Rounds

I travel through the Swedish countryside, I make the rounds. I visit friends in old cities, I visit grandparents in the brick houses they built in the sixties, that are dirty now with age and lonely neglect. I walked past my old house the other day, and it looked smaller. Things inevitably change; too much remains the same. Stay away mere months and suddenly everyone is pregnant with a ring on their finger. It gives me the shivers--no longer because I feel as though I've fallen behind, as though I am missing out on that key ingredient they found in the fortune cookie, but because I don't want it for myself, and I don't see how they can.

How are these people so satisfied with jobs, with refurnished apartments and American Idol Friday nights, with the Way Things Are? I suspect they are happy, but all it does to me is make me want to scream at them until their patterned wallpaper tears off the walls. Dejected, I nod appreciatively and congratulate them on that upcoming wedding weekend in Paris.

I was nothing short of grateful as I boarded the train for Gothenburg, and I rolled back into my old home. Here it was, this city that I have so loved, and it felt as though I had never been away. Perhaps that is the thing, then. People come and go, they disappear and when you meet them again they are not the people you knew. I have long since ceased to mourn the passing of friends from my life; too frequently occuring, it became too painful in the long run. But cities, they remain. They welcome you back, whisper stories of your childhood or the street corner where you drunkenly stumbled home at dawn and giggled. The buildings stay, steadfast, and the tram lines will not be rerouted. I trust the cities to remain, and they do. Three beers later and I forgot I had ever been away.

But at night, finally catching a moment to myself and staring at the black ceiling, I think of New York and am overwhelmed with the happiness of going home soon. I remember a conversation with one of our old bartenders, who had just returned from his stint in England. How happy he was to be back. I thought, New York, honey, I ain't done with you yet. Hell, I haven't even begun.