practicing

sticky

A favorite of mine: Jessica, my Dad and Me - taken by my mother

Girls gather and whisper

Where is mine?

It's a cloudy, rainy day as I board a plane. I stare blankly out the window at the persistent drear as the plane rolls down the mat and eventually takes off. It's only moments before we rise into a bed of clouds. For a while I'm drenched in a sea of liquid white, forever squashing the childhood belief that I could bounce on a cloud like an air castle at the fair. Then, there is that single moment when the plane breaks through the roof of thickness and into blinding yellow sunlight. My body fills with warmth and my mood can't help but be lifted. There is something special in knowing that as the world below you battles the day, you get to be above it all in the sun, just for a few hours.

One of my favorite feelings ever.

for the curious:

It's Thursday, 1:30 AM. I've been asleep about an hour. I awake to the loudest thump I have ever heard coming from the apt above me. I ignore it, but before I can close my eyes, another louder thump follows. I then hear a TV, gradually increasing until it is blasting on the loudest possible volume. THUMP THUMP THUMP! My fuse is short and I am tired. I let this ensue for another 20 minutes before I've had it. The thumps sound as though someone is picking up a full size couch in the air and dropping it...it is more than anyone could sleep though. I go upstairs and pound my fist on the door, in a furious attempt to be heard above the cacophony going on inside. The TV lowers - footsteps to door - silence - TV volume increases. I pound again, harder this time. "Hello? It is 2 in the morning, what is going on in there? Can you keep it down?" "GO AWAY" "If you don't answer I am going to call the police" "GO AHEAD"! I'm mad as hell. I go downstairs and call 311, the non-emergency-AKA-it-totally-doesn't-matter-that-you-are-calling line. The noise above us increases and becomes more frantic. Dan goes upstairs and knocks "SIR I AM LOCKED IN MY APARTMENT, SOMEONE PUT A LOCK ON THE DOOR, I HAVE TO GET OUT, I'M GOING TO THE AIRPORT"

This is when we realize something is truly not right. Also, that she is alone and making this noise herself.

I become more worried as she begins screaming out her window at people in the street, demanding they call the police. Noises that sound like crumbling walls and sledgehammering is heard from her apt. I call 911. Redirected to 311. Nice.

Dan goes downstairs and outside to look for a patrol car around Lincoln center. Then things really start to go really crazy. She bashes out all her windows with whatever her weapon of choice was. Glass is raining down 5 stories to the ground. The few late night pedestrians and insomniacs stop and watch. She is shrieking nonsense about airports and locks, all the while throwing toxic liquids and full paint cans down into the streets.

I'm terrified. I am on the fire escape directly below this woman. She could come down and...well I don't even know...

The police finally arrive. They surround the scene and saunter up to her room, not taking the situation seriously enough. They try to reason with her (and by reason I mean saying things like "bi*ch is fu*king crazy" to each other) to open her apt for about 40 minutes, all the while she is yelling and claiming she can't and that she is locked in. The metal door is not easy to kick through in a small hallway, and the cops are avoiding it.

The situation inside is clearly escalating. Several of the cops suddenly run downstairs and slam on our door. "Open up now, open your window!!" They rush through my apartment and through the window up the fire escape. We hear screaming above as the rest of the cops finally try to slam through her door.

She has lit her paint-thinner doused apartment on fire.

Several of the cops run back down and herd us out the door. I'm barefoot in a robe. I run out, knocking on doors yelling "fire" on my way out. Dan gives me his shoes to walk across the thousands of shards of glass at the door as he braves it in socks. Soon after, she is dragged out by two haggard looking, chocking, shocked policemen. I have never, ever seen anyone look so crazy. She was thrashing and throwing herself in any direction, screaming.

The firefighters get there 10 minutes later. The blaze is put out with an excess of water. All I can think is "really should have taken my mom's advice on that renter's insurance"...Oh and also, OHMYGODOHMYGODMHMYGOD

2 hours later, and after I was interviewed by ABC news in my skivvies looking a total mess, we are let back in. My apartment got it the worst. Electricity is out.

Not the finest of photography, but I must say it wasn't my primary concern.

Frantic candlelit cleanup commences
















downpour of disgusting yellow and black water from every light fixture and crack
















Bulges form in the walls


















The ceiling begins to saturate and drip


















6AM aftermath. Obviously, I haven't slept at this point. Shards of glass from her window and my broken screen.















Paint she threw
















I guess I'm pretty happy she didn't answer the door, after all.

Now my ceilings are being torn down and re-drywalled, floors fixed and walls repaired, and I move out in hefty bags to a new apt on the Upper East Side.
So on I go.

Searching

Wherever I go
Whatever I do
I wonder where I am in my relationship to you
Wherever you go
Wherever you are
I watch your life play out in pictures from afar.