Several Years Later

When I look back at writings from the last time I seriously wrote, I wonder, as I gather most do at this point in their lives breathing in a certain scent of nostalgia, how it all could have gone so fast. Time moves quicker now, it must, and in the blink of an eye an apartment in the nation's capital with a view of the horizon bled into a dimly lit New York City cave where nothing grows, the sink water occasionally pours brown, and outside an impossible number of people walk and talk and execute their days. Attempting to chronicle this, all these years at once, the chances taken, the money lost and gained, the great migration across the river, the heartbreaks endured along the way, and the little triumphs that come as surely the world's most complex place grows into something more understood, more yours, all this must be the most futile effort. Yet I look back now, slightly more weathered suddenly falling closer to forty than thirty, recommitting to the fact that doing so carries some worth.

My mother asks why the pause, and I do not have an answer. What can it be other than letting things get in the way, a shift in priorities, and a general loss of momentum? Someone told me once, you must enjoy not having free time, likely in response to back to back days and nights slugging away at a chaotic Bleecker Street bar following a full week spent around a midtown office, and that must in part be right. But if it all had to be measured, this was an era that began almost immediately doing what was required to make it work. I am not alone. So many have done this before for so much less across the island at the center of the world, and all are more resilient for it. What is the prize? Joining a tapestry of events and shared experiences on top of steel, concrete, and brick in a place that matters to humanity, even if it is just for a short period of time, when you could otherwise exist in places that will soon be forgotten if they have not been already. This was always the draw, what led me here, and what cradles me now as we embark on a new year certain to invite new questions, thoughts, and choices. So with this in mind, we suddenly fast forward, like a film timeline guided by explanatory subtitles, well into the future even though only a second or two have gone by.

Restarting again here has felt heavy, heavier with each month and year that went by, but perhaps it is just putting something down, one true sentence, and accepting that it does not have to be everything, just a small piece that speaks to the nature of a cold wind blowing across the harbor, down the East River and under the Williamsburg Bridge, up the numbered streets and over McCarren Park before landing at my doorstep in early January as a new year rears its head curiously and asks, what shall it be?