If You're Going to San Francisco

We're moving to California, he said. We want you to come with us. 

A hundred different thoughts floated through my head, that sunny afternoon in their Boerum Hill kitchen. Memories of the Spanish family, asking me to come to Panama. Images of New York, and how I fought, so many times, to get here. The nervous excitement, in the very core of my body, that always tingles when adventure appears. I say I will think it over, and proceed to dive into a weekend of excess and methods of forgetting. But the thought lingers, the air of possibility. Ah, life, what it does to us. I take long walks around the river and return exhausted, but none the wiser.

You were the first person I wanted to tell. I didn't, of course, I am trying so hard to be an adult about it all, but in the end I sit here with my question marks and floating ideas and it just seems everything would make more sense if you knew.

Perhaps I ask too much of things that are unreal. I must remember that, when the West beckons.

In Bloom

The cherry trees along Bedford avenue are all in bloom, lighting the black night with their white ghosts. I decline a cab, but she drapes his wool cardigan on me before I go. It was too warm for even a sweater this afternoon, but I land sweaty at the L stop again for what use. These hipsters crowd the platform, I miss the dirty tired faces of my Marcy avenue travelers. Oh well, too late to change your mind now. 

New bodies make their way into my peripheral vision, we traverse the Lower East Side happy hour together and weave hour stories as they unravel. In the window of the old factory he asks again, but what do you really do? and I find myself so tired of answering the unanswerable questions that I just ignore them. Again. 

If the truth was ever important, we'd find it. 

Never mind. 

I'll find someone like you. 

Changes

And perhaps there is a reason for this, that is not immediately apparent, and you must now figure out what it means. If this is a sign, make the most of it. Grab adventure, or venture forth. Whatever you do, do it well, and do it with heart. 

There is no other way. 
And there never was.

Dealt

So many drunk nights in the warm Manhattan air, summer gives us a flash of its long legs and I say Yes to every invitation because suddenly my heart wants to. The streets fill up with people --Where were they all winter?--and the Hudson River Promenade moves slower than seventh avenue on Friday afternoon, but the magnolias bloom in the courtyard, so how could anyone be angry.

She writes to say she is back in the in-patient psychiatric ward. Schedules of electro-shock therapy erase every other item in the calendar. They say I can go home tomorrow for a while, to visit, but I'm scared to. Images of cold 1950's hospital hallways and long, cold baths fill my mind but she says they are all so kind. I long to be healthy, and hopeful, and happy. We were children together once. We didn't fit in the molds, but who could have seen this crick in the road?

We run into madness one way or the other,
when really we're just afraid of going home.

The Difference

journal excerpt:

"And then it arrives, for real this time. With its warm days and racing blossoms. With its sense of life and possibility, and the blood courses quickly through my veins again. We went to Central Park and everything was lovely. We laughed, and I want to do nothing but to laugh now. Everything is easy, suddenly, everything is possible. I abandon my cynicism, my critical voice. I look people in the eye and breathe deep, fulfilling breaths far into my lungs. I stare into the sun until I fall over in the street, it doesn't matter. Every bursting bud I see explodes inside me; every burgeoning flower or leaf or shoot is another hit of life in me and I am fine. Every year, this. Now it doesn't seem so bad. I made it out alive, why worry? 

Now is the time to go forth and do Magic. 

Now is the time 

to be Mad."

Blossom

Why don't you go outside for a bit, he says, I'll keep an eye out and call you when you need to come back. Sunshine washed all sense of decency out of me, and I rushed into the street. And oh, how the world can change in the blink of an eye. The flower bulbs, so long struggling, have suddenly burst out on the Brooklyn lawns, little trees are suddenly powdered with bright green dust. 

I walked down to the boardwalk and let the sun warm my neck. And there it lay, sweet little Manhattan, dotted with its irregular buildings and anchored by those reliable bridges. My heart, so long frozen and buried in debris, made little leaps inside my chest, like it just discovered a love it already knew so well. 

The sunshine has returned, my dear. To our faces, but also to our souls. 

It appears we survived. 

Now let us live. 

At Last

and when it arrives
at last
like every year,
that delicious spring
in one's step
that tickling giggle
in one's gut,
you look people in the eye
and drink bubbly on the stoop
and forget the reasons
why you didn't want to live
while the vicious words
in your head
dissipate into the warm
evening
and you are fine. 

In:Sight

Spring arrives, each day milder and lighter than the preceding. People appear out of the cracks in the pavement, milling around outdoor cafés and along the river promenade. They smile and walk lightly on the sidewalks, making spontaneous plans because it's too nice not to. In a cramped room on Morton Street, the last vestiges of a person wither to dust and get buried in the dark corners that remain. Every morning, I think the nightmares will be over, but each day seems worse than the last. I fear that this winter has been more cruel than any before, but looking over words from years past reveal that every winter burns me to the ground and rips the flesh from my bones. It is comforting.

I got too drunk last night, I get too drunk and say stupid things so often but just a moment with air in my lungs was too tempting, and I took every breath I could get. I walked him to the subway later, I don't know why, and as I walked back down Hudson the skies opened. Rain turned the West Village into a sea of scrambling pub crawlers in too little clothing, of yellow cabs with their lights off, but all I did was kick my soaked boots in it and smile.

Because the thing was, among those papers, rambling about impossible darkness and senseless despair as they did, a slight beacon kept reappearing, nudging at my sides until finally I heard what it said. That in every struggle, in all these years, the Promise of New York has kept my head over water every time. That the magic of belonging to these streets has made me kick, and claw, and fight through every apathetic grief I've fallen into. That in the end, I don't need sunshine, or perfection, or you, now, because I am here.

The corners didn't seem so dark then, the hangover not so encroaching. And whatever happens in nightmares can't touch you when you wake up.

Lists

(Because if what you're doing isn't working, then what's the harm in trying something else?)