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June, 2011

  1. Something’s Changed

    June 25, 2011 by Barb

    toronto sara collaton Somethings Changed

    Toronto at dusk (photo taken by Sara Collaton)

    At first, I noticed that the small things had changed, like the rearranging of items at Trader Joe’s and the augmentation of MTA fares. It wasn’t until las weekend when I realized that there had been larger shifts in my life – that some sort of displacement had occurred. Things changed. People moved on. Friends drifted.

    I was already aware that some friendship ties had already weakened over the last few years, but there was always some residual of amicability that I could build on and construct some sort of ideal in which nothing had changed. After all, it’s difficult to acknowledge how much has changed in a place of which you’re not in its presence. In some pseudo-manner, the construct that I hold is suspended in time – with each memory retaining its quality through the years as the constant present. And that false construct is better maintained now with social networks that permit us to have some access to the estranged with news feed updates.

    This falsified construct of mine has held itself up pretty well, given that social settings to which it lends itself are more of celebration, as opposed to awkward and spontaneous run-ins/conversations. That and the fact that much of the conversations refer to the past in which we all share a sphere of common knowledge. Both of which contribute to the suspended belief that nothing has changed and that I have been here for everything.

    And bringing this topic to a broader light, it holds the same truth with regards to these cities in which I’ve lived. In spite of always coming back to the same house in Toronto, for instance, I continue to find myself becoming more acquainted with the unfamiliar corners that are reserved for crowd to which I did not belong in my youth. It is as though this entire city has opened itself up to me to further explore and to realize that it has changed as much as I have, as childhood memories of what once was are replaced by new bars and cafés. And though both are newer, New York and Paris have changed considerably in the span of a year, in terms of my viewpoint and what has happened mutually exclusive to me.

    I suppose that I had spent so focused on actively accepting and letting go of certain things, that I hadn’t realized how much I was holding on to, on a subconscious level, as it had been. To actively and collaboratively build on these memories wasn’t a consideration – I wanted to preserve them and perhaps align them with what I had absorbed from Facebook updates.

    In summary – I’ve spent the last three years not realistically acknowledging that things surely change, suspending them in this frame-set only to realize that I live in something that hasn’t existed for more than three years.

    Image courtesy of blogTO

  2. Returning to NYC

    June 13, 2011 by Barb

    brooklyn bridge dcdead Returning to NYC

    Brooklyn Bridge sunset

    After spending the night in Toronto last Wednesday, I flew out the following morning to New York with the intent of spending several days at a friend’s before signing for an apartment. It turns out that the hunt went by much faster than I had thought. I spent most of Thursday afternoon with a broker only to find myself bored with the convoluted process and instead landing an apartment through Craigslist in the Gramercy/Stuyvesant area.

    The apartment is quite a steal, much bigger than what you would normally find for what I’m paying, especially in that neighbourhood. Only caveat to my current living situation, though, is that I lack a kitchen sink and the traditional oven/stove. What’s that mean? You can pretty much guess it: I wash my dishes in my bathroom, and make use of a convection oven and hot plates. In truth, it’s not too bad or off-putting, especially since I live alone and won’t be lining up to wash my dishes while someone’s showering.

    Since writing out the deposit cheque, I’ve pretty much gone to the races in putting my NYC life (back) together – headed to the DMV, rented a U-Haul to fetch a bed frame and make a trip to the Brooklyn IKEA, raided Bed, Bath, and Beyond, scoured Craigslist for furniture, and hauled an office chair onto the crosstown bus to save the extra $8 that a taxi would’ve cost me.

    Now of course I put the word “back” in brackets since I’m not really sure as to whether or not to articulate a return or a new beginning (despite the title of my post). After all, I started my college career in Paris, and proceeded to spend another year of it in the French city. So it would have made sense last year to say that I would be returning to Paris, knowing that I’d be exploring more of the city’s secrets. Could the same be said about New York? Perhaps. But it is just so odd to say when I am entering my last year of undergraduate, as opposed to crossing the midpoint, which seems to, for me at the least, present the possibility of naïvity. The last year, though, seems to be one that holds a connotation that it is the most familiar, but is just as estranged as last September was for me coming back to the city of lights.

    It goes to say that it’s interesting for me to try and wrap this whole experience around the normal social construct, in which one spends most of their time at the main campus, and maybe a semester abroad. So I suppose I’ll say that I’ve returned, only to mean that I’ve only really begun to explore the town.

    Image courtesy of flickr (user: dcdead)

  3. Here I Am

    June 1, 2011 by Barb

    paris highway Here I Am

    Paris highway

    I heard nothing. There were days, then weeks, and then a month passed. And in all of that time, I hadn’t heard anything about an appointment with a new nurse practitioner/psychiatrist. A half-filled prescription bottle of Prozac sat on my table, unopened since that last meeting with the Cat Lady. I could have easily picked up the telephone to call, but the recent experience of “don’t call if you don’t want to be here” just echoed in my mind. I did not want to be there, but I most certainly should have been there.

    All I hear now are two Californians, complete strangers before hand and now friends, talking and sharing their individual passions. We’re standing in some semblance of a long line, curving around the terminal hall, as we wait for our turn to check in to our flight to Reykjavik.

    There is a memory from last year that stands out amidst it all in my time in New York– the no-context statement by the Cat Lady. “Koreans smile when they’re angry,” she said. Smiling was simply politeness on my part; nothing cultural or ethnical. Her “save,” in light of my confused expression, was something along the lines of “I know that you’re not Korean, I was just making an observation.” That moment clings to me most because it best concluded and surmised our relationship.

    There is no particular memory here. No particular anecdote seems worth noting in my memory. Perhaps something interesting is when I was helping a friend with her overweight luggage fees, since the airline booth only took cards with a chip, and I hadn’t cancelled my HSBC account yet. It is more likely that I only find this to be pertinent now that I am in line worrying that my suitcases are grossly overweight.

    Someone had to write to the Head Honcho for me, so as to address the dropped line of communication between the Cat Lady and everyone else. I eventually got an appointment with someone more competent, the Outsider (the name is more associative with the location of the office, as opposed to a social thing), and I was prescribed Trazedone to sleep; it didn’t work very well. That nurse practitioner soon left for vacation (NPs, or at least with NYU, work only ten months per year), and I was passed on to work with the Psychiatrist, who prescribed me Celexa.

    I nudge my suitcases with my knees and continue typing on the laptop. This is probably the best place finish what I wanted to say about my student health fun in New York. There seems to be some kind of solace in writing all of this, as though in recanting all of what has happened, I am able to better distinguish what really had transgressed.

    In Paris, I spent two sessions a week with the Shrink throughout the two semesters in an attempt to work through it all. I wasn’t necessarily direct in what I said, but in conjunction with this, I was able to let go of what had infuriated me a little.

    Now I sit here in the lounge, waiting. I’m not so much living in both only past and present at this particular moment, but rather living in the current and just accepting of what has happened.

    Image courtesy of flickr.com (user: jeremie-gisserot)