Learning to live alone, learning to know what you want.

I have a fear that I am only filling my days so that I do not have the opportunity to think, so I can have an excuse to keep moving forward for time to pass without tangible production. I have a lot of these fears, I suppose. I get anxious with night and empty apartments even though there is an endless list of the tasks I want to accomplish, things that require isolation, quite apartments, time. All things I seem to have and yet they make me uncomfortable, to be alone and sit. To turn all the lights on in the apartment just so it seems alive, awake. Can it possibly be true, what people say about New York, to be surrounded by people and still be alone? This reads as more depressing than I really am. Its just a learning experience, one I've been trying to master since college, to gage. I think it comes from a desire of not wanting to be wasteful, of absorbing every moment of that minute and time and yet sometimes taking it, absorbing it, appreciate it in a way that can only happen from accurate examination requires time. and space. and quiet.

There's been a lot swirling around my head this past week, my first week at StoryCorps/New York. First of all, I've been a sponge consuming stories. I'm reading Listening is an Act of Love,  one of the books by StoryCorps, listening to interviews while doing my own work, and listening to interviews for the all staff listening sessions. 

Strange things about New York as of late:

Being an outsider in a place that is supposed to feel like something familiar.  Its interesting coming here after Croatia, after the total separation, the almost luxury of being able to step away from a situation and say, hey listen, I'm outsider, i can play dumb i dont have to understand, in fact I can't understand because...well because? As the anniversary of 9/11 continues to encroach on the city as a heavy presence, dominating StoryCorps, the news, the internet and even its presence felt on your morning commute: there, in front of each door on my G train is a stalky navy dress police officer, taking notes, looking out windows, exchanging notes. One female police officer seemed to be crossing her fingers. I'm not even sure what they are looking for, trained to spot or what they would do if something was about to happen. but they are there. en masse. Not quite as intimidating as riot police but eerier in their silent presence among nose-in-book commuters.

The thing about 9/11 is my confusing of identity. This complex thing of 9/11 being specific and yet national. As an american are there not certain feelings i should have? But I'm not from New York. I didn't hear the sirens or smell the smoke or know more people than i have fingers who almost or were or worked or went in to save people in the World trade center that day. I was in 8th grade. It was the buzz. We watched on TV.

So here I am in New York after a year of maybe artificially, or out of ease,claiming distance from the complexity of Croatia's memories, or construction of a national narrative. I find myself wanting to resort to this solution: I can't understand! I know nothing! I'm not from New York! It's just not my battle, but it is? The nation-building project that surrounds 9/11 and the impact 9/11 has had on national identity is too close for me to step away from. I don't really know an America that is not at war. I don't know a New York skyline with the twin towers or a time when the Middle East wasn't a loaded conversation topic.

Sitting on the subway and reading and watching the police stand there, scribbling in their logs, and listening to the story of death certificate #1 at the friday production listen session at StoryCorps is a new exercise. When they killed Osama Bin Laden I was in Croatia. People asked me why America got to go kill whoever they wanted, why we didn't have to put him on trial. While there are a lot of answers, it was moment to think on America in the contemporary world, the complexity of individual, nation, and global. 

Hi everyone!

It is still rainy and gross outside here in New York. I caught a glimpse of muggy sunshine in a brief jaunt from the L to the 1st Ave bus, but it didn't last meaning my inspiration to go explore has quickly dwindled.

There's been a lot of exploring, however, of the computer world. The internet's new role in part-job seeking (even babysitting) or the highly technological office space where everything is wiki-ed or digital or color coded by google. Finding my way around the office doesn't so much include a walking tour but a digital one.

We've been talking a lot about how to explain StoryCorps, how to pitch it, and to really know what it is all about.  They have a pretty succinct and to the point mission....replicated here:

Our mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.

check out the link in the post below!

Day Two at StoryCorps.

I'd like to start sharing some of their work here in case everyone isn't familiar. Right now there is a 9/11 project happening and here is a new animation from the 9/11 archive.

StoryCorps Animation

Testing. Blogging via text message, the way of the future?

A messy journal of sorts.

Its a funny thing to wake up and look out the window and see new york city. I am bit paralyzed by options, things to do, people to catch up with, expensive stuff to buy or at least touch and think about buying once I have a real job. Again I have the feeling of perpetual motion, constant moving, the sensation of time literally washing over your skin. As much as Kansas City was a collapsing of time New York is equally saturated with people and strange stories and blurry memories of a late night in this or that neighborhood. New York doesn't seem so big or so foreign-just funny. As opposed to moving to Croatia moving to New York is like instant coffee, just add water and a life begins to materialize.

I'm attempting to ignore it all for a couple of days in order to wrap up a paper I've been working on and neglected while in KC. I've hunkered down in Paula's apartment sitting up on her high riser chair, occasionally starring out on to the east river and eating carrots in an attempt to procrastinate longer. I have the urge to just go on a long walk and soak it all up. And to go shopping. And to go to museums. and to hang out in a park with some friends, but instead I'm sitting here in front of my computer. Self-discipline is hard to come by these days.

Some notes about here vs there.

In Zagreb on the trams everyone is always checking you out, looking you up and down, starring at your shoes that are a bit shabby or that not quite hip hair cut you may have let grow into a bad phase. Occasionally you'd get the grandma who would say something to you and a handful of people would be listening to music on their cell phones. For the most part though it was acknowledged that a bunch of random people were sitting or standing around you. During busier times of the day everyone just smooshed on and off the trams. however, new york is a different story. Its like everyone riding the subway is sitting in a glass case with tinted windows, boxed squarely on all sides, body in proper form, eyes turned down. They pretend that if they didn't look around or didn't hear the rumble of the subway they were alone for a while. I, on the other hand, want to peek at the book that is printed in cyrillic and occupying the older man next to me who is slumped into a spherical shape, I want to know about the girl who is pretending her knees are her office desk, shuffling through paper clipped papers and manilla folders, and I'd like to ask everyone where maybe they are heading. Everyone here says you get used to the commute, you read so much more, you listen to great podcasts, that  you begin to hate it when you run into someone you know on your daily commute because you don't really want to chat, you want to pull the shades on your personal bubble and only come out at 14th and union, or wherever it is you may be heading. We'll see.


old thoughts:

It is really hard to not feel like the luckiest person. I keep joking soon my luck will run out and I'll get hit by a train but I really hope that doesn't happen. Here's the truth, home is always dripping with depth and history and every inch of this city is like a heavy woven rug, intricate and delicate and well loved. It sort of blows my mind the lives we create in the glimpses, the passing moments, and the lives we create over extended time through sustained exposure, the pure accumulation of stories.

In the last month there has been some real delightfully, oh-this-is-what-it-feels-like-to-be-totally-happy, moments.

going home is always a collision with your past and a collapsing of time. I get this icky feeling that it is a lost month, and dangling all around me are objects hanging out from the past. Some remind me of the parts of myself i have reluctantly forgotten, the fears I once had, and others remind me of the consistency the things we don't even realize that never change.

writing cover letters is a task to be avoided. selling yourself. ba hum bug. never what a girl needs. Its a rainy day here in kansas city missouri, my feet were flooded with rivers of fresh rainfall and the chill has soaked in and i am damn glad there is no conception of the draft lurking in these America parts that can sneak in and snuff my living daylights out.