Gratitude Muse
"Instructions for living a life: pay attention, be astonished, tell about it."Â
— Mary Oliver
PERSONAL ESSAYS
The following is a collection of poetic prose essays.
JOY
Lately, whenever I sit at my desk for longer than necessary, the hummingbird comes. His chirp short, squeak-like, sporadic. Calling me to order, pulling me from the screen and the paper; from the book, or the coloring. Drawing me towards the window, the open front door; to spy him, find him below/in/on/above the branches; through the leaves; to spot him in midair. Wings spread in a shimmering explosion of color. This one, green...Blink and you'll miss this little creature. Blink and you'll miss his fleeting birdsong. Blink and you'll miss the wanderings of joy.
I HEART NY
Tonight... Right now... Right this minute... I miss the streets of NYC. I miss walking block upon block. I miss the bar, the restaurant, there... right around the corner. I miss walking. I miss (gasp!) the subway; the monogamous way it had of being there... anytime you needed it... I miss Broadway, Amsterdam, and Columbus. Third Avenue, Houston, 8th and 4th, the way 79th St. would become quieter and quieter the further West you traveled, all the way to the River. I miss the way people connect with just a glance, a groan at the subway conductor's voice over the loudspeaker... I miss the way people say "this is what you wanna do... you wanna take the...", in that aggressive, fiercely protective tone whenever talking to any non-New Yorker. Tough love, and a loyalty that is anonymous precisely because we are all in this together... I miss cracking the window in January as I swelter in the steam heat emanating from the broken radiator... I miss the quiet during the first snowfall... I miss the way Central Park smells in those last days of March, its wet ground, slippery rocks and buds barely visible in the ground. I miss the days in late April that begin with a jacket and end in a t-shirt at the first happy hour spent around an outdoor table... I miss the rooftop parties, the cherry blossoms, the Boathouse, the Summer Concert Series. I miss the way steam would wallow out of manhole covers, the construction workers with their steely jaws and crooked smiles. I miss the smell of grilled meats at Street Fairs, the spontaneous gatherings around street musicians. I miss the bistros open until 4am, the way you could sit on a stoop and shoot the breeze until dawn. I miss the Met, MOMA, and Lincoln Center, the Joyce, and City Center. I miss STEPS and Broadway Dance; Ailey, Graham and Peridance. I miss the randomness of it all... getting your portrait sketched by the man seated next to you in the subway... I miss the hurried pace, and the way buildings conspired to give you shade or a Western breeze. I miss the gusts of frigid air from the stores' open doors in the middle of August... I miss my friends; I miss feeling like I belonged; I miss my family; I miss all of you, everything about you... NYC.
BIG EMPTY SPRAWL CITY
I have been trying to love it. No, really, I have. But the Sprawl-City makes it so hard... It's just that I'm tired of her forbidding ways. All these streets that lead to dead-ends and never take you home. The boulevards that are like spider webs; the ones that seek to trap you in the middle of the intersection as you wait for the split second reserved for your left turn; the one just before engines rev up to your left and the light flicks to red. I am weary. Her traffic has made me so. Her freeways, not so much much connected as tangled, layered one upon the other. Cars idling, inching, revving, screeching. All that traffic. At any time of day; on any day... Like that Saturday I took the 10 into the 405 into the 110 at 3pm. Bumper to bumper. Everyone territorial; guarding the inches of space between themselves and the next bumper, that sliver of road on the other side of the dotted lines. "No, you won't come in, I say! Not on my watch!" an echo reverberating between the hills, the Santa Monica mountains, the high rises on Wilshire Blvd.
A city built image by image, moving images, Hollywood and all its make-believe; watch the artifice amble on Sunset, Melrose, in Beverly Hills, Bel Air, in that Mercedes, this Jaguar, a Bentley. The car you drive matters when no one can see your face. Your car is your avatar, another self, the vehicle to drive the image home. Race, race, up the avenue, gotta make the audition, get to my shift, my nail appointment. Soccer moms, school buses and beat up junkers. All in a row on Pico, Olympic, or Venice Blvd. A city of stories.
A city of scenarios; we imagine what others are thinking, feeling, we have to; we never speak. And stories help when all you have to see are lanes of broken concrete, potholes, buildings, and more concrete; walls, guard rails, off-ramps and bridges. You wonder if that seam, there, in the middle, was caused by some tremor or earthquake; you feel the edges dig into your right tires, wonder how many of those you could drive over, doing 75 before your tires gave out?... But I digress... No matter what I do, Sprawl-City feels cold under all that sunlight; impatient; unforgiving; pushy; selfish; entitled; narcissistic. A city of vanity: "me, me, me"... Abyss after abyss to be filled with validation, recognition, respect. Hey you, could you please just acknowledge that "me" standing before you already, there, in that car, at the light?...
I have been trying to love it, really, I have. I've been waiting for her to inspire me; prompt me to say I judged her too quickly. I keep looking for a spark to ignite my soul. I keep wanting to feel grounded; anchored; at home. I thought there might be some peace in all that void; some sort of thick silence to enwrap and soothe me. All that light, these naked sunrises and seductive sunsets; they seem disconnected, in a world apart; like on a coin, an absolute obverse of the scenes below. Driving along, it's as if you keep chasing their horizon, never arriving, just getting closer and closer to the rows of concrete, the metal gates, the bumpers ahead; trapped in the web of the Sprawl-City.
One day melting into the next, into the Big Empty.