Room in the Room

The storm was imminent, but my bones had sat in front of that computer too long. I saw my window, and I stepped quickly onto the streets.

I always walk along the river; it is my refuge, my little piece of fresh air and green in the encroaching city. But today, as I stared at the swelling waves and the wind picked up around me, it was not what I was after. I crossed the street. I wanted my city.

Hoards of suits and heels swelled out of financial centers and crossed the streets. I passed the gaping wound of America, looked at the rising steel skeleton and thought how impossibly large it was, how loud it would be if it fell. Between the buildings, the wind was rising, and I turned east, down small alleys crafted when the town was still young. Fall; it was already dark.

Soon, the offices had emptied out. For a short while, downtown was empty, black. A few yuppies ran past me; I could only pity them for choosing to live here. Conveniently close to work. I walked north, passed the Woolworth and remembered standing at that exact street corner years ago; how nothing had changed. Streets shifted, soon I was dodging slow-moving tourists. Countless blocks north along Broadway, the Chrysler building glittered in the distance. I meandered through Chinatown. Dark streets made me think it was late at night; the strange smells reminded me it was dinnertime. Slowly I closed in on Houston Street, made my way west, closed in on home.

New Yorkers get very enamored with their neighborhood. They stay there, live their entire lives there, rarely venturing out to other parts of the city. Why would I, when I have everything I want right here? As humans, we cannot fathom too large a home, so we make it small even where it is not.

I walked around my city, safe in its changing scenery, comforted by its differences and its sound buildings. I thought perhaps I should get out of my West Village rut, explore something new. Perhaps if I move to another part of town, I will see the city as brand new again, and it will sparkle in that magical way that only New York can do.

I am only human. If this City is now my world, then my restless pacings around it are no different from the running I did across the countries. Always looking to the next clean slate. We do not change, we simply repeat with another manuscript.

But, I thought, if this City will be my stage, I will play my part till the lights go out.

The Years

How many choices, how many diverging paths in the forest and we must follow only the one. No point in regrets, there is no telling what could have been. If he hadn't died, if she hadn't left; it happened, and you are who you are because of it. So I do not worry.

But sometimes I think. If I had not let you go home that night, your eyes so sweet and my heart already gone, could we have endured? If I had not pleaded to move, again, to return to a Home that was no longer mine, would I not have spent an entire youth lost? If somebody had stopped her until she decided to live, would she have been saved? Would I?

It leads nowhere, of course. I know that. But your smile made everything okay. And I miss that.

End of a Century

1999 was a good year, in so many ways.

On a Day of Incessant Rain

"Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?"
-Clarice Lispector

Bubble

Another Friday night phone call, and my roommate must make her way over the water for a funeral again. I should be just as distraught as last time, but I don't have it in me, she says before she goes, I am numb.

And so it is that a Sunday afternoon finds the apartment on Morton Street empty, quiet. I wrap myself in soft cotton sheets and read hundreds of novel pages without coming up for air. When the room finally gets too quiet, the freedom apparent, my fingers and lungs grow impatient and I uncover the piano.

With every flight over the keys, my body softens. With every sad sweet song of love and loss and longing, my soul unravels, dares to look at itself honestly. It is not long before tears form in my spine and the thick skin that separates them from their physical manifestations on my cheeks begins to thin out.

Suddenly I am 15 and living in that house in the dark country, trying desperately to fill the void with music because what else would I do with my time when I had lost my home and myself across the sea. I would sit at that piano for hours, never tiring, so intertwined with the song that I could forget reality completely and be one with vibrations.

But there was always something to fix, I learned quickly. Voices nearby would point out mistakes, correct artistic freedom to fit classical training. By the time my voice teacher on the other side of the woods tried to encourage a little off-beat singing, it was too late and I had no spontaneity left in me. In the early afternoons, my livingroom would reel from arias and soul, but by evening, they would retreat to quiet platitudes.

It doesn't take a psych degree to see why I cannot sing in front of people. It takes no genius to map out the fear or the hurt. I was one with the music, and if the music was flawed, then so was I.

Is it then any wonder why I keep my words mostly to myself? Stack passworded manuscripts in secret folders and save them from the world's scrutiny?

My skin is thick. But my heart beats so softly within.

Realism

The Word returns. Catches me unawares, sneaks up and distracts me from conversation, work, errands. It teases me but disappears as I try to give it proper attention; it dances around my head and giggles at me behind my back. I am not angry. I am delighted it returns, however tentatively, and I try to relax, let it settle on my shoulder.

I have so much to learn from my children, he said. To look at the world with curiosity and joy, to live in the now and believe in the Goodness. Normally, I would smile at the thought of innocent faces and blank slates, but today I felt cynical. It's easy for children to be wide-eyed when they have yet to see how ruthless this world will be. They'll learn.

It always ends, so why pull the taffy of this relationship until the end of unbearable? Someday I will try to persevere, to stay and believe it may work, to not cut the chords prematurely out of mere cynicism. But not today. Because how sweet the song in your voice, but how ugly the pretense in your words. Your sugar isn't worth the toothache that follows.

Twinkle, Twinkle

No place is as peaceful as a house of sleeping children. In one bed, a five-year-old hugged her plush crocodile and sucked her fingers. In the crib, a baby lay with fluttering eyelids and pouting lips. I walked from room to room, turned out the lights, and pulled up a chair to the panorama windows.

On the other side of the glass, New York glittered. Midtown Manhattan skyscrapers spread out like rhinestone trinkets. In between buildings, I saw the cacophony of Times Square lightbulbs change color, and a full moon painted the darkness in a velvety gray. I walked out on the terrace, and the air was warm, smells of end-of-summer and traffic noise drifting through the air.

And just like that, like so many times before, New York blew me away.

I leave myself completely open. I consider the risk of having no defense but I still let myself get swept away everytime. Sometimes I dare to contemplate if this whole thing is just madness, but then moments like these arrive, that are so simple but so overwhelming, and I fall helplessly in love all over again. I make it work because I see no other option.
journal excerpt, Sep 23, 2010

How simple these moments, these reminders. They may catch me off-guard, but they are never unwelcome. Amidst all the perils, the challenges, the days spent staring at the wall and shaking my head, a single second like this wipes every dark cloud from my heart. A single second like this, and there is no other life I would rather live.

Oh, Jack

Dean and I are embarked on a tremendous season together. We're trying to communicate with absolute honesty and absolute completeness everything on our minds.

The text message made me smile. I knew he was reading it, and that he was again ready to be ignited by its spark. I remembered that day, ten years ago, when he first wrote me of it, when I sat in my dark, confused existance, needing a light and being given this bonfire. The short email was written in a blur, in jumping sentences and crazy giggles, and I caught his bug without even having seen the book. I said Why the hell not?! and ran out into the world.

"I can feel it. I understand it and I am held there... I'm inflamed and I just want to hang out with Mad mad people. Even if they completely abandon me before I'm through, I'm there for the ride... you know? I have too many things I want to do and not enough time to do them in... But do you know what this means? It means that there isn't time for stupid petty things or stupid grievences. It means there is a world out there. And I can learn from it."
(email, November 7, 2000)

When he gave me Jack, he gave me the Key to the riddle. After years of running in mazes, I finally knew where it was I was heading. I had tried so hard to dig myself a safe cave of inertia that I forgot that what I truly wanted was to run head-first into the world and Live it. When he gave me Jack, he gave me the Road on which to do it. Ten years of a burning heart, and my gratitude has not even begun to cool off. We grew up, we changed shapes and shed cloaks, but with every reading, the book changed to fit the place we were now.

His last text came in as I walked down Christopher street at dusk, New York City a warm, vibrant buzz of a city, the streets crowded, and I thought how right he has always been. He gave me my dream of New York; I can never repay that.

I am reminded that I love this book because it is, as is life, poetic, beautiful, holy and haunted by inestimable sadness.

Could not the same be said, for ourselves?

The Word

Slowly, the days return to normal. The Life. I pick up the crumbling pieces of my existance, scattered around the tiny room where I live, along the concrete streets where I've fallen apart; I gather them up, take a deep breath, and begin to glue them back together again. (I always do, in the end, you know.) My computer travels around the world and returns with jobs, projects, promises of income that'll pay the rent another month, secure my footing in the city for a sliver of a while longer.

I begin to sleep more soundly in the night.

But as I scramble about in the cellars of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, my soul lies silent, its needs and contemplations stowed away until there is space for them. A hundred beloved projects lie unattended in my word processor; if I cannot live, I cannot write, and priorities rearrange themselves without my effort.

But, my darling word, you are not forgotten. Do you not see that I do this for you? That I toil, and weep, and fear, and fight, so you will have a spot of soil in which to grow, in which to flourish?

Wait for me. I'm trying to build you, a home.

No Other Way

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.

On Mad Hatters

my own seeds shall be sown, in New York City.

The Lack

There they are, words in print. A small achievement, perhaps, but nonetheless, your mother would beam proudly if only she knew. Always the treasure at the end of the rainbow, the light towards which you run tirelessly, because a word in print promises to fill that dark, empty hole within you, promises to make you whole. A word in print promises to negate the Lack, and you will certainly want for nothing once you hold its sweet victory in your clenched fist.

And yet there you stand, staring at your exhibition, gleaming in its untarnished newness, and you don't feel the least bit accomplished. There is not a single curve of its letters you could not pick apart with disappointment. You look away, shake your head, and the let the piece endure your parental shame. The hole is gouged a little deeper, a little darker, in the reminder that not even the one Truth to which you hold, actually is true in the broad light of day. The piece loses its shiny sparkle, and you have only yourself to blame.

Minutes later, a new sheet of paper lies pristine, bright on your drawing board. You see the rainbow stretch beyond where your eyes can see. You begin to run.

Feel Brand New

The sun shone brightly on Brooklyn rooftops and cold beer bottles, and before long, it was too late to bother with trains; I slept soundly by newly painted white walls. When I finally made my way to Marcy Ave, the rain was sloshing through borrowed sandals, and it felt like fall.

On a dreary, dirty street in Midtown, in a quiet Korean restaurant, I cured my hangover with kimchi and little sips of soju, while that same question wafted around the room. But if you have all that over there, all those people, that whole life, why are you here? What is it about New York that you love so much?

I didn't have an answer for him, but it didn't matter. I walked down the soaked Manhattan streets, and in my heart, those soaked, gray, busy streets were all the reassurance I needed.

Even the rain, didn't seem so bad then.

Clean Sweep

The night was long, and without much sleep. Fight or Flight, my body was ready, eyes alert and adrenaline tickling the nerves. I awoke and dressed in a haze. On the subway, the boy in my book lost his mother. I thought if I can't even handle a small set-back, how would I ever survive that? I spent the morning with a baby in my arms, and as she looked at me, smiled, and fell asleep, I thought it was about time I pulled myself together. In a sun-drenched apartment in Hell's Kitchen, there it was: perspective.

In the storm of questions, of angst and impossible darknesses, suddenly I saw the only question that mattered. If I want to stay in New York, I have to find a solution, work it out. If I want to stay in New York, I cannot lie down and whither to dust, saying what else was I supposed to do? If I want to stay in New York I have to fight.

And I do.

Inside me, the girl who never takes the fight, who always brushes her shoulder and walks away, walks on, says goodbye, she turned silent. I haven't the blueprints for any other girl; all I have is this beating heart that says this city is all it knows how to love. I will it to carry me, until she is here.

And New York,
honey,
please be worth the fight.

Rock Bottom

How many times I have lied crushed at the bottom of the mine shaft, thinking so this is what over feels like, and it turns out I was merely camping out on a ledge, and there were miles to tumble yet.

I sat on the stoop, slowly taking drags of a cigarette while the world swam sickenly around me. My insides wanting desperately to come out, but my limbs numb to the touch. I can pay one more month's rent, and then I will have nothing left to my name but a box of duty free tobacco and a suitcase full of books.

I feel like I have been drowning for half my life. But now, the water is beginning to boil.

Under Construction

On my leg is a scar, a long line traversing my left knee down on to my calf; I fought barbed wire once and lost. On my arm is another scar, on my foot another. A small mark on my hand reminds me of a childhood in Australia, brown freckles on my chest remind me of a day of too much Spring sun.

The years pass, my body endures them. For years, I would be upset by the change Life wrought on my skin, the purity it destroyed. But where once was smooth skin and a child's blank slate, now is experience, a story painted by my body's efforts to heal, to compensate, to carry on. Where once was soft clay now is a hardened shell, a thicker skin more able to handle what challenges are still to come.

It was such a week. Where everyone around me ran into roadblocks and off of ravines. Where not a single phone call carried good news, and every morning was a short blissful second of ignorance before Reality made itself known.

So that when I stood in the basking sunshine on the loud corner of Bowery and Houston, and heard a voice on the phone say that after years of longing, anguish, and fear, they had at last heard the heartbeat of New Life, it was the lightest my breath had been all week.

Turned Leaves

The dog didn't bark like he usually does, when I put my key in the door, he just paced anxiously in the hallway when I came in. Something was not right.

She sat at the kitchen table, weeping uncontrollably. My oldest friend just died, she said between sobs, and I could see the disbelief in her eyes as she did. The bottle of gin stood open next to her, no glass, and she had to keep recharging her phone to endure the traffic that didn't abate for days.

The pain in my jaw didn't hurt so much then, the pain of my existential angst. The shadows that hover so closely when I try to sleep went quietly to wait in the corner. I ask him about everything. Who will I turn to now? He was my family. Everything gets painted in different colors, when the loss is so tangible. She remembered to walk the dog, but our steps were hesitant, trembling.

Days have passed slowly on Morton Street. Beautiful, cool summer days come and gone. The sun will always rise. We just have to be there to see it.

Short. Fast. Deadly.

The Great Relief of Letting Go

In my dream, we hung off the side of an impossibly tall building. My feet tingled the way they do; I am afraid of heights. I turned to her and said, Can you believe some people actually let go? I should have known it was a dream; I was so calm. I should have known it was a dream because were I awake, I would have replied, Can you believe some people don’t. I woke up in my own bed, but the sheets were twisted.

This Grace Thing

Trembling hands hand over prescriptions and a quiet body sits in a corner to wait. Dizzy mind takes the wrong train and finds itself crossing the wrong bridge, but how beautiful it is, in spite of itself. The September sun beat down indiscriminately, and I sweat just standing still.

How things that for some would be a minor inconvenience can shake the earth and darken the skies for others. How I falter and tremble, re-evaluate my own existence altogether. I sat on the train back to the island and wanted desperately to tear this evil out of my body and toss it violently from the bridge; and yet, how different, for the evil to be something tangible, concrete, as opposed to those wraithey demons that will not let themselves be caught.

I decide that this is no dignified life. I hang off the edge of poverty, of sanity, of health; it was not what I had planned. (I suppose I had nothing planned at all.) I stand on a viciously hot street in Brooklyn, tears streaming down my face, and the train rattles overhead. You must break down, to build up. You hit the bottom, and you've nowhere to go, but up.