Briefly

Christopher was eating a buttered croissant today.

Until now, he had been 'the man with the brown cap' or 'the man with the arts and leisure section'.

Today, I decided that his name would be Christopher.

I have known Christopher intimately for quite some time as the resident of the north-most table of our corner Starbucks, never without a latte and, for this reason, never without foam on the upper right half of his lip which, I had to assume, protruded further than the upper left half of his lip which always seemed to remain unfrothed. I had never seen Christopher eat before and paused in admiration of this uncanny phenomenon, a change in my morning routine that made me a devastating two minutes early to work rather than my usual five.

I've concluded that I've grown too fond of early daydreaming and resolve to postpone the bad habit to later in the afternoon.

Today was a Tuesday, so Christopher was sitting alone with his right leg crossed over his left. He always sits that way on Tuesdays. Mondays are the opposite while Wednesdays find him leaning sideways on his impossibly narrow elbows. On Thursdays he doesn't lean on anything because his daughter joins him on Thursdays and she prefers to be the one leaning on him.

Children always humanize the morning coffee drinkers.

The camera zooms out and I realize that I too am just an extra in a stranger's life.

Cut.

My cellphone rings and it's all the people I've forgotten to call again, and I swear it's not for lack of wanting to but for excess of distraction.

Cut.

The train car's empty. I look around for signs of spilled soda or distasteful perfume, but no, the train car is just empty. I think it's warm enough to take off my gloves.

Cut.

The train car's full. The train car's full and I am empty. I put my gloves back on, embracing fever.

Cut.

Someone's singing an obbligato line to the buzzing of a radiator. My arm knocks over the bottle of menthol I've been abusing and I burn my hand. F sharp.

Cut.

The santa clauses are on parade. It's finally snowing. The cashier hands me my change and I notice a week has passed. Christopher watches as I zip up my coat and pull on my earmuffs. I wonder if he thinks that the fur is real - that I am leaving for a morning at the spa before an evening at the Met.

He notices that I put more weight on my left leg than on my right and, for this reason, the heel on that boot is slightly shorter. He assumes I'm off to work.

I catch his eye and nod at the croissant on his plate. "The usual?"
He smiles. "My daughter has your scarf."

I take that as a compliment. I do not tell him about the froth. Christopher returns to his paper and I return to my early daydreaming.

I'll see him tomorrow.

Eight Days a Week

There's a calm that sets upon Barclay's Grove at 10:15 on the eve of Thanksgiving. There's a pond that never ripples just across from a fountain that always does. There is stillness enough to watch warm breath meet air in smoking ringlets that float three yards. There is stillness enough to realize that I can know someone intimately; that the rest see clusters or soot or buses belching brisk walkers while I alone know the silent stillness of this city's 10:15.

Then the doors swing open and the Beaumont births an audience, thrilled or disgruntled, and the winds pick up and the moon fogs over and man takes over my Manhattan. And suddenly it's ten past tea and I decide to saunter north.

Why does Andante stand for "walking"? Who determines what the tempo is for shifting "left, right, left"?

The pages in my notebook open to D minor. It's curious, how we settle in a key despite our hopes to modulate. There's comfort in tonic. I take a sip.

My grandmother answers the phone and tells me about childhood. She doles out rozhinkes mit mandlen as my present revisits her yesterdays.

She talks about how far they've come. I talk about how I'm returning...

I've romanticized pages of ladino as conversos and moranos intertwined in dance. I've toyed with mizrahi modes because they taste like resistance.

But it's the plea from Wishnetz that jots in solemn repetition at the corners of my consciousness and I know that I am saving notes from the underground.

Night confuses its fall with Twilight. I remove myself to linger on the poetry of eyes.

Before the seasons change

There's a faint waft of terracotta drifting through the crack in my dark wooden shutter. I can taste the commotion of buttons meeting boots as the sweaters thicken and the crisp air thins. A glimmer of summer escapes from my dresser as the glamor of autumn hangs neatly in rows. I breathe in today, because it's always today and never yesterday, and smile. Tchaikovsky sits in artful summary on the music stand atop my keyboard. Four seasons. The leaves outside are swirling in triplets as the sirens find E flat. Quaint.

I'd been gathering friends like roses, selected in intimate bouquets, and I've been picking out the thorns. I've been peeling away all the he saids and she saids. I've been whittling down to the wick of it all to allow for another bloom.

You want to be there for people, until you realize you love them less than the pain you share. Voice leading fails. The arrangement's unbalanced. You pick another tune.

And still there are the winter markets. The crinkle of December flickers like a comforting candle in a frostbitten garden. My best friend will hold my hand and we will walk through lantern painted skating rinks as the snowflakes light the darkening afternoons. Teacups will mix with warm lattes and we'll smile as strangers lean in to skim the steam. The saxophones will tune to cello and I'll fall for Saint-Saens all over again.

And all will be as it should.

Starry Starry Might

There's a rain that falls. A pelting. A hand against hand that rattles like thunder sticks in a primeval train station. There's a rain that falls outward and upward and never falls down, at least not until the microphone cuts out and the people stand. There's a rain that falls before you hold your breath. There's a rain that falls after. There's a lifetime in the meanwhile.

I've been inhaling sound. I've been exhaling silence.

There's a man in Tel Aviv who used to share my nights with me and I've forgotten how to talk to anyone else.

I press "prive" on my franco-phone and reflect on the way 3,000 handclaps taste through a Carnegie echo.

I come home to a family that wants me to heal, but know that I'm addicted to insomnia.

My gratitude is misconstrued as ennui.

The tunes in my head progress in Yiddish, and I wait for politicians to forget what I keep feeling.

I'm proud of something. I'm not sure what it is.

It's time to flip the vinyl, for this side's getting weary.

Shh.

Taming of the Shrew

New York City,

It's been a little while since we've gazed into each others' hidden truths. I used to flood your subway lines with secrets, my heart racing along with your midday dash through horns and traffic lights. I've missed our stop and go. We used to linger together as I paused to cross your roads. It was in those frozen moments that you understood my every unspoken word.

Now, I'm only go or gone. Now, I'm only silence.

Where were you on that night, New York City? Where were you when your people wrapped themselves in self and didn't hear me shatter? Where was your intrusion?

I've had the stains of your neglect imprinted on the surface of my arm, but life washes over and washes out and I have tossed away my expectations in a fit of self reliance. This isn't forgiveness. This is you and me on my terms, without the promises and without the traffic.

The reality is, I don't have time for secrets anymore, but I do miss leaning against your lampposts and finding comfort in the way your curbside curves at corners.

Thank you for waiting.

~86th street

Notes from Persephone

There's a certain stillness in the crux of 2am that is challenged only by footsteps and bicycles. The cars fade away and the lights fade away and the voices fade away and the little girl sits down on a bench to pick mudbits off her shoe. She'd been avoiding herself, losing her Chopin to Ludacris and her Stevens to Bukowski and with the latter she sank beneath the rivers of manipulation.

I want to do what's right, Demeter, so I'll stop before the 6 seeds turn to 12 and spare you an eternal winter.

She made the calls. The ones to the doctors. The pain's been too much these days. She spends her evenings in bed and calls it apathy, because apathy is something no one questions in New York.

There's a brimming notebook by her bed. She writes. She can't talk.
If she opens her mouth she knows that in their listening there is back-thought and in their hearing there is judgment and in their caring there is selfishness and she's running out of minutes.

It's why she sleeps with men. To make sure she's still alive.

It's why she showers in scalding water. To get jolted into being.

It's why she loves every passing person that ticks away like the hands on a backwards clock. If they are here, so is she.

Eurydice loved Orpheus less than she loved the darkness.
Persephone loves straddling the two.

Seeking Podiatry

I've been walking loosely.

I've been walking barefoot because someone stole my shoes.

I've been walking on shards of I and Thou, on promises un-kept, on people's otherness, on my un-self. I've been walking on coals of false consideration, on 'wait for them to figure things out'. I've been walking on the gravel of other people's terms forgetting that Achilles died here.

We get lost in loss. We question ethics and friendship. We remove ourselves from the complicated and resign to the empty. Locking eyes and crossing boundaries breeds fair-weather friends. I didn't know that. I'm learning.

I'm watching the leaves fall in the rain and wonder at how I let the summer in when I knew I'd fall prey to the fleeting.

P'tach Lanu Sha'ar

I'm becoming friends with the latte boy. Every morning, at half past eight, I find my way to the curved counter on 86th and Broadway. The air is brisk and the door is heavy and as I force it open I find solace in the soft breeze of recognition. "Here she comes", they murmur. "Venti sugar-free caramel latte with regular milk?" The question lingers rhetorically and I smile. It was about a week ago that I started calling him "latte boy" and he started calling me "sugar-free but sweet", and I can't help but blush when he winks at me and flashes a grin.

I know it's innocent. I know it's innocent because he works the morning shift.

I wonder what we'd talk about if I didn't rush off to work. I wonder if he'd tell me about his love for pixie sticks, or about the day he decided to adopt an iguana, or about the store where he bought his purple shoelaces. I wonder if I'd tell him about the way Woody Allen narrates things in the back of my head, or about the way insecurity feels, or about the plant I want to buy in the flower shop across the street. Or maybe we wouldn't talk at all. Maybe we'd just look at each other and smile and then go for a walk in the park to watch the kites fly by. We'd hold hands and exchange whispers, but only while the sun was out, because he'd know that I'm scared of holding hands at nighttime. He'd know I've put the walls back up and he'd let me keep them there, for my sake - for when he lets me down. And he would talk and I would listen and that would be enough.

But I do rush off to work in the morning, so I think I'll leave things at "sugar-free and sweet" and "latte boy".


Where did it go? Where is the atheism, the rational self - the cynical but safe? What is this holiday hypnosis, this upside-down, this exuberant nausea, this raging belief that contradicts personal experience...? I stood before a multitude of mourners and their silence taught me how to mourn aloud. I dove into an ocean of repentance and in the deep sincerity found air. I shook beneath the spinning and the sound and felt centered while outside myself.

I want to change the world. I'm young enough to think I can. Let me.

Waiting to Become Godot

There's an upright bass standing in the corner of my mind. It leans with casual grace, balancing a black beret on the uppermost peg. I'm 15 again and I can feel my hands falter in dorian.

And then the keys melt away and the bass turns to humming and all our together comes apart and I decide to Take Five.

He used to shrug and say that no one comes to hear the bassist take his solo. It's different now. It's different when a bike gets run down on 2nd avenue and you're left with brass and clashing and no foundation.

Meanwhile, here I am, in all my 'generation me' free will and glory, indulging in the luxury of my own existence. I sit and I see and I feel. I record or I evaluate. But now I'll take my cues from you - cues to touch and affect.

Because a string is not music until someone makes it ring.

Grand Central Sundays

I opened my eyes and inhaled cathedral. A ray of white crept through a folded wooden shutter and shot back through a reflection on the wall. Bay windows consumed the once glamorous parlor in which I now sleep, and I wondered where the people sat when the artists came to play.

This is home - this strip of pre-war New York City; this strip of bodegas and flower shops, straddled by parks and synagogues; this Marais of America. I watch the passersby, their skirts worn long, their skirts worn short, their coffee-dogleash-New-York-Times-JPost-radio morning cocktails in hand, and I smile at the way my tallis crinkles in its velvet green bag as I walk along 86th street.

The high holidays have come again...the way they always do...the way they did when I ducked beneath elbows to catch a glimpse of the shofar... the way they did when I rolled my atheist teenage eyes at a mass of bowing and mumbling. The high holidays have come the way they always do, smelling of clean slates and new chances.

Submerged in the waters of belief, I bow and call out. I call out for myself. I call out for seven hundred selves. The prayer echos within me and within them and I know that this year will be different. Doubt is no longer skepticism, but engagement.

The train lurches forward and I refuse to second guess the direction.

Philadelphia Cream Cheese

A rainbow is setting in the Central Park reservoir. The boy with the purple knee-socks is kissing the girl with the sapphire eyes. Victorian acacia branches curve into cupids as my fingers trace the railing of the footbridge where we walked. It smells like ivory keys and maple syrup.

My brother is turning ten on September 6th. I remember ten. I remember this park at ten, when I stayed with you that first last summer. I remember the sound the wheelchair made as it parted gravel. I remember reaching up to grab the walker, my small hand on your wrinkled one. I remember the leaves we gathered and the poems you recited and the way you loved when I hummed the theme from Swan Lake.

And now it will be his turn to visit these streets. And I will show him. I will show him the window where I used to spin through white lace curtains. And he will laugh when he hears the stories. And I will tell him that he has your laugh.

And we'll remember.

Rakes Progress

a weekend past budding,
the petal curls downward
with the weight of
Pink and something silver.
aging wrinkles on a
“Maybe I’ll fall off tomorrow”
she mutters,
in winded wisps of
pensive on green

For lack of words

19. She's been wrapping her tongue around that number, waiting for it to melt or unfurl. Nineteen. It tastes something like kalua out of a rusted flask. It vibrates through her fingertips like a Jacobin reaction to generations of matriarchs. 19. She toasts away its education, with gratitude, and turns a new leaf in her book of recollection. Let autumn iron out the old sheets.

She shook hands with a stranger today on the corner of 114th and Broadway. He commented on her thoughts as she read his grin and let him fumble numbers into a phone. She watched him walk away with his briefcase and wondered if he'd ever walk barefoot through morningside. She decided to touch toe to pavement on her way to work. She doesn't think she'll pick up if he calls.

She's been having trouble speaking. There's something about the way that sound sits on air that makes insecurity tangible. She'll do what she always does. She'll leave love in pen scratches.

And stop counting time .

Terminal

The bus rolls in at minutes past the hour. I've traced the spotted gray of these seats before just as the wheels trace the bridges I haven't built. I watch the outline of my reflection flit between the raindrops on the window and wonder if I'd take a chance on myself the way I wish the others did.

I think I would. I don't know if that counts.

The man sitting next to me is offering me a stick of gum. He leans over the aisle and hands me a dashing smile. I  return the favor but refuse the gesture and turn back into myself. The bus accelerates.

The things that aren't are flirting with the things that are and I hold my breath until the faces spin away. I could use a smoke.

The doors swing open and I tumble back into pseudo-certainty. Consequences are always relevant, but they won't stop me from being. I'm scared of time and not having enough of it.

Happiness isn't about everything in life being perfect. Happiness is about stringing together the little things and making them count more than the bad bits. Happiness is about the way a friend leans on your shoulder, or the way a long awaited phonecall feels in your hand, or about the way you made someone laugh when that was exactly what they needed. Happiness is the way I can be if I want to be. And I want to be.

I'm not spending time in front of mirrors anymore. It's time to live as more than a reflection of myself.

The Ugly Duckling

There's something about the way a toy sailboat tilts in the wind that makes me hold my breath. I know it's in my head. I know the sail will curve just so and the wind will blow just so and the little strand of silver will ripple and crease the water. I know that the sailboat is going to make it around the bend. Still, I wince every time I watch it stroke the murky green of Alice's pond. I think it's because I'm afraid of falling.

I sat on one of those wooden benches today. I mention that because I usually sit on the grass, but this time, I sat on one of the benches. It wasn't ornate, or freshly painted, but I sat there because it was inscribed with something I've been trying to avoid. The bench read "To my dear Beth, because you hear me when I speak and wait while I count fireflies".

I'm trying forget what that feels like. I'm trying to forget what anything feels like, really. I'm trying to be ok with things, you see? But here, in this city of sculpture and solitude, there's a person who sits next to Beth on Sunday afternoons and loves her, and I'm terrified that knowing that might ruin everything.

So I think I'll sit and watch the boats turn the bend. Suspense with certainty is comforting for now.

Intellectual Property Law

Three nuns sat hunched on a bench on 96th street, their crosses colliding with the aluminum wrappings of three identical egg sandwiches. I watched their laughter and indulgence, prayer books tossed aside, and wondered if it's we who choose the challenge of belief, and why.

New York has won me back. I'd been yearning for reckless seduction and the raging brush-sweeps of Chagall lured me back to this island of fountains, opera houses, and late night sharp stiletto accents that roll playbills into joints and inhale euphoria. I've been walking alone in crowded places, again, and sipping my overdose of coffee, again, and talking to complicated strangers, again, and holding my breath so the visions beat faster while my heart stands still.

I've been waiting for Odysseus to walk with me and hold my hand, but time isn't stopping for us. There are skyscrapers and kingdoms to contend with, and while my nature is not politically expedient I know I can't watch seasons change and hope to harvest the ideas of an early July. I'm back to urban - fast though not yet flourishing- and while I wait, Odysseus may not be coming home.

There's a man with diamond studs and golden hair lining lead sheets in B flat. There's a man in fresh pressed suits who doesn't sleep but understands the soul of things. And then there's the girl, who follows the rondo of their conversation and doesn't let on how much she understands. That's safer for now.

You got a light?

Treason on ice. There's a wall between an east and west that no one can see. Picasso's blue period has turned into Kandinsky's red, and I'm not sure which history is mine. I am born breathing Jeffersonian air, but tune my strings to La minor and find myself walking chromatically. Skip and skid.

We spin for two weeks on a pedestal, tipping between Temple falls and renewal. We spin for two weeks holding our breath, forgetting to exhale, losing ourselves, addicted to the momentum. We spin for two weeks and then, gravity pulls us down. Just as we were hypnotized by love we are submerged in doubt. We still want, but we aren't certain.

I've learned who my friends are. I've learned who's real and who's convenient. I've learned who weathers time and who falters before it. I've learned that I want to believe in everyone. I've decided I'll keep trying.

I close my eyes and wonder at the way some pairs of hands lock together while others shrivel to the touch.

I don't want to run away anymore. Help me stand still.

Something New

There's a moment in central park, just before the cloudy hues sag from amethyst to gray, when the only thing to do is sit on a rock and acknowledge your humanity. You outline air as it sinks into the creases of a tree and wonder at the way the bark draws hieroglyphics onto pillars topped with green. You watch the children reach out, uprooted. They're soaring from sand box to roller skates to first kiss to laptops and coffee stains. You're happy to be detached from the ground and follow them.

There's a moment in every day when you exhale and realize that more things are good than aren't. The trepidation of "what could be" melts away in light of "what is". I am happy with "what is". I'm happy growing into "what could be". I am happy curling into myself today, knowing that our hands may intertwine tomorrow.

Exhaustion is palpable. My eyelashes cross and stick while I struggle to string words into sentences. This time, it's a beautiful sort of fatigue. It tastes like I have lived just as I wanted to. It's a new feeling - a grounded sort of vulnerability.

I'm challenging my mortality by believing in endless tomorrows.

The Summer Triangle (astronomy lessons)

Daisy looks out toward a liquid sky and glistens green. It's been 8 years since she watched the sea breeze flirt with symbolism. Strains of something silver touch her skin in tricky tones of light and dark, and she hesitates. She's been here before, and last time, Gatsby ended up submerged and silent.

Spend 3 days grinning with sand in your teeth. It's different from your high-heeled life of cocktail induced meandering. Central park is watching you fall in love with the way waves rise and fall, and you know there's room in your heart for both, but Bethesda borders on absolutist and the only thing you can do is sit and watch the fountains spin. We'll figure things out, this city and I, because there are pockets of nature within the man made condition of it all. It will align...at some point.

I close my eyes and watch a woman scale my palms to tell me to stop waiting. She tells me I'm too kind for how I'm treated, and that's the way it's going to be. I don't mind. I'll do what's right and feel comforted by the irony of it all. She tells me it's time to start seeing past the tip of my nose. I wish that were safer.

If we set sail together, maybe the birds would turn to dancing stars and change the constellations in the sky.

For now, we'll trace the dots that glimmer through the night and chant in three parts.

Sunrise

I decided to interrupt the sorrow. Darn right. You see, I was walking up columbus and figured it was time for liberation's dawn. It's my turn to lock the door and turn to a major key. I'm changing the clocks an hour forward and leaving the rest behind.

People spend their lives in flux. It's all about what they have, or don't. Whether material or abstract, we're defined by acquisition.

None of that really matters anymore, because I like who I am, and that is enough.

It's 85 degrees in New York City. There's no breeze off the Hudson, and the trees in Riverside park have finally settled into calm. There's a little boy tripping over his shoelaces as he trots toward a passing ice cream truck. He's eyeing the raspberry popsicle and tugging at his mother's purse for change. Breathing in a golden wisp of July, she folds over the corner of her summertime novella and tends to his exuberance. Radiant.

Lavender turns to rosey cheeks and everything. It's simpler, after the fall.

Not quite 88 keys

Order a glass of water. Ice. No lemon. Take a sip of your surroundings and try to recognize them. The chairs smell mahogany. The air tastes like peppermint and fresh arugula. 84th street is classier than iceberg. It's comforting and intellectual. And yet, something about it sounds like Berlin. She can't shake it.

It hasn't gone away. The morphine addiction. A psychological rehabilitation of soul isn't as simple as sow and stitch. Three years ago she pressed a button every 60 seconds to make the pain stop. Three years ago she pressed a button and the stranger came and held her hand. Today it's 32 advils and an empty palm.

I feel alive. I think it's the insomnia. The world is beautiful when you're in half state, when you're reaching for it. It's ambrosia atop Olympus as long as you're still climbing.

She's learning to stand up for herself. It's a process. Everyone is telling her she needs to learn how to say no. Not to them, of course, but in general.

Priorities are a funny thing. The wrong swatch of color can be the end of someone's world. The right swatch tends to be the end of hers. It's why she sabotages. It gives her edge.

I propose a toast. To effervescence.

Chronologically Speaking

Wake up.
Something's flickering within my sub terrestrial understanding of humanity.
I'm being chastised for my "please walk all over me" disregard for personal initiative. 
If I advocate for myself, I'm selfish.
If I don't, I'm irresponsible.

He wanted to meet with me. You know who. He wanted to meet but I was 'unavailable'. It's because I'd want to say too much, you see? Give it a month. Let me wrap my tongue in pleasantries. I'll see him when I've forgotten enough again.

There are some sexually transmitted diseases they don't tell you about in school. Apathy. Non chalance. They don't explain how joie de vivre evolves into I think therefore I am not. I want to belong to someone. I know that isn't progressive.

I ordered a beer. It's uncharacteristic of me. It's because I feel generic today. He took over the world, you know - the one with ambition - the one who can't feel. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe if I succeed at things, the way I used to, I'll have to resign to numbness too.

Accolades without applause. That's the aesthetic. They'll tell you what you've done wrong, but it's accolades without applause. Watch your friends fester in their validation. Nail-bites and false smiles are better than the American way.

I can't remember what the weather was like on the day I was born. They say you're supposed to start your story by setting a scene. I've been trying to write. Dickens always talked about London, or cemeteries. I guess I can talk about New Jersey. A Dickensian mindset is risky, considering people's attention spans these days...

My grandmother often marvels at how little I remember about my childhood. I fear she thinks I'm ungrateful. I remember some things. The mask of a gorilla and a black leather couch, the turtle my mother let me keep for a week in Manhattan, the way my grandparent's house smelled of warm mushroom barley soup and vinyl children's records when the rest of the world fell apart...
I remember green tiles in a shower stall, and making a flamingo out of clay.  I remember my grandmother feeding me grilled cheese on rye while illustrating my book reports with her Leningrad interpretations of Mark Twain and Roald Dahl.

I remember who loved me.
I remember who I wanted to love me.
I remember being unsure of it all...

Helen Thomas left the White House yesterday. The thing is, the government isn't really outraged about what she said. I wish it were, but I think it's more about her transparency. You see, growing national bigotry is only appropriate when veiled in politically correct gray areas.

Words speak louder than actions. Welcome to the modern age.

Memorial

Ten beards bow before an opened door as they turn their backs on an altar to welcome a woman. They mourn two thousand years of destruction and fall before the temptations of a virginal bride. Rest. They would give it all away for a moment of pious reprieve. Bow. Exhale. Rise. Feel the flood of rejuvenating holiness seep in between the cracks of study and labor.

Atheism is a luxury for those who don't need anything to hold on to. I don't have enough self-worth to be an atheist. 'Generation Me' skipped over this believer and left her without the remnants of entitled apathy. I'm surrounded by sound and air, trying to convince the masses that I'll be ok despite myself.

I've been listening to the sounds of an IV drip and remember how I started, resting bibles on a Lydian scale and waiting for something to tip. Three years brought me out of Greco-Roman indecency into Judeo-Christian relativism and it's time to stop running. I want to remain transfigured by enlightenment, not desensitized by the atonal.

I'm home, mixing city soot with Kabbalat Shabbat...waiting for the doctors to resolve my ironic deficiency.

Flicker

There's a man standing in front of me. Tight jeans. Ironed collar. A black messenger bag anchors him as our subway car traces a red line up Broadway. He catches my judgment, eyeing the cigarette lighter in his right hand. He doesn't realize that I'm yearning to see a flame. He doesn't realize that both our lives have been colored in red.

I catch myself holding my breath as he tilts the lighter into the palm of his left hand. I smell a click. He flips his ignited palm over and looks up, holding the promise of searing flesh for an instant. The ventilation blows it out. He doesn't look at me anymore. He doesn't look at anyone. The subway lurches forwards as he reignites his hand. I'm staring. It isn't horror. It's awe. He doesn't mind the pain. He'll do anything to catch a flaming spirit in his hand. He's burning bridges between man and mortality to hold the fleeting and intangible between his fingertips. He's holding moments.

It's comforting to know that people can't look through me yet.
My smiles aren't overcompensating, they're perfecting my self deception.

Your condition is only real when diagnosed, right?

My palm is open and the flame is searing into my less than consciousness.
Don't blow it out.
I'm scared of the dark

Grappling with Mixed Voices

I visited the caverns of my introspection and found them vacant. I've forgotten how to meander through myself. I used to do too much of that, I think. I used to be more smart than I was good.

I've gotten into the habit of counting things. Four people enter the middle elevator of our office building before the doors close. My phone flickers seventeen times before the battery dies. I've found twenty two bruises on my rude awakening, and realize that I'm one year away from my own ill fated imaginings.

I've become allergic to questions posed on humble kneebends. Solitude is better than repeating history.

I've been disassembling my life in hopes of perestroika. Maybe it's because my mother's house was Ikea and I was raised with an understanding of what it means to rebuild. Maybe it's because I remember my father's black leather couch, the kind that sticks to you in shorts, and know that furnishing with fixtures is overrated.

I'm living in Queens again. Did I mention that? I watch the bikers curve around the bend on Greenway south and trace the spot where seven people said "I love you". I wonder what it meant back then, and why it came so easily. Or why my skin grew colder when theirs glistened diamond. Why I said no...

Scores of children stand in rows and ask to be inspired. I'm teaching less than I've been learning.

Patience.

I want to be a year from now and confident.

I know that I'm a year from then, and proud.

Spiraling Through

A woman just fell off the bar. Her heels are as high as her boyfriend will be by midnight. I'm sure of that.
A man in the corner smiles, a row of multi-million dental bills glistens against an imperfect tan. I'll take my jacket off. It's just one drink.

I think I love New York more when it disappoints me. It's like most things. For every person's bad day someone is getting a raise. For every person's overweight anxiety, two men on street corners pause to whistle. For every friend I've lost, man I shouldn't have slept with, and apartment I couldn't afford, there's a poster-plastered bar with two dollar coronas and men asking for my number.

I feel their eyes on me, pleading Roxanne, and I remember how easily I can make someone happy.

Buy her a drink first... she's more expensive than that.

I watch a scholarly flirtation evolve and wonder if they'll bump monocles. I'm sure they're talking about global warming and volcanic ash. I'm sure they aren't talking about the blood libel in Switzerland, or Iran, or accountability, or anything of any real significance. They succumb to obstinant affiliation and don't realize that the tables have turned. They don't realize that the five old timers who play 60s B sides on guitar, bass, and milk crate in Washington Square Park aren't happy with they way we, the people, have taken over things.

The bar can't decide between reggae and salsa. I think I'm falling. Did you know you can wear a suit and still inhale?

My lips are moving but I know I've been dubbed.

Protocols

The ring's on the wrong finger. I've been watching you for an hour and I've decided that the ring is on the wrong finger. After all, if you're stranded in a terminal and not on the phone with her, the ring must be on the wrong finger.

You'll seal my doubts with eyes closed. I'm sure of that. I'll be airborne, not accountable. Just a few bites and I'll grow bigger than all this. Just a sip, and you'll evaporate.

How long did Alice fall? How far? She's watching flower petals flirt with caterpillars. They're more dangerous than pollen and that's exciting.

Flap your petals twice and look away. He'll buy you a drink. He'll pluck your love-mes and your love-me-nots. He'll paint you red.

The condition is apathy. The disease is forgetting.

There are blond and blue bruises on our perfect misconceptions of self. My short and stout will march along your tall and narrow and the six pointed guns will read us just the same.

Actualized maybes are merciless.

I've been listening to the sound of moving air. Your hands stretch forward, pushing into my lungs, crossing my borders, muffling my voice with your seductive propaganda. Fact and fiction wrestle and fall, tangled under the bedspread of your charisma. We're becoming idolators and our lust is sanctified. You say we're entitled to our overindulgence but you haven't tasted sweat. You haven't tasted fear. You haven't tasted immigration, or perishing, or survival, or not.

I am a first generation novice. I haven't learned how to forget.

Tangueray and Torah

An effervescent April, lilac hued I think, knocked on my door this morning and told me I wasn't in Kansas anymore. Not that I was ever in Kansas. Or that I like young Judy Garland all that much. I think it was more of a metaphor about childhood and expiration dates.

This is the first time that I'm in a chapter of life that doesn't have a definitive endpoint. It feels Homeric. You don't "graduate" from elementary adulthood. There won't be caps or gowns in four years, or in eight years, or in twelve. There won't be time-defined friendships that cycle and fizz. Nothing is given. Everything is about take.

Where is this all going? The feminists are wearing skirts and kneeling in the kitchen, lamenting over crumbs. The pseudo-clandestine homosexuals can't figure out what side of the mehitzah is the pious one. I'm standing in the corner, blasting REM, and I know I've chosen my religion but it won't make up its mind and tell me what page we're on.

If I can love more than one person, if I can believe in more than one moral code, if I can subscribe to more than one tradition and fall prey to more than one judgment...am I a polytheist? I do believe in one God...

There's a feather in one hand, a candle in the other, and a sea of questions in between. Dive.

Beware the Ides have Passed

As I opened the window this morning to let a draft of sun penetrate my room, a pink cigarette stub slid off my fire escape and landed on my keyboard, balancing on an E flat. I was on my way to work, and yet, couldn't help but pause to watch as it swayed to and fro. A slight puff of air changed C minor to C major and back again. It's that continued balance that we try to strike in life. While our daily notes are the same...we are always on the edge.

What's yours is yours and what's mine is also yours...that's what we are taught to aspire to. Does that apply to everything. Is my stress now your stress? Are my burdens now your burdens? Or is it a law of righteous convenience? Do we only share the good things or do we share them all? Where do we strike the balance between admiration and alienation?

I decided to stay at my mother's house tonight. It isn't because the city is far away and I'm too tired to stay awake on the subway. It isn't because my roommate and I don't talk anymore. It isn't because the fridge is full or because the heat is working or because deep down I'm still a kid and no one sees it. It's because I want to be in the presence of someone I admire. I want to be reminded that there are some successes where kindness isn't a casualty.

Balance is a tricky thing. When you grow up too fast, swallow life whole, and speed through the moments that are worth remembering, you might require a periodic smile transplant. I've fallen in love with the way tulips stretch their blossoms to the sky, the way foam rises when the waves come in... I've fallen in love with the way a room full of children falls silent when they feel something for the first time, the way notes sound when there's a bit of God in them, the way holy lands become tangible when you call them your own. I've fallen in love with how fallible we are alone. I've fallen in love with how comforting it is to be fallible together.

It's the beauty of New York...you know...how ephemeral things are. You shut your eyes and open them to see that the season has changed, that your pigtails have been unbraided, that the archeologist that became a mathematician that became a pianist that became a singer that became a Jew that became a conductor never learned to administrate and wishes someone were willing to pause and teach her how to sit still.

In the meantime, the short espresso will do. It's bitter, but that's reality and I'll take it with sugar for now.

Affectionately Friday

There's this perfect table in the French Roast cafe, just to the right of the red lipped, hair bunned hostess, where you can sip a cappucino for one at a table for two at thirty minutes to Shabbos and feel like the world stands frozen on tiptoes just waiting to count three stars. The man with a Yankee cap ties little yellow boots to the paws of his terrier and helps him over the cold feathered mountains that line Broadway in February. Snow challenges trees as they straighten their spines. Haughty. A family of four passes beneath them, slip-sliding to Shul. When did I start day-dreaming in Ashkenaz? The Lower East Side immigrant makes aliyah and breathes in the Upper West Side's elite and intellectual. We're moving up and in and north is warmer when the sentiments are Mediterranean.

My amorous intentions towards this city are completely dishonorable.

Between Seasons

I'm falling prey to pathological optimism.

I found a stack of articles as I was cleaning my apartment yesterday and realized that knowledge is about living beyond paper. My apartment is lined with volumes of opinion-ridden fact, rewritten with red pens and highlighters. They say I'm a product of biased education and metropolitan desensitization. I find that empowering.

At a young age, my father validated my psychosis. My firm belief in prince charm-me-not was strengthened by a traveling forgetful banker who set event reminders on his blackberry and still forgot to call on my birthday. And so, I became the kind of person who always reads the last paragraph of a novel before buying it. I became the kind of person who goes to bars for no other reason than to move the plot of life forward - who drinks Jasmine tea infused martinis and prefers the company of brilliant strangers to close friends because intellect can't break your heart.

I'm honing my bedside manner, because the diagnosis of life is uncertain.  When it's 50 degrees in January and New Yorkers are holding doors open for tourists, you realize there's hope for all of us. I don't expect the world to revolve around me, and I don't plan on walking around you seven times either, but I do believe that we can be happy simply walking forward.

The goal is to reconcile Romanticism with Bach.