new york city

feels like traveling along a circuit board of the city

the ferry: from wall street pier to the rockaways

here, aboard a ferry, traveling by water — is when you realize slow truths: about why you're here, where you come from, and where this life might be taking you. I run around the city for two months, and then escape to its peripheries by water. the experience of sitting in the window seat of an empty boat (or plane, or train, or bus) creates a liminal space for the mind to unfold, and breathe. this is why I never watch movies while traveling. I let the movies of my own mind take a break, and just inhale the experience of movement.

here: two photos from my last weeks in new york city — the financial district after sunset, in between sunshine and rain (which is to say, in a moment of rainbow) and while crossing 7th (?) ave in midtown, just after exiting penn station. I’m no longer there now, but I still carry the taste of new york under my tongue, like lozenges made out of concrete. and steel. if each city makes you into someone different, then what did new york city make me? a city of sharp edges - such that even raindrops could feel like needlepricks on the skin. here, more than anywhere else, is where you learn to put your birdheart inside a shelf, and wear your lionskin on the streets.

a few weeks ago, on an especially moody day, I left my phone at home and went on a long walk through a rainy central park. I took the C train to 81st street, meandered through the park, walked up and exited into Harlem, found Levain Bakery and picked up cookies, and then, walked thirty blocks to 148th street, where I was staying with a friend.

there is something beautiful and empowering about going on a long walk without a device in your pocket — nothing to take photos with, look up directions with, receive text messages with. you feel like you're truly alone with yourself; unreachable — except by the other human beings next to you. it made life — lived through the senses — feel more real.

the day I got the first dose of the vaccine, I danced tango for the first time in over a year at a private house milonga — with a bandaid on my increasingly-sore arm - which felt like a one day tattoo to mark an entire era, a singular moment in history.

the next morning, I woke up with full body aches and a total fatigue. I thought it was from dancing. but by noon, I was horizontal — feverish and nauseous, with a splitting headache in the shape of a reverse flower crown. I drifted through the days in a deep head fog, uncertain if it was caused by the tension of new york city air, reverse culture shock after being abroad for over a year, the aggressive way in which I left berlin, too much sudden socialization in proper english, or having just been injected with the fastest developed vaccine in history for a mysterious and unknowable disease.