Ghosts in Autumn

Yay! September! Autumn is almost here!
But this morning I couldn't help but think about ghosts.

When B and I went to New Orleans a few years ago, we did one of those cheesy ghost tours. I absolutely loved it. I could feel the weight of that city. It hung everywhere in thick air and cracked paint. I was wrapped up in the creaking and colors of the French Quarter. It smelled like history there. So now, I can't help but wonder-- What has happened to all of those ghosts in the flooding wake of Katrina?

Maybe I'm sick to be wondering about ghosts when so many people have lost their homes, livelihoods or even worse--their lives or loved ones. But I can't help it! I've always been a superstitious overwhelming romantic wanabee-mystic escapist. There's not enough plain old social activism in my nature. And although I suffer a great deal of "bourgeois guilt" because of it, I can't help where my imagination wanders. I just can't help the fact that when disaster strikes, I wonder about ghosts.

The past has been rising all around me lately. Not the distant past of my childhood, but the more recent past of who I was and where I was before the Narc saga began. This morning I passed the site of the old Hard Rock Cafe, only to notice that it had changed locations. No more pink Cadillac jutting out onto 57th street! Instead, there were signs posted in the window announcing the move to Time Square. "Elvis has left the building," they read. I was listening to Elvis as I passed by and it made me sad. I don't know why. I'm weird...

Last night, memory was doing strange things to me. I went to my first choral rehearsal which happens to be in the neighborhood of Columbia (where I did my undergrad). I could feel the gnawing presence of "time." I kept seeing myself--my former self around every corner. The building where rehearsals are held brought to mind VJ and a particularly sad time in her life. It made me reflective. After rehearsal, I walked on Claremont and passed the dorm where I spent my first summer in New York City. That was the summer after my sophomore year of high school (I came as part of Barnard's summer program for high school kids. God, was that really 11 years ago already???). It was an amazing summer. I took three classes--one in film, one in art and one in literature. I drew from live models and wrote a paper on NY City graffiti and another on Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. I really came into my own that summer. I remember sitting in the Museum of Modern Art, sketching from Picasso and even Duchamps. I even remember my first visit to a Starbucks. It was an "event" back then. There were only one or two in the city and I had to go all the way to 86th street to find one. Now they're on every corner. You just can't escape the dreadful uniformity. (Although I still go there all the time to drink overpriced coffee and do work!). Walking down Claremont, I peeked into the window of Eliot Hall, catching a glimpse of the student lounge. I remembered sitting there with my summer-roommate, Emily. She had long curly red hair, the color of fire, and was reading "Angels in America" all summer long. She was older and wiser by a year or two, and back then, that made all the difference.

I tried to shrug off the sense of passing time, but glancing up at the back wall of Barnard's quad to my left, I imagined GoldenFinch. She lived there our sophomore year. I used to look at that wall of windows, able to tell which was hers by the Christmas lights dangling there. I remembered the day that my sister came to visit and the three of us were being silly in GoldenFinch's room, listening to Phantom of the Opera and dancing around with scarves. I burst out with a high E at the end of one of the songs, much to everyone's amazement (including my own, as I only sang mezzo at the time!). I remembered sitting at GoldenFinch's computer, pouring over emails from PZ, one of the grad student/teachers in the music department, with whom GoldenFinch fell head over heels in love. The love remained unrequited.

I was so tired last night though. Tired and a little depressed. It was 10:45 pm and I still hadn't eaten dinner. I decided to head into Ollies to grab some takeout before heading home. Whenever I used to eat there, I would always order their spinach wonton soup. They're the only place around that makes spinach wontons and they're really good. (They don't even have them at the Ollies near Lincoln Center!). Being back in that restaurant, again, brought a strange feeling. The inside was newly renovated and trendy, but not much had changed aside from that-- it was still bustling with the same crowded "take a number" chaos. The homeless man peddling on the corner was the same guy who had been there all through my college years, and the man working the newsstand outside was the same one who used to flirt with me whenever I bought calling cards to call B in the Philippines. Weird. As I waited for my food, I thought of VJ and our post-class discussions over plates of piping hot steamed chicken. We had so much fun when we lived together! Again, I was surrounded by ghosts.

University life is a strange thing. Students come and go and the cycle endlessly repeats itself. The indifference of the territory for those who pass through it seems almost callous to me. Everyone there is the same age. They will always be the same age. Everything is the same, only slightly varied--everything except for me. It was like moving through a strange version of my memory. The world was vacant and unreal. I half expected to bump into someone that I knew, but those people moved away from there long ago.

The whole thing put me in such a strange mood. As I left the restaurant, a mob of about 10 girls passed me, clumped together, dressed up for a night on the town, giddy, and nervously laughing. They were probably freshman, fresh out of orientation week, all dolled up to hang out at some crummy pub like the West End. I felt old. Very old. And strange.

I got into a cab and called B. He didn't pick up, so I left him a message. Suddenly I was overwhelmed and overcome with anxiety. What prompted it? I don't know. Life in general, I guess. To be honest, I still haven't processed what went down between me and Narc. I could feel it coming up and it choked me.

How could he have said the things that he said? How could those be his words? His thoughts? How could he profess to love me and hurt me like that at the same time? Did he lie for the whole year whenever he showed me love? How could he have spent a whole year with me and still have absolutely no idea who I am? How can he think that I'm that awful? Why does he hate me so much? What did I do wrong?

Ugh! This is pointless. You know what? Fuck it! I don't even care about those things. What I care about is how this all ends...

How can he be not returning my email or my drunk-dials? How can he just ignore the whole thing and let it go like that? I hate him! I HATE HIM!!!

I feel so powerless when it comes to Narc. Nothing is in my control, including my own feelings. And now he's just disappeared into thin air. It's not that I want to see him or talk to him. I still haven't forgiven him. It's just that I can't talk to him that's driving me crazy. He's put up a wall against me. He's gone.

All of these things were whirling around me last night. They weren't so much realized thoughts as they were a singular anxious feeling-- a feeling of frustration, a sense of the past, unarticulated thoughts about where I am with my life, about the people and places I've left behind and an overwhelming feeling of helplessness in the face of loss. I sharply felt the loss of what I went through in early June as well. I was tired and I still had work to do. I called B back.

He was on the phone and couldn't talk. I needed a friend though. One who has known me for a long time... one who was there with me in the places I had just walked. I called Liu.

It was great to talk to her. I miss having her around so much. We gabbed on the phone for nearly the whole cab ride home, and continued on while I ate my dinner. It was just what I needed.

Later NDN stopped by and we caught up on the status of his romantic life. Finally, wiped out from the start of the semester and the emotional pain caused by Narc, I did some work and went to bed.

Sleep was strange last night. I didn't get to bed until around 1:00 am and I was falling off my feet by the time my head hit the pillow. It was the first night in a long time that I've gone to bed without either a man or alcohol. But even though I was tired, it took me a while to fall asleep. And even though I only slept for about 5 1/2 hours (my alarm went off at 6:30 this morning), I woke up at least six times during the night. It's okay though. In the end, it was a rather delicious sleep. Each and every time I woke up, I felt cushioned by my super soft down comforter, as if I were on a cloud. It was literally speaking, a "comforter." I turned the air up, keeping the room like an icebox, snuggling deeper into the blankets just to keep my nose warm. God, how I miss the winter! When I woke up this morning, I was still tired. My jaw hurt and I know that it must be from grinding my teeth all night long. Even so, I somehow felt more like myself... somehow refreshed.

This morning I stuck an Elvis CD in my discman and hit the road. (I feel like a technological dinosaur. I really need to get an I-Pod one of these days. I just keep thinking that I don't really need one though, and I have other things to spend my money on). On my way out, I bumped into Druggie in the elevator. It was strange to see him before 9:00 am-- on the morning side of things. We said hello and made some stilted chit chat. Then he asked me if I could lend him a "couple of dollars."

"What do you need a couple of dollars for?" I smiled.

"Uh... um..." he mumbled in his druggie sort of way. "To get downtown, I guess."

I had $5.00 in my pocket. I so shouldn't have given it to him, but I found his answer mildly amusing.

"Are you going to pay me back?" I asked.

"Oh, uh, yeah... I'll pay you back," was his half-lidded reply.

"Promise?"

"Yeah, I promise!"

"Okay, then..."

I gave him the money and I was off.

I still have a lot I want to blog about--talking to that guy Roman at Cheers and my first day of teaching and classes on Tuesday, my trip to the Speech Therapist yesterday and my first choir rehearsal last night! But I don't have time for all that now, so I'll have to leave it for the next post.

And as for the obligatory Narc-analysis, all I have to say is that I've accepted the fact that he's not going to contact me until he's back from Europe. Not that I really want him to, but part of me is aching for the acknowledgment of my feelings that would come with an apology. And like I said before, I just can't stand the fact that he's unavailable to me to me right now. It's totally a "security" thing. I'm trying to put it out of my mind. I know that he knows what went down between us, and he knows that I'm hurt. He just doesn't want to have to deal with taking responsibility for my feelings. There's nothing new about that. So let him be a coward and pretend that he's the victim of my "histrionic irrationality" and I'll just have to suck it up and go on with things. Nothing else to do about it, right?

Okay, that's it for now... I'm off got to go teach another class!

-Hyde-