found this in an old "drafts" folder. there were pictures to go with it (lovely, haunting pictures of the deserted Coney Island boardwalk in the middle of a freezing winter night), but they were lost when i accidentally reset my phone.

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Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2007 12:56:05 -0500 (EST)
From: (me)
To: (livejournal)
Subject: new york stories

the trees outside the subway station sparkled with fairy-lights; they were so pretty, in the cold, that i found myself suddenly in tears. he asked what was wrong, but i couldn't explain it.

i felt i was coming to bits, so i walked out. i found myself on a train, and then another: a Coney Island bound F.

on the street, i was crying again, without even knowing why. i huddled into a corner on the train, turning my music up loud, my vision blurring.

a panhandler said something to the car, made his way down it to stand next to me. moved by some impulse, i paused the music, was surprised to hear that he was singing to himself, so softly i couldn't make out the words. i toyed with the idea of giving him some change as the train slowed to a halt, the doors opening. "carry on," he said, so quietly that i was sure the words were meant for me alone. "take care of yourself." i looked up, startled, but he was gone.

somewhere along the way, i became convinced that i was going to Coney Island to get mugged. it frightened me -- i have my laptop with me, was my first thought. but to turn back would have been to admit my cowardice, to dodge my intended fate. i wanted to meet it with my head held high, i wanted to see it coming.

i began a mental inventory of everything i carried with me. it was a sort of meditation. i focused on each item, thought of its worth to me, recited all the reasons i didn't want to lose it. and then i let it go. the hardest thing was the large chunk of un-backed-up writing on the laptop. i thought there was no possible way i could be blasé about losing that. then i remembered losing several thousand words of my first NaNo novel to a hardware failure. "i will rewrite it," i said to myself. "it's still in my head. i know what happens. nothing will be lost."

i wrote the following:

---

faced with the inevitable loss of everything
our impulse is to cling -- but that is exactly wrong.

just let it go.


everyone you love will change, will become a stranger, will be taken from you one way or another.

there is nothing in this world we can keep, we can call truly ours, except that which lives in our hearts. everything else is distraction -- a poison deadlier even than death because you find you are left completely empty-handed when all is said and done.



i cannot run far enough or fast enough to leave myself behind, to learn to let loose the menagerie of petty fears and insecurities that bind me.

everything i leave behind with such joy will be waiting for me when my courage runs out and i turn back again.

someday may i find the courage to leave, to open my clutching hands and let it fall away.

---

my prayer for all of us is:
Dear God, let me never become indifferent.

and yet, crying silently on the subway, i felt that one unrequested act of kindness would break my heart completely, would shatter me into pieces.

i feel i'm falling to bits, coming completely apart at the seams. sometimes i feel dizzy, i want to start screaming, to take my clothes off in class, to do something terrible and irredeemable and insane.

If you read overheard in new york you might recognize this guy:

Hobo: I have never met a woman who was not a government agent, a secret agent, on a mission to destroy men...Women don't like men. Never have, never will. --F train

Hobo: I never met a woman that wasn't a secret government agent. She get you to marry her, and then she bring you to the government building, and you like, "Hide me! Hide me!" but you can't hide, 'cause she a secret agent. --6 train

Hobo to bystander: You're gonna marry a woman and not know she's a government agent? How retarded can you get?! --Queens-bound V train

Of course, I didn't recognize him at first. We were on a crowded uptown E train on Thursday evening, during the evening rush hour. I was near the end of the car, and he was in the middle, right up against the door. He didn't strike me right away as a hobo, though I wasn't close enough to see what he was wearing or detect that, well, unbathed smell. Just a dark-skinned man in his late 30s or early 40s, with an appraising look in his dark eyes and the confident voice of a missionary. He was speaking calmly and in a conversational tone, so that I couldn't tell immediately that he wasn't speaking to anyone. "I never met a woman that wasn't a government agent," he said, in a voice that carried easily through the car, and with a slightly odd emphasis and a measured rhythm -- almost as if he was reciting from a book of poetry. (In fact, for the first few moments after hearing this, as my brain searched for the source of that familiar quote and my eyes searched for the owner of the voice, I thought he might be the poet Blue).

He paused for a long time after finishing this sentence, surveying the car -- not as if expecting a response, but as if sizing up his audience to see whether his words were having the intended effect. Then, as if satisfied with what he saw, he added, in a more confidential tone: "All women are on a mission to destroy men." Something I couldn't hear, and then, louder: "Secret! Agent! Man!" Each word punctuated and given that peculiar emphasis, as if there was a coded message hidden beneath the surface.

I made eye contact with him and he just looked back at me, his gaze holding no question, no expectation, no challenge. Just a sureness, that same sense of resigned certainty often encountered in the door-to-door purveyors of religion. "I don't expect you to believe me," he seemed to say, "but this is what I know to be true."

I lost sight of him as the train stopped at 5th Ave. I could still hear his voice as he got off the train, but I couldn't make out the words. I caught one last glimpse of him as the train pulled out of the station: he stood on the platform, facing the train, still speaking calmly and lucidly to no one in particular.

zevhonith, I wish you could've been there.

Sometimes I think it is the thousands of small mysteries of the City that make it so extraordinary.

As you're leaving the 72nd street subway station, you glimpse a man descending the stairs to the downtown platform. It's ten o'clock on a Sunday evening, the first real evening of winter cold, and slung over his shoulder is a large fishing pole. (You won't remember anything about him afterward, but you'll remember that the pole was blue.) And you smile, irrationally cheered, as you wrap your scarf around your neck and continue on your way, knowing that you'll never discover what sort of fish he hopes to catch, or where he thinks to catch them.

Well, all I can say is it's a damn good thing I work in Butler library. This place has got to be the best-fortified building on campus, and somehow we've still got power and internet. I'll try to keep this short since it seems unlikely that'll last.

Of course, I don't have cell phone reception, but I figure the towers are mostly down by now anyway. I didn't even know anything was happening until the security guards came through; yeah, there were some shouts, sirens, and things banging around outside, but that's just the normal state of affairs in New York. Anyway, campus security did a head-count, then had everyone go upstairs, off the ground floor. As we were being herded out, they were overturning the computer desks -- I guess they were going to use them to board the windows. The sound of all those nice widescreen displays spilling their liquid crystal innards all over the tiled floor is one I won't forget for awhile.

Campus security being helpful? Yeah, I never thought when I was arguing with those assholes about whether or not I could bring my bottle of water into the library that the very traits that made them so annoying to deal with on a day-to-day basis would someday come in handy.

Anyway, we're barricaded in pretty soundly, and we seem safe enough for the moment. From the CCNMTL office on the fifth floor we have a pretty good view of campus. It looks like finals week out there, all those students shuffling around mindlessly or just lying motionless on the grass. Well. There's not usually quite so much blood.

Lerner Hall, predictably, turned into a slaughterhouse -- too many entrances, all those glass windows. Broadway, from what we can see, is a complete mess. Some of the guys are talking about organizing a sortie to deal with our primary problem: food. Of course, I'd just be a liability on something like that. They're arguing about whether they're better off hitting the big grocery store on Bway or taking the chance that no one's found those little bakeries on Amsterdam yet.

Some of us, though, feel like we've got more important things to worry about. Hoarding food is a good idea if we're staying, but I think we'd be better off moving sooner rather than later. Leaving the thick walls of the library is fucking scary, but I don't want to just sit here hoping to be rescued. I'm voting for making the dash across Amsterdam to the hospital, since it seems likely there are others holed up. Dismantling the office furniture has yielded quite a few sharp-edged lengths of metal, and we haven't yet gone through the whole building -- we think there is still quite a bit of construction paraphernalia on the upper floors. And there are probably a couple of hundred of us. Even if we're mostly students, librarians, and a couple of professors, I think we've got a fighting chance.

Anyway, I know we're going to have to do some serious thinking about getting out of Manhattan. Quite a few people are talking about going by water -- the bridges are going to be completely clogged, and the tunnels will be deathtraps, so that's fair enough. But I don't think there'll be a boat available for love or money, not anywhere. I'm saying we should push uptown, try to travel overland through the Bronx and find shelter upstate.

... We just took a vote, and it seems we're going to wait twelve or sixteen hours and see whether things calm down or we can observe any patterns. If we can tell whether they are more active at certain hours of the day, for instance, that could prove invaluable. Some scouts have volunteered to use the tunnels to recon the other buildings on campus -- I'd envy them the chance to get into those tunnels under Math if it wasn't so dangerous right now.

I hope flooey and squishyent are okay. You guys out there? I'm guessing that Brooklyn is a bit safer, but I can only pray that A. found some way out of the west village. I have this weird fantasy that he'll show up here before we leave, but really, I just hope he's safe. damion I'm not worried about, in fact I expect he's out distributing fliers and killing zombies with probably a sword or something.

I don't know how widespread this thing is, so for those of you who don't know what's going on, you might want to read this link. Then, well, be careful, okay?

I'm going to post this now before anything else happens.

Carrying the diploma home, it feels like a ludicrously precious, fragile thing, as though some casual impact by an inattentive stranger could somehow obliterate the past two years of my life. Just holding it, I feel giddy -- an untethered, weightless feeling that stems from being between major projects, serious commitments. I felt it two years ago in Dublin. It's an exhilaration that is a little hysterical, colored by a superstitious fear, as if I am more susceptible to my own mortality when there are fewer loose ends to be left dangling. I keep resisting the urge to take it out again and make sure the words haven't changed; I imagine, irrationally, the paper fading into blank whiteness, the words fleeing back to their owners like faerie gold.

It is rush hour and the subway is crowded. I work my way onto the car, trying to hold the diploma (sandwiched between a stiff cardboard backing and a protective cover page, the whole enclosed in an envelope which is wrapped up in a Columbia bookstore bag) close to my chest without bending it. With my other hand, I reach for the nearest pole, which happens to entail reaching between two tallish black kids, probably in their late teens or early twenties. They're both in casual but not overtly thuggish clothing; one is wearing a white hoodie, while the other is in red, with a black backpack slung over his shoulder. The train starts to move and I sidle a bit closer to the pole, steadying my grip and falling into the Subway Stance: feet a bit apart, knees loose, weight evenly distributed. I readjust my grip on the diploma, hyperaware of all the people near me, attempting to predict any actions they might take that would threaten this delicate piece of paper, this symbol of myself.

Then, the boy to my right starts singing, softly, as if to himself. A moment later, with a lack of hesitation that speaks either to preplanning or long familiarity with this game, the one to my left takes up the song, humming and beatboxing a surprisingly complex rhythm. They gain confidence and volume and the song weaves itself together. The boy's voice (which he has trained, I will gather from eavesdropping on later conversation, by singing Gospel at his local church) is a surprisingly smooth, confident, powerful R&B croon. The first words, the only ones I will later remember, are either "my crib tonight, baby..." or "my kryptonite, baby", and are repeated so many times that they flow together that way, seeming to be both phrases, or neither. The rest of the car seems to have fallen mostly silent, and I, having found myself by chance in the audio sweet spot between the two boys, experience the whole of the song in a sort of stereo. I don't know whether the music is their own or a favorite tune from the radio, but for those few moments the sound is as polished and perfect and clear as if we were standing in a recording studio. Even the inevitable sounds of the train have faded below my level of consciousness, as if myself and the two impromptu musicians have been enclosed in a bubble.

The train comes aboveground and starts to slow as we pull into 125th Street. The song peters out as suddenly as it began, and I have decided that the two are particularly talented subway musicians, and are about to start moving through the car, asking for donations. Someone else claps a little and they seem embarrassed, saying it was "pure improv". The car empties out a little and I move away, leaving them to their now-ordinary conversation. The doors close and we continue on.

Somewhere in the world there is a person. A boy -- well, he's probably in his thirties now -- but a boy who, ten years ago, was living in Chicago. And that boy has a story. It's a story about how, one afternoon, a teenage girl followed him off the el and worked up the courage to introduce herself to him, simply because she thought he looked interesting (and, in all probability, also thought he was cute). Maybe he remembers how they walked together for a few blocks, talking, and then they were in front of his place, so he invited her in. And fed her cereal. Then she left, and he never heard from her again.

I have not been a good caretaker of my half of this story. In fact, I don't know when the last time I remembered it was -- up until this evening it may as well never have happened, except that one chain of thought triggered another, and some low-probability neuron fired, and the pathway existed again. I know that, at the time, I didn't tell a soul; I was in Chicago with my family and they would have been terrified, or angry, if they knew that I'd impulsively put myself in such a potentially dangerous situation. They might even have prevented me from going off on my own to spend the day riding the trains and wandering the city, and that would have been a disaster, because only my ability to get away like that was keeping me sane.

But I remembered, and I knew his name. It was my secret. I used to look up his number in the Chicago phonebook, just to know that I could. I never called him.

I have not been a good caretaker of my half of this story. I no longer remember his name, not even his first name. I don't know a single detail about what he looked like, whether he was a student, or what brand of cereal it was. I don't know whether that afternoon took place in winter or summer, or which train line we rode. I have no inkling what it was about him that so intrigued me that I found that I had to overcome my natural timidity and speak to him. Whatever passed between us, on that day so long ago, has long since vanished from my memory.

It is lost to me now, as so much is lost. Time, cruel time -- it dulls the meaning of everything, washes out the details.

But I have to wonder how the other half of this story has fared. Is it still remembered somewhere? Has it suffered as much attrition as mine? Is there really someone, somewhere, who remembers that afternoon -- does he know the details that have slipped away from me? Or is the girl reduced, as here, to a few sentences on paper, a fading remnant of barely-remembered emotion?

Perhaps he has distilled it into poetry, found better words than mine.

I left the house this morning, already slightly late for work. For no reason that I can relate, I decided to walk up the other side of the street. I crossed the street, and hadn't gone ten steps before an orange-and-white cat materialized from an alley and ran up to me.

He could have been Naranjito's brother. He was slightly bigger, his face slightly longer, but he had almost the same coloring, even down to the white patches on his face, neck, belly, and paws. He was more solid orange than Naran, with stripes only evident on his tail.

He ran right up to me just as if he knew me and was being super-affectionate, climbing on me and purring. I could tell that he was hungry, and sick; there were places on his back where his fur was all patchy, and he had some kind of sores near his rectum. A woman who was walking by stopped, and after seeing the situation, went back to her house to get some food for him. We talked about the sad situation of these feral cat colonies. Her name was Linda.

He ate ravenously. After Linda left, I petted him for a few minutes, noticing how he was shivering in the cold, how he cringed away from loud noises and other humans who passed by. I couldn't bear to just leave him there, but there was nothing else I could do. I knew I couldn't keep him and that he wouldn't be adoptable; if he turned out to really be sick, it was likely he'd just be put down. And I knew, moreover, that even if I did rescue this one, he would only be replaced by another unwanted cat. The feral colonies can't be eradicated; they replenish their numbers to the maximum sustainable. Even if you trap and remove all the cats, others move in from overfull colonies somewhere nearby. However many you save, however much you do, there will always be more of them, untold numbers: living short, miserable lives in the street, and dying there, unremarked.

I tried to say something flippant to him as I left, like "take care of yourself" or "let me know if you need anything"; the sort of thing I always say to the strays I meet, because I feel like every stray's mommy. But this time, the words stuck in my throat. I knew I was leaving him to his death, if not right away, then sometime soon. I couldn't have been more broken-hearted if it was my own child I'd been leaving there, shivering on the sidewalk.

Now tell me. There is justice. In the world.

( Read more... )

There are days when living in the city is almost too much for me to deal with. The sheer number of people you interact with every time you leave the house makes it exquisitely painful to be a person of heightened empathy and compassion; but the very same condition makes it unconscionable to be anything less.

It is impossible not to believe in the essential goodness of the human spirit here; a city like this is ideal for people-watching, and you can't watch them for long without seeing surprising acts of openness, moving moments of honesty and heroism, glimpses of the incredible strength we all carry within our fragile shells. People living in extraordinary conditions become extraordinary themselves; they glitter like diamonds, even in the dullness of everyday routine. All of the selfishness and weakness only makes that goodness, that internal strength somehow more apparent. You see it in war, you see it in famine, you see it in hospitals. And you see it in cities, when we all have somehow to cope with sharing our backyard with eight million other humans. Just to live your day-to-day life here, you must learn a special wisdom, a sort of extraordinary kindness wrapped around an uncompromising instinct for self-preservation.

It is humbling and difficult to be confronted, every day, with so many connections you will never pursue: laughter you will never share, tears you will never console, stories you will never know the end of. Just as life itself will someday go on without you, the city is forever expanding beyond your reach, leaving you with fragments of understanding, glimpses of other lives. But, at the same time, you understand yourself to be a part of it; whatever we are making, here, whatever we are building with our passions and our quarrels and our grace, you know that your presence is changing it, that you are helping to make it what it is. And that is a beautiful thing to know.

Sometimes I become so overwhelmed by the beauty and frailty of the human condition that I fall a little bit in love with everyone I meet.

as we descended into Albuquerque last night, i was half-awake, my senses dulled by hours of travel. i couldn't shake the impression that the massive pools of darkness that seemed to riddle the city and lay seige to its borders were water, as such borders are in new york. i imagined a deluge of floods, a sudden rainfall coming with the darkness to cover the scrubland, transforming the desert town overnight into an island. the streets become rivers, every park and empty lot a marsh. in the dark, i could see the luminarias reflecting, each tiny light finding a strangely rippling twin. the desert creatures would learn to swim, lizards cavorting and diving in the dark water, their normally-drab skins turned luminescent green and shining in the wet. roadrunners would paddle in the currents like ducks. the plants, overwhelmed by this newfound bounty, would grow several feet in a matter of hours, bursting into multicolored blooms even in the darkness. even humans, emerging from the shelter of their homes into an unaccustomed land of tiny streams and ponds, would be startled and transmuted by the miracle. they would convert ordinary household items into rafts and gather together, pulling their families and neighbors aboard to row into the middle of newly-formed lakes, where they would find themselves sandwiched breathlessly between the silver moon and the silver water.

in the morning, the sun would rise, and a thousand shades of gold would flare up, the desert city glowing like El Dorado. at first, you'd have to shade your eyes from the brightness. then, the whole city would begin to steam, making the air shimmer until ghosts seemed to inhabit every street-corner. Every Taco Bell would seem half-unreal, like a mirage.

by noon, the water would have burned off entirely, or been sucked into long-term storage by pragmatic plant life. aside from an unusual greenness to the plants, there would be no evidence that anything had happened. and no one would speak of it, as if afraid to show their complicity in some sort of shared hallucination. or perhaps because it was an experience that could not be translated into words without robbing it of all meaning.

My serial killer, when he finally came for me, was charismatic and feral, like a wolf. He had hunted me for ages, carefully, methodically, until he knew my life as well as his own. He could predict exactly how I'd run, and where. And I did.

( Read more... )

When I woke up, I was trembling with fear, terrified that another second of sleep would put me back there again, in time to feel the killing blow. I do not want to dream of dying.

I went to the window; it was early morning, and the sun seemed preternaturally bright. I stood there for a long time, watching the birds flit around in the morning light, tears coursing down my cheeks. I felt almost unbearable sorrow for the people who have really died like that: in the dark, alone, unable to summon so much as a prayer to their aid. I seemed to understand for the first time that this really happens, the world is really like this.

In the end, all I could think, over and over, was:

I do not want to die at night. I want to die in the morning, bathed in sunlight. When I die I want to be surrounded by light too bright to look at.

unbelievable. it took more than two years, but it's finally done. (can you tell i'm avoiding doing homework? x_x)

[parts 1-4, edited for accuracy and non-lameness, can be found here]

( 81-100 )

[again, in the style of unphotographable.]

this is a picture i did not take of two pigeons, one snow-white and the other coal-black, sharing a piece of food on the gray stairs to the Low Library. the black one picked up a crumb, and the white one reached over to try to pull it away, and for a long moment while they struggled, they were still, their beaks close together, as if they were kissing.

raise a glass tonight, my friends.
raise a glass for love, the great mystery that, in the end, escapes us all.
raise a glass for those unspeakably beautiful things which, in their inevitable passing, become even more beautiful yet.
raise a glass to the understanding that love is not enough, to the certain knowledge that, no matter how much you love someone, it does not mean that you can make them happy.
raise a glass to the moments of pure happiness, the ones you know, even at the time, will shine in your memory years later, glittering gems amidst the dullness of the everyday.
raise a glass to those pretty dreams of a future that is always receding into the distance, never arriving.
raise a glass for a love so bittersweet that it is indistinguishable from pain, from longing, from happiness, from all the strongest emotions you've ever felt, all screaming through your head at once.
raise a glass to knowing better than to give up things you know you can't do without, even when your heart tells you otherwise.
raise a glass to waking in the morning to know you are finally home, and that you cannot stay.
raise a glass to figuring out what you want just in time to feel it slip through your fingers.
raise a glass to knowing you had a chance to break the pattern of your own selfishness, and missed it.
raise a glass to having caused more pain with love than you will ever cause through hatred.
raise a glass to knowing when to walk away, though you leave half your self behind.
raise a glass to coming back though all seems hopeless.
raise a glass for one last kiss, though you can hardly breathe for crying.
raise a glass tonight, for love.

the air crisp and cold, the flickering beyond the trees. northern lights? directly overhead, the sky awash with stars, bright pinpoints in blackness. the flickering again, pastel colors seeping up over the horizon. it was so beautiful. i was still out of breath from running to get to this place, this time. the cold air stung my lungs, but i was beyond noticing. a dark purple spread over the tops of the trees, a sunset-pink flickered, like a corona. i waited like a penitent, breathless.

and then, the Double Tower appeared, just as i had dreamed. despite its massive size, it moved quickly and erratically, firefly-dashes. it hung in the air, a giant, unnaturally-conjoined chess piece. the pastel light flickered over the windowless brickwork, which gleamed and reflected darkly, like polished onyx. i could just make out the jag-tooth edges of the crenellation, far, far above. as the Tower passed above me, i could see the giant grate across its base, the lights kindling deep inside it.

it's going to incinerate me, i thought, dimly, but made no move. at the last possible moment, the Tower turned in the air, the rocket-flames licking out above my head. the brightness made my eyes water, but i watched, unblinking, as the huge bulk retreated, allowing the stars back into the sky. in seconds, it was a bright star itself. then gone.

the night was dark again, but for a few dying embers at the treetops. i noticed that i was shivering.

last night, i walked down the stairs to the subway platform at around 2 in the morning. looking down the platform, i saw that it was empty save for one college-type boy, walking slowly toward me. with a sigh, i resigned myself to a long wait, meandered up to the forward end of the platform, and pulled out a book.

glancing up, i saw that the boy had, upon reaching the stairs, not climbed them -- as i had expected him to do -- but turned and walked back in the other direction. when next i looked up, he was walking toward me again. closing my book, i watched him.

he was small of build, dressed all in black, but in a way that evoked more a school uniform than goth tendencies. black tennis shoes, dark slacks, a soft-looking coat -- maybe suede -- buttoned up. headphones, big silver ones like mine. shortish brown hair with a slightly rumpled look. he walked the platform, from the stairs to the point where the wall slanted inward, slowly, with carefully-measured steps. i couldn't stop watching him; my book forgotten, my heart quickening with the feeling that i was observing some private ritual. when he got to the end of his walk, he would stop; turn; align himself carefully; and, with an impression of indrawn-breath, as if embarking on a difficult task, begin his slow pacing again. it was as though he was practicing walking, as one might rehearse lines for a part in a play. every so often, he would stagger slightly, or drift to one direction or another and then correct his course. i wondered if he was drunk, or drugged; he seemed otherwise lucid.

i decided after a few minutes that he was kind of cute, but that wasn't why i couldn't take my eyes from him. i was blatantly staring, at that point, trying to catch his eye as he came toward me, but it was as though he looked right through me. finally, drawn to him with a force that had me half-breathless, i picked up my bag -- while he was walking away -- and came over to the stairs, the nearest end-point to his inexplicable walk. as he came toward me again, i cocked my head at him: a question or a flirtation. i found i was smiling just a little, the way you do when you share a secret with someone. his eyes passed over me again, unseeingly. he came even with me; he stopped, turned, raised his gaze to the far wall. i could have reached out and touched him.

"are you measuring it," i asked, flippantly, "or is this just better than sitting still?" whether he truly did not hear me or only pretended, i don't know; he didn't react. he walked back to the far wall. sighing, i watched, getting a better look at him as he came back. he carried himself with a calm sort of assurance that, for some reason, made me imagine a private-school background for him. his features had a softness that made me think he was young -- maybe 19 or 20. he had full lips, the sort that settle into a natural pout; high, sort of aristocratic cheekbones; dark, expressive eyes. it was then that i realized what he was doing: trying to walk a straight line with his eyes closed. his utter absorption in the task, his quiet indifference to everything around him, filled me with fascination. it was as though he existed in a world utterly separate from the glaring flourescent lights, the dirty tiles, the muffled traffic noises from the street; an angel, a ghost, a shadow of a dream, briefly coming into phase with the world of our meager perceptions, would have walked like that. i think if he had shimmered into nonexistence or walked out onto the air over the tracks it would have seemed perfectly natural. i could have watched him for hours.

all too soon, the rumbling of the train filled the air; he was at the far point of his pacing, then, well away from me. i felt a pang of disappointment that we would not be in the same car. as the train pulled into the station, i kept my gaze on him, resolved that if he looked my direction, i would wave goodbye. he didn't.

this is a picture i did not take of the large, round bumblebee who was outside my building this morning. when i opened my window to lean out into the sunlight and feel out the weather, he reversed course in mid-air and came to hover a foot from my nose, where he stayed, perfectly still, wings a blur, for all the world like a very ugly hummingbird. we examined each other for half a minute, and then -- presumably having concluded that i was not, in fact, some kind of new and succulent species of flower -- he did a decisive little bob in the air and was gone.

this is a picture i did not take of two campus laborers who were out doing something to the landscaping on College Walk, their little campus golf cart parked nearby. one of them was a slightly older, janitorial type, with a large paunch; the second was a coarse, stringy man on whom the drab grey coveralls of the office seemed to hang even more shapelessly. the older man was in the process of examining the ground under one of the cherry trees, which are all in glorious full bloom; his compatriot had just shaken one of the lower branches, filling the air with an explosion of pink blossoms. as i passed, the older man stood, brushing cherry blossoms from his hair. they were both laughing.

so, a few nights ago, i took a walk to escape from the stress and cabin-fever. i wandered down Broadway for awhile; just as i was about to turn back, i paused, seeming to hear something inside me say keep going.

in another half a block, a park entrance invited me; a gate set in a tall wall, with a path leading upwards into the darkness. so, of course, i went.

the path climbed a hill, languorously, with switchbacks and shallow stairs. it was like the approach to a fort; from everywhere on the path, i could look back through the trees, see if i was being followed. it ended with stairs up onto a sort of overlook at the top of the hill, with benches and some trees in a little paved area.

across the street from this upper half of the little park were a couple of apartment buildings, rows and rows of windows staring white like blank eyes. someone was having a party; i could hear the music. i had lit a cigarette on the path below, and i leaned against the wall, smoking, looking out across the park.

some noise behind me attracted my attention; i glanced over my shoulder and saw a shape silhouetted in one of the windows, just shadow and light. a skinny boy, i thought; watching me. i finished my cigarette; when i turned to cross the street, the silhouette was gone.

on the corner, i saw this.

in the gutter beneath it, the shine of a CDR caught my eye. i pocketed it and headed home.

so, you see, after all of that, it really should have turned out to contain love poetry, an unfinished novel, or a playlist of slow and meaningful songs. i would even have settled for pornography. but... spanish polka/rap?? *sighs*

if i could, right now, i would find myself at your door. drawing the key from its chain around my neck, i would unlock your door -- quietly, slowly. i would turn the handle, open the door just wide enough to slide through. ease the door closed after me, and quietly turn the lock.

you are asleep, right now; your room is dark, but for the dim street-light slanting in from the window. i have to stand there for a long minute while my eyes adjust. slowly, objects resolve themselves in my vision. there is the bed; your sleeping form, blanketed, soft. i can hear you breathing, and i am suddenly frozen, trying to still my own breath and stop time; wanting forever to be here, poised on the edge of touching you.

...you turn in your sleep, and the moment passes, falls back into the flow of time and is carried away. i reach down to unlace my boots and, standing, see that your hand is there, in the white light, upturned; your fingers half-curled, as if in invitation.

i accept. as i slide under the blanket beside you, you move without waking to make room for me, to wrap your arms around me. your skin is warm and i nestle into you, in rhapsody at the scent of your hair, the curve of your neck against my cheek. it is so easy to be here, such a simple thing. i close my eyes. there will be time for questions in the morning.


[you know who you are.]

sometimes, when my cat is curled on my chest, purring all's well all's well all's well, i look at her, and marvel at how lovely she is. i see how she is made of whiskers, and soft sand-colored tummy fur, and tiny tiny bones all joined together. the retracting claws and swivel-ears and all the expressions of her tail, and all painted perfect in tiger-stripes and Egyptian eyeliner. she regards me from those gem-green eyes, thinking her unknowable thoughts, sometimes blinking.

and i want there to be a god, so that i can say: "well done, sir*. this is a wonderful thing that you have made."




(*or "ma'am". we need a gender-unspecific honorific, damn it.)

i am bathed in the golden light, like in Winter's Tale. it is the second time i have seen it. it happens early in the morning, just at sunrise, when the air is still shrouded in that pre-dawn silence and clarity.

it is only for a few minutes, a little eternity outside of time... then, as quickly as a thought, the golden saturation fades, and it is ordinary light again, an ordinary morning.

perhaps it is only that i never see sunrises unless i am already in the breathless fragility of sleep deprivation, that strange lucidity that comes of having stayed awake so far past tiredness that you come out the other side, feeling invincible.

the boys breathe heavily in dreamsleep, and the cats are curled with tails to noses; and i want only to sit awake here, holding myself apart, watching over them. i feel so happy, now, as if everything has just fallen away from me, as if i am opening my eyes fully for the first time in months. i know if i sleep i will fall back into the fugue, into the half-dream... and yet, sleep i must, and wrap myself in the armor that keeps me from feeling the world like this, like light on my eyelids, like fur against bare skin.