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.

Repeat

The night is mild, soft, breezy. Long row of cars line Morton Street as we sit with our Friday Night Cocktails and watch the slew of dog walkers passing by. Neighbors from upstairs and down pass us on the stoop, carefully treading between clinking glasses and plates of salume while remarking how warm the night, how lovely spring. Reluctant to return upstairs to the real world, we order pizza and dumplings for the steps, giggling about how to direct the delivery boy.

All day is spent staring into the sun. Running around playgrounds with kisses and giggles, carrying piles of clothes unworn. I take the long way home and call a world of people to gloat about spreading crocus and suddenly flushed cheeks. My phone beeps with messages of babies on the verge of being born, and I can't imagine a better day for it. Welcome, this is the only Life you know, isn't it perfect? The dogs skip down the street and tell me the times are a-changing.

It's like turning a light switch. Every year, it's the same procedure. Every year, the same amazement and surprise. The familiarity of the feeling, the delighted giggles as though it were the first time. Spring grabs me by the heartstrings, and I fall helplessly and happily into the whirlwind of rainbows and sparkles.

Spring is here. I am tickled pink.

Attached

Trains never run proper on weekends; I found myself upended on the far end of Bleecker street, and the torrential downpour followed me home. Restaurants along Bleecker stood empty in the rain, but the line outside Poisson Rouge stretched around the block. We pick our battles. In Brooklyn, the windows shuddered from the storm, but the company was worth the trek. We pick our battles, indeed.

As I turned the corner on Morton, I found myself slowing down, reluctant to return home and hear the news of Orphan Puppy's condition. The morning had seen a setback and we were again reminded of Reality, of Mortality. But when I got home, her wagging tail and eager eyes reassured me, bought us another day.

Faced with mortality, every day lived is another battle won.

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.