Sarah Cypher

View from Leena's apartment

You know you’re not in Oregon anymore when strangers don’t make eye contact. And you know you’re in New York when everything gets narrower, dirtier, and darker–starting with the brown tile stairs down to baggage claim at LaGuardia Airport.

On my obligatory I’m-here-alive phone call, E said I sounded nervous. I feel fine, I said. My calmness is the numb sort, like somebody gave the freak-out zone of my brain a shot of novocaine. That is what denial feels like, maybe: denial that I’ll be reading the first two pages of my novel, my query letter, and pitch out loud to strangers and literary agents tomorrow. That I’m here chasing the tail of a dream. That I always get really, really lost in Manhattan.

I’m telling myself that just here to have fun and meet some interesting people. Denial can’t be that bad, because to all parts of my brain, having fun sounds like a pretty good idea. And speaking of fun, it’s time for bed, because the fun starts at 5:40 a.m. tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.