100 Days in New York
A Journey of Self-Discovery and a
Complex Analysis of the Condition of the Human Spirit
By
Isaac
M. McPhee, esq.
©
2008 by Isaac M. McPhee
Introduction:
This book was, at one point, going to be fantastic. It was going to be an epic chronicling of my
first 100 days of living in a new city – but not just any new city – The City
That Never Sleeps.
NYC.
I moved here on January 8th, 2008, in an
attempt to find some adventure and a change to my life – and to perhaps meet
and befriend celebrities, whom I could see casually, maybe for coffee or a
bagel or something.
While the move itself has been a resounding success, the
same can’t be said for my more “farfetched” ideals regarding this place. For one thing, this book, while containing
some truly beautiful moments, some shocking twists, and some mind-blowing
philosophical insights, ends in utter failure.
What began as a grand experiment, not unlike the creation
of America’s republican government, tapers off toward the end into the droll
tedium of office life. Where had naively
expected these first hundred days to be perhaps the most exciting my life has ever
seen as I search desperately to find my way in this city – things have not progressed
quite as dramatically as that.
I have a life. It’s
growing. And it’s becoming relatively normal.
There is plenty to write about, don’t get me wrong. I could sit down here and write a highly entertaining
entry for the remaining sixty-nine days that don’t get covered here (yes, I quit
only a third into it), but the truth is that at this point I’d probably just be
making it up. Maybe you don’t mind, but that
kind of goes against whatever it was I was attempting here.
So I present this now to you, even if the title is no longer
accurate:
These are my first “100 (though actually 31) Days in New York.”
Day
1
Tuesday
While many certainly tried, no one could possibly have
explained to me just how difficult it would be to pick up my life and move to
New York City. From Philadelphia it
wouldn’t be such a big deal, or from Boston.
But from Seattle, it proved to be difficult almost beyond all forms of
human reckoning.
Yes, of course I knew from the start that it would be
different from anything I had ever experienced before. I knew that I wouldn’t know anyone, that I wouldn’t
immediately have either a place to live or a job; that I would suddenly be
completely out of place in a sea of millions of people, all focused on their
own paths toward personal success and unwilling to make room for a newcomer
like me.
Of course I knew all this before I ever made my decision
to come here, but none of my knowledge could have possibly prepare me for what
I found when I first got here.
Flying into John F. Kennedy International Airport on
Tuesday, January 8, the frigid New York winter pierced me like sharp knives through
every part of my body, brief as it was, upon first exiting the plane. Forecasters were calling for freezing
temperatures throughout the month of January, with occasional snowfall and
severe winter storms. Perhaps this was
not the best time for me to be making a new start in such a hostile,
competitive environment.
But I was already here, so there was no turning back.
After nearly an hour of waiting at the baggage claim,
both of my giant suitcases (everything I would need to get started until the
rest of my belongings could be shipped to me after I had found a place to live
and started making some money) finally arrived and I hauled them out to the
sidewalk and waited for a cab to take me to Manhattan. It was cold, yes, but things would certainly
be going my way from this point on.
Of course nothing is that easy in New York.
It’s been three days now and I still don’t have any good
leads on places to live or work. I’ve
spent far more money than I’d expected and now find myself in a position where
if something doesn’t happen soon, I might just have to head home, hanging my
head in shame as a dismal failure. While
this eventuality had always been right at the back of my mind as a possibility,
the fact that the thought has been creeping up in my head over just the first
few days is something I’d never even remotely considered. No one could have explained to me just how
competitive the housing market in this city really is. Being a newcomer to the city with no job and
no real income apart from some money I’ve saved over the past few months does
not sit well with most landlords, who want to know that the rent will be paid
each and every month by way of a good, well-paying job. So what is there to do? Find a job first? It’s pretty hard to do that without someplace
to live. Employers in New York City
don’t like to find an address from Maple Valley, Washington on their
application (or so I would assume). Am I
caught in some kind of chasing my tail situation where the chicken/egg analogy
might be most fitting? I’m reminded of
an old Alice Cooper song called “Lost in America”:
Can’t
get a girl cause I ain’t got a car
Can’t
get a car cause I ain’t got a job
Can’t
get job cause I ain’t got a car
So
I’m looking for a girl with a car and a job
Couldn’t be much more accurate, could it?
Anyway, that’s New York City for you. While I’m still firmly committed to the
concept of free-market capitalism and the idea of picking oneself up by one’s
bootstraps, I’m just now beginning to realize that all of this is much easier
on paper than it is in real life. Still,
I will struggle on, not sure what will come of each passing day, scrapping for
food, saving my money, living off cold ramen noodles and the occasional hot dog
from a street vendor when I can find a couple bucks.
This is life in New York, and anyone who is expecting
anything different is in for a rude awakening when they get here.
…
Yes, well…
At least this is how expected
to begin this little chronicling of my life in any event. It’s not that I was hoping for absolute
disaster, but I was nevertheless mentally, emotionally and physically (whatever
that means) prepared for a worst-case-scenario type situation. I was prepared to be caught in a cruel
situation where nothing would go my way and where I would have to fight tooth
and nail to make anything happen for myself.
Like the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock or the settlers at Jamestown (or,
worse yet, Roanoke Island – for those who know their history), I would find
myself thrown into a hostile environment and I would continue to overcome
adversity until one day I found success for myself and my heirs.
By nature I am not a masochistic person, so of course I
didn’t actually want any of this
tragedy to actually befall me… but to be perfectly honest, it would have made
for a more entertaining read. Perhaps,
if it was full of enough emotion and distress and truly exemplified the human
spirit, it might even have had what it takes to make it onto the Oprah reading
list. Every author’s dream.
It would be a “coming of age” tale, like The Catcher in the Rye, but without all
the depression and misanthropicism.
My point in all of this, just to get back to the present
for a moment, is that I moved to New York City this very morning from the
little town of Maple Valley, Washington with no apartment and no job… and it
turned out to be far easier than I could have ever expected.
I had, as I mentioned before in my little dramatization,
two pieces of luggage with me (not including my carryon bag, which I suppose
makes for a total of three) containing everything I need to survive. Clothes, a few books, blankets, a pillow, a
couple flashlights, q-tips, and some miscellaneous items that I threw in there
for good luck. Both of these bags
exceeded the weight limit for checked-items at the airport, so I had to pay an
extra fee just to get them on the plane.
No matter, they got here and that’s that – though they created no end of
pain in my back as I tried to carry them both (well, carry one of them; the
other has rollers), even short distances.
Perhaps I should have taken it as a good omen when my
bags were the very first ones off the plane and onto the baggage claim conveyer
belt – the first time that’s ever happened to me. It was a pretty exciting moment, but being
entirely alone in a brand new city, I didn’t have anyone to immediately share
it with, so like I have been forced to do so many times today, I repressed my
emotions. Psychologists may not
appreciate it, but repression seems to be my best friend these days.
I left the airport and entered into what was decidedly not the typical freezing cold January
evening at JFK international airport.
Instead, I entered into a very comfortable, 65º that could have been the
middle of springtime. The temperatures,
I am told, had surpassed 70º earlier in the day. So much for the four jackets, three sweaters,
two scarves and four pairs of gloves in my exceptionally heavy bags. Apparently, the New York winter ends right
when I arrive. Still, never one to look
a gift horse in the mouth (whatever that means[1]),
I am able to look past my obsolete luggage and see the beautiful weather for
what it is – beautiful.
So, my cabbie – an irate Indian fellow – whisks me away
through the dreadful rush hour traffic on Long Island, over the Triborough
Bridge, and to my temporary residence on the upper west side, where I will be
staying for up to two weeks (or until I find someplace more suitable), a little
hostel off Columbus Ave.
Now, I am not exactly new to the idea of living
inexpensively and staying in hostels.
I’ve personally found lodging in these establishments twice in the past
- once here in New York just over a year aago (though that a slightly nicer one)
and again for a couple nights in Rome a couple years ago. While others might see this in itself as an
adventure, I think of it as doing what needs to be done so that I have a roof
over my head. Now, granted, this
particular hostel is not exactly the nicest place I have ever stayed – it has a
surprisingly rude staff, no elevator, no real hot water to speak of – at least
it serves its purpose, and at least I won’t have to stay here very long.
Why don’t I have to stay here very long, you ask? Because, as I said before, things are much
simpler here than I ever thought possible.
Before arriving I had been in contact with a few people
in the area who had listed rooms for rent on various websites, and before ever
arriving, I had made a few appointments to go take a look at a few of
them. It’s nice to actually have some
specific things to do now that I’m here, rather than to just completely play it
by ear or to simply show up and expect something great to happen. So I’ve got a few meetings. One, in particular, was scheduled to happen
just as soon as I arrived. This was, in
fact, the most important of them all, because this meeting would be concerning
a room for rent on Roosevelt Island, a fantastic little strip of land most
people have never so much as heard of located in Manhattan’s East River, only
minutes from downtown. This kind of
location should normally cost an arm and a leg, but due to a couple
restrictions (the landlords don’t like frequent visitors, and other such things
that don’t seem entirely important to me at the moment), there’s an open
apartment in my price range.
The other apartments I’m scheduled to look at are too far
from the city for my tastes, though I’ll certainly look into them as last
resorts.
So, I immediately headed uptown to meet with Esmer, a
qualified, documented real-estate agent who had seemed very nice on the phone
(but you never can tell for sure, because nice people are often trying to sell
you something, as I know from personal experience as both the buyer and the seller). My first foray on the New York Subway is a
good one to begin with, as it takes me through some of the “less-nice” parts of
town to the north, up to 158th st., where I met my contact in his apartment/office and go
from there.
Esmer is very likeable, very professional, and very
capable at what he does. We discussed
the apartment for a bit, I looked at his credentials, he looked at mine, we
gained a bit of mutual trust, and then we headed back to the subway to go take
a look at the actual room that I’m trying to rent.
And, to make a long story short, it’s just that easy.
We went out to Roosevelt Island by subway (though it is
also accessible by a bridge from Queens and a famous air tram which you might
remember from the final battle of 2001’s Spiderman
film). We walked a couple blocks along
main street to the apartment building, entered, met the landlady (a very kind,
very friendly Colombian woman who lives there with her husband), took a look at
the room, and I told them I’d move in tomorrow.
Just like that, I now have a place to live in New York
City, spitting distance from downtown Manhattan. Maybe this isn’t the norm, and maybe I just
got lucky, but I don’t really think this is true. I think that with enough perseverance and
patience, you can always find opportunities like this that you never thought
possible before. I guess maybe there are
several things you might be able to take from this, so I’ll just leave you to
make up your own mind.
So tonight is the one and only night I’ll have to stay in
this hostel, which is probably a good thing, because the person in the bunk
directly above me snores like nothing I’ve ever heard before in my life, and
all of these cushions are covered in plastic liners which make the most awful
noise every time anyone so much as breathes to heavy… suffice it to say the
sleeping will surely not go very well tonight.
Next step up is a search for my perfect job, but no
matter how perfectly today went, trust me when I say that I have no
preconceptions. I’ll find my perfect
job, but it very well might take a little time.
For now, I have a list of things to accomplish while here in New York
(which I have been for only six hours).
1.
Find a place to live
2.
Find a job
This means I’m fifty percent done. Good progress for the first day.
Day
2
Wednesday
Yesterday, my very first few hours in the Big Apple, was
all about productivity. I can’t believe
how much progress I made on my very first day.
That leaves today to tie up some loose ends. For one thing, I had to get up first thing in
the morning (9:00 am – perhaps not so early by some peoples’ standards) and head
straight to the bank (the name of which I will not specify, as they really are
not as bad as I am about to imply) in order to withdraw some money so that I
can pay for the first couple months of rent at my new place.
Let me begin by saying that banks really should not be as
much trouble as they seem to be. If I
have an account with a bank, it really shouldn’t matter what state I happen to
be in at any given time. It should be a
relatively simple thing for me to just walk into the bank, demand some cash,
and leave. Unfortunately, without the
added resource of a gun and a paper bag over my head (or a ski mask – they seem
to work as well), it’s just never that simple.
I know things would have been a bit easier if I had my debit card with
me, but I didn’t, which is another story altogether.
And that story is this:
Monday (that is, the day before I was set to leave
Washington State), I made my way one last time to the local branch of my bank
to withdraw some last minute “emergency” funds.
In the process of doing so, I seem to have left my debit card in the
machine, which promptly destroyed it, leaving me cardless. No problem.
I guess that’s why I got this emergency cash in the first place.
So here I am, two days later, reaping the negative
results of my carelessness as I stand in the bank for ten minutes waiting for
them to try and look my account up, because apparently Washington State
accounts are the most bizarre things in the world, undecipherable to these
newfangled New York computer systems.
Nevertheless, everything was eventually sorted out. I took my money and left.
Another couple subway rides later, I was once again in my
new room in my new apartment (well, new to me anyway). Having forked over the better part of my life
savings to get here, I felt I’d better appreciate it, so I did. I sat there and appreciated that room for the
better part of ten minutes before I finally decided I’d done enough
appreciating for one day and that I’d better get out on the town and enjoy the
fact that, once again, I find myself with temperatures nearing 70º in the
middle of January. It would certainly be
silly for me to stay in my apartment and wait while this great weather passed
by.
On I went, back to the subway and back to Manhattan.
My first stop, which seemed only natural as a result of
the weather, was Central Park. For one
thing, I’d never visited the Central Park Zoo before and felt like that was
somewhat important for my own cultural enrichment, and for another (more
important) thing, I’d been here for more than sixteen hours and still hadn’t
bought myself a single hotdog.
So I took care of both those things.
The hot dog in particular was everything I hoped it would
be, but I’m not entirely sure why. After
all, a hot dog’s a hot dog, right? I’m
sure that’s probably true, but when you’re in New York, it doesn’t feel like
it. There’s just something about this
city that makes the hot dogs taste better… or perhaps it’s that mustard they
all use… It may also have something to do with the fact that hot dogs were
invented here.[2]
To buy said hot dog I used two of the dollar bills I was
given over the past couple weeks after, in a sudden bought of ingenuity, I had
decided to place a small bucket on the front counter of the hardware store at
which I used to work, labeled, “Isaac’s Hot Dog Fund – Do Your Part to Help
Isaac Live the Dream.” After all the
change was counted up, I made a solid $18 off that thing, which just goes to
show you that a little bit of creativity can certainly pay dividends in the
long run. Consider that your financial
tip of the day.
So, as the chewed remnants of hot dog swirled around
inside my belly, being slowly torn apart by stomach juices,[3]
I made my way to the southeast corner of the park, where the zoo sits. Actually, to be honest with you I’ve been to
this city twice before, and never once have I even noticed the existence of
this zoo. They do a pretty good job of
hiding it. Anyway, I paid my $8 entrance
fee while contemplating the possibility of buying for myself a membership,
which would cover admission to both this and the far superior (I’m told) Bronx
zoo – but I’d like to try them both out first and see if it’s worth it.
The first thing one notices upon entering the Central
Park Zoo (if they’re fortunate enough to be anything like me), is that it’s
very small. Even when compared to some
of the smaller zoos I’ve visited in my day, this one feels a little bit like a
joke. But for some reason, I’m perfectly
okay with this, because what else can you possibly expect from a zoo placed
right into the middle of the largest city in America?
I began my thirty minute investigation at the sea lion
tank, which sits right in the middle of everything. As I spoke on the phone with a friend from
back home, filling her in on all that had so far happened, I began to notice
that while two of the sea lions were frolicking about in their little circular
pool, having some fun in the warm winter sun, a third sea lion lay on the rocks
above them. Clearly dead.
That’s right, a dead sea lion. I looked a bit closer – sure enough, he
didn’t appear to be breathing. He was
just lying there, completely motionless.
So I did what any normal person would do. I sat there and stared at it for a while,
wondering if anyone else had noticed the dead sea lion just laying there on the
rocks, probably entering into the initial stages of decay. But no one else did notice. All the families and their little children
continued to watch the two living sea lions as if nothing was wrong – as if
there wasn’t a dead animal just lying
there in front of them, stinking up the place.
Then the dead sea lion came back to life and I realized
that I had been wrong the entire time.
Apparently when a sea lion is sleeping on rocks, it only looks
dead. So I missed that call, but at
least I didn’t draw attention to myself by announcing my discovery in
public. I waited it out, and my patience
was rewarded. I’m still slightly hopeful
that through some metaphysical miracle, this sea lion truly was brought back
from the dead, but I don’t suppose I’ll be able to convince anyone of that, so
I’ll just leave it be for now.
Twenty minutes later, I had explored just about
everything there was to explore in the zoo (including exciting confirmation
that polar bear skin is, in fact,
black[4]
when I saw one which was in the process, for whatever reason, of shedding its
fur) and left, heading back through the park, setting my sights on another
level of intellectual stimulation – the American Museum of Natural History at
Central Park West and 79th street.
The first thing I noticed upon entering into the
museum: The quote on the left side of
the front wall in the main lobby by Teddy Roosevelt doesn’t make much sense. I stood in line for a good ten minutes waiting
to pay my “suggested” admission fee of $15, wherein I had a good amount of time
to try and decipher the thing, which goes like this:
I want to see you game, boys, I
want to see you brave and manly, and I also want to see you gentle and tender.
Be practical as well as generous in
your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars and keep your feet on the ground.
Courage, hard work, self-mastery,
and intelligent effort are all essential to successful life.
Character, in the long run, is the
decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.
Now, I understand all of the words as individual entities,
and I think I even have a grasp of the basic sentiment… but I still just don’t
really get it. I consider myself quite
the fan of our 26th president (Roosevelt), but I can’t help but feel
like this quote borders on mediocrity at best.
And what does he mean by “I want to see you game, boys…” maybe that was a popular saying in the late
nineteenth century, but it clearly hasn’t withstood the test of time. And, finally, what in the world does any of
this have to do with natural history?
Despite my initial confusions, I enjoyed my first foray
into the museum of natural history, though my experience was somewhat marred by
the fact that I had to use the restroom the entire time, but could not find one
until I had seen almost the entire museum (or at least what I could find – the
layout is pretty confusing and probably requires multiple visits in order to
truly grasp the entirety of what is being displayed).
While in the bathroom I tried to pull some toilet paper
off the roll and the entire dispenser came tumbling off the wall. Fortunately there was no one else in there at
the time or this might have been embarrassing.
Still, if you are reading this, I apologize to whoever had to fix
that. I promise you it was not my fault.
The rest of my day was fairly typical (by this I mean it
consisted of what I assume most people would do on their second day of living
in New York City) – I took the subway down to the NYU/Washington Square area,
ate some pizza at a little pizza shop, found a hardware store wherein I could
make copies of the keys to my new apartment, and then made my way back home
right in the middle of rush hour, where finding a seat on the subway is
difficult, though not entirely impossible.
I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t really do much to better my
situation today. I didn’t start looking
for a job or buying lottery tickets or playing guitar on the street for
quarters. That’s right, I didn’t, but I
got a lot done yesterday and I feel like I’ve earned a break for myself.
Tomorrow
is another day.
Day
3
Thursday
A year ago when I visited this city for just a few days
in December, I remember making the mistake of walking absolutely everywhere. After all, why would I ever ride the subway
when it would only cause me to miss the amazing scenery that this city has to
offer? Well, in retrospect, this
philosophy, while sound in theory, turned out to be mistaken in execution. After about two days of walking (the entire
length of Manhattan in one fell swoop, in fact), my dogs were barking.[5] Matters weren’t helped much when I decided
that the answer to my problems were to buy a new pair of shoes. Apparently, a good pair of walking shoes are
only helpful if they have been broken in first, which these had certainly not
been. So I made my way home from that
short trip with some mighty blisters on my feet and some very sore ankles,
promising myself that I would never make the same mistake again.
Well, here I am, one year later, and my dogs, once again,
seem to be barking. Actually, they seem
to be growling quite ferociously, and there’s a good chance that they’re rabid
and will need to be put down.
I need to start making better use of public
transportation. That much is rather
evident to me as I sit here, finally resting my “dogs” after a hard day’s
“work.”
I began the day by going to get a New York driver’s
license. Of course, this isn’t exactly a
simple task even in the small towns I’ve lived in before, let alone in a city
of 20 million people. In actuality, it
wasn’t as bad as I was initially expecting.
They’ve got things streamlined pretty well, in fact, and in the end, I
only had to wait in four different lines.
First just to check in, then to get my picture taken, then to have my
identification verified, then to receive my temporary license. I was in and out of there in a matter of just
a couple hours, which for a DMV in downtown Manhattan, seems pretty
admirable.
Still, my wallet now feels bizarrely empty. I have no debit card and I have no driver’s
license (they took my old one when they gave me the little slip of paper that’s
supposed to pass as my new one). Apart
from my passport, in fact, I really don’t have any forms of identification at
all. Hopefully I don’t end up dead
somewhere before my new cards finally arrive.
Now comes the most interesting part of my entire
day. I had a bit of a scare at the bank.
Remember that withdrawal I took yesterday morning in
order to pay for the first couple months of rent? That’s about to be important again. You see, I went back to the bank today for
two reasons: 1) to get another withdrawal (remember, I don’t have a debit card
anymore – my new one is still 7-10 days out) and 2) to get a local bank account
so that I don’t have to go through all the hassle which is apparently involved
in withdrawing from out of state accounts.
First, I attempted to get that withdrawal. Again it was tedious, but I am a very patient
person when I make up my mind to be so.
Well, it came as a bit of a shock to me when the teller denied my
request, saying that my account contained “insufficient funds.”
Hmm… That doesn’t sound good, does it? After all, I’ve been saving for this move for
three months now. I know exactly how
much money I have. How could I possibly
be broke already? Thanking the teller
for her efforts to get me money that apparently doesn’t exist, I turned to
leave while simultaneously calling the bank in order to check my account
balance. The news was not pretty: “You’re
checking account is currently overdrawn by two hundred eighteen dollars and
seventeen cents.” Uh oh. This was most certainly not good. According to the
bank, I was missing quite a bit of money.
Never a good thing, but the timing is especially bad at this point, when
I pretty much need to eat and to survive for at least a few more days while I
look for a job.
So I went back into the bank in order to talk to a
personal banker (very nice people, all of them), and I ended up waiting for
nearly an hour to talk to someone. An
hour of my stomach tying itself into knots over my sudden destitution – of my
heart beating rapidly in anticipation of the confirmation that I am, indeed,
impoverished and ruined. My mind went
back to the depression of the twenties, which, conveniently enough, started not
fifty blocks from my current location – the images of people living in
cardboard boxes, of hoovertowns in the park, of boiling shoe leather for food,
of waiting in long lines at homeless shelters, all came flooding into my mind.
Finally I was invited in to have a conversation. I explained the situation and my agent, we’ll
call her Sandy (as that was her real name), informed me that it wasn’t not easy
for her to check the status of my account, as it’s out of state (a fact we have
covered already), so she had to call up some other people and jump through some
hoops and whatnot to try and resolve this problem. Fine, I said, do what you have to do.
So she did it, and she got to the bottom of the
situation.
And the end result to all of this is this: I am not, in fact, poor. I am doing just fine.
Apparently, when I took out the deposit yesterday, due to
the fact that I was withdrawing from an out-of-state account, the rest of my
money was put on hold while they waited to verify the original withdrawal. That’s all.
All of this trouble (I nearly had a heart attack and at the very least
probably knocked a good decade off the end of my life due to stress – though
that’s not exactly a problem, as I expect to live to a surprisingly old age in
the first place) and it turns out that everything’s just fine. Come back tomorrow, Sandy said, and
everything will be back to normal and we can set up that new account.
Stupid banks.
So, my stress level finally having leveled off, I left
the bank and bought another hot dog on the corner outside.
As I was walking toward the subway station with my
hotdog, minding my own business, I suddenly realized that the last bite has
somehow forced a great deal of mustard and ketchup from the dog and onto both
my fingers and my sweater. I looked
around, but no one seemed to notice yet.
Unfortunately, a homeless man on the corner saw me and thinks that I
have just recognized his existence, so he started yelling at me – “Hey
you!” “Hey!” “Hey!” – over and over
again, while all the while I was doing my best to simply ignore him while I
cleaned my hand with the single napkin given to me by the hotdog vendor, which
turned into nothing but a terrible exercise in futility. Mustard and ketchup were everywhere, and I
had a bum yelling at me, drawing attention to my situation by the crowd of
people surrounding me as I waited for the streetlight to turn green so I could start
walking again. It was really rather
terrible, though it only lasted a few brief moments. In the end I was forced to try and lick my
filthy hands clean, which I’m sure most New Yorkers frown upon, but I didn’t
have much of a choice.
Still, I made it home in one piece, and the hot dog
really did taste very good. I guess it
was worth all the trouble.
And at least now I know exactly how I’ll handle the
situation if I ever do in fact lose all of my money. So we’ll just have to hope that it never
comes down to that.
I plan on spending the rest of the evening doing some job
hunting online. Maybe I’ll get
lucky. Pretty soon, though, I’m actually
going to have to don my very expensive black suit and hit the town. Someone in this town has got to need my
talents, whatever they might be. The
trick is finding them.
Day
4
Friday
Today I find myself forced to answer
a rather important question, one which I had not exactly prepared myself for:
Should I, or should I not, buy an
umbrella?
Now, apart from a couple isolated
instances in my past, I’ve never actually used an umbrella for its intended
purposes. As a kid, I remember jumping
off the tool shed in my backyard, umbrella in hand, hoping that it would slow
me down like a parachute – but using it to prevent myself from getting wet is
something altogether foreign to me.
After all, I grew up in western Washington, where rainfall is just a way
of life and you just get used to it and move on. Of course, I had a car back then, and at the
very most I would have to walk from my car to my house or from my car to the
store and then back again – not enough time to really appreciate the power of a
good rainstorm. Now things are a bit
different. City-folk (a group I am now
proudly part of) do things a bit different.
We tend to walk a lot more, and thus, when a rain storm hits, sometimes
we need to be ready. Thus my conundrum.
Never has a question been more
timely than today, for today New York got hit with a brief rainstorm which
really raised a lot of important questions in my mind.
My original plan for the day had
been to take the subway all the way downtown to the final stop in Manhattan –
the South Ferry terminal. Once there, I
would look around battery park for a little bit, enjoying the scenery, then
make my way back uptown where I would walk across the Brooklyn bridge and back
(my favorite bridge in the world, thanks to a remarkable book by David
McCullough, entitled The Great Bridge).
Things stopped going my way just as
soon as I stepped out of that subway terminal and into a light drizzle. It wasn’t very intense, but it sure was
annoying; enough so that I skipped Battery Park and turned uptown toward the
bridge instead. Unfortunately, after
only minutes this light drizzle had turned into a full-fledged downpour,
reminiscent of something one might find during the East Asian monsoon season.
While it’s true that at this point
in time I was still only a couple minutes away from the subway station I had
just left, and could very easily have turned back toward it, accepted defeat
and made my way back home in the dry confines of the subway, my mind,
unfortunately, did not seem to want to work like that. In fact, the option of turning back never
once dawned on me until I finally arrived home this evening.
So there I was, caught in a
downpour, walking north into the concrete canyons of lower Manhattan, with the
wind whipping through in such a manner that the rain began to fall sideways
and, at times, upwards, making it impossible for me to so much as take shelter
under the overhanging ledges of buildings, and within minutes I was as
absolutely soaked as a person can possibly be.
If I had decided to turn to my right
and jump directly into the East river right then, I certainly would not have
been any wetter. And yet, I kept
walking, knowing that this rain had to let up sooner or later. The laws of nature demanded it, and unless the
laws of nature had somehow changed without me knowing it, there would surely be
respite.
But who knew when that time would
finally come?
As I turned a corner to take
momentary shelter and allow my wet, frigid body some rest under the awning of a
restaurant, a particularly kind man offered me a garbage bag to somehow wrap
around me. I gratefully accepted the
offer – not under the assumption that it would keep me from getting wet – it
was, after all, far too late for that – but in the hope that it would afford me
some sort of psychological comfort as I waded through the deluge.
Finally, after about twenty minutes
of walking aimlessly through what can best be described as a class five
hurricane in downtown Manhattan, I realized that I had arrived at my original
destination – the onramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. I did not take that onramp, of course, as I
was afraid that the East River might have swollen so severely from the downpour
that it would rise up and drown me as I walked across the bridge. That and I really just wanted some
shelter. Fortunately for me, right there
at the foot of the bridge, right in front of city hall, was a subway
station. I really couldn’t possibly have
cared less which subway station or where those trains led. I ran down those stairs with the fervor of an
octogenarian discovering the fountain of youth.
Excitement was to be had. Like
Noah before me, I was saved from the flood.
So, that was that. I rode the subway for about an hour, to no
destination in particular, just to dry off a little before I finally made my
way home.
Looking back over this little
adventure, I now realize that the most interesting aspect of it all was, as I
mentioned before, the umbrellas. I’m not
entirely sure how everyone in the
city seemed to know that it was going to rain today, but they did. Every last one of them. As soon as the first drop of water fell from
the sky, you could almost hear a collective “clicking” ringing throughout the
entire city as millions of people simultaneously slid open their
umbrellas.
These people sure know their
weather.
I guess if I do want to truly fit in
here, I’ll have no choice but to get one for myself, even if it does feel a little
bit to me like selling a very important part of my soul.
That’s that. I’ll get an umbrella.
After I had arrived home and began
to finally dry off, I received a call from a woman who works for an employment
service who had looked over my resume online and wanted to schedule an
interview concerning sales/marketing jobs with top companies in New York City.
Blah.
Yes, I need money. Yes, I think I could be successful in a sales
and marketing career.
But seriously. Blah.
I honestly can’t think of a more boring profession (no offense to those
of you who are in sales/marketing out there and love your jobs – we all have
different tastes). I’ll do the interview
and I’ll do my best because I know you can probably make good money that these
jobs, and maybe I’d be able to save up enough to go back to college so that I
can actually do something interesting, but I can’t really get myself too
excited about this kind of career.
At least it’s started to make me stop
and think about what exactly it is that I do
want out of all this. What kind of job
am I looking for and how long am I willing to hold out in order to get it? I’d like to work in some sort of creative
industry, like publishing, where I would be able to read, edit and critique the
works of others. Or if I could find a
job as a book reviewer somewhere, where all I would have to do for a living is
read and then write about what I’ve just read… that would be amazing too. But for all of these jobs seem to require a
certain amount of professional experience that I just don’t have, which means
that I need to find some creative way to get my foot stuck in the door of this
industry… and quickly. This is my
challenge.
Day 5
Saturday
In the Jewish calendar, Saturday is the Sabbath – the day of rest.