Wanderlust

i cannot sleep, as for every Thursday night
with a soft breath of whiskey stuck in the back
of the mouth. I pull out Infinite Jest and make
hot chocolate - humidity pulls through the window,
double covers, in socks and a small set of shorts -
bare body which I wish could move with more grace.

I had held the subway doors in my hands as the
train whisked away. A moment to write:

Once you’re no longer a crutch to me
Once we’re no longer a desire to the 
10 blocks of wide white stairs
I sat on the deck before the sun could
kiss them, hearing your quivering voice
telling what had happened, I was
eating beans quickly, sleeping slowly.
I would’ve taken it all from you - 
From the river I tried so hard to keep
the night from coming in.

smiling

wrote this two years ago, and re-reading it made me, well, smile.

I really like the rain.  When I left the office yesterday, leaped down three flights of stairs, and said goodbye to my elevator-man-best-friend, I walked out onto the street and was greeted by a thick, cool rain.  I instantly started smiling.

 Most people hate walking in the rain —especially in the city. I get it: Your clothes are probably super nice and are dry-clean only, your hair will get all frizzy and you’re gonnnnna look weird, and those shoes were $350 and rain water probably isn’t the best thing for them. (Also, how come everyone in NYC has really nice shoes?)

But for me, I wear the same flip flops I’ve had since High School, I don’t own anything dry-cleaned worthy, and I’d much rather walk in a cooler, albeit wet environment than feel like a hair-dryer is blowing hot, hot heat directly in my face.  The rain also takes away some of the city-smells. When it’s hot and balmy, I smell a mix of dirty heat and rubber tires and sidewalk trash and halal food (although that smells good) and subway smog and dog urine and whatever else that makes up that unique scent I like to call…“New York City.”

So here I am walking down the street, and it’s raining pretty hard. And I’m smiling and smiling and getting wetter and wetter and goose bumps are forming on my arms and my tattoo looks all weird and neat and I’m happy and there’s mud on my heels and I’m smiling.  I constantly say “no thank you” to the umbrella-sellers, wishing I had time to explain to them that I’m already soaked and a crappy $5 umbrella will not make me dry again, while simultaneously believing that they must be smarter than any weather man since within 12 seconds of the first drop of rain they appear out of thin air selling their crappy umbrellas to sorry tourists and people with really nice shoes.

Then I realize how much I’m smiling in the rain and that when I’m at the office all day I probably rarely smile.  And it’s not that I’m not happy—it’s just that when you’re sitting in front of a screen all day and you’re sucked into your own little world and you’re typing and researching and thinking and concentrating that it would look weird if someone was spying on you and you were doing all of that stuff while smiling.  Right?  I do smile when I talk to people; I strike up conversations with the girl next to me who is from Burlington and Serbia, so I grill her about life and why the hell she’s in NYC and does she really like coconut water and how can you afford to live in the West Village?  I am also forced to talk to this guy in the office who is either extremely hipster or a little bit gay, but is definitely ADD and travels around to different computers to do work and tap his hands on the keyboard.  He asks me about every 45 minutes what I’m listening to on my headphones and this usually bugs me because they’re noise-canceling for a reason, and I have to take them off just to hear him repeat that same question, where I always lie and say I’m listening to something weird so he thinks I’m weirder than him which is an absolute lie. 

The other time I smiled in the city was when I was on the subway and I saw this couple fighting and the girl was mad and the guy was touching her butt and I wanted to be like dude, she doesn’t want you touching her butt right now but I kept that to myself and that made me smile. And then these two guys from Jersey were asking their third friend how much they’d have to pay him to move back to New Jersey and he said $50,000 a year and I thought that was AWESOME and then I found a gift that my boyfriend Azin left for me but unfortunately someone stole the gift and I was left with only the tag:

 

And I also smiled when I woke up from a dream the other night.  I dreamt I was walking out onto my friend’s roof down by South Street Seaport and I discovered a whole secret world lying on top of Manhattan and there were trees and driveways and small, simple houses and the ocean was feet away and you could see the tops of skyscrapers poking out from underneath the secret world’s ground. It was beautiful and peaceful and perhaps symbolic. And I smiled and smiled and smiled.

to better

tiny, beautiful moments

“Escaping to the wilderness has been a constant theme as my life continues to unfold. It was these adventures that made me the environmentalist that I am today. It was the first time I stepped into the Narrows River at Zion National Park that I fell in love with a feeling. In a way, that feeling is indescribable, and although my attempts to put words to a feeling may be feeble, it is important.

This feeling is a culmination of tiny beautiful moments: of the awe that bubbles and fills you up when you realize you are standing on a glacier that is also home to steaming lava coals; of the freeing yet dizzying feeling when you realize, after hiking several miles of the hard red rocks of Canyonlands, that you are utterly alone.

It can swallow you whole, this feeling. Knowing that when the sun kisses the earth at 5:00 am at the most eastern point of the States, that she is including you in on a secret that will bathe you in a warm orange, red, and yellow hued bath. This could swallow me whole, I know. I’d woken up at 4:00 am racing the clock, racing the steep incline of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia, to be let in on this secret.”

And this is why you’re my best friend.

surround yourself by people you love.

Though there were grumbles when the Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer did away with her employees’ work-from-home arrangements, maybe she was on to something: many workers are saying they need a hive to be happy and productive.

[working alone, together]

forward we walk

Enkindled spring, you’ve waited to unravel
just as we began to give to ice: 
folded over layers to dance with scarves
and feel bliss with cracks of skin.

But, spring: Just as sunlight hits the corners
of sidewalks people are warmed below lampposts - 
men lay bricks with heavy elbows,
relaxed shoulders building homes.

In the winter after the string of letters
she folded her hands on top of the
dresser, tears stuffed into sock drawers,
the postal service unable to send
mail delivery subsystems.
Each envelop sealed with an ability to
freeze grass and make steps to ice.

But the sand in these sandals
remind me of where I’ve been.
She’ll pour her heart until reaching
below the seasons,
cluttered elements won’t make me steel. 
Fire won’t break bones,
miles won’t stop the numbers of times
we’ve held on to how many years of stories
together?

Through the seasons lay
brick after stone below laces -
you’ve showed me life through streets,
you’ve showed me grace through rock.

And forward we walk to the sun of summer.

sawdust & diamonds

though my wrists and my waist seemed so easy to break
still, my dear, I would have walked you to the very edge of the water
and they will recognise all the lines of your face
in the face of the daughter of the daughter of my daughter

darling, we will be fine, but what was yours and mine
appears to be a sandcastle that the gibbering wave takes
but if it’s all just the same, then will you say my name:
say my name in the morning, so I know when the wave breaks?