I don’t know, but I’ve been told.

This morning I awoke, half-dazed, throwing coffee in a cup, clothes on the body, stumbling half-dementedly to an intake appt for some good old fashioned therapy. Unfortunately, in this scenario, good and old-fashioned are not agreeable adjectives, but I found myself filling out forms and giving out oral history… sensitive only to the slight awkwardness of the intake person, the strange and predictable surroundings that felt like an office out of a movie, each piece of furniture and complementary lighting creating an environment that felt part non-profit, and part 70’s psychoanalysis and david cronenberg set, replete with store bought blocks with some encouraging motivational catch phrase, and popcorn ceiling cork board above, with odd shelves and hooks and plastic buddhist bushes, and a flat screen that looked like it was pretty swank back in 2004. Motivational catch phrase home decoration. I hope there’s an artist somewhere reassembling these into sculptured kidnapping notes for the country’s collective soul. The woman who escorted me up from the waiting room, was so incredibly uncomfortable and awkward, barely making eye contact in the elevator, and while she seemed like stacked white bread sans the jam, and also basically fine after a short period of me just giving her my history, at least vaguely related to me, I had the distinct sense she was most likely a grad student or an intern completing a requirement. The irony never escapes me. My butcher block list of legitimate complaints will earn you a wedding one day where jewish relatives will pay for your middle-shelf white wine, and I’ll be going on night 9 of vampire like insomnia. I couldn’t quite keep up with the strangeness of the situation, focusing on the task at hand seemed to close out any deeper absorption. Giving a a student-stranger a very personal set of guinea pig history and tales is well… less awkward as it was unnatural and odd.

It was the first cool-ish blisteringly hot day we’ve had here in a week. My heelish open-toe shoes felt unkind, and I wondered as I stood outside later if I looked like I was having some trouble as I walked. I traveled with my mother as passenger, both of us in mutual morning inebriation and ineptitude, and reminded her of my age at least twice in the waiting room as we exchanged half-wakeful words on the bathroom and her giving me constructive criticisms on when and how i needed to go.

At the end of sharing my story of sorts, the woman seemed mostly unconfident that she could place me with the right person, and let me know she’d be in touch in several weeks. I felt no nervousness or anticipation or excitment or curiosity at this, just a partially disoriented and indifferent head nod as the gravity of my life suddenly seemed a great deal heavier then when I had walked in.

At the very least this area had some life in it, northern blvd., douglaston-bayside area of queens, for some reason today it vaguely reminded me of the sunset district in san francisco, with it’s breezy asian shops beckoning in the sun, i felt almost part tourist to the neighborhood even though it is all of 15 minutes away…. a fact that once I realized it again reminded me of the many gravities suddenly weighted and unwelcome and maybe silently cruel. My mood changed from one of openness to heavyness as I wanted to explore the area, see the changes in the impressive amount of time since the last time I’d been there. New York felt a strange place, and I felt a stranger to it, as though cloistered and exiled maybe, and almost green to it’s windows and questions, ready to romance it for just a little while.