toast, eggs, fresh salad, coffee. the corner seat. other people’s stories in earshot, hot and dynamic with all the life. outside, the city swelters. the heat is a holiday on its own for those who choose to bake in it. i let it settle into me like some sweet perfection, mixing with my own cocktail of pheromones and left over sea tacky in my hair from yesterday’s excursion. i don’t mind drifting through the haze of heat, it’s the veil of my childhood; the pressure in my head and on my skin that squeezed my imagination toward other destinations. i coped with diving deep into books, or driving to where the town met the gulf, sixteen drinking coffee at the marina cafe, dreaming of foreign land. the heat, here and now, in new york, pushes me along as only myself. no pretender in a big coat, no person hiding away. there is a romance to the harshness, i let it paint my days rather than live in resistance to it.
last night i dreamt of drinking honey straight from your hand. oh, how sacred it was. i am laying in the visions of it now, breathless with devotion. i drank the amber honey from you, slowly, savouring every drop as your eyes watched me like an artist watches his muse. this clip may have been an attempt my subconcious meant to send you as a confirmation of my love. i am dizzy now, in the yellow diner, in the pressing heat. i am dizzy with passion, with desire. the face of Bernini’s St. Teresa is in my mind’s eye, for her inability to maintain her poise in the midst of the erotic encounter of spirit is just how i feel. i see her mouth gaping, my own jaw hinge loosening. your eyes again, a flash in my direction, encouraging my surrender.
sudden visions: the international porta of the mediterranean, the land of my ancestors. i see their sun, hot and gold too. i smell their sea, busy carrying merchant ships from North Africa and Asia and Eastern Europe over and through. my own hair brushes the middle of my back, my own eyes, i feel their color. something of this vision rattles my DNA. this is not a before, it is a memory i can awaken at anytime. lighting incense under red light, adorning myself in silk, eating ripe tomatoes and weighing my ears down in gold, i speak to my ancestors. every step i take now, i walk with the gait of all the happenings that have brought me here. i wash the dirt off the lettuce, i scrawl in my books, roll the old language across my tongue, under my breath. tears well in my eyes as i write this, from a corner room in the city that, long ago, became home to my bloodline. my habits lean more and more toward my madrigal tree, hands familiar with making and caring, limbs secure in jewellery of a lineage, gesture careful and coated with superstition.
on the edge of the river, i look at time in the configuration of buildings. evidence of generations, of technology, of boastful capitalism, of innovation. of the reclamation of freedom in the shape of a mirrored needle. i look at the remnants of what may have been the old pier, the one where beatnik outcasts took their drugs and wrote their poetry. i send a prayer to them, looking down in the grey-green of the Hudson. they are the artists whose songs are etched into my own path to artistry.
then i imagine what it could be like to be in a port town somewhere else, where a bucket of mussels and a jar of wine can be purchased and enjoyed right on there, the rolling in of the summer storm as entertainment. i imagine what it might have been like, buildings slouchy and blackened by coal, men transient seeking salve for their otherwise stress-torn bodies due to months at sea.
returning from these made up memories, the city stays steady and alert to what history is brewing now. i suddenly feel extra small, looking up at rooftops i’ve danced on and windows i’ve looked out of. so much of my life has come from the echoes of this place, decades and decades of people who were driven to some sort of purpose, some motive, or maybe because of some incident. my love puts his arm around my shoulders and i remember what inspiration can be gleaned from this infamous city, the one that i have decided to call home.
there is a future brewing. it hovers over the month of September and it says that everything will change. i don’t know if i can disclose to you my deepest intuitions about what that change may be, i can only say that there will be release. perhaps some grief, but more so, the bittersweet change one would feel at a wedding or a moving away party. one that really beckons us to look at how good life is now, how we should be so delighted with a life like this, even if it is dotted with the simple and the mundane.
yes
Wow.