My Personal Upcoming Event: Moving!
I’ve returned to NYC from Buffalo where I spent the last four months working in video, living life a little slower, and relaxing in my solo digs (I had a 1bedroom apt. there for $375!). Before my Buffalo excursion I had been living in Ridgewood, Queens since February 2011. Predominately a Polish and Spanish neighborhood, Ridgewood is a quiet little gem in Southern Queens right along the Brooklyn boarder.
I love this neighborhood and my apt., especially the large kitchen where I often sit at the red painted table looking out two big windows which overlook the back of the buildings on the parallel street. In the summer months the laundry waves from outside lines strung above the small, square patches of backyards. In the fall and winter months the wind blows and slips under the cracks, making the kitchen chilly, but still enjoyable. Aside from the wind, I can also hear the leaves rustling from where I sit and last year I watched a large tree slowly loose all of them, some landing on the fire escape. The best of all is the vibrant, yet romantic sunlight that streams in through the two windows all year round.
And now I have to move. I won’t get into the situation, but at least I’ve found a place. It’s a room the size of a walk-in pantry. Actually, its even off the kitchen so I think someone just put a door on it and called it a bedroom, but it mercifully has a window and a fire escape. I will be saying good-bye to not just my current room and apartment, but also to my Ridgewood neighborhood. I’m going to miss this place. There’s this one deli down the block which has better bagels and cream cheese than most coffee shops. I’ll be moving, in the coming weeks, back to Brooklyn (the first, and only other, place in nyc I’ve lived) where I will live in a pantry in Boro Park. Which, for those of you who can’t place it, (Boro Park, not the pantry-though I’m sure most of us have had at least one pantry living experience in nyc and if you haven’t then you’ve been spared or you’re a trust fund kid in which case…I digress) its just south of Prospect Park and a little north and a little east of Sunset Park. Boro Park seems okay: there’s trains close by and the neighborhood seems safe and generally likable.
Humorously, I’m paying more for this cubby room in a small apartment that I’ll be sharing with four other people and my cat, than I was paying for an entire apartment to myself in Buffalo, but this is NYC/Brooklyn after all and that was Buffalo, and I didn’t make much money in Buff so I suppose it is relative (on a side note, I did make really great friends in the short time I was there).
In fact, my ant hole sized room is a steal at $450 with everything included and still being a 20-ish minute train ride from the LES; and no offense to anyone, but I’m very happy that I’m not way out in Ozone Park or Far Rockaway.
In other news, I’ve made many more Smoke Drawings and along with getting them up my website, I’m hoping to have an exhibition soon. If anyone hears of anything please let me know! I am also finishing up a one act play (I know, I’ve been finishing up that play for half a year now) called A Thousand Lives of a Nomad and I’ve started work on another entitled This is a Shared Bathroom. I am hoping to take my trilogy of one act plays and have a weekend show early next year. The trilogy includes The Rootless: A Play about America – which was performed last year and can now be read in its entirely on this site under my writing tab.
To anyone who made it down to this last paragraph, thanks for reading my only biographical post and thanks also to those who just skipped to the end. Society wouldn’t be where it is if it weren’t for those who take short cuts-wait-aren’t we in a recession/depression/onslaught of massive economic inequality right now due to exploitation, corruption, and quick fixes (a.k.a short cuts)???
I know it’s a stretch, but I’m just saying…