Changes

Whenever I type that word, "changes," my mind involuntarily starts humming the opening bars to that Bruce Hornsby song "That's Just the Way It Is," which was sampled in that posthumous Tupac video/song tribute. Eh, that's not too bad of a thing. Eighties music has its place.

Without seeming exceedingly self-indulgent (um, too late...?), it never ceases to amaze me how life can turn on a dime -- how everything that seemed one way can suddenly look different.

I'm moving. I'm stripping myself of my oft-bitchy roommate and her social rules, and I'm moving to a hella expensive place of my own uptown. I'm so sad to be leaving the convenience of my Midtown neighborhood, but moving is key to my self-preservation. The less stressed I get about the apartment transaction, the more excited I get about everything else: the solitude, the space to write, the space to be totally naked in my living room whenever I want. My life is moving onward.

I think that when life starts pushing to break its self-imposed, temporary mold (my current apartment situation, for example), it forces a lot of other things out, too: The N thing is going well -- too well, I'd even venture to say, which leads to me waiting for the other shoe to drop. For him to get tired of me. For me to say something extremely stupid. For this all to go up in a puff of fairytale-cloud, sparkly smoke. But it hasn't yet, and that's something to be grateful for.

I have to divorce The Bar that Shall Not Be Named. I haven't been there in a while (see other life changes, above, which have prevented me from putting "getting soused" at the top of my to-do list), but I went tonight, because I felt I owed it to my present self and my future self to remind all of my selves of what went on there -- the regressing and the desperation and all of that fun stuff that no one likes to talk about. I had a few beers and waited for the locals to show up, but they didn't. The Bar that Shall Not Be Named has a new laminated, professionally printed menu, though, and near the top of the specialty cocktails list was the Brazilian bartender's caiphrinha. I laughed out loud when I saw that. It reminded me of what he made for me the first night I met him and fell for him despite my best (sober) intentions. I thought about telling the bar manager, "Um, if you WANT people to get hammered off of one beverage that's essentially rum and crushed ice, go ahead!" The Brazilian bartender never made good drinks. But he did have a way about him.

What was great about seeing that menu was that it was all full-circle: I'm leaving. The Brazilian bartender is staying. I'm pushing on with my New York life. Everyone else there is stagnant, for now, until they receive their gusts of wind from the cosmos. I'm already more positive. I'm already writing more. I'm already hoping for things I didn't believe existed six months ago. It is progress. Progress is something everyone can at least appreciate from afar, even if it isn't happening to them.