From Me to You (An Administrative Advice Column for Writers)

Monday, October 24, 2011

Chaos and New York

Back when I was at yoga teacher training, I was told twice about the Saturn return. I turned 28 while I was at teacher training, and some of the people I met there thought I was headed for the Saturn return the following year, based on what I told them about how I wanted to change my life.

Well, it didn't happen then, to my knowledge, but I think it's happening now. Although I learn quickly, I've always been slow to get a clue, in the cosmic sense. So the tumult and noise and misery and dreaming and transition are a leetle overdue.

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The good news is, over the weekend Matt and I went to New York and saw Sleep No More, a show (sort of) that is part dance, part theater, part David Lynch, part steampunk, part BioShock, part Macbeth...it was some crazy shit. I had thought I would be writing an essay about it, and although I was wrong about what I'd be writing about, I did write an essay on the train back home. I worked hard and I'm happy with the result. (Matt helped.) I've already queried it.

I'm having a difficult time concentrating today, or I'd tell you all about the experience of Sleep No More. Perhaps another time. If the essay gets picked up, heck, you can read about it then.

I will tell you that Matt and I tried to go to the 9/11 memorial, and it turns out that you have to reserve tickets ahead of time if you want to go there. The only exception is for first responders. We walked down there, and there were no lines to get in or anything, just the information guides milling around, but we still couldn't go in because we hadn't reserved tickets.

I don't want to be a jerk, but I feel like this kind of contradicts the whole point of a public memorial. (I'm not sure if this contradiction has anything to do with the substance of the memorial, just...public memorials in general are supposed to be public, right?) I think part of the reason is that there's so much construction going on in those two or three city blocks, and it could be a little dangerous for a lot of visitors to pile up in there. But still. What could go wrong with limited-number on-site ticketing, with a waiver form?

We passed by some Occupy Wall Street protesters on our way there. They were mostly still asleep. (The early protester doesn't necessarily get the worm, I guess.) I've been enjoying the OWS movement - or pictures of it, anyway - because it's the first time I've seen protesters that kind of look like me: ordinary, no particular age group, not homogeneously rabid or vegan or filthy or dreadlocked or anything else that indicates to me that this is a group of people with different values than mine. But I have to say that the group we saw down there kind of did look like dirty hippies. Sorry, guys. I still think you're fighting the good fight.

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