A Perilous Expedition

I am off for a week in New York City this afternoon. Going alone.  With my cane.  Staying in a hotel because our studio is sold.  Resisted calling upon friends, because the last time when I stayed with a friend, we went everywhere together, and that was partly because I was terrified of being alone on the city streets and she did not like to see me doing so.  I have a compromise this time.  I have made a great number of "play dates" so that I will have an arm of someone to lean on, and what is more I have hired a young guy, an actor, to accompany me for a couple of mornings to museums.  At the moment, 6:50 AM, I don't want to go, completely nervous.  So this is how it ends up?  My doom and gloom personality has taken over in full force, but maybe, just maybe, a week from now upon my return, I will be bubbling with the recollections of all the great art I saw, friends I was with, and not the stumbling, the near falls, the missed connections, you know, all the things I am envisioning right now.  It doesn't help that Thursday morning, tomorrow, is predicted to be very rainy.  The young man whom I have engaged to join me for a couple of mornings has an entirely even tempered generous personality, and he already is bubbling with the "adventure" of it all.  The dear friends with whom I will spend time are all persons I have known for fifty years of more, so we have a lot to say to one another that will be a slight defense from the barrage of the politics of the presidential campaign.  I am so negative a person that I am already envisioning revolution in the streets from those who are convinced they have been cheated of their rightful election.  When I want to whine and say "I didn't want it all to end this way," meaning my life, I have to say sternly "get a grip! Think of all the dispossessed of the world, pushed and pulled and chased from pillar to post. I don't think someone sweating about flying up to New York and staying in a small residential hotel on the Upper West Side even gets speaking rights in today's dramas."  It doesn't stop me, however.  There will be no blog writing for a week, and if I fall down on the sidewalk and maybe go into a coma--it happened to a friend of mine in Los Angeles--then there may be longer delay or permanent blackout.  Friends of my friend in LA who fell on the street had only one question, such a Los Angeles moment: "Well, why was he walking?"