Well if there isn't anything like a letter from you to make my smile brighter, ego bigger, or repair faith and love to my crushed battered spirit. Life is as unpredictable as my mood is locked in the midst of the city- Luckily today, in tandem with her siblings of the past month, was a day filled with unsuspecting smiles from strangers, which as everyone knows is a legitimately contagious behavior. It was one of those extra humid, mildly thick days yet I only felt a motherly warmth permeating the thick cloud filled sky. I soared effortlessly through lower Manhattan, paced by an impeccable play list, conditioned by the perfect cold of a coffee iced- living, lusting, loving- seeing the magic- oh you know, the magic that is love- that makes anything and everything beautiful and worthy of praise; The crowds surrounding the basketball courts on west 4Th street, people with stressful eyes and tense calves extending their stumpy legs a little higher as to make the strain of focus a bit easier; the scantily clad trannies owning the west village, judging all who walk by only because the passersby are mirrors of what their confusion manifests; the one legged homeless man who lives in a perpetual state of drunkenness- constantly cackling, giggling at something, perhaps nothing that I am determined to surface, all while sitting in his one constant his environment.. a wheelchair outside the projects next door to the fancy high priced restaurant I serve over sized overpriced food to indulgent greedy upper west-sider's who are trying to show face and pretending to give a damn; And Rosindo, the 58 year old Mexican dishwasher who is always tucked in a dark corner next to a hot machine in the bowels of the infinitesimal kitchen, who somehow always looks eager to recieve a dirty plate and finds the sweetest ways to be inappropriate while conversing with me in Spanish, never straightforwardly inappropriate, always cut with the same sad kindness that lives in the corners of his bloodshot overworked eyes.
And the thing that caught me today was that we all had moist skin. Beads of salty liquid melting down brow lines, dancing along the corners of sharp jaws and sitting in the crevasses above pursed lips. The human body- were all the same machine just functioning to house a mind, house a soul, house love, house emotion and and and...
And it was astoundingly quiet this particular evening-- we who work in restaurants like to call it slow-- when the time seems to hide in un-discoverable places just to escape the clocks demanding hands. Its technically terror when you have nothing to do, moreover cannot do what you would choose to do , and are held captive at the possibility of a couple or group ambling in to eat like locusts, fast, vapid, furious, voracious, without hope or abandon. But in that moment, in those moments rather in every moment of happiness or defeat or boredom, there is beauty that still exists and exists and is just waiting to be seen. I noticed the warm ocher glow of the illuminated orange walls bouncing around the room, reflecting in the monstrous mirrors that line the establishments interior and the timbers in the wood burning brick oven offering tickles to one another in which to maintain or ignite the jovial welcoming fire- what a hearth. And the wine glasses, polished and erect, stoically in formation framing the bar, draping the window in which I can see my friend Rauls round kind face.
My point being that life and love and a minute and a Mexican and everything and nothingness is all the same. It's the same here as it is anywhere else, you are the same you, you just see the good in things, you see the love in things and perhaps the woman that you love is what you think of when you see the beauty in almost getting your hand bitten off or a rainbow or when you cry or have a big pimple and when you love any little nuance of life perhaps she is the sounding board, or the measure for the happiness you can receive from any experience or thing. As you said, pain and pleasure, they live in the same house. It's like in the throws of passion, there is always a bite here or there and why would that pain feel so good if it wasn't so closely related to pleasure?
Its a scary concept, one I battle with- the constant of opposites existing as equals. Did you know that complimentary colors are two colors-opposite- the true hue of both when put next to each other causes something in your eye to reject the line where they meet, you literally cannot see the line. The chaos of that is incredible- but without chaos there could be no order. My first, and probably favorite tattoo that I got is hand written and it says ERIS who is the Greek goddess of strife- and wouldn't you know her counterpart is Harmonia? Its true, like complimentary colors they could not hold hands and walk peacefully together- strife and harmony could never see eye to eye but like polar opposites, like reverse magnetism- If i have a little strife with me forever, i know there must be some Harmonia lurking around to keep it all in check.
You know, I think I lost it for a while there, I lost myself. My trip to Spain initially was disguised as something for myself but I had no backing for it- it was literally a way to run away from the things i disliked about myself- I wanted to run away from me from the things i thought i couldn't change due to the people around me and whatever mediating circumstances I could blame my misgivings on. Turns out that move was a bad one for me, it took me to a place deeper and darker than I have been in a long time. Ultimately, subconsciously, it brought me to run further, to run to the feet of a man I loved looking for him to pick up the pieces. I think I thought love, his love, would make me a better person, like that mutual love would miraculously heal me and make me be and act like the person i wanted to be or thought I could. I had unreasonable expectations of him- i had an idea of what i wanted us to be, i wanted him to be something he was not, something i had made him in my mind, something i had made our love out to be in my head.. and as we have talked about that hurt was ultimately good, it was that level of emotion i needed to reach. In my heart I thought it was love, but it turns out I needed a bit more love for myself before i could expect to give or receive it fairly.
i was fucked up for a good while when i got home earlier this summer. Afraid and sad and lonely. That girl could never have had a day like I did today. I spent a lot of time this summer exonerating bad feelings- letting go of negative energy within myself as well as things and people i surrounded myself with- and alot of it was even more painful and difficult than I realized. I am just finally feeling good. No great. no the best i have in years. When I saw you this summer, i was at one of my worsts. Physically and Mentally- and i cant believe there was some part of my positivity and stellar outlook still lurking in the creases of my darkened heart that pushed out and met yours- so when you say a thanks, it is appreciated but not necessary- you have no idea sir how you helped me by listening to my woes and aligning your hope, faith and happiness with mine. This give and take is exactly what i needed-all I could ever ask for. A like mind, a hopeful heart, a soul searcher, a chance taker, a listener, a story teller: mostly its comforting to know there is someone out there in this world who cares and gets the things I appreciate- lightening storms, Ms Faye, cold nights, warm beers....So much like me in so many ways- a through and through romantic, looking at life with rose colored glasses, analyzing, experimentizing, hypothesizing what an indefinable soulful connection. We found each others compassion and we both needed it. And I too agree you will be a big part of my life for a long time to come.
And that being said, my friend with a like mind and like soul- As someone who did move across the world for love, I would just like to be throwing caution to you- don't go home for someone else. Don't go home because that foreign land feels unsettling and strange- that doesn't change from place to place. A home is only a wall that you decorate with the same things you had in your last abode. Love only exists as Love bouncing back and forth from one soul to the next, and sometimes it looks like love, or like a home because of memory. Its like a house you grew up in. When you look at it, it may look like a home for a minute, your home- but you must realize its not still what it was when you lived there. However it is impossible to look at it like you didn't feel a little piece of yourself inside. I'm not trying to dissuade you, I think you should follow your heart totally and absolutely. Go home for yourself because it is where YOU want to be YOU, where you want to be how it is now, not how it was when it was good. And coming home by yourself from an amazing adventure is the hardest part of the whole experience because you are truly the only one who can feel what it was- its changed you there- and i promise it is unsettling and lonely to feel changed and positive alone especially when you are uncertain about feelings that may be recipricol. Go home or go adventure when you feel calm and drunk with happy. Lucid with Love. Go when you can see anything as if it were the most spectacular thing you were ever seeing-like I see in you.
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