The Quietest Place in Manhattan

I missed last week’s entry in the whirlwind of my teacher, parents and friends visiting, so allow me to catch up.

The politics of the moment are braiding into an extraordinary narrative. I interviewed with my boss last December, the same week that Julian Assange published the largest batch of Wikileak cables, and now everywhere from the Middle East to the Midwest in engulfed in political upheaval.

My morning routine of waking up at 7 to catch Democracy Now’s news hour is an energizing motivator for the day’s work. I can imagine the thrill of someday waking with the satisfaction of knowing that I helped unfurl the day’s headlines for the sleepy-eyed, coffee-sipping nation.

This morning, a man from the NYPD security force gave our floor a twenty-minute lecture on “non-fire emergencies.” Listening to him list off evacuation policies suddenly made the tenth floor seem a lot high than I had previously perceived it. I cannot imagine what this city must have been on September 11, 2001.

The office has stopped serving as a professional environment, and has become social one where a lot of work happens to be accomplished. Something about my colleagues wearing sweatpants to work makes it difficult to maintain the icy wall of protocol. Instead, the station is a warm, although at times high-stress, workplace. There’s a level of political and social commonality that is implicit with a desire to work or volunteer at the station. The water cooler conversations range from the hidden powers of the mind to Egypt’s future concerning the Muslim Brotherhood with a curious lack of distinction in tone.

I’m quite fond of the disc jockeys, volunteers, editors, and managers. I have reason to believe the feeling is mutual, as a man at work who affectionately calls me jewel handed me a two-page poem ("U just keep on jewelling us up/pouring journalistic goodies N2 our cup"). I hope, although doubt, that the kindness and good humor at the station are reflective of the entire field of journalism.

My parents were invited up to see the office last Thursday. I was working in my boss’ office when I heard him say, “Hey, those two white people must be your folks.” It was strange to see them though the window, like Harry Potter paper dolls accidentally placed on a Lion King background. At any rate, I was very happy to see them, and we all went out to lunch with my boss who gave me the afternoon and Friday off. Bingo!

My parents and I had a power-tourist weekend of food, drink, museums, galleries, sightseeing and plays. A weekend here without financial restriction is very different from a normal weekend.

The highlight among the flurry of stimulation was visiting The Earth Room in SoHo, where my uncle’s childhood friend curates a studio filled with three feet of rich soil that covers all but an observation hall. The exhibit has existed for over thirty years, making it a rare token of stability in a neighborhood that reinvents itself every six months. I expected pretense, but found peace in the room that smelled of life. Bill, the curator, had a profound sense of well being that stemmed from living in harmony with this mass of dirt that he has maintained over the last two decades by raking and watering once a week. He said the soil’s acoustic properties make The Earth Room the quietest place in Manhattan.

The Age of Ophiuchus

Today I woke up early, walked to work while squinting down the sunrise, pondered the enormity of the city of New York, performed my internly duties, schlepped home on the 2 train after sundown and went to a concert in SoHo. Today was very similar to every other day here.

It’s been getting easier and easier to melt into the expressionless masses, but this weekend, my friends Ryan and Gus came to see the city, and they helped refresh my perspective. I see so many astounding things in a day here, that I schellack myself with a layer of tedium so that I don’t have a stroke every time I step outside.

We went to Chinatown where thousands of people thronged in ribbon-clogged streets around dragon floats and acrobats to celebrate the New Year. A man tied a live, five pound carp to a stick to which he also strung kale and red envelopes filled with money and wagged it over the beer-guzzling ceremonial fighters. I took cues from my friends’ mien and reminded myself to let in the cool things.

At two that night, a man followed us with a guitar on the vacant L train, plunking and howling “Come Together.” He was the first person I’ve given any money to. It felt good.

At work, I drafted up a tee-shirt design for the Al Jazeera partnership and their special combined Egypt coverage. The day Mubarak’s regime fell, my boss took me uptown on an adventure to seek evidence of the crumbling world. When we didn’t find any at the 110^th Street Egyptian Embassy, we went out for sushi in Brooklyn instead.

I forgot how much I enjoy drawing, and the office seemed happy with the shirt design. It feels good to help out and exceed their expectations by doing little side projects like organizing disheveled CD storage areas or running the phone pledge room, but I hope I’m not just training to become a great intern.

Sometimes I tell myself to be more assertive about wanting to get my hands dirty with the production side of the station, but it’s difficult when I’m already working so hard for so many hours and everyone seems so appreciative of my help. The general manager is always talking about hiring me out of college, and today my boss even suggested that I take part in a promotional photo shoot for the station as the “face of the future.”

Meanwhile the GOP released their version of the budget, which includes defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Try as we might, I doubt places like this can stay afloat with only the support of Viewers Like You. This prospect, combined with my own insecurities over my potential in the field, paints an uncertain horizon before my daily thrill of waking up and pretending to have the job I want.

At any rate, as the best fund drive pitchers teach me with every boisterous exclamation, self-doubt won’t get me anywhere. I’ll keep faith that one day, I might actually get to face the future as “the face of the future.”

The Only Left, Left

I’m already one third through with my time here. That seems impossible. Everyone else in my program is staying here through the end of the school year- roughly twice as long as I am- so I try to double their anxiety over clobbering their New York bucket lists. My main focus and majority of my time is spent at work from sunrise to sunset, but instead of kicking back with my Netflix and cat as I do at home, as soon as I push through the door at work, my stress revolves out and my plans for the night replace them.

The catch is that I always have to leave for work again in eleven hours, so there’s a lot of pressure on making sure I choose the very most fun thing to do that night. This leads to a significant amount of multi-tasking. For example, right now I’m writing this as I watch the Super Bowl (pausing for commercial breaks, of course).

Work is offering me a lot more responsibility than I anticipated. I work 45 hours a week, which I just realized is the longest time I’ve spent anywhere in the context of work. So far, I must say that it beats the heck out of waitressing. Less tips, more humanity.

The manager at the station told me that organizing the staff is near impossible because it’s an office filled with anarchists and everyone refuses to conform to traditional workplace norms. There’s a poster I’m fond of by the coffee machine that says, “Pacifists need a clean kitchen just like everyone else.” This element of the station carves out demand for the type of intern who compulsively cleans offices because she can’t stand staring at the coffee sloshed over the walls and three year old review copies of CDs with no cover art.

Other than writing and recording several promos that I hear broadcast daily in the station, the most exciting thing I’ve done was write a press release for Al Jazeera’s partnership with the station. The Egypt and Tunisia uprisings have drawn more attention to the under-broadcast news network, which my station serendipitously began streaming back in December.

As I google it now, the press release was picked up by seven news blogs in the last two days. It’s a powerful feeling to see your own words copied, pasted, and distributed without anyone confirming the details. It emphasizes the importance of triple checking your facts; a low grade seems so trivial compared to the curdling realization of a gaff in print.

As my housemate said, as far as she can tell, a lot of professional jobs in the media are amalgams of thousands of little tasks, and your success is based on your track record. So far so good, although I did accidentally post my boss’ cell phone number to one of the press releases and now he thinks he’ll have to change his number.

There are moments of frantic improvisation in the office, but the final product always streams from the transmitter smooth as glass. I wonder if all news outlets are so manic within. I’d like to see Terry Gross uprooting her desk over the sound quality on her John Waters interview.

Friday night is always a cathartic end to the workweek. My (short) friend Molly and I decided go to an Irish pub after work called Molly Wee. (That’s how big this city is; I’m still looking for a bar called Elaine Directionless.) Everyone at the Wee was from Ireland, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself by ordering some Merkin drink, so Molly texted her Irish bartender friend for a suggestion. He responded with an “Irish Kiss” which not only embarrassed me, when the barkeep got the wrong idea, but also landed me with an eight dollar green and syrupy concoction and a syrupy recollection of the rest of the night. Next time, I’ll stick to a Shirley Temple.