Heights

             My friends from High School recently came to visit me and the three of us took a train into the city on a Sunday afternoon. Personally, I was hoping for a mellow escape—while simultaneously ignoring an unfinished paper looming in the distance. My friends were hoping for a little adventure, not very familiar with New York City, and ready to make the most of the one afternoon that they had to explore. What we found was right in between—just what we all needed. We found ourselves at a downtown apartment right off of Wall Street—a friend of my friends whom she’d met in her travels.  Needless to say (as the pictures sort-of say it all) he was exceedingly wealthy. 

And I was exceedingly inspired, to each their own.

It’s that feeling in your stomach, as if you swallowed a phone and keep receiving texts—that faint buzzing, that weakness of limbs, subtle numbness of fingers. The fear of heights doesn’t seem like fear at all. Rather, carnal reaction.  I can’t control it, I can’t stop it, I can barely endure it, but I don’t mind it. I step away from the edge with a jerk of my legs, when my newly fragile body has had enough. I wasn’t fragile before. But that was before I found myself atop the world. Well, sort of. Atop of the city hailed the greatest in the world—bright lights as far at the eye can see, subtle lights even further, and a newfound trust in the existence of the lights beyond the horizon, an assuredness resulting from this feeling.

The feeling of insignificance that spurs from the realization that we are all just tiny specks of dust within one of the thousands of illuminated squares, sitting side by side on the face of a high-rise. And Simultaneously, the feeling of insight, spurring from the realization that each speck of dust has the power to think of them self as a speck of dust, the power to draw the shades on their illuminated square, the power to look down on the rest of the specks, with respect or distain, depending on the day, depending on the speck. And furthermore, when those specks get together, in a cloud of indiscernible dust, the power to build the greatest city in the world.

Downtown NYC / 2011

life, simply.

Life is not a building

It's a railroad

We're not building up,

We're moving forward

For--if we simply build upwards,

We're destined to come crashing down. 
2010

Bronxville, NY

When the gum on the curb sticks to my sneaker and sentiments fall from the overflowing receptacles that haphazardly line the streets within which my life is confined. I find—that it’s time.  

To get out of here for a little while

Take a trip to a place where the times a bit slower 

Where people are scattered and voices ring lower 

To leave the place where walking means walking with purpose 

Dragged towards the loafer-clad leader of this circus 

And find myself in a place

Where meandering is a pass-time, acceptable all the time

Where everyone is on time. And you can’t see the deadlines.

They’re blurred between elderly strolls and supermarket stands

Between houses becoming homes and pickup games of soccer

Between the branches of the trees beneath the tracks that I ride

To get out of here, just for a little while.

Take a break. Take some time. Take a trip and unwind.

I walk the paths beneath the tracks, not worried about my frayed suede latching onto the remnants of a rushed lunch break or a breeze-blown receipt book.

I look up when the rumbling trains pass above, filled with comings and going, leaving behind only rays of permeating sunlight.

I skip stones in the water where fish don’t reside and couldn’t if they tried. For, long-time hasty-living suffuses the shallow stream.

I see fragments of metropolis in indistinct spraypaint conceptions that complement the water’s reflection of my face.

Smiling. For, I found my escape.

From the excitement of knowing there’s so much to know 

Where separately together we can’t help but grow 

And a fascinating person is always at hand.  

Where everyone's a notch in this five-borough plan 

That's why it's just for a little while.

Bronxville, NY / 2011