The Last Word on…
moving up...
moving on...
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The Last Word on… moving up... |
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While I do appreciate the voices of concern as I take on the big Apple, everyone can rest easy as I have always adapted well to new surroundings. See for yourself…
Living
in the big city no longer affords me the luxury of a car and I find myself on
the subway quite often where seats are often at a premium. Fortunately
I have learned several tricks to make life easier.
Once boarded, I rock nervously back and forth staring into space
muttering “shut up… shut up…” After about three stops, I usually
find I now have room to kick my feet up even on the 5:30 D train.
Whether
you find a seat or not, you’ll need to find a way to pass the time other than
asking complete strangers if they can identify random stains on your pants.
Being an avid reader I like to bring on a hard-core porno magazine and an
inflatable doll.
After about three dry wheezes, I offer “Susan” to the guy next to me
and ask “a little help?” Once I had an entire car to myself.
As
we all know, there is a homeless problem in New York, and no wonder…the cost
of living in New York is the highest in the country. I mean I doubt the fine
people of Oklahoma are wasting valuable tax dollars on soup kitchens—especially
when cornfields are as viable a source of nourishment as shelter. Anyway, being
a good soul I do what I can. I hand the homeless subway tokens and say “Here,
two of these will get you to Jersey City… you can steal a car from there!
Drive west until you hear someone in a straw hat ask, “What stinks like that!?!?”
I
must admit though, even the homeless have the attitude of a New Yorker. Once I
offered a one all the loose change in my pocket, which amounted to a mere three
cents, only to have him indignantly throw the coins back at me. He
made me look like the ass. That’s like hitting on a girl at last call and
having her ask “whose your friend?”
Kudos to the city of
New York for recycling; while it is a pain in the butt, every Monday morning I
carefully place my garbage into the bins marked paper, plastic, and
syringes. I thought it was too specific myself, I mean who separates paper
from plastic anymore?
Oh
and if you’re a comic, I highly recommend moving to New York. Not
for the work here, but everywhere else. It’s amazing how much time I wasted working on my stand up act
when all I really needed to do was change my zip code. The logic being that a
New York rental agreement has spaces requesting previous residence, monthly
income, and updated act. This
data is used to properly group each comic into some super “colony.”
Unfortunately, I panicked on the last question and copied my act word for
word from Red Foxx. That may explain why
my neighbor’s son Lamont keeps rummaging through my garbage. Yesterday he ran
off with five syringes, the big dummy!
People
still ask me why I left Delaware. I didn’t. The truth is I never left my home
in New Jersey either. I visit these places and the people I love as often as I
can. And while I can’t be with these people wherever I am, I do take them with
me wherever I go.
I see so many things that remind me of the people I love when I sit and
write, and laugh, and smile… and these people are most certainly there with me
at these moments. Just as I would like
to think that when people laugh or see something beautiful they are reminded of
me…and I am there too.
As
I grow older, I appreciate more the fact that the body is physical and
it needs a time and place to exist. But the people we are, the things we
believe, the way we affect each other exist solely our minds. In a way that
makes them so much more real than these fleeting physical things we feel we so
badly desire. Money, a car, nice clothes; things we only worry about when we don’t
have them, when they don’t exist, when they’re not real.
The
only real thing is how you feel right now as you read this article. There’s
no money, there’s no car, there is nothing. Only your mind, in this moment.
Think about that.
So
my residence is in New York. But living is something we do with
our hearts and our minds. It’s where we start out with the imagination of a
child and slowly lose as we try to cling to the fleeting realities that this
world deems real.
I live every moment of life with my family, my friends,
and everyone and everything that has ever affected me…and it’s the greatest
place in the world. I can only hope you
live here too…if you don’t then I have to ask you…”Why did you
move?”
xoxo
-g