recess

A muggy afternoon, an opaque sky, the feel of early summer encroaching on spring.

I'm secluded - even docile - as a lachrymose alt-rock song from many years ago plays from my desktop speakers.

Outside now, sporadic traffic on secretive streets. The Super of the building across the street sprays away the grime and garbage in the alley. From the other building adjacent to the alley, a guy in workwear hauls out chock-a-block bags of trash. Construction across the way and on the avenue around the corner. A car service driver in a tie waxes his black sedan in front of the house. A couple of older ladies stroll down the sidewalk, happy, dressed as if for religious service. A young dude in shorts with his iPod hangs a right into the alley. Only one customer was at the laundromat when I picked up my clothes earlier. Idle neighborhood chit-chat with the venerable woman who runs the place. It makes me feel as if I still have a place here after all this time - like I somehow belong.

Here I am at the keyboard, in front of the box fan in the window, with a Friday off from work. Memorial Day weekend is upon us, and I observe this fraction of city life. People begin to clear out for the holiday and the city seems to widen. I enjoy staying around, when the crowds thin and the noise pollution loses a few particles. When the subways are less crowded. When it is easier to get to the bartender and order a drink. Or to secure a pool table. It's the amelioration of the odds in the urban waiting game.

R. is apparently out of the hospital today after his two week ordeal of rib-removal surgery and blood clot excision. The times I've visited or spoken with him on the phone, he's generally sounded "chipper" and appeared healthy. I'm simply relieved that he's pulled through without any serious complications. So tomorrow evening we plan a "welcome back" poker game of sorts.

I relish these long weekends. I am mainly with myself, which is often how I prefer it. Humanity can make me cringe and retreat - and I need these self-imposed gulags. Here with my thoughts and words I find a certain restless contentment. Yes, I realize that's an oxymoron, but that's the only way I can explain it. And during the passage of the weekend, I will venture out to see friends, to imbibe a few libations, share some laughs, and lose a few dollars at five card draw.

And later, in the small hours, I'll watch the streetlight swim and skim across white bedroom walls. And here in the half-dark I'll find a spark.

malachite

Green. It is such a lush green here in upstate New York that it might actually be described as malachite. Here I am surrounded by wide open sky and billowing, burgeoning green, far from the congestion and pollution of the city. The season is past the vernal equinox and we reside in the heart of spring. Here nature thrives amid the forests, fields, and flowers and the scent of pollen. The hum of insects. The chirping of birds. A deer in the distance at the edge of the woods. The thunderstorms came on Saturday. They were brief but furious - torrential - and soothing in their turbulent grandeur.
I do feel as though I still belong here ensonced within this gentle green, but there is always that part of me that becomes restless. The components inside my brain long again for the concrete beneath my feet and the interminable hum of white noise in my head. The clatter of the subway. The sound of elevator doors closing. The din of bottles clanking at a bar. The sirens and car horns. The countless voices and accents merging into one.

Here in my old desk I found the key for my room at the Pacific Bay Inn from when I lived in San Francisco. It's a memento I decided not to take along when I moved to New York, so I left it here. Room 707. I felt the need to keep it when I moved out of the hotel way back in the summer of '95. And now, in some odd way, it reminds me that my life out there actually happened. No, it was not all an elaborate fantasy I constructed in my mind. The Pacific Bay Inn, the Tenderloin, and those three years of my life 3,000 miles away was once tangible and very real. Now it is a vivid memory, like a waking dream. And yes, I still miss it on occasion, but part of the blame there is fleeting youth as it escapes through the clutching fingers of age.

Back here in the now, but far from the routines of my day-to-day life, my nephews give me hope. They temper my recurrent misanthropy and give me hope for the future. They make me want to be a better person. And they make me want to change the world one lost soul at a time.

And now I prepare to return to the cluster and the noise of my world. I leave behind the woodland and wildlife for a different kind of habitat and creature. I'm just one who dwells among the concrete and grime and the dense accumulation of life. And I need them like nature needs the storm.