Plans Change, Searches are Abandoned, Favor the Physical

Everything I read about the Fulbright said: Plans change. You'll labor over this proposal but through the course of your year abroad, it will all change. I didn't get that Fulbright, which I suppose was the first change, and again my plans have changed. I was going to go to New York, see old friends, go to Princeton, do research on Alejandra Pizarnik. I was going to write blog posts about the point where informational professionalism, poetry, and travel intersect.

I guess it started when I moved from Cricket's in Bushwick to Phil's in Hell's Kitchen on Monday - couldn't go to Princeton that day. I think I might have been too culture-shocked from living in a tiny chamber dry-walled off from a loft for 3 days in Bushwick to even consider it (Cricket, guru Jew of New York race said it best: no "normal white people" live in Bushwick - the only white people are "hipsters"). Then, Cricket's request for her trial to go to court on Wednesday instead of Tuesday was granted by the Judge, so she got Tuesday off and we went to Coney Island - couldn't go to Princeton that day. Tuesday night, as Phil was trying to recover from his horrible day at work, I was frantically trying to figure out if I could even see Alejandra's things the next day - would they be paged that quickly, or should I have already figured out what boxes I wanted to see and have put in the request? (That was going to be the topic of the blog post that will never get written - why do libraries make it so difficult to figure out how to access their collections? I am a library professional and no matter how many times I read all the web sites they sent me, I couldn't get a clear answer.) Then Google eventually told me it would take 3 hours one way to get to Princeton via public transit. I was already crapping my pants so hard about my upcoming flight to Argentina that I couldn't fathom spending 6 hours in 100+ degree heat trying to get to and from a library that may or may not be able to produce some papers I wasn't even sure I needed to consult. (That's the other thing: I was utterly unprepared for the devastation the NY heat wave would have on my San-Francisco-coldest-winter-summer biosystem.)

As Phil was heading out the door to work on Wednesday morning, he woke me up to see what my plans were. I reluctantly gave up the ghost - Alejandra's ghost - and I put it this way: it's so easy to come up with some idealized plan when you're sitting alone in the Government Documents room of a different library across the country. At 8:15 EST in a king sized bed on West 43rd and 9th Ave, I knew I couldn't spend my last full day in the States chasing that idealization, even at the cost of letting myself down (the hardest part: letting go of the principle). So I got up and started preparing for going to another country. I did my usual Google trolling to find answers to currency exchange rates to how best to get from Manhattan to Newark Airport. I "prepared" by spending hours online, moving money around in bank accounts, reading reports of first contact at the Buenos Aires Int'l Airport (EZE), and looking up the address of the apartment I would stay at in Buenos Aires.

Later that day, I actually walked through Port Authority (only two blocks from Phil's) and noticed all the signs: bus to Newark, this way. I found out how long it takes: 30 minutes. One bus, $16. All that stupid Googling never suggested this! The trip plan function on Google maps, About.com, the Newark Airport website: they all said take the subway to Penn Station to Amtrak to AirTran - oh it's so easy and cheap! Fast forward to the next day. Despite my freaked out exit off the Newark Airport bus at Port Authority and the rushed and sweaty jaunt back to Phil's to recover my cell phone, which I had left charging on his nightstand, I couldn't help but wonder: what would the lady at the info desk of Port Authority have said if I had asked her how to get to Princeton instead of Google. Information Professional lesson #1: Don't rely on the internet for things best done in person. No, scratch that. Revise what you think is best done in person and what is best done on the internet. Life ain't no academic database you can assume you've mastered, so live in the physical. Even if it means squashing reflexes and bypassing social anxiety.

And, oh yeah. I made it back to the next Newark Airport bus with my phone and plenty of time to spare. Only my clammy, moist clothes were the worst for it.