of Giving

A Monday arrives, the days pass so quickly in December, racing toward a socially constructed finish line and leaving you grasping at remaining moments to complete your to do lists and impossible dreams before it is too late, before you are too old. An alarm clock ticks at the edge of your vision, reminds you it will soon scream into the ether and it will be too late for you to change your mind, to reclaim your soul and your beating heart from the devil with whom you made deals so long ago. You spent a lifetime building armor, and now you want only to tear it down, life is a cruel joke if you look too closely, best not to. You string another garland of colorful lights around the joyful apartment, sink into reprieve, see your body soften not from love but from protection, I know I have to do something about this because nobody else will, and anyway soon a new year will appear full of promise and potential, soon you can reinvent the wheels under your armor.

I think perhaps your cuts hurt me more than I knew and this shield just kept us both from seeing the blood as it drained from my body.

Sometimes I fear we know too much of life, and that is what turns us against it. Perhaps when the new year comes, we should shed our skin how we built it, should wash our memories clean and start anew with only hope, only faith, only beating hearts no thought to how they bleed. If ignorance is bliss, perhaps this is the year we transcend into oblivion.

M-I-SS-I-SS-I-PP-I

We're on a winning streak
I got a plan that's gonna turn it all around.

 A handful of free hours arrive at your doorstep: you are dumbfounded. Your liberated muscles creak with disuse, eyes blink at thee sunlight. I took a short run along the river, let my rusty lungs stretch before landing at the piles of words and wondering, but, you know, in the other sense of the word.

Wonder.

What a gift it is to age, and still be giddy like a child, to still swell like a balloon in gratitude, to still be amazed as though you had not seen this feeling before. We can fall in love a hundred times, and each time is as magical as the one before.

A young girl greets me at the end of the cursor, repeats my words back to me. I would not let you go into this fight, if I did not believe you had it in you to make it out. I fall in love with her all over again, wonder at the magic at my fingertips. Begin with cautious steps: break in to a run when you are ready.

Take Heart, Little Monkey

The Monday bar is quiet on a Tuesday; you sink into the warm, dark, downstairs mood as the cortisol finally washes out of you, we are superhuman when we need to be but achingly human when the storm has passed. A week has passed in silence, did you notice? I forgot: I forgot how to think, how to let the moments sift through words to arrange themselves neatly in my lungs, I forgot my own name how it sounds when all the accents are right. I am here, now but I'm not sure it's real. Would you pinch me? Would you shake me up and say my name, over and over until I feel like myself again? An old man in the toystore said he moved to the East Village in 1982, but I also got to live in the West Village for a while, on Bethune, that was a dream, and now here we were, wrapping gifts and talking about rent controlled apartments like we still hadn't achieved all we came to, and realizing we never would. New York is a dream: it puts everything you ever could imagine you'd want right in your hands,
and then you wake.

This year I am grateful for another year, grateful for more days on these strets and the promise of others to come. We lose so much, so much, all the time, including time, and we have to keep an eye on all that we gain. More days under our belt, piles of days, mounds of wisdom all adding up, one day I will tell you everything I know and it will be beautiful, this life is a miracle, I may be quiet sometimes, but don't for a second think
I forgot.

Destruct

You are too tired, the voice at the back of my head says gently. You are running head first into the brick wall, didn't I tell you about it a mile ago? I wake disoriented, a fire rattling in my lungs, a to do list chasing me through every dream. Drag five versions of a manuscript to a quiet corner and watch the happy couple next to me touch each other in that way people do when the early morning is a bubble of their own making. Outside the window, autumn leaves cascade down the awning, some days New York is a film set all to itself. I walked home late last night and played peek-a-boo with the Empire State building, we had a good laugh even though I could hardly keep my eyes open.

If you think I am complaining, let me tell you I am not. Everything aches but my soul is delirious, I cannot keep my eyes open but I cannot stop smiling. Do you know I found the secret to the Universe and it makes everything else irrelevant?

I turn it over in the palm of my hand. It is weightless, and it is everything. Do you know I'm this close to the edge, and I have never been more sure of my footing?

Scratch

The bar waxes and wanes, Monday night before a holiday and we're all trying to fill up on strength and resistance before we are reduced to children who do not know how to fight for themselves. Silverware can turn fatal with the right lighting. My regular bartender is away; my spine crackles at the incongruent playlist but the post-it on my word processor says don't be precious, so I pull out piles of paper and get to work. At home, the cupboards bulge with holiday spices and pounds of butter, the corners whisper of tinsel and light. I know it's just an excuse to hide from the world, but if this world were yours, would you not take it? I worked so much for a while I forgot my own name but nothing lasts forever, not even that storm in your chest: if you just sit here long enough that racing heart will pass. If you just wait at this word processor, eventually the story will show up and let you tell it. All this loose yarn is nothing but a headache now, sure, but eventually you will tie it all together and create a tapestry.

You'll know when it's time to give up on a white whale.

It's not yet.

So keep moving.

Surge

Getting over love is like breaking an addiction, the scientist says in your headphones. See how this part of your brain lights up?

I consider a future in opioids.

The dog saunters in and shimmies herself down on the cushion behind me, fast asleep on her perch and I wonder what it would like to come home at the end of the day and just rest. The video feed from across the ocean shows six and a half pounds with a full head of hair, it's so strange but somehow it's like he always was here, a small girl stands at the end of my cursor and everything that follows is a miracle: I love her still. The days are long when you rise before dawn and return to bed in the middle of the night, but such is the nature of this addiction. We do what it takes.

I break out the bourbon for the season. Take a long, light run in the hesitant winter twilight. Pack my bag and get back to work. I'm turning this brain into a god damned Christmas tree.

Dig a Tunnel

The mornings get earlier and earlier. I become intimate with the Frenchman behind the coffee counter, he gives me free coffee and I have patience that he forgets everything else. Hours while away behind the word processor, stressed Brooklynites running in and out for their morning regulars, other writers or free lancers roll in with the tides. Come midday, I stumble out into sunshine and feel I have an entire day behind me, while another lies ahead, but evenings are heavy and my eyes grow gravelly before their time. He calls from across the earth and his accent soothes you, the way his voice sounds tanned by African skies, the way his pauses are waves against the shore. I once spent a summer watching him fall asleep in Soviet nights, but that was a different life, I was a different person. Not better, not worse, just different, you know?

You have been someone else, too, many someone elses after all, surely you know what I mean.

I go to bed early, now, my eyes closed before my head hits the pillow.

It's been a while since I watched someone fall asleep.