Dreams of a Future Past

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Some of the fury of the New York entertainment hurricane has lessened with the passing of its leading front. It is calmer here in the eye, but it is far from dull. The winds still howl and the landscape is ripe with the excitement of things undone. In fact as I type this, I am sitting in a coffee shop in Fort Greene next to another writer who compiles the Events Calendar for New York Magazine. How's that for luck. As I mentioned previously, I have no guidebook, but why would I need one when I roll like this.

Another strange experience occurred earlier this Friday day. I actually ran into someone I knew on the street. Gilli Chupack is from Maryland and part of the Camp Mosh crowd. We were never really great friends, but certainly friendly. As I stepped out of my apartment onto the street to come here, there he was. What and whom Fortuna has me destined for I can't even guess, but it's an interesting ride.

To stay on those rails as long as I can, I changed my plane ticket and will be away from Los Angeles an additional two weeks. I can't glean how my public (that's you, chief) will process that news, but for me it's just a response to a hunger to keep going on like this and a rebuff of a return to a perhaps more normal life. Living out of a suitcase has it disadvantages, but as long as I keep meeting new people every other day, they don't know I'm wearing the same thing again and again, right?

At last blog, Tuesday night, I was heading out to Williamsburgh, Brooklyn, ground-zero of hipster culture. I rode Marc's bike there and managed to evade the fixed gear police, if you know what I mean. Todd's Nebraska friend, Michele, invited me to join her friends for a night of Pub Trivia. We ended up coming in third and won a Hulk Bubble Pipe. I only really contributed one solid answer in the trivia game in the "Monkeys and Apes" category: What Clint Eastwood film starred a bare knuckle boxing ape named Clyde? To my possible embarrassment, I knew that answer (to be divulged in the next exciting edition! -ed).

On Wednesday, after a great 5 mile run through Prospect park in humid conditions, I made a nice air-conditioned journey on the 4 train of 1 hour to a little place called Yankee Stadium. Orioles at Yankees! As the train rode across 110th street, I sang a little silent prayer to Bobby Womack. Arriving, I was surprised that even for this day game, the seats were all but sold out. The cheapest available at the box office was $200 -- I kid you not! Simon, a scalper from the Dominican Republic though, had a single nose-bleed seat for the bargain price of $75. What was I going to do, I was there and I paid him the cash, but not until after he walked with me down 161st Street, Bronx, to check my bag. We had a nice conversation en route. The game was less nice for an Orioles fan. Yankees win 6-2. Back to back homeruns by the O's in the top of the 9th provided a glimmer of hope which Mariano Rivera quickly extinguished.

I was alone all day Wednesday, but surrounded by thousands all day, and, that, my friends, is new York.

But on Thursday, I got a special treat: an afternoon with a friend. Yes, not a friend of a friend, nor a casual acquaintance, but a real life, zero degrees of separation, friend. Exciting, isn't it! I've known Dave Bassin since 1986 when we moved to Chevy Chase, Maryland. He went to a different high school, but we were in the same youth group. Dave lives in Princeton, New Jersey, but made the special trip into Manhattan where his company has a separate office. He spent a working lunch with me shooting pool and drinking beer. I believe we split the games too, 2-2, before lunch became dinner time, and he caught a train from Penn Station back to his three kids and wife, Lynn. It was really good to see him, talk, and shoot pool -- something we used to do way back in the day when we were post-college roommates in Washington, D.C.

So now it's today, and I'm working, trying to write a little, doing the paying gig thing, and enjoying a mellow day. Maybe I'll head out to do one of the many things still on my list, but sometimes it's nice just to sit. Oh, and this place has the bomb of vegan chocolate cookies.

This week I also had the strangest dream. I dreamt I was caught in the midst of a urban street gang war. Running down the street between the belligerents, I ducked under their exchange of fire -- not of bullets but deadly thrown plastic plates of lightswitch covers. I ran until I bounced of an ice cream truck and had to be helped to my feet by my friend. Looking down I noticed that the knee high socks I wore -- the kind I had as a kid -- failed to adequately protect my now bloody kneecaps.

I am not an interpreter of dreams. I do know that I am caught between friends old and new; a life accustomed and journey unknown; and of possibilities finite and endless. We all balance on the needle's point, braced against the arbitrary breeze. The warm air rising; the cool falling; the results of a turning world.