back turned by 9pm, so I’m reluctant to disturb this spring communion when an isolating city surrounds.

In the morning I wake early and climb the noisy wooden stairs to the rooftop. The panoramic icons glisten in a sunlit post-rain lineup: Liberty, Freedom Tower, Triborough Bridges, Empire.

It’s an outer body experience: like a spectator automated through the motions of another person’s life. One foot after another on a trajectory to I-don’t-know-where.

However, devoid of routine and permanent residence, I choose to let all sense of confusion slip by and acknowledge simple facts: I’m alive, healthy, well-fed, and have an exciting future to build.

NYC From The BQE

With my mind still saturated with the feature film edit I’d been working on, it suddenly sparked that at some point I’d catch a great view of NYC. I glanced out the taxi window and sure enough I was in that exact spot where the BQE rises above cemeteries with a line of sight through a clear night to a perfect New York cityscape: buildings jet black, windows vibrant, and iconic structures such as the Empire State, Chrysler, and Freedom Tower, glowing.

It was in that moment en route to JFK it hit me – that New York, that seemingly endless year discovering and rediscovering all aspects of the Concrete Jungle, had come to a close.  That chapter has finished. What’s next?

For the immediate future, it’s Dubai, Abu Dhabi, India, and Australia. After that, we’ll see…

Favorite Links to Hurricane Sandy

Sirens ring through ghost-town streets. Car alarms sound. And the gusts of wind through the trees grow stronger.

I’ve heard the term “bunkering down” so many times on the telly I’ve had to turn it off. The same way “inundated” gets exhausted during flood coverage.

Here are some of my favorite links to keeping up with Hurricane Sandy:

  1. This Google Crisis Map tracks the storm and has fun features to turn on and off: http://crisislanding.appspot.com/crisismap/2012-sandy
  2. Pictures from NBC News, updated every hour or so: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49560895/displaymode/1247?beginSlide=1
  3. The NYC hurricane zone map, with mandatory evacuation from Zone A (I’m in the clear!): http://project.wnyc.org/news-maps/hurricane-zones/hurricane-zones.html
  4. NYC skyline photograph from the New York Times, updated every 60 seconds: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/28/nyregion/nyt-webcam.html?smid=fb-nytimes
  5. Memes! Every event gotta have memes: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/2012-hurricane-sandy

Stay safe!

Apple HQ

Taking a bite out of the big apple. At Apple.

I was expecting tech mecca. Instead, the Apple headquarters were more like a university campus…nothing particularly flashy from the outside. I guess that is reserved for places like the 5th Ave New York store…

Easter Sunday

Probably because I’m new here; probably because I feel very transient, having moved house four times in as many months. Probably because I have no job, yet more work than I can handle. Fortunately.

In my early 20’s I would have tried to wrench control. Or built some pattern of habit and routine to compensate the feeling of such. And it’s not that I feel out of control at present, just that I’m learning to be buffeted by the moment and yield to the opportunities that present themselves, with no guarantee of security for tomorrow. It has taken me to the most interesting places.

Easter Sunday afternoon: following an extravagant brunch-turned-day-long-eating-fest, I have fallen into a food coma. I wake drowsily to my phone’s vibrations echoing in the mattress springs. Several friends are urging me to head out to a bar in East Village. It’s a holiday weekend and I really should be out socializing. Yet with this much work to get done I must stay in tonight to edit. I slide across the bed to rest my chin on the window sill. The sunset strikes the red brick apartments opposite me above a stream of activity on the Williamsburg street below: pedestrians filing from the subway, bus brakes grinding to a halt, a JFK-bound jet looming overhead and 20121007_IMG_1619_900several men jabbering in what I think is Spanish outside the Deli below me, though I’m too tired to pick it. An ice cream van sings by. Rap thumps from a throaty engine pausing at a red light.

This is my world for the moment: New York. Sometimes I wonder
what it all means, how I ended up here and where it is leading. One side of me thinks I should have an agenda for success – some preconceived path, a self-image probably formed in my late teen years, perhaps outdated. Another side of me says to throw away all expectations save one: to observe the new experiences Liberty throws at me and enter the path-unknown without fear.