The Time of Your Life

We tell all the same stories, again and again, it's strange how you can know a whole host of another's memories when the ones you have together are so few. We hash and rehash, try to find new gems in piles of sand, but the secret is the sand is what builds your castles, and all it takes to glimmer is shining the light just right.

I woke early this morning for a meeting, I went home from the bar for a late return to the midnight oil. I looked a young child in the eyes at dawn and whispered apologies for my negligence, apologies for my shortcomings and the way my priorities have twisted themselves to pay rent, to live a little longer in this dream. He sells his home to afford saving the world while you cobble yours together to create another. There are rights and wrongs here but you've lined your pockets with justifications and you wonder how they'll fare once winter comes. I play rain sounds in my headphones as though I can fake connection: the truth is some days we run on empty. The truth is I can run myself into the ground if you give me enough room to really make a go of it. Every now and then I read a piece of poetry so true I think nothing else is relevant.

I said I regretted nothing.
I'm beginning to think it was true.

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Your days are planned down to the minutes, you race from one box on the to-do list to the next and forget to remember you are tired, was it always like this? Summer careens towards its cruel end, it is hotter now than ever but the light is different in the sunsets, people's tan skin taking on the same feel as the leaves: a little exhausted, a little overdone. It feels like minutes since the new green of spring pressed itself through your eyelids and words spilled from your fingertips in gratifying curlicues, how old they are now, how tired.

But I sat in Washington Square Park today, college freshmen outdoor piano playing crazy bird people sweltering fountain romance Washington Square Park, and I knew. There is magic still to be wrung out of this season, there are late nights still to whisper and warm waves still to swim. There's an entire life yet to live though sometimes it dwindles in autumnal ashes, it rises again, and again, and again. You will rise, too.

I'll make sure of it.

Block

(Drag yourself through muck and mire. Scrub your knees against the rocks of your resistance, sand your eyes with doubt and indifference, fill your veins with paralyzed apathy. You know this is just as much a part of the process as everything else, you know excuses are only windblown trash on a street you must cross regardless. Sit in the dirt for a minute, let it seep into your pores and grab you by the throat, feel the air leave you and everything turn black. 

Then dust yourself the fuck off.  The only way to survive, is to live. 

The only way to get something done is to do it.)

Missed

I dreamed of airplanes again, of lives in transit, the comforts of home. I don't know why I keep having these dreams, I suppose I should be listening. A friend asks how I'm doing, and I answer working too much and working too little in the same breath. It turns out to be exactly the truth. I try to scrub tingles off my skin, try to wring myself out of this body to try to save it in the fall, this life would be a farce if it wasn't so tragic and once my work is done I realize I scraped the magic right off. Maybe there's plenty where that came from, I suppose we might find out.

I have this heart full of love, you know. I have these arms full of comfort, this head full of song, I try to use them on myself but I forget so often. In a dark room in the west village, I sat with a small child wrapped around my body, taking gentle breaths and thinking of eternity. We can all be reduced to humans. That is a magic that cannot be scrubbed off.

Come. I dare you to try it.

Mist

The bartender plays a new soundtrack, some sort of mellow bluegrass Americana, it weaves in and out of your consciousness and you forget where you are. She pours your beer as you walk in the door, the bar smells of old alcohol and mumbles: would that you could live in this space always. You think perhaps that is all you are trying to do with these words, build a line of credit that will let you live along a bar forever, and you will not be sorry. You always dreamed of being a recluse belonging, and now here you are: the drink has your name on it, the table in the corner, you make no excuses anymore.

We stood in the ocean this morning, last night's storm whipping up seaweed and shrimp carcasses around our ankles, a heavy fog rolling across the beach noncommittally, and all I could do was laugh. What a dream this life, after all, even as fall threatens on the horizon, even as old age sets in and everything is different from how it once was. Two years ago I sat across the river with a stupid smile on my face and thought how everything was different, and I had no idea. How many waves would I ride, how much terror would whip up from the depths below: how grateful would I be one day for just a moment's peace in the sun. I know every inch of your skin, every fold of your heart, what a tremendous gift is that?

The river looks the same now and yet completely different. I approach it carefully, feigning courage. Remember what lurks beneath. Believe in the wave that will make it all worth it.

Doors

Morning arrives too soon, already sweltering and relentless. I drag a heavy head to a kitchen table, to a coffee cup, to a pair of running shoes. Arrive at the river long after it's become unbearable, stumble a few miles and land on a patch of clover, letting the sweat drip as I search for four leafed promises underneath my skin. The phone stirs relentlessly, Sunday chatters and yet not what you're looking for, it's a practice in patience. I stare at the river and dream of the ocean, I dream of a lot of things but I don't sleep nearly as much as I need to. Play the reel over again. A to do list circles your drain, you are tired and impatient at the same time, you know the only answer is work. Watch the cursor blink at the edge of your screen, the minutes race around your watch. The obstacles writhe and stretch and build themselves in front of your nose.

The only way to get over them is to start climbing.

Thick Skin

Another cycle begins, she writes from the north, endless summer drawing impossibly to a close and everything beginning and ending all at once. I don’t know what to make of this life. I stand on the platform late, trains running rarely and the air thick with August, how was my skin so cold so recently? We sat in a restaurant in the midday heat, calculating dates and remembering times when everything was just beginning, it seems a lifetime ago, and I’m not sure anymore I remember who I was then. I tell him I’m better now, better every day and I know I mean it: for a short moment I forget the gashes across my lungs. A Hasidic man next to me takes off his large fur hat, a source of pride, a symbol of repression, I don’t know that any of us are as free as we like to believe.

Still, any moment breathing is better than not, this short moment before stepping onto the steaming platform is a gift and you swallow it whole. A train runs express in the depths, the workers blow a whistle and step off the electrified rails. The Hasidic man puts his hat back on. I smile despite myself, and it feels like this is the greatest gift: belief that everything may one day start anew. The train arrives, I make my way back home. Everything ends, I am still here.

I am here, again.