it's 1 am and i'm in bed with a glass of riesling after meeting up with the crew for a quick round of cocktails. everyone wants to know about new york and what i did with my time there. it's a blurr of fantasy and fascination. i can't tell you what i did because i'm still waiting for my breath to slow and for the earth to stop quaking. all i know is that, now, almost 4 days after returning home i feel so heartsick and stupid for leaving. i have enough in my savings account to make relocating to new york a do-able enterprise. hard, but do-able. i just didn't want to be a dick about it. and besides, i still need to go to Germany. but my heart throbs. i long to return. right now. fuck it. let me buy the ticket and pack up these stacks of books. let me throw some clothes in a bag and give the rest to the Goodwill. what am i sticking around for anyway? because the truth of the matter is that i feel, every second of every day, the weight of death baring down on me and there are precious few reprieves i receive from it's heft. in new york, i started crying angrily at my friend that we needed to pick up the pace, that we needed to walk as fast as we could, that I needed to walk as fast as I could and round as many corners as possible and caress as much pavement as possible and hear as many accents as possible because my mother is dead, died at the ripe old age of 55, a week before her birthday, and ever since i feel the weight of mortality pressing against me. i feel it wrap its eager hand around my throat and i stare at other human beings in disbelief that they seem to think they have time to fucking spare. news flash: there will never be enough time. this is the tragedy of our existence. this is why we make stupid mistakes. this is why we risk all for a chance at the fairy tale. this is why we are bastards to some and angels to others. this is why i write and write and wait and wait, wait for someone to act like they fucking understand one goddamn word coming out of my stupid, impatient mouth. because in two seconds i'll be old. in two seconds i'll be staring my own death in the face. i don't know if, at that moment, i'll care about whether or not i ever traveled or the books i never read, but i sure care right now. i care about dancing and sweating and feeling connected to something larger than myself, to some sort of surging universal passion that might **might** be capable of connecting me to another human being in a way that defies all logic and explanation. is that really out of the question? in new york, on my birthday, i shared such an amazingly beautiful moment with a stranger and i can't define it at all. all i can tell you is that i am rattled. i am rattled in such a way that i'm actually grateful for the pain of intense longing that has resulted. i don't want to be on the pacific coast any more. i want to be back on that beloved ferry, named after my brother, looking at lady liberty and crying silently behind my sunglasses. i can't tell you how emotional it was to see her. i stood on the deck and stared at her green contours and listened to the myriad of languages swirling around me and thought, "can a person really call themself an American without having seen The Statue of Liberty?" and then i thought of my mother who died without ever seeing her, without ever seeing the new york skyline or the famous paintings in MOMA or the wide smile of a happy stranger in a dance club in the lower east side at 4am.
these statements make me seem wild and intense. maybe i am wild and intense. all i know is that i cannot live without passion. i tried and something inside me, something fundamental and necessary, withered to a state of unrecognizable atrophy. finally, that which was stilled has woken up and is gaining strength. i don't care if i make mistakes. i've spent the entirety of my life being "good" and it has only ever amounted to degradation, humiliation and confusion. it has only ever led to self-loathing and the painful dismissal of tightly held dreams. no more. i am unwilling to go that road again. i know where "good" takes me. can "bad" really be that much worse? if redemption exists for me anywhere it is in my art, in my diary, in my words. it is a pity that so few have the stamina to love me and so i traverse this world alone. fuck it. let me know you by your art. you will know me by mine.
a stranger's hand brushed my hair away from my sweaty forehead on a dance floor in new york and my entire life changed. for as complicated as i am sometimes accused of being, it's just that simple.
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