New York, NY

It was nothing, it was just a picture. Just a snapshot of Houston street in muggy July weather and god that city was hot in the summer. How everything reeked of steaming garbage and every day was a battle between evaporating skin and freezing machines, and not even the nights were a cool refuge. A man on a bike, cars stalled, a piece of street art, there wasn't much to the picture. No matter.

Something about it reminded me that there is a New York still out there, not a figment of my imagination, but a real city, still vibrant, still alive with all the energy that makes New York what it is, that there are still people walking those streets as if nothing had changed; they will still bitch about it and never leave.

But something has changed. I am not there. Something about that picture reminded me that I am elsewhere, that the city is no longer mine. And tonight, at last, that breaks my heart.

Last Time

journal excerpt,
January 1, 2007

I have, now, left New York City...

I can feel in my heart that my body already misses it. Goddammit.

It rained as I packed up and cleaned out. The Empire State was nowhere to be seen in the fog, the City was tired and dreary. Then we got in the shuttle and the windows were covered, so I couldn't see the City as it zoomed passed. I felt disoriented and lost, in this city that was mine, knowing these were the last minutes I would see it and wanting to savor them but unable... It was as though it was no longer there. At least not for me. And I doubted I had ever really been there, at all.

But then, we took off, and through my airplane window I saw the City, so small suddenly, the Empire thin and fragile but red and green nonetheless. I saw the buildings glitter and the darkness that would be Central Park...

If what I wanted was closure, I've been left unsatisfied.
What I have now is an already overwhelming longing and a determination to make it back. Hold out, for me, New York. I'll see you soon again.

Overs

But how can you be leaving? You are New York. You love this place more than anyone I know. We stood in line for coffee at one of the delis at NYU. The summer sun was bright; we made our way quickly to Washington Square Park to catch up. Apparently, my announcement came with some surprise.

We sat in the sun and watched the streams of people pass us by. She spun tales of the drama since last we met; it had been a while, there was so much to say. When I got home in the afternoon, my cheeks had a new flush to them.

Last night, as I sat on the rooftop of the pasta factory in Brooklyn, looking out over that glittering skyline, they both said Do you mean to say that you are leaving this?

But I'm not. Not really. Home is where the heart is.

And I heart New York.

With a View

I saw your pictures on Facebook. In New York the cherry trees are in full bloom. They litter the streets with their petals of pink.

I had forgotten to think of the City. Just for a moment. I got caught unawares.

I think of leaving, and it breaks my heart.

In Spring

There was one moment, as we walked south on Park Avenue, and the early evening sunlight streamed through the skyscraped streets, with trees just on the verge of bloom and that distinct smell of cigarette smoke and warm pavement lingering in the air, the wide Manhattan avenue stretching into forever, that I thought I love this place more than I ever knew I could.

It was a good day.

On the L train

Okay, we really are both going to be late. I have to get a cab, he said as we stumbled out of the bar into the still soft light of spring twilight. April. The crowds were just beginning to look for dinner tables or opening drinks, and here we were, already too many in. A cab came, we forgot to say goodbye, he jumped into the car and I disappeared into the underground, late for the dinner date in Brooklyn. I dizzily climbed aboard the F train, and as the door closed I processed the voice that said the next stop was Spring street and the train was running on the A line. Damn construction. The doors popped open for a second and I jumped out, made my way to the uptown trains and the 14th street L train instead. Slowly the last of the giddy drink seeped into my system and put my head on the floor. By the time the train had reached Union Square, my world was spinning and my forehead was clammy. So many stairs to get out of that deep, dark tunnel before reaching the crisp air up above. I tripped down University Place, attempting to text excuses and direct questioning tourists, but mostly trying to put one foot in front of the other, before finally, finally collapsing in the apartment and having to reveal to my roommate and her dinner guests what I was doing home so early.

$2.25 to ride the subway around the block and get nowhere, but slowly. Five years later, and I suppose that's where we still stand. Same story, every time. I end up dizzy on the streets of New York, but I always come back for more.

Tax Season

By the time I reached the Meatpacking District, it began to snow. Hesitant, cautious snowflakes, seemingly confused as to their own existance at this time of year, this time of geography. They fluttered aimlessly towards the ground and transformed into raindrops before they even hit the pavement. Spring is ever the manic depressive. I forgive it.

We can't afford to live like this, she says, as her daughter plays hide-and-seek in a cardboard box, oblivious to their troubles. But then, who can? We were raised in years of little money, but all the social safety nets one could dream. Our childhoods were green grass between bare toes and taking life for granted. Her daughter is all concrete and loud sounds and maybe next month you can go to the zoo with the other kids. Still, her sunshine beats its way into my heart, and we giggle together.

It occurs to me that year has passed since that night on the fire escape on Charles Street. How young we were then, how blue our eyes. This city sinks its teeth into all of us.

For better or worse. No one comes out unscathed.

Cumulonimbus

I took a late train home from Marcy Ave on Friday, and we were a beat collection of strays in the harsh light on the J. Standing on Delancey, waiting for my connection, I stared down the long tunnel into the dark, unexplored entrails of Manhattan. It is the part of the city I have least explored, but that I most desire to see. How easy it would be, I thought, to simply follow that narrow strip from the platform and away, along the tracks, along the regularly dispersed lights, into the eternal night of the underground. . .

As I gazed at the little ledge, I noticed a pile of what I had previously assumed was garbage move. A homeless man rolled in his sleep, precariously close to the edge, undisturbed by passing trains as they shook the walls and pushed the wind. When I looked again, he was jerking off. Life is sad. The point didn't need to be rubbed in. My train came, I averted my eyes, went home in the freezing night.

It could just be the hangover, I said over my coffee in a crowded West Village café the next day. Perhaps it'll pass and I won't know why I overreacted so. The knot in my stomach was coming and going. We were trying to catch up on months apart and still mostly all we talked about was the future. How being back in the City tickled him, how the dream of buying More Time on its streets still gleamed like a treasure in his eyes. How I feared it was an impermanent residence, that soon my time would be up.

Just look at it as an adventure. As running off into the world and trying something different. You can always come home again.

I knew he was right. I love a good adventure.

(And yet knot did not pass, with the hangover.)

Vacancy

We clean. We sneeze through dust clouds and wade through the years of trinkets piled into this tiny Greenwich village apartment. The big interior design site wants to come by to photograph our home, and it doesn't take long to realize how much grime remains in corners unseen. She frets, I delight in the open windows, the higher ceilings. Daylight savings tricks me into thinking the day is young, and I adore forgetting dinner, weariness, while my hands smell of softsoap and clean.

She erases every trace of me in the bedroom, and I let her. How proud she is of her home. We joke of the madness of the house, squirrels on the fire escape and santa clause salt shakers in March. In the end it's an apartment 25 years in the making; we are who we are, with all our eccentricities. I go into her apartment and I think how much potential it has, if only... she says of the neighbor, and perhaps that's how we all feel. How much easier to find flaws in others, to say why don't they just..?, and how hard to do the same for oneself.

I roll silently in my self-righteousness before I try to shake it off, again. In the end, it's too lovely an opportunity to revel in the clear windows and polished porcelain, to waste time making yours what is not.

Super Moon

All day this sense of unease. Tears always on the verge of breaking, emotional walls no doubt softened by the arrival of those babies, the burgeoning life in the ground, and the way orphan puppy prances in the sunlight now even though no one gave her more than days. Unnamed feelings swirl through my innards and it is not until much later that I curl up in the privacy of my own room, in my own solitude, that words begin to form, labeling emotions and stowing them away in neatly organized compartments in my journal.

I needn't bore you with the details of what those emotions amounted to, the language they created. In the end, I suppose, it comes down to getting one's shit together. Take a deep breath, start over, get it right. Life is short, but we are never too old to do ourselves justice.

It seems like I should be fighting like hell.

Reminders

It is good to be questioned, to have to put into words. See this city with more attentive eyes. Show someone else what makes it magic for me. We walk the streets up and down, tire ourselves and still don't get very far. The Village is calm, the city doesn't seem particularly big at all.

The little Spanish girl was not satisfied; if my parents lived in Utah, my sister in Sweden, and here I was only living with a friend, then where was my really real home? she asked.

This is it, I said. This is my really real home. And if she didn't believe me, at least I was convinced. This is my really real home, in the end.

Revisited

Where are you going? the woman asked me as we waited for the AirTrain. Oh, nowhere, I replied. I'm here to pick up my mother.

Two years since last she was here, and isn't it strange to think? A life based in that Greenpoint apartment with the breathtaking view. An adventure in the city, barely out of its cradle. There was no telling where it would lead; I suspected my money would run out by fall. We navigate the West Village maze now, and it's difficult to remember a time when everything was new, every map uncharted.

It's good to be reminded sometimes: we live, we learn, we evolve. These days pass so quickly, but not a single one was lived in vain.

How to Save a Life

Friday night and all is well with the world. I giggled from the moment I woke up right on time and realized I'd forgotten to set my alarm, through the work day of silly children and chilly sunshine, to the last hours of counting down until it was time for Friday night cocktails. Unexpected company and we all felt the tingle of the anodyne cocktail flowing into our veins, the remains of the day finally washed away.

Hours later, I walked home down west 10th street and New York had that weird glow it does when the clouds roll in and every building bounces its lights into the nighttime sky. Front yard trees revealed hints of leaves and Bedford was quiet despite the Friday night buzz. Saturday morning lies waiting with not a care in the world.

There is something inexplicably delicious about such a moment. I do my best, to savor every morsel.

Abridged

It was cold, too cold, there'd be other opportunities for a stroll and the trains run so frequently on weekdays. But before I knew it, I'd reached the Bedford Avenue entrance and was slowly making my way onto the Williamsburg Bridge.

Perhaps the wine helped, kept my legs warm. Perhaps it was the sweet remnants of invaluable friendship, still coursing through my veins and reminding me what an amazing thing that is. Here we are, in the City, all together, how blessed are we?, and I couldn't help but smile. As I climbed to the peak, my ears filled with Axl Rose in his youth and my step kept his quick beat. I felt like an animal released to pasture in the spring, I stretched my tired muscles and sang along.

The Williamsburg bridge, all steel beam prison and glimpses of the world, the city beyond, was nearly empty; lone bikers rode home in the opposite directions. The J train passed below, countless cars, but mostly I felt as though it were all mine, and, with it, so was the city. For that brief moment, how high I was. Literally, too. At the descent on the other end, I looked up and saw nothing but the night sky, and was again reminded how unusual that is. I was lowered past people's 12th story windows, saw the skyscrapers I know as friends disappear behind rising buildings. Considered that if I jumped from here it would still be an awfully long way to go.

And then, suddenly, deposited on Delancey Street as though the whole thing were a mirage. Crossing the Lower East Side streets, my Manhattan streets, as though Brooklyn weren't a world away and hadn't I been here all along? Turn a corner and there is Morton Street. You may act surprised, but in fact it is nothing unusual.

All roads lead to home, if you let them.

Block.

I stare at the screen. Scroll back over the pages. Read passages I adore, passages I can't stand to see, and consider where to begin. I can't tackle the ending, it breaks my heart. But after a few hours of strikethroughs, it seems I cannot tackle any other part either. Frustrated, I resign myself and whisper Tomorrow, but it makes me feel no better about today.

I took a long walk through the neighborhood today, to visit a friend in Chelsea. Walked through the projects and remembered how those exact streets had looked four years ago when we went there for a gallery stroll. I know them so well, now. I weaved through Saturday afternoon traffic until I got to the edges of the Meatpacking District, those few corners that are still seedy, dirty, decrepid. I love them. Then navigating through the maze that is the West Village, over the cobblestones, back to my beautiful Morton Street, to my New York City home.

Some days, New York appears more enchanted than others. Some days, simply by existing, by showing me streets I have not seen for a while, it reminds me of its magic, of its sweet secrets waiting to be uncovered. On days like that, all that has been can be easily forgotten, all the bad wiped away and I remember again why I came.

I don't know how I'll ever be able to leave.

Saturday Light Naïve

St. Marks remains a pillar of comfort, of reliability.

Lives fall apart in the city, even after years and wedding bands and babies. What do I do now? she says, and I have nothing to say. Black and white is never as easy when his grays have nestled into your every pore. Your life is mine now, my life yours. If this ends here, who are we?

We walk west until St. Marks turns into 8th until it ends and we navigate the greenwich village maze. I cannot find my pyjamas and fall asleep in the button down shirt of a man who is not mine.

Shirt and man, both.

Ultima Thule

They said there would be an ice storm. I woke up to glistening, frozen branches outside my window, but walked out to inches of cold, cold water all along Hudson Street. Miserable doesn't begin to cover it. The children stopped and played in every puddle between the swim lesson and the house. Their joy so contagious, I couldn't keep from dancing the last block myself.

I want this winter to be over. I always want winter to be over, but this year, it seems like such a continuous slap in the face.

Still, as I walked home from Hell's Kitchen last night, my back straight and my heels reassuringly even in their pace across the slippery streets, I couldn't help but feel happy about where I was. The grayer New York gets, the colder, the tougher, the dirtier, the more miserable, the more my heart paints curlicues and rainbows around its name. I miss Australia something fierce, the sun, the surf, the sweetness of the people and the ease of living, but this is my home.

This is my home.

New York, New York.

The dog smells of winter and burning woodchips. The streets are slow, navigating mounds of slush and deceptive pools of icy water. The snowfall picks up again. After hours of Brooklyn laughter, I made my way down Hudson Street to nestle in my jet lag and my home. White Horse lay quiet and cosy on its streetcorner, the bright red sign like a beacon of familiarity through the falling flakes. Last night, by the time I was on that E train riding towards Manhattan, the car filled with so many different types of people, all united by their place in the city, already I felt at home. Already, the beautiful trip of sunshine and new faces, of family and escape from reality, was dripping off my skin and disappearing into the gutter. How quickly it happens, and I almost wasn't sad to see it go.

Hours later, unable of course to sleep despite the promising start, I lay in my own bed, in my own sheets, with orphan puppy nestled into my armpit, tickling me with her content, deep breaths, devouring music like I had been starved for a month. (I suppose, in a way, I had). I could barely force myself to wait out one song before jumping to the next, trickling through playlists like they were Baskin Robbins flavors handed out on plastic trial spoons, letting each one slide down my taste buds and fulfill my senses before it was gone and I was on to the next.

Perhaps, tomorrow, I will remember what I until so recently had, that my feet danced on Australian soil and my life had not a care in the world. But as my Home seeps in to my pores and words yet again run rampant through my head, I can't help but giggle, my heart can't help but sigh. That is the magic, of home.

That is the magic, of New York.

Unhappy Hipster

Every inch of the house looks like an image from an urban architect magazine describing hip rural living. I giggle at my own captions before diving into a 1000-piece puzzle with my mother. Me, laying puzzles. Unheard of. This is vacation, what it does to you. As the car gets packed up with technical gadgets and telephones for a trip to the civilized world, I stay behind, turn up the sound system, and let my soul pour its heart out.

It seeps into the cracks of the hardwood floor. It trickles out onto the porch in the afternoon breeze. It spreads across the olive trees, the birdbath, the yellow fields and the ocean below. I sing along to the music until my chest trembles, I pretend to lie down in the hammock but my legs long too much to run.

I know my return looms in the suddenly much nearer future. I know I need to start working, catching up, getting back in touch with those back home who expect my correspondence and my schedules. A large part of me misses New York something terrible and cannot wait to run through its streets again, back in the company of those I love. The word begins to rummage about my bowels, asking but a minute of my time, asking to come to the surface. But for now, how sweet it is. Just to revel in this land, this air, this sun.

How did life get so good?

On Travel

We rescued a frog in our bathroom today; my mother suspected it came out of the drain. I stepped outside the house several times to follow the nightly feeding of a giant spider who’d caught a dragonfly in her net. When I stuck my head out from under the roof to get a different view I nearly collided with another of its kind. Their webs span entire stretches of the yard. At dusk, the bush comes alive with kangaroos and birds and other wildlife; Seventh Avenue seems quiet and calm in comparison.

Overall, Seventh Avenue feels terribly far away. Like a dream I had of another life, and then you wake up in the morning in your real world and can’t believe how lifelike it all seemed. I saw a picture of Greenwich Village houses along the West Side Highway in a magazine today and couldn’t quite comprehend that that was my city as well. My accent changes slightly to adhere to local standards; these round American words that come out normally don’t quite seem to fit. I imagine that this is my life, this is my home, and the thought isn’t entirely farfetched. If an Australian voice only spoke softly enough into my ear I believe I could be convinced to stay.

Perhaps such is the magic of travel. A reminder of possibilities unrealized, a reminder of dreams within reach. I could get rid of all my things, I could get up and go. I long to clean out my fifty square feet and prepare to pounce. I long to be ready. If someone, anyone, said Let’s go, I’d be out the door in a heartbeat.

Although the tradeoff would have to be something immensely appealing.

Australia, darling, when will you tell me let’s go?