Pata Pata

He writes from Cape Town, all traveled wonder and gratitude for the leap. There is sunshine in his words, music, and that delectable feeling when you are overwhelmed by the unexpected. You ask him if a life after New York is possible, and he speaks of adventure in return. 

The sun sets so early in the land up north. The sky turns black while you are on the train and you forget it is still the middle of the day. Fight the will to hibernate and vow to open your windows to madness, instead. Ignore the implications of turning into a tragic stereotype of romantic comedy homecomings. 

Be where you are, now. Be somewhere better, eventually. 

Even if it takes dark days to get there. 

Gratitude, Year IV

Today, as we sat there in silence, a soft stream of sunlight sifted in through the windows onto the white coffin at the front of the room, the pink roses dancing in the light. We spoke joyous words of oft-repeated stories, remembered a turn of phrase, held each others' hands. 

Life passes, without fail. It begins anew and it ends. It is how we love people that lingers. 

This year, 

I am thankful 

for her. 

EWR

There's a certain light that hits Manhattan at twilight, a deep golden shimmer that doesn't exist anywhere else. It will take your breath away every time. It may be the only reason to ever leave the city at all, come to think of it. 

You walk the same steps as usual, you could walk them in your sleep, from Morton to Penn to the airport to the gate. Everything follows its usual pattern and you breathe deep sighs of relief the whole way. If you could live your life at an airport you think you might. There is no joy in this trip, no excited reunions or eternal summer days. You stare at the glowing ember of a city from the gate and your heart fills with joy at imminent returns. That living here is a gift you keep giving yourself, and each repeated moment of unwrapping its crinkled papers is as sweet as the first. 

We must count our blessings every day. They grow in our hearts even when we forget them, they linger long after sunset has passed. 

They remain, when another morning wakes us. 

(But I Don't Know What to Say)

Sunday night, 34th street and the air is growing warmer by the minute, you can't explain it. He runs out of a taxi and you decide there's still time for a drink because we can't go in there sober. There's the usual anticipation, the unstoppable giggles in your chest when his rock'n'roll hair walks out onto the stage. Someone closer to the stage is smoking pot: great giant puffs float out over the crowds.

And then there is a moment, when he sings that song you've heard in the back of your head since the millennium was new, and it was a song that was yours and no one else's. You sat there on the patio of one of your first apartments in life, so young and unsure, with nowhere to go but forward, listening to his words and thinking One day I will move to New York and all the rest will follow. You moved to New York, listened to his song and thought No matter what else I do in life, I am here now.

I stared up at the strobe lights and let everything else wash away. There were no crowds around me, no Monday morning ahead; there was no deep, aching longing for skin that will never touch mine like I wish it would, and no shattered sense of feeling half of a whole.

I do not need anything else, I thought into the void, I do not need anyone else.

This adventure is mine, and mine alone.

Correspondence

Jack Daniels
Sour Mash Whisky

in a hotel mini bar-size version
plastic
but just as wretched and godawful
as you recall
and yet you send it rushing down your
throat
hoping it will chase away demons
(or dreams -
you do not know)

Do not ask questions
to which you are not prepared
to hear the answer.

No good comes
from moments of bravery
followed by eons
of fear.

Next Episode

Are you ready for another drink? he says, and we nod before we have the chance to think about it. Hours later, we fall out onto St Mark's and feign thievery at the place with the cotton candy. It's all a ruse.

The City has turned cold, of late. I run along the river with chattering teeth, only a few scattered joggers left in the wind. The golden yellow Morton Street gingkos shed their fur overnight, and winter arrives like a slap in the face. But I walk home across a pitch black Washington Square Park, cutting across MacDougal into Minetta Lane to that short, quiet stretch where you think you're in another place completely. I rolled a cigarette in the middle of the street and thought there is no other place I would rather be.

It's hard to be so sure of just one thing,
and doubt exactly everything else
about life.

That You Choke

I spend the evening cleaning out my sock drawer. Inspect items of clothing too old and tattered to wear, fold the pieces that pass inspection into neat piles and return them to their designated spots, knowing full well that I'm only trying to clear out the cob webs of my tired soul and failing miserably. At least the neatly arranged drawers offer some sense of accomplishment.

There's an autobiography on my nightstand, a successful actress who was young in the 60s; she spends her days battling misogyny and eating disorders, channels her inner soul in exchange for fame, envelops herself entirely in passionate obsessions, and you know the root to all success lies in such dedication. I can't remember the last time I buried myself in anything with passion; instead, I'm buried in apathy, and it leaves a far more bitter taste in my mouth.

Perhaps there is something else we should be doing. Perhaps we've gotten it all wrong and this was not the be-all, end-all of our endeavors. Perhaps I should have moved to Australia years ago, spent my days  harvesting mangoes and my evenings drinking beer on the beach, caring little of ephemeral promises and profound literal ambitions. What use is there to scratch and claw against my exhausted skin, to scream myself bloody in the vacuum void of urban indifference? I don't belong in your clique; I don't know why I've fought so hard to get in.

A lifetime seems too long
to be suffering.

Don't Be Scared

It's okay now. It's over.

And even knowing what she was going to say couldn't stop me from falling apart when she did.

Do you remember that afternoon, in the hospital, when you'd had such trouble with the words, such a hard time remembering who I was or why you were held captive in this confusing mansion where you didn't know a soul? I sat and held you for hours in silence until the worst of the fog passed, and when I mentioned your favorite poem, you began reciting it like your mind was clear as day? I read it to you then, even though it was hard through the tears, and we stared out the window at the turning leaves and smiled. When I told you I loved you that day, you understood what it meant.

We've been reading that poem for years, did you remember that? Those late nights in your living room, passing the the little book of poetry that once was your mother's between us, saying you read it just one more time, before eventually going to sleep. Do you remember the way we all inherited your giggle and your silly mannerisms against our will, but how we never tried to get rid of them, once we had? Do you know we think of you every time we find ourselves buying flowers on Friday or leaving the last piece of food on a serving tray?

You loved me with every fiber of your little body, because you knew no other way to love. When you laughed, you lit up the room, and when you'd made up your mind, no rhyme or reason could change it. When we spoke on the phone, we'd talk about pulling out a gigantic pair of scissors and cutting the country in two, so we could glue the pieces together next to each other and not be so far apart. I always hoped there'd be a day when it would be true.

Do you remember the time you picked me up from preschool and we ate licorice lozenges as we walked home hand in hand? Or when I'd discovered Tom Lehrer and gave you silly concerts you probably hardly understood, and you encouraged every infantile story I wrote you? Do you remember our constant dilemma of choosing different paths through the woods for our walks, and how we pretended to live in all the beautiful Victorian houses along the river? How you told me tales of growing up in the north, of Stockholm in the 40s, how you taught me to obsessively pat the little wooden Buddha's belly on my way out the door because my mother had done it her whole childhood and the knock of the wood against the banister was engrained in my steps down those stairs? Do you remember how you named the lawn mower and laughed when we said goodnight because and you'll be here when I wake up tomorrow? was such a lovely luxury we afforded each other? Will you remember that now that you're gone?

Because I will.

As Per

An immense hangover passes through my insides. It shakes the cogs into new spaces, makes the machine work at other angles. Once the fog clears, how easy it all seems.

I know it's the darkness of fall. I know it's the usual wave of my two-year turnovers that make the pieces fall so easily into place. The temptation of something New.

But if what you're doing isn't working,

What's the harm in trying something Else?

Hemingways

You should just quit, he says, empty your bank accounts and run yourself into the ground and then, then you will write.

The Chelsea bar fills up, slowly. Early Friday night and it's on both your train lines: you have such a limited amount of time and want to savor the moment. I could have sat along that glossy wooden bar until closing.

He's right, of course. I have been there before. In the gut-wrenching sludge of poverty, finding the words sing better in misery. When you're already off the edge of the cliff and racing head-first toward the bottom, you have nothing left to lose, no time to worry about anything but pulling out of your innards every last word you could possibly have left to leave.

November rolls over your brow like a wet blanket. You shed the last frail dreams of summer, the last vestiges of hope and reckless abandon.

Stand at the precipice and shrug.

Not Lean

West Harlem, Tuesday night and something comforting about the dirty streets, about the ridiculous blinking lights on Broadway a hundred streets up only advertising top level delis. Something in the way people in the neighborhood make you feel more assimilated than a hundred west village propers ever seem to. You are reminded this city will have room for you even in poverty, even in despair. It's a large island: there is space. She speaks of the country you left, of a job you know so well and blank stares you haven't missed. 

There's a reason you left. There's a reason you longed for these crooked cobblestones when you had everything left to lose. 

It's just you and me, now, you say into the dark tunnel, as the 1 train careens down Manhattan. You wish you felt sorry. 

You feel complete, instead. 

Solder

The smell of burned flesh, a jackhammer ripping through your heavy breaths and he tells you the price but at least he lets you swear as much as you want. Your boss sends you texts late into the night; you sleep with one eye open and you never meant to.

You stand alone on the platform with a toothache and shivering skin. November has been mild, so far, the sun shone today and I walked with my jacket open. It doesn't help. I'm falling apart all over the place.

And all I want to do is cry.

Metaphor

November arrives like a sledge hammer. Daylight Savings sweeps an immense darkness over the city, as you know it will every year; it doesn't hurt any less when it does. There's a bitter wind flying down Seventh Avenue, you wrap your jacket tighter but it sharpens your vision against your will.

But here's the thing: you don't have the option of summer in November. You don't have a million tropical days spread before you in an endless field of opportunity, each more delightful than the next. So if the autumn day is cold, with wind like ice on your skin and the night an ominous threat along the horizon, but the sun is shining, then you owe it to yourself to go out there and stand in it. Let the bright rays beam straight into your eyes, let them fill you to the brim with gratitude of the things you do have. You may have to stretch your limbs to reach the light.

But it sure beats whiling away your days in the dark.

Will Call

It's a cruel craft. Pages upon pages of words and mere morsels of any worth, at best. There's a short turn of phrase on page 15 that makes you smile softly in your chest but you're ready to throw out the following 24. I spent the day in sweatpants, tucked away in a corner of the room with the phone silent, the computer focused. There's a slow feeling along the inside of my skin that says this is who you are. I spend so much time playing pretend with the rest of the world.

I only hope it's worth it.