New New York & the End of European Summer

reflecting on my home & my pilgrimage from it

All of a sudden there are leaves on the ground again. It is autumn and time makes itself known to you as the first shock in the ocean when the sun has closed its eye: cold!

My grandmother is frail and wheezing after every sentence. My little brother is having a baby girl. I left the beautiful European city before you were able to meet me there. Summer is defined, deified, by how quick the heat wave passes you by. It’s melancholic, which has always been my favorite emotion, all the beauty mixed in with the sad. All summer I’ve been walking, sweating even when I wasn’t going too fast, but are we going away or coming back?

Already, Europe, I miss you and the life I found within you. Specific, secret parts of you. It’s been a fun flex to be able to list my stops on two hands: Barcelona, Paris, Valencia, Naples, Portugal & the Azores. Belize before it doesn’t count but it sure feels like it does. Ah, time! But I will return. Next time I won’t be alone.

I felt the burning away, my protective exoskeleton molting, leaving parts of myself out there amongst all the marble and sun bleached stone and the sand. Here in New York things get hazy quick, there is all the distraction of having to carve out a living which gets in the way whether you’re ready for it or not. One can’t help but grow a carapace to protect. But from what? And why are we like this?

New York has a palpable air of fear, I can see now. People are afraid to be caught looking into a stranger’s eye. We are afraid to ask each other out for pain of rejection or self-reflection. We put in music to avoid having to communicate with our neighbors or potential new connections. We hoard money and disregard our dreams for fear of somehow losing stability or face… But when you keep out the bad, you also prevent the good from infiltrating you…

Because I’m from here, and because I’ve been extensively away from here, I can say with my chest: New York is disgusting. Odorous. Relentless, ruthless, reticent. There is no colorful sea and no awe-inspiring ancient history to see here, only the skeletons of the metal coffins we built around ourselves and the shadow of all the dehumanized ones clawing up to the battered sky right alongside us. Dingy corners of dilapidated buildings, entire pockets of polluted disarray, and a sheen of corrupt chrome spray painted over everything. And yet we keep coming back, our heart always thrums at the thought of it. The money goes away anyway. If you’re living life to the fullest you invest everything into it. There will have to be disappointments and curses and losses or you will never understand the taste of a ripe triumph.

It’s intoxicating in the way of messy lovemaking — there is the sweat, the groaning from deep in the chest, the saliva, the teeth, the awkward, such proximity has the color of red in my head, not scarlet or coppery-bloody but red just deep red red.

The door is ajar now. The walls are thin. When I look into your eyes I can see what you’re feeling.