This sticker is dangerous and inconvenient but I do love Fig Newtons

Monday, January 7, 2008

New York Journals, part II

These are my New York journals, my Kerouac-lite prose-poems, in my default shitty style that I revert to when I'm being lazy or just want to write fast, but I'm posting them anyway (as I stated below) 'cause it was my first-ever trip to NYC and I was in love with an image before but now I'm in love with the City and these are my puppy dog love letters and also I'm a narcissistic exhibitionist twit, so nothing goes unposted. I'm hoping my earnestness is enough.

NYC, NY 12/28/07
I never knew there were rocks like these in Central Park, big monsters of granite (?) pushing their way through the grass, attacking the landscape, prehistoric skeletons of the city, like the elemental cousins of the skyscrapers --
Everything in New York is famous,
Everything you do is iconic,
Everything you see on a clear warm December sunny day is a little piece of the miracle of human ingenuity,
and the Dakota is where rich people live and a famous man died and life goes on, NYC is bigger than a moment or a death, it is its own life --
So many people, I can't feel fear, the woman passing by the knock-off stand is my favorite New Yorker yet, she speaks to me so familiar:
"It's kinda cheesy right? But whaddaya want for 20 bucks!"
and she laughs like we didn't just meet 20 seconds ago (and then she's off to do whatever New York thing she's got to do) --
I think I love these people, familiar and open, yet strangers, tough but honest, you couldn't invent them though we try, so different, variety upon variety...
Avenue Q and puppet sex and Trekkie Monster! (and "We're all a little racist")
And the Empire State Building:
Where's the Ape and my Ginger-Rogers-feather-dress and Warren William? Up at the 102 floor we look out and see the world, what else is there than this? A Limo ride through the Lincoln Tunnel.

NYC, NY 12/29/07
I have seen a real New York street, a dingy thing covered with fire escapes, creeping their way up to clearer air -- but who wants that!
I want the crowded streets, the vendors, the smell and salt and t-shirts that hint of gasoline, a fish stand, cheap watches and a thousand hat-and-purse shops, all the same, it's Chinatown swallowing Little Italy --
A small church lit-up with Christmas lights and a Nativity scene, I feel like I just entered The Godfather, part II, and we eat at Angelo's, est. 1902 (or was it 1905? As if it matters, a hundred year old restaurant in Little Italy, NY, NY and I quibble with a few years), and suddenly it's Godfather the first one, waiting for Michael Corleone to come out of the bathroom with a gun, I eat Veal Parmesan and I'm completely content.

On the plane ride back, Simon and Garfunkle trill in my ear, whispering the siren call and nostalgia of the city, and I cry because I don't want to leave, I miss it so much and I haven't even left New Jersey, how can I get back, how can I make that my life?

Suburbtown, MI 10:15 p.m.
Watching the Giants try to spoil New England's perfection, I'm utterly depressed seeing the blue and red and the "NY" and the screaming fans and to know that only a few hours ago I was there, and then they show a shot of the Statue of Liberty and I'm a wreck -- It's all I can do to keep a stream of tears from bursting, I'm already bored with my life and being home, I love my family, I really do, but this place is a drain, it's an exile, (almost), now that I've seen the center of everything, now that I've been to New York. A little melodramatic? I don't care. You didn't just leave the cold, fast City to come home to extended family lumped all over the house, the smell of ham and gingerbread mixed with bad perfume, and the dim yellow lights of lamps reflecting off of chintzy Christmas gold and every TV on. I'm allowed some melodrama.

No comments: