insomnia haiku

Wanted: Bus driver with a strategic & tactical background. Sandra Bullock?

Can't sleep, worrying over apartment situation. Or maybe just can't sleep.

After perusing a few apartment listings (if I don't get the small studio I applied for today, I may raise my price I'm willing to pay -- this has all become a game of "What will break Patricia next?"), I started looking at job listings. Because this is exactly the sort of thing that will calm me down and get me to sleep. (Well, that and the Ambien I just took.)

I have no great revelations or leads. Just this one:



Is it just me, or did anyone else think that the company needs someone to drive a bus? (A new one!) This particular listings website seems like an odd place to put out a call for busdrivers, but times are tough everywhere. Maybe the bus driving website was full.

How we gonna pay... Next year's rent?

In the Now It Can Be Told department: I just learned that I didn't get the job I've been trying to get for the past three months. (If you know me personally and don't know what the job was, feel free to email me and ask.) That job would have been out of state, which is the reason I've been homeless this past month, as I was waiting to see whether I would have to up and move to [name of new city... oh fine, it was Chicago. Clue!].

It was a little disappointing not to get the job, or any job, but when one door closes, a new something something, right? And in this case, my new something something would be an apartment in New York. I need to find one, and fast. Let's see, October 1 is three days from now -- CAN SHE DO IT?

I should create a reality show. Contestants are in a race around New York City to rent the best apartment they can, using criteria like square footage, number of rooms, amenities, layout, neighborhood (safety, restaurants, shops, "would I let my mother walk there alone"), proximity to subway, niceness of landlord and possible inclusion of outdoor space. Price is naturally one of the criteria, though the contestants would be capped at, say, $2,000, and you get bonus points for scoring a great apartment for less than that. And also for not paying a broker's fee. Ready? Set... go!

Can you just imagine the contestants -- or "rentestants," as we'll call them -- running up to people on the street asking them if there are any apartments for rent nearby? It's "Cash Cab" meets "Million Dollar Listing" (in reverse) meets "The Amazing Race"! Oh, and rentestants can't be from New York. You have to cast Charla or Mirna or Chuck and Millie (though they can't be paired -- that's too easy.) Trust me, this will either be hilarious or cruel, but great television either way. I'd certainly rather watch it than live it.

Rents have gone up significantly since the last time I did this, lo those many 12 months ago. Now, scouring the broker listings I see nothing but studios and places in faraway lands like Bushwick. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Bushwick, having never been there. The name just make me think of bushes, hence the jungle, urban jungle, chaos... hence I would rather live somewhere else. (Sorry, Bushwick. I'm sure you're very nice.)

It's funny how, when you're on a quest, you can start off with firm convictions that crumble one by one. I had known all along that I didn't want to pay more than the rent on my last place, since I don't have a job right now and have no idea what my eventual income will be. I didn't want to live in a studio -- the very thought of living in a single room makes me claustrophobic (quick, someone feel my pulse, I'm hyperventilating right now); and particularly for an insomniac, having your bed and your couch in the area is a big no-no. 

I've also loved the last two neighborhoods I lived in (which are more or less the same neighborhood): Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill. Carroll Gardens didn't have much in the way of gentrified infrastructure when I moved there, but it was always pretty and always safe. Then boom, the rest of us yuppies moved in, and suddenly there were great bars, restaurants and shops everywhere. Friends started moving to Brooklyn, some even near me. And then, when I was finally forced to leave that apartment and get another, I found a huge apartment at the exact same rent, and this one had a stoop and was just a block and a half from the subway, half a block from my favorite butcher, and across the street from my favorite bar. SCORE. (Also, half a block from Starbucks, but I don't like admitting that.)

Let's pause for a moment. I went from one two-bedroom apartment with a washer/dryer and dishwasher to a big one-bedroom apartment with a big kitchen and a stoop, a block and a half from the subway.

Is there some kind of bad juju karma that's about to come crashing down on my head right about now? I think there is.

These days I'm nose deep in listings. Everyone has convictions, dealbreakers, and at the beginning of this process mine were: 

1. One-bedroom, no studios

2. Rent no higher than my previous rent

3. Nice, safe neighborhood with restaurants and stores

4. Nice, safe neighborhood with reasonable transportation nearby (and by reasonable I mean "a subway line I've heard of before" and "not the G")

5. Can't be loud (ie, quiet street, not on a busy avenue)

6. Pre-war building preferable

7. No broker fee if possible

That was about it. First I noticed that in my price range, there were studios. Studios, lots of studios. I looked at the pictures and winced. Take it away! I'd scream like a diva refusing appallingly inferior food. Except, of course, that there was no one to take it away, and I had to face my reality. No. No. Noooo. Couldn't do a studio. Just couldn't.

Then there were the listings for one bedrooms that were within my price range -- some of them even had that holy grail of New York apartments, outdoor space -- but were in neighborhoods much farther afield than I was used to, and that I hadn't been planning to consider. It's not a snob thing, exactly. I just like a nice, quiet, familiar neighborhood where I can go out and eat good food and maybe buy something cute to wear; is that so much to ask? I would enter these addresses on Google Maps and if I saw busy highways, auto-repair shops and check-cashing places across the street, an abandoned warehouse in front of the building... I passed. Time is ticking here. I gotta stick with what I know.

Gradually I came to realize that the thought of living in a remote, industrial or otherwise sketchy neighborhood unnerved me more than living in an (ugh) studio. I think what sold me on it were two things: 1) I saw a photo for one studio listing in which the tenant put a big bookcase next to his bed, to hide it. That could work, maybe? 2) I saw a listing for a studio in a cool art-deco building, and 3) I saw a listing for a studio on a lovely block with a front door that simply captivated me. And this one was cheap.

Today I saw a listing for a real one-bedroom, within my price range, in Fort Greene. Such closets, and a kitchen with a pantry! But then I looked it up on a map, and walking to the subway would take 12 minutes ... to the G, nemesis of my life. Well, the G's a little too sorry to be a real nemesis. And it does have some cool friends, but let's just say I wouldn't rely on the kid to back me up when the chips are down. There's another subway line nearby, but it would take 20 minutes to get there. That's a long way to walk at the end of your work day, or late at night home from a party, or for your friends to brave on their one-time visit to your new place. Translation: Live here, and I really will be alone forever.

So in less than a day I have gone from "no studios" to "studio if it's really big or has an alcove," "studio if it's in a cool building," "studio if it's significantly less than what I paid before," and "studio since I can't find anything else in a neighborhood I like and trust." Um, studio it is? Gaaaaah!! Massive stoop sale at my new apartment, folks. But I suppose I have learned that living in a cool neighborhood is more important to me than living in a studio, even if it makes me claustrophobic and gives me insomnia. Yes, I am shallow. I'll be shallow and sleepless in a studio. That's a movie, right? Maybe about Harry and Sally's daughter, forced to live in an economic time far more tenuous than theirs?

Oh, and I completely caved on the broker thing, too. I hate that I'm paying them for this -- it's such a scam, really -- but if you need someone to look for apartments for you super fast, some of which might not be listed yet, I guess that's the easiest way to do it.

And let me add one thing: Regarding apartment listings, wtf people, why is it so hard to post a picture? A picture of the inside of your apartment? Because a picture of the building and then one of the restaurant down the street isn't telling me much about your place, which makes me think you're hiding something, which makes me not want to see it after all, or think you're much more than a bozo who got his realtor's license at clown college. Ditto for when a realtor posts no photos at all. Really? You couldn't borrow a digital camera from... anyone? Again, what are you hiding? And the best are the ones that show you a room, and then the other three pictures are of that same room, from two slightly different angles. Show me the kitchen, for crissake! Sigh.

Finally, I would like to call for a moratorium on the usage of these words in rental listings:

cozy
charming
quaint
"requires vision"
full bathroom (that's not something to brag about)
landlord pays hot water and heat (maybe because it's the LAW?) 

Well, the hunt continues tomorrow. Wish me luck. 

The life you own

For the past couple of weeks, I've been homeless. Unemployed and homeless. In fact, I'm currently unemployed, homeless and crashing with my parents. [Chandler Bing voice] Could I BE any more attractive?

At the end of last month, I packed up my apartment -- everything but my laptop, purse, two suitcases and a small bag -- and put my things in storage. Several times as I was packing, I wished that I lived a more ascetic life. Why couldn't I be the kind of person who doesn't need material goods? Why on Earth do I have so much stuff? And where, for the love of Christ, did it all come from?

Yet I had pared down, I really had. Or at least it felt like I had. I got rid of chairs, books, clothes, CD racks, pots and pans; but still the packing didn't end, and the boxes towered over me.

I do, I'll admit, have a lot of books. Call me a Luddite, but I like books, actual physical books with pages you can turn. Since I used to work in publishing, a lot of them are in hardcover. Maybe I haven't read all of those books, but I have every intention of reading each one ... someday. Yes, even A Man in Full. (Maybe.) And so the books took me days to pack, me with my Sharpie and my tape gun, until the boxes climbed halfway up the walls, covering a good chunk of my living room, and I looked at them and felt sad for all the things I've meant to do, but haven't yet done.

I also have a lot of kitchenware. Perhaps, as kitchen consultants claim, you can get by with a pot, a pan, a wooden spoon and a few good knives. But I love my Le Creuset Dutch oven, I cook everything from roast chicken to green beans in my cast-iron skillet, and my aluminum saucepan makes me swoon. Plus, you always need wine glasses, and Tupperware, and casserole dishes, and serving dishes, and a rolling pin (which I have never used), and an ice cream scoop (ditto), and ... um ... custard cups. Do I actually need all this stuff? Probably not. But would I want to live with only a pot, a pan, a wooden spoon and a few knives? If I'm being honest, I don't think I would. (Maybe, I concede, I don't actually need the custard cups. Though I have used them, to serve nuts.)

Then there were the boxes of old work, shoeboxes full of random cables, files crammed with bills, tax returns, sheets, towels, vases, pictures, DVDs, curtains, hats, scarves, family photos, duffel bags and purses, old cameras I can't seem to throw away. It doesn't seem like you have that much, when you're sitting on your couch surrounded by it. But the older you get, the more you accumulate things, like a wave picking up water as it speeds toward land. Some of it you keep out of sentimentality, some out of need; some because it makes you feel like a grown-up (look! I have placemats!), and some because you're lazy or indecisive or optimistic. In the end, they're just things. But sometimes they're hard to let go.

When the moving was done, and the storage space was full -- a 10x10 room crowded with boxes amid which my couch teetered on one end and the TV looked at me accusingly -- I gazed at all my stuff and felt weird. At first I thought, this is my whole life, right here in front of me, contained in this one little room. Then I corrected myself: This isn't your life. It's just your stuff. You could walk away from all of it and never look back, and would you really miss it? Is this the life that you had, or the life that you own?

I know it's the latter. It's all just some junk I accumulated through the years. But as I sit here in California, living just fine out of a suitcase, unfettered by possessions with a world of possibilities ahead of me, some part of me can't help but feel that my life is 3,000 miles away, packed up high in a little room.