I arrived in Harlem around 6 pm. I took the express D train to 125th street and decided to find my way from Martin Luther King and St. Nicholas up to 139th and Broadway, where my new room eagerly awaited me. I was very excited to get back to my room, for many reasons. But I had a long walk in the cold first.
I walked up St. Nicholas to 133rd street until I saw a short-cut through some high-rises and up some stairs. I was listening to Ahmad Jamal's "The Best Thing For You" when I looked up and saw the crescent moon with a perfect smile, shining from in between the clouds. This was a welcome return after several days of rain, ice and winter dreariness in the city. Art Blakey's "Moanin" carried me most of the way to Broadway, and Art Tatum's "Body and Soul" took it home, where I was very happy to escape from the cold. I was wearing a rain coat instead of a winter coat because it was 54 and raining this morning, but it had cleared up and begun the slow descent to the low teen's expected later tonight.
By the time I walked up a few flights of stairs and found my room at the end of the hall, Charles Mingus's "Better Git It In Your Soul" had me in tune with the traffic noisily gliding by on the street below. It was easy to be in tune with it because my noise-canceling headphones and the trumpets made it impossible to hear the disjointed honks and wheels on pavement.
Sometimes it's a beautiful feeling just to have a few hours to yourself. Ever since work started up again on Thursday I've been running around to get this apartment, move into this apartment, sort out the objects I hastily moved into this room, do laundry, teach my classes, study for the SAT, and take the SAT. This evening I was arriving in Harlem on the heels of the latter.
All of this began Wednesday evening. I rang in the New Year by answering my ringing telephone. It was a call from a realtor who had read my application for my apartment and wanted to offer me a two month lease. That sounded perfect for me because the room isn't exactly glamorous and I really just wanted to get a place somewhere, hopefully in Manhattan, preferably in Harlem. There are many constants in my character and my passions, but stationary locations are not on the list. That's not to say I will leave here after two months. But I have the option if I don't like it or I find something better.
Anyway, he didn't want a personal check for the first month's rent and security deposit. He wanted a certified check, money order or cash. I never pay large amounts of money in cash because there's no paper trail in case you get screwed over. My bank is upstate, so I couldn't do a certified check. What's more, he was leaving for Israel at noon the next day and would be gone for two weeks, so time was of the essence. I had to be in the Bronx by 10, and the banks don't open until 9 anyway. So I talked him into signing the lease in the morning and allowing me to pay one of his workers (a nice man I'd already met when I looked at the apartment) and get the keys after I got out of work and had time to get a money order. He suggested we meet at McDonald's, which I thought was kind of strange, but it was actually very convenient for me because it was right next to the subway on my way to work.
After work I went to 145th street in Harlem, near the office of the man I was supposed to pay and from whom I would obtain the keys. It turns out that Western Union doesn't do money orders for more than your daily ATM limit. Mine happened to be at $800 to prevent theft. Their system works like an ATM for some reason, so I couldn't take out the full amount necessary for the apartment. I called my bank and had to wait 40 minutes to find out that I couldn't raise my limit and had to try somewhere else, perhaps a post office. I walked twenty minutes to find a post office somewhere near Malcolm X Boulevard and waited in line for 50 minutes. It was actually okay. I wasn't stressed at all, because I've been through these types of things many times. Usually when you're about to get a reward it just takes a long time with a bunch of petty extra bull at the end to test how well you've learned about dealing with challenges and improvising from past endeavors. Also, I had a great book and some great music from living musical legend Hiromi on my headphones. By the time I got to the window it took three seconds to purchase the remainder of the money order. Then I walked back to the man's place of work. Apparently the guy who shows apartments and keeps keys for my realtor also works as a dialysis technician, so I waited around with all these people in wheelchairs watching TV while he got my keys. During that time I was happy I hadn't been too bothered by the events, was very excited that I was actually going to get off a couch for the first time since I moved to New York and truly come back to the city in a way, live in Manhattan for the first time and best of all, I wasn't in a wheelchair for any reason, let alone kidney dialysis. I made a point of eating some kidney beans that evening, as I hear they are seriously good for preventing such issues.
Of course, the building key I was given didn't work, but a friendly girl let me in just as I was giving up on the key. She had moved in the day before from Los Angeles, and asked if I was from New York. When I said no, she seemed to expect that, as I was apparently too friendly to be a New Yorker. I explained that I had just moved from San Francisco, and that I was a country boy anyway. After that I found out that at least my apartment key worked, and I finally got to see my room, which came furnished with a single bed, a desk, a bookshelf, a closet and some more shelves with a cabinet in the bottom. There were no shades on the window, so that would have to be dealt with, and it was a little noisier than I remembered, but I did use to live by a freeway, so I figured I could adapt. After a quick phone call the key man finished work and brought over the correct key, and I was free. Except it was 6:30 instead of 4, so my idea of starting the moving process seemed unwisely ambitious at that point, especially with winter storm Hercules starting as soon as I emerged above ground from the hour long subway ride to Astoria.
On Friday afternoon I began the moving process, which involved a suitcase completely filled and likely weighing 70-80 lbs., a tote bag filled with my sleeping bag and a few pans for cooking, and my same blue backpack I've had since I began journeying in India. It had stopped snowing that morning (even though we had classes, I only had four students and one student in each class), but the snow was still everywhere. Some of it had been melted by ice or removed by shoveling, but there were still vast stretches of slush coating the sidewalks, especially where they met intersections. That meant I had to lift the 70 lb. suitcase and carry it in one arm for certain 10, 30 and 50 foot stretches at a time, and every time I entered or left an intersection, so that it wouldn't drag in the slush and leak into the suitcase (it has a few cracks from years of wear and tear). I was filled with hope though, because as I crossed the street to go around the construction on my friend's block I looked up and saw the thin smile of the crescent moon for the first time in weeks.
I had to take two trains to Harlem, and I had options on getting to the 1 train, M or R, but the M came first. Unfortunately, this meant getting off the line at Bryant Park and 42nd and re-entering one avenue over at Times Square, one of the most crowded places in the city. At least I got some cool pics of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building with snow everywhere to remember the move by.
When I got to my apartment I began emptying all of my bags so I could bring them back for the second voyage. During that time I met the first of my four roommates, and at the time of writing, still the only roommate I've met. Apparently one of them is rarely seen, one of them is a Columbia student on winter vacation, and the other is a fashion guy who is doing some theater down in Florida for a few months. The one that I met is an actor/writer from Maryland who has always wanted to go to India and Japan. After about an hour of unpacking and meeting my new roommate I got on the hour long subway ride to Astoria for round two. Once again the bags were packed full, although now it was 11 pm and down in the single digits.
I waited twenty minutes for a train, and when it came it was the M train again, which is weird because it's usually the R train late at night. Then again, it sped by and didn't stop, so I figured I would be able to avoid a hard decision and take the R train, which does connect directly at Times Square. Instead another M train came two minutes later. Things must have been screwed up by the snow storm. So once again I had to carry everything up the stairs and walk an avenue with freezing hands (gloves would have been a good investment) and back down the stairs and through the turnstiles again. After all of these years I have become skilled at sliding that enormous suitcase through the turnstile and below the bar, but it doesn't make it any more fun. Of course, I missed the 1 train by three seconds, and had to wait another fifteen minutes for the next one. Luckily, an old man was playing a fiddle and a crazy guy was dancing and clapping happily and blowing him kisses. I don't know why there were hordes of normal looking people who didn't appear to have been partying at all riding on the train after midnight on a Friday, but it was incredibly crowded and I had to stand the whole way. Even so, I felt very peaceful and content. It's not easy, but carrying so much weight actually makes me feel good, as if I can feel my muscles thanking me for the long run amidst the curses in the short run.
Somehow the whole journey took 90 minutes, and I didn't get to my apartment until 12:30. I had been hoping to start organizing the mess I had dumped into my room, but that would have to wait.
Of course it was noisy and I hadn't thought to purchase ear plugs, and there is an enormous street light just outside the window and a McDonald's with two stories that keeps its lights on all night just across the street. I didn't have any push pins to hang up a towel, so I would just have to deal with it all the first night.
The traffic woke me up at 8, along with the bright morning sun shining directly in my eyes. I like that in the long run, because when I want to I'll have a shade to block it out, but it was my one day off amidst all this chaotic moving, and I really wanted the sleep... but I was in my own room! In Manhattan! And for the first time, including my three previous years in the city, I wasn't waking up a couple feet from the ceiling in a creaky loft bed. I didn't have to climb down a ladder to start my day. Hooray!
At one point I realized, "Man, I've had this celebratory, 'Wow, I'm in a room!' thing going for a few years now. What makes this time any different?" The answer: people. When I was so excited to be in my own room in California, I didn't know anybody. I met more people, but my social life didn't expand very much beyond various roommates in various houses and my students, as excellent and fun as they were. Basically, since I left New York to go on journeys, I haven't known the oft taken for granted situation of being in one's own space, supporting one's self with a job, and having friends one can call up.
Soon after I awoke my oldest friend Glenn texted me to see what I was up to. I still had one more run to Queens to get a few more things (not as much weight), shovel out my car and hopefully find a parking space that wouldn't require me to move it during street sweeping, but I could go for some lunch, and that's exactly what we did. We found a soul food diner near his place by Jackie Robinson Park and I had grits for the first time in my life. Glenn and I lived a block away from each other until I was 11 and moved upstate. Now we are a ten minute walk from each other.
After lunch I took the train to Queens and tried to study SAT Math questions from a prep book propped up on my suitcase. I'm sure it was a strange site for those seated next to me: a man with a beard and a large suitcase studying for a test usually taken by sixteen year old's. I had taken the SAT back in November in order to qualify for a tutoring job that would pay twice per hour what my current job pays. I would be able to teach more difficult material, and what's more, I would be teaching native speakers for the first time in my life. I aced the verbal with a perfect 800 (I got a 700 back in high school), but my math score went down to 650 (I got a 700 back in high school). So even though my overall score had gone up, they required at least a 700 on each test so they could promise parents that they had master tutors. I don't want to teach math, and I'm probably not especially qualified, but a job is a job. Apparently my high school score was worthless, so I had to take the test in their office after teaching English for six hours, riding the train to Brooklyn for an hour, and on four hours of couch sleep. I'm surprised I did as well as I did. I haven't done complicated math since high school. My friend said it was just high school math, but when you think about it, a lot of that stuff requires knowledge of equations, approaches and techniques that you throw out of your mind the second you graduate because you don't need it for anything unless you become an engineer or an accountant. Anyway, I had thought I would have more time to study over the weekend, but this moving thing and snow storm had changed everything.
Packing for the third time wasn't hard, but shoveling out my car took quite a bit of time. The moon smiled up above for the second straight night, so I felt encouraged. I originally planned just to shovel it out because it was supposed to be freezing rain the next morning, and it's impossible to shovel snow after it's covered in ice. The clock was ticking because I was parked in a zone that is okay except for the hours between 7 am and 6 pm on Monday. I could have moved my car to Harlem, but walking through the neighborhood showed that nobody was moving their cars because they were all covered in snow and the roads weren't safe anyway. After shoveling the snow I ran the car for twenty minutes because you're supposed to do that every three days in very cold weather if you're not driving it anywhere.
Once that task was completed I decided to scope out my old favorite area to park, a fifteen minute walk north which had spaces with no street sweeping. You can leave your car there for weeks and no one will do anything, and there are definitely cars there which haven't moved in a long time. Somehow everyone else found out about it since I did, and it's been very hard to get a spot since Thanksgiving. I didn't want to forfeit my current spot, which was good for another day, by driving up to scope out what would most likely be snowed in cars occupying every available space. But since I was already there, I walked up to scout the situation. Lo and behold, there was one free space, and it wasn't too snowy to park in. So I sprinted back to my car beneath the smiling moon, jumped in and gunned it down the block, stopping only for the obligatory traffic light. Nobody stole the spot from me, and I pulled most of the way in before hopping out to shovel out the rest so I could be closer to the curb. Then I went back to my friend's apartment and couch which had served me so well during my NYC reorientation, and brought my final suitcase load to Harlem to complete the move.
I didn't have time to get organized though, because I was honoring longstanding plans to have dinner and a drink with my friend Yash, who had both accompanied me to my third Bonnaroo (and left me with a tent when he and my cousin had to go back early) and told me about the tutoring job. He's also a writer, and he gave me advice about how to handle food sickness when I went to India. We met up on the Lower East Side, which is much easier to get to now that I live in Harlem instead of Astoria. After that I met up with Glenn and his friends in the East Village, and got home by 1. I didn't have a shade yet, but I did have ear plugs, a much more important weapon. I slept like a king.
Of course, I had to work Sunday morning because my job is stupid and requires us to work six days a week. I would demand a full weekend but I need the hours. Back at the winery I could work 30 hours in two days, but here they stretch it out over 6 days. The bright side was that it took 25 minutes and one train to get there, instead of 70 minutes and two trains. Even better, half of it involves a stroll amidst classic city architecture.
I spent most of my time after class doing laundry and organizing my room. I tried to study but I couldn't concentrate surrounded by the chaos that was my room. Then I cooked an amazing meal of lentils, broccoli, carrots, onions, spinach and tofu. I studied for a couple hours, but I was still hungry, so I made some brown rice, kidney beans, red bell peppers, shiitake mushrooms and kale after that.
Today it was pouring rain when I woke up, but it subsided just along enough for me to walk most of the way to the 145th street train station. I was listening to Mozart because they say he helps your brain get into organizational math mode. I think it works better for developing children's growing brains, but it couldn't hurt.
For some reason I was a little irritated during classes today. It seemed like too many students were coming in late, arriving in class for the first time after missing the first week, asking questions about the one thing I had just spent twenty minutes explaining over and over again, asking what page we were on after we had been working on it for two minutes, or interrupting everyone else's flow to ask about something they would have learned if they hadn't come thirty minutes late. How do you discipline paying adults when your livelihood depends on them wanting to come back and pay the school that pays you? How do you discipline adults to begin with?
When class was over I got on the hour long train (notice a theme?) to Brooklyn to retake the math portion of the SAT. I assumed I would do better because I had more sleep, had studied a little and didn't have to go back and forth with the verbal section. However, my brain didn't feel much better, and it seemed like there were even more questions requiring approaches I didn't know than last time.
I had to wait a long time for someone to grade my test because they were all very busy, and it turned out I got a 690, ten points shy of the requirement. I had time to look over the test before the girl who had originally interviewed me went over it, and once again there were at least three question that I got instantly upon review and would have figured out correctly if I hadn't felt so drained from everything. Luckily, she said that they really wanted to hire me and thought I would be a great tutor, but they have to hold true to their parental promise that everyone got a 700. I did get a 700, but thirteen years ago, when I thought I would never have to do that kind of math again. Actually, I did much more complicated calculus the year after the SAT, but that stuff left my brain as soon as I stepped foot on a college campus and realized that my AP Math scores had eliminated the need to take any math classes.
Thus, after all of that, they are going to let me take the test again in a couple weeks. Third time's the charm? Perhaps a few weeks in my room with a desk, a bed and a little extra studying will make a difference? I'm also hoping to schedule it on MLK Day, because they are open, but I don't think my school is open. That means I can take it in the morning without being on the heels of hours of teaching. And if I don't pass the math, my writing ego doesn't suffer, and I truly wasn't meant to be an SAT tutor. We will see. What will be will be.
Speaking of which, I am conflicted, because a few weeks ago I started watching these talks by Sir Ken Robinson, an education leader. He claims that standardized testing and mechanized learning is exactly what's wrong with American education, and I've always agreed. But I don't know any other way to get my foot in the door of the tutoring industry (a good side job for someone writing a book) without any other tutoring experience
After all of that, it was amazing to arrive at my own place with some spectacular jazz music, delicious healthy food and a brightly lit well-organized room awaiting me.
Whatever happens with that job, I have a desk and time to re-focus on writing the book. I keep making up these deadlines because I want to do it for you and for me and for everybody, but those self-subscribed pressures are tampering with my mental state. I trust Chung Fu to pump the story through, from me to you, when it feels good and ready to. The universe has gotta do what we've gotta do.
Ain't that true?
I walked up St. Nicholas to 133rd street until I saw a short-cut through some high-rises and up some stairs. I was listening to Ahmad Jamal's "The Best Thing For You" when I looked up and saw the crescent moon with a perfect smile, shining from in between the clouds. This was a welcome return after several days of rain, ice and winter dreariness in the city. Art Blakey's "Moanin" carried me most of the way to Broadway, and Art Tatum's "Body and Soul" took it home, where I was very happy to escape from the cold. I was wearing a rain coat instead of a winter coat because it was 54 and raining this morning, but it had cleared up and begun the slow descent to the low teen's expected later tonight.
By the time I walked up a few flights of stairs and found my room at the end of the hall, Charles Mingus's "Better Git It In Your Soul" had me in tune with the traffic noisily gliding by on the street below. It was easy to be in tune with it because my noise-canceling headphones and the trumpets made it impossible to hear the disjointed honks and wheels on pavement.
Sometimes it's a beautiful feeling just to have a few hours to yourself. Ever since work started up again on Thursday I've been running around to get this apartment, move into this apartment, sort out the objects I hastily moved into this room, do laundry, teach my classes, study for the SAT, and take the SAT. This evening I was arriving in Harlem on the heels of the latter.
All of this began Wednesday evening. I rang in the New Year by answering my ringing telephone. It was a call from a realtor who had read my application for my apartment and wanted to offer me a two month lease. That sounded perfect for me because the room isn't exactly glamorous and I really just wanted to get a place somewhere, hopefully in Manhattan, preferably in Harlem. There are many constants in my character and my passions, but stationary locations are not on the list. That's not to say I will leave here after two months. But I have the option if I don't like it or I find something better.
Anyway, he didn't want a personal check for the first month's rent and security deposit. He wanted a certified check, money order or cash. I never pay large amounts of money in cash because there's no paper trail in case you get screwed over. My bank is upstate, so I couldn't do a certified check. What's more, he was leaving for Israel at noon the next day and would be gone for two weeks, so time was of the essence. I had to be in the Bronx by 10, and the banks don't open until 9 anyway. So I talked him into signing the lease in the morning and allowing me to pay one of his workers (a nice man I'd already met when I looked at the apartment) and get the keys after I got out of work and had time to get a money order. He suggested we meet at McDonald's, which I thought was kind of strange, but it was actually very convenient for me because it was right next to the subway on my way to work.
After work I went to 145th street in Harlem, near the office of the man I was supposed to pay and from whom I would obtain the keys. It turns out that Western Union doesn't do money orders for more than your daily ATM limit. Mine happened to be at $800 to prevent theft. Their system works like an ATM for some reason, so I couldn't take out the full amount necessary for the apartment. I called my bank and had to wait 40 minutes to find out that I couldn't raise my limit and had to try somewhere else, perhaps a post office. I walked twenty minutes to find a post office somewhere near Malcolm X Boulevard and waited in line for 50 minutes. It was actually okay. I wasn't stressed at all, because I've been through these types of things many times. Usually when you're about to get a reward it just takes a long time with a bunch of petty extra bull at the end to test how well you've learned about dealing with challenges and improvising from past endeavors. Also, I had a great book and some great music from living musical legend Hiromi on my headphones. By the time I got to the window it took three seconds to purchase the remainder of the money order. Then I walked back to the man's place of work. Apparently the guy who shows apartments and keeps keys for my realtor also works as a dialysis technician, so I waited around with all these people in wheelchairs watching TV while he got my keys. During that time I was happy I hadn't been too bothered by the events, was very excited that I was actually going to get off a couch for the first time since I moved to New York and truly come back to the city in a way, live in Manhattan for the first time and best of all, I wasn't in a wheelchair for any reason, let alone kidney dialysis. I made a point of eating some kidney beans that evening, as I hear they are seriously good for preventing such issues.
Of course, the building key I was given didn't work, but a friendly girl let me in just as I was giving up on the key. She had moved in the day before from Los Angeles, and asked if I was from New York. When I said no, she seemed to expect that, as I was apparently too friendly to be a New Yorker. I explained that I had just moved from San Francisco, and that I was a country boy anyway. After that I found out that at least my apartment key worked, and I finally got to see my room, which came furnished with a single bed, a desk, a bookshelf, a closet and some more shelves with a cabinet in the bottom. There were no shades on the window, so that would have to be dealt with, and it was a little noisier than I remembered, but I did use to live by a freeway, so I figured I could adapt. After a quick phone call the key man finished work and brought over the correct key, and I was free. Except it was 6:30 instead of 4, so my idea of starting the moving process seemed unwisely ambitious at that point, especially with winter storm Hercules starting as soon as I emerged above ground from the hour long subway ride to Astoria.
On Friday afternoon I began the moving process, which involved a suitcase completely filled and likely weighing 70-80 lbs., a tote bag filled with my sleeping bag and a few pans for cooking, and my same blue backpack I've had since I began journeying in India. It had stopped snowing that morning (even though we had classes, I only had four students and one student in each class), but the snow was still everywhere. Some of it had been melted by ice or removed by shoveling, but there were still vast stretches of slush coating the sidewalks, especially where they met intersections. That meant I had to lift the 70 lb. suitcase and carry it in one arm for certain 10, 30 and 50 foot stretches at a time, and every time I entered or left an intersection, so that it wouldn't drag in the slush and leak into the suitcase (it has a few cracks from years of wear and tear). I was filled with hope though, because as I crossed the street to go around the construction on my friend's block I looked up and saw the thin smile of the crescent moon for the first time in weeks.
I had to take two trains to Harlem, and I had options on getting to the 1 train, M or R, but the M came first. Unfortunately, this meant getting off the line at Bryant Park and 42nd and re-entering one avenue over at Times Square, one of the most crowded places in the city. At least I got some cool pics of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building with snow everywhere to remember the move by.
When I got to my apartment I began emptying all of my bags so I could bring them back for the second voyage. During that time I met the first of my four roommates, and at the time of writing, still the only roommate I've met. Apparently one of them is rarely seen, one of them is a Columbia student on winter vacation, and the other is a fashion guy who is doing some theater down in Florida for a few months. The one that I met is an actor/writer from Maryland who has always wanted to go to India and Japan. After about an hour of unpacking and meeting my new roommate I got on the hour long subway ride to Astoria for round two. Once again the bags were packed full, although now it was 11 pm and down in the single digits.
I waited twenty minutes for a train, and when it came it was the M train again, which is weird because it's usually the R train late at night. Then again, it sped by and didn't stop, so I figured I would be able to avoid a hard decision and take the R train, which does connect directly at Times Square. Instead another M train came two minutes later. Things must have been screwed up by the snow storm. So once again I had to carry everything up the stairs and walk an avenue with freezing hands (gloves would have been a good investment) and back down the stairs and through the turnstiles again. After all of these years I have become skilled at sliding that enormous suitcase through the turnstile and below the bar, but it doesn't make it any more fun. Of course, I missed the 1 train by three seconds, and had to wait another fifteen minutes for the next one. Luckily, an old man was playing a fiddle and a crazy guy was dancing and clapping happily and blowing him kisses. I don't know why there were hordes of normal looking people who didn't appear to have been partying at all riding on the train after midnight on a Friday, but it was incredibly crowded and I had to stand the whole way. Even so, I felt very peaceful and content. It's not easy, but carrying so much weight actually makes me feel good, as if I can feel my muscles thanking me for the long run amidst the curses in the short run.
Somehow the whole journey took 90 minutes, and I didn't get to my apartment until 12:30. I had been hoping to start organizing the mess I had dumped into my room, but that would have to wait.
Of course it was noisy and I hadn't thought to purchase ear plugs, and there is an enormous street light just outside the window and a McDonald's with two stories that keeps its lights on all night just across the street. I didn't have any push pins to hang up a towel, so I would just have to deal with it all the first night.
The traffic woke me up at 8, along with the bright morning sun shining directly in my eyes. I like that in the long run, because when I want to I'll have a shade to block it out, but it was my one day off amidst all this chaotic moving, and I really wanted the sleep... but I was in my own room! In Manhattan! And for the first time, including my three previous years in the city, I wasn't waking up a couple feet from the ceiling in a creaky loft bed. I didn't have to climb down a ladder to start my day. Hooray!
At one point I realized, "Man, I've had this celebratory, 'Wow, I'm in a room!' thing going for a few years now. What makes this time any different?" The answer: people. When I was so excited to be in my own room in California, I didn't know anybody. I met more people, but my social life didn't expand very much beyond various roommates in various houses and my students, as excellent and fun as they were. Basically, since I left New York to go on journeys, I haven't known the oft taken for granted situation of being in one's own space, supporting one's self with a job, and having friends one can call up.
Soon after I awoke my oldest friend Glenn texted me to see what I was up to. I still had one more run to Queens to get a few more things (not as much weight), shovel out my car and hopefully find a parking space that wouldn't require me to move it during street sweeping, but I could go for some lunch, and that's exactly what we did. We found a soul food diner near his place by Jackie Robinson Park and I had grits for the first time in my life. Glenn and I lived a block away from each other until I was 11 and moved upstate. Now we are a ten minute walk from each other.
After lunch I took the train to Queens and tried to study SAT Math questions from a prep book propped up on my suitcase. I'm sure it was a strange site for those seated next to me: a man with a beard and a large suitcase studying for a test usually taken by sixteen year old's. I had taken the SAT back in November in order to qualify for a tutoring job that would pay twice per hour what my current job pays. I would be able to teach more difficult material, and what's more, I would be teaching native speakers for the first time in my life. I aced the verbal with a perfect 800 (I got a 700 back in high school), but my math score went down to 650 (I got a 700 back in high school). So even though my overall score had gone up, they required at least a 700 on each test so they could promise parents that they had master tutors. I don't want to teach math, and I'm probably not especially qualified, but a job is a job. Apparently my high school score was worthless, so I had to take the test in their office after teaching English for six hours, riding the train to Brooklyn for an hour, and on four hours of couch sleep. I'm surprised I did as well as I did. I haven't done complicated math since high school. My friend said it was just high school math, but when you think about it, a lot of that stuff requires knowledge of equations, approaches and techniques that you throw out of your mind the second you graduate because you don't need it for anything unless you become an engineer or an accountant. Anyway, I had thought I would have more time to study over the weekend, but this moving thing and snow storm had changed everything.
Packing for the third time wasn't hard, but shoveling out my car took quite a bit of time. The moon smiled up above for the second straight night, so I felt encouraged. I originally planned just to shovel it out because it was supposed to be freezing rain the next morning, and it's impossible to shovel snow after it's covered in ice. The clock was ticking because I was parked in a zone that is okay except for the hours between 7 am and 6 pm on Monday. I could have moved my car to Harlem, but walking through the neighborhood showed that nobody was moving their cars because they were all covered in snow and the roads weren't safe anyway. After shoveling the snow I ran the car for twenty minutes because you're supposed to do that every three days in very cold weather if you're not driving it anywhere.
Once that task was completed I decided to scope out my old favorite area to park, a fifteen minute walk north which had spaces with no street sweeping. You can leave your car there for weeks and no one will do anything, and there are definitely cars there which haven't moved in a long time. Somehow everyone else found out about it since I did, and it's been very hard to get a spot since Thanksgiving. I didn't want to forfeit my current spot, which was good for another day, by driving up to scope out what would most likely be snowed in cars occupying every available space. But since I was already there, I walked up to scout the situation. Lo and behold, there was one free space, and it wasn't too snowy to park in. So I sprinted back to my car beneath the smiling moon, jumped in and gunned it down the block, stopping only for the obligatory traffic light. Nobody stole the spot from me, and I pulled most of the way in before hopping out to shovel out the rest so I could be closer to the curb. Then I went back to my friend's apartment and couch which had served me so well during my NYC reorientation, and brought my final suitcase load to Harlem to complete the move.
I didn't have time to get organized though, because I was honoring longstanding plans to have dinner and a drink with my friend Yash, who had both accompanied me to my third Bonnaroo (and left me with a tent when he and my cousin had to go back early) and told me about the tutoring job. He's also a writer, and he gave me advice about how to handle food sickness when I went to India. We met up on the Lower East Side, which is much easier to get to now that I live in Harlem instead of Astoria. After that I met up with Glenn and his friends in the East Village, and got home by 1. I didn't have a shade yet, but I did have ear plugs, a much more important weapon. I slept like a king.
Of course, I had to work Sunday morning because my job is stupid and requires us to work six days a week. I would demand a full weekend but I need the hours. Back at the winery I could work 30 hours in two days, but here they stretch it out over 6 days. The bright side was that it took 25 minutes and one train to get there, instead of 70 minutes and two trains. Even better, half of it involves a stroll amidst classic city architecture.
I spent most of my time after class doing laundry and organizing my room. I tried to study but I couldn't concentrate surrounded by the chaos that was my room. Then I cooked an amazing meal of lentils, broccoli, carrots, onions, spinach and tofu. I studied for a couple hours, but I was still hungry, so I made some brown rice, kidney beans, red bell peppers, shiitake mushrooms and kale after that.
Today it was pouring rain when I woke up, but it subsided just along enough for me to walk most of the way to the 145th street train station. I was listening to Mozart because they say he helps your brain get into organizational math mode. I think it works better for developing children's growing brains, but it couldn't hurt.
For some reason I was a little irritated during classes today. It seemed like too many students were coming in late, arriving in class for the first time after missing the first week, asking questions about the one thing I had just spent twenty minutes explaining over and over again, asking what page we were on after we had been working on it for two minutes, or interrupting everyone else's flow to ask about something they would have learned if they hadn't come thirty minutes late. How do you discipline paying adults when your livelihood depends on them wanting to come back and pay the school that pays you? How do you discipline adults to begin with?
When class was over I got on the hour long train (notice a theme?) to Brooklyn to retake the math portion of the SAT. I assumed I would do better because I had more sleep, had studied a little and didn't have to go back and forth with the verbal section. However, my brain didn't feel much better, and it seemed like there were even more questions requiring approaches I didn't know than last time.
I had to wait a long time for someone to grade my test because they were all very busy, and it turned out I got a 690, ten points shy of the requirement. I had time to look over the test before the girl who had originally interviewed me went over it, and once again there were at least three question that I got instantly upon review and would have figured out correctly if I hadn't felt so drained from everything. Luckily, she said that they really wanted to hire me and thought I would be a great tutor, but they have to hold true to their parental promise that everyone got a 700. I did get a 700, but thirteen years ago, when I thought I would never have to do that kind of math again. Actually, I did much more complicated calculus the year after the SAT, but that stuff left my brain as soon as I stepped foot on a college campus and realized that my AP Math scores had eliminated the need to take any math classes.
Thus, after all of that, they are going to let me take the test again in a couple weeks. Third time's the charm? Perhaps a few weeks in my room with a desk, a bed and a little extra studying will make a difference? I'm also hoping to schedule it on MLK Day, because they are open, but I don't think my school is open. That means I can take it in the morning without being on the heels of hours of teaching. And if I don't pass the math, my writing ego doesn't suffer, and I truly wasn't meant to be an SAT tutor. We will see. What will be will be.
Speaking of which, I am conflicted, because a few weeks ago I started watching these talks by Sir Ken Robinson, an education leader. He claims that standardized testing and mechanized learning is exactly what's wrong with American education, and I've always agreed. But I don't know any other way to get my foot in the door of the tutoring industry (a good side job for someone writing a book) without any other tutoring experience
After all of that, it was amazing to arrive at my own place with some spectacular jazz music, delicious healthy food and a brightly lit well-organized room awaiting me.
Whatever happens with that job, I have a desk and time to re-focus on writing the book. I keep making up these deadlines because I want to do it for you and for me and for everybody, but those self-subscribed pressures are tampering with my mental state. I trust Chung Fu to pump the story through, from me to you, when it feels good and ready to. The universe has gotta do what we've gotta do.
Ain't that true?
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