Of course I am sad and feel an extreme sense of loss. I am angry. I am disappointed, most of all. Yet, at the same time I feel so filled with hope that it frightens me. I am so filled with longing for a new beginning and have been presented with the most timely of opportunities. Everything arrived from Oxford, was waiting for me at home, and I saw, leafing through the information, just how lucky I am. I am lucky to be going to Oxford, to get this extraordinary intellectual opportunity. I am lucky to be in Europe, at a hub of international travel. I am lucky this is now, so close I can almost touch it. I am lucky for the friends and family that I have.
I want to see my sister before I go. I am thinking, now, of going earlier to Europe, both Julie and Nick said I could stay with them before I move to Oxford, Nora will be in Italy/Spain, I could see my remaining friends in Germany, then Julie might be going to France. Maybe I should go take an intensive French language program. Go write in Cambodia. Go back to Argentina and write. It isn't about running away anymore, postponing the possibilities, now it is simply about seeing, enjoying and understanding the world.
I wish I could stay in New York for awhile, but the truth is that it is simply too hard for me at this point, so full of meaningful memories and recent regrets. I am hopeful, though, that it will all work out for the best, for all of us. For the first time in a long time I have real faith in myself and the decisions I have made. Everything is clear, so suddenly, once I allowed myself to do what I knew deep down was most honest, fair and true to myself. I made some real mistakes along the way, hurt people that I love deeply (and also been hurt by them), but this is where I belong at this point in my life. And I know I will be ok. There is just so much more to me than being a partner, a lover. It is an important part, but only a part and one that I have allowed to determine my life and myself for the past decade. I have learned so much, though painstakingly, the last year--wonderful and horrible things, soft, sweet, harsh, frustrating things. And the hope that I have comes from my realization that I have so much left to learn. And that I will know, I will decide as I have decided, I will be sure one day.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
A Smaller Horizon
This is the place where birch trees meld into the striped horizon, our star-spangled eyes affixed to the notes of familiar song (a warm but wilted blanket, certain and civil around our necks). If shed together, all would be violet, the seeping blood of skies and veins, rigid warmth wrecked by the fall of day. This is America, violet and violent at once, small sterns fretting in the grease of a dirt-grass ocean. This is America, with plastic, compartmentalized lawn chairs, grandparents holding tight to sun-spotted hands, small gazebos that cannot coat, propel, protect from the rawest of rains. And deep beneath, seated in the inner rings of willows, pillowed pollen of communities, is some sort of love, tepid but true, tangled and torn, a pinched pirate sail not bowing to the storm.
While saviors, small and large, make their way into song, it is the blue-grass beat and belted words that stand out, the Dixie cups flowing with gingerale, the bug spray roaring back at beetles, the grease-sweat pizza boxes, bent brass belts, girls in hellish heals, babies with unimposing flags affixed to their still-spurting hands. At moments, these flags present themselves as worn appendages, grown from the wrists of the perfectly blonde children, curls that speak to a prairie already conquered and quit. They wave with joy, our small angels, quiet patriots, portable totems of federal fight. They hang upside down, run through the mediocre lawn, wretched with bloody knees, but bright eyed, plump with love. At no moment do they drop the flags, saying to their elders that they already know, that their fleshy legs, chipmunk cheeks are full not with summer berries and corn, but a pickled pride (one set within to season and burn from the very moment they were spit forth from their mothers’ watery wombs).
Our small Americans stand out in the crowd of grandmothers and grandfathers, fallen exhausted, too bright but beaten back by banking on pent-up possibility. They are grounded, give in to small dances, but delight mostly in the knowledge that they are here, home. I am delighted too, by the small waterfalls and lasting rainbows, stairs etched in mountains, reminding me of the world above red roofs, beckoning belonging. But this is America, I am told by the song and the crowd, the callouts to soldiers, the miniature flagged hands, the calluses of my urban upbringing somehow vacant from this smaller horizon. It takes vengeance on that other America—corrupt, cornered, cruel. Instead of the bed of horny hostilities lies an unhallowed dream, a gentle cooing of custom. Here no one bowls alone.
To which America is it that I belong? To which bright, banished, or bored nation? Can I deny, even with the stark cries inside, the swelling of my heart at this song, the certainty, the gracious grin in knowing I am here, home.
While saviors, small and large, make their way into song, it is the blue-grass beat and belted words that stand out, the Dixie cups flowing with gingerale, the bug spray roaring back at beetles, the grease-sweat pizza boxes, bent brass belts, girls in hellish heals, babies with unimposing flags affixed to their still-spurting hands. At moments, these flags present themselves as worn appendages, grown from the wrists of the perfectly blonde children, curls that speak to a prairie already conquered and quit. They wave with joy, our small angels, quiet patriots, portable totems of federal fight. They hang upside down, run through the mediocre lawn, wretched with bloody knees, but bright eyed, plump with love. At no moment do they drop the flags, saying to their elders that they already know, that their fleshy legs, chipmunk cheeks are full not with summer berries and corn, but a pickled pride (one set within to season and burn from the very moment they were spit forth from their mothers’ watery wombs).
Our small Americans stand out in the crowd of grandmothers and grandfathers, fallen exhausted, too bright but beaten back by banking on pent-up possibility. They are grounded, give in to small dances, but delight mostly in the knowledge that they are here, home. I am delighted too, by the small waterfalls and lasting rainbows, stairs etched in mountains, reminding me of the world above red roofs, beckoning belonging. But this is America, I am told by the song and the crowd, the callouts to soldiers, the miniature flagged hands, the calluses of my urban upbringing somehow vacant from this smaller horizon. It takes vengeance on that other America—corrupt, cornered, cruel. Instead of the bed of horny hostilities lies an unhallowed dream, a gentle cooing of custom. Here no one bowls alone.
To which America is it that I belong? To which bright, banished, or bored nation? Can I deny, even with the stark cries inside, the swelling of my heart at this song, the certainty, the gracious grin in knowing I am here, home.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Urban Orchards
There are no true urban orchards, but there are places where you can sink your feet, summon the sun, black out the beatings of summer in the city storms. There are streets, too, with such names--nonstarters as they lack aesthetic beauty (but are certainly bright with life). Life is not faint on the lower east side...in fact, the small streets startle back the cars, roars are from windows and hidden treasures of tea, trinkets, tricks. Cupcakes only cost $1.50. Restaurants sometimes seat under a dozen wanderers. What wild of urbanity.
It is within this wilderness, one of the only wilds left for me, that I find small peace. Small peace is all that I search for these days after off-setting my own path, shaking up and then shuddering at the realities created by my thin frame. I sometimes wonder how such a frail body can be so fierce, I am told. This is Kiki, wild and shameless, I am reminded by another. It is not pride that I hold in not holding back, firing my will and worries in the street, in my tears, at the top of my lungs. There are real hurts, true endings, doors I have slammed in my own face, locks I pick and pick with no avail (I am not skilled at breaking and entering), a cryptic confusion I have spread--my own small, scaring wildfire.
But certainties, however small, still serve as comfort. Imagining the rise and fall of my sister's belly, now full with life. Landing on an orange chair in the subway, my book wrinkled and read at my fingertips, my feet tingling with the raw life that waitressing breeds (exhaustion, in short). There are tastes--cold seltzer, rye bread crusts, black licorice, squash soup--distinct and defining, momentary grins. Photographs of Oxford, where I will spend the next two years--ally-ways that I imagine will enthuse my art. Friends faces over coffee or Corona. Limes.
There are certainties of myself that, however slowly, do return. On a walk in Chinatown with a friend, I am reminded of the comforting clink of dim sum, my love of steamed red bean buns, the days when I burst alive in the stores plump with cosmetics, teas, twisted ginger. We stand on a corner listening to a Chinese man sing, albeit with lyrics at his eyes, surrounded by a community we can not infiltrate, find ourselves in, but certainly can enter freely, as soft onlookers, receiving smiles or better yet, nothing. I am asked how tall I am (tall, I respond), recently commonplace in my life. I am tall. I am a city girl. I am in love with eating and greeting. I am still sad.
Being sad, confused, a little lost, that is life my friend tells me. It is as certain as the clinking heartbeat of my soon to be niece/nephew, small births and deaths of imaginings, hopes, histories, fraught of course with graspings, gropings, gaspings, clawings for clarity. All is opaque, I might add, though sometimes warm and blue, sometimes bright, tangerine and other times that dreaded red, the sure blood on our hands.
When I see him now, and all you all know who he is, my heart beats and breaks. It burns with the sudden nostalgia that only this man and that portion of my life can alight. It still hurts as it did over a year ago, so sore at my very core. But he seems stronger and somewhat of a stranger to me and all I ask for, if anything, is that his clouds have come to pass.
Of course I have been in real orchards, apple picking, cherishing pumpkins with which I would create monsters and moons. They are places to get lost, to bite into sweetness, to bask in autumn, the annual dawning of life. Today, as in Germany, Argentina, Chile and every small street here I have known, I try to understand the orchard, the fallen fruits, the sudden turns, the stern sins, try to brighten at the bank, condemn the corners. On Orchard Street itself, in a re-arranged coffee shop, with an au lait in my hands, I reminded just how raw, alive and brazenly beautiful every urban orchard is.
It is within this wilderness, one of the only wilds left for me, that I find small peace. Small peace is all that I search for these days after off-setting my own path, shaking up and then shuddering at the realities created by my thin frame. I sometimes wonder how such a frail body can be so fierce, I am told. This is Kiki, wild and shameless, I am reminded by another. It is not pride that I hold in not holding back, firing my will and worries in the street, in my tears, at the top of my lungs. There are real hurts, true endings, doors I have slammed in my own face, locks I pick and pick with no avail (I am not skilled at breaking and entering), a cryptic confusion I have spread--my own small, scaring wildfire.
But certainties, however small, still serve as comfort. Imagining the rise and fall of my sister's belly, now full with life. Landing on an orange chair in the subway, my book wrinkled and read at my fingertips, my feet tingling with the raw life that waitressing breeds (exhaustion, in short). There are tastes--cold seltzer, rye bread crusts, black licorice, squash soup--distinct and defining, momentary grins. Photographs of Oxford, where I will spend the next two years--ally-ways that I imagine will enthuse my art. Friends faces over coffee or Corona. Limes.
There are certainties of myself that, however slowly, do return. On a walk in Chinatown with a friend, I am reminded of the comforting clink of dim sum, my love of steamed red bean buns, the days when I burst alive in the stores plump with cosmetics, teas, twisted ginger. We stand on a corner listening to a Chinese man sing, albeit with lyrics at his eyes, surrounded by a community we can not infiltrate, find ourselves in, but certainly can enter freely, as soft onlookers, receiving smiles or better yet, nothing. I am asked how tall I am (tall, I respond), recently commonplace in my life. I am tall. I am a city girl. I am in love with eating and greeting. I am still sad.
Being sad, confused, a little lost, that is life my friend tells me. It is as certain as the clinking heartbeat of my soon to be niece/nephew, small births and deaths of imaginings, hopes, histories, fraught of course with graspings, gropings, gaspings, clawings for clarity. All is opaque, I might add, though sometimes warm and blue, sometimes bright, tangerine and other times that dreaded red, the sure blood on our hands.
When I see him now, and all you all know who he is, my heart beats and breaks. It burns with the sudden nostalgia that only this man and that portion of my life can alight. It still hurts as it did over a year ago, so sore at my very core. But he seems stronger and somewhat of a stranger to me and all I ask for, if anything, is that his clouds have come to pass.
Of course I have been in real orchards, apple picking, cherishing pumpkins with which I would create monsters and moons. They are places to get lost, to bite into sweetness, to bask in autumn, the annual dawning of life. Today, as in Germany, Argentina, Chile and every small street here I have known, I try to understand the orchard, the fallen fruits, the sudden turns, the stern sins, try to brighten at the bank, condemn the corners. On Orchard Street itself, in a re-arranged coffee shop, with an au lait in my hands, I reminded just how raw, alive and brazenly beautiful every urban orchard is.
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