I'll Follow the Sun

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 3^rd and 20^th 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 8^th, the day after my 41^st 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 23^rd 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." 

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once again, I am buoyed a by a trip to a faraway place. It is December the 27^th; 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.

The Longest Move

It seems like yesterday I was hailing a cab on 2nd Avenue, headed off to the tropical part of the United States, a/k/a: Hawaii. It was December 20th, 4:30 AM. It was cold and dark.  Street vendors piled the sidewalk with Christmas trees, and it was still so on January 17th, 2011.  The fragrant evergreen piney smell of trees that had been felled recently, and I imagine, bought on December 24th only to be tossed to the street as the 12th day of Christmas rang through. 

This was the day I had finally ordered the movers to deliver my worldly possessions to the apartment I had reluctantly signed a lease for in mid-December, immediately regretting the decision and spending the following weeks tossing and turning, dreams of unruly neighbors and angry landlords, who I had recently learned, were my next-door neighbors.

As if I had been born under a sign that demanded it so, it rained as it had for the past three major moves I’d been through, and for over $1000, three men busted my furniture and boxes through the door in just two hours. Not bad.   After they left the apartment, I followed them and traipsed back up to the safety of Tudor City and a minimalist apartment that wasn’t wall-to-wall boxes and plastic wrapped furniture.   

My friend and former roommate  Victoria offered some comfort, ‘moving always sucks’. “Remember how many books I had when we were living together on East 19^th Street?” I ask her. “Multiply that by 17 years.”     I ended up staying in Tudor City for the next two weeks until I was curtly told via text message "Cut the cord!”.  I was being ridiculous, I know, but I just did not want to face the task ahead of me. 

How can I put the feelings I had into words while I shuffled through cartons I had boxed up in August 2007 and left in a Pasadena storage facility?  "Simultaneously detached and eerily present" is what comes to mind.  In fact, it was rather overwhelming.  Life has happened.  Things have changed. I’m different. And that I’ve been an unapologetic transient… it feels like I’ve been moving for years.


I keep trying to believe what people tell me, that this will be fresh start, that all of my efforts and energy will come back to me, but I can’t seem to drink the Kool-Aid just yet. It seems like such a monumental effort, this moving, and I can't help but wistfully think of Gandhi and his shoebox.

What I’m finding are things particularly California-centric; a Stickley bed set, Catalina forged decorative tiles, Plein Art oils of the Cambria coast, a rare pattern of Franciscan ware called “Forget Me Not “ as if lulling me back to the west coast. 

All of this fit pretty nicely into that life over there - wide-open space and suburban cityscape, that way out west across the Painted Desert, the blur of colored lights in the middle of nowhere, the cragged ragged crags of the Sierras changing color with every hour of every day.   This is what my boxes contain. The light.   I miss the light, which is especially poignant given we’ve barely had two days of sun during all of February, March and the first two weeks of April.

Don't get me wrong, I love living in New York.  Every day I’m on the move, walking to and from and sometimes nowhere and I am always glad to be here. But I although the reason why I ended up here is a happy accident, I can’t say that moving is happy making.

It just brings up too many questions that wake me out of a restless sleep, overwhelming me at unseemly hours like 3:AM.   Questions that range from morbid, (“Do I really need these photos albums? Someone is just going to throw them out when I die”) to angry (“Why is the square footage constantly wrong on the apartment listings? This apartment is definitely NOT 350 SF.  Note to self – in NYC, always deduct at least 100 sf from what the listing states!), to despair masking as existential (“What am I doing here?”) This can be interpreted on both levels of spiritual to practical to a sack full of self-doubt. I mean, really, what am I doing here in this dark, studio apartment?   “Where do I belong?” Hawaii? Could I live there? I’ve always wanted to live in Spain. Why did I sign this lease?”)

Over the next six weeks, I slowly find a place for everything, come up with creative shelving, hunt down Crate & Barrel bargains on Craig’s List and make several trips to IKEA in Paramus, Elizabeth and Red Hook. 

After four years, I finally I have all my things in one place, with the exception of my Peter Beard signed print that is stowed in someone’s garage in Los Angeles.  For the first time in many years, I don't feel like my life is one big diaspora.


I'm further downsized and compact, and this apartment, which I refer to as The Garden, is really super cute.  My landlord is actually a very nice man, (although his wife tends to light into him every other day).  The Yankees fan across the hall is a complete stoner, so much so that there are times when I arrive home and MY apartment smells like pot. The light in my bathroom is yet to be fixed, but as Victoria reminds me, "Kat, this is New York - we've been waiting for our landlord to fix a lamp in our apartment for eight years!". 

And truly, I was tremendously happy to see those books, covered in plastic acid-free wrappers, a weekend project I’m grateful for as I see how badly the movers have handled everything despite my careful labeling.  I remembered all of my friends, gleefully recalling where and when I had found certain prizes while I examine the spines and page through to my favorite passages.


As I was lying awake one night, with those eternal questions zipping through my brain, this one popped in “Am I to be toting around these heavy boxes of books and curios all my days, items consolidated over time constituting my life? They are so heavy!”  I considered selling them.  It was Gandhi and that little box, whom I admired so much more as I shuffled these boxes from one end of the room to the other, but a friend advised that one day I would find that house and I’d want my books around me then. 


And so … even though the trips to yet a new storage unit, this one in Brooklyn, are bewildering, I know there is another move in my future.

For now, I'm waiting for the sun to come out and enjoying the lovely little space I've created.