Ten Years Ago Today & Now

Ten Years Ago Today: My Last Gathering of Friends in NYC

March 14, 2015

My birthday is on the 9th, but I had my farewell gathering the night before my last flight out of New York City, after having moved to the area a mere six weeks after returning from senior year of art school, spent in Rome during the pre-internet era, 1988 and 1989. I was 23 when I arrived and 48 when I left, blissfully unaware of the realities of ageism at the time. That's another story.

We met at D.B..A., a bar literally around the corner from my little studio, "The Hovel". I just checked and it is amazingly still open at its original First Avenue location! Nearly everything about the city I so loved - and for ages never imagined myself leaving - has been obliterated and erased. By time, and the ongoing destruction of late stage capitalism, accelerated with the big Bankster crash of 2008/2009, and has never slowed since. 

Juliet, Me & Gina

I lost access to a ton of old pictures on a backup drive awhile back & didn't have access to any from that night. I got this one from Nako, another dear friend I've been close to since RISD.

When it first opened I thought DBA was uncool¹. Judging by the crowd, I used to joke that it was an UWS (Upper West Side, new money, corporate crowd) outpost in the East Village. I was in my late 20s then. By the time I left, it was a favorite place. I brought Baby Henry there, during the summer of 2014, the first of his existence. I was with an old friend I'd bumped into that afternoon, and we went and had a couple pints in the "garden", the enclosed patio space behind the bar, surrounded by the walls of the tenement building 'hood. Henry was the hit of the place, and made the rounds socializing that night. They had big picnic tables and others the smaller bistro type. Nick and I were at one end of the former, and a few younger ladies were at the other. Henry met all of them first. 

We were leaving and one sang out, Henry brought this whole garden together!

Being that it was so close to my apartment, as well as the F-train, and so chill - D.B.A. was my perfect choice for a forever farewell. After the party, Gina & Danny came went back to hang out with me for a couple moments. The empty, crumbling Hovel seemed like a movie set once it'd been cleared of most of my belongings. I used a flat, rate shipper and they'd boxed up my life about five days before I left. I had a camping-size inflatable mattress, a pillow, and one old blanket, that I abandoned. Besides that there was one big, cheap, lightweight suitcase, Henry and his travel case and a flimsy carry-on for my laptop, chargers and travel purse.

Ten Years Later Last Night: My First Lunar Eclipse / Blood Moon

Got to watch the entire lunar eclipse last night with Charlie. The eclipse fell on the Virgo full moon, in the month of Pisces. My chart is sun, moon, and Mercury all in Pisces, and also all in the 6th house of Virgo, which is also my rising sign. I've like to joke that I am a "well organized, crazy person."

Yesterday I was out of sorts. I'd hardly slept at all the night before & sunk into a deep, full day depression. I decided to go with it, to give into the sloth, and just rest. I didn't work on any design upskilling. I didn't sketch. I didn't exercise and I didn't cook. 

I've been practicing some short full & new moon rituals every month since last December. When is the next moon? I wondered. I looked. I'd neglected to schedule it! The peak happened to be at 10:55pm here in the Pacific Northwest, and though we'd had interesting weather all day, we had a break in thick cloud banks of the evening. I went on the deck outside Charlie's bedroom, on the 2nd floor. Is that a cloud on the bottom or is the lunar eclipse in progress?

We watched it go from bring full mood to red. For the first half I'd set my watch timer every five minutes and see how far the the shadow had moved. Toward the end, I sat in a supported malasana squat to watch and Charlie sat on a portable chair. Took a bit under an hour and then a thick cloud bank moved in & it was past midnight, so party was over.

I'd decided to wait to burn my "full moon release" notes this morning. I drew a little scribble sketch of last night. I might try to flesh that out in Procreate later. I see all these illustrators getting booked and paid for these crude, childlike styles. Can I do that? Worth a shot. 

* Please excuse poor grammar, typos, and other literary misfortunes. This was written entirely without the help of chatGPT.

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^{1 A search has reminded me that D.B.A. opened in 1995.}