saturday afternoon i needed to be cleansed. lately my goods and bads have been a bit extreme. everyone’s coming at me and going from me and i have no say, not in the plan…i’m on top of my own plan, that lonely efficiency. the family was in town, i adore my family, i need them – for the first time in a long time it felt like 5 people all moving in 5 directions the entire time. the common denominator was to complain about this city of mine, looking past all the places i loved at the end of my pointing fingers. plus work was intense, lots of visitors also somewhat befuddled by these streets and rivers of mine. my favorite ny mysteries suddenly seemed vulgar in show and tell.
and so many of the people i love are leaving the city in a mad dash, i hear secondhand, after the decision is made and the movement has started, tossed over the shoulder – ‘i’m leaving’. i hear doubtful voices of far off loved ones, ‘maybe i will return, but not willingly’. so saturday afternoon i needed to remember why, when everyone’s leaving, i still love this home i’ve chosen, and i came out of the subway to go to an official board dinner and i looked up into a thunderstorm sky, yellow clouds and purple backdrops, the sun off to the left not absent, but to the right near blackness. the wind was lifting up everyone’s cool, grown men and pregnant women could be witnessed elbowing each other for space under awnings as the first drops fell down. i thought i could make it. i stopped for a moment under an awning with an older white couple who argued about catching a cab. i thought ‘what are you so scared of?’, took off my sandals and glasses and walked out into it right when the rain really started to hit the ground. i stepped into the road rivers and landlocked lakes and let the water create a true second skin of all my layered clothes and i slowed down. couldn’t see anything really but the rain, the lights, people huddling away from it. i thanked god for my limited vision and the water and the moment where the city can remember the land underneath it which used to arch into green for such a rain. in new york you can still be shameless, illicit some innocent shock, catch yourself off-guard and pay the consequences. i shivered all night in the restaurant, but i felt fearless. so i am a fool sometimes. fault me. my life is all available to me. i push it away, but then i pull it close just for the scent. so messy, so unfulfilling. life’s constant product is perfect desire. 

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lyrics for the week:

Tides that I tried to swim against

Brought me down upon my knees

– clocks, coldplay

I keep thinking in a moment that
Time will take them away
– sideways, citizen cope

I level with death even beneath radar
I level with death and she got pretty eyes
Nobody told me death was so damn fine
I go to sleep with that girl on my mind
Wake up in a sea, I wanna fire in line
Grab my heat, then it’s get down time
One day I’ma make that girl all mine
But for now I’m a soldier abidin’ my time
Writin’ my rhyme behind enemy lines
– war, mos def

maybe its the full moon. my friend writes horoscopes at: http://www.itsalllove.com/starry_eyed/starry_eyed.html