Lightbulb Over Head Blog

I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe in this:

Sooner or later, everyone will drop anchor in New York City.

Be it a year, a semester abroad, or a long weekend, people from all around the world will pay a visit to the place my father reverently calls “The Center of the Universe.”

I’ve said a few disparaging or disheartening things about this urban labyrinth, but I wouldn’t be living here if I didn’t love it. However, I’m not so in love with this city that I can’t recognized the misplaced overconfidence in this statement.

There is an undeniable dream-like quality that accompanies the uttering of the words “New York.” I want to be a part of it. My little home is on the 100th floor. The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down. It’s the city that never sleeps. Lets face it, if Amy Adams endorses New York City as the perfect place to unfold a fairy tale in her movie Enchanted, I’m inclined to believe her. She’s just so darn cute!

In my five years living here, I’ve ventured to tourist hot-spots like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’ve also discovered my own treasures, like the gorgeous story-book fountain by City Hall that is lit with gas lamps, their flames flickering like smoldering ballerina feet in the night. I’ve enjoyed a disparate array of cuisines from street food to five star restaurants. No matter how long I’m here, the infinite well of the city provides me with more scope for the imagination and my taste buds. Where else can you get pad thai delivered to your door at 3 AM?

I love the ability to disappear amongst the metal spires of skyscrapers and at the same time, I stand by the fact that even in this massive city, I still run into friends on the street. They vary from close friends to long lost coworkers. While this may not be everyone’s last stop, it certainly makes everyone’s “must see” list. I’ve crossed paths with almost every important person in my life while treading the metropolitan asphalt.

People always want to visit me here to get a proper tour from a “real New Yorker.” I love having them and it’s incredibly convenient and cost effective for me. Like Hermes, the Greek god of hospitality, I accept all visitors and newcomers with dutiful open arms, suggesting interesting off-the-beaten-path attractions and helping foreigners find the best subway routes- and I’m not the only one! Once, when my mom was on business here for her law firm, it was raining heavily and a man saw her without an umbrella and promptly walked her all the way back to her hotel, not taking no for an answer. When they arrived, he said, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you New Yorkers aren’t nice.” Then he promptly disappeared into the sea of passing umbrellas leaving no name and no trace.

However, I find I’m leaving the city less and less. It makes me ponder how this affects my mental health and most importantly my sense of perspective. New York might be a centrifuge for culture and commerce, but I’m not sure that it really is the center of the universe and without question, it isn’t the only place that matters inside of it.

New York sometimes feels like an inescapable womb in the process of breeding and evolving a new strain of subhuman. I shall call them:

Turtle People.

Just kidding.

But not really. Let’s take a ride, shall we?

When you decide to live in New York City, you run the risk of becoming a Turtle Person. I once stumbled up on this phenomena, and by stumbled upon I mean coined this term myself, while discussing what a battle it is to navigate the NYC subway system, pick up your morning coffee, and arrive at work unscathed and on time. I was commiserating with my friend, Pam, about how alone you can feel even in a packed subway car and how everyone moves through their day with their head inside their shell until they require food or some other service, and then they pop their heads out, blazing with this incredibly unattractive, blinding sense of entitlement. If two Turtle People pop their heads out of their shells at the same time…

The results could be disasterous.

This is the danger of letting New York trap you. which I don’t necessarily mean in a physical sense. It’s very easy to get sucked into a grueling routine. Every weekday, when I plunge down into the subway at rush hour, I begin to feel my turtle shell forming and hardening. I bend my elbows, clench my fists, and forge ahead through the flow of people towards the turn-styles. I used my shoulders defensively, protecting my iPhone like a linebacker driving the ball through a veritable phalanx of opposition. I brace myself as I weed through people rushing at me, trying just as fervently to go in the opposite direction, all of our shells thickening as we advance deeper into the underbelly of the city. I arrive at the doors of my train as they are closing. In my way: A tiny old woman who is unsure of whether or not to enter.

“MOVE!” I bellow at her, head emerging from my shell as I try desperately to make my train. I completely ignore the fact that the woman could be a tourist who doesn’t understand English and I disregard that old platitude about “respecting your elders.”

You get the picture? Turtle People. Tell your friends.

That’s the risk you run when you live here. Of course, there’s a degree of expectation that you will get used to all of the people packed into small spaces. At first its just a matter of putting on your headphones and getting to a state of Zen, but eventually, this develops into a defensiveness and a willingness to be combative. It’s a jungle out there and you have to eat or be eaten from time to time.

At the other end of the spectrum, I have also felt the immense power of communal love in New York City. Last summer, my parents and I were in a car accident on the Upper West Side. We were in a cab on our way home from my graduation from NYU. I was in a gentle slumber, leaning on my mother’s shoulder. I was full of good food and celebratory dreams when I was shaken from my sleep by the perpendicular impact of our taxi with a woman’s car that was speeding across town. I woke, crumpled against the divider. Stupidly none of us were wearing seat belts and I was completely disoriented. My mother was gasping for breath, repeating the words, “My chest is crushed.” The combined weight of me and my father had slammed into her and sharply knocked the wind out of her. As I got my bearings, I realized my father was clutching his head. I could see his head had a huge gash across his forehead. He was talking quickly and saying “I’m ok,” not to mention trying to tell a few jokes as he stumbled out onto the street. I knew he couldn’t be too badly hurt because his jokes were at the same degree of “corny” that they always are, but the blood made it look worse than it was.

I followed him, trying to help him settle on the curb when I noticed how many people were rushing out of their stores onto the street. Apparently the crash had been rather loud. People gathered around us, trying to help my dad and steadying me as I dropped my diploma and my program. They carefully began checking my face and arms for scrapes and blood.

“I have to get my mom,” I said to the woman who was leading me to the sidewalk, but when we turned towards the cab, a gentleman was already helping her, supporting her weight on his arm. As an EMT student who happened to be passing helped my dad into the neck brace he was carrying with him, a shop-owner brought out plastic chairs and bottled water for me and my mother.

The traffic on Broadway had been brought to a halt and as my senses reawakened and the pounding in my head subsided, I realized that for every person that was helping us on our side of the street, just as many were helping the female driver who had hit us on the other side.

When I looked at my dad lying on the sidewalk, bleeding profusely from his forehead, I started to lose it and began to cry. I didn’t see her approaching, but a homeless woman put her hand on my shoulder. Normally I would have glared and pulled away in disgust, but that day I didn’t. She squeezed my shoulder with her warm leathery hand and said. “He’s going to be OK, Mama.” She smiled reassuringly. I stopped crying as we locked eyes and she calmed me down with her steady, concerned gaze.

I kept dropping the papers I was holding. The woman who was looking after my mother picked them up for me. She noted the purple NYU insignia on them and smiled. “I went there. What a great school!”

“I g-graduated today.” I stammered. It was all I could think to say.

She giggled good naturedly and looked between my mom and me, taking both of our hands. “You’ll remember this day for the rest of your lives!” We all laughed.

That day was such a testament to the spirit of New York- the spirit that got this amazing city through immense tragedy and hardship during 9/11/2001, the spirit that made that Wesley Autrey Sr. leap onto the slippery tracks of the New York Subway in order to hold down 19 year old epileptic, Cameron Hellopeter, saving his life by keeping his shaking body still as the train passed over them.

So yes, we run the risk of becoming Turtle People, but being here isn’t always a battle. Sometimes it’s the greatest opportunity of your lifetime and an absolute honor to be a New Yorker.

I really am filled with hate right now. I tried to update my iPhone with 3.0 software and AGAIN it went into recovery mode and is in this odd loop hole where the computer tells me to restore it and then says there is an error and it can’t be restored. This happened once before and I took it into the store. They managed to restore the phone so that I could use it, but I’ve never updated it to the new software again for fear of having this very thing happen. I wanted to try to download it today so that I could download the Wordpress App, but it seems I have entered this annoying “You-need-to-restore-but-we-are-unable-to-restore” vortex again.

I made an appointment with the Apple Store, but there’s not an available time until Saturday, two days from now, at 5:50 PM. Even though that’s an inconvenience and it may ruin my plans for the 4th of July weekend, I HAVE to go on that day because my phone has to work. I can’t live without it.

I had forgotten what this is like. I actually feel naked. I’ve grown so accustomed to all of the tools on my phone, not to mention its run of the mill ability to, you know, make phone calls. I have plans to hang out with two people this weekend and without my phone, that may not happen. If it doesn’t, I’ll be a sad panda.

Ugh, who am I kidding? I’m already a sad panda.

I’m also pretty disgusted with how reliant I am on my iPhone. A few posts ago I wrote about how I was addicted to my iPhone and its different bells and whistles. Now I’ve progressed to going through actual withdrawal. I’m not kidding folks. I’m restless and I keep pacing around the apartment and trying to sleep this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach off. I keep wondering how people will contact me.

Would it kill me to be incomunicato for a few days?

Maybe I should just… move to the jungle and live off of fish I catch with my bare hands and water tempered with iodine tablets. I could even fashion a spear out of a branch and hunt boar. Maybe I’ll meet John Locke from ABC’s Lost. Ah, let’s face it. I’d never make it.

I used to be way more outdoorsy. I have taken several “adventure” trips in the course my blessed life. I went horseback riding with my parents in Arizona for two weeks. I’ve camped and rafted in Alaska for three weeks and gone on glacier hikes near Valdez. I went into the Montana mountains for three weeks and stayed out in the woods on solo for one of those weeks. I visited the Galapagos Islands and took naturalist tours. I worked with the National Park Service tagging sea-turtles and living on a boat in the Caribbean. I went white water rafting in the Colorado River and hiked out of the Grand Canyon.

So now I live in New York City. Rewind. What? How did that happen?

When did I become so tirelessly urban? Where has my inner cowgirl gone?

I think she’s still somewhere inside of me. I feel her stir in me whenever I can see a large expanse of sky, even if its only over Washington Square Park. I actually felt her today, of all days, while I was sitting in Grand Central Station.

I was trying to get a few moments of escape and serenity from my boss, who was making me do all sorts of annoying little tasks like canceling her Visa card and changing her legal address, both of which are real headaches for the actual person, let alone an assistant who is trying to remember all of her boss’ personal information.

As I sat on a bench, I noticed that there was a bird twittering and tweeting away. I knew immediately that it wasn’t a pigeon because pigeon’s coo.

Actually, if you ever get a chance to hear pigeon sex, its coo-rific. It makes me die laughing. I’m not a pervert, for the record, but they used to roost right outside of my window as a child. I often convulsed in giggles when I heard them going at it in a rousing “coorus.” Get it? Coorus, Chorus? Come on people! I digress.

As I looked for the source of the sound I noticed something tiny and dark running across the floor. I almost shrieked because I thought it was a nasty New York rat. Upon further observation I realized it was a red breasted robin. Phew.

My father is obsessed with birds and he taught me long ago how to identify one. Actually, we used have a huge one that lived in our backyard in Chicago. This type of bird is also significant to me because I loved The Secret Garden as a child and Mary Lennox, the heroin of the story, was guided by a “Robin Red Breast” to the gate of her Aunt Lily’s garden and he flew around the ivy covered, overgrown  walls and kept the girl company while she planted seeds. That story was so gorgeous, both in text and on stage as a musical.

So there I was, overworked, underpaid, and sitting on a bench looking at my very own Robin Red Breast. This one was singing beautifully but upon closer inspection, I realized his wing was broken. He must have flown into the building and banged into a window or other reflective surface while trying to get out. It was so tragic because you never see anything but pigeons (AKA the rats of the air) in the city. Atleast I don’t. Then again I’m not specifically looking to identify birds.

It is a fact: This poor creature that reminded me of my childhood and a beautiful story will die. I didn’t know how long he’d been there. Perhaps he was singing for his supper. Perhaps it was his “Swan Song.” He must have been in so much pain. Maybe it’s stupid, but it made me tear up a little bit as I watched him waddle about. He even hopped over to me and just looked at me for a while, completely unafraid and uninhibited. It reminded me of how the animals had acted during my visit to the Galapagos Islands. The sea lions and marine iguanas would just sit and sun themselves on the beach. They hadn’t been introduced to fear of humans because they’ve never been hunted there. That whole trip made me feel like I was living in the Garden of Eden. The guide warned us not to touch the sea lion pups even if they approached us because the mothers would stop recognizing the scent of their young and disown them. They were so adorable. You just wanted to pick one up and squeeze it so badly. I don’t mean like Lenny in Of Mice and Men. I mean a comfortable cuddle rather than a life threatening clamp of doom.

As I watched my doomed bird-friend, I felt a similar conflict. I wanted to pick him up and mend him, but as we all know, birds are ridden with disease, germs, and God knows what else. Also, who am I to think I could “mend” a broken bird wing. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theater. I’m not a veterinarian.

That thought reminded me of how when I was on my Outward Bound “solo” in Montana, I had decided to make a woven basket and failed miserably. I don’t know what made me think I would just naturally have the ability to do something like that. Did I expect it to be written into my homo sapien DNA? However, it was undeniably fun and it gave me something to do during the lonely days. I sort of remembered singing through the entire score of every musical i could remember and even the ones I was less clear on as I worked.

Somewhere along the way I traded simple pleasures and child-like curiosity for iPhone apps and rent checks. Some of that is just a part of growing up, but sometimes I think it wouldn’t be such a travesty if we all tried to retrace our developmental steps a bit and follow our silly impulses. Mind you, I’m not telling you to expose yourself to disease ridden urban creatures on the verge of demise, but a walk in the park to lie on the bedrock outcroppings and read clouds wouldn’t do you any harm.

This morning, I killed a man.

That’s a lie. I didn’t “kill” him, but for exactly three seconds after the following event transpired, I harbored murderous thoughts in my heart.

I was walking down the street and skipping to the next track on my iPhone when a man, who was apparently walking behind me, RAMMED into my left arm so roughly that I was shoved against the glass window of GNC on Lexington Avenue. Then, this man had the AUDACITY to glare at me and say “Watch it!” while motioning in a frantically pissed off fashion at the device in my hand. The man was older and had gray hair. He was certainly spry and didn’t carry a cane, but he had an undeniable crotchety quality.

Firstly, Sir, you approached from my rear. Even if I hadn’t been looking at my iPhone at that exact moment, I wouldn’t have seen you coming. “Why?” you ask. Well. Simply put, I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. If I did, they would be covered in hair. For those of you who are unaware of this fact, I have very long, very full brown hair.

So you know what, man? YOU WATCH IT.

Seriously, after this happened, there were three seconds where I could have killed him. If I hadn’t been regaining my balance at the time, I might have. Plus, as he stalked off, he walked BETWEEN a man holding the hand of his young daughter. That’s right. He’s a homewrecker.

That’s a lie.

He’s not a home wrecker, but what kind of man has the choice of the ENTIRE SIDEWALK and chooses to walk between two people, nay, a man and a child holding hands?

This incident reminded me of a time I was rushing to catch a train to class at NYU. I was transfering like I did every day. Pause. Let me tell you how much I hated this transfer. Firstly, its a long, sweaty, stupid transfer. It looped all around the underground station and I think everyone who had to transfer there hated it because from what I could tell, everyone looked like they were in the calvary in the movie Gladiator. They were bearing down with clenched eyes and brandishing their backpacks, briefcases, and umbrellas menacingly. Their mission was to make it to the platform and race up the stairs to the train. However, this was harder than one would think.

These stairs led to the Sophie’s Choice of subway platforms. The train never came to the same platform, so essentially, everyone would stay huddled between the two stairwells as other people rushed by and jostled you on the way to their other less complicated commuting situations. You had to crane your neck and listen through the ambient noise to guess which platform the train was pulling into and then race at break-neck speed to the correct stairwell. Anyone who has ever been on the NYC subway knows how hard it is to listen carefully to anything. If you guessed wrong you missed the train.  Basically everyone was huddled in silence like Anne Frank in the attick or slaves on the Underground Railroad until the train pulled in. Once it did, there was a frantic stampede up the stairs. I’m pretty sure there have been casualties at this station, but everyone is so frantic to get to where they’re going that no one notices if any of their comrades in “commuting battle” fall. You also have to race the closing doors of the train and that damnable vixen who announces them. Every time she says “Doors Closing,” I want to slaughter a white kitten.

On the day in question, I was dashing up the stairs and I was at the back of the pack. The woman in front of me should have had a walker, but she didn’t. No one was helping her up the stairs. I couldn’t even help her because we were sandwiched in so tightly. Time was ticking down and we finally made it up the stairs. People were filing into the train. Me and the walkerless broad SHOULD have been able to make it, but that would be too easy and there wouldn’t be a story, now would there?

She stopped at the door with arms outstretched, looking for the train number, letter, or maybe even a sign from God himself, but for whatever reason, she made no move to enter the vehicle.

“Doors Closing.” Ding dong.

The doors slid shut with her still gaping and scratching at her dry freckled scalp, which yes, I remember quite clearly.

“COME ON!” I screamed at her and threw up my hands. After I bellowed, she turned around and stared at me, her eyes wide and teary with obvious terror at my outburst. After the adrenaline died down, my heart sank and I felt pretty awful. I appologized demurely and walked all the way to the other end of the platform in shame to wait for the next train, praying it would come to the same platform so I wouldn’t have to repeat the whole bloody ritual again.

You can hate me if you want because I yelled at an elderly lady, but I tell you this because I think New York is full of these sorts of moments. Just today I was walking through Time’s Square with a friend of mine. The streets were packed with people here for the weekend of the 4th of July and some tax protest was also going on. I felt trapped and claustrophobic. As we were crossing a street, I felt like we were in that scene from Footloose where they play chicken on the tractors. No one was moving to allow anyone to pass so the two sides of the the street were converging on each other like batallions on opposite sides of the feild. It was as if the sides of the parted Red Sea were crashing down on Yul Brynner and his Egyptian chariots.

Time’s Square is often like this, but today something bizarre happened. My friend grabbed my backpack as he walked behind me. He wasn’t pushing me, but because we were both walking forward, I now lacked the ability to stop if I needed to for fear of tripping him up or creating a massive pedestrian traffic jam. It made me think of how we pass through time. There’s no fast forward or rewind, you just keep moving whether you like it or not. I had a miniature panic attack in my chest and I actually think I yelled out “Stop Pushing me!” even though he wasn’t. I’m told I caused a scene, but honestly, it was such a stressful mom.

Does these things happen to everyone or just me? It must happen to us all. I know I’m certifiable, but I don’t think I’m so far off base that my experiences aren’t relatable.

After a few evening errands, my friend and I ended up in Washington Square Park. I had wanted to check out the new fountain installation because I hadn’t seen it yet. As we entered the park, I was immediately hit by a lilting drum beat and the quivering vibrato of a jazz saxaphone solo. It was divine. We spotted a bench and sat down. The fountain was pumping at full force, pushing and pulsing high into the air. Whenever the breeze moved towards us it took a refreshing, non-invasive mist of water in our direction. We talked of Twitter, recent plays we had seen, and our fears that we might be going crazy, amongst other things. They sky was like a painting. Its not often I take a moment to actually look at the sky while I’m in the city. Sure, I look at the buildings and skyscrapers, but not the sky itself. The clouds were long, fluffy pillows and they were catching the firey orange light from the setting sun. Then, my friend giggled and pointed to a perfect bubble that was floating towards us in the air. At the same moment be both miraculously exclaimed, “It’s a Glinda Bubble!” Then we convulsed in laughter till our sides hurt. A man in the park had a bubble wand and was dragging it around the fountain as he danced to the many different musical strains springing like creative fonts from all the corners of the park. There was also a strange Asian boy dancing with a hula hoop who I must admit was pretty mesmerizing.

After our restful moment in the park, I decided to buy the first installment of Percy Jackson and the Olympians from the “teen fiction” section of the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore. It was kind of embarrassing to buy a book from the teen fiction shelf, but I did it anyways. I can’t be stopped when it comes to modern fictional interpretations of mythology.

So at the end of the night I sit here on my couch and despite the rough start to the day and some comedicly stressful reflections, July 1st had a rather pleasant end. All of these intense moments just seem to add up to the right equation. And that’s just life in the big city.

Before you Bible thumpers get too excited, let me preface this with the fact that this is not a religious blog, nor is it a religious moment in a religious post. In fact, this is the antichrist of blogs. Well, maybe that’s pushing it, but let me tell you something. The devil is real, ladies and gentlemen.

Now when I say devil, I’m not talking of a red guy with a pointy tail, or an animated Satan in love with Saddam Hussein. No, my comrades, I am speaking of our modern opportunities for addiction. Honestly. Every time I turn around I hear someone saying, “You know what I’m obsessed with now?” Even I must admit that I have a moderately addictive personality. Ok… I may have an EXTREMELY addictive personality.

These days, addiction can sneak up on you. It’s that Starbucks coffee you think you need before class or that last high score you need in Tetris before you get back to writing your final English Paper. It’s facebook and myspace. It’s Ben and Jerry’s Fossil Fuel Ice Cream (Can you really blame me?).

Granted, some addictions are more serious than others. There are the old classics; sex, drugs, and booze. They’re still around.

I happen to be obsessed with Star Wars. I always have been. I think it probably creaped out the rest of my freshman class in high school. Han Solo is a hottie. You know it. I know it. Actually, I think my additional obsession with musical theater didn’t help too much in the popularity department either.

For the last 2 and a half years I’ve played World of Warcraft. Now, if that isn’t an addiction, I don’t know what is. I have levelled away HOURS of my life on that game. I have three level 80’s and I raid with my guild three nights a week. Its like having a part time job that I don’t get paid for. Does this make me sexy? No. The only person WoW makes sexy is Felicia Day. No. World of Warcraft makes me quite decidedly UNSEXY, nay, quirky at best.

I’m amazed at how easy it is to get addicted to games on my phone. The Sims 3 is one of my most recent iPhone love affairs. I loved fishing and selling my wares at the market so I could build my magnificent Sim House and get my Sim married off to whichever loser Sim lived in the house next door. I loved making them have sweet sweaty Woohoo on my hard earned Bohemian bed. After I got bored of repairing refrigerators and filling the empty parts of my Sim Mansion with potted plants, we broke up. I rebounded with Archers, a free iPhone app where you use your finger to aim an arrow at an opponent at a distance which is operated by your phone or in my case, my father. The first one to kill the other player wins. Suffice to say, it got dull fast.

Today, I welcomed the Devil into my home again, and by “home” I mean iPhone (which in itself, is another addiction). I signed up for Twitter. I have 5 followers, all of which are probably selling something. Lets not fool ourselves. They are all selling stuff. I thought Twitter would be some horrible thing that lonely people use to stay connected. Then I realized: I’m just a lonely person who wants to stay connected, plus following Dane Cook provides me with brief comedic respites and frankly, what’s not to love about that?

It is actually kind of fun to read about what your favorite actor’s, writers, and singer’s are up to in an average day. It got me thinking. With all of these little addictions that take us away from being face to face with one another in any sort of recognizable form of social interaction, Twitter is this odd cry for help. People need to feel connected in an increasingly digital world. That’s what their little video on the website says. I mean, sure, there is such a thing as threat level STALKER, but its kind of fun to take stock of what I’m doing during the day or post that my boss is making me prune her cactus with my bare hands (NOT AN ODD SEXUAL REFERENCE, I SWEAR) or reassure renowned award winning novelist Neil Gaimon that its OK for him to want to buy a particularly nice table.

But when it comes down to it, why don’t I just go knock on my neighbor’s door and ask to borrow a cup of sugar and then invite him over for some tea? Is it time we rest our eyes from the glow of the computer monitor or iPhone? Everything that seems fun these days is a trap. Holy shit. We’re living in a booby trapped virtual playground.

That said, if you want to know what goes on inside my crazy head during the day, you can follow me on Twitter. @annrichmond

Or, if you are boycotting Tweets in general, stay tuned to this blog.