Life Inside a Music Box

Heavy clouds over Manhattan. The Empire State nowhere to be seen, but you don't look for it anyway because your head is kept down to avoid being washed over by the floods pouring from the skies. Turn a corner and get swept off in a wind gust. Pay too much attention to opening the broken umbrella and drop the envelope in a huge puddle, mere minutes before reaching the post office and now the stamp glue won't stick. Of course today is the day the Give-Money-To-Poor-Children Canvasser gets me at Union Square, and my head lined with fever cotton I can't interact appropriately. He stands just a little too close to me while enthusiastically talking, and all I can think is that he doesn't know how many germs are making their way from my breath to his at this moment. That'll teach him to try to save Children. Return home with a full grocery bag and nothing to eat, while the internet refuses to work; is that humane? Try to breathe but the lung machine has decided to go on vacation, and I take every pill I can find to bring it back.

But then, I walk to the subway. I trip down the stairs to the dry warm space below, weave through college kids who just came to New York and have no idea what's in store for them, and stand at the platform, looking at old mosaic tiles and rivers of garbage between the rails. I ride through the underground and emerge where the buildings are tall, and disappear in the gray beyond. Where millions of people run to their individual destinations and a bus load of cheap ponchos takes in the sights. I remember where I am. This is me, in New York. This is me, living the dream. Every day now, I spend here, and it is my life. And the thought made my heart swell in my congested chest, made my feet tingle through the cold wetness. So that on this day when I should've just given up and gone back to bed, I found myself with a smile on my face and a bounce in my step, grateful to the very tips of my split ends.

It may only be the Honeymoon. At some point the City, or I, will have to prove we really want this relationship to work out and are willing to fight for it. At some point it won't be enough just to be here, to be happy. But that moment isn't here yet. So I'll enjoy the simple delight, while I can. But I'll toss the umbrella as soon as I can find a trashcan that isn't already full of them.

Growing Up New York

I spent the morning at the playground, with this small child who looks like she could be mine but is in fact someone I get paid to care for. Her language is mine, thin, light hair encircles both our faces, and when I stare her down to pretend i am the one in charge, my blue eyes pierce hers until we both giggle and carry on.

We ran around the playground, this safe haven with high fences in a midtown corner, where children mill about and never match their caretakers' dialect or skin color. And the thought struck me, how different our lives, and our relations to New York, will be. I grew up in the small town, ran free in the woods, and dreamed of a life where something would happen until I landed starry eyed in the City. But this child, she grows up in the playground that is Manhattan. Smells of fried meat wafting from the corner carts. Somebody upstairs playing the trumpet. Cabs honking and streets neatly arranged on a grid. In a city of such diversity, soon divided up according to class and ranked, opportunities staked out and what age do you let them ride the subway on their own, anyway?

This is the City where she was born, where she has spent most days and the place she calls home. But I can't grasp it. I had to fight so hard to get here. I had to leave all those beautiful people, pack up my most cherished possessions, and run without looking back. I still walk with determination in my step, as if to will New York into existance, should it want to disappear beneath me. And this, this is the place she can take for granted.

It's amazing how different lives can be.

The Great Escape

They call me reserved, those who know me. Say there's that wall and they always feel like they talk more than I do. And I know they're right. It's just, everytime I divulge snippets from the deep beyond, it makes people so sad.

I told them I ran away to New York. That New York was the drug that kept my sadness away, because while here, I needn't think about Reality so much. I create a new Reality, and it keeps me happy. But I know that at some point Life'll catch up to me, and I'll have to deal. But maybe if I have the City to hold my hand, it won't be so terrifying, somehow.

I also told them that maybe I will not solve the tangled web of my emotions and solve my relationship issues, my aversion to love. And this, more than anything, seems to freak people out. As though it were an impossible concept. As though it were the most tragic fate. It is to save them from this sadness that I do not expose the dark ball of yarn within. I only want their worlds to be pink, and sparkly, and all smiles. Why will they not let me protect them?

♥

This is here. This is me. This is Home.

New York, I love you.

Mannahatta

And as we crossed the Williamsburg Bridge, my soon-to-be former roommate said, look out, take in this moment. This was the view you had. This is the place you are going. This is the moment when you moved to the island. How right he was.

As I took it in, the City looked brand new to me, unused, unseen, a whole new Adventure in the making. I've been here before, but now it is mine. Now I live here, and every breath the City takes, I am in. When my soul sleeps, it does so on a crooked, narrow, gingko-tree-lined street in the Village. When my soul sleeps, it does so with a smile in its heart.

Humm,Macdougal, I lived here,
Humm, perfect, there's empty space
Park by the bright lit bookstore
Where I'll find my mail
& Harmonium, new from Calcutta
Waiting I come back to New York & begin to Sing
(Ginsberg, A., Bayonne Entering New York)

I've Been Dancing with, Mr. Brownstone

Oh God.
There was a tally, empty wine bottles gathered from around the house and back yard and lined up in the kitchen the next morning. Eight bottles. Eight bottles, and three people in desperate need of hydration and sleep. Welcome to Poughkeepsie, bitch.

I had to run to the train to catch it at grand central. It wasn't what I had planned for my sunday afternoon, but why the hell not? And then this beautiful train ride, all mountains and greenery and overgrown little cottages in the upstate countryside, arriving to find two mad men picking me up at the train station and the feeling that it was all truly beat. The driver with his straw cowboy hat and looking so much the vacation getaway personified compared to when I'd last seen him in the City. Them having spent the past day in the backyard, drinking and reminiscing and not having a care in the world even when it was so sad. I picked right up where they were at and suddenly all was well with the world and wasn't this red wine particularly splendid? So we spent the setting sun in the backyard of this late 19th century house in historic Poh-Kippsy, drinking wine and deciding that handrolled cigarettes were infinitely better than Newports.

John, the man in the straw hat and whose house we were now staying at, seems the ideal of ideals. A place in the city, a place in the country. A proper job and button down shirts, a garden in progress and a charming house in need of tlc. A wine cellar in the basement, infinite smarts, and more goodness in his heart than the soft eyes can convey. All that was missing, he said, was that special someone. And I don't know how often I've seen this. The good guys never get the girl, and what on earth is wrong with the girls that they don't get that? (and shouldn't I be able to answer that, being one of the ones who never gets it?)

In other news, the boys had proceeded to kill a poor bird before I got there. It had broken a leg, or something, and they had put it on something soft in the bathroom, so as to nurse it back to health (or whatever), because they love all living things and want only the best for Everyone. By the time I got there, the poor thing had scrambled from its soft spot and drowned in the toilet. Heaven help me, I couldn't help but laugh.

I return home with inexplicable bruises on my body, dirt under my fingernails, and a creeping tiredness in me. But I am glad I went, because I never regret any adventure I take, and it's good to be reminded of that. When Life asks, the answer should always be Why the hell not. Even if you end up with eight empty bottles and grass in your hair.

The Edge of Reason

Awakening is slow, and painful. Limbs twisted and mouths dry. Sleep too short, always too short and yet already restlessness pulses through the veins, and it's time to get your bearings, time to salvage whatever heart matter spilled out in the openness of the drunk Friday night and close up shop. Not regretting anything, perhaps, just regaining composure and putting the hair back up. Stumbling home along the Pulaski bridge and Manhattan is covered in gray fluffy clouds. The Good Ones are out for their runs, and it isn't strange considering it isn't even morning anymore. Memories flashing of the previous night, of the dead or dying fish in the Chinatown restaurant fishtanks. How weird it is to know something will happen someday and then to be on the verge of it. And does that mean I am now in the middle of it? The hangover affords some much needed escape from thinking, from feeling. Did that girl at the bar and I really decide to be best friends and should I maybe do something about that? Left my umbrella at that bar but it wasn't mine to begin with because it was left by someone else months ago. In the general tally of umbrellas it evens out. Perhaps I will keep my eyes out for another. My phone took a swim in some beer and refuses to write the words I aim for, so text messages went out that no mere mortal could possibly interpret, and how many shots did we drink anyways?

Still, there is something to be said for those moments when you both know. There's no need for questions or questioning. It's so strange. I know. But I knew this would happen. I know. And here we are. It's Saturday night and only my second entry and already I'm bullshitting because I haven't yet learned at what level I want to be writing. Forgive me, bear with me, stay. It gets so overwhelming being left to your own devises.