I’ve been away so long I can’t remember which drawer is for socks and which is for underwear. I unpack in a fumbling daze, car weary and heat-stricken. And this, I think dejectedly, is only a break from unloading heavy crates of candle gear up four flights of stairs from the car, a duty which can’t be delayed much longer since it’s 100 degrees out, and god knows what inside the solar heated vehicle. Even palm wax has its limits!
I can’t believe last night I slept under two blankets, sans air conditioning. Only a screen door, which opens to the best stargazing rooftop balcony ever, remained a few inches open to freshen the room with poofs of 67 degree air all night and the sound of melodious bird calls in the pre-dawn chill. I’ve become so familiar with the flying critters of our neighborhood upstate I’ve started to name them – “Geiger” is what Colin dubbed the tireless woodpecker across the street, because his incessant pecking sounds like a radiation detector. “Shaggy” is what I call all 4 blue jays, because while I can’t tell them apart, all sound appallingly like Shaggy’s outbursts of “ZOINKS” on Scooby Doo.
67 degrees. Let me spell that for you: Sixty-seven. That’s fully twenty-one degrees cooler than it was in Brooklyn last night. I can’t believe we’ve chosen to come back. Ever. As we drove South I told Colin I felt like we were descending into the bowels of Hell. Traffic, humidity and heat all intensify as we approach Manhattan, where I drop him off for a rehearsal for the Classical theater of Harlem.
It’s not just the environment. Once home, I know I must take the sheets and towels used by two sets of subletters down the stairs and to the laundry in the sweltering heat, unearth the stash of sensitive papers we keep hidden so deeply it’s even hard even for us to find, and, worse, get to all the desk work I’ve been putting off, because every last page of it has to be dealt with here, as opposed to there for some reason or other, access to my files being prime.
Sorting through receipts and returning calls to doctor offices is a drag everybody hates no matter where you do them from. But a surprising truth has emerged in our many trips to our Catskills getaway – for some reason we both hate it less when we’re there. Why?
At first we thought it was just that we had each brought a limited amount of annoying stuff to deal with. Each time we finished a duty, there wasn’t an endless, unkillable pile of more paper staring us in the face, rising up to meet us like Zombies.
But as our visits to the Catskill Mountains turned from days to weeks, and more and busywork managed to chase us up the throughway and into the “vacation” house, we realized some other potent facts:
One: Using the dining room table as a desk, each of us gets roughly quadruple the usual size of horizontal surface for our deskly duties. Two, windows. We’re surrounded by three sun-filled windows, each with a distinctly different view – flowering side yard, towering trees, and sprawling deck, (in order left from right, from my side.) Three: The deck.
And beyond. Instead of catching some TV or noshing some chocolate for a break, I do yoga on the deck and ponder the sight of squirrels running along the railing. Colin takes a bike ride. We go on a hike. Wonder what the babbling Vly creek has to say today, and if it’s interesting enough, go swimming in it. Or visit the public pool a block away. In the winter we watch it snow.
I keep learning anew how far more deeply energizing it is to be in daily commune with nature, than not. I need less naps. My pain levels go down. I get less infections when we’re up there. It’s like my body says, yes, this is how you are supposed to live. Stop making those damnable drips down into hell!
I’ve asked other people with fibromyalgia why they choose to live in New York City. I was genuinely curious. Knowing the city is hard on all of us – the extremes of heat, poor air quality, subways with mounds of steps, noise, clutter, a bedbug epidemic…why would anyone with chronic illness choose to live in a big city?
I expected answers like, the culture! The live music! So many free activities along the riverfront! Theater, art, restaurants, education, jobs. Architecture, shopping. Beauty of a diverse population. Or even, (as might be expected of a population with some mobility impairments) easy access to public transportation, not to mention services like meals delivered and vans for the disabled.
Indeed, New York is known as one of the greatest cities in the world. And I happen to live in the neighborhood recently voted by New York Magazine as the #1 neighborhood in the city. What grandeur, what brilliance, what excitement can you not get in New York?
Instead, every single person I asked said, “Everyone I know and love is here.” Or something like it. My grandchildren are here, my girlfriend’s career is based here, all my friends are here.
Oh.
So what keeps me here?
This is a question I ponder at least a little every day. Sure I have good friends here, but New York isn’t the only place I have friends. And of course one can always make new connections. Colin is here, but we’ve thoroughly enjoyed the times in our relationship when it’s been long a distance one (except for the fact that for a normally socially bright guy he’s uncannily horrible at making phone conversation.)
What about career? Of course I moved here for that. But I haven’t had energy to do much more than make a living for several years now. I find whenever I do get involved with a show or musical enterprise I spend the next months in an avalanche of serial infections. And then there’s getting work - how I hate auditioning over and over again, like a wind-up doll.
Now, I’m not a New York hater, like some people I know, ahem my Dad. It’s said we hate what we fear, and we fear what we do not know. In my experience, most people in the middle of the country (referred to by an equally ignorant population of New Yorkers as “the fly-over” parts) have labored under a pile of myths and misconceptions about the Big Apple their whole lives, some of which perhaps were true at some period of history long-gone, but most of which are just a lot of hogwash. People are unfriendly, you can’t walk in Times Square without getting mugged, you can’t park a car in Manhattan, there’s a terrorist attack every week. Pish-posh.
I feel responsible to point out The City is truly an incredible place. Think of it: millions of people from different countries, races, creeds and colors, all living peacefully under the rule of democracy. It’s the epicenter of the proud tradition of the American melting pot. Music, finance, science, art and a million dreams come true, some not so true. Absolutely endless opportunities to learn, educate and improve yourself.
Wanna take a course on International Affairs? Attend a lecture on personal branding in social media? Want to jam with other musicians at an open mike, watch a movie outdoors with a thousand other people who like The Princess Bride as much as you do, or eat yourself around the world on one block of eateries? How about savoring what the latest fashionistas have to offer, taking a tour of the Holocaust Museum, or seeing real work of Picasso’s at the Met?
It’s all here. Not a thing missing. Except Geiger, and the trees, and the – nothing- I appreciate so much in my mountain haven.
So why not move my files there, as opposed to here? Then I could pay all my bills, answer all my correspondence, organize all my referrals within view of Nirvana! I’d open the windows wide, play my guitar on the deck, swim in mountain streams and make up songs between spates of work. Why not?
Come to think of it, why doesn’t everyone just pick up and move to their ideal climate? You’re in the Midwest but you hate the cold. You live in Alabama but love to ski. In today’s movable feast of flexible arrangements, why doesn’t almost everyone, at some point, just pick up and move to their Heaven?
Why don’t you?
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