NY8 - Weirdo

How she hated words, always coming between her and life I read with my eyes as I wrote into memory the perfumed treelined paradise of a particular Park Slope street; the odd aching familiarity alien calm? of the two little blonde girls selling 25¢ Oreos and 50¢ lemonade Half our proceeds go to Japan! in recyclable cups all stacked neatly on a miniature foldout picnic table with a daisied tablecloth; gusts of beach wind across an oasis of green in the middle of Brooklyn I'm on an island; people passing on the street speaking things from past pages of my script I'm trying to enjoy it while I can leaving me to my vicarious déjà vu, frenetic, heartened, overstimulated, whatever But it's better, much better, than all that old envy. No lenses, but my senses turned
all
the way
on.

NY7 - Vanity

Many many people sneaking strange glances at me on the street and the subway, in bookstores and cafes. Brief visual interactions that appear neither appreciative nor critical. Recognition, mostly, with a tinge of either embarrassment or bemusement, as though they'd all seen me in some seedy internet sex-tape or silly YouTube video. Oh how I hope it is the latter. Or perhaps, much better, we're all simply feeling observant and brave, noticing each other and interested enough to stare a little. I don't mind. I do it all the time. Bright pink boat shoes and slim progress into 2666. Thick-knit rust-coloured scarf and an equally thick, spring-yellow copy of something published by Gotham Writers Workshop; extra cilantro. Grey-sweatshirt genius slipping out a SoHo street door. Still, I feel I am being watched. Like that guy whose life turns out to be a reality TV show, and his bright blue skies a well-painted backdrop. Hope these blossoms I've been looking up at aren't made of styrofoam.

NY6 - Late Night

Last night, a girl was poring over the Nicomachean Ethics on the C train at 3 am, armed with the best kind of highlighter, seated opposite a homeless man whose socks were worn down to bright white spider webs and whose fingers had hardened over with a new, sad sort of skin. The optimism I've been nursing withered some, and my propensity for value judgments re-ripened in a quick second. I pulled a clementine suddenly from my pocket and we all partook in happy little wedges; citrus always cuts through sadness. Blossoms have begun to blossom and the winter puppies are growing up and everybody is having a bit of a flirt. When I leave the house wearing my "Take Off Your Pants!" button, people I pass on the street appear to be considering it. But I've failed to procure a pretzel and my hands mysteriously smell of henna and first avenue is full of November Delhi perfume. As always, I will settle, with infinite substitute joy. Which, as it turns out, is still real joy.

NY5 (Belated)

The city was out today like a nineties executive determined not to take any calls, ambling into the slowly solidifying promise of springtime, the day's paper under its arm. Out walking its dogs and washing out its minifridge on a patch of east village pavement. Out wearing top-heavy sunglasses and talking literature over late lunch in Gramercy. Out leaving little chocolates on doorsteps and offering a mint to a girl in preparation for a tentative public kiss. Out of complaints and out of excuses and out for adventure with a vengeance.

Annie Hall

I think I might like New York a little.

NY4

What looks like a fourteen year old boy comes in wearing a grey coat and a beautiful butter yellow tie, and buys a small cup of coffee. A strange desire to watch the superbowl surfaces. The same banker winks at me twice, pre- and post-latte. Infidelity need not be chronologically concurrent with a relationship. Optimism is easier when one doesn't have to explain one's anxieties in full; a momentary frown needn't provoke an emotional third degree. Baseball players are the best looking American sportsmen, or perhaps I'm just a sexual racist. Didn't expect Paul Harding's page 24 punch to the gut. Still haven't written that goddamn letter. Do even french people know how to say "Sartre"?

NY3 / Oh such a prima donna sorry for myself

Something is wrong. Chain bookstores smell of seduction and
lobotomy. First World poverty being marketed as Third World
luxury. Those girls look and smell overwhelmingly like plastic
puff pastries; I forget where I am going. No one stops to listen
to the band with a bucket-bassist and ghungroo-percussionist.
My precarious envy-admiration balance is suddenly way off.
Snow is banal with sunlight and efficiency. No fruit all day.
No sign of bliss. Every sound an irritation except this:



Spicy noodles aren't spicy. I don't have a crush on anyone.
Laundromat's givin' me the weepies, and not the good kind.

In other words: look at this fuckin' hipster.

NY2

Union Square subway stairs, again, this time with one resolute tear somewhere inside one spectacle frame. Sudden sadness, Etta James casually shredding hearts, note by minor note. Michelle Williams' doppelganger in tight blonde curls waits for her skim latte. Charles the quiet, Colin-Farrel-looking Frenchman comes in for his single espresso, says Sank You, sits, shakes his head at New York One, stretches his empty cup into my shaking hand, and leaves, that same black and grey scarf tucked into his jacket, hair perennially freshly washed. Come out of a blues-induced stupor at Adorama to purchase one roll of 120 mm B&W film, speaking with an alien voice I didn't even have a year ago today, and the man behind the register looks at me with a kind, puzzled, sympathetic expression, the question behind which, in a fiction of my life, would be "Who broke that girl?"

NY1

Walked home with a mouthful of secondhand smoke, peering in at happy hour strangers. Two Latina girls ascended the Union Square subway stairs in front of me, both instinctively hiking their tailbone belt-loops, holding them up all the way to the top of the flight. George Bush's doppelganger was buying spinach. I know exactly how many inches of snow will fall on Friday. New York One didn't say a word about the earthquake. The content of the postcard has been revised three times since last night, when I woke up and penned it into the penultimate page of On The Road in the post bedtime darkness. I am on the last dregs of that Bic pen I lifted from the bookstore, and can't seem to find its kind anywhere else, for love or money. Sixty dollars in my wallet. A day's wages. One hundred or so pages from the end.

This is how 2011 begins

With me in a strange city, in a red dress, in non-snow shoes, walking down a street, looking at people, stopping to talk to someone who calls me a free spirit, stone sober, headed home, content.

Black and white world.

Vision: Standing on a disembodied staircase in a very high place, with the anxious swoop of vertigo taking me over and the sudden sound of copter wings interrupting my fall.

Vicarious: Standing smally in front of a guy with a large fake crocodile on his head (or is it an alligator?), damp in my little coat, hat, and wellingtons, fallen rain swimming on stone all around. Rickety bicycles sliding by and disappearing around buildings slowly softening into themselves.

Vaastav: Standing on a cold, indifferent sidewalk, wishing something in this city would sneak its hand into mine.

A photograph I did not take

The flower vendor by the turnstiles at the fourteenth street L train station, softly slumped over himself in late evening slumber, chin on chest, hand hanging on the inside of his knee, surrounded by flowers; his apron turning the whole thing into a curtsy.

Why I Am In New York:

"I am in New York to have a battle of wills with the apotheosis of civilization. (Or such like.) I am here to exercise a vague whim so it doesn't fester into a mid-life what-if. I am here because why the hell not? I am here to get big city life out of my system. I am here to take a last shot at being young and fun, and to find out what that even means. I am here because they speak Spanish and Urdu and Hindi on the streets. I am here because it is the epicenter of weird shit. I am here because it was as good a place as any. I am here to piss the city off with my ambivalence towards it. I am here for any number of reasons, none of which are really strong enough to hold the weight of my [nostalgia] for India, my love for Oregon and my desire for other places. But I am here, because it is an in between, a temporary, perhaps even a good story. I am here because on any given day, there may be a Mariachi band on the subway.

I am not here to Make It Big. I am not here to fuck a lot of bankers/models/heirs/suitjacketed douchebags. I am not here to wear high heels and short skirts. (Okay, perhaps SOME short skirts. But with Birkenstocks.) I am not here to become a New Yorker. I am not here for Times Square. I am not here to partake in a Nora Ephron movie. I am not here to be Carrie fucking Bradshaw."

[Excerpted, with mild modification, from my correspondence with one Jared Metzker. Yes, I did just quote myself.]

Alright, New York.

I even brought my goddamn typewriter.

Let's do this thing.