back in brooklyn

So here I am once more in New York, and still in limbo. Some of the puzzle pieces will fall into place in the next few days, I think, at least for the short-term: a place to live, and a place to work. My depature from Seattle was complicated by a massive windstorm that knocked the power out for a couple of days--I packed my bags by the light of a kerosene lamp, and missed the internet pitifully. Now, I'm busy with freelance work and some applications and fellowships, and the search for a place to live. Dear friends have been very generous with their spare futons as always, and I am grateful. But after months of this in-betweenness, I am yearning for my own space, a little room with a window, and a kitchen where I can claim at least partial sovereignty. I want to reassemble my spice collection and set all my books out on their shelves.

With serendipitous timing, Contrapuntal has a thoughtful post all about A Room of One's Own, to which I can only add: word. It's particularly frustrating that I should find myself bursting with things to write about (and a drive to research, an intense desire to track down odd things that have caught my attention and read about them endlessly) when the pressure of keeping afloat makes it least possible. Perhaps I should go back to grad school soon after all. But New York delights, as always: from the pleasures of the Park Slope food co-op to the Chinese New Year parade (watched while dizzy from lack of sleep after a redeye flight, so all the dancing dragons felt like hallucations) to the never-faded awe of crossing from Brooklyn to Manhattan high above the East River on an N-train over the Manhattan Bridge. I'm trying to stay aloof (the possibility of relocating to DC for a job still hangs in the air) but I am falling into step with the city all too easily. And it's about to snow--the excitement of which will peel two decades off my mental age, despite the likelihood of very cold feet.