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.
