Credit: http://dreamatico.com/
Over the past few months,I've been horrible at returning calls,texts and emails.I've been bad at keeping lunch dates and meeting for drinks.I have finally left my cave of woe-is-me and I'm moving forward after what has been a few very challenging months. Where do I begin? Well it all started when our careless neighbor started a fire in our building. Since our landlord is a slumlord, he had no smoke detectors in the building.Thankfully I was late for work and the smell of smoke hit me before grabbing my keys and running out the door. Power and gas were shut off from November to March while renovations were being done in our building. Sure, moving was looking like a great option after this happened,but,really,who can afford the average $3200 a month it costs for a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco? I refused to give up my rent controlled apartment.
In the meantime, we were camping out in my mother-inlaw's livingroom with our two dogs and whatever belongings we could fit into two suitcases (Ha, need I say more?). Two days after the fire, I got myself together and was headed to a local bar to meet a girlfriend for a drink. I never made it to the bar that night. As I was headed to the ATM to get cash for the evening, BAM! A laundry bag full of clothes and, as I would later learn, a brick hit me in the face. I was knocked to my knees. "What the fuck just happened?", I thought. Before I could begin to figure out what was going on, a man stopped his car in the street and helped me up. Once I was on my feet, he ran after the person who had attacked me.
A welcomed escape, New York City!
It turns out, I was hit by a crazy homeless woman. She would later tell police she attacked me because I was "trying to be her". It seemed I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm sure the police were ready to take me to the mental hospital with my attacker. I had lost my shit and suddenly my attacker was looking much more calm than me. I was sobbing, screaming "Why!? I just had a fire, now this bullshit? Do you know I'm from Canada where we have healthcare? We medicate mentally ill people. I've never been attacked in the street in Canada. No,I will not get into the ambulance! Do you know how much an ambluance ride costs in the United States?".Not my most glamorous moment. A hug from my husband, a hot bath and two glasses of rum numbed my emotions and my neck pain (I would later learn I was left with a sprained neck bone from the attack).
After months of fighting with housing inspectors and housesitting all over San Francisco, we are finally back in our apartment. Life is slowly getting back to normal and I can get back to what I love, Art! I was in New York City March 2-9 for the string of artshows that were going on around Manhattan. I attended preview shows for The Armory Shows, Volta NY and Pulse New York.
There are not enough words in the dictionary to express my love for New York. My in-laws live in the East Village and I feel more at home there than in San Francisco. I grew up outside of Toronto and although Toronto is MUCH smaller than NY, both cities have the same energy,weather and foliage. AND in both cities, people tell you how it is. If they don't like, you'll know within minutes and they will tell you to your face.Californians tend to let "relationships" linger from oh-I-want-to-throw-you-a-surprise-party-you're-my-best-friend to actually-I-didn't-really-like-you-but-we're-in-the-same-circle-and-didn't-want-to-step-on-any-toes. Yeah, save me the nausea and the time, thank you very much.
New York City and the recent adventures I had there deserve much more than a single blog post. I haven't begun to dig into the amazing artwork I saw, how New York showed me that socal media makes the world a smaller place or how a common interest(Art!)can gather people from across the world into a single space,and make that moment in time feel purely electric.
-H
