When nothing makes sense...

Today, I leave and there is a TV sitting inside a suitcase. As I walk up to it, a homeless-looking man takes the cord and plugs it into the street lamp. I'm not sure why.

This "I'm not sure why" phrase seems to be one of the most common things I say/think these days.

Now the TV is on. It's sitting there on the sidewalk, with the cars and people passing by, on the corner of 10th and A.

Basketball was on.

I watched for a few seconds while waiting to cross the street. "Hmm...I'm watching some random TV on the sidewalk, right out here on the street...OK."

Some homeless guy was fooling with it, and it seems he has been carrying a giant suitcase with a huge TV inside. I pass by trying not to wonder why -- because nothing, absolutely nothing makes any sense in this city.

Maybe it's performance art, or a statement about society, but it didn't seem like it -- seems like the guy just wanted to be left alone with his TV. Perhaps he found these items in a dumpster -- and this is where my head starts reeling and I get a headache.

A couple other slightly confused passerbyer people raise eyebrows, but in that apathetic NY way, because fact is, there is too much weird stuff here to ever figure out.

You know how in most cities, you might mis-read a sign and think it says something silly, and laugh at yourself for reading it wrong? Maybe tell a friend about your funny mistake? Here, well, you read it right. And no, there is no explanation -- ever.

Human Blackjack ----> this way. Yup, read that right. People wearing giant cards walking around.

This is why I have a headache.

Then in the subway there was a large group of kids blasting music just around the corner -- were they break dancing? There were skateboards involved and screaming. And then a guy with the most enormous chello walked up -- or it must have been that other instrument, the giant one. You know what I mean.

Anyway, it has a wheel on the bottom, and he takes the wheel off and a street kid runs over and touches it and he yells at the kid -- "This is very, very expensive!!"

For some reason every third person on the street was carrying an instrument. guitars, violins, everything.

"The table top is around the corner over there, and the table legs are on that corner over that way," says some lady to a guy. ONCe again -- i tell myself to not try to figure this one out! But as usual, my mind can't help it.

WHY?? Why are there table legs ONE way and the table top on the other? WHY??

*Sigh*

As much as I love New York, I admit at times it's like living in Alice and Wonderland and trying to have it make sense.

It's enough to make me want to go to some bland department store in the Midwest that closes at 7pm and soak up the normalcy. Maybe I need a break from the island.

I made some new friends here, woo hoo! It's a hard place to make friends. But then again, I think it's hard to meet friends everywhere in the country these days, as society has us all so isolated. I think that is sad and almost with it was back in the times when we had farms and things, just so we would have communities. People are meant to be in communities, not in square little isolated boxes.

Rambling little essay

I throw down foamy hot chocolate and play with a big slab of chocolate cake as it sticks to my fork, as I contemplate exactly which of all of these forks in the road, to take.

Here I am, half-way inside, half-way outside, in one of these open-air coffee shops listening to salsa music and Shakira as that familiar smell of coffee grounds and sidewalk cigarettes drifts in now and then.

A creepy old man stares. I think to myself, there are plenty of ladies here wearing far less than me, so kindly remove your eyes and I'll take off my glare. I watch cabs carry people from one place to another. Only less interesting people sit in this open air coffee shop, as the cool breeze make an occasional entrance. I watch the passing shoulders and dark eyes of men hurrying – that sidewalk taking them somewhere quickly. Somewhere, is never here. At least, not yet.

This late at night on a Monday, this place is all pie, tea and diaries. Pens scribbling onto computer print-outs, women sighing as they flip through journals. Men contemplating as they count ceiling tiles. It makes me feel like I’m not the only one with a need to word-doodle this late at night.

Homeless people scream to amuse themselves in the park. Half the people look up apathetically from their coffee, moving only their eyes slowly up, as their heavy heads and necks refuse to rotate. Then, eyes slowly return back down to reading. Screams continue, fewer eyes look. Screams sporadically come and go, just like the cigarette smoke and the smell of coffee.

Mosquitoes bite my ankles.

I guess we all get what we are ready for. And the things we long for that are delayed are often that way for a reason. Then one day, all of those things we’ve wanted so badly fall into our laps, and that can be the moment, when it feels like everything is strange.

But as Willy Wonka says to Charlie Bucket, “You know what happened to the boy who got everything he ever wanted, don’t you?” And after a pause, “He lived happily ever after.”

Looking back, last November I threw myself into a place where I wasn’t sure I could swim. I was fully aware of sinking and it terrified me. Still does of course.

Few things make us feel alive like pairing our small fragile human souls up against the world, and all the things that could happen. Sometimes opening a door is all that is needed. After years of trying, it can come down to just opening that door a tiny bit more – and that sunlight that streams in, that small amount more can be all it takes to illuminate the situation, to re-align the factors, and to shift everything in a great way.

There is a movie trailer parked on the side of the street, bright against the dark night. It is parked there from time to time, so I forget to notice if they are filming or not.

The couple next to me drinks tea from a little pot as she demands too much from him and he smiles anyway. She complains in shrill, bitchy voice and he gazes at her, head on hands. Their table, like all the tables on the patio, is chained down -- as they discover when they try to move it. They seem very happy, despite this.

A woman wraps her arms around an attractive guy half her age. A younger girl behind them raises her eyebrows.

The silences between words, those tones in someone’s voice, and going deeper with them than they have before. It’s like throwing someone into the ocean, while still holding their hand – giving them the freedom to dream without restriction. To discover what their intuition is telling them, and freeing them to touch their strength, feel their power and charge off towards whatever it is they want more than anything. And then I sit back, and I feel this warmth, the same feeling I have when I see all of my beginning soccer players dribbling triumphantly toward me, with a mix of concentration and joy on their faces. That’s Life Coaching to me.

I guess that’s what I want in my life. To do that for as many people as is possible. Because each person who feels the strength of knowing their own power, that person is not stoppable by anyone or anything – they will fight until they get it. And whatever “it” is, will make them happy, and that will spill over onto all of the people in their lives.

And when they are living, doing the things they were meant for – the strongest powers and talents and abilities they have within them, the things they were born with, the things their intuition has whispered in their ear “to do” for years, maybe a lifetime, that they have ignored, calling attention to that thing, those things, that is like lighting a match for someone, and the result is a fire.

That fire is all their own, and that is where I step back. I want to set this world on fire with the passion of what is lying latent inside of people. Because this power, is what we were meant to do in life. It’s simply a matter of standing up and realizing what it is you are capable of. A conversation with yourself. I simply put people in touch with themselves. I am that link, and that is all. I flip a switch, dust of something inside of their hearts, and they do the rest. And that’s what I want to do.

I smell gasoline from a motorcycle that just sped off loudly, a few feet from me on the street outside of this coffee shop patio.

I walk home.

“Miss, you dropped something,” says a guy, as he passed me on the street. I stopped, turned around slowly. Looked at the ground. Touched my purse. “I did?”

“Yes, you did.”

I again looked at the ground. Nothing.

“What?”

“My number,” he said and smiled.

He must have been 20. I gave him one of those smiles than an 80-year-old grandmother gives the charming young man who flirts with her. That smile that means “oh you!” as she loudly laughs and waves the air.

I remember the past years. Whenever I told people about my dream, as much as I knew I could help people and it was the right choice for me, I admit part of me pictured white unicorns frolicking. And I knew the people I talked to also were picturing a silly white unicorn, which is why they would ask me such ridiculous questions like “aren’t you too young?” And “isn’t that what Jewish boys have mothers for?”

Then, suddenly and strangely, something shifted ever so slightly. I forgot to care if people respected me and my “career” and decided to just help people instead. I just went with what felt right, what felt like helping someone with what I have to give. And at that point, the human-ness of all of us seemed to fall into a soup during those calls and I found it so easy to relate to it all. And in the last week, I had my first paid client and three more – all in one week.

Strange.

Things only happen when you are ready for them.

soccer

So when you're playing soccer, the players yell out all kinds of things to let you know what to do with the ball, since you can't see much of what's going on around you. Things like "man on" which means someone from the other team might be about to get the ball from you, or "time" (you have plenty of time because no players from the other team are close by), "back" (there is someone open behind you) and so on. They also say take it "down the line" or "bring it up" (bring it closer to the goal), etc. Today was the first time I heard someone say "uptown! uptown! Take it uptown!" LOL. Only in NYC.

Not sure why this came to mind, but...

Rain is different in the desert.

Sometimes I miss thunder. That cracking sound that makes the little hairs on your arms stand up. That predecessor to pouring rain that will drench the earth and fill the cracks in dry desert ground. That smell of creosote and look on the faces of your family as they decide to unplug all of the computers and definitely not shower or talk on land-line phones. Hoping family members make it home okay without driving into any deceptively shallow few inches of water, only to be swept away in a flash flood river.

The fear it strikes to hear that thunder and see the huge scribbles of silver lighting flashing across the sky, as the sun sets into bright oranges and pinks blending together. I haven't seen those sunsets in a while now.

The Gila river, a joke most of the year. a bridge over a dry canal. not a drop of water. but at that thunderous moment, a river falls from the sky and fills it to the brim, where it will stay for only a short time before returning again to desert dry.

Monsoons are a strange thing. Like throwing gold coins onto an impoverished person a few times a year. And then it's back to hot, to dry, to dusty. Sunburn with draining sun beating down.