memory

I’m not at all the nostalgic type. Quite the contrary, I spend such exorbitant amounts of time planning that I barely have time for living the present, much less the past. So it’s generally a pleasant surprise when memories pop up and bop me on the head.

I’m in NYC for the week for work. Since I’m catching some opera while I'm here, I booked a hotel on the Upper West Side. I’m at Broadway and W. 73rd in short term apartments (the clientele is certainly tourist, not business, but the price and location were right). It’s surprisingly large, it has a clean (and private) bath and an illuminated cross next door welcomes me home each evening. (Ah, vestige of old New York...)

Trying to be a good opera singer, what with the Oregon District MONC next weekend, I figured I ought to limit the use of AC in my room. Since there was an arctic chill upon check in, I turned the AC off before heading out for the evening. (Five days of AC in the office plus flying PDX to Orlando to NYC to PDX this week should provide ample dehydration to battle.) I returned from using the free wifi at Cosi a couple blocks uptown to the faintest smell of garbage and fish in my room.

Bop! I was back in my first apartment in the city. My best friend Jamila and I were sharing a bedroom (and a bed) in downtown Brooklyn in a loft space converted to a 3-bedroom. The first floor was a fish fry place and the second floor was a beauty parlor. Thus, the place smelled like fish in the afternoon and we had no cold water from 8am to 5pm. That lasted about two months. (We found out years later, when a lawyer contacted us while researching his case, that the entire building was zoned for commercial use only and the guy from whom we were subletting was several years behind in rent, having been “subletting” the apartment for years and pocketing the money.)