I'm keeping a little list of some of the things I'm getting done in the city -- the classes I take, the shabby rough drafts I write in a month, the plays and museums I visit ("cobbling together" an education out of nothing -- to paraphrase the great Mamet). I want to assure myself I'm not wasting my time ... you take stock of that sort of thing at age 30.
It's also kind of expensive/tricky to live here. You don't want to fritter away your days, at these rates.
But I guess New York also feels a little dangerous. Not meaning "street crime." I mean, I'm naturally hyper-aware, I think, and see things, but am not afraid to the point of being preoccupied by it.
I'm thinking more of New York, the Target -- 9/11, etc. You're walking down the sidewalk and the big ticker in Times Square brightly warns you to stay out of the subways (last summer). This does not preoccupy me, either, but you do get the sense that ... I'm in a beautiful place of opportunity -- I need to use it and enjoy it. Now.
My co-worker has dreams of fires, and one of my best friends, in her darkly cheerful way, forwarded me a prophecy written by NYC Pastor David Wilkerson of FIRES impending, immediately ... Well, I'm always one for hoopla, so ... I'm not really preoccupied by this, either.
I am preoccupied, though, by the early Christians -- my fascination partly inspired, interestingly, by Buddism and Taoism -- simplicity. I like how the early Church, for the most part, was just Jesus -- relationships, sacrificial service and love. A crew that was hunted and killed, whose lives depended on each other.
I wish I had Googled this before I started writing, but there's a story of early Christians ENTERING a city ravaged by a plague, dying while they helped. So ... being in my right mind, and safely seated in the South Park Ave Kinkos, with a stomach full of turkey sandwich, I want to say if anything ever happens, ever, I want to be here. And to help. (Though I could see how it could also be helpful for me, Sara Harvey, to go, and get out of everyone's hair.) And to not pee myself.
