I See You

A day of proper clothes and riding the subway like a respectable person with the nine-to-five crowd. Settling, satisfied, into the clean, spacious office with its inspiring skyline view, booting up and resuming work, playing catch-up.

Finally connecting and the new computer has an integrated webcam, like a little treat in the conversation. Where were we? When did we last speak? There's too much to retell, we look ahead instead.

She is tired of that town now, that job and that life. I already left it once, why would I go back to begin with? Two good girls, trapped in their societal expectations and inner super-egos, with dreams and aspirations but always falling prey to what they should do. And suddenly how clear it was, how the Answer and the Project spread out ahead of us. Ahead of me, the chance to toss that head from my shoulders and revel in Madness. To dig my toes into the dark, seedy sand and see what comes of it.

On the horizon, opportunity. Immortality and refusal to acknowledge limitations. The No of the Father detained for yet another little while. How these days pass in a tumble of despair and elation. But I chose that. This, is the life I chose.

The Return

So many days, so many words left unsaid. The absence of perpetually handy technology leading me to scrub in corners of the room that have been long abandoned. Figuratively, too.

And then there it is, a shiny new machine ready to bear the heavy load of my knowledge expectations, development requirements, and addiction. Immediately smitten, I relinquish contact with the outside world and delve into discovering what has happened in the seven years since my last piece was produced.

New York Spring continues outside my window, slow breezes and sounds of neighborhood barbecues wafting in to my small room where I've forgotten to turn on the light. My father asks me what I am doing with my life, and I reply that I have no idea. The question runs around in my head while I install firewalls and desktop backgrounds.

But when my roommate says If you ever leave, I'll have to go too, I love the thought. I think I might never go.

Tumble and Fall

A mere second of lost attention, and an entire world collapses. The hard drive of my life, encapsulated in such a sensitive plastic skin, now unable to boot, to speak, to remember me.

While repairs are made, of the computer or my heart it's hard to say, this page lies silent. Forgive me.

It turns out there is a real world to see, as well.

California Dreamin'

New York in a tumble of sweltering heat, of unbearable humidity, seeming not so much as a spring evening in early April as musky August nights in the Deep South. I pack my bags to revisit the End of the Road three years back, and I remember the nights leading up to it. Hot, thick Alabama nights where cicadas are louder than the air conditioners. Dry lightning storms in New Mexico as we raced toward the bright lights of Vegas. And there, at the end of the earth, two plastic chairs on a Venice Beach rooftop. We had run out of words, so we stared at the setting sun in silence.

But if Home is where the heart is, and your heart is on the Road, then what is an apartment? What is stability worth? The Word is yours. Once you are done with school, just go. Back to America, to New York, to Madness, to the Word. Go home to them while there is still time.
(journal excerpt, September 2007)

I return now, the person who was so changed on that trip, and still so much the same. Like predicted, much of Road Revelations fall away, and I have nothing but scribbled words in a notebook to remind me. I return to reap the rewards of that trip, of that work, but mostly I pray that I can again capture the Madness of the last trip. The night that told me, that cemented, that it was not my choice to make. The wide, prepared path spread out before me like a safe freeway into the decent life. I took my bag, I took my books, and I ran as fast as I could in a whole other direction.

It's not that I don't ever look back. It's that I never regret the path I chose. And I think that somewhere, on a plastic chair with a view of the Pacific, the girl who found herself upended and overwhelmed in California sunshine, is looking right back at me, content.

Buy the ticket.
Take the ride.
Feel the free.

How You Like Me Now?

Each day warmer than the one before. Skirt hems lifted, shoulders suddenly tanned, and a whole new stillness in the thick, humid air. I skip down my stoop and am hit with flashbacks of a life in Greenpoint, simply because of the way the streets smell, the steps down to the subway. New York summer scents.

We spend our day in the Park, and she marvels at the newborn buds as much as I do. Her first spring on two feet; she devours the experience whole, while I tell her to be careful with the soft miniature leaves. I want to drink it all in too, to not miss a moment of spring. I take deep breaths as we pass the pear blossoms, the magnolias, the sweet-smelling Hoya relative; I keep my eyes wide open to see the grass grow, the sparrow chicks rummage about, the tulips along Park avenue gaze at us adoringly. The air is filled with birdsong, laughter, excitement, and we both giggle and chatter at nothing in particular. We need no excuse, today. I know it will be over soon, much too soon, and I don't want to miss a morsel.

There is a subway stop on 53rd street, where throngs of commuter suits are thrown up onto the streets every minute of the morning. In between cold high rises and agitated traffic, I am one of them. But the other day, they had turned on a fountain by my exit. In this concrete world now rushes a spring flood, unstoppable by the gray 9-5, unable to be silenced. Water rushes down constantly, happily, in its own spring mania. In my heart, I imagine it just broke free of the ice.

In my heart, I imagine I did, too.

Singing Sweet Songs

I wake early, bright morning sun streaming into my room; it gets too warm. I open the window wide and take in bird song and magnolia scents with the incessant drone of Seventh avenue. Since last I saw the courtyard, six, maybe seven hours ago, a thousand new buds have burst into life and smother the barren trees in their new-green, pink, red colors. I feel like I am watching a time-lapse and fear blinking, lest I miss it and Spring will be over before I realize it, before I make sure to extract every drop of manic life force therein. I revel.

Every day is spent staring into that bright sun, spent indulging in street-side seating and strawberry picnics. I neglect the messy home, the work to get done, the obligations of Real Life, and I haven't the slightest inclination to be concerned about it. I am too busy waking up, too busy emerging from hibernation. I am too busy smelling the roses; I have my priorities straight.

But then my sister asked me Are you writing? and I become aware that I haven't had a thought to it. My senses have been so busy dancing around my head that there has been no space left for the Word. Suddenly I missed winter angst, missed the dark, quiet hermit within me and the countless hours of peace. I am a sucker for painted portraits; I seem to cling persistently to myths of tortured genius and artistic mania, and I fear I can reach neither while the sun beams unconditionally on me. And despite all those weeks of worthless wait, of not being truly human, she is the person I know, she is the familiar face, and I fear now I will not see her for many months.

Where is my word, then?

I go to sleep late. Joy rushes through my blood and I cannot force myself to bed, nor do I have the desire to. Magnolia petals outside my window begin to fall to the ground below. Bare legs come home late and flip, flop all the way up the stairs; I hear them through the thin door as I finally pass out. A new day tomorrow. A new sunrise. A new adventure in the making, and the word will come, when it will.

In Bloom

There were ambitions and things to get done. But the quick stop on a Williamsburg rooftop turned into a glass of wine that lasted all afternoon, as conversation turned to tears and the questions we are left with in the wake. In the warm spring sun we shivered, but perhaps it was only the wind.

Later that night, we sat on the fire escape and watched the setting sun trickle in from the Hudson River, settling on the pear blossoms that line the streets like a blizzard lately. Again we found ourselves trying to make sense of the lives around us, the ones we share and the ones we don't. When the night got too chilly, we crawled through the creaking window and poured green tea into bowls (there are no mugs, yet). It scares me so much. And the questions didn't really find any new answers, but perhaps they never will.

But how sweet it is, to have those souls into whom one can pour one's dark matter, one's broken heart and troubled nerves. It makes the floral giggles and happy blossoms that much sweeter to inhale. Literally, too.

I walked down Bleecker Street, soft street lights guiding my way past the neverending flood of taxi cabs. The same air flows through us, the same blood. The same city nestles its way into our hearts, and we are powerless to stop it.

When sticky green buds open into brand new lives, though, who would want to?