Photo: Autumn Mott via Unsplash
And then, it’s fall. It’s been nearly 10 years since last living on the east coast. It’s a preemptive season of reboot mingled with the fine breeze of uncertainty.
The city is fueled by this transitional change in the air. Back from holiday, the streets fill with students, Manhattanites, business folk, more travelers. People from all walks of life.
Everything and everyone is here. There’s a door for each opportunist and a home for every weirdo. There are no limits, each day giving way to the possibility of falling upwards or subsequently climbing down.
Living spaces are relatively small around here (that’s a kindness to you, NYC). It’s also no secret that apartments are ridiculously overpriced in comparison to median parts of the country. Most city-dwellers, however discerning, begrudgingly suck it up because it’s New. York. Freaking City.
The home of some of the most powerful industries in the world. A centerpiece for global culture. On the world’s stage, every kind of theatre. Culinary offerings for even the most unromanticized of foodies. Virtually anything your heart desires can be delivered to your doorstep at any given hour, regardless of the size, color, or shape of said heart.
An otherwise mean morning can break into fantastical evening delight. The city, on its own volition, will hug you one day and kick you out fiercely the next. It’s the schizophrenic relative you always secretly wondered about – how did he get by in such an elegant madness?
The energy here, however fragmented, is a beauty to behold. In Manhattan and its boroughs everyone becomes a tiny shade woven into a large, colorful, ever-moving mosaic of a canvas.
There’s no room for afterthoughts or contributions for later when it becomes more convenient.
You’re out there, with everyone, whether you like it or not – your own authentic traveling freak show in the form of a tiny amoeba. There’s no curtain of binary digits to hide behind.
On, off. On, off. That’s how I was to everyone who knew me in LA.
On the surface, everything is fabulous.
On the digital layer, we’re just keeping up with the joneses.
Nothing is calculated.
No one seems to mind much.
I catch a glimpse of my reflection as the train barrels across the city. whip-whip-whip-whip-whip. Never in my life did I not care that I had forgotten to put on mascara that morning.
I was a nobody in a sea of people just like me.
Onwards we go, on the volition train verite.
We move forward, a generation apparently never satisfied with “how things are.”
I can say with full confidence however that as a member of said generation, at some unmarked milestone in our lives a decision is going to be made.
“This is where I want to be for awhile.”
Or simply, “I’m ok with this.”
One way of arriving at this place is by comparing ourselves to the formulaic expectations of the average. Another is by observing what those around us do.
Another is to simply throw our arms up in abandonment, overwhelmed by the cold futility of it all as our dreams are surrendered to the deep recesses of the mind, or perhaps reluctantly tucked away in a neat little package for an aimless rainy day.
These decisions begin to take shape, seeping slowly into the desires we had as children – brilliant dreams, clouded over by the gentle crush of reality’s present.
Yet still, we feel a need to fulfill and then betray the mission. I read something once about our need to pierce the obsolete yet notwithstanding systems that condition present life.
Whatever happened to that?
Don’t make waves. It’s been a long day for everybody.
The present becomes a dream in itself; to the future a shrug and a weariness.
And all we ever wanted was to be better.
My grandfather died one year ago to the day I type this. I woke up one morning and he was no longer in this world. I had my own mini-milestone in the realization that:
a) He’s not coming back,
and
b) I’m all grown up.
So, I left LA.
I needed to try something else, because whatever I was doing at the present simply wasn’t working. I needed to change my location, my career, and my state of mind. I wanted to erase everything and completely reboot. There were no longer any seasons. The train hadn’t been moving. My mental boxes of creativity had already been packed.
Anhedoniac tendencies had set in, and a semi-regular state of happiness became increasingly difficult to achieve. Dreams for the future became ideas of the past. Middle class dreams are merely aspirational, yet recognition of this was hardly a sign of personal satisfaction.
The hard work I saw in my grandfather brought me to the realization that something is cut out for all of us in this elegant madness. We do have a path, but can’t see the end of the journey because the next step we take as individuals is in the fog.
So, I rebooted. And realized that the beginning wasn’t thirty three (or, twenty nine) years ago.
The beginning feels like now.
There’s a blank space that exists after an object falls and right before it breaks. It’s the space between frames often cut from the final picture.
The moving piece you don’t see behind the curtain – it’s a combination of delay and timing and risk and surprise. Your fingers lose their grip. It’s the feeling of falling and the unknown and being scared shitless yet wildly alive each and every day.
This is it.The glass careens slowly to the floor. You know that in your heart of hearts, you secretly want it to break. It’s going to someday, anyway.
Nothing lasts forever.
Especially fall.