Arrival

I found myself coming awake, the light coming through Sasha's window was as dark as it had been 4 and a half hours ago, when I had laid down at midnight. I thought about trying to lull myself back to sleep, but there was an insisting voice in my head that was running down the list of last things and within a few minutes I heard the beginning notes of my alarm in the corner, singing out
"Settle down, it'll all be clear, don't pay no mind to the demons who fill you with fear.."
I smiled into the darkness as I heard Sasha stir. A good message for an adventurous day.
     We got up, sleepily moving around each other, flicking on lights and making hot water for tea for me and coffee for her. Our sleepy ride arrived in time for a cup of coffee to go and then the bags were loaded and we shut the door on Sasha's darkened apartment and stepped out into the new beginning of light.
     I sat in the backseat, looking out as Denver flashed past in the glowy light of early morning. The concrete was lit with it, the buildings still shadowy.  I felt in myself the mixture of elation, excitement, wonder, a little fear, and a lot of room for grace.

As we drove out towards the airport, into the hilly plains I looked up to see a rainbow, it's colorful ends touching the earth, out of the pink clouds of sunrise. I sat with my nose pressed against the car window, looking out at the bright colors and feeling shivers cross my skin. 

If this was not a blessing on this adventure, I didn't know how more clear God could be. 

Oh but how I would find out. 

We unloaded at the airport and I skipped inside to check my bag, which I was hoping and praying wouldn't be overweight. It wasn't, weighing in at 44.5 pounds. 

Sasha and I met on the other side of security and she walked me to my gate before going and finding her own plane. (Sasha went to Boston last minute, for a family emergency. Prayin hard for her.)

With a final hug to Sasha, I gave my ticket and boarded my plane. 

I sat there in my seat, a little bit surprised at how you can just go out and do life. That's it's really just doing it. Here I was, sitting on a plane bound for New York City and a summer of possibilities and adventures. 

I was seated next to an Indian couple, returning from a vacation in Alaska. 

     Nadia, -the woman, dressed in a billowy red shirt/dress, was extremely excited that I was a skinny female, because the last seat mate she had had, had been a mean man who wouldn't talk to her. 

     A few hours into our flight Nadia and I struck up a conversation, she wanted to know if I was returning home to New York and I told her that no, I was coming here for summer school at a film acting program. Her eyes lit up and she clasped a darkly creased and caring hand upon my arm. 

"That is so exciting! I am excited for you! I will pray for you. And God listens to me. Just this morning I prayed to God, 'please make a young pretty girl sit next to us' and here you are!" I smiled, our familiarity growing. I told her about Paper heart and how she coud find it on Youtube, she had me write it down on a scrap piece of paper. She tucked it into her purse with careful hands and then turned to me with a glint in her dark eyes and said: 

"Here," She gestured to my scrap piece of paper. "Write this down: Nadia.." and then she proceeded to give me her telephone number. 

"You are going to make it." She looked at me steadily, her eyes bold and bright. 

"I will pray for you, and in 6 months when you have made it, and they are throwing a celebration in your honor, you call me. I will tell all my friends that I knew you, that we sat next to each other on this flight."

I laughed, but wrote her number down anyways. 

     "You know, you may laugh when I say that God listens to me, but people come to my house to ask for me to pray for them and then those things happen. I have a friend who was so incredibly sick of living with her mother -in -law, she comes to me and she says: 'Nadia? I am so sick of living with my mother-in-law, but I don't know when or how we will ever move out and have a house of our own again.' I tell her, 'Sheela, within one year you will have a house of your own again.' I don't know where the words came from, they just tumbled out of my mouth. But one year later she had bought and moved into her own house again. So you see? God listens to me. He did not bless me with children, so maybe this was his way of giving me something. I pray for the rest of the world and take care of it when it is sick." She resettled in her chair, her enthusiasm overspilling as thoroughly as her words.  

     "You just always have to be thankful. When you wake up in the morning, before you do anything else, Thank God. He gives you life. And that is so much to be grateful for."

     "And don't get discouraged. If you are faced with challenges just say to yourself 'I can do it, I will do it, I have to do it' and you say this three or five times to yourself and you can do it. 

You can go back to your book now, I have been talking your ear off. But really, don't forget to call me."

And with that she rummaged in her carry on and found her makeup and began applying and fixing her hair in preparation for landing. 

     I sat there a little bit stunned. But as she had spoken I had gotten the same chills across my skin as I had, seeing the rainbow coming out of the clouds that morning. 

I felt her monologe about gratitude and praying had truly been meant for me.

I went back to my book. 'True and False' by David Mamet

But it wasn't long after that I heard a voice behind me, ask if I was going to acting school. I turned and seated behind me and across the isle was a tall, good looking, young man in a gray T shirt. 

We struck up a conversation, exchanging names as our hands shook, bridging the gap across the isle. His name was Zach from a tiny Podunk town in Indiana but had moved to the city nine years ago to pursue his acting career.  He was doing well for himself. But seemed to enjoy seeing the city and the potential of everything through my new eyes. We joked about coming to the city from a small town and the things I hoped to learn and what he was working on now. 

     Our conversation stretched across our landing and the deplaning process and on into baggage claim. As we waited at the black conveyer belts in the low ceilinged LaGuardia airport for our bags to arrive, I shared my ginger snap cookies with him and asked him about the best shows to see. He gave me good advice about taxi's and the few things he knew about where to go in Brooklyn and about Shakespeare in the park. Finally my bag came around, big and bulky, with hand stitching on the side and I heaved it off. His looked like it hadn't made it from Denver but before he went off to inquire he gave me directions on how to get to the train I needed. He walked me to the bus stop and as he was about to walk away, he turned and gave me his Metro card. 

"That should get you there, I think there is one ride left on it." And then with another wave he turned and shouldered his way back towards the problem of his missing luggage. 

I stood in the sun and the humid heat of the airport. The taxi's idling  the buses trundling and all the people, looking bored and tired and happy. I could feel the excitement pulsing in me. New York. I was actually here. Actually doing this. I called my best friend. Her voice sounded as familiar and beautiful as it had on Wednesday when we had hugged our last goodbye. Although now we were separated by a lot more land. Her squeals echoed my own excitement at actually being here. 

I let her go and my bus came and I climbed on, swiping Zach's card and stowing my enormous bag. 

Now, a little back ground here. It's a little silly, but the thing I have been the most nervous about on this trip, isn't the first day of school, or geting around New York, but getting from the airport to my apartment with all of my crap. 

I asked the family sitting opposite of me, what number the change stop was. It took asking twice before they heard me, but they answered kindly enough. The man sitting next to me, hiding behind his gold sunglasses and gorgeously fake blonde hair seemed to take notice as well. We all hoped off the bus together and followed the stream of people up towards the subway train. Going up the steps with my huge bag looked like a challenge, but as you know I seem to be up for those. But as I reached for the handle and took the first step I heard a voice, the voice of the man with the gold shades. 

"Do you want some help with that?" 

"That's sweet of you, yes, thank you."

He grabbed hold and helped me heave my bag all the way up the stairs. He was small, my stature probably, but strong. When we got to the top and I thanked him he waved it away saying, "I'm a flight attendant for SouthWest so this ain't nuthin hon." 

     I stopped to buy a new metro card and he waited for me on the other side of the gates, and then again up the mountain of stairs. At the top I asked what train he was taking and it happened to be the same one as mine. 

     When it came we sat next to each other and he made sure I knew exactly what stop I was getting off at. And then, of course, he asked me what I was doing in the city, actually he guessed. 

"Actress?" He smiled brightly at me. 

I laughed and nodded. 

     "Ooo! What's your story? I'm William by the way." 

"Elizabeth." We shook hands. 

We had a good 15 minutes on the train and I told him about being a farm girl and coming to the city for acting school. His eyes lit up very much like Nadia's and he said 

"Oh my, word! It's just like an episode of America's next top model, isn't it? Your gonna do great. Your gonna make it. I just know it." I felt a familiar sensation on my skin.  

     "You know, being a flight attendant for Southwest I met one of the winners for that show, the red headed one, she was totally sweet. And you know who else I met? Taylor Swift. It was before she got big, I saw her guitar as she borded and then she was waiting for the bathroom and I was like LORDY she is tall, and I told her she should stop trying to make music and be a model instead. She has legs for days! Oh well, I guess she's doing pretty well for herself these days." He gave me a conspirative smile. I laughed. 

How good it felt to be chasing life again; to be living it. To be out, in a crowded subway, with all my luggage and this incredibly sweet human, making me laugh. I felt a moment of gratitude wash over my skin. 

My stop came, and William bayed goodbye to me, wishing me good luck with a wave. 

     I climbed out of the subway lugging my bag up the steps and appeared on the hot street in Williamsburg, the heat rushing around me and the sounds of truck horns, taxi's, and hipsters long boarding down the softened black tarmac. I took a moment to just breath it in. I was here. 

I stopped at a bagel shop and ordered my first New York bagel sandwich before I set out down the two blocks towards the building that would soon be home. 

I found my apartment building, but was locked out because I didn't yet have a key. But with an extra hour, some sitting and a whole lot of sweating I finally managed to acquire my key from my landlady, lug my bag up three flights of stairs and finally open the door to my tiny, and adorable apartment. 

Home sweet home

My roommate (who I have yet to meet) wasn't home so I set about unpacking and making myself at home in my tiny pink bedroom. 

     I am really thankful to be subletting, because it means I have a bed and a place to put clothes and a blanket to sleep under. AND a swamp-cooler  Which although isn't quite as refreshing as a jump in the irrigation ditch back home, is probably going to be my favorite thing. 

As soon as I shut my bedroom door I turned it on and striped off my clothes. Unpacking in as few layers as possible.

Sweat. It's a new thing for me, in this big of a way. But I don't mind it as long as the air is moving. It's different, but not hated. Not yet at least. 

I put up pictures with tape and then took a really wonderful nap. 

    Afterwards I got up, still to an empty apartment, and get ready to go out dancing. Around 9:30 I rode the subway into Manhattan and found the weekly friday night blues venue, a little dingy place in the back of a tile studio, but I made a few friends and saw a few people I knew. 

     A dancer friend of mine from Denver actually happened to be in the city and we met up at blues. Super random coincidence, but so lovely to see a familiar face. 

     I ended up staying and helping to close down, repacking boxes with christmas lights and cables for speakers. and then the last few of us went to a diner around the corner and ordered pancakes and homefries at 3 O'clock in the morning. 

My body was beginning to rebel to that little of sleep, but it was 4:30am before I had made it back to the subway and was riding the appropriate train towards home. 

The other people on the train were lazily asleep, leaning against each other, or talking of their drunken friday night. (Sometimes, living in the country, it's easy to forget that Friday nights are a thing.) 

A toothless homeless man, made eyes at me across the subway car, but he smiled and I resisted the urge to just be a hard uncaring person and I smiled back. Maybe it is the country in me, and I'm sure iI have friends who's insides tighten at reading that, but his eyes lit up, and even though he dozed suddenly against the rail, I could tell that that fear and that uncertainty in the unknown in people that so often makes life so isolated, if faced with courage, can also make life beautiful. 

It was 5:30 by the time I fell asleep, and the light of my second day in New York was already blooming through my curtained window. 

I am so thankful for this adventure. And so incredibly thankful for all the hands and hearts that hold me so tenderly and with so much love.

Thank you for your support y'all. It makes all the difference in the world to this bare foot colorado girl here in Williamsburg Brooklyn NYC. 

And if you really read all of that. Damn. I solute you. 

Till next time.