The Ups and the Downs

I think I mentioned (in one of my many posts on how I was finding it difficult to write) that I have a number of posts sitting as drafts because they just don't quite say what it is I was trying to say. Below is a post written in the second week of September. Fast forward four months (four months!??!) and I'm deciding to post it because look, I actually wrote something this past semester! Interesting how standards fall... ANYWAY, this was life in mid-September...

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It's the ups and the downs of this transition that tire me the most.

Fall crept into the city Friday afternoon. The sun warmed rather than baked and a cool breeze swept down the streets. I sat in his office and we talked about things that I haven't talked about in years. Topics and names I haven't uttered since I left Vermont. "Spark. What makes a kid spark?" Those are the questions that make me spark. Ooohh, it's the good stuff.

I met my brother in the park and told him I was never leaving this city. I talked a mile a minute and his head nodded and he waited for me to propel off my chair. I might have been levitating; I wouldn't have noticed. And his life? His life is going well, too. I can see it in his eyes. I get to see it in his eyes. Friday evening conversations with my brother, it's the good stuff. 

One the way home, the flag flying above the Brooklyn Bridge stood proud in its spotlight and over my shoulder the Chrystler Building and Empire State Building defined the night skyline. They are my constants now, while the sight of the 9/11 light beams on my walk home earlier in the week prompted teary eyes. It was a first, and I didn't expect "visible from everywhere in the city" to actually mean everywhere. Chills. The chills on my walk home Friday night came courtesy of the cool breeze and I walked home to the sounds of early fall crickets. How did I get so lucky?

When I walked in the door to my house, I noticed that something felt a bit off. One of my roommates abruptly moved out on Thursday, without telling the rest of us. Which is concerning but not surprising - we're pretty independent in that house. Nothing like the friendships I formed this past year with my old roommates in DC, who I miss every single day. I noticed the mail from my roommate who has been MIA for the past month had disappeared, and I assumed it made its way back to the post office. There had been rumblings in the house that she had just left this city without notice and left all of her things behind, including the car in the driveway. Really?

When I went up to my room, my bedroom door was locked. I knew I had not locked it when I left. Someone had been in my room. When I walked in, my things looked in tact. It didn't look like there was an intruder. And what intruder would lock the door upon leaving? It had to have been my landlord or my roommate, the one who moved out, and the one who I quickly realized had a spare set of keys to my room. My dresser stood a few inches from my wall. I certainly did not have it that far from the wall. My room is a shoebox; I need all the inches I can get.

I finally, finally noticed that the cable box was missing. I don't have a television, so it was sitting idly on my dresser under a pile of books. If the cable box was missing... that meant we didn't have internet service. The roommate who moved out had the account in her name; she must have returned the cable boxes and modem. Sure enough, downstairs no longer contained an internet router and when I walked back into my room I saw a letter from the old roommate confirming she had moved out and would now be the superintendent of the apartment. Her uncle is the landlord. I had just learned this on Tuesday. Internet would be out for at least four days. Excellent. I had a four-day weekend and no internet. Which means I would have to make the hour and a half commute to school to get work done.

It was a split second decision to take a train to Connecticut and spend the weekend at my mom's with internet service and home cooked meals. A split second decision that I can make at 11pm Friday night and hop aboard the 9am train Saturday morning.

It's the ups and the downs of this transition that tire me the most. But it's the ability to make split second decisions that rejuvenate me the most.