Sherry L Huckabee: Taking a Bite out of the Big Apple

Thursday, November 30, 2006

I arrived yesterday afternoon to the hustle and bustle that is New York. The suitcase I heaved off the conveyor belt was twice as heavy as the pack I carried through Europe for five months, laden as it was with interview suits and business clothes to face the practical reality of having to find a job, but lightened with the hopes I carry for my writing and the people I will meet here to help me develop my chosen craft. It always hits me as I walk off the plane and enter the winding boarding gate that seems strangely like the gut of a giant snake – “Wow, how did I get here? …. What the hell am I doing here?” For a split second I feel like I am drowning, the water rushing over me, desperation building as I realize I am entering a new world, a world where I know no one, have no clue about how things work here in particular, and have only a limited reserve of funds with which to survive. I gasp for air as the drowning sensation consumes me. When I cross the half-way point, it is as if I suddenly realize I am not in the water but actually floating on its surface - safe, secure, supported, basking in the sunshine. A sense of calm infuses me - I am fine; it will be fine. I continue to walk, almost to the end of the snake-gut now, filled with an awed amazement at this person who says “I’d like to do ______” and then does it. Where did she come from? As I enter the boarding area, struck for the first time with the language, the energy, the people of whatever land I have just entered, I am filled with appreciation for this loving, supportive Universe that conspires to help me, in lessons as well as blessings, every step of the way, every day that I choose to embrace myself, my world, this life.

My host was working late as a volunteer on a literary project and couldn’t meet me until after 9 pm so I stashed my suitcase at the Caribbean bakery under her apartment and made my way to the local internet café, K*Dog & Dunebuggy, to catch up on emails and follow up on job leads. It was about 3 pm when I settled into my little table in front of the window - a 50 cent coconut roll from the bakery stashed in my bag, a 69 cent bottle of water from the local supermarket, and my $1.50 large mug of coffee. I like New York already. A roll, a water, and a coffee in Charlotte would have cost me ten dollars, here it is less than three. At 4 o’clock, a movie camera rolls in. I spend the next four hours as a background extra for the movie they are filming in the café. I’m even allowed to stay after closing for “continuity” – I am now a fixture, like the clock on the wall frozen at 7:15 or the constantly replenished fruit bowl. Three hours in New York and I’m already in a movie. I think I’ll take that as a good omen for the movie I am here in the hopes of finding a way to bring into creation.

At 8:30 they “wrap” and I am on the streets again. I make my way back to the bakery to wait for my host. Rachel enters with a big smile and a hug. She is a bright little thing with slightly wild chestnut brown hair that changes to the darkest red of autumn when it catches the light just so and pale white skin sprinkled with freckles. Ever since my daughter April entered my world and my heart, with her illuminating smile and eight year old freckled face, I have had a soft spot for freckle-faces. I can’t help it. I like Rachel instantly. She is witty in that sarcastic, dry way with an expressive face and a pouty upper lip. She bears an uncanny resemblance to my dear friend Kelly. Rachel is wonderfully direct and honest, a quality I cherish, but strikes like a viper when you venture too close to challenging any of the beliefs she has carefully woven her world around. We talk until well after midnight about travels and writing, which was her major, family, relationships, and the elusive feeling of being loved. It does not take me long to learn that this relationship will fare best if she talks and I listen - a fine arrangement given her engaging personality, expressive style, and well-sharpened sarcasm; and a fair arrangement given how many people granted me an ear these last several years when I needed more than anything just to be heard as I struggled to find that elusive sense of rightness in the world, in myself. We re-arrange the furniture in the small one room studio apartment to make room for a thin futon against the wall and I settle in for my first night’s sleep in what I hope will become my city for awhile.

The dreams come, making minutes seem like hours. I wake, ready to start the day, and realize it is only 3:30 in the morning. I force myself back to sleep. I wake again, convinced another three hours have at last passed and the coffee shop will be open. I reach for my phone. It is 4:34. Sleep does not return until the suns rays carry it to me when at last I slip into another dream-filled slumber for a couple hours. I lay a long time in the morning light, lost now to time, exploring my mind for snippets of the dreams that filled the night and morning. When Rachel’s alarm goes off just before nine, I slip into clothes, out the door, and onto the streets.

I am in Brooklyn, just a few blocks from Prospect Park, in the Caribbean “hood”. I walk down the street in the light of day - the only lily white girl for miles, except my host still asleep in her bed. There was a time I would have felt like a stranger in a strange land. Now I feel like I am just one more person walking down the street - worried about money, happy for my children, thinking about the people I love – the same thoughts that likely fill the minds of most all the people around me. I like this feeling, this openness. Several people greet me with a bright ‘good morning’ or ‘hello’, as if I have lived in this neighborhood all my life. I am reminded of something I read recently that to introduce a new chicken to a flock you slip her into the roost in the middle of the night. The next morning all the chickens, her included, just assume she has always been there. In some strange beautiful way, I feel as if I belong here. In some strange, beautiful way, I feel as if I belong everywhere.

I don’t know where she came from, but suddenly Calliope, the muse, was dancing on my shoulder, whispering a part of the book into my ear. I haven’t written since I returned to the states, not even a post. I was too overrun with the stress of the last few disappearing dollars, of finding a place to sleep in New York while I searched for a job, of chasing contacts that might lead to the job. I was mostly overrun with the fear that I wouldn’t, that I couldn’t write here in the states; that I would return to that person who spent more time in mental masturbation than in life; who spent more energy in the fear of rejection of others than the joy of reaching out for others; that I would begin working and lose myself in the need to find the earrings that matched that blouse I just bought or the right cup to organize my pens. Mostly I was overrun with the fear that the book would end up partially finished, a once-upon-a-time dream, pushed aside for reality, forgotten on some shelf in my room, in some corner of my heart. As I walked down the street this morning, comfortable in my own skin, in my own presence, in the presence of those around me, I realized no, I am not that person. It is she who was pushed aside for reality, a reality that has nothing to do with money and to do lists. As my fingers flew across the keyboard, the emails and lists and phone calls pushed aside at Calliope’s beckoning, I realized the person I have become, the joy I have found, the love I have felt, the faith that now breathes within my soul are gifts I gave myself when I allowed myself to open to the beauty that is this world, that is humanity, that is me. I know, from a place where there are no words, that the sun is always shining, there above the clouds, even when we can’t see it; that love is always here, deep within our hearts, even when we can’t feel it; that joy is always there just within our reach, even when it doesn’t seem to be; and that possibility abounds everywhere as hope smiles softly in the morning light. “Welcome to New York, Sherry,” smiles Calliope as she hops on a city bus and disappears down the street.