More NY

Yesterday afternoon I had time to tool around Manhattan before my train ride home. So I used the Gray Line bus tour (once I figured out that all you have to do to get a ticket is walk up to one of the guys holding up the poster of the bus tour route! D'oh!!) and did some sightseeing. It was gorgeous weather, by the way. I had a great lunch in Little Italy. Yum, pasta and wine. Two of my very favorite things.

During part of my touring I went to the WTC site. It's fenced in, of course, to keep people like me out of the way. There's a new building, shown here, that replaces one that fell after the two main towers, later in the evening. I thought the way that it reflected the clouds was beautiful. (They're still working on the overall site, obviously.)

I sat across the street in the cemetary/ garden behind St. Paul's chapel. It's across the street from where I took the first picture. I was there more or less to pay my respects, and I ended up thinking for a while about what it must be like to lose your soulmate, your partner, your best friend. How it must feel at times like it was someone else's life, that time so long ago, almost six years gone. Then in the blink of an eye, something happens - a rainy day or a particular song, a glimpse of someone in a crowd, or the mention of any random little favorite thing that you shared, and bam. It feels like it was only yesterday.

I thought about how my life has changed, since that day. I guess I thought along those lines because it was the same type of sunny, warm day - - with a sky so bright and beautiful it's hard to imagine that it could be any other shade of blue, ever. I thought about the relationships in my life -- the ones I still have, and the ones I don't.

I thought about the person who was my best friend on September 11th, and how I had to cut her out of my life a couple of years ago. She had been home on maternity leave on 9-11, and was reacting to things as she saw them live on tv, and telling me about them over the phone. Now we don't speak.

Things deteriorated between us over time, for various reasons, until I finally had to say "no thank you... you can keep that." You see, if someone gives you something, you can choose to keep it, or refuse to accept it. I just could not accept the disrespect and other negative things she continuously gave to me. (When I finally told her how I felt, her husband sent me an email insulting me repeatedly and twisting every part of my life around to put a negative spin on it. That's when I was 100% sure I had done the right thing.)

I thought about some of my other friendships, and how certain friends have encouraged me to follow silly little dreams like "I can run a 5K", and how those friends manage to see the very best parts of me, and encourage me to be THAT girl. (Yes, you. I love you for that. You know who you are. )

There are definitely areas of my life that are in varying degree of disarray; I don't usually blog about them for two reasons. One, this blog was started for creative writing / "happy place" purposes. Corny, but true. The other is that I don't want to put some of these things out on the internet. I mean, why do people really blog about their worst problems?? (Who doesn't have problems?? Raise your hand, so I can punch you.) Anyway, I mull them over, I try to figure out what to do, how to get out of the tangle of knots I have put myself in. Some days, I feel like I'm wandering around without a map, but I haven't given up hope just yet.

If you've ever heard of Keith Anderson, he has a haunting song about chasing your dreams, called "I'll know when I get there". It's completely different from his other "stuff". I love it because it encapsulates that feeling I carry inside, that I know exactly what I want, and I'm not really sure I can ever have it, but if I ever manage to get there, I'll know, and I'll be so damn grateful, I won't waste a moment of it.

(A more upbeat post will follow, in a day or two, with a few final shots from my touring. )