Being There

Holiday weekend and the neighborhood rests. An old curmudgeon complains that Tompkins Square Park is only empty now because the people who live around here are rich these days and leave the city, but I say let them go, good riddance. I run into my neighbor in the stairwell, 39 years in this apartment and she hasn't gotten an AC yet. The birds have babies on the windowsill, I feel bad shoving them away.

We sat in a bar on the Lower East Side, painting the world in our grand plans as if trying to find our purpose. Do you know, one quiet summer evening I started speaking truths to you along a river and I never really stopped. It was like so many years of subtle glitches and suddenly everything had lined up like it was supposed to. Like so many years of walking with a limp and finally I'd come home. Every conversation since has simply been another verse in this melody.

I walked home along Essex eventually, young kinds scrambling to fit themselves inside bars, my headphones in my ears but the playlist turned off, because the city is a better DJ on Saturdays, like a little  gift. I know I write a hundred to-do lists and think I can construct my life in theory first, but that isn't how it works. If you want to really live a life, just do the thing. Put one foot in front of the other, and eventually the magic will catch up.