What Colors the Steel Sky Blue

This morning I woke up from this strange dream about the power plant behind my building. This still operational power plant is one of the two on Manhattan on the East River side.

To some this power plant is an eye sore, for some reason I always thought it was beautiful. Well, in my dream this particular power plant was on fire. With flames gushing out from one side while people were running around like crazy. The sound of the fire raging was incredible, I could barely hear the sirens, then there was another explosion, another cloud of smoke and fire blew out of the other side. At this point I woke up.

Like most days it took me a few moments to realize that I was no longer in the dream. The sound continued however, like a pipe organ on fire, kept blowing. The windows were vibrating, and then there was another explosion.

THIS WAS REALLY HAPPENING. I jumped out of bed, put on my clothes as fast as possible and stepped out into the hallway. There was no one in sight in the hallway. I ran down the stairs, the sound was coming from the power plant side so I went one level lower to the street side by the power plant. The stairs door flew open and there it was. There was this huge ball of fire at the side of the power plant.

There was no fire fighters or police in sight. My guess is right around the point I was woke up from my dream the first explosion happened. Just like in my dream the fire was growing. Pipes and pieces of the transformer that was on fire were being blown onto the street.

I ran upstairs to my apartment to pack my essentials for evacuating the building. This was stupid in retrospect but there was no way I was going to be stranded in New York City without money, some form of ID and my passport.

On my floor I ran into my neighbor Jim, he had the same idea. He had already packed a suitcase for himself and his wife and was on his way out the building. I rushed into my apartment and salvaged my backpack with my laptop and the papers I needed. I did not even think about clothing. Oh, I also took my portfolio of paintings. These are the times that make me appreciate the fact that I paint small 12x16 watercolor paintings --they pack nicely.

Jim and I ran out of the building with several other people. We kept going. By the time we left the building the fire fighters and police were flocking to the East Side of the 14th street where the fire plant was located. The streets were cordoned off and officers started going through the buildings closest to the plant trying to evacuate anyone and everyone.

Jim and I ran into Jim's wife on the way. She did not even see us, she thought that the fire had already reached our building. Jim had to call her name out several times before she realized he was her husband. After we exchanged our stories we calmed down a bit. It looked like a few avenues down, the power plant fire was under control.

The three of us calmly went to a bar nearby and had lunch. I guess this was a strange reaction to a major gas explosion in a power plant across our apartment building. But what is one to do really when they are faced with these situations. This was also a couple of months after 9/11, so we were always ready for something to explode in those days.

It turned out that one of the transformers in the power plant had experienced and overload and melted down. This meltdown had ignited the gas intake that exploded and became the big gas fire that drove us out of our building.

The power outage that followed hit the West Village and other parts of Lower West Side. Our power was not affected. Strangely, there was little or no coverage of this event. In these post 9/11 months where everyone loved linking everything including a dog pissing on a priceless Thomkins Park statue to terrorism, no one linked this huge explosion and power outage to anything.

Although I had moved away by the time of the second big power outage, I have always thought it strange that the authorities threw out the possibility of sabotage so swiftly and with so little to prove their theory.

A couple of hours later, we were back in our apartments. Our double pane windows were still in place. In fact except for a power outage that did not affect us, one could barely tell this ordeal even took place.

During my days and nights of unemployment not only did I get less and less motivated to anything and everything but I also developed some really strange skills that one certainly could not share with everyone.

I have always had a solid history of having very vivid and strange dreams. In fact I must have spent every night of my first 23 years with nightmares night after night. Endless combinations of exams failed, public humiliations staged, getting raped by the high school bullies, being exposed as a gay man, and finally a subgroup of dreams that absolutely had nothing to do with my fears or daily life.

All the other ones I could stomach, mostly because I knew where they were coming from and mostly where they were going to, nowhere. These were remains of the daily brew, that stain ring the last gulp of coffee leaves in a mug. one could either way the mug or throw it away if it was a paper cup from Starbucks.

The group that was not related to anything was a rare and strange breed. These dreams mostly felt like being in a film. Many times the credits rolled by after the dream was over. These were dreams about settings, places never seen, perhaps completely fictional people whose names I never remember after I woke up. These familiar strangers of my dreams could be my parents, could be my best friends, wife, boyfriend, perhaps even my child. What I have never quite understood is the process through which our mind creates a completely fictional face, assigns a fictional name to it and then fits it into a dream during our sleep.

Considering the hell we put our heads through daily life, you would think our brains would take any opportunity to unplug, to shut down, to take that blond moment we all are so in need of.

Late July, the weather is unbearable. Still, I am on the street, on the go because I can’t stand myself all cooped up in the apartment all alone. I frequently go to Tompkins Park in East Village these days, mostly because it is a rel strange mix of people. There's the base layer of homeless people speaking in the language of me, add to that the hippies of East Village having heated discussions about which color has more of the fire element in it, then in the shade sitting on a bench a celebrity with his girlfriend --pretending to shy away from the attention of others and of course others like me: the unemployment, multi-nationality marginalities of the lower-mid Manhattan.

In the green gray background of the Tompkins Park I suddenly noticed a spot of pure white, a color one does not come across often on Manhattan. As I followed the winding park path, the trees that were in the way first came closer into view to reveal that the white stains on the green were actually people, then the trees moved to the side as the path made a sharp left turn to reveal 5-6 people painted all white head to toe and wearing white clothes.

This was the kind of visual moment that stops you and forces you to re-evaluate your senses before you fully accept the anomaly. Although I double/triple checked my vision, the white people were not going away. They seemed to be some sort of a family on an afternoon's outing. They had a little baby and everything. There were other people interested and the white people did not mind at all posing for pictures. All this time none of them uttered a word to another.

I finally concluded that this was one of those wonderful moments in New York City when you experience something otherwise you would never experience anywhere. Here was a group of actors that were all dressed up for the part of a mime family but had thrown themselves onto the ever so gray, every gloomy and glaring scene of the East Village.

I followed them around while they made their rounds around the park for a while. Then I decided to leave before they dismantled and revealed their secret. I would rather leave them in mid-act and assume that they kept of living their ultra-white, ultra-calm, ultra-quiet life in a coop building colored none other than pure white.

Feeling is the beginning of hurting where what is felt solidifies at the tip of a tender leaf not letting go of the past and unwilling to accept the future and what it brings. It is at this crease in time in which I find myself balancing tens of apples on the sharp end of a large kitchen knife still wet from the diswasher. Then the sink screams, the microwave burps, the stereo in the living room sings an out of tune Turkish song, and it is time for my shower.

Clothes come off, one by one, perhaps even somewhat out of the ordinary order, the mirror stares on, the towels ready for my wet skin. I climb in and embrace the strings of water that seem to shoot through my conscience and clean all my regrets and pains. But the remedy is temporary because the memory of it all remains. "One slip and one ends up with a broken neck, how come no one ever thought of a shower insurance?" I ponder to myself.

Then that funny book comes to mind. I think its lines to myself, trying to remember every word. Somewhere in my mind a duo sings "you can not do it, you have failed again". But I tune them out like a radio station, like some old e mail print out I recycled, like a monitor I shut down even without shutting down the CPU cause I felt like living dangerously that day. Risking my equipment, risking my job, I unplugged the damn plastica electronica box out of that wall, because I had never done that before. To my despair, nothing went wrong, the monitor lived on.

I turn my head underneath the shower nozzle and my life is burdened by the experiences of others. I am constantly told to do this or that and to avoid all of the above that
involves thinking. My life is lived for me and then put into a package of four with one free at Wal-Mart.

I step out of the shower drops of water being licked by the A/C which is obviously turned down too low. I want to breathe and for that I take a pill. I knew it too, way before I had it coming. I got off the plane and they told me "you just wait, in four years, your allergies will drive you mad". It is almost like telling a child that he will support an unyielding erection in four years and not know what to do with the damn thing.

I climb into bed, one of the few good investments in my life; the pillow soaks my hair in, the comforter dances on my legs and I am in heaven, first row center. The A/C kicks in and crawls into my bed but he has a really restless sleep, I hear him leaving my bed several times during the night. All the better I think to myself his feet are too cold.

Mr Gardener come give me my fix
cause ma can no longer make cookies.

On that red day you began, I ended.
As yellow leaves fell on my forehead
I did not have a comb in hand.

The wild grass was long and soothing,
but soon green stains would be growing.

Everything rips, everything wrinkles
no wash can take away what I have seen.

What you and I hold here for less than a minute,
can only turn to grudges.

You said you knew the course of the sun,
I said I knew it's cooler in the shade.

You're always up for digging up the garden,
somehow I end up sleeping on my back all day.

The windows cave in, the ceiling weighs down
the fan beats that familiar beat.

Your callused hands stroke my winter shoulders,
as ice cubes shift in a glass of ice tea.

Mr Gardener, I can not say yes to all this.
Put that shovel down and let the wilting die free.

TJV
May 2002

I have been a coffee house addict since college. I am addicted to the buzz I get from the smell of stale coffee on concrete floors, smoke wafting over from the smoking section and the electrically charged air just like before a thunderstorm as strangers exchange glances between sips.

I spent a fair share of my days in spring 2002 in Starbucks at Astor place. No not that one on 3^rd Avenue, I am talking about the one on Lafayette. It was a few blocks from the Crunch Gym.

After lunch I would check into Starbucks like a dutiful worker clocks in at their workplace. This was a very busy location so the first thing I would do after I passed through the double doors was to go to walk around and find the best spot. Certain tables were more desirable over others mostly because they were near electrical outlets and had better views. I needed the outlet for my laptop that ran out of juice faster than I did on most afternoons.

After I picked the table I would sit at, I would run over and get a cup of coffee. Through the years I lived in New York City I have learned to love the bitterness of Starbucks coffee. Starbucks coffee to me tastes like a coffee roasting accident --always bitter, always verging on burnt; there's something endearing about coffee that's seen more heat than it should. My coffee soon changed color with a deluge of cream and sugar. I would pause a couple of seconds and watch the clouds of cream do their dance in my coffee every now and then. It truly is one of those experiences we skip out on due to our busy schedules. Everyone should set a couple of minutes a day to watch the cream dissolve in their coffee. Take my word for it, like a good Broadway show, this little dance is delightful to watch each time.

I spent most of the summer working on my book of Turkish poems. The book is still not finished. After years of writing Turkish poetry I have come to realize that this whole poetry writing business is really a difficult and draining experience. I must have written only ten poems all summer.

My poetry writing process has evolved through the years to become what it is right now. I used to write pretty out there stuff that usually meant little or nothing to others. I have since moved away from all that obscurity to more familiar ground. I most write about things I have experienced in my life these days. Most of my current poems have strong roots in my childhood experiences. The writing itself is rewarding but I also have found that the process of writing actually helps one's memory stay in shape. Even the process of writing these New York stories has helped me remember, sort out, cope with the two years I spent in the city.

Starbucks usually got busier after lunch and then quieted down for a few hours only to get worse after five. The busy commuters usually poured into to get themselves fancy caffeine fixes before their long commute. The New York University students came here to study for their classes and work on their group projects. The group projects were always the most fun to listen to. I would sit there working on my laptop while eavesdropping on the academic drama unfolding at the table next to mine. People in college just like others are very good at arguing over the darnest things.

There were always a healthy dose of first dates in the house. I could always tell these people apart from the body language. If things were going well, the two of them would be leaning in towards the table; if things were going down the tubes, there was much nervous smiling, looking around at people in the coffee house.

Occasionally a guy would walk in get a drink and sit at a table directly across mine, and stare me down all the way to the bottom of his drink. Some days I would glance back, some days I would ignore them completely. Some days interest from other people can be so overwhelming --much like a burden. Strange how something good can become an annoyance given a certain set of circumstances. If I were single, if my spirits were higher, if my work situation was looking up I probably would have been delighted to see someone interested in me. But I was none of these things, I was busy trying to keep a relationship going while looking for a job in a beyond hope economy.

At this point, I had delved so deep and dwelled so long in the have-nots in my life that I was unable to look at anything positively. Most people complain about seeing the glass half-empty. My complaint was the complete absence of the glass.

Trapped in my head, I just think and re-think things to the point that I can not even think of a way out of it all. In a way, the problems become the maze, and I willingly and eagerly throw away the map and convince myself that the maze is my home, and my endless wanderings in it is my life.

This was the routine of my life in the spring of 2002. I hated the way it all felt but it surrounded me so gently, slightly squeezing me in its embrace. It felt warm, and heavy like a comforter and I must have feared the cold outside because I stayed wrapped in my misery for far too long.