Can I tell you a secret?
I think I lost myself this year. I think I’m still looking. I’ve looked everywhere.
Along the water most mornings, tracing my finger in the indent of the metal barricade, my whole hand swooping through the loop as it carves space for the wooden land buoy. With the 70 year old fisherman who caught something big before noon in his yellow Moncler jacket, the morning last December I decided to walk the pier to the end. The woman on 42nd street speeding past me to say “your heart will heal your heart will heal” on the day I missed all that came before. Big Boy, the pirate of a ship called Barney Greengrass who gave me free latkes, apple sauce and coffee refills the January mornings I tried rollerskating in Central Park to cement myself to a city that knew nothing of me. Big Boy asking me where I have been. Then giving me more latkes. Do not tell me if he has given you latkes too. I do not want to know.
Peter who plays cello but it could also be double bass at the end of my street and the sound of his music through my window. His bow hairs splintering and CDs scattered like candy in the black of his Cello case. Asking passerbys “What was your wedding song, may I play it for you?”
Ebenezer the cab driver I had coming back from Christmas last year. His deep voice and gesture to Christopher Street where he’d care-taken for someone with AIDS back in the day. Him saying "I have not been here in awhile.”
The Church next to St. Luke’s where the choir sings in a wooden heaven. The ceiling raises for them and I saw someone fly once there. Their lullaby lifted them to the sky. I saw it.
My bed on the floor with the steam so loud in the cranky pipes. They threw such a fit nothing I said could soothe. “What is it that you want?”
“For Spring to come.”
Snow that came in from the windows when the sky blanketed us with 8 inches of white. The small pile relaxing against my sill. Candles, so many candles burning everywhere. Because if I can’t have quiet I will feign my peace in hope the two will meet in the middle.
The snowball I found in the shape of a heart. My first visit to the concrete Udder of Little Island on a February stroll. Entering a cave so cold it could be underground. Lillies too. Many of them. Pink flower-basket perennials that my neighbors planted prematurely. How could they have known that February would lie.
My first visit to Montreal. Going away for a little while only to come back again. My saving grace: leave to return again. Doing that in April to Los Angeles. To the friends I hold like family. Going to Jasmine’s flowers the shop on Hillhurst to buyout some stock before they close shop from rent gauging. Seeing Charlie the tuxedo angel pawing around my old digs. Him mozying out from under the brush, whiskers awry and hair matted from dry Cali soil.
May. More flowers. Shirley temples to myself on the bistro chair at Paella restaurant with generations of Maroon sleeved servers. Beautiful couple inside eating right across from me separated just inches by glass.
Curlier and more humid hair and my bikinis as tops. Eating that Faicco’s sandwich that changed my life. Walking the water again seeing snow melt light fade slower water shift back to carry in new tide. Watching boats. Dragging Serena to watch them with me. Finally getting a bed frame.
Talking to Dennis the Super down the street with Snow white hair and always with cigarette in his mouth before 8am. Asking for advice with the roaches in my apartment. Buying “roach motels" for the fuckers to live in. More trips to the hardware store. More walks by the water. Watching people sit in the tennis queue wiggling their rackets between impatient hands. Napping on benches with my face in the sun.
September. Leaving my windows open, wearing white. Trying to walk in heels. The heels disagreeing.
The poodle walker with amazing hair, the barista who looks like Slash, kids back to school, first dates kissing on the sidewalk in front of me, the tree in front of my window naked again stripped of leaves, the first stirring of my heat pipe awake again from its not so eternal slumber and me - searching through it all and all that is to come toying with pieces I have convinced myself I lost. When maybe, they just got misplaced for awhile. Yes. I think that is it.
They have been misplaced for awhile.
The movie Safe (1995) my neighbor Ava said to watch. Julianna Moore leaves her world to find out why it does not work. Lips straight as a line she stands alone in front of a mirror in her bubble of a home mouthing then saying that which she is trying to believe: “I love you.”
And I do. I love you. And I love me, even the me I thought was lost for awhile. I looked everywhere. But I didn’t need to. She was right, that woman from 42nd. “Your heart will heal, your heart will heal.” I think it is. I think it is right now. And you know what?
I can’t wait to dance with my Tomorrow.