August, Too

The afternoon continues in mild brilliance. Bleecker street is crowded, sauntering tourists and persistent brunchers mill about the corners as I try to hurry uptown. I reach Union Square just in time, riding impatiently up countless escalators past sunny windows, before retreating into the dark of the movie theater at the top. Sunday matinee and not half the seats are full. The girl in front of me comes alone, too; she is eating ice cream with a spoon before the house lights are dimmed. I only brought water. But knowing what's to come doesn't leave much room for an appetite.

The American plains spread out again; they are just as heartachingly beautiful this time as the last, and perhaps tinged with more despair from the start. The characters appear, dancing their steps just right and the little crowd laughs accordingly because they do not know yet how venomous the bite to come. For two hours, a steady stream of tears rolls down my cheeks, a heavy lead weight sinks in my gut. Life is such tragedy. You wish you didn't see your own reflection in this reel but it cannot be helped.

Why else would you have gone back?

I walk west on 12th street, the evening still strangely mild, and I cannot make myself turn on any of the avenues. Such a quaint little street with brownstone steps and garden lanterns and Café Cluny like right out of a small town in France. Eventually I hit the West side highway and the wind picks up, my cigarette smoke evaporating quickly as the cars go by. How slow my steps, and heavy, but the city revives me, embraces my sad shambles of a person, until I can make my way back to Morton Street and fall apart in words.

If I did not have them,
who would pick these ragged pieces
up?

Sun Day

Another beaming day--the dog and I take a long walk around the neighborhood and criss-cross between the returning tourist walking groups and little puddles of evaporating snow. It smells like spring and cigarettes; I had forgotten what that smell was like. At the corner of Morton Street and 7th avenue I stop for a bit and stare straight into the sun. At such an unpleasant corner, the most overwhelming sense of joy and relief. We are alive. 

I reread Kerouac for the hundredth time, and again I turn the first pages with the cynicism of my years, unbelieving that it could possibly do to me still what it lit in me then, but I am proved wrong, as ever. The dream of America, of magic and life's inestimable sadness, I turn the pages till my eyes bleed and my soul is revived. Thirteen years of chasing madness only for this dilapidated paperback with the front cover fallen off and it is as beautiful now as it ever was in the rose-colored vision of my youth.

There is more to this all than our hearts can possibly hold. Spring returns. We are alive.

Everybody Goes Home in October

Oh! But how the spring returns to our weary bodies like salvation. Greenwich village was full of people today, so many people: where have they been all winter? They interfere with my quick trajectory down Hudson Street, but I can hold no grudge against them now. The sun is too bright, the air too warm with birdsong; I forgive them all.

I took a long walk downtown last night, in that misty weather the city had then, albeit warm. And as I traced the edge of the island, brilliant fiery sunset drifting off behind New Jersey, did not the skyscrapers of my beloved city glitter particularly? These, my pillars of strength, the building blocks of not only a town but also of my otherwise shaky insides, did they not tower something fierce in the approaching darkness? Oh, how I love my little village, but the buildings are small, and tight, and you forget so easily what a remarkable wonderland this is, how it pulsates and moves with a rhythm bending to no mortal rules. We will all die before New York does. It will not miss us, nor remember us truly. But we walk on its soil now, and leave the slightest tremble in its beat.

It is all we can ask.

It is more than we ever could dream.

(For a Film)

Breathe. 
Keep breathing.
(Don't lose
your nerve)

It's another week of smiles, sweet little hands nestling their way into my soft spots and holding on tight; I am powerless to stop them. As it always does, work becomes my refuge, my hours of reprieve. I savor them, smiling on the subway in the morning and taking long quick strides down the last blocks to reach them, while everything else around me crumbles. Perhaps we are all falling, now, it is cold out still, and dark, and we have nothing left, but all these voices pull at me and demand of me and I have no more now to give them but expletives and exasperation, why can they not hear it in my faltering words?

But do you know, there was a great big thunderstorm in the City today. I heard it rolling around the edge of the island, bringing rain and lightning and pervasive mist to the streets, and as it roared, something in me awakened, began to breathe. Because thunder means the winter is lifting, rain means it doesn't snow. This dull, gray Friday afternoon meant spring is just a little closer to our fingertips.

And once spring comes,
my darling,
we will live.

Fix You

A week continues. My rough shell begins to molt, as I return to jobs, to subways, to people's smiling faces persuading my own to return the gesture. The unpleasant reflexes of smarting replies and unengaged silence soften; I return on the F train smiling. Everyday putting these clothes on, washing this skin and braving the world, every day lighter steps and easier breaths: is this the choice, then? 

Must it be one or the other? A life of creative ecstasy, of connectedness to self in the mad delusions of art, that eliminates all others from my line of vision; or a simple life of smiles and paychecks, of loving and being loved but where the Words lie quiet at the wayside and my purpose empty, pointless? 

I cannot choose; do not make me. I know already the road. 

It will break me. 

Flat Rate

I cringe most of the time, you know, ashamed of the narcissistic drivel and loose ends I have produced, grateful it hasn't passed the threshold into outside eyes; I want for it to burn. I doubt my unwavering conviction, scoff at my ambitions and cry out of fear that this is the best I can do. Me in my smudged glasses and unkempt hair, me who hasn't been outside the door for two days except to walk the dog, me who cannot carry on a decent conversation with my roommate because I am in a deep fog. Friends reach out and I am unpleasant in return. This room is a disaster of half-drunk coffee cups and piles of dirty clothes.

But in the silence of this shuttered weekend, in the stillness inside these four walls, the Story grows. It lives in me and works itself out while I stare into opiate nothingness; it moves when I do not. And at the end of the silence, I see a few words connected together that make sense, a soft melody that I instantly adore, a turn of phrase that makes the anguish worth it. I forget that the process is so malevolent, I forget how it tears at my seams, no matter.

For just a morsel of that song in my bones,
I would endure every pain it asked of me
grateful
and asking for more.

1001

A thousand posts lie in this story. A thousand notes of days and nights of years that have passed. It was a silly endeavor that turned into a habit and now it remembers my steps when I do not. Sometimes it seems a thousand journeys should have reached further. Tonight I can't believe how far we've come.

I paced for hours around the Words today, feeling my mind recede into its dull back corners (as it will and as it must, it seems, to approach them). Eventually that familiar feeling swept over me and my veins turned to ink, my tongue to words on paper. I thought, as I always do, this is love, and the feeling washed away all the others. When I write, there is nothing else that can harm me; I am complete.

One thousand and one tales
rest at your feet now.
That is all.

That is only the beginning.