Cracked Two

Today is not a bad day. Breath feels a little easier. The veil a little filmier, lighter. Just those few sentences strung together yesterday gave a bit of shape and verve to what are otherwise amorphous feelings just kind of hanging around, ready to pounce at odd hours. And knowing that when you call something "Day 1," "Day 2" is implied ... well, that's a good nudge, a moment to look forward to because it's a chance to blow off some more dust, another good exhale.

This has been with me all day. My first date with Bart included a friend of mine, two Lina Wertmuller movies, ice cream on 8th Street, spaghetti and broccoli at his apartment on Tompkins Square, and my friend says a few beers at MacSorley's, although I thought that was another night. The "date" was impromptu, spinning out from lunch at Sandolino's on Barrow Street following a poetry class at NYU.

Aside from the specific memory of being with Bart, there is NYC in the 1970's. I guess it was a scary place then, but I had no idea. I loved it -- gorgeous, chaotic, spooky, aggressive, multitextured everything, charcoal buildings, velvet-clad people, urine and pachouli, creaking subways filled with overheated skin, music, days and weeks and months, mundane and magnificent, religious. Some people have country roads and wide-angled sunsets, soft grass underfoot, kids selling lemonade. I think of the city in this way too, romantic, and in some ways gone.

Bart was from Skaneateles. Never heard of it. I was from Brooklyn, at least then, and everyone had heard of it. He played the violin, painted, waited tables. The perfect New York 20 year old way back then, not entitled, just so happy to be a part of whatever it was that was going on. Even with the roaches in the halls and the thin layer of soot on his walls (he lived in a basement apartment) -- maybe also because -- he felt good, he felt he belonged to his time and to his adopted city.

Makes sense that the beginning comes to mind when you sit down to write. I don't often look back. But it's a good thing to acknowledge time spent, experienced gathered, love lived. Tempting to turn away from what is painful, things lost, but the truth is that gathering it up in my arms softens the sense of loss a little. Different for tears to run down your cheek than for your heart to harden and become inaccessible. Cheers, Bart, I am still here looking around trying to collect some misplaced pieces, always dawdling a bit. Right now, I see your beautiful smile as I climb the stairs of the Lexington Avenue subway to meet you in front of the cube.