The Magic

How did Friday night become my constant salvation? After a week of falling, tumbling helplessly and grasping for branches and weak grass roots along the ravine, finally resigning and thinking perhaps it would be best if I stayed home and simply went to bed.

But we made our way through the dark, quiet Greenpoint streets to an abandoned convent where the chapel was filled with guitars. Walking closely together, we explored the eery building, softly stepping down darkened corridors and peaking into decrepit dormitory rooms. Everywhere whispers about the ghost of a nun on the third floor; no one went there alone.

And then the music started, careful harmonies streaming through stained glass windows, one gravelly voice making the house silent, and my mind burst into words. I scrambled for a pen but ended up writing with an eyeliner in the back pages of my current subway read.

For the entire gig, I sat mesmerized by the Moment, by the beauty of the music and the emotion of the room. Incense smoke and creaking chairs. Films of the old West and beads of sweat along the singer's closed eyelids. Having become so jaded, so cynical, I reveled in allowing myself to be swept away. To sit in a small, abandoned convent in Brooklyn, New York, and remember what this Life is.

We buy so easily into the myths, into the painted portraits of our role models, our heroes, our gods. We try to emulate them by painting ourselves the same way. But when the real moments arrive, you know them instantly. When the Magic strikes your heart, you can close your eyes; you are Home.

Crumbling

My body envelops the dark storm clouds, numbs my tongue, silences my words. My psyche can sense its leaves tremble and closes its door from the draft. There is certainly no lack of emotion, of experience. New York sizzles vibrantly in my field of vision, stories flow through my conscious.

But once the door is shut, it is safest to simply hold your breath and let the nightmare pass. I will wake up, and the words with allow themselves to be assembled on these pages once again.

They have to. What else am I to do?

After a Day of Too Much Sun

Another time, another year. Same me. Same you.

Take You Away

I get too easily wrapped up. In stories, fantasies, climate. I spend hours in a whole other world and when I am forced back to the actual one, I get disoriented, dizzy. It seems it would be easy to pull myself together and work on this reality, but I never seem able.

Instead I get overwhelmed at the prospect. Of Life, of what it is and where I fit in it. I retreat, fear the social circles and lovely adventures around me. They make me happy, for the moment, but they do not help me sort anything out; they merely confuse me. I drown in the impressions that swim sickeningly around me, hold my head under the surface, tease me until I collapse, exhausted, on my bed and take another break. Read another book. Escape into yet another world for a few hours, pretend all this around me can be staved off by merely ignoring it.

It works, for a while you know. It's only, when it comes back around, its force is so much worse. I hold my breath, brace myself.

To Deliberate

The Good Lord set aside Sundays for brunch, so who were we to disobey. We went to the recently moved soul food place on Seventh Ave, and I smiled to see chicken-and-waffles on the menu. Stored the information for when it may be asked of me.

It was a late night on the Sunset Strip, L.A., that a white minivan pulled up to us, where we stumled home along the curb. A strange-looking boy stuck his head out the window and asked us where he and the rest of his haphazard band could find some chicken and waffles. Having had a little too much Jack Daniels, I knew better than to trust my senses, and I had to ask him to repeat his question several times before I was sure he was asking for what it sounded like. I'd never heard of such madness, nor could I wrap my head around it now.

Needless to say, we couldn't help them out with their quest. But when they asked us to jump in the back of their van and come back to their hotel for an after-party, we were all smiles and senses of adventure. We climbed in with their drumset, their saxophones and random members, and we set off into the night.


There is magic in every moment. One day, you will look back on a single second of your life, and it will sparkle, even if you didn't expect it to ever do so when it happened. That's why you persevere. That's why you make it one more day, even though some days it's more of a struggle than you think you can handle. Tomorrow, you may get the sparkle, and you wouldn't want to miss it.

Last night, I fell asleep with my head by the window, gazing at the lightning as my chest vibrated with the thunder overhead. Tonight, the heat broke, the air changed and I can finally keep my window open; I breathe it in wholly. Tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, I will get my sparkle. I wouldn't want to miss it for the world.

Didn't Even Need Therapy

A Joke, I Suppose

We sat on the Brooklyn rooftop, counting our dollars, and just when we'd closed the tab, the storm came. We'd seen the lightning approaching, heard the rumors that Manhattan was already drenched, and we planned our escape to the nearest beer hall. The torrent, when it finally came, drenched our open-toed shoes, our meticulously crafted hairdos, our newly acquired cameras, but we were grateful for the supposed break in motionless air and hundred-percent humidity. An hour later, in another smoky patio, we concluded that the tropical climate would not be discouraged so easily.
Our group was immense, so many people speaking my own language that I forgot, for a while, where I was. But when she asked Do you just get used to it?, I said No. I never get over the magic of calling this home.
I jumped out of the cab at Bleecker Street and skipped the last few steps to my door. When we say goodbye to these friends in a few days, when they return to their Normal lives and New York is just a memory of a Thing they did, we will still be here. I will still be here, calling this place home.
The best thing about leaving this place, I told him, is knowing I'll be coming back.

A Fleeting Glimpse

I knew I had to get myself out of the room, out of this tiny space where I spend far too much time. The walls were closing in. Long, purposeful steps lead me to Union Square, to the bookstore which is my haven and which promises me refuge if only I make it in through its wooden doors.

But the air conditioned building, with its soft carpets and harmless music, afforded me little comfort today. I paced its shelves, shifted positions in the chairs where I'd stacked my treasures. Jaw clenched, eyebrows hardened, I went back out into the blinding sunlight, the impossible heat of New York asphalt. And I didn't know where to turn.

It was thus I found myself at my most guilty of retail pleasures: I was perusing the aisles of Kmart. This place that doesn't match my view of the world, nor my view of myself in it, this place that I don't want to support, this place that reminds me of my simple upbringing out west; this is where I come to feel a twinge of nostalgia, and the comforts of home.

Looking for thumbtacks, I walked up and down school supply-aisles, and my heart stung with the desire to merely be on summer holiday, to prepare for back-to-school and How will I decorate my locker this year? I looked at every single useless item of unecessary consumption, trying to rationalize a need, while my mind unwound in the silence. Couldn't I just have been allowed to be grateful for such a simple life? Lunches for the kids and Kmart errands in the afternoons. Keep my world small, maintainable, comfortable.

I know I cannot choose that life; I know I couldn't sink into its ease even if I wanted to. I would be clawing at the walls before sundown. (or worse, I would resent them.) But as I walked around this store, with its colorful plastic toys, giant-sized dog food bags and patio furniture, it hurt me so much to feel how that life has just slipped through my fingers.

Numb to the core, my jaws more locked in their angry face than before, I couldn't even walk home. I took the long way home on the train, staring straight into the nothingness, and I thought This, too, shall pass.

Comfortably Numb

Kinetics

I see beyond the shallow defenses; I know their intentions. But how helpless I am at their hands, their impulses carry me away like a rip tide in the middle of blissful summer, and I go gladly.

I know I keep pushing the boundaries, pushing the deadlines. I used to think this would change me, and now I wait for the next step to get me in line, he says as we both stumble into a bar, hungover from tequila shots and ready to be revived with beer sobriety. I sigh; I knew full well nothing would change with legal papers, with societal approval. But as I drag my exhausted body home in the early evening, I gaze at my glass house and return my pebbles to their pocketed safety. Who am I to shake my head? If I only make it to New York, I will have arrived, and why would I run from that?

My toes tingle. I make plans to move, to toss half my possessions and find somewhere new. I consider the neighborhoods, the streets, the boroughs. At the party, she asks me why I don't just stay in Australia after my vacation, why I would leave. Her question gnaws at me through the intoxicated mists, and I have no good answer. An entire continent spreads before me, vast deserts and clean slates. Perhaps I will find the answer there.

I long to scratch the itch, but I know full well I will leave unsatisfied. Run, run as fast as you can. You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man. Although, of course, in the end.. wasn't he eaten, after all?

11211

Exhausted feet collapse in their west village bed; hours of dancing blackened their soles beyond recognition. The train car was empty as we crossed the Williamsburg bridge, and I ran the entire car just because I could. Such ideas will be created when the mind is tired and buzzing, and dear friends shout encouragements along the way.

We stood on the roof top and gazed out at Manhattan. Tears in her eyes, she said do you see how Big this is? and I knew what she meant. Ten floors up, I didn't dare look down.

For a while, my entire day was washed away, my every doubt laid to rest. We had another shot of tequila, turned up the music, and I let New York blow me away.

Tumble and Fall

Summer is divine in its unending sunlight and carefree nights. The days pass quickly, so quickly, and I jump at every occasion to celebrate, indulge, play. But at the back of my heart, the helpless girl who is me scrambles to keep up, to stay afloat when there isn't time to sink into the quicksand. I love the quicksand, I need to revel in it, to feel like myself.

It makes the moments of quiet solitude that much more unbearable. Knowing I haven't the time to fall, I keep myself occupied until the next party, the next event on the social calendar. I close the door and teeter on the edge, unable to commit to locking it completely, but unwilling to pass up the opportunity.

My doorbell rings. Unannounced visitors trip up the stairs and bring their sun-soaked joy into my dusty apartment. And I am glad to see them; I am glad to have them in my life. But my soul was just allowing itself to sink, and when they leave, the air is in a whirl. The words racing in my mind are too many; I try to release them into my journal but cannot get myself to do it properly, honestly.

I put away the books, turn off the music. It's time to get ready for the next party. I get in the shower, wash the grime off my eyes. Put on a smile. Brace myself for good times.

So You Want to Be a Writer

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.


if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

-Charles Bukowski,
sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way

To Let It Go

Cursor blinking, how bright the screen is when empty, when no words fill it. I have been staring at it for what seems like hours, mind racing, body overrun by words and scattered fragments of feelings, in need of literary arrangement in order to be released. And yet nothing.

How trite words will seem when forced, how obvious the hidden intentions. As though I could paint a different sunset and believe myself in the process.

I pack my easel, my palette, and I pick up my pen. The world in which the cursor lives is not the Real one, my stories always brushed and color-corrected. In ink, I've no need for embellishment, for secrecy. I forget, sometimes. Remembering, I am instantly relieved. The words begin to trickle.

On Standing Still

Weeks and weeks of visits over, I begin to settle back into my own life, and there it is, that familiar itch. Sneaking up on me from around the corners, whispering questions of Where next? and What now? Only three weeks from my next trip, my mother calls and asks me to come home sometime soon. Just for a weekend, just for a spell. How tempted I am. Distract yourself with packing and unpacking, and you can ignore completely the life you have.

My summer trip to the homeland beckons, my maybe-maybe winter trip to Oz, about which I have spent countless hours in the past few days planning, dreaming, fantasizing. I forget that I am here, that this is the life. Like a shark, I fear if I stay still too long I may asphyxiate.

The kitchen smells of broccoli soup and onions; it is all my cupboards can afford me. I sink into the scent, remembering countless summers of impoverished freedom full of vegetable soup; I remember how I loved them all. I tell my mother I won't be coming. I tell myself I love this summer, this City, this Life, and I have nothing from which I need to run.

For once, I believe myself. For once, I am entirely right.

If I Could Come Home

We took a boat to IKEA today, to the mother ship. I helplessly stuffed my bags with moderately vital trinkets and herring jars; we filled up on obligatory meatballs and patriotism. I reminded myself that I would be there soon enough, that I needn't stock up for winter famine. I reigned myself in.

All these visits, all these beautiful angels and connections to the Life-that-was. My roots begin to untangle, the jellyfish tentacles pull away and cease to sting as violently as they did. Some days I do not miss what was. After a lifetime of reveling in the pain of separation, I settle into the calm of the aftermath.

I had a short moment today, after leaving one friend in Chelsea and trudging towards another in that garden on Charles, when I looked up and saw the Empire State being lit, when I paused and realized that this is my life and that this life is mine, when I was completely overwhelmed. How glad I am to live in New York. How glad I am to live. Everything else, fades in comparison.

Lackawanna

After such an insanely hot week, the heat finally broke, little breezes nestling into the trees outside my windows. We made our way across tricky railroad tracks leading straight into the water and climbed up to the top of the old boat. A pitcher of sangria, a smoke, and the sun slowly sank on the other side of the Hudson until twilight crept in through the Chelsea streets. It was a day when I had needed to do so many other things. But sitting there in the warm sunlight and the air of the Atlantic, I had no regrets.

I rode at the very front of the C the other day, one of those old trains with a window straight ahead. I stood there and stared, as we made our way through the deep dark tunnels of New York City, through this labyrinth that amazes me to childlike wonder. We passed other trains in the dark night, with people going elsewhere on other levels. Every pole we passed had some person's tag; I envied them immensely for having allowed themselves to delve into the depths on their own, unsupervised, unprotected by steel walls and safety announcements. I held my breath. Suddenly, we turned a corner, and light flooded the window, the beginning of the West 4th platform unwinding ahead. Again a familiar place, out of the all-too brief respite, the break from Reality. I sighed, gathered up my things, my heart, stepped out and walked home.

Sometimes, if I think too much about the Life, the futility, the inactivity of my days, it builds up in my chest, I want to scream.

Like the Way It Likes to Rain

News headlines twitter heat advisories, people fear blackouts, no one dares leave the confines of the reach of the A/C. Open the door to the outside world and feel as though you've hit a brick wall of warm. Five minutes later, and no one will know how much time you spent on your hair, your dress, your polished, cool exterior. When the air is running a fever, your body begins to boil.

Ten minutes into my day, I'm sweating so much it doesn't actually matter anymore. I get on the one train car without a/c, and I cannot be bothered to move. I sit there, bobbing my head to the music, but my breath is slow, calculated. Later, as we walk along the river, trying to catch at least a slight breeze, at least a slight lowering of temperature in the night, my lips taste of salt. My chest glistens, my hair is damp.

I think of the Finns, and how wise they are. They scoff at our constant showering, (only the sauna will get you clean, they say) and I can't help but think they have a point. At the end of the night, how cleansed I feel. I imagine every dusty particle within me, evaporated. And with them, every bad thought and sad feeling. Washed away and drifting out to sea.

I sink into a harmless easy read, instead. My skin soft like a baby's, I sleep before I can even turn the page.

Let It Ring Some More

How easily music can bowl me over.

Years later, and I still remember that December night on 28th and Lex. When the world crashed down on me and I sat on the cold, dirty floor of the terrace, crying for hours and listening to Staind and Nirvana on repeat. How my entire body shook but my lips still mouthed the words, because they were the only thing keeping me attached to reality.

How years of moving between America and Sweden always ended up being about the music. That my tastes didn't belong anywhere, and, subsequently, neither did I. How many nights were spent on the floor, with my sad excuse for a CD player, wishing I was a thousand miles away, and how that song just reminded me of it.

I remember being very young and having just fallen in love with Mozart. I'd pick up the turntable needle, carefully, and move it back one track; every time raising the volume a little more, until finally, the aria would vibrate through my fingers and make my heart explode. I thought I had never felt anything more beautiful, until my teenage heart sank deep into choral notes and Togetherness. As I stood in the midst of a hundred others, my very spine shivered; I thought perhaps life would overwhelm me until I could take no more. Perhaps music agitated the adolescent tendency to dramatize; perhaps music is what saved me.

And then all that damned New York music. Sitting in my first apartment in Gothenburg, 19 and already world-weary, 19 and already tired of the stability, listening to Ryan Adams and dreaming that one day I would be there, too. Sitting in my last apartment in Gothenburg, 24 and fearing my adventure was over, 24 and thinking I'd never have New York again and Regina was just a reminder of what I'd lost. How the very same songs made me giggle three years later, back on Manhattan soil and home.

Sometimes I still think I won't make it. I who am this cynical, rational person and not easily swayed. If I allow myself to crank the music up too loud... I fear I will be swept away for good. I suspect I might not even mind.

For a Sunbeam

All the windows of the cab were down; I didn't have the heart to close them as we flew over the Williamsburg bridge. The wind swirled my hair in a storm, but what did it matter? The night over, who would see? Quiet, sleeping Bushwick streets quickly gave way to a dark skyline, and the Empire State donned its alien halo; I remembered all those nights spent in the Greenpoint loft, staring out at that ring of light as the rest of the building had gone to sleep. The skyline is always so reassuring to me. We drifted softly into the Lower East Side, I was back on solid ground.

New York parties quickly grow so old. Sizing each other up over drinks and what do you do, what can you do for me? What will I gain by knowing you? Forgetting the beauty in meeting people for being people. Mountains of coke and carelessly walking around barefoot, picking up professions and the Power of Free Will as though we were raised without history, without context. I tire, return to the group with whom I belong. Roll another cigarette and contemplate the uselessness of fireworks.

I return home to a clean apartment. Where the explosion of the last few weeks has been cleared away, collected, demoted to the recycling bin. Only my bones are weary. I set my alarm for an early hour, do the math in my head, balk at the tiny figure. Outside, a new moon works its magic. I stare at it, tired, indifferent, cynical, and I fall asleep.

Through the Bathroom Window

Our heroes always disappoint us with their mortality.

You are only human, too.

Shame.

The Buttered Bread

Endless bottles of bubbly opened, pink candles light cutesy cupcakes. We celebrate, even when we suspect we should be mourning.

How old we grow, when no one is watching. How quickly the time passes, while we are busy being mortals.

I forget that time passing means soon they will be back in their homeland, in their routines and steady jobs, paying bills and behaving like proper adults. I forget that time passing means I am not spending mine figuring out what to best do with it.

We will all die. Some sooner than others. We will grow old, and wrinkled, we will lose these bodies we didn't love but will come to see as beautiful when it is too late. We will speak of our youth in terms of if only I knew then what I know now. Hell, we already do.

In the brick staircase, a lonely fire alarm signals that it is running out of energy. Beep, beep into the night. It echoes slowly, piercingly. We drink our aged Nicaraguan rum, tip extra for our tipsy misbehavior, and trip up the stairs to the West Village night. Take the long way home to stretch our high heeled shoes and marvel at the numbers. When we were young, birthdays were the source of unrivaled ecstasy. We are not young, any more. The answers are not as easy.

But lord, we do walk better in high heels than we ever did then.

ICU

Closeness has nothing to do with distance

The Blackberry ad yells at me from across the streets, a billboard so huge no one could ignore its message. I need no longer touch you, to know that you are in my world. I scoff at the message, of course, such blatant propaganda.

But when I sit at my computer, and a recently (automatically) refreshed page reveals that you are talking to the universe, the cyberverse, at this very instant, too, the feeling creeps up my spine that maybe they have a point. That I am a little closer to you now, as we both stare at our individual screens, as we both try to speak to the electronic galaxy and pray for resonance.

I know you are just down the street. You are a world away. You are right here, on my crumpled sheets and in my unevenly air conditioned air. I can't touch you. But you can move me.

The only difference is, when I turn off my computer, all I feel is cool air over my restless skin. And distance, has nothing to do with how far away you are.