• Home
  • Archive
  • About
  • Awards & Media
  • Contact
    • Facebook
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter

Courting Destiny

  • Courting Classics
  • Fiction
  • Mainstream Media
  • New York Stories
  • My Parents
  • Mental Health
  • N. Myrtle Beach

Sign Up For My Weekly Newsletter!

In 2008

January 8, 2008 By pia

I’m totally losing it. I’m living in a non-worked on construction zone. I factored in everything that could go wrong but what did. I would walk away from this if there wasn’t so much money at stake. My luck it will be ready the day the last apartment is sold in Manhattan. I hate inertia. I can’t go into why I’m really upset but I’m ready to kill or be killed.

I took a walk. Went to Barnes & Noble Cafe where a homeless mentally ill man was allowed free reign. I’m sorry but I pay for food and drink and don’t need vagrants who are spewing obscenities breathing on my table.

Then I went to Food Emporium to pick up a few things. Something that cost $4.99 at Fairway cost $6.99 there. C of Atlanta had pointed out that item when we passed Fairway and couldn’t believe it as it costs $2.99 in Atlanta.

I went on line. There were people behind me–we all could have qualified for the twelve or under line had there been somebody at that line. A man who works at the store picked me to touch and say his probably three words of English: “You, self service.” I ignored him. He refused to be ignored or ask people behind me. I finally said that I’m not spending this amount of money to use a machine I have no idea how to use or pack my own bag. Actually I didn’t say that. I said that the store was too expensive.

I won’t miss this city after today. When the vagrant was breathing on me–I did get up, but like a good person threw my stuff out rather than leaving it there, I thought I have done my time in the trenches. I worked in the South Bronx during drive by shooting, crack days. This doesn’t make me a better person but a jaded one who wants an easier cheaper life. Then I worked in a much “better” area of the Bronx, but I was always the person chosen to do the initial intake with the people who lived in filth or were homeless. All my experience, you know–and could counsel them after.

I never looked at them as if they were crazy or judged them. But it left a mark. There’s nothing sadder than a geriatric schizophrenic. Age seems to make most schizophrenics, if they live so long and take their meds, “better.” But that’s what’s so sad. And they don’t know how to take care of themselves. I knew a woman–it was in the paper so I can say this–who paid a pizza deliveryman $1500 a week to make sure she got meals and would be checked on. He checked on her so well she spent an entire Thanksgiving weekend fallen down in her bathroom. I was the one who had to tell her that a social service agency had deemed it unsafe for her to go home. I had to give that speech fairly often. i interviewed another woman who came to the home with dead and some live cockroaches all over her clothes and pocket book. I have many other examples. I would go home and take long showers that never seemed to clean me enough. That woman was a success and cleared to go home–after everything in her apartment was thrown out and the place was fumigated. I can’t imagine what it was like six months later, but she didn’t need services so…

I don’t like remembering these things. I see more and more homeless people on the streets. But to be in Barnes & Noble, that was just too much. it’s supposed to be a refuge, a place where you can read, write, think….I did stay for twenty minutes as I didn’t want him to think I was leaving because of him. Actually I was a bit scared and I don’t scare easily. All the workers looked the other way; there was ample time to call security If somebody was hurt it would have been horrible PR and major lawsuit. He might have been harmless but he breathed on me–sorry but that’s gross. Not for all 20 minutes, for 20 seconds–three times. I can’t believe the workers did nothing. It’s one thing to be nice to people. It’s another thing to let an out of control person remain in a store.

I apologize for this discourse. I need work on my apartment to happen, let alone be finished. I was just looking for a nice day. Was going to walk in the park afterward but felt so scuzzy. My nose is stuffed. I know he had nothing to do with that, yet…..

I don’t know if I have it in me to be patient anymore. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have this blog as at least a partial outlet and wish I could tell the whole story but….I know I’m overreacting but it’s the second day of no work and I hate like hell to be touched by strangers or breathed on. I needed a nice day. A day to feel good about myself and nothing went right. Little things, but lots of little things and one big thing–the ever rising costs–are the reason I’m getting out of here.

I don’t like to rush a year. The new year really began for me today. I was reading a real estate blog predicting big corrections in Manhattan this year. It would have scared me but I’m a blogger and therefore have an answer for everything.

Manhattan’s not the same Island it was in 91, last time the housing market downturned. There was much crack and crime. We have been the safest large city for years now and 07 had the least amount of murders.

Neighborhoods like mine have gone from being hip and needing work to mainstream with all the work done. Then look at Tribeca. It really picked up after 9/11 though every indicator and all common sense would have said the opposite. Downtown and the Village was much cheaper than the Upper West Side pre-9/11. Not anymore. Maybe people want to live where the action was. Maybe people just like it. I don’t know of any studies that explain this phenomena.

This is a new world we live in and I’m embracing it. I have to. I have an apartment almost for sale. This is week ten of me living in a construction site. It’s going slower than anticipated for reasons not of my doing. And I did factor in problems. I’m trying to be Zen about this. Sometimes I’m exceptionally good at that and sometimes…..

I might have a total breakdown. If I do I truly enjoyed getting to know many bloggers.

Actually it’s probably longer than that as I began Colliding Worlds when I began preping for the renovation and tomorrow will be Chapter 17, but some weeks I wrote two chapters.

You would think that this is a major renovation. You would be wrong. I just sleep in a bedroom that’s a third given over to supplies. I’m tired. I want to write that I have handed my apartment over to a broker and am out of here

Bone found this song. It’s the Colliding Worlds theme song. It’s perfect.

Don’t ask me
What you know is true
Dont have to tell you
I love your precious heart

I… I was standing
You were there
Two worlds colliding
And they could never tear us apart

We could live
For a thousand years
But if I hurt you
I’d make wine from your tears

I told you
That we could fly
cause we all have wings
But some of us dont know why

I… I was standing
You were there
Two worlds colliding
And they could never ever tear us apart

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: colliding worlds, finally getting ready to move

« The party's over
3WW: Colliding Worlds; chapter 17; gossip, naive, station »

Comments

  1. G says

    January 8, 2008 at 11:48 pm

    I love that INXS song! Nice one, Bone (that just sounds…)

    I have to hand it to you – you’ve been holding up pretty well under renovation circumstances. They’re never as quick as they say they’re going to be except in needing to be paid.

    Hang in there.

  2. TC says

    January 9, 2008 at 10:54 am

    When Bone goes looking for the perfect song, he always seems to find it.

  3. Bone says

    January 9, 2008 at 1:09 pm

    I just thought the song sounded like Justin & Nell. Maybe I’ve read one too many Pia Savage futuristic/action/romance novels 🙂

  4. Marcia (MeeAugraphie) says

    January 9, 2008 at 1:23 pm

    I’d love to solve it, but reality….

    Hang in there, you are making memories that will become lost in your others eventually.

Search for your favorite post!

Follow Me!

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Sign up Now!

Sign up now and get my latest posts delivered right to your inbox!

About Me

I live in the South, not South Florida, a few blocks from the ocean, and two blocks from the main street. It's called Main Street. Amazes me too.

I'm from New York. I mostly lived in the Mid-Upper East Side, and the heart of the Upper West Side. It amazes me when people talk about how scared they were of Times Square in the 1970's and 1980's.

As my mother said: "know the streets, look out and you'll be fine."

What was scary was the invasion of the crack dens into "good buildings in good 'hoods." And the greedy landlords who did everything they could to get good tenants out of buildings.

I'm a Long Island girl, and proud of it now.
Then I hated everything about the suburbs. Yet somehow I lived in a few great Long Island Sound towns after high school.

Go to archives "August 2004" if you want to begin with the first posts.

Categories

Archives

All material contained herewith is owned by Pia Savage, LLC

Copyright © 2021 Courting Destiny · Designed by Technology-Therapist