Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Bhudda and Bed Bugs

Unfortunately, I have a broken digital camera right now, and won't be able to post any photos for a while. And any film that could be developed and then scanned to show you is somewhere in a plastic bag (via bed bug lifestyle), so that might take some time as well. But, I've still got some things that are important to me. My dog, who is the most adorable wonderful animal in the whole universe, a roof over my head, which as you know, does not come so easy in the big apple, the music, and the people I love. Sounds cheesy, but it's true. Things have been tough lately and it's really hard to count your blessings, but there are a lot of things I have to be grateful for as well. I've been going to a meditation group every monday called the I.D. (Inter-Dependence) Project that dave's been a part of for a while now. And this week's discussion was particularly impressive on my life. The theme was Cynicism and Skepticism. Obviously I am prone to both, but lately, especially the former. I have a gift for seeing all negativity in a situation and then feeling almost wise for knowing the worst. We discussed how skepticism was an inherent part of Buddhism and how without asking questions, there can be nothing learned at the end of the day, and you will not have gotten further in your journey of knowledge. But we also discussed the danger of having only cynicism and no faith, no ability to believe in change and growth. That actually, skepticism, or as they call it, "the great doubt," is just the other side of the coin to faith. This really resonated with me. Because after many years of being brought up under the Jewish belief that G-d is the unyielding "rock" of your existence...the shoulders that hold the world together, I realize now that if I were to have faith in something, it would be faith in the yielding, the natural cycles of change that occur constantly. If you trust that things are fluid rather than stagnant, you won't be disappointed quite so much.

So. How can I apply this to my life? I'm living out of bags, and I can barely find a pair of socks to put on my feet each morning. I'm still tossing an turning every night on a plastic-covered mattress with nothing to rest my head on. I'm living in an apartment building where my downstairs neighbor can't even afford to do all of his laundry so the exterminator can come spray his place for bed bugs too. Jerry, the old, slightly mentally impaired man below us who has lived here for 40 years, who is living off welfare cannot even afford to have his 20 year old TV repaired and wants to have Dave help him carry it down stairs to take to the repair men, but not until his check has arrived. I'm living in a building full of want and lack. This is the Cynic in me. Where the voice inside of me says, this is the world, and it has nowhere to go.
But if I were to really listen to the the other side of myself; the one of faith, I would know to trust that things are in flux as I speak. Everything is shifting and rearranging, and soon another batch of uncomfortable untimely things will probably happen, but I might be sleeping on a very plush bed with pillows, bug free. And Jerry will have gotten his TV fixed.

So this is my challenge for the next few weeks. Look at the big picture, and the small things will start to get smaller.

Friday, September 5, 2008

bed bug-a-thon

I haven't been writing the past few days because I couldn't decide whether to lie about how hard things have been or to actually sit down and tell it how it is. But then I realized like an idiot, that it's my blog, my story, not anyone else's. So why would I hesitate to write what's true? It's a funny inclination I have to avoid problems. Therefore, if I don't display the problems on an internet journal, then the problem exists a little less in my life, right?

Fuck it.

Bed bugs have taken over our life. When we came back from tour, Dave noticed he was getting bites again. (I say again, because we thought we had had them a couple months ago but got rid of them). So we called the landlord, and we eventually scheduled the exterminator to come. What I didn't realize before this started is how draining the bed bug war is. Not only do you have to wash every item of clothing or cloth thing that you own, but you have to bag everything you own for a while and live out of trash bags until the problem has vanished. The night we were preparing for all this, we both had several break downs after having lifted the heaviest laundry loads up and down stairs, vacuuming books, emptying drawers of important photos and papers, and clearing our pantry. We might as well have moved in one day, we were exhausted.
Then at 3:30 in the morning, as dave was coming back from a walk with Roger, he noticed his bike was missing, and the only evidence left was his now cut chain. Imagine our chagrin when he walks inside and shows me the broken chain. That's just too much for one day. There should be a limit on shitty things that occur to a person on a given day or week.
But they always seem to collide into one shit chasm, don't they?

But things are looking up, I hope. We got the bike back, miraculously. Or not, because the idiot who stole it rode around on it every night two blocks away, so about 4 of our neighbors noticed and told us about it. Finally, our friend Ashely saw him riding around and at that moment called dave while he was at an interview, and the cops drove him over to the scene, and he politely and carefully took his bike back and rode off into the Bushwick sunset.

The bugs: the guy came and exterminated, supposedly. He sprayed the hell out of our apartment with this liquid chemical that Roger, and even we, were not allowed to walk barefood on for two whole days. We left the house to eat at Fiore, the place I work. (If you ever want really great, affordable Italian food while in NY, go there! Fiore restaurant on grand st. in Williamsburg, BK)

So we are living out of bags, sleeping on a plastic bed with no pillows or blankets, and the apartment seems bare. But, no bites for the past two nights! We've had some consolation through the indulgence of television via netflix and internet. ie: Weeds season 3, Daily Show, and DNC and RNC speeches.
We haven't been able to practice our music all that much, but we're getting back to it slowly. There's no way a bed bug could ever defeat the duo Chicken Little! No way no how.

Pictures from tour still on hold since I had to put the film canisters in a bag somewhere. Thanks for being my virtual shrink today everyone. May you live a bug-free life.