Swimming with My Subtle Body

I’m in the water with all of my jewelry on, because if I don’t, who will?

Already so many adventures in Naples! Afternoons spent wandering about the winding alleyways and secret side streets. A secret night in a secret grotto by Virgil’s Castle of Gold with the Saint Virgin Mary, who led me there in a vision as if I were a prophet. Many nights of dinner of spaghetti and bread and mussels and beer. Crooked cobblestone, maniac mopeds, Holy Ghost holographic light from the jewels adorning women’s teeth, the waning crescent magic moon lingering over a volcano. I get McDonalds in the magnificent Galleria Umberto I, a beautiful building replete with marble statues across the street from the Royal Palace.

I’m slowing down my pace because I'm still digesting yesterday.

Europe has shown me just how young America is. There are so many places here where you can feel the history. Masterful embellishments adorn random hidden building corners. Brilliantly sculpted fountains and statues litter arbitrary city vertices. Families linger in the countryside which have roots dating back hundreds of hundreds of years.

I can’t help but sweat as I stumble down the spiraling streets. One has to artfully walk in the shade, dodging sunbeams and cars and other treacheries. Every which way here and there is a narrow passageway leading into shadow, balconies and clotheslines connecting buildings arms-length apart like arteries. Every minute is vital. The humidity reminds you that you have a body which is weaker than the elements. When I’m not exploring or locking myself in my room to write, I’m at the beach, kicking off from stones which glisten in the sun. Vistas of the purest blue you’ve ever seen await, accentuated by a slight hint of green, moss under your feet tickle and hide the sharpness of the rocks which are eager to slice you open. Golden bodies are immortalized in the brief beautiful moments in which they resemble the goddess Nike, arced and ready to pierce the cerulean sea.

I’ve discovered that I am the rocks of the bay and the ephemeral smoke rising from the mountain. My romance is the water of separation of the original world, and when in love like so I am slippery, hard to grasp and hold, yet purification itself — I will save you and sliver open your palm and wash your blood away.

“These are the waters of beauty and mystery, issuing from a gap in the granite world; .... and these are also the waters of separation: they purify, acrid and laving, and they cut me off.” — A. Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Did you feel the portal opening?

Did you make a wish?

There is mystery abound here within the labyrinth and hectic levels of elevation. Every corner you turn there is another marble fountain or gate from which dead-eyed statues gesture out to the stars. Without seeing it coming I’m living out the wishes I made in frustrated despair months back. I continue to leave posters advertising both METROPOLIA and Hot Literati amidst the graffiti. Memorials to the Virgin Mary and various saints weep at you when you least expect it. On someone’s balcony rests an empty chair with red velvet draped over it. Arches and aqueducts. A book discarded rests, open, on the banks of a rushing river. I see lithe androgyny on a balcony with all the city stretched out behind them.

Everyone is staring. I am not the only negro but there is no one else like me in all the world. I would know, I’ve been searching for myself.

There is the sloping of the houses overlooking the sea. The levels of roofs, the arches, the angles, the stairs worn down by time. Dwellings of pink, beige, khaki, sapphire sandstone. The sun scorching the sands and us. This facade made in 1919, this gate established 1887. This city was once bombed into ruins and remade — in its own image, or a new one? How a child’s face immediately resembles the mother’s: legacies of love. This place will be here long after I am and there’s no way I can leave my mark in a way that endures.

I was reaching into the same place again and again and kept drawing the same color.

Today I pulled the tarot card of Death. Remember the last city I was in, when I said my old self has to die for the new me to be born? This isn’t as brutal as it sounds. It is an automatic metamorphosis and the sunburnt skin peeling off me is my translucent chrysalis; my ways are changing against my will. I know where I’m headed and I can feel so viscerally what it feels like, what the mornings sound like, how the afternoons smell. I’ve always been good at this sensing, I think. It’s why I frequently feel a sense of deja vu. I haven’t been here before, but I’ve known it was coming.

The number 999 has been significant to me for years. Before Juice WRLD (RIP). Before Sub9K formerly of the Five Finger Posse. For as long as I can remember the concept of a cycle’s re-revolution, namely an ending and a new beginning, this idea and this sensation has spoken to me. For as long as I can remember I have been moving, leaving behind and encountering, always evolving. It’s gotten to the point where most of my clients start their sessions asking, “What corner of the world are you in today?”

The ocean gives and takes away in the same breath. What is left standing is just what happens to remain. I lost my keys and my phone and they were returned to me by the wind and the sea in tandem.

Sutures hold together the subtle body.

I can sense someone manifesting me.

Long ago we should have stopped trying to hold onto what came before, the city is showing me. It’s pointless to look back: you’re not going that way.

This is what is happening now: we are all on the shore, and the world is falling away from us. We cannot hold onto it. “It’s here,” you say, “I feel it —”

But it’s not.

It will be finished when it ends. Not before. Only after.

We had a beautiful time in the water. The waves mirrored the flow of our conversation. She realized her power, I realized more of my destiny. True understanding is rare. She is on a new cycle and I am almost done with mine. I can’t stop surrounding myself with Cancers. I think my heart yearns for the sea. Angels dance above us in the clouds, warring, reaching for each other with fingers shaped like bodies, and just when you recognize them in an image, they are already changing into something else.

The next version of me stands over me and blocks the sun. He squints and he frowns and his eyes disappear, and he says, What do you know?

I am who I idolize. And I need what I resent.

The world is so alive! A rented scooter through the winding Amalfi hills, fried calamari and the freshest lemons you’ll ever get. The ocean is a passionate thing. The salt of the sea tastes like danger. If you’re not careful, the ferocious tides will slam you against the rocks and slice open your skin and you won’t know it until you try and get out. Or the crabs will gnaw at your ankles and leave scars in the shape of kisses. But I’ve never once been afraid. I’m in the water with all of my jewelry on, because if I don’t, who will?

The ruby on my throat is important.

Flesh is what we’ve always been looking for. And it isn’t enough to be hungry and silent. I want to roar about it, I want to complain though I know it won’t fill my belly any. I want the high ceilings and the picturesque view and the comforting nails on the back of my neck all for myself. It’ll be special because I won’t tell anyone about it, you’ll only know I have it when I shut my mouth and only love comes out. What we’re searching for, can it be put into words? Is language enough to describe it? Remember the sweetest treat you’ve ever had: had it a brilliant appearance or a decadent taste?

Conquering — hunting — seeking — dancing — hiding — veiling — deceiving — enticing — captivating — escaping — swelling — devouring — …

Everything is alive, prismatic, brimming with brilliant divine light.

What luck! The moon also rises!

If there was no God, we would invent her.

I don’t know how to explain myself and no, I don’t want to. The devil responds to requests; true prayer sounds closer to confessions.

We tried to check out the nightlife. But all we can find are patios and terraces filled with little tables and people standing around them, chattering, flirting, playing music out loud from their phones. A chaotic cacophony. I’m reminded of the main street of the Lower East Side in New York, an area outside of a gaggle of clubs where people stand to mingle and smoke — only here, it seems like that is the main event.

Locked in my room with only alcohol and the air conditioning to accompany me, I finally finish the edits to my novel Phantazmagorya. Lovers never die. And only the sleepless ones will understand. I have given birth and my child is now old enough to go out into the world without my control of it. I will have to find a home for it. I will have to find someone to bring it to term so it can be brought to you.

I want to be remembered as a mystic. A seer. A healer. A visionary. I know it is the nature of such peoples to be remembered mostly after their deaths. I see in my future myself draped in royal fineries, flanked by beauties and fellow mystics, all of us esoteric. I have many scions. I yield my riches only to them. I am generous and thus very blessed. I have been collecting all these jewels just to gift to my heirs.

If I could, I’d stay out here and continue working remotely in perpetuity, or until my homesickness gets unbearable. I do dearly miss my bathtub and my friends and my bed with its distinct smell. I said on my Instagram story “Like this if you miss me” and I received more likes — and views — than I ever have. Is it true that the world really has a place for me? If I were swept away to sea, someone would hold a memorial? For so long I considered myself a new negro Gatsby: enjoyed by all but remembered by few.

I want to rebel against the concept of borders, and immigration laws, and visas. I feel no attachment to being an American.

And yet — I can tell I am being judged for being one. “They can tell you’re a tourist just from your rings,” a voluptuous woman sharing the bar tells me. What, does nobody else here believe in accessories? The nights here are sticky and quiet, nothing like Barcelona, where I think I left a piece of my heart. For a people dedicated to absorbing what they can from Black culture, Italians are certainly unwilling to show me any hospitality or generosity. Young men decked out in Jordans and flashy chains look at me with suspicion as I walk past. At the beach, I watch a group of young teens snicker at their dark-skinned friend when he runs off to grab them all ice creams. At the supermarket, a clerk with humongous gold hoops in her ears smiles at the customers before and after me. But not me. A woman wearing a shirt with Nicki Minaj on it clutches her purse and crosses the street at night when she sees me approaching. I wish I could say this no longer bothers me. I wish I could have found one place in all my travels that had welcomed me with open arms. Cars slide past blasting hip-hop hi-hats and heavy bass, but no taxi will stop for me. I know I don’t need them, my legs have never failed me, but don’t I deserve the luxury of being lightened?

What’s next? The sea will show me.

This week marked the 2 year anniversary of METROPOLIA. As a thanks to all my supporters, I decided to hold a contest to give out 2 six-month paid subscriptions. It’s my pleasure to welcome Daniel S.J. and Anastasiia M. to the cabal! Thank you again for your support! Enjoy the Night Reports and the full METROPOLIA archive!

As I told subscribers recently — I know I didn’t do a Night Report for the month of July. Haven’t been clubbing much. To make up for it, August will feature 2 paid sub only posts, so if you’ve been thinking about upgrading, now is a great time to do so.

Fun things are brewing over at Hot Literati, too. Us guest writers will be holding takeovers of the platform in turn. Eminent

Ananya Dutta

has just finished her reign, and now vicious

Victoria

has taken over. Check it out and prepare for my eventual coup…