Thinking- Warning this Blog Not Like the Others

Its hard to breathe here. I feel stifled by the tall buildings, smoke, smells and the breath of other people. There is no place to really be alone, no place to think without noises and thoughts and desires of others intruding. No free spaces. No clean clear winds. No tall places to look down on uninterrupted nature. No low places where the only noises are the water and the wind. I feel a longing for space. For nature not covered in dark grime and starbucks cups.

I suppose I could have chosen differently.

I have work but it is sporatic. I work long hours in dark places surrounded by the noise of someone else's words, the sound of an audience I never see. I work one hour here and another hour there at a playwriting facility- worrying about the number of pencils I have lost or how many times the script should be printed, the script that will be re-written and printed again the next day- or perhaps even an hour later. I work a few nights for a dance company watching them move as if silent film stars with an orchestra of noise instead of just an upright piano to accompany them. Stretching their thin bodies to the limit- watching every morsel of food that enters it, smoking like fire breathing dragons- hungry. Always a new place, always the latest job, new faces, familiar strangers- stressing myself out for enough money to watch the numbers of my bank account count down slowly instead of pouring it out onto the street.

I have friends here. Old characters from my Trinity days. People I really liked or people I just knew are mixed up here. Everyone is dear- when you have only a few to chose from all friends are your closest. A few new project friends. Coffee, beer, lunch, secrets, mundane tasks until the project is finished and they fade to black. Faceless numbers in the cell phone. Deleted when you can no longer scrounge up their face or the name of the project.

I've only been here a month.

Its not all a mish mash of noise and stress. When the light is streaming down the sides of beautiful old buildings, when you can smell authentic ethnic food and hear real languages being spoken, when you see unlikely comrade-ships form and unform in the space of a walk or a train ride. People live their lives on the sidewalks, the subway, in crowded shops and stores and parks and sometimes that is gross and rude and unsavory but sometimes those moments are beautiful and special and...

Onward and Upward