August, Too

The afternoon continues in mild brilliance. Bleecker street is crowded, sauntering tourists and persistent brunchers mill about the corners as I try to hurry uptown. I reach Union Square just in time, riding impatiently up countless escalators past sunny windows, before retreating into the dark of the movie theater at the top. Sunday matinee and not half the seats are full. The girl in front of me comes alone, too; she is eating ice cream with a spoon before the house lights are dimmed. I only brought water. But knowing what's to come doesn't leave much room for an appetite.

The American plains spread out again; they are just as heartachingly beautiful this time as the last, and perhaps tinged with more despair from the start. The characters appear, dancing their steps just right and the little crowd laughs accordingly because they do not know yet how venomous the bite to come. For two hours, a steady stream of tears rolls down my cheeks, a heavy lead weight sinks in my gut. Life is such tragedy. You wish you didn't see your own reflection in this reel but it cannot be helped.

Why else would you have gone back?

I walk west on 12th street, the evening still strangely mild, and I cannot make myself turn on any of the avenues. Such a quaint little street with brownstone steps and garden lanterns and Café Cluny like right out of a small town in France. Eventually I hit the West side highway and the wind picks up, my cigarette smoke evaporating quickly as the cars go by. How slow my steps, and heavy, but the city revives me, embraces my sad shambles of a person, until I can make my way back to Morton Street and fall apart in words.

If I did not have them,
who would pick these ragged pieces
up?

Sun Day

Another beaming day--the dog and I take a long walk around the neighborhood and criss-cross between the returning tourist walking groups and little puddles of evaporating snow. It smells like spring and cigarettes; I had forgotten what that smell was like. At the corner of Morton Street and 7th avenue I stop for a bit and stare straight into the sun. At such an unpleasant corner, the most overwhelming sense of joy and relief. We are alive. 

I reread Kerouac for the hundredth time, and again I turn the first pages with the cynicism of my years, unbelieving that it could possibly do to me still what it lit in me then, but I am proved wrong, as ever. The dream of America, of magic and life's inestimable sadness, I turn the pages till my eyes bleed and my soul is revived. Thirteen years of chasing madness only for this dilapidated paperback with the front cover fallen off and it is as beautiful now as it ever was in the rose-colored vision of my youth.

There is more to this all than our hearts can possibly hold. Spring returns. We are alive.

Everybody Goes Home in October

Oh! But how the spring returns to our weary bodies like salvation. Greenwich village was full of people today, so many people: where have they been all winter? They interfere with my quick trajectory down Hudson Street, but I can hold no grudge against them now. The sun is too bright, the air too warm with birdsong; I forgive them all.

I took a long walk downtown last night, in that misty weather the city had then, albeit warm. And as I traced the edge of the island, brilliant fiery sunset drifting off behind New Jersey, did not the skyscrapers of my beloved city glitter particularly? These, my pillars of strength, the building blocks of not only a town but also of my otherwise shaky insides, did they not tower something fierce in the approaching darkness? Oh, how I love my little village, but the buildings are small, and tight, and you forget so easily what a remarkable wonderland this is, how it pulsates and moves with a rhythm bending to no mortal rules. We will all die before New York does. It will not miss us, nor remember us truly. But we walk on its soil now, and leave the slightest tremble in its beat.

It is all we can ask.

It is more than we ever could dream.

(For a Film)

Breathe. 
Keep breathing.
(Don't lose
your nerve)

It's another week of smiles, sweet little hands nestling their way into my soft spots and holding on tight; I am powerless to stop them. As it always does, work becomes my refuge, my hours of reprieve. I savor them, smiling on the subway in the morning and taking long quick strides down the last blocks to reach them, while everything else around me crumbles. Perhaps we are all falling, now, it is cold out still, and dark, and we have nothing left, but all these voices pull at me and demand of me and I have no more now to give them but expletives and exasperation, why can they not hear it in my faltering words?

But do you know, there was a great big thunderstorm in the City today. I heard it rolling around the edge of the island, bringing rain and lightning and pervasive mist to the streets, and as it roared, something in me awakened, began to breathe. Because thunder means the winter is lifting, rain means it doesn't snow. This dull, gray Friday afternoon meant spring is just a little closer to our fingertips.

And once spring comes,
my darling,
we will live.

Fix You

A week continues. My rough shell begins to molt, as I return to jobs, to subways, to people's smiling faces persuading my own to return the gesture. The unpleasant reflexes of smarting replies and unengaged silence soften; I return on the F train smiling. Everyday putting these clothes on, washing this skin and braving the world, every day lighter steps and easier breaths: is this the choice, then? 

Must it be one or the other? A life of creative ecstasy, of connectedness to self in the mad delusions of art, that eliminates all others from my line of vision; or a simple life of smiles and paychecks, of loving and being loved but where the Words lie quiet at the wayside and my purpose empty, pointless? 

I cannot choose; do not make me. I know already the road. 

It will break me. 

Flat Rate

I cringe most of the time, you know, ashamed of the narcissistic drivel and loose ends I have produced, grateful it hasn't passed the threshold into outside eyes; I want for it to burn. I doubt my unwavering conviction, scoff at my ambitions and cry out of fear that this is the best I can do. Me in my smudged glasses and unkempt hair, me who hasn't been outside the door for two days except to walk the dog, me who cannot carry on a decent conversation with my roommate because I am in a deep fog. Friends reach out and I am unpleasant in return. This room is a disaster of half-drunk coffee cups and piles of dirty clothes.

But in the silence of this shuttered weekend, in the stillness inside these four walls, the Story grows. It lives in me and works itself out while I stare into opiate nothingness; it moves when I do not. And at the end of the silence, I see a few words connected together that make sense, a soft melody that I instantly adore, a turn of phrase that makes the anguish worth it. I forget that the process is so malevolent, I forget how it tears at my seams, no matter.

For just a morsel of that song in my bones,
I would endure every pain it asked of me
grateful
and asking for more.

1001

A thousand posts lie in this story. A thousand notes of days and nights of years that have passed. It was a silly endeavor that turned into a habit and now it remembers my steps when I do not. Sometimes it seems a thousand journeys should have reached further. Tonight I can't believe how far we've come.

I paced for hours around the Words today, feeling my mind recede into its dull back corners (as it will and as it must, it seems, to approach them). Eventually that familiar feeling swept over me and my veins turned to ink, my tongue to words on paper. I thought, as I always do, this is love, and the feeling washed away all the others. When I write, there is nothing else that can harm me; I am complete.

One thousand and one tales
rest at your feet now.
That is all.

That is only the beginning.

I Only Pray At Night

We drove out of the city on quiet Saturday night expressways. Little Long Island towns flashed past us with idyllic names, unpronounceable by anyone not from them, until at last the car slowed along a main street of small wooden houses and signs announcing various forms of Shoppes. When we stepped into the snowy driveway, the cold sky was full of stars and the clouds of our breaths. Her house was sprinkled with icicles. Winter is alive and well in the suburbs. We make lewd jokes and refill our glasses too often, giggle into the provencal chicken and expand our waistbands as the courses continue. He reminds me of an old friend; I love him instantly. 

There was a man on the train yesterday, buried in the crowds and invisible, who sang his heart out to a Beach Boys Best Of. It was terrible, and loud, and sharp, the kind of singing that is best kept to the shower, and people shifted uncomfortably around his general direction.

But he continued relentlessly, and little by little, the train cleared and emptied. An old man appeared around his voice, gray hair and newspaper in his hand, bopping along till daddy took the t-bird away. People began to smile and look each other in the eye. We exchanged a few words as the train rocked patiently under Roosevelt Island. I tried to offer my seat to an older man who told us he was 77 and still driving a taxi, he'd be happy to stand. I drove Obama once, in the 80s, you know. I wouldn't forget a face like that, but the rest of us thought that he probably might. The song grew louder, our smiles wider. When I left them at Forest Hills, we exchanged pleasantries about taking care and having a good day. The singing man got off the train as well, quiet now and focused on other things. Coming home, perhaps, or supper, or errands.

In so many ways, this city is sweeter and smaller and softer than anywhere else I know. I leaped up the subway stairs. The smile followed me all night.

Re:Set

The days pass, my computer still silent and cold on the floor, awaiting spare parts and encouragement. I spend the time anxiously pacing, reading books and watching television, trying to remember what's to be done in an analog world. Every day a commute, a job, but at the back of my spine the sense that I long for something. I realize eventually that it is words I miss, the way one misses an old friend or lover. I long for them with that delicious sense that distance creates when you know it is not lost forever. New York dances with ink, and it softens the dreary, wintered city. The computer parts arrive; the laptop lights up again as though we were never apart.

Do you know I wake up every morning happy? That no matter the early hour, I rise smiling because I am here, because outside this courtyard window, New York rises with me and follows my every move? That I sleep every night a heavy luscious sleep full of words and stories and irreverent potential? It is hard to compete with that.

And I no longer wish you had tried.

178th Street

I was tired, too tired probably I kept taking the wrong exits and got us lost in New Jersey for a bit and when we'd crossed the George Washington bridge I relaxed too much over being on home soil and we had to take Riverside Drive halfway down the island but it didn't matter in the end. The point was driving 14th street on cobblestone streets in the Meatpacking, across 8th avenue that is my street wherever I need to go and passing Union Square in its sleepy Sunday night calm and feeling that beautiful sense that no matter the delicious giggle of travel, a homecoming is the sweetest miracle there is. I tripped on tired, light feet across Washington Square park and thought I must be the luckiest girl in the world. 

Because the stars in the sky may glitter alluringly where the night is dark, but I needn't long for them. 

I needn't long for anything. 

(Because New York, my darling,

I have you.)

In The Fall

The day begins like spring, all thawing ground and birdsong in sunlight. We make snowmen out of the last white patches, but by lunch there is none left to be had. It is divine. We drive out to the lighthouse in the river and remark how bleak the winter, still. A storm lurks on the horizon. 

Last night when I went out for a smoke I heard the coyotes howling in the mountains; tonight all there is is wind, but it howls all the same. We stare out the kitchen window and try to conjure up ghosts in the dark, but they need no encouragement. They come out all on their own and follow me to bed, wring the breath right out of me. I stare into the bathroom mirror and say enough, but the old house whispers that I haven't seen the last of this heartache yet. It will run up and down the west side highway until I am a pale comparison of already unsteady grounds. I go losing out of this battle, year after year. This will all end in tears, and I am not yet ready to make it any other way. 

A screen door slams downstairs. The ghosts make themselves at home. They have your face. I don't want them to leave. 

Never Mind

Ten a.m. Friday morning you drive through Manhattan like it's yours and you do not realize until later that it is. A haze spreads over Lego pieced buildings as you span the bridge. The car plays CDs: everything is ten years ago and winter. 

We arrived at the old wooden house at the foot of the mountains much later than we thought, but who cares, we're here on vacation. You get drunk much too early but cannot will yourself to sleep. There are stars in the skies and in your eyes, what is there to do. I go outside to smoke, and it is so quiet that I can hear the cigarette paper crackle as it burns. I would play this violin if it wasn't so damn small. It seems there must be a better alternative. You know what I'm saying so I won't say it out loud; it screams enough in my ear drum as it is. I wonder if it's ringing in yours. 

Tomorrow morning there will be country brunch and child's play. I promise to laugh in the appropriate pauses. I will drive the car wherever you tell me. It's a beautiful bedroom. 

I just don't fill it so well, on my own.