Ice Rinks in November

There's a dame in Bryant Park today. I say dame and not woman deliberately to honor the way she carries herself. Clutching a purse just wide enough to fit her opera glasses and a shivering chihuahua, she tilts her head slightly as she examines the glasswork of a particularly ordinary vase. I crane. She turns abruptly and sneers one of those audible sneers as she catches me watching her. I avert my gaze in apology.

I'd forgotten how it feels to be a stranger in New York - to be caught in the crossfire of taxi honks and the occasional blue collar whistle. I'd forgotten what it's like to order a chirashi for one and ask the waiter to lend me a pen.

I grew up this past September. It was one of those swift agings, as daunting as a Dorian painting and as inevitable. It was a Woody Allen sort of growth, with an outpouring of tangible neuroses laying claim to my autumn. The little piece of solace I'd called self for the last five years evaporated in the face of my emotional recklessness, and I began to re-enlist Edith Wharton and the decline of contemporary mirth.

Adulthood seems to be the state of shifting time, both forward and revisiting. It's the act of running without moving your legs. It's an attempt at compromising without being compromised.

How do we learn to talk to people? For every friend I have ten special silences. I've learned to talk without sharing. Feelings are for nightmares and cold showers and google searches and therapists. I feel love, but that's different. That's unavoidable.

The dame from Bryant Park walks into the restaurant and orders a sushi for two for one. She removes her earmuffs to reveal two emerald earring set in silver. Her graying hair folds across her forehead and she reaches for the soy sauce with a shaking ringless hand. She recognizes me and smiles. Perhaps we aren't strangers any longer. Perhaps she's not alone. I nod to her and whisper to the waiter for my check.

Encounters should be fleeting. Who knows what we might start to feel.

Electra or Oedipus 2011

Rib after rib

He counted every keystroke

Like a xylophone of sweat,

Mallet on a resonating

Vibrato

carol King

getting high on a Monday

kgb lovegames

pretentious peppermint patties

salacious grannies

physical conspirators

an editor

a singer

an intellectual

Write out the frequencies

And listen in between the static

To the drone of sonic

Bone rattle

the bench is always sitting

Shambling

It's been a month since I last put thought to pen and pen to paper and paper to post. It's been a long time. You see, I was away for a while, walking in Eden, but I'm back now. I'm sorry. We get carried away by butterflies sometimes, but their wings grow weary so here I am, with a thud. You can live years in seconds, you know? I just forgot that the ticking gets louder, that clocks have alarms...my negligence. They're ringing so loudly these days, the alarms I mean, and I'm fumbling for the switch. I know it's there. So anyway, that's why I'm back here. To fumble and switch.

There's a restlessness sitting in my throat. It's making my tongue turn to sandpaper.

I'm beginning to understand Jane and Elizabeth and Tess and the rest. I'm beginning to understand why we love Heathcliff and why doors don't close even when the temperature is frostbite and the feeling is fever and shake.

There's a layer of dust that settled on the children of 9/11, reminding them that 10 years means it's time to grow up. They lay wreathes of flowers by fallen pedestals and hope that makes things better.

And I wonder at flowers and chocolate and painkillers and smoke. And I'm grateful that there's hope of resurrection.

The song's been playing through my head - the one I wrote but didn't share with many. There's a line in particular.

"The little girl with glasses is learning how to dance. It's the only chance she has to make her mother smile. And she wears a wreathe of daffodils, paints angels on the windowsills, and wonders, in a decade, who'll walk her down the aisle".

Life's a series of unanswered questions and irreconcilable doubts.

I'll sit and google plane tickets and Tuscan sunsets and hope that, in the dreaming, reality fades.

Non Puoi Comprendere

I spoke with Verdi this evening.
You see, I've been starting the middles of my nights with Act III of Traviata, so it was important that we speak, Verdi and I. I know it to be true, you see, that it isn't the cacophony of NYC, or the bicyclist's bickering, or the panic attacks. I know it to be true that it's the cello that keeps pulsing at my insomnia. It's the cello in Act III.
So I spoke with Verdi this evening.

It's a conversation about time, really.
It's a conversation about ticking.
It's a conversation about Alfredo coming too late.
Perhaps.
But the aspiration was never happily ever after.

So I went to the place where I always go when I'm alone, the place that smells of marijuana and Russian poetry, and I sat with my purse between my legs and I prayed to God.

And I didn't pray in language. I prayed with stillness.

I prayed to God and Verdi answered.

And he said - Lech L'cha.

Heath and Cliffs

In an old lime-green notebook, scribbled diagonally in my own hand, I read a reference to Rimbaud in which I once found meaning.

"I wait gluttonously for God. I have been of an inferior race for ever and ever."

The scribble is in pencil and I toy with erasing it. It could be as though thoughts never were...

Then an ambulance speeds past my window and I look up at my reflection in the cold glass. I don't seem any older. I'm 22 and my shoelaces still untie when I walk too quickly. I still wonder about words like thither and happenstance. I still have questions about God.

I outline the quotation in pen and return the notebook to the bottom of reverie's heap.

When I was nearly eight, I dreamed of being Atlas. I kept a globe atop my dresser and lifted it with young abandon. A chiropractor's dream. And with each year its weight increased while my abandon faltered. And with each year my shoulders shook and balance turned to bitter. And now, uncertainty.

A man on Columbus stopped to ask me why the words Hashem and Hashish barely differ. I didn't know. The man had been holding his cellphone to his left ear, pursing his lips as he spoke, and I shook my head in reply to the anonymous caller on the other end. He seemed disappointed.

I wonder if I believe in God or if I just believe in 'Jewish'.

My email has been inundated with horoscopes lately. I don't subscribe. The subjects read "I'm sorry for your sadness" and "How to care less and learn to live". I'm deleting them one by one to remind me that I don't wish to change.

Instead, I wear stilettos to mask the fear that I may be falling from this wuthering height.

Slowly

A distinct waft of lemonade sidles its way through the crack in my bedroom window, pauses just above a half open copy of Catcher in the Rye, and drifts on. I open one eye and observe the clothes I've been meaning to hang in my closet for the past week and a half.
Needs sugar.

Tripping over a Chumash and pulling a robe around my shoulders, I watch the digits of my bedside clock click to 5:30. Classic. May settles onto my calendar and I wave to the man jogging down 86th street. The ducks are back.

My mind drifts to a year ago. My mind drifts to a small room on the lower east side with unswept corners and bright red sheets. My mind drifts to the bouncer on Rivington who used to kiss my cheek and rub lipstick off his. My mind drifts to the graduation I decided to skip and to getting hit by a bicycle. My mind drifts to flying and falling.

I toss back a shot of mouthwash and wince as it burns my tongue. The face in the mirror doesn't look any older. And still.

It happened last night - the realization that I didn't need to assert my independence anymore. Now, I am looking to trust.

I throw on my jacket and grab my keys. The air is fresh and I look toward where the ducks go. A taxi whizzes west and I'm reminded that it's Tuesday. They'll have to wait.

Reminded of Borders and Fences

I close my eyes and see a room. There's a crowd of jeans and sweatshirts walking in synchronized crisscrosses across the vast rotunda. A little girl with blond braids sits on her father's shoulders as an escalator raises them above my head. I hold my breath as I watch them and the room starts spinning. There's water everywhere. I can smell the salt and the blurring of faces. There's a tall man in a navy suit with deep black eyes and I stagger through my tangible incompetence with hands sweating. He reminds me that I'm in the way.

And the image fades, and the tall man leaves as he always does, and the water drains and what's left is salt and crumbling.

It's because she looked back.

There are moments when you sit before a test question, the solution in plain sight, and can't bring yourself to let your sharpened pencil touch the paper. You're in second grade again and they're asking about family trees. You raise your hand and ask to step outside.

There's a cherry blossom in the yard and the sun is shining. The french teacher left his window open and you can hear the upperclassmen declining in monotone. There's a cute boy with mischievous dimples staring out the window. He winks at you and aims his paper airplane at the french teacher's graying goatee. You laugh. The cloud passes.

She'll give it the requisite day or so and then return to smiling.

Sans Cynicism

There's a desk that's four feet wide in a building nineteen stories high. It's an ordinary desk, cherry wood, perhaps, and it stands solemnly straight in spite of a series of scratches hidden beneath mounds of paperwork. It's a desk that's no stranger to shifting tides, to erosion by scrutiny, to silent executions and undignified loyalty. It's a desk that knows not to ask questions.

There's a door between passion and politics that's never quite open and never quite shut. There's a gust of inspiration that falters when moods swing. There's the resonant rejoicing of children falling in love with their moment of sanctity. There's the stillness after.

I watch people find themselves over-saturated with dreams - nearing toxicity. They're losing themselves in the semantics behind causes. I watch their eyes narrow with suspicion when I don't follow suit and drink coffee with Rabbis. I watch them doubt.

I spent a decade of my life caught up in phases and in parts, writing halves of novels and recording halves of songs. I've feigned and started friendships that I've cast away too soon, embracing anyone with whom I knew I wouldn't fall in love.

And then comes spring - a wild breath of seasonal spinning, a rush that shoots through your fingertips and jolts you into being - and you realize that you're ready to be woken and revealed.

And you realize that forevers only frighten those who do not want them.
And you realize that you want them now.

And you close your eyes
And you hold your breath.

And you wait.

Revisions

There's a kite zipping through the air, slicing the taste of March in two as it dips and circles above a little boy's head. The little boy is wearing a violet cap and yellow knee socks, and he knows that if he wills it the kite will stay afloat forever.

There's a name zipping through my mind, slicing my breath in two as it dips and circles and challenges reason. I'm wrapped in the innocence I haven't lost and wonder if I too can will my way into an eternal soaring.

The lights in the bar are dimmed to half past twilight and we swim together in a tequila sunrise, marveling at how simple it was to have grown up. We talk about work and earthquakes and the way the ephebic oath feels when you're the only one remembering. We talk about the people we have met and the romances we've fallen into. We talk about ideals we all still cherish and illusions we have tossed aside. We talk about our friends who've left for war and our distress that has returned from leisure. We talk until our glasses are empty and our minds are full and our clarity of purpose is tangible once more. And then we go home.

There's a dream zipping through my fingertips, slicing my patience in two as it dips and circles and reminds me of the promises I've made to New York City. I'm wearing disillusionment and two-tone shoes and know that I've regained the wind beneath the wings of my integrity.

I smile and blow a kiss to dawn.

Ripple Effects

I reach across the table for a taste of hot mulled wine.
It is a small table, trimmed with tinsel and candlewax.
A miniature pine tree teeters slightly to the left, and my mind dances along with the peculiar velveteen santa claus dangling with an ironic grin.

My mother wears an azure suit to match her eyes, and I note her attention to exuding strength through softness.

My voice flits between Gilberto and Gheorghiu, the Ginsberg that's Allen and the Ginsburg that's Ruth, and I find it early in my journey to be deemed resigned.

I miss the way that sound feels when it ripples through my chest and and I miss the way that logic tastes when it settles in neat diagrams atop my coffee table.

I hold my breath and marvel at the symmetry of eyes.

Three short words find themselves tongue-tied in shifting unfitted sheets.
I let the clocks lurch forward so that I don't have to.

I'm speeding up a hill on rollerskates.

At least I know the consequence is happiness.

And there was evening and there was morning: the first day

There's a light that falls on the Museum of Natural History at 7am on a Sunday morning. There's a light that falls between the iced and the frozen, hinting at seasons. There's a man walking a doberman who catches me in reverie and asks for the time. He tells me to have a nice day.

Whisper inward.

There's a light that falls when you let the doubting dim. There's a light that falls between the questions and the silence, hinting at the fact that it might not just be you. There's a man who catches me in reverie and asks me for a glimpse.

And I am bare.

Mapping

January shrugged her shoulders, wrapped in lambskin with a touch of silk, and exhaled her British reserve with a hint of trident gum. The ringlets floated through the shutters of a second floor apartment and settled on the water-streaked cheek of New York's first generation. The generation breathed in.

I've been searching for a way to battle gravity.

I've been watching as the men and women fade into each others' hidden hurts - the Eves and the Adams, the forbidden and the falling, the always falling...

I've been lingering in lamplight despite my better judgment. Flurries falter around bare branches and I close my eyes to meditate on something tangled. There's a whisper in my ear and my lips meet something soft.

And I know I'm lost and I know I'm found and I know that someone has turned into something and I'm falling into four letter words again.

I'm falling into hand fits hand and laugh meets smile. I'm falling into happiness on a high heeled Friday night.

I'm falling into what it means to be beautiful to the touch.

Broadway gazes at Amsterdam from afar. They know the power of possibility. They know that in New York City, parallel roads do meet.

Of Knowledge or Perception

I've been sitting on your bench again. The year is 2011 and the season is silver and the characters are the same and I'm watching peter pans pout as I challenge their mortality.

There's a ticking of Hungarian triplets stage right. A man stands poised before a glow of blue and red, shielding his eyes from sorrow as he prays in melody. I hold my breath, surrounded by mink and Chanel, wondering if opulence is humbled by the sound of memory.

And then the applause ends and the tears are dried and the hall is emptied and history repeats itself in Brooklyn while the papers look away.

I've been sitting on your bench again. The snow rises to just above my ankles. The season is St. Petersburg and my mother is 12, running with ice skates swinging off her shoulder to the stand on the corner with the steaming hot bread.

I think I'm falling for someone. It's a terrifying sort of calm.

I've been sitting on your bench again, tasting the remnants of your poetry. I've been waiting for the snow peaks to transform into the outlines of your frosted hair. There is so much I want to tell you.

I've been revisiting belief.