New York

There’s a small part of me that’s drawn to New York City. A small part of me, left over from a childhood desire to live there, that wants to be a part of something so… epic. For that’s what New York is. It’s epic. “The center of the known universe” (TC), certainly the center of publishing, something that I could certainly see myself doing.

That small part of me wants to be able to say that I did it. That I was capable of living in New York, even if I don’t settle there for good. I need to know that I can make it on my own, and what better place to prove it than New York, the city of crime and atrocious prices, of struggle, of prosperity, and of poverty. If I can make it in New York, I can make it anywhere.

At the same time, I don’t want to live in New York. At all. Ever. I hate the cold of winter and the stifling, baking heat of summer. I hate the crowds and the anonymity. I would feel lost, like I could disappear into the cracks in the sidewalk at any moment, and not a soul would notice the change.

I need something to ground me, something that the city can’t offer me. I need nature. I need the ocean, if possible. The Park is wonderful, but I would need to see it often, in order to keep hold of my sanity, and I could certainly not afford to live near enough to satisfy. I need the ocean, I need sky, I need grass. Most of all, I need open roads. I need to be able to drive my car, not leave her stuck in some garage in the city, or worse, out on the streets where I would be constantly afraid of car jackers (it’s an irrational fear I have when I don’t see my car everyday, even in Williamsburg or Reston).

I need space, at the same time I need people, and civilization, and happenings, so I couldn’t live in the country or the city. The best that I think I can to do to satisfy both these sides of myself is a coastal city, where I can see the foreverness of the ocean, and feel the buzz of the city.

God only knows where I’ll end up. I just go where the wind takes me.

Juke Box Love Song

I could take the Harlem night

and wrap around you,

Take the neon lights and make a crown,

Take the Lenox Avenue busses,

Taxis, subways,

And for your love song tone their rumble down.

Take Harlem’s heartbeat,

Make a drumbeat,

Put it on a record, let it whirl,

And while we listen to it play, Dance with you till day–

Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.

Advice

Folks, I’m telling you,
birthing is hard
and dying is mean-
so get yourself
a little loving
in between.
-Langston Hughes

Maple Valley Branch Library, 1967

For a fifteen-year-old there was plenty
to do: Browse the magazines,
slip into the Adult Section to see
what vast tristesse was born of rush-hour traffic,
décolletés, and the plague of too much money.
There was so much to discover—how to
lay out a road, the language of flowers,
and the place of women in the tribe of Moost.
There were equations elegant as a French twist,
fractal geometry’s unwinding maple leaf;

I could follow, step-by-step, the slow disclosure
of a pineapple Jell-O mold—or take
the path of Harold’s purple crayon through
the bedroom window and onto a lavender
spill of stars. Oh, I could walk any aisle
and smell wisdom, put a hand out to touch
the rough curve of bound leather,
the harsh parchment of dreams.

As for the improbable librarian
with her salt and paprika upsweep,
her British accent and sweater clip
(mom of a kid I knew from school)—
I’d go up to her desk and ask for help
on bareback rodeo or binary codes,
phonics, Gestalt theory,
lead poisoning in the Late Roman Empire,
the play of light in Dutch Renaissance painting;
I would claim to be researching
pre-Columbian pottery or Chinese foot-binding,
but all I wanted to know was:
Tell me what you’ve read that keeps
that half smile afloat
above the collar of your impeccable blouse.

So I read Gone with the Wind because
it was big, and haiku because they were small.
I studied history for its rhapsody of dates,
lingered over Cubist art for the way
it showed all sides of a guitar at once.
All the time in the world was there, and sometimes
all the world on a single page.
As much as I could hold
on my plastic card’s imprint I took,

greedily: six books, six volumes of bliss,
the stuff we humans are made of:
words and sighs and silence,
ink and whips, Brahma and cosine,
corsets and poetry and blood sugar levels—
I carried it home, past five blocks of aluminum siding
and the old garage where, on its boarded-up doors,
someone had scrawled:

I CAN EAT AN ELEPHANT
IF I TAKE SMALL BITES.

Yes, I said, to no one in particular: That’s
what I’m gonna do!

~Rita Dove, from On the Bus with Rosa Parks.

Hope [1]

Sometimes when I’m lonely,
Don’t know why,
Keep thinkin’ I won’t be lonely
By and by.
-Langston Hughes

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

– Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

-Elizabeth Bishop

From All the King’s Men

For West is where we all plan to go some day.

It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach.

It is where you go when you get the letter saying: “Flee, all is discovered.”

It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and see the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire.

It is where you go when you hear that thar’s gold in them-thar hills.

It is where you go to grow up with the country.

It is where you go to spend your old age.

Or it is just where you go.

-Robert Penn Warren