May 6th New York hour

I’ve been back in the city for less than a week, and the weather’s been swampy with memory. Rain thickens the air like grief, humid and unspecific. Everything feels damp—concrete, clothes, thoughts, sex. The sky’s been leaking since I landed, as if New York itself has something it can’t say directly. In the gauze of springtime I’m reminded how much can happen in a week—no matter the coast. Time swells here. Something close to seven days is enough to ruin or rebuild a life. 

In the past year I have felt little control over the way things happen to me. Luck is what luck does. I originally went to Los Angeles for much needed reprieve. And now Leaving Los Angeles wrecked me more than I let on. I went there seeking balm—a soft fog to muffle the psychic clang of New York. The social walls here had begun to close in, thick with the breath of everyone who thought they knew what had happened to me. What should count as pain, I could hear them thinking while looking at me. Everyone knew about what ex did to me, strangers formed their own opinions on my pain or what should constitute my pain. My heart was broken, the scar on my forehead still pink. I needed Los Angeles to feel like a warm bath. I needed it to be calm womb to climb into, unriddled with hard questions. It was a little bit of that until I started to love it. I was not prepared to love again. I was unarmed for the West Coast’s grinning optimism, slouched beside its mid-century ruins. The desert scares. The valley scares me. People who smile without showing their teeth scare me. That was a kind of darkness you could lean against. That was a darkness you could fold yourself in and hide. Something about my time in LA felt like cultural differance dressed in the drag of reverence. I’ll write more about what I mean once I’ve settled into some distance. Vivian Gornick writes that one can only start to write about their own life once they've stepped away from it for a bit of time. 

I'm ripping a page off of Mason's inspired diary entries. The way he remembers his days are so crystalline. I forget that I can have it, too. I need to figure out what the oldest part of my eye is and how to access it. The one that still knows how to witness without wanting. Contemplation means having to enter the temple that is your minds eye. I met Mason far too late in my Los Angeles residency. I wonder of the kind of intimacies we could have afforded each other had the clock been in our favor. I wonder about a lot of the choices I make. That's why I've decided to unearth this old pandemic blog, where my thoughts can land on my screen's lifeline. 

My Move wouldn't have been My Move without a snag. Alaska Airlines lost my hot pink 85 pound bag that was missing two wheels. In it I had over 15 years worth of clothes, shoes, mementos from Limo and Max, japanese garbage I deemed precious. Today I finally received a phone call from LAX stating that my hot pink 85 pound bag is in a holding cell in Newark. My whole life in a fluorescent purgatory off the New Jersey Turnpike.

Meanwhile, the ants in this Bushwick apartment are savage and philosophical. One crawled across my face last night while I was ignoring incoming text messages. I wonder if any of them have made my ear canal a comfortable home. 

Do we all need the company of hard property to feel the unknown facets of ourselves? 

I love you May 6th New York hour