we'll find a cathedral city

i have a little over three weeks left to go before i fly north, and i've officially started my hunt for a home in new york city. it's something everyone should do once: try to find a decent, affordable place to live in new york. sort through all of the offers to sleep in the living room, or worse, in the same bed. dodge other-shoes-dropping like "railroad apartment," "no window," and "i hope you like cats." often, the craigslist post from your potential roommate will tip you off if this is someone who might end up eating all your food, smoking crack in the living room, or walking in on you in the shower a few too many times to get away with calling it an "accident." you start to get an ear for it.

i suppose this is universal. while i had extraordinary luck in finding a place in melbourne (and a flatmate i would marry), i think we've all experienced at least once the terror of realizing how many headcases are looking for someone to sleep in their spare bedroom.

but i think anyone who's done the apartment hunt in new york can agree that the sheer volume of people, and the general level of insanity present in the city, yields a higher rate of fearing for your life while getting a tour of the place.

to say nothing of the job hunt. while the process of getting employment in melbourne was "let's throw shit on the wall and see what sticks," the process of getting employment in new york is like "let's throw shit in the fan and see what doesn't come back to hit me in the face." i have started tugging at the connections i have in the city, but i haven't quite leapt into the hunt yet. maybe it's denial, but i keep expecting, perhaps after all the bullshit in finding a job here, that i'll get back to new york and ease right into something in the first week. i'd like to think life will reward me at some point for my troubles.

obviously, i am looking ahead and always keeping at least one eye on post-february 15th life, but mostly because i'm not doing a hell of a lot here. and that's kind of by choice. i could have kept working a few more weeks. i could be out absorbing everything there is to absorb in melbourne, so i can toddle home overstuffed with stories and pictures and experiences.

but for once, i want to be allowed to do absolutely nothing. i'd like to think that's a genuine feeling, and not just laziness or some sort of strange depression about being so groundless and purposeless setting in. essentially, i think i'm relaxing, but the more i think about it, the more i worry that i'm not relaxing. and i think it's quite obvious the snake begins to devour its tail here.

i go to the gym and go to yoga and go to the beach and read and i think i will be writing more, i'm getting my inspiration back. i finished "prozac nation" and found it entirely depressing. i'm going away for the weekend, where i have no intention of doing much of anything other than more reading, sitting on the beach, and not having a single responsibility.

i miss having a life though. i know australia will go down as this experience i didn't appreciate as much as i should have at the time, but to be honest, i don't even think i care anymore. who's to say what i was supposed to do here? when people ask me now why i came to australia, i laugh and say, "oh, i don't know!" and that's that.

you can get caught up in owing people a good story about your life. that dinner party panic of "what will i talk about with strangers?" the truth of the matter is that if you just told people, "i just hung out," they'd accept it. they'd still be a little jealous, because i think we all wonder what it's like to have no accountability in the day to day workings of life. so long as i pay my rent and don't push anyone in front of a bus, i'm basically free to roam. to go from a life in new york where thousands and thousands of dollars in advertising money relied on me getting my shit together every day, to a life where i could lay on my bedroom floor all day and not make a huge dent in the world, is a lucky opportunity really.

but i miss being relied on, to be honest. it's all fine and good to lay on your bedroom floor all day, except it gets incredibly boring. maybe that's my bigger concern. not that i'm not relaxing, but that i'm getting bored of relaxing. you get hungry for a little bit of stress. the only thing i need to do today is go to yoga at 7:45. or maybe 6. that's the big decision i need to make. i should also probably go to the supermarket and do some laundry. i ought to finally get back to work on my play. but it's a quarter to noon on a friday right now, and if instead i thought, "nah, i'm going to youtube movie trailers for three hours and then order chinese food," that would be okay too.

new york would hardly recognize me.