ENG 2150: Writing Through New York

Now that I live in the city I rarely have the time to visit home… and I really like home. There is a HUGE tempurpedic bed, my 3 ADORABLE puppies, and a PEACEFUL beach 2 blocks away. It’s heaven on earth compared to the noisy crowded dorm that I live in now. Thankfully, I had the opportunity to go to Rockaway this weekend and spend the entire weekend lounging out and doing absolutely nothing. Having the chance to just lay down and watch the ceiling (yes, literally watch the ceiling) was the MOST enjoyable thing that I have done all semester long.

Saturday I went the the beach with my dogs Baci, Lucky, and Bella. I have three miniature yorkies… (cutest dogs ever) and I spent two hours walking them. playing with them and even swimming for a bit. Honestly, I didn’t realize how much I missed just spending time with my animals. Being able to sit on the wet sand and throw a piece of drift wood to my dogs was so relaxing. Watching the rays of sun and it’s reflection in the water was truly breathtaking. You know that feeling of when a cool breeze grazes your cheeks while the warmth of the sun beats down on you? … Yea, I love that feeling, that has to be one of my favorite sensations!

After loosing track of time, and I was all relaxed and at peace, I walked my dogs home. The little trouble makers were so sandy that I ended up having to bathe them… which was an adventure in itself. Lathering them up and rinsing them, left soap all over the bathroom. There were water droplets on the ceiling, a pool on the floor, and eventually I just sat in the tub with my clothes on and showered them. By the end of the shower I was laughing so hysterically that my Mom ran up the stairs because she thought something terrible had happened. She mistook my cackle for screams of help. Seeing my mother frazzled, face flushed, and huffing and puffing, made me break out into an even less controlled fit of giggles. All in all, I had such an AMAZING weekend!!!

I’m not very good at adapting to change, sure I do it- everyone does, but I’m not good at it. I tend to cling to the past, suffering from nostalgia every day until I’m comfortable enough to focus on the present. This has happened many times; usually brief like a friend leaving town, or coming home from vacation- these nostalgia trips last about a week or so, not to bad and not that hard to deal with. However I’ve had much bigger ones, big nostalgia ruts I get stuck in. When I went from middle school to high school, it took me two years to get over my missed middle school. That’s half the time I was in high school, which is funny now that I think about missing high school.  I don’t know why I’m so bad at accepting change, it’s inevitable, and we all deal with it on a daily basis. Every decision we have made follows us for better or for worse, and I’m at the age where it should be easy to move on, “when one door closes another one opens” mentality.  But for some reason, I have yet to learn. I am stubborn, I know time moves- I just don’t like how quickly it goes, how am I in college already, let alone an adult. I feel like I’m so young and so old at the same time, and I don’t know if I never want to grow up, or if I would like to be a “grown up” so things won’t change so often. Regardless I’m here now, at Baruch- the only city I said I wouldn’t be in for college. I have nothing against New York, I actually adore it- but I never wanted to stay home for school.  I told myself that I would go as far away as possible, in my head that was very easy, in reality there’s so much more that goes into making a decision like that. Money became my drive, is it worth spending 20,000 a year to go to a public state school? Be in debt before my life begins? But then again, is it worth missing out of the “experience”, just to save some money? I couldn’t tell you, I still don’t know. I’m just stuck here, afraid to leave and afraid to stay, hating living at home and missing my high school. Stuck in this nostalgia bubble- unable to move on mentally, although my life feels like it is physically moving at the speed of sound. I wish I could cut and paste time frames, where I wanted. 24 hours in a day is enough, but I would like to put it in order my own way. Does that make sense?

So, today i decided to take advantage of the beautiful day and take a walk on the pier. It’s was nice to see all the people that were, like me enjoying the beautiful May-like weather. It felt so nice to just take a few moments of life to stop and enjoy the beautiful scenary around me. There were bicyclists and joggers, couples out for a stroll walking hand in hand, parents out with their kids; even though all the people were doing different things they all had one thing in common, they were enjoying the beautiful day.

My friend had decided to meet me at the pier, and since we hadn’t seen each other in a while, we decided to walk and catch up with each other. We were so caught up in conversation we ended up walking all the way to Caesar’s Bay, once we got there, we realized how far we’d come, and now we were so tired we didn’t have enough energy to walk all the way back.

Last week I was on my way back from a job interview I saw a homeless man sitting on the floor by the entrance to the L train in Union Square. He was holding a sign that said “spread a little love…” something along those lines. I gave him a dollar, and a flower someone had given me on the street that day. He looked up and said “Thank you!” and I realized he was much younger than I had imagined. A few days later, I was on my way back from a different interview, and saw him again! I took a closer look at him, and realized he was wearing a blazer and jeans, and that overall he was better dressed than I was. I asked him if he remembered me, and to my surprise he said yes; I couldn’t resist but ask him why he was homeless. He wasn’t offended (thank god), and took the opportunity to tell me his life story.

He is a college graduate, with a degree in design, and was working in the city until he got laid off. He couldn’t pay his rent anymore and had to move out. Now he stays over his friends’ houses since those are the only places where he can sleep safely. His mother lives in Georgia and he is waiting to file taxes to get a refund, and then move back with her. I asked him what he was doing in the meantime, and he said “this” and pointed to the hat that was on the floor with a few dollar bills in it. I ask him if he ever considered waiting tables, or getting a part-time job. He said he once had a part-time job but they didn’t give him enough hours a week, and decided to quit. That’s when a I thought maybe he was just a quitter.

I said to him “I am about to sit down next to you, and just beg for money, because I am frustrated going to all of these job interviews and not getting a call back.” He said “yeah you should, we’d make more money.” Of course I was kidding, but he wasn’t. Anyways, we spoke for about an hour and then I went home. Thankfully I got the job that day, and realized that it takes time and effort to get something you really want. I also realized than while some people choose to sit down and wait for time to bring an opportunity around, other people go out to find this opportunity. Although this guy was very nice and polite, he wasn’t much older than us, and I couldn’t help but compare myself to him. We’re both young, we’ve both worked in the restaurant business, but he has a college degree, and I don’t.  So why is he sitting in the subway station begging for money and I am not? Many people in this room have part-time jobs, and for many of us it wasn’t easy to find that job. This guy had a job, and quit for almost no reason. I may be wrong, but if he really needed the money he would had kept his job. Instead he chose to wait for his income tax refund, and beg for money in the meantime. I realized the difference between some of those people in the train station and the rest of us may simply be how hard you are willing to try in order to move pass a bad stage in your life.

Last week on Thursday I spent my afternoon in Madison Park with a whole bunch my LC peers.  Not much was done at the park itself, but I was happy that the sun was out. We saw a hawk land on top of a tree we were next to. It reminded me that New York is  still a jungle, I guess the hawk just struck me as a majestic creature. One my friends tried to catch with a pokeball, though. There were also many squirrels and dogs at the park. There was one particular dog that stuck out to me. It was a huge golden retriever that was pulling  towards where he wanted to go completely ignoring the his master, of course the guy was trying to play it off as if the dog was not completely over powering him.

As the weather gets warmer the clothes get shorter, as most of as noted. We could not conceive how quickly the girls found out about the warm weather to bust out the short shorts. We also meet a girl dressed up in a  Mongo costume, the gingerbread man from Shrek, who did not even know her own identity because the person stared at us thinking “WTF are they talking about”. Time continued to pass as we sat at the park we noticed it was 2:30, half of us wanted to skip English at this point.

I just don’t understand why people argue, at least a majority of the time. When I say argue, I don’t mean argue over a worthy topic but more like argue for the sake of arguing. And by that, I mean people wasting their lives fighting about their opinion over a dumb topic.

This issue was brought about to me over the weekend with my father, who seem to be pretty much the same people in terms of the way they think. My father isn’t too familiar with technology these days because well…he’s old for one thing and for another, he’s not from here. My dad came to America from Guyana when he was about 20 years old, and back then, life wasn’t as tech savvy as it is today. He obviously hasn’t adapted to today’s lifestyle and really isn’t the type of person who can, but tries to.

Well anyway, here’s the situation. The other day, we all decided to go out to a restaurant that we haven’t been to before, where he decides he’s gonna find a route through the GPS. He starts ranting about how I gave him the wrong address because the GPS wouldn’t pick it up. So when I finally got it from him to fix it, I see that instead of writing “Corporate” he typed “c0rp0rate.” Yes, that is “Corporate” with zero’s instead of the letter “o.” Then on the way their, the GPS decided to give us some crazy route which seemed like it wasn’t going to to right place. He claimed that I must have screwed up the address and messed everything up, which is why we were where we were.

His arguing with me went on for a good 10 minutes, saying things like I gave him the wrong address, I put in the wrong address or something like that. And in the end, I showed him I did everything right and the only way something would have gone wrong would be if he screwed up the previous information entered into the GPS. And what happens after that? He argues with me for not correcting his mistake.

So this entire rant and argument over such a small and insignificant deal. Mainly because someone didn’t want to admit they did something wrong. What is wrong with people these days?

In this blog post, I want to talk about “A Walker in the City” by Alfred Kazin. It is a pretty interesting reading. The use of description throughout the reading is amazing. The way he describes all he sees on his train ride into New York City. I think he was successful in persuading me to think the city was a foreign place for a moment. I’m sure Brownsville is not too far from the city, but the way Kazin describes the train ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan seems like it is really far. For a second, I forgot he was in Brooklyn.

It’s interesting how he describes where he lives. He says, “We were the end of the line. We were the children of the immigrants who had camped at the city’s back door, in New York’s rawest, remotest, cheapest ghetto, enclosed on one side by the Canarsie flats and on the other by the hallowed middle-class districts that showed the way to New York.” It’s funny because Brooklyn is probably the total opposite of this description, excluding some areas. If Kazin saw Brooklyn today, he would be extremely surprised. I feel like he wouldn’t think Manhattan was a foreign city, but more like Brooklyn’s neighbor. However, the way he describes his neighborhood makes me think that he wouldn’t like the newer Brooklyn. He talks about all the sights he sees on the train ride and wonderful parts of Brownsville which aren’t present today. If Alfred Kazin lived in present-day Brooklyn, would he have talked about Manhattan as a foreign city?