nyc, round two

Second summer in NYC without an actual residency and it's different this year.

It's occurred to me today that I'm impatient and exasperated with much of what the city holds for me, especially with certain individuals. I alternate between feeling somewhat forgotten and angry at that, to angry at people who remind me of a time when I was more confused than I am now, namely last summer.

This is the first time since 1996 when I first summered in NYC whilst still in college that I feel like a foreigner in my own city. Of course I can blend in easily enough, routine and all-- starbucks in the morning, followed by rushing down the subways stairs while trying to balance a nyt, latte and gym shoes in the same hand as i did for my metro card, which is later inevitably followed by a drink at Jakewalk and perhaps some food on smith street. The routine fits me like a well-worn glove, but the feeling of loneliness is not the same. In times past I would often feel alone, but wistfully alone, as though the city offered endless possiblities just waiting for me. This time I feel somewhat abandoned and displaced. I've caught myself taking photographs of seemingly familiar sites-- the corner of Smith and Sackett, the walk to Boca Luppo-- as though I am trying to jar some memory of a feeling that is in abeyance.

And this summer the friendships feel different, more distant. People who used to hold secure places in my life and me in theirs have slipped away. I know very little about their lives, thoughts, dreams, and angst. Even as I lie here a bit sadly reminiscent of better times past, I think that maybe it's time to let a lot of that go. I tend to cling to old ideas, feelings, moments. Maybe a head doctor would say that I've failed to reach the next developmental stage because I've been so hung up on my friends.

Or maybe I'm just being dramatic.

pre and post

Woke earlier than normal this morning, post-call to prayer, pre-Morris begging for food.

Walked to the gym through the tree-lined streets of Maadi, thinking along the way that the morning heat was reminiscent of summers in Connecticut: that pre-steamy smell and feel of the sun's rays.

Back home post-gym to a now meowing Morris and Maha sweeping the carpets while the vacuum lays prostrate in the back bedroom.

Day two is certainly better.

Unfinished

The sand has finally stopped storming over the little town of Maadi in the bigger town of Cairo. My lungs have taken yet another beating. A coughing fit visited me during the credits of "He's just not that into you," interrupting the first time I'd heard Robert Smith's voice wailing during a film that Friday is an appropriate day for him to be in love. Definitely something I like about Drew Barrymore productions: the girl's got good music taste.

The film itself I give no more than a B, maybe even with a minus. Undoubtedly it's difficult to turn a dating advice book-- organized according to vignettes punctuated by questions and followed by all too obvious answers-- into a fictionalized story that can hold the viewers' interest for 2 hours. [Parenthetically I wonder how much of the film was sliced and diced-- what juicy sex scenes did I miss out on having watched it in Cairo?]

movement

Anticipating change is, for me, worse than the actual act of change. As I sit here on my balcony that period of change has begun to begin: tonight is my first night alone in the apartment, most probably the first of many to come. This isn't the first time I've spent a first night alone in an apartment I've only shared with someone with whom I spend nearly all of my time. And yet the first night is always as bad as all of the previous first nights. Like times past, the first thing I did when I walked in was apply the dead bolt to the door. Why? I have no idea. Especially considering it was only 5 pm, sun still ablaze and Morris wide awake and meowing for food. And again, retracing steps from years ago, I paced around the apartment, unmotivated to perform the household tasks I usually carry out with satisfaction. The cat needed to be fed, the laundry required folding, the dishes stacked since last night's dinner begged to be done. Chores performed without the usual cheer, followed by incessant refreshing of my gmail page (someone must have emailed me today?) and then an attempt at some newspaper reading.

After hours of fidgety dissatisfaction I am at last nestled into one of the two bamboo chairs on the balcony overlooking the ongoing insanity of the bus stop, poised to begin season three of Weeds.

It will be better tomorrow.

incomprehensible

I have "bookmarked" my blog [yes, I still, as of 2009, feel the need to use quotation marks around verbs not previously used to mean what they now mean] and every time I click on the bookmark I am directed to an Arabic version of my blog. I never asked for this. Does my blog somehow detect that I am in Egypt [yes, I realize I write Cairo, Egypt as my location, but I've also tried Brooklyn, NY] and therefore switch to Arabic? Shouldn't it also, if it's that smart, be able to detect that I write in English and therefore provide its offerings in my language of choice?

The real problem with the Arabic script on the internet is the size: it's nearly microscopic. Although I am familiar with the open apple + command, upon viewing the mass confusion of miniscule letters I instantly become frustrated and begin clicking on random words, without any regard for meaning. When the Arabic script is that small it seems not only foreign but thoroughly frustrating.

And this is not the only misunderstanding of the night. I seem to be confounded by my own reaction, my own feelings. I found out tonight that someone I know is pregnant. Obviously this is hardly the first time, nor will it be the last but it struck me: I have felt lost and unsure since I was told; surely confusing feelings when they are combined with my happiness for her. It just so happens that this person is less a friend of mine than the person with whom I reside; a long time friend of his. Might I also add an unmarried, long time friend in her 20s? Yes, yes, of course I am happy for her, rejoicing in her joy. And yet, it strikes me that I am somehow in the wrong place and time. I can't seem to fit things together and make them flow as they should. Not that I want that to be me today or yesterday or even tomorrow, but I don't understand why it just simply can't be like that for me, why it isn't an option.

Figuring out what another person is thinking is tiring. So tiring that I'm almost tempted to just throw in the towel and stop wondering. Tempted but not set following through with the suspension of my curiosity. Clearly.

An email from a friend of mine unintentionally raised an interesting question: in dealing with the men in our lives who eternally puzzle us, how can we posit suggestions about what they might be thinking-- help them clarify their thoughts, so to speak-- without seeming as though we are merely talking about our ourselves?

Recently I addressed a letter to someone that personally inserted me into this quandry. He was quick to point out that much of what I wrote was entirely about me and not about him; after all, how could I know what was going on in his head? And furthermore, how could I take such liberties with his thinking?

Months later I think it was, perhaps, a desperation of sorts; a grasping at what was comprehensible to me, which happened to be an interpretation based on how I would behave if I were in his position.

There are so many spaces and times in which we just plain "miss" each other, where two minds are clearly not one. There are more times than not when it becomes abundantly clear that we can never completely get at the essence of another's thinking no matter how much time we invest in memorizing all the details. Some things just can't be teased out.

situational

Today I had a moment of profound clarity regarding my present place in time and space: I went to pick up my chest x-ray at the hospital with one of the best views of the Nile I know. I decided to walk back, although the “sidewalk,” if you can call it that, is adjacent to a highway with barely a raised platform to indicate separation. As I strolled along the highway/Corniche, cars whizzing past but not distracting me from my daily amazement at the beauty of the greenery that dots the small islands in the Nile at this particular point of the river, it then occurred to me—it nearly knocked me down with the realization— that I live in Cairo, Egypt. Another country. 8,000 miles away from everyone I love. but one. I suddenly saw myself as someone who lives in a different country from where I was reared, the borders between which resides nearly everything that is important to me. As I write this I realize how trite this might sound, how basic. I mean, duh, I live in another country and have for one year, nine months and counting. But it was the way I understood the distance at that moment along the Corniche: it was as if I, all at the same time, imagined/felt/thought I understood the perspectives and opinions of many people in my life. It was as if conversations, however small, that might involve my name or my doings came crashing into my headspace. I could hear, most prominently, my mom bragging about how her daughter lives in Cairo; yes, that’s in Egypt, she says proudly. I could imagine my dad shaking his head in the certain way that he does, slightly lowered, glasses crooked—by necessity as they attempt to balance upon his nose long ago broken during the days when he really believed he would be a major league baseball player—saying that yes “Rebecca lives in Cairo but I’m none too happy about it,” perhaps then recounting the news of the bombing that occurred last week at a major tourist site downtown. I imagined Hans standing around his BBQ in his backyard that he shares with Laura and his other roommates, tongs in hand, veggie meat on the grill, our longtime mutual friends and others gathered round, talking about the video link I sent him the other day about the class bifurcation in this here city. With more effort I can see Kate casually mentioning my name when she is in the Cobble Hill Park on one of her BoCoCa parents’ group outings, saying perhaps that I picked up the shirt enveloping Gus in Bangladesh or some other faraway place, maybe even here.