Liz left today. She should be on an airplane heading for St. Louis right about now. So far, I haven't completely panicked, but I'm pretty sure it's only a matter of time. I am completely on my own in New York City.
Last night I went to church at Redeemer. It's a reformed church in Manhattan that I had heard a lot of good things about. Scott Sauls, who used to teach at Riverside in St. Louis, is a pastor there now. I decided I wanted to find a church while I am here, so Redeemer seemed like a good place to start. Unfortunately, it meets in multiple locations on different campuses, and I got the time/location combination wrong so I only caught the last half hour or so. But Scott was preaching and it was really good. He was talking about Hagar in the wilderness and about how she only had two choices: return to complete dysfunction or die. Scott said that sometimes God himself pins us down in dire circumstances because he knows it is where we need to be. I can't help wondering if my job/apartment search/House of Cats is just such a thing. Scott also this article that one of his friends from seminary wrote about being single. She said that her theme verse was this: "If any man would come after me, let him." I thought that was hilarious.
Anyway, I met some folks at Redeemer and they invited me to their small group on the Upper East Side Thursday night. I really want to go, but I'm not entirely sure about riding the subway from UES all the way around Manhattan and back down to the tip of Brooklyn from 10 to 11 p.m. It seems like I get whistled at more than necessary. It kind of spooks me. When I was with Liz, it was okay, but now I'm on my own. And apart from the catcalls, the biggest problem I have with the subways is finding the actual stations. They're underground... It's not like they just stand out on the horizon! Even with my maps (I have 2), I still get all mixed up. It usually takes me longer to locate a station than to actually figure out where I'm going. Still, I've taken like 20 trains so far and I haven't gotten on the wrong one once! Although, that was largely because of Liz. So anyway, I don't know whether to go make friends at this small group or not.
Last night at Redeemer, I looked in the classifieds (the church is so big they have their own classifieds). There are a few apartment sublets. I'm thinking about calling, but I don't want to completely alienate my aunt. She called the plumber today, which I appreciate, although I don't think she understands that plumbing won't fix the permanent stench permeating her house. Also, a sublet would be another nine hundred bucks, which I could really use to buy another salad.
Yesterday I went to class. It was good to be forced to sit down and write something. In general, I feel like, "I'm in New York! I need to SEE everything, not sit in front of my laptop and write!!" But yesterday in class I was given a topic and forced to write. I'm no Gertrude Stein or anything, but I think, off the cuff, that what I wrote was pretty damn good. In any case, everyone laughed and applauded at the end (we had to read it out loud). And just to toot my own horn here, no one else got any applause. And some people even got, "You didn't really follow the directions." But not me. I'm a genius. But then I was compared to David Sedaris and it occurred to me that what they were mostly applauding wasn't what I wrote but how I delivered it (half of DS's success comes from the fact that his voice is so high-pitched and puny and he has great comedic timing).
Tonight I am going to meet one of my friends from Wheaton days in Greenwich Village, and tomorrow will be my first ever Catholic mass (I promised Aunt Jean I'd go). Yikes. Better pray for me :)
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