Archive | City Matters
Love and Light, Love and Night
I can’t decide if I’m up early or late but it is 4:15 am and the moon is singing too loud a siren song for me to sleep. This is the view from my kitchen window–poetry and manmade nature, the ultimate New York story if you add in childhood rage. I’m reading Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology Of Water, which may have something to do with all this awakery. I don’t even like the memoir but I love it. It summons my latent misogyny–everyone harbors latent misogyny; resentment of the womb’s great power comes hand in hand with the trauma of being ejected from it–and it rouses my literary and erotic ambitions. I can’t resist a book that feels like it’s been (meta)blogged by the thirstiest of pussies, even as I roll my eyes and clear my throat and rearrange my crotch. So here I sit, parked by my window, reading and watching and sniffing the still-sweet air, thinking of sex, thinking of jealousy, thinking of how to mount this whole freaking city. I light a candle honoring the Santería spirit Changó–he’s very much on my brain, no coincidence there–and pray that this thunder and lightening god will help me channel my own big weather when the sun rises again.
That Stranger Called My Life
I just saw an old lover on the street. He didn’t see me or at least he pretended he didn’t, but I got a good eyeful. We were together off and on for many years and I hadn’t seen him in two. Recently he had a big birthday, so he’s been on my mind though our connection is too dangerous to reignite with a polite phone call or card. We live in the same neighborhood so it’s a wonder we don’t run into each other more often. I often think the Universe is protecting us by ensuring we don’t. We caused each other a lot of pain–more than the great pleasure we gave each other, even.
He was talking to someone–a friend, it looked like, though not a close one. Maybe a colleague. I watched him clap his big hand on that man’s shoulder, then make his way down the street in the opposite direction from me. My old lover seemed smaller and bigger, blurrier and more filled in. It was a shock to see him alive at all–still human, not just an animation of my many memories. Continue Reading →