Falling in Love Again (Book Edit)

'American' Part 1: Scrambling | Chapter 5

You are about to read an excerpt from ‘American’, a collection of memories and personal essays compiled to narrate the story of my life in spite of and because of my culture and circumstances

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October 3, 2021

Two weeks ago, I was walking through the streets of Portland, Maine, hand in hand with my fool du jour (or, rather, du temps). I spent three days breathing air that flows from northern oceans and walking through streets where every driver stops for pedestrians, and every passerby has a smile and something nice to say. The locals paint their buildings and their electric boxes and anything else that can be a canvas, and they cover the land in flowers. Portland, with its vertigo bookshops and wind-swept streets, was Heaven, and I intended to be there for an eternity or two. At the airport, I stared through the window at the most vivid of blues and the clouds seemed to plead with me to stay there - home.

—

Landing back in New York City, I felt like a traitor to myself for returning to a city that had stopped loving me the way I deserved months ago and which I'd stopped trying to find the good in. New York and I had been in a state of disrepair as I relegated myself to a life of obligation, to work, to an end, to a person.

I couldn't sit in my apartment that night. I stood in the doorway of my room for an hour, trying to make a decision, to take one step in any direction. Getting out was the only answer, but my mind maintained that the methods of doing so were a paradox for which there could be no resolution. The result was a haphazard self-assembly and a trip with no destination except my notebook.

Hastily, I ran to the subway. Only once the doors closed did I realize that I had no pen. I frantically profiled passengers in hopes that anyone might meet the impossible qualifications of both having a pen to spare and having their ears free of noise-cancelling devices. No such luck.

A woman entered from the next car over, accompanied by a man who served as her rhythmic accompaniment. The duo did a rendition of "Killing me Softly" that I can only describe as the product of repeatedly kicking a horse in the gut, though I concede that she was in tune. This would never be happening in Portland. I tried to keep my nose in my book, but could only manage to read the same two sentences of "Cannery Row" six times, without any comprehension. I transferred to the express train. The duo of horses transferred too, making me again their unconsenting listener, while this woman was killing me mercilessly with her song.

At Chambers Street, I made an urgent escape, asked the lady in the MTA booth for a pen, and ran to the Brooklyn Bridge, which is the only place among all five boroughs that still held any meaning in my frenzied mind. Half-way to Brooklyn, I couldn't contain my thoughts any longer; I grabbed a bench and wrote profusely.

The rain came gently at first, as if each drop had to be precisely measured before falling. It will pass. It did not. My words and my early edition Steinbeck were on their way to drenched. Standing to head for shelter, I knocked my pen to the ground, and listened as it fell between the planks of the bridge and on to the platform far below.

I had been reduced to not much more than a crazy lady asking tourists for a pen on the Brooklyn Bridge at 10 PM in the pouring rain.
The night deteriorated into dismay and darkness. By the time I fell asleep, it would be safe to say that nothing was as I believed it to be; the precious compendium of my life had been shattered into a chaos antithetical to faith.

—

That weekend was spent in a fog that would have covered all of New York if it had escaped from my head. Each day, I slipped on a fancy dress to coerce myself into leaving the apartment.

Tuesday, I dressed like a CEO with a seedy past and made my way to Wall Street to sit in a cafe and gaze at the enormous balls of Charging Bull, in hopes that I may acquire some, proverbially, for myself.

Wednesday, I went to a jazz show and found myself conversing with a renowned flutist about the purpose of life and the directions we find ourselves driving in.

Thursday, I sat by my lonesome at a comedy club and laughed my tuchus off.

Friday, I sat with an old friend at a landmark West Village cafe, and confessed all.

Saturday, I returned to the comedy club and laughed even harder.

Sunday, I sat at Washington Square Park and spent two hours conversing with a 91-year-old painter of global acclaim.

Monday, I stayed home, alone, and I didn't feel lonely.

Where I once thought I had no one, it now felt like the entire city had come together to keep me in good company. From Sugar Hill to Battery Park, the path became studded with recent strangers turned friends.

—

It's November now. Two months ago, I was wondering if I would ever again see a November, or if I would sleep through this one and the next, and all thereafter. I am happy to be awake - I hardly want to blink, afraid of missing one shred of this world that has been offered up to me on a silver platter.

I kept going to the comedy show, and I smiled so much that my face froze in that expression and my soul was saturated with it.

The community surrounding me revealed itself to be unlike any other in New York City - one where I am accepted and was befriended upon first introduction, where other rookies support me and I them, and the weathered pros offer guidance and conversation freely.

Tonight, I am running my own open mic in the humble cafe where I currently offer my time (at least they liked my resume). In any other world, a beginner, not even a month into the craft, is a no one. But I've made more friends in these past few weeks than I have in five years in the city, and we're all just... making it happen, for ourselves and for each other.

I've never had less of an idea of what my life is going to be. But I know what it is right now and, for once, I wouldn't change a thing.

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