MANHATTAN

“There are no borders up here, only metaphysical ones remain.” (from my soon-to-be-released book, The Beginning of an Inexplicable Journey. It has been in captivity for much too long.)

Now come the life changes, the cracking giant shifts, the flows are altering, and water is moving on and down hill, faster and faster. Here is something I found as I was going through my cyber-filing cabinet. If this has already been aired, forgive me, because it reads new to me, for some reason. It was very strange coming across it, because I cannot remember when or why I wrote it. Usually I can remember everything, but it seems Manhattan was roughing me up at this time, and I was feeling it.

In other news, I am exceptionally tired, and looking forward to doing very very little when I arrive on the ancient soil of my ancestors in the United Kingdom. From the United States I will travel to another Unity. The unity of one. But! How great to return once again to writing letters to my lover. The man with my name carved in the back of his guitar. A great writer friend said (wrote) to me today “I honestly hope everything is good with Jon. I only know about your passion for him, which I can easily warm my hands on.” True, this fire must be shining some light and warmth from our small corner of the world. I’m glad it can warm some writerly palms. Those are the hands that best need warming, for the pen.

“I was hungry, an over-zealot, looking for a dime in Manhattan. I didn’t know then what I still don’t know now, that everything comes with it’s asking. And what of noise? And what of home? And what of living? I was finding out all of the crisp vivid questions in the sky, working my way out, trying to find a path. And while I tried, that nudging, that pushing through the damp snow, I made my own path. I think that’s what happened. I was far away, hadn’t a clue what I was doing – maybe no one does here? – but they all push on too, maybe hoping that if we all just look busy, everyone will leave us alone to each follow true paths.

Manhattan, Manhattan. I have been with you sporadically for years, and years are turning on. The climes cool and the leaves curl, and soon the green window branches will be covered in flake ice. Soon the apartment will be dark, and inward-hopping, inbound like a bunny pouch, and my skin will need sunlight like I’ve never known. I’m preparing for the long hard winter, all I have known is summer, fall, summer – maybe that is all I will ever know. Perhaps this is all the world will devolve to, is summer, fall, summer. Winters aren’t popular in this demographic of this planet. We are slowly becoming one group, one age, one life – and by popular rule, I’d rule winter out.

But that’s not to say that winters aren’t dealt with, here, even when the snow covers all there are deliveries to be made and acres to trudge. I’ve walked First Avenue in a skinny white snow, dark in the evening on a Valentines night, once. I had my brother’s Nike high-tops on, and black velvet leggings, a black bomber parka with fur on the hood. I was not cold, and it was not unpleasant. But all goes to death in Winter, and though the seasons marinate on elsewhere – in Australia it’s summer down there – Manhattan is an ice-brick for now.”