Are You Listening?

On Saturday we threw a 60th birthday party for my dad at his favorite restaurant, in Brooklyn.  A couple weeks earlier he and my mom both independently asked me to perform my September 11th poem, which I felt was completely inappropriate for the occasion.  So I wrote this in secret, and debuted it between the entree and dessert.

Happy birthday, dad.  (circa December 2007)

PS - This poem contains a TRICOLON CRESCENS!!!!!!  Can you find it?!

Are You Listening?

My father is 60 going on 100

His capacity for worry

Is that of a senior citizen circling the 24-hour news cycle

Frantic

Like a hamster circling a ball

Like a balding hamster circling a ball

Like a balding hamster

Whose son only lives in places that are extremely vulnerable

To unpredictable natural disasters

Circling a ball

Dad                 

You can give me a dozen reasons why I should evacuate for a Category I hurricane

But I will never listen

When do I ever listen?

You can name your ulcer after me if it makes you feel better

My father is 60 and still learning how to use technology

A few years back he learned the difference between reply and reply all

When he sent this message to me, in reference to my first marathon:

“Susan, I don’t want to scrape Sam off the ground in some faraway city.”

Dad I proved you wrong

In fact you cheered me on

Then helped me climb up the stairs for the next three days

My father is 60 going on 23

That is to say he’s rubbing off on me

I’ve always had his ears and his voice

But now I have his astigmatism

His New Yorker subscription

His distrust of all other drivers in the tri-state area

His reluctant admiration of Jewish women

It’s called genetics, people.

My father is 60 going on 18

That’s why for the past two weeks he’s put everything down

Packed the trunk full of emergency supplies

And driven to the edges of the city

Of Long Island sound

To meet the needs of stranded and cold survivors

He said it was harder than seeing New Orleans for the first time

My father is 60 going on and on and on

Most of his sentences to his children begin with

“There was this article in the Times that…”

Or

“I heard on NPR that…”

And end with

“Are you listening to anything I’m saying?”

“Kids?  Are you listening?”

My father is 60 going on proud

He didn’t want me to stop playing baseball

When I got hit with a pitch in 3^rd grade

But not because he cared about how good I was at baseball

I think he knew I would never get good at baseball

He just wanted to raise children
Who understand that in life you will ache

And that is no reason to quit

The weekend his father died

He drove three hours to my sleepaway camp

Because all he wanted to do

Was be a dad

My father is 60 going on 61

Which, he will have you know

Does not mean he’s retired

About two years ago he told me he wanted

To get more serious about screenwriting

I didn’t listen, didn’t think he was really being serious

I told him “ok dad, just don’t quit your day job.”

And then… he… quit his day job.

But it’s alright!

He’s got a working spouse

My father is 60 going on 30 years of marriage

No simple feat          

But they’ve always made it look easy

I don’t know if their relationship was ever in doubt

But if it was thank you for hiding it from us when we were young

And if it wasn’t

Wow

My father is 60 becoming everything we need him to be

Driving mom to chemo and radiation therapy

Holding hands through news good and bad

He’s head chef, chauffeur, husband extraordinaire

Yes my father is a worrier

He’s also a rock

No, he’s a boulder

The kind you lean on in the middle of a difficult hike

The kind you would include in a landscape painting

If you wanted the viewer to feel at home

Are you listening?           

He asks

Are you listening?

Yes, dad             

I heard you explain how to put on a spare

I understand that I should read through the entire rent contract before signing

Dad I’m 17 I know what a condom is

Are you listening?

He asks

Did you remember to call your mother on her birthday?

Do you need anything from me?

Are you happy with what you’re doing?

Are you even listening?

Dad

We pretend to be independent

Children our age excel

At making parents feel irrelevant

But your kids know better

Than to ignore 60 years of wisdom

60 years going on a million

So yes,

We’re listening

Dad

We are always

Listening

Clay Pots

Thanks to whomever took this

The prose just isn't hitting the page right now.  Every time I sit down to write, I'm working on poems.  Some satire, some reflection, some catharsis.  It's a whole new form of expression that I'm sorry to have ignored for so long.

Finding a fitting metaphor is a real treat when writing poetry.  The best ones build themselves - their meanings extend outward as the writing continues, beyond the scope of what you expect them to explain.

I went through five drafts of this poem, including a full rewrite, but the metaphor did most of the hard work.  It's a piece about my relationship with my younger sister, who turned 21 in September (!?).  I sent it to her about a month after her birthday, mostly because I didn't know what I wanted it to say.  It still doesn't say most of what it should, which would sound like an extension of this:

"Hey, I know I've been a pretty difficult big brother most of your life, and I'm sorry for that.  Even though our relationship has been challenging, you're my sister and I love you."

It should not take 21 years to say that, but that's how long it took me.  Maybe I just needed to find the right way to say it.  Maybe I'll stick with this poetry thing a while longer.

Clay Pots

One of us must have been adopted

And it was probably you

Because I have dad’s voice and mom’s hazel eyes

And her brother’s brown hair

Though luckily neither of us inherited

Their unbearable senses of humor

But we both got

Grandpa’s gritty stubbornness       

As kids it was like

Two rough ceramic pots rubbing

Grinding on contact

Chipping and dulling one another

But I was older and taller

So I raised your self-esteem up over my head

And then dropped it

And not by accident.

Just to see how many shards

You’d make when you shattered

Before I learned to know my anger

Feeling bigger was all that mattered

Like when I used to call you stupid

For not knowing all 50 states

I think I teased you into learning them

Sculpting you with childish hate            

But I’m learning

That you are not ceramic

Because clay doesn’t grow stronger

Doesn’t unbreak

You are not solid and delicate

But liquid and opaque

You are not clay but ink

My mistake

Has been to think

That every time I knocked you over

You crumbled beneath your brother

But you just spilled a little bit

Then stubbornly recovered

Pouring ink

Forming blots

That from a distance

Look a little bit like courage

And a lot like persistence

And from above they look like confidence

And up close they look like art

And I

Am finally learning

How to appreciate art

I’m finally learning

To handle ink when it’s wet

That’s why this poem reads like tribute

But still tastes like regret

And it would sound like an apology

If my pen was not so weak

But at least now I’m learning

How to make ink speak

It’s been two weeks

Since you turned 21

This poem started as a gift

Though the ribbons have come undone

Like all our past attempts to change our friendship’s tack

Some bowls are made to fit

And others just don’t stack

But I’m learning

That love is not a sequence

Of broad artistic gestures

It’s not one perfect sketch

Or a collage of silk and feathers

It’s fraying leather

It’s ice sculptures melting

And then getting out the mop

It’s knowing how fast to spin the wheel

And knowing when to stop

It’s sloppy

It’s crumpled drafts and crossed-out lines

It’s chalk on a sidewalk

And pastels that dull with time

I’m learning that love

Has no design

And that’s fine

Maybe there’s no blueprint

On how to be a good big brother

But I promise

For the next 21 years

I’ll try to be less stubborn

What I Wish I Had Been Told

In May I attended my first ever poetry slam, a monthly show hosted by Slam New Orleans (who, by the way, just won the National Poetry Slam).  The show was inspiring, so much so that I decided to try my hand at it.  The following month I made my slam debut, and after that I set a goal to perform a new poem every month for the next year.  Four months later I'm still on track.

This poem is about my experience of the 11 years since the September 11th attacks.  The idea behind the poem is that I travel back in time to speak to a younger version of myself on the morning following the attacks.

Thanks for listening, and please please please offer any constructive feedback.  Transcription below.



What I wish I had been told on September 11th, 2001.

The worst nightmare is one that everyone shares
That bears its weight in the faces and backward glances of an entire city
That you escape from not by waking but by falling asleep
But this is no dream

You will witness the end of sneaking deli sandwiches into baseball games
Learn to pose crucified for intimate pat downs from impersonal hands
Prepare yourself
For red-eyed nights aboard red eye flights
And the red faces of teenage boys who want to kill the man who did this

                                              

On trips home you will ride the New York subway and notice

How people have become even more proficient at looking over their shoulders

You will gaze into the only hole on Earth that makes New Yorkers stand still

That no amount of concrete, steel, and arrogance can fill

And not for lack of trying

You will hear claims that

Today everyone is a New Yorker

And you’re going to wish it were true

Because at least then this country could put its head down, its ear buds in, and mind its own fucking business

In this new world you will ask yourself

Does it really matter if hate is in our hearts or in our actions?

Because most American Presidents have murdered more innocent people

Than Bin Laden could ever imagine

And imagine the irony

That ten years after this insurrection

We will orient our anger in the same exact direction

Lower Manhattan

And for a lot of the same reasons

Our means will be non-violent but the point is the same

There’s a culture to blame

Yet we won’t examine ourselves

But delve headfirst

Into aggressive self-denial

We’re addicted to a sense of greatness

That most of the world reviles

But what if interrupting violence doesn't start in Islamabad
But in Manhattan?

What if we demanded that our schools teach conflict resolution

So that not a single American child turned to violence as a solution?

There’s a line in the preamble of the US Constitution

That says to form a more perfect union is to promote the general welfare

That’s a challenge for us to think up our own particular ways to care

That all involve people

Small acts of love speak softly

But a million at a time can drown out the noise of evil

In this new world we’ll need to laugh at ourselves sometimes

Humility is a willingness to be your own punch line

Because if we don’t make ourselves the subjects of comedies

Then someone else will write us in as the objects of tragedies

If we don’t ask questions

Then we’re giving up on answers

If we don’t nip hate in the bud

Then it will spread like a cancer

If we’re not inspired

If we don’t light roaring bonfires

Beneath our youngest boys and girls

Then who’s going to imagine

The next new world?

Spiders and Storms

Life is picking up again and this might be my last blog post for a little while.  Thanks for reading.

Love,

Sam

~~~~~~~~~

I admire spiders

What if we all took the time

To weave such fine webs?

I admire spiders.  How they spend every last calorie weaving silk between anchors of buildings and trees.  How they see a home where we see empty spaces between.  How they persist in their life's work through interference from wind and the destructive hands of children.

Last weekend a friend and I watched the sunset from the Cabrini Footbridge on Bayou St. John.  The bridge, the oldest in New Orleans, was once a portage for cargo from Lake Ponchartrain to the Mississippi River.  No longer needed for this purpose, its thin metal skeleton and aging wooden planks now mostly bear the weight of dog walkers and awkward first dates.

The wind picked up, and we noticed spiders bouncing back and forth upon webs-in-progress.  Certain angles rendered the webs invisible and the spiders seemed almost to vibrate in mid-air.  At breaks in the wind the spiders would return to work, sliding along diligently and expanding their webs to the blueprint of instinctive design.

In days Tropical Storm Isaac would arrive in New Orleans, probably as a hurricane.  It had already reached the Caribbean.  We wondered aloud what would happen here, spiders and all.

By Sunday afternoon school had been cancelled through Wednesday, and that evening we made a plan to evacuate.  Isaac was to strengthen to a category two, with winds up to 100 miles per hour and stronger gusts.  Trees and power lines would fall, and the slow-moving storm threatened to dump 18 inches or more of rain, possibly flooding swaths of the city.  Power would likely be out for days, and perhaps gas and water as well.  We aimed to leave for Atlanta early Monday afternoon, after we had a chance to storm-proof the house and stock up on supplies.

That morning I went to the grocery to get food for the road.  By eight the parking lot was full and the bottled water nearly out.  People weren't leaving, they were gearing up.  Caterpillars preparing chrysalises.

I went into school to help prepare the garden.  We rolled logs, flipped tables, secured loose tools, and prepared a chicken shelter inside the school.  Most people sounded ready to weather the storm at home, leaving at the last-minute if necessary.  I spoke with my Atlanta-bound friends and all of us had been similarly emboldened.  We would wait it out here.

By Tuesday mid-morning the edge of the storm began creeping in.  The police announced a dusk-till-dawn curfew in expectation of a dark and stormy city.  They cancelled school through Thursday.  As the day drew on the sky greyed and the sway of trees grew from a lilting waltz to a frantic swing.  We ran last-minute errands then hunkered down at home, ready to lose power at any moment.  That evening we watched a film and fell asleep to steady rain and loud whispers of rustling leaves.  Gusts woke me up in the night as wind hissed and windows shook, and by morning the power was out.

Wednesday we didn't leave the house.  The wind stayed strong through the afternoon but the rain slowed to a drizzle.  I called my parents every twelve hours to reassure them that I was ok, and they reassured me that the worst was yet to come so I'd better be careful.  I kept my cell phone off in between calls.  I spent most of the day horizontal, working my way through The Shipping News and editing a poem.  I took at least three naps and was about as happy as a boy could be in the middle of an extreme weather event.

That night it appeared that the worst winds had passed, and the promised rains had not yet arrived.  I wanted more than anything to go outside, not to experience the tempest but to see what my neighborhood looked like without power and pedestrians.  Feeling a little stir-crazy, a little reckless, and morbidly curious, we took a walk around 10 PM.

Outside we saw a police car pull up to a neighbors house so we walked the other way.  I'm not sure if I had remembered the curfew or was just being cautious but some part of me felt that stealth was the right approach.  We walked along oak-lined Banks street, stepping between downed branches and deepening puddles towards Jeff Davis parkway.

I turned the corner and my jaw dropped to the pavement.

The Jefferson Davis parkway is a wonderful stretch of road.  In between two lanes on either side lies a vast neutral ground, large enough to accomodate a playground, a volleyball court, and the occasional pickup football game.  The neutral ground is lined with stunning elderly live oaks, and every evening I bike home on the narrow concrete path that leads from the Bayou to my block.  Name not withstanding, it's probably my favorite roadway in New Orleans.  Most evenings it's teeming with activity.  On my corner there's a 24-hour tattoo parlor, and within a five-block walk there are about four bars, a bank and two gas stations.

Tonight Jeff Davis felt empty.  No sounds save for rain and wind.  All the traffic lights were out; the neon beer signs off, the tattoo parlor closed for the first time since I moved here.  Beneath the faint glow of the clouded sky we saw a new place: navy blue silhouettes of trees and houses, dozens of cars parked on the neutral ground to protect from flooding, roads spared from the pounding of car and foot traffic, trees absent birds but encumbered by the weight of fresh water.  We stepped into rareness, and were lost in awe.

We made a left and headed towards where the parkway curves up over I-10.  We cleared the buffer of trees and the rain pounded us with tiny pellets.  At the top of the curve we saw more of the same wonder.  The whole city dark, minus the Parish Prison and the shell of the Superdome.  Priorities, priorities.

By morning the wind had calmed.  Hard to say who came out first, the spiders or the people.  We drove to the French Quarter to find power, and already the bars were packed.  It was 11:30 AM.

Back in Midcity the caterpillars had emerged, now butterflies.  On every street people were sweeping up leaves, collecting branches into piles, and moving cars back to lower ground.  Along the Bayou we heard a brass band warming up, and minutes later a crowd of 50 had collected for an impromptu street party.  Across the water a father and son sat together carving spatulas from the fallen wood of a neighbor's pear tree.  The tree had stood for over 60 years, and its keepers had often brought gifts of pear pie.  A circle fulfilled.

Back on the Cabrini footbridge the spiders were hard at work.  New webs to be woven, always.  Early Monday morning I came back to the bridge to see them.  Dozens and dozens of webs, maybe 100 in all.  As if the storm had never come, but of course it had.

I admire spiders.

I admire this city.

When Your Eyes Make Choices Without Your Consent

New York has always been a paradox for me.  I’ve always claimed belonging without ever really wanting to belong.  I grew up in the suburbs but always introduce myself as a New Yorker.  I've always taken pleasure in my visits to the city while keeping fairly certain that I’d never call it home.  When I’m there I emulate the habits of New Yorkers even though I don’t enjoy any of them: keeping pace with rushing bodies on broad avenues, archetypically avoiding gazes on the subway, always looking like I’m moving with backbreaking purpose even when I’m completely lost.  These are "New York things" to me, and my aptitude at them has always been a source of strange pride.

When I left for college almost five years ago I wasn't sure I'd ever be back in New York for good.  Too big, too much noise, not neighborly enough, easy to lose yourself, hard to get away.  Here was a place whose vastness and volume was matched only by its people's desire to be isolated; islands; invulnerable.  Here in this metropolis of 8 million I thought I’d found Earth's epicenter of being alone.  I couldn't help but feel both charmed and totally repulsed by the concrete and steel exterior of New York and its people.  Here was a place that I loved, but wasn't sure I could ever be a part of.

Most of the important people from the first 22 years of my life have ended up in New York: childhood friends, college friends, family.  I never considered moving back after college, in part because I thought I’d be too comfortable.  Still, I seem to go back every chance I get.

On my most recent trip earlier this month I found myself on the subway shuttle between Grand Central and Times Square.  This particular subway line is a graphic designer's erotic fantasy and a cultural critic's recurring nightmare.  Every car is adorned with a single advertisement that takes the shape of the subway car itself: images fold over every seat edge, enclose every windowsill and span every inch of ceiling.

I saw this phenomenon for the first time a few of summers ago when I rode the shuttle every day on my way to some already-forgotten internship.  An ad for Mad Men – which I believe is a show on television – rendered the subway’s interior into the interior of Grand Central Station.

This photo still gives me goosebumps. http://eatshopplaylove.blogspot.com/2010/10/una-ragazza-on-shop-dr-zizmor-vs-big-al.html

I remember feeling totally floored by the amount of design talent it must have taken to create such a thorough piece of art.  I remember also feeling totally unsettled that the ad industry had found its next ingenious method to break through the immunity to advertising that New Yorkers develop living in a city where ads outnumber pigeons.  That statistic is made up, and also maybe true.

This time the shuttle was filled with something even more curious: a full-car advertisement for Doritos and Mountain Dew.  Together.  Joined in matrimony from the depths of some perverse diabetic nightmare.  My mind flashed to a conference room full of buddy-buddy ad execs in seersuckers and fedoras somewhere high above Madison Avenue scheming ways to sell their products:

Dorito Joe: “Jeez guys, it’s been a tough month for Doritos.  People are just too thirsty to eat our product right now.”

Dan Dewey: “Yeah!  Summertime is the pits for Mountain Dew sales.  People need something that’s refreshing and substantial, and our product just isn’t dew-ing it.  No pun intended!”

Dorito Joe: “Gah... I just wish... I wish there was some way we could… Wait a minute!”

This is how I imagine most ad campaigns are born.

As a matter of survival I cling to the belief that humans will always like looking at other humans more than we like looking at billboards and posters.  It’s unfortunate that the largest and most well financed industrial project in all of human existence is dedicated to making the opposite come true, and I try to fight that project in small ways whenever possible.

People Watching is one great way to fight the Great Advertising Project.  It’s also my favorite idle activity in New York, especially while riding subways.  You see every kind of person on the subway in New York.  The only people you won’t see are the ultra-rich, claustrophobes, and people for whom the subway is difficult to access.  Everyone else is fair game.

There’s just so much to wonder about on the subway.  Where are those tourists in matching neon shirts from?  What book is everyone reading and would they recommend it?  Whom does that child belong to?  People Watching is also a good way to forget about yourself for a little while, which is among the healthiest things that I don’t do enough.

Sitting there in the shuttle trying hard to forget about myself for a few minutes and trying even harder to ignore the Dew-ritos ad, I had an epiphany: I only look at certain people.

I only look at certain people.

I twirled the thought around in my head, like trying a new flavor of double-churned ice cream.  I was surprised at how such a simple truth could escape my notice for years.  It was like discovering a limb whose weight you’ve always carried but never realized was there.  I felt liberated, like I’d had some glorious insight into how my mind worked.

I started to piece together who I looked at the most: cute children (which to me is pretty much all children), people with unusual physical features or attire, and people whom I find attractive.

Then I started feeling really ashamed.  I wasn’t just looking at certain people and not at others.  I was assigning value to them, all of them, without even realizing.  Some people are worth me looking at and wondering about, and others aren’t.

A habit like this can be useful, and it can also become dangerous.  The world throws a million pieces of information at us a day, and our minds need to filter through it somehow to avoid getting totally overwhelmed.  The problem comes when we get stuck on certain filters.  We enter into cycles in which everything we see affirms what we already believe.  In these times we learn very little, and become closed off to all the details that make the world complicated and interesting.

I think back to a year ago when I began serving my Americorps term at a K-8 public charter school.  I had big issues with the public school system: overemphasis on testing, learning confined to classrooms, the school system’s role in maintaining historical inequities.  I felt uneasy about serving in a school, and felt skepticism towards people who chose to make careers in public education.  You’d have to be pretty uncritical and somewhat oblivious to support such a broken system, I thought.

It took me months to realize that I shared a workplace with some of the most thoughtful, passionate, and giving people I’d ever met.  Many of them agree with me that parts of the school system are broken, but they’re resolved to create a school that isn’t.  With their guidance I've seen that an open-enrollment public charter school can prioritize critical thinking, social and emotional development, and outside-the-classroom learning.  I didn’t have an eye for these details at first, and instead I fixed on a few narrow conclusions based on what I thought I knew.

On this trip back I started to think more on some of the conclusions I had drawn about New York and why I couldn’t be happy there.  Living in New Orleans has intensified my feeling that New York is too fast, too crowded, too unfriendly.  If you walk too quickly in New Orleans, on the other hand, people may begin to worry about you.  It's not unusual to say hello to a stranger here, or to strike up a conversation.  Not everyone has somewhere to go at all times.  Sometimes people just sit outside their homes for hours with family or friends, or even alone.  

But in my certainty I was missing a crucial detail: New Orleans is about one-sixteenth the size of New York.  You can find Saints tickets on Stubhub for $60 because there aren’t 8 million other people looking for the same ticket.  At most there are a few hundred thousand.

In New Orleans you rarely walk by more than a couple of people at a time.  You can walk around your neighborhood all day and not see more than a few dozen people.  To travel any substantial distance in Manhattan on foot you have to navigate through a veritable ocean of humans.  Think about how quickly you’d get discouraged if you attempted to make eye contact or say “hi” to everyone you walked by.

So of course New Yorkers avoid eye contact.  Of course they wear headphones at all times, read a book on the bus or wear sunglasses on cloudy days.  Any genuine attempt at small-town neighborliness would be completely exhausting.  New Yorkers have to close themselves off a bit to keep their daily commutes from becoming staggering feats of human contact.

Here was a shade of New York I’d never seen.  It’s not that people are unfriendly or lonely or constantly desiring of privacy.  It’s that people develop habits out of necessity.  We all make our worlds as small or as large as we need to function in them.  We carve out corners to exist in and then fight like hell to keep our worlds at a scale that works for us.  We do this to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people, sensory experiences, and filter-penetrating full-subway advertisements.

Perhaps this is sometimes why people join gangs or churches, or why they leave their homes for other places.  These things give our world focus and scale.  Without them the world would just feel too small or too large.

Perhaps this is also why my mind trained itself only to look at certain people.  It keeps things simple.  It’s much easier for me to spend a day ogling at babies and attractive women than it is to spend a day trying to contemplate the fullness of everyone’s humanity.

We all need easy days.  We all need time to shut our minds down, or to be closed off and stubborn and certain.  But I think it’s important that once in a while we remember to ask: what are we missing?  Where haven’t we been?  What aren’t we seeing?  Who are we walking by?

On my last day in New York I decided to conduct an experiment.  I told myself that I would try to notice everyone, especially the people who don’t usually grab my attention.  And not only that, I would try to give them all value.  I’d give them a description that complicated my perception of them a little bit.  Here are some highlights:

“Encyclopedic knowledge of igneous rocks.”

“Employee of the month in June.”

“Plays a mean alto sax.”

“Plays a crummy alto sax but works damn hard at it.”

“Never misses son’s soccer practice.”

“Helps old women cross streets.”

“Speaks seven languages fluently, has broken hearts in six.”

“Just really, really kind.”

And some less cheery ones:

“Angry because just lost job.”

“Tired from staying up all night with spouse with terminal illness.”

“Significant other feeds low self-esteem.”

Predictably I got really overwhelmed really quickly.  There were just too many people, and I was working against 23 years of conditioning.

But even a few minutes of this completely transformed my day.  I felt more hopeful, happier, more open.  I started noticing more people, and then I started noticing more of everything: contours of tree branches, heights and shapes of skyscrapers, the rhythm of cars playing along the street.  New York seemed even more impossibly vivid.

Late that night I made my way back to catch a train home from Grand Central Station, my favorite building in the world.  Sometimes I leave extra time on my trips to New York just so I can walk around a bit and stare at the constellations painted on the ceiling or the ridges in the tan stones that form decorative shapes on the walls.


I love being there around rush hour.  I stand off to the side and watch people run across in every direction, avoiding a thousand devastating collisions every minute.  It amazes me how many people walk through the main concourse without ever looking up, without taking a moment to remember that their commute takes them through this stunning edifice with a million beautiful edges to consider.

Look at all those edges.
http://www.thingstoseenyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/grand-central-2.jpg

I thought I had considered many of those edges, but that night the building revealed itself to me in a way that it never had.  I noticed light fixtures and wall colorations and designs in the marble that I'd never seen before.  I was moved to tears by the cohesive and overwhelming beauty of the place.

I knew that the euphoria of that evening would fade, and it has.  Even as I felt it I realized that it’s easy to be vulnerable towards the world when you’re in a comfortable, familiar place and you don’t have to worry about work or errands or bills.  I realized that it’s easier to see new details when you get a break from focusing on old, ongoing details.

I thought that maybe I could carry a little of this with me, try to channel it every day in small ways.  Maybe I could learn to see better, to become a more cognizant observer.  I promised myself to notice things more; to notice the particulars in plants, buildings, and clouds; to notice at least one stranger every day and imagine some detail that gives them value.  Maybe some days I’ll even gather the courage to talk to them, to go beyond just imagining.

I boarded my train home and said goodbye to New York for a while, goodbye to its honks and shouts, to its glass towers and black asphalt, to its abrasiveness and its charms.  Staring out from the train's window onto New York's singular landscape I thought to myself, “Maybe I could be happy here.”