Subways

(continued)...Once we finished scraping our plates clean at Jasmine, Craig suggested a trip to Times Square, which remains my favorite place in the world, despite the fact that it can be noisy, tacky, crowded and altogether a nuisance, at times. I delight in the extremity of it. Years back, Craig ventured to New York City on a business trip. That evening, a subcontractor took him to a bar called Blue Fin. Blue Fin is actually a chic overpriced seafood restaurant with a glass enclosed bar at ground level overloooking the Times Square street scene, and after seeing it for the first time, Craig gushed about it to me and insisted I would positively adore it. Much later, he took me there for a cocktail, and as he suspected, I did adore it. So, Saturday night we decided to stop into Blue Fin for a drink. He opted for the Blue Fin (named, obviously, after the establishment) which came with a red gummy fish resting against the bottom of the cerulean-colored beverage. I selected the passionate cosmopolitan (I can't remember the precise name but it was a cosmo and it was passionate in flavor!) The bartendress took our picture with Times Square streaming in our background, and we sat there for a little while, still absorbing the tension that we both felt of the afternoon's adventure. We admired the expensive Blue Fin menu, consisting of such items as caviar, which neither of us has had (primarily because it's high dollar for our pockets). Notice how I can't seem to steer away from the issue of the dollar. I'm not typically money-centric, at least not that I'm aware, but this move is impossibly expensive, from all sides of the coin, so to speak. We're somewhat prepared, but yet, every time I think that we're ahead, we fall back two more steps. Nevertheless, we were not about to wreck a perfectly decent Saturday night in Manhattan, especially considering it is about to become the place we call home. Although, that said, we swung through one more establishment off the beaten path of Times Square for one last drink, and while we sat nursing those beverages Craig's heavy eyes shifted up to mine and he said, Are you tired? I smiled wanly and replied, Exhausted. So we called it a night, two weary travelers.*My sleep remained fitful. Not knowing for certain about the apartment, the heavy fear of our credit checks, and any other stray elements of concern regarding our relocation kept me tossing around, and when not wide awake with paralyzing alarm, I was dreaming of terrible things, which in turn then woke me again. But in the morning, we took our time getting ready: I phoned my mom a Happy Mother's Day wish from the Big City, Craig took a long shower, then I showered leisurely and we headed for a plain corner diner for breakfast. Craig and I have never been aimless in New York City, but this case was drastically different from any other. Where should we go? What should we discover? Should we continue the apartment search in the event we weren't approved for The One We Wanted? Should we go to the place where we'll work? We resolved to check out of the hotel and head to Brooklyn Heights, the neighborhood of Brooklyn where I felt the need to repeatedly pick Craig's jaw off the pavement. He was astonished at the homes, the gorgeous landscaping, the narrow polite streets running through the neighborhood. We found ourselves a park bench at the Brooklyn Heights Promenade overlooking Manhattan's skyline, and Craig called his mom to wish her a Happy Mother's Day. I perused a Gotham Writer's Workshop catalogue for spring classes, all of which have begun (I will need to catch up with the summer issue likely to be issued soon). Although the weather had been much lovelier Saturday, the overcast skies didn't hamper our wanderings. The whole weekend, outside of feeling overwhelming floods of stress, I also tuned in closely to the expanse of subway system we used to travel from neighborhood to borough to airport. It didn't take long for me to think in terms of numbers and letters for each line, but it will take plenty of time to master transfers, weekend hours, express trains. I attempted to prepare myself for riding solo by occupying my thoughts as I sat next to Craig (I feel an amazing degree of security riding alongside him on the NYC subway system, but soon will come a time where I will be riding alone). I noticed the teenagers in their thick gold chains who ride the subway every day, New Yorker teenagers. I noticed the older woman with her shopping bag riding into Queens. I noticed the quiet man reading his Bible. Then what I noticed later, when I thought harder about it, is that I spent more time in New York noticing things (casual observation) than I have in a long time in a place I've lived. That would be because there is so much to take in in New York City. There isn't a moment that passes where something isn't happening, whether it's an exchanged look between two people passing each other at an intersection, or on the train, or a melody of car horns and crowd control shuffling along the street. It never stops impressing me, no matter how many times I've witnessed it. But this time was different: I was timidly viewing the streets as my new place to live, my new home with a multitude of undiscovered loves and likes and dislikes, waiting for me to happen upon them. What an unbelievable amount of America, all right there.*During our outing, we also found the DUMBO neighborhood, and even ducked into an artsy cafe*bar establishment for iced lattes. Some more walking, and I finally just caved and requested that we head to JFK to fly standby (we had called in the morning to find out the chances of doing so, which we were told were positive). I positively adore this city, but my feet were howling in pain and my stomach still couldn't find peace with itself with all the food, wine and worry I had filled it with over the course of the weekend. Our trip to JFK was smooth, subway and Air Train. And there we ate lunch, found the gate, waited with other Richmondites to board a delayed plane. All this, and today we still don't have certainty or confidence about our apartment selection, but I'm going to look to our new future as a whole new arrangement of problem solving that we've never experienced before. Our respective and combined experiences with moving around surely have prepared us for some of this, and that which remains to be seen will only enhance our personalities, make us that much stronger. We're in it, now, in the beginnings of the adventure, but I courageously and admirably look forward to what's still to come...to be continued.