Family

My brother and his wife were just here visiting me in the city. (As it turns out I’m probably gonna stay after all – I am still a little in love with this place.) It was so good to be with family. The warmth and comfort of someone who knows you so well – all your annoying quirks, who tolerates your never ending complaint sessions about the same old things, who you can talk to for hours on end about the state of the world (or just the state of your life) and who loves you in spite of it all. Such a relief, because there’s not exactly a ton of unconditional love floating around in my life.

I feel the sweet tang of sadness when they go. I am snapped from the cushion of companionship and returned to my strange and elusive solitary ways. After hugging goodbye outside the subway stop on 14th St they disappeared into a hole in the ground. I was alone again on a warm night in Manhattan. The breeze picked up softly, bleeding the darkness and lights together as I drifted off into the miasma of the city. In love with loneliness and being lost.

Where I Came From

Twilight closes in and I step outside. The dry air is silent, hovering on the verge of darkness. Trees have grown up along the old path, obscuring the view of the meadow below. Once a tiny sapling in my memory, a large oak now huddles in a verdant clump surrounded by young pines. The growth of these trees surprises me but then I am reminded time has been passing. And not a little bit of time. It will be 20 years this summer since I left, all my belongings thrown carelessly into big black garbage bags. I drove away down that long dusty hill in my Toyota Tercel, with pictures of Robert Smith taped to the back window, blasting some staticy ‘modern rock’ radio station. I was headed to the big city for college and a better life – to forget my small town shoddiness. To leave the chaotic, eccentric poverty of my parents’ weird lifestyle, to make new and interesting friends, to take drugs and stay up all night, to not be fat, to not be a virgin.

Here I am no longer a child, not even young anymore. And still the silence and isolation of this place holds me in its thrall. I can see now that it is beautiful in its remote uncultivated way. My Dad struggles incessantly, fencing gardens, pulling weeds, cutting grass, sawing down trees, repairing old buildings and yet everything rebels and returns to nature – paths overgrown, thistles and weeds thrive, trees rot and fall under the weight of winter snow, the buildings slip into disrepair – the wood going grey and brittle, birds eat the fruit from the trees, gophers pilfer the gardens and rattlesnakes lurk in the grass.

How can this relate to my life in New York City? These worlds seem at odds, split entirely from one another. And yet I am part of them both, even though I have wanted to disappear. I am from here. This solitary wilderness still flowers within me, inescapable as nature.