I've been sort of in a reminiscing mood lately, going through old pictures and whatnot, thinking about the "good old days," whenever those were. Of course, I realize they weren't so good, or so old, but there's something I definitely miss about the recent past, the first few years I was in New York. My "first" New York life, as it were. It mostly consisted of love/hate relationships: Living in Park Slope with a revolving cast of roommates- some pyschotic, some Ukrainian, some friends, some friends of brothers, etc; going to grad school, going out drinking very very often, frequenting Great Lakes, having a future, hanging out with a lot of different people. But all those things are now gone. Well, the future part is, by nature, still there theoretically. But Great Lakes, formerly my favorite bar ever, has officially jumped the shark, as they say. Most would say this happened a few years ago, but there was a definite revival in 2002, up until the smoking ban, which, for good or bad, really changed the feelings of bars. I like my bars to have a mixture of vices. Now it's just booze. Well, booze and lust. Still, it's not the same. But the real blow to the bar is the departure of the key bartenders, namely Ray, who was responsible for stocking the jukebox with all our indie rock favorites and took them all with him after a falling out with the owners. He's apparently opening his own place, which is not surprising. He was really raking it in at the Lakes, I think.
Anyway, not that my current everyday life doesn't have it's own triumphs and defeats, and in reality it's by far a superior lifestyle that I'm living now. But I kind of miss the quiet desperation of that first phase. Actually, what I miss is the fun i managed to have despite the quiet desperation. Though that's what ended this phase of course, as I had to get the hell out of there for my own sanity. Which started Phase Two, which was the year in Greenpoint. And now Phase Three: Stability. There's something about stability that makes one long for the quiet desperation. A fools view, though.Something I've been thinking about in relation to all this reminiscing are the letters I've written. I don't remember the last time I sat down and wrote a letter. It used to be my forte, I think. I wrote a pretty damn good letter. The bulk of the letters I ever wrote, I think I wrote to my friend Michelle, in the first year or so after we first met in 1992. It's so odd that I see her regularly now, after seeing her maybe five times in the first ten years since we met. I just wish I could read some of the letters I wrote in the past. With email, it's easy. I can just go to the sent folder or whatever. But with the letters, you write them, maybe read them once, then they're gone forever. I have boxes of other people's letters, and many of them reference things I wrote, and I'd really like to be able to go through them sequentially and experience the letters as a whole. It'd definitely be interesting from a personal growth (or regression) viewpoint.
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