it is cold

My feet are slowly beginning to thaw. I know chucks aren't the right footgear for winter cold, but so far this season they hadn't been so bad and I put on thick wool socks this morning. This was not enough.

Our apartment is generally way too cool but today I just couldn't get warm in there. Our heat never really warms things up much, but with the extra cold outside it really isn't doing the job. But after sending off some emails this morning I didn't really have a good reason to stay in and the lack of food in my stomach was mirrored by a lack of food in the fridge so I did have a compelling reason to leave. Carefully bundled, I weighed my options. I just wanted to go sit somewhere and have some lunch and sit with my computer and type. This is New York; there are a thousand places for this to be accomplished. There are two places right beside my house perfect for this, Cafe Nijasol and Boulevard, but I had it in my head that I haven't been venturing out far enough and that I wanted to go feel the energy somewhere else.

Just going into Williamsburg seemed like copping out and it was too cold to deal with how retarded public transportation is for getting around Greenpoint. The West Village was briefly considered, but I wasn't sure of where to go and wandering in the cold looking for a pleasant place seemed daunting particularly since anything over there was also likely to be packed with college kids or tourists. Chelsea was also quickly panned, though not without briefly pausing to miss Big Cup. I never really spent much time there (not a big coffee drinker), but still it was good for what it was.

Since I wasn't in the mood for more than one train, that left the East Village. It is where I am most comfortable here, but familiarity can be decieving. Once I headed that direction it became apparent I don't know the cafes and coffee shops like I know the bars. And it was too early to go to the bar. I never actually liked AltCafe, but it was good for what it was: a place to plop down with your computer and get online. Like Big Cup, it ain't there no more. So I went with Cafe Pick Me Up as a default. I like it fine for sitting with a friend chatting, but I've never particularly warmed up to the place. This is odd because I've always ended up finding it really pleasant once I sit down and get settled in, so I remind myself that I like it and head there.

Feet already frozen, just walking the few block from the train, it seems perfect when I step inside. Nothing on the menu jumps out at me, but it is warmish inside and I don't care to search out somewhere new so I order. Before sitting down, I ask the lady at the counter if there is a password for the wifi. She looks at me like I am a crazy person and starts rattling off prices for using the internet. I look at her like she is a crazy person, which she is if she expects someone who just gave her 7 bucks for a sandwich to fork out more money for wifi access. She comments that they never had free wifi, and I suppose reading my skeptical expression clarifies that it has been at least 5 years since they did. Which is also not true, since I went there several times this summer and used it. Whatever. So I couldn't relax and write, I'd just sit and read. I do remember why I don't like the place though: the staff. I always get the feeling from them that they would rather not be bothered. The sandwich was bland (meat, cheese, bread) and not very big with a pleasant enough side salad which became the condiment for the sandwich since it had no other. Reading Terry Prachett while eating was punctuated by a fat drama student talking at her gay bff who didn't get a word in edgewise.

Taking leave of this delightful lunch (it was more pleasant than I'm making it sound), my feet, which never really thawed, are already refrozen by the end of the block. My Swedish longjohns are sort of doing their job, but most of my cold weather layers are in Anchorage waiting for me to return and really need them, so I'm looking again for somewhere warm to thaw out and type. My apartment is not warm. It is 3, so bars should be opening but the stools are still on the bar when I walk past Section 218 (and I don't know if they have wifi anyway). I start to go to Nowhere but I remember that the last few times I've had my computer there, the wifi has been screwed. Metro definitely has functional, if slow, wifi AND fireplaces. Propping up my feet in front of a fireplace becomes the most appealing thought in the world.

On the sidewalk and subway I remember that even worse than the glut of commuters pouring out of work into every form of public transportation at 5 is the glut of kids pouring out of school, though I have to say that despite popular opinion that the next generation are a bunch of rotten little bastards, lately the crowds of kids I've found myself sandwich amongst have been suprisingly polite even if boisterous. Of course when I get metro, I see the bartender leaving the bar and locking it behind him and walking off on some errand. Despite wanting desperately to toast my little piggies in front of a fire, it is too cold to wait and even if I am one of those people who shows up at the bar far earlier in the shift than any happy hour bartender likes, I am not going to be that guy who is waiting at the door when they walk up. So back to my neighborhood and my two originaly options.

I chose Cafe Nijasol. I haven't been there since it got cold, but it is small which in my cold-numbed mind equals cozy which = warm. Which is by then my number one requirement. It is a little further, but a block and a half isn't so far if I can warm up then. I can't. It is closed, according to the apologetic sign on the front just for today, but closed none the less. So back to Boulevard, which I am mainly skeptical of because it is a larger space with a big front window and where I have sat in there before is right by the door. I know I can sit in a different place, but I am that kind of creature of habit; if I like the place I sit one time, I want to sit in that same place again and irrationally assume that I won't like sitting somewhere else. I each of the places I have mentioned today I planned out where I would want to sit as I considered it. I know, kinda crazy.

It isn't closed. The guy behind the counter is friendly and doesn't look look like it is annoying for a business to have customers. There is a spot at the counter far enough from the door that I can take my coat off but not so far in the back that I feel quarentined. Most importantly, it is warm! For the first time today, I'm not cold. The coffee tastes fine to me (but I don't drink it very often so I won't pretend to have a useful opinion on this); the carrot artichoke soup is perfect.

right now...

I am missing New York in a serious way. Just got back on land off the boat, but we offloaded in Hilo (on the Big Island), so I'm staying in a hotel til I fly back to Honolulu in the morning. The peaceful moment with a room to myself (you have no idea what kind of a luxury that is in my life now) is great, but I was just surfing around on the internet and saw a friend from the city in a magazine spread (he's not normally a model, so it was unexpected). The familiar face and all the time alone in my head conspired to send a fucking tidal wave of homesickness crashing over me.

I'm not the homesick type.

Right now though, I'd kill to be sitting at Nowhere at happy hour eating a chicken and cheese fajita from the Chinese/Mexican place next door or sitting in my underwear on tuesday night at Rbar watching cartoons while Carter makes flavored vodka or to be at one of the boys' apartments watching America's Next Top Model with the crew. Damn. I miss my friends, I miss my haunts, I miss my garden... easy tiger. Let's not get carried away.

This last trip I had my first get-me-the-hell-off-this-boat moment since taking the job. Don't worry, I still love it. I've got some awesome pictures of tapertail ribbon fish and cool critters puked up by lancetfish (which I'll share later). The job I love and I still like Hawaii, but I just had that moment when you know you need a break.

So I'm going to take one. One more trip this go round and I am taking a fucking break. Sort of, if traveling through San Francisco, New York (yay!), Seattle, Portland, Puerto Rico, Montreal, and D.C. in two months with two weddings in the mix is what you consider 'taking a break'.

This is something of the conundrum that my wanderlust has always faced: I really like settling to a place and getting in a routine. I'm a hell of a creature of habit. I like seeing the same folks again and again and doing the same things again and again. Really. But I just couldn't stay happy settled down in one spot, at least not so far. I've never actually really been able to envision myself in any kind of life work that lets me sit in one place. I really can't quite visualize it. That may sound kind of silly, but I mean it. I can imagine myself somewhere for a while, but only with an eye on the horizon. It has sort of always been that way.

Every career or lifestyle I've ever pictured myself in has been one of constant motion, do this here and move on there. As a kid I was always sort of inside my head and pretty awkward at interpersonal interactions. Really fucking awkward, and I seemed to have a knack for making friends with people who always moved away. I'd become best friends with a kid, and then realize that his parents were in the airforce and the next year he'd be gone off to Iceland or Germany or wherever. This isn't some lament about my childhood, because I totally had a great childhood and don't bum about any of that. Like I said, I was an oblivious kid who just kind of did his thing and changes like that didn't strike me as odd or tramatic, I'd just be friends with whoever else showed up. Even though I was staying in the same place, everyone around me seemed to be moving to and fro, and I always knew I wasn't staying there.

The point being, I'm suddenly wondering whether or not this combination of stable environment that I loved but always dreamed of leaving combined with the constant flux of friends and associates is a big part of why I feel the way I do. Maybe this is why keeping on moving feels so comfortable to me while plans for permanence send my circuitry haywire. I'll lay down roots and lay them down deep and fast at it, but I can pick up and move just as easy. It suits me and the way I seem inclined to live, but then I have moments like this where I am just missing my friends. I'm happier with my job and the trajectory it is pointing me on right now than I have ever been, and the what-are-you-doing-with-your-life? moments had been killing me before, but damn I'm miss my life in New York.

I guess it should tell me something that living in the city for not quite 5 years is the longest I've lived in one place since I was 17. Actually, come to think about it, that will probably be the longest I live in one place before I am at least 40 (which suddenly doesn't feel all that far off).

Anyway... enough of you silly homesickness. I'll sleep it off and wake up tomorrow and hit the ground running and smile about it all.