40 year tunnel.

i have seen a few movies downtown this last week as part of an awesome jean-luc godard retrospective. OH! i cannot explain my increased obsession with this brilliant filmmaker and the 1960s aesthetic. and seriously, i really just want to be anna karina... i mean look at her! i'm thinking a mid-hair-part is in order. mom - i'm so jealous that you were able to wear false eyelashes everyday in high school! :)

also - mom, i'm 200 pages into "the oldest living confederate widow tells all", and yes, it is amazing. truly.)

and further also - life in new york isn't perfect. you see, due to complications (i.e. flaky plumbers who don't keep appointments), my apartment still doesn't have hot water. so throughout this full cold manhattan february i have been heating up water on the stove and taking bucket-showers. good thing i've had good practice from niger, morocco, et al... the plumber is supposed to be here tomorrow at 8am. i'm praying after 3 weeks he'll show.

grateful sunday

(borrowing from leslie today :)

so i must admit that i have never had a church calling i've really felt passionate about, or felt that i was actually useful in... i know callings in church are meant to help us feel some more involvement with our ward and our fellow church-members, but the awful truth is that i simply have never felt i was actually doing anything productive in the callings i was asked to serve in. of course i know every lesson about magnifying your callings... but i don't think it's wrong to admit that sometimes you just simply don't feel enthusiastic about the way you're being asked to serve the church - we've all been there :)

so today, this blessed sunday, i can finally feel this absolute overwhelming gratitude for the calling i've been given! of course, since i've melded so ideally in every other aspect of life in new york, my ward experience would be no different, yes? and today proved this ten-fold - i was asked to be a "community outreach" coordinator. totally vague-sounding i know, but the general idea is that me and 2 other coordinators will help our ward members get involved with the communities around us, to help organize volunteer opportunities, publicize local needs and events to members of the ward etc. to simply connect with everything happening at our doorstep, but that we are often blind to because of the demands and focus on our own inner religious and social circles. i love this calling because i love the idea of breaking away from our narrow mormon community and realizing that we actually do live among thousands (millions in new york really) of other beautiful and interesting people who are worth our time and involvement. i'm going to an extreme here, but i just fear the insular us vs. them mentality, the tendency we have to huddle in among other mormons only. there is so much to be gained and learned and exchanged with everyone around us, and i'm so happy my actual calling is intended to furnish activities to create such exchanges. also, you know how i love to eat up, absorb, and invest fully in the cities around me. this calling will provide more opportunity for this as well. i mean really - is it not perfect? yes, i think so :)

what i love about the church is our professed trust in individual members to gain faith and testimony for themselves, and to utilize their singular talents in the best way to determine their own lives. we are free to determine what makes us happy, knowing what God has given to us, and there truly is no formula for this. no pattern we are all exactly meant to follow... getting this calling made me feel that i was actually recognized as an individual member of my ward - that there was a sense that i would better serve in this, whereas others would be better teachers or enrichment leaders etc. i love to be reminded of our freedom to believe and act according to our own consciences. that we are meant to determine our own happiness - something i tend to forget at times as guilt induces me to think i must alter myself to fit into another more common lifestyle, but there is nothing doctrinal about such a mentality at all. the truths of personal revelation and free agency are simply very beautiful and unique, and i did feel quite grateful for them today.

and in other matters, some people from my ward invited me and my roommate over for a dinner party tonight that i just returned from. there were about 10 of us there, and on top of an already wonderful sunday of fabulous social exchange, this event reconfirmed once more (as if i need any more confirmations at this point) how much i connect with the community here. i must again express my gratitude for being in a place where i can feel so much at home. it's how i felt at oxford, and it's so nice to find that again someplace else. honestly, i am simply enamored with the people here, in my apartment, job(s), ward, and community - so huzzah for that! and huzzah for community outreach! for looking outside ourselves and opening up to all the rest around us.

the street where i live

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move the image over to the right just a bit - my building is the grayish one to the right of the garden. and yes, that IS a garden :)

my street is wonderful, no?

a city visible but unseen

a phrase i borrowed from "the satanic verses", which i've now completed, thanks to a very long subway-ferry-bus ride to the african refuge drop-in center on staten island today. thank you, salman rushdie.

i have many thoughts as of late, and like my dear friend xarissa, am having trouble finding the energy to write them.... but i'll begin to try anyway :) so. i will start work next week at this drop-in center, run by a wonderfully brilliant and energetic liberian man, located in the projects of parkhill, a community nestled in the bizarre new york borough of staten island. going there today was the first time i had ever been to the island - i got hopelessly lost after debarking from the ferry, and when asking random people on the street how to get to parkhill i was met with sharp glances and disbelieving laughter - "parkhill? that area's a warzone!" "the projects? you wanna go there?" this is much the same reaction i get when i tell people i meet that i am living in harlem - all the way up on 149th. "what's up there? i've never been!" as this fascinated glow of interest passes over their faces as they realize that people actually go there, and even live there. (!!!) i don't live on 149th or work in parkhill out of any deliberate political statement, i'm just trying to live a "normal" life in this city which has no real "norm". i'm not trying to prove a point, i'm simply hoping to absorb all aspects of new york - to live and see the insane and overwhelming amount of diversity that is present in these 5 boroughs. (besides i really live in north harlem because rent is ridiculously cheap, and work on staten island because they had a posting and were looking for workers with a background in african issues.)

but really - why are so many swaths of new york simply overlooked and invisible? even by people who have lived here their whole lives?

it was really impossible to not feel my heart stir as i passed the statue of liberty this morning on the ferry (not a bad commute, eh?). i mean truly. all that this piece of metal means and signifies about what america is and what it has given to so many people is truly inspiring. it's incredibly ironic that i will pass it every time i go and work in a drop-in center to work with recent african immigrants - mostly refugees from political chaos at home. these families are struggling beyond struggling to make their lives work here in the US, despite all the personal history and baggage that they may be carrying.... oh man, where do you begin?

but in the end i am simply so excited to be involved in such a venture, really excited by the potential of this work - of the things i will hopefully learn or at least be exposed to. there is so much i'm simply so ignorant of, and i hope my new life here in the city will chip away at some of that ignorant shell - that i won't be prey to the delusion that new york is simply this or simply that - but instead let my own conceptions and ideas crumble away and feel in some small way more involved with all that surrounds me.

so yes, of course - more to come :)

and yes, i took these photos today - of the statue of liberty and manhattan from the ferry, and then the last one is actually of the parkhill projects. the drop-in center is simply in the basement of one of these apartment blocs, just so get an idea of my surroundings.

this is where i work (part 1)

my days are wonderfully full with various jobs these days. (and various wonderful train rides in between.) (and various wonderful literature read on said train rides.)

this is one place i have begun work at: the dumbo arts center (DAC) in brooklyn. (dumbo is the name of this area of brooklyn, meaning "down under manhattan bridge overpass".) i took this picture this morning of the front entry - notice the gorgeous manhattan bridge? you turn the corner to the left and boom there's the brooklyn bridge - the arts center is right at the corner of that famous park in every movie about new york, you know the one at the base of the brooklyn bridge looking right on all the skyscrapers of the financial district? of course the world trade centers used to make the view even more spectacular, but it is still stunning nonetheless. (too stunning for me to get a good picture of it, apparently...) i am seriously so beyond excited that i have an excuse to come here twice a week and gaze at the beauty...

....ah, life is running full force - i feel as if i have entered a time warp since moving to new york - the last week has been so brimming it feels like a year has passed. i have already indulged in so many events only available in a city as diverse and massive as this one - cat power at the apollo, movies on mexican mennonites at film forum, literature readings at east village bookstores, gourmet grocery stores in chelsea... normal pretentious adventures :) but honestly. i have been inundated just in the past 8 days alone. i have learned so much, experienced so much - my mind is stretched and expanded and pulled and challenged. (i.e. my favorite state of mind ever.)

i saw a documentary ("our city dreams") a few days ago at the IFC center - one of the artists in the movie said that she moved to new york from cairo and felt entirely comfortable not fitting in, because here, "no one fits in." i think that was so accurate and brilliant. the city is so diverse and gargantuan that anyone can find their niche, everyone is welcome and integral to the landscape. i could never expect to grasp it all - the city changes so much minute by minute - but who cares about total comprehension. i am just so happy to be here, more happy than i could ever, ever say. yay! so now everyone come visit. (les, it's totally not too early to give yourself a bday plane ticket.... :)

this is my 101st post!!!

i feel an exuberance in that my first official post from manhattan should be my 101st - as if i am embarking off on something entirely new and my blog actually gets it :)

it's hard to explain how i have felt since arriving here on saturday - but the best way to describe it may be to say that i simply feel an overwhelming calm. i am of course ecstatic to be here, but i don't feel a nervous excited happiness - instead i feel absolutely content and at peace with where i am. i no longer feel as if i'm lying in wait or expectation of anything - as if i am just looking to the next step. instead i feel so happy to be. the end.

nothing has changed in terms of my employment - i do the same frustratingly sporadic research work i've done for the last 4 months. but whereas before i felt uncertain and apprehensive each morning, i now just feel hugely grateful to be where i am. while falling asleep last night i was repeating over and over in my head a prayer of gratitude for all working out as it did - for this opportunity to have the freedom to actually live where i want to live. to be surrounded by 3 wonderful and creative and fabulous and kind roommates, to have stepped into a wonderful community around 149th and broadway (there have been so many instances just in the last days which have made me fall swiftly in love with my building and my neighborhood and the general kindness i've been met with here). i just feel an overwhelming sense of potential and possibility - the very opposite of stagnation. i haven't felt this in quite a long while - and i don't see it leaving anytime soon. i feel quite at home here in new york - moving here really did feel like i had already been here for years (i suppose i had been mentally), that i'm simply stepping into something i've always known. and i want to make it here for a long time yet :)

ok, so forgive the sappy over-cheesiness of this post, but i promise i'm absolutely sincere in all i've said. i am very happy and wanted you all to know that my apartment is absolutely huge and wonderfully brand-newly renovated, so everyone is welcome :) i'll post pictures soon hopefully - i also need to document some choice images from my neighborhood :)

so yes, so much more to come!