Take Heart, Little Monkey

The Monday bar is quiet on a Tuesday; you sink into the warm, dark, downstairs mood as the cortisol finally washes out of you, we are superhuman when we need to be but achingly human when the storm has passed. A week has passed in silence, did you notice? I forgot: I forgot how to think, how to let the moments sift through words to arrange themselves neatly in my lungs, I forgot my own name how it sounds when all the accents are right. I am here, now but I'm not sure it's real. Would you pinch me? Would you shake me up and say my name, over and over until I feel like myself again? An old man in the toystore said he moved to the East Village in 1982, but I also got to live in the West Village for a while, on Bethune, that was a dream, and now here we were, wrapping gifts and talking about rent controlled apartments like we still hadn't achieved all we came to, and realizing we never would. New York is a dream: it puts everything you ever could imagine you'd want right in your hands,
and then you wake.

This year I am grateful for another year, grateful for more days on these strets and the promise of others to come. We lose so much, so much, all the time, including time, and we have to keep an eye on all that we gain. More days under our belt, piles of days, mounds of wisdom all adding up, one day I will tell you everything I know and it will be beautiful, this life is a miracle, I may be quiet sometimes, but don't for a second think
I forgot.