Let’s be honest. I will do almost anything but sit still and plunk out words on the keyboard. Just now, I spent almost two hours watching YouTube videos of George Harrison on the Dick Cavett show and then subsequently following the stupid links to other YouTube Beatles related videos… anywhere but facing this screen. You wonder, my friends, why I am not on FaceBook. Can you imagine the amount of wasted time I could rack up?
This is how I found myself at Fete Coffee on 3rd and 20th Street not finishing the several half-written posts about my great experience in Peru last October. Normally, I would send you, dear readers, updates about the build site, the work we would be doing, the families, but I just couldn’t wrap my brain around anything I had previously started, and frankly, I didn’t know how to put into words that I was moving again. It feels like I just mailed those beautiful “change of address” cards.
It all started in June while I was lying in bed throwing a pretty big pity party for myself, trying to evoke sympathy from Vanessa, who impatiently interrupted my nonsensical stream of consciousness with “Lemonade, Kat, lemonade!”
The benefit about being in your 40s is that you can actually see everything as a win-win situation, which is what Vanessa told me when she told me to sweeten up and write down what was going on. This introspection is not for everyone. Lemons, after all can be sour. You end up seeing things about yourself that you may not like. Which is exactly what happened.
I began working on a long essay about my volunteer work, community and the simple concept of home. In my efforts to pen descriptive prose, the authenticity of this subject forced a lot of complexities to the front. I found that I couldn’t stop dreaming about my former house on Oak Grove Drive. In my sleep state, I would walk the hallways and peer in the closets; I would sit on my green vinyl step stool in the kitchen corner and chat on the old rotary dial wall phone and wave to the neighbors. I would pluck the dead heads off the climbing yellow roses.
I was compelled to revisit a blog about Oak Grove. Yes, I was listening to Suzy Orman talk about dream houses. Yes, it was the perfect time to sell in Southern California. Yes, my CPA was right, I was never going to see this margin of profit again.
But I found hidden anxieties woven into that reasoning. I didn’t want to clean the gutters by myself. I didn’t want to haul the gy-normous trash bins to the curb. I didn’t want to be the single woman on the block that caused all the young brides to suddenly start walking their golden retrievers alongside their husbands. Didn’t they know that I, too, wanted someone to share the load?
Indeed, Oak Grove Drive was a grief inspired lovesick real estate therapy purchase, but I had unexpectedly disrobed the naked truth that I loved that house. By selling, I had uprooted myself and had not yet found fertile ground. That, despite wanting someone to share the yard work, I regretted letting go of my home and didn’t want to admit it.
It was these unsettling thoughts that permeated my mind when I left the country with a team of volunteers for La Florida, Peru, ironically to build houses for single women. And it was while I was hiking the Inca Trail, all 32 miles (or 26 depending on who the guide is or what literature you’ve read) I became fully conscious of how unhappy I had been in the past year and that the only way out of it would mean changing the course of my life … again.
Before I flew back to New York, I spent some time in Temecula with my childhood friend, Robin. Her house is some sort of Franco Tuscan style complete with fountain and circular drive. Hot water comes out of the faucet. Heck, water comes out of the faucet. This was literally the polar opposite of where I had just come from.
Hot air balloons swell on two sides of the house each morning at dawn, waiting to take people on tours of California’s south coast wine district and spectacular sunsets spread bright blood orange azure violet blue streaked skies across the Great Room’s 20 windows. “Every night” Robin says. I am envious of these views.
Numerous rose bushes remain in bloom, even for late October. I miss gardening. I long to plant geraniums to trail down the second floor balcony. The house practically weeps for it. I found myself pouring through one of my favorite cookbooks, The New Basics, planning dinner parties and imagining the deserts I hadn’t made yet.
I had to force myself to leave, not wanting to face my 250 square foot one-window apartment where the snow had left thousands of North Easterners without power. I wanted to stay there, in the spacious kitchen with the Thermador stove and pot of hot coffee.
And so I returned ten days later than originally planned, having been gone a total of six weeks, at the beginning of what I dreaded might be another long winter.
I woke up thinking about a conversation I had with Robin. I was trying to reason the necessity to have a permanent address, unsuccessfully betraying my reluctance to leave California. “Well, let’s see - you move for love or a job.” she reasoned back.
Full time wasn’t part of my bi-coastal-summers-on-the-Cape plan. In fact, I had moved for love. Well, that and the apartment my then-partner and I were sharing was not dog friendly, a fact omitted when he asked me to move in. So, there I was driving across the country with Lily on March 8th, the day after my 41st birthday, to his other apartment in NYC with the pretense that we would fix it up, sublet and perhaps buy something back on the West Coast.
Three years later, I didn't know why I was here except for the same hopeful, if not misguided, motivation that had prompted the purchase of that house, the long drive across country and currently, the leasing of this apartment - all results of relationships that didn’t make it to the Oscars, let alone the altar.
The fact of the matter was that for the past 10 months, I had been trying to make lemonade out of a hurried survivalist decision made against my instincts, but the mix was still tart.
I started thinking about the money that flew out of my pockets, how the rent I paid was more than my mortgage had been, the fact that I have to turn on the lights to make coffee, and that every morning when I walk Sgt. Pepper, I’m witness to more and more of the New York I used to know from the ‘80s, (meaning – openly transacted drug deals in front of the Bellevue Emergency room entrance at 9:AM).
I love this city. I’ve traveled far and wide, and it truly is the greatest place in the world, just like the Red Sox are the greatest ball club in the world, but the standard of life I want includes a view, a little bit of sunshine and sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes… a free parking lot. Friends, I'm not talking Brooklyn. I gave notice a few days later, and scheduled movers for mid-December.
While I packed up the apartment, fall was in full procession. Leaves sparkled in parakeet yellows and wine-like crimson. The temperature dropped absurdly without reason and rose the next day to 60 degrees. November’s full moon gleamed over the East River, the Empire State building was illuminated in five colors: purple, orange, blue, green and white. This was a nightly event I looked forward to, a surprise the whole city is in on because you never know what the colors will be unless it’s a holiday.
One night, I passed three people loitering outside my building, casually sharing a cigarette. A girl wearing bubble shorts, accentuating her ass and not caring that her cellulite peaks out right below, (she’s probably 25 though, so F you for noticing), takes a long drag and says: “You have to be careful about the Nurses. They either ignore you or they don’t know what they are doing. Hey you know what, you look just like Rashida Jones from Parks and Recreations… she’s gorgeous! But tell me for reals, is Jack a shitbag or what?”
I ask you, where else in the world can you eavesdrop so blatantly?
I didn’t know if I preferred the bitchy customers waiting in line at the Santa Monica post office or just the plain crazy clerks on 23rd Street who lose your packages. Honestly, I didn’t know where to forward my mail, but I did know that I wasn’t going to live in an apartment that made me unhappy any longer.
I am uprooted, or “a seed in the wind” as David LeBarron calls me. Maybe that is O.K. Maybe I should seriously think about getting a PO Box.
Someone asked me how I was doing, thinking my move might be for more ominous reasons. “I’m molting” I responded. “It’s not comfortable, but necessary for growth.”
Before the movers arrived, I flicked on the lights, lit the kettle for my leaky French press, and clicked open TinyBuddha.com’s Daily Wisdom:
We make hundreds of decisions every day, and most are no-brainers with low stakes results. Whether we choose A or B is a matter of evaluating risks and weighing benefits. It’s more about preferences, and less about impact.
Not so with powerful decisions. These are the ones that change the course of your life. These are the ones that require us to go way beyond reason and logic, straight into our hearts, and find answers that are truthful, though not necessarily popular or easy.
I’m always reassured when I get a missive through the Internet that speaks directly to what is going on in my life. Like I do have a guardian angel out in cyberspace.
As if I needed reinforcement, I received an email the same day with this quote under the sender’s signature:
"Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen."
Once again, I am buoyed a by a trip to a faraway place. It is December the 27th; I am high above the Pacific Ocean on my way to Moloka’i in the state of Hawaii.
To borrow from Paul, I’ve decided to follow the sun. I know the universe has conspired with me on this one.
