A fifteen-minute cab ride is long enough to forget the chill in the air; it’s funny what skin chooses to remember. Walk past a certain building and think, This is the picture of Brooklyn that films and stories paint inside your head. And then you’re where you’re supposed to be, and the number on the chalkboard is dialed, and you climb a staircase and walk through what you’re pretty sure is the apartment you’d be living in if life were fair at all and you’re climbing again - onto a step stool this time - and out a window and down a rickety ladder into candlelight and laughter and the smell of twenty kitchens on one table. No thing has happened before and every thing tastes like a memory.
I’m still
me, I still sometimes feel as though mine might be a parallel existence,
resembling and trucking along without touching, but more and more (and
more) I can identify that feeling as an offshoot of internal dialogue
(or something, you know, whatever) rather than as a fact. I still feel
sad sometimes for no real reason and I still feel distressingly removed
from whatever reality is sometimes and I still struggle just like you
and you and you and that other guy. I still expect things from myself
that are maybe more than a little bit unreasonable.
All of these things, and more, still. Yes. But.
A lot of lately has been looking around and thinking,
What did I do to deserve this life?
Because all of it, in its imperfect entirety, is really pretty beautiful.
AND I'M SORRY I KEEP TALKING ABOUT THIS but seriously you guys it really feels like my stomach is going to flip itself out of my eye sockets and is that what feelings for somebody feel like? Seriously? If I try to sit really still even for a few seconds my body gets all shuddery and nervous and like, twitches. Which might actually not have anything to do with my love life, maybe that's just a thing. Try it right now, just try to sit perfectly perfectly still and see what happens. I bet you electricity happens. Let me know.
