Saturday 27th 2006f May 2006

Flux

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A , posted by Anthony in the early afternoon.

Firstly – Happy Birthday Eleanor! Secondly – Happy Bithday Vanessa! It’s very warm here at the moment, and humid. I’m sweating as I type. This week saw the season finales of 24, House and Lost and next weekend we’ll have the last episodes in the current season of The Sopranos and Big Love. What am I going to watch? I guess it must be summer. I’ll continue to illegally download new episodes of Dr. Who as they arrive (yay! Cybermen!) but I doubt that’ll hold me long.

Work is fine, despite the unsettling shock closure of R* Vienna. Table Tennis was released this week to generally favourable reviews. My voice is in that, as an Irish fan cheering on Cassidy. I was able to get Conor and Hilary in as fellow Irish supporters, as well as Young-Min cheering for the Korean character Jung. I hope she wasn’t swearing in Korean or I might get into trouble. I have a copy, but of course I don’t yet have an Xbox 360 to play it on. Someday…

New York is much less stable than Dublin, in a way that you need to be here a little while to appreciate. I don’t mean physically, but in terms of its population. People come and go, all the time. I didn’t notice this for a while. I arrived and of course everything was new to me. Everybody I met was somebody I’d never met before. Some of these people I stayed in contact with, some I didn’t. I assumed, despite the many obvious and not so obvious differences, that socially speaking it wasn’t that different to Dublin. I was approaching it from a different angle, not having grown up here, but I imagined that I was working towards the same kind of stability, that ultimately I’d have the same kind of network.

If I were to return to Dublin I could probably fall in with most of my old friends. I could go to the same bars, or ones just like them, and have the same kind of interactions. Not that nothing there has changed, of course – there are relationships, weddings, children, and people do leave, like me – but people are still there. Or at any rate, not too far away – Ireland isn’t big enough to get that far away. The idea of a “job for life” is dying in Ireland – I was very conscious of that as a teenager – but it hasn’t existed here for a long time.

One of the most common questions I get asked, by people I’ve just met as well as those who know me well, is “Are you planning to stay in New York?” I have a standard answer – “Well, I’m not planning not to stay”. Which is true. I don’t know if I see myself here when I’m sixty, but then I don’t really see myself anywhere else at sixty either.

Mobility and choice are good things, if you can get them. I’m glad that people come and visit. I was happy to see my aunt Stephanie, my cousins Catherine and Claire and Claire’s husband Keith. We had some very pleasant meals at one of which we even saw some celebrities. My friend Hugh was over at around the same time, which was also fun. I’m glad that there are new people to meet, people calling me up because they’ve just arrived and somebody gave them my number just like I had people to call when I arrived. I met my friend Julian largely because we arrived in New York within a week of each other.

People come here all the time, just like me, but people leave all the time too. And when you start listening you realise that even the people who have been here for a while haven’t committed to staying here forever. They talk about trying somewhere else, somewhere quieter, or somewhere warmer, or somewhere closer to home, wherever that might be.

Vanessa is moving out to Portland, Oregon next week. Last night she had a combined leaving/birthday meal (I’ll get her a present eventually; yes, and you, Eleanor). She was my roommate for a year and a half while I lived in Queens. Of course I’ll visit her in Portland (if she gets a nice enough apartment) but it makes me feel that I’m on shifting sands here in New York. Now there will be a Vanessa-shaped hole. What other holes will appear? Do I have to constantly be making new friends? If I don’t, will I wake up one morning to realise I’ve run out? Where is the stability?

One of the greatest and most difficult things about coming here and starting from scratch was having to make friends, but I guess I had reached a stage where I felt I could relax a little. In my first months here I had a rule – accept any and all invitations. Maybe you’ll end up in the kitchen with nobody to talk to, and maybe you’ll have a great time and meet some cool people. But go. Recently I’ve relaxed on this – I was invited to a gathering on Thursday but I blew it off, partly because it was a school night, but also because I just didn’t feel the need. Maybe that’s the only luxury this city doesn’t afford. And it’s a shame, because a Vanessa-shaped hole is only really fillable by Vanessa.

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Sunday 07th 2006f May 2006

Multi-Festivalular

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A , posted by Anthony during lunch time.

One of the great things about a multicultural society is the enormous variety and frequency of the festivals that you can latch onto and abuse. The last couple of weekends have seen me taking my revenge for St. Patrick’s Day at the Cherry Blossom Festival Sakura Matsuri and “Cinco …

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