Life Inside a Music Box

Heavy clouds over Manhattan. The Empire State nowhere to be seen, but you don't look for it anyway because your head is kept down to avoid being washed over by the floods pouring from the skies. Turn a corner and get swept off in a wind gust. Pay too much attention to opening the broken umbrella and drop the envelope in a huge puddle, mere minutes before reaching the post office and now the stamp glue won't stick. Of course today is the day the Give-Money-To-Poor-Children Canvasser gets me at Union Square, and my head lined with fever cotton I can't interact appropriately. He stands just a little too close to me while enthusiastically talking, and all I can think is that he doesn't know how many germs are making their way from my breath to his at this moment. That'll teach him to try to save Children. Return home with a full grocery bag and nothing to eat, while the internet refuses to work; is that humane? Try to breathe but the lung machine has decided to go on vacation, and I take every pill I can find to bring it back.

But then, I walk to the subway. I trip down the stairs to the dry warm space below, weave through college kids who just came to New York and have no idea what's in store for them, and stand at the platform, looking at old mosaic tiles and rivers of garbage between the rails. I ride through the underground and emerge where the buildings are tall, and disappear in the gray beyond. Where millions of people run to their individual destinations and a bus load of cheap ponchos takes in the sights. I remember where I am. This is me, in New York. This is me, living the dream. Every day now, I spend here, and it is my life. And the thought made my heart swell in my congested chest, made my feet tingle through the cold wetness. So that on this day when I should've just given up and gone back to bed, I found myself with a smile on my face and a bounce in my step, grateful to the very tips of my split ends.

It may only be the Honeymoon. At some point the City, or I, will have to prove we really want this relationship to work out and are willing to fight for it. At some point it won't be enough just to be here, to be happy. But that moment isn't here yet. So I'll enjoy the simple delight, while I can. But I'll toss the umbrella as soon as I can find a trashcan that isn't already full of them.