July 24
Noah. Ugh, who people are calling pukingly enough "Noey" which makes me about sick to my stomach. Noey? I remember Tina was worried that people would call him "No". Noey is worse.
Whenever I go anywhere, I want to stay. How's that for an ambiguous opening sentence? What I mean is that whenever I leave my state, or even go to a different, non New Haven part of Connecticut, I want to move there. I wonder what it would be like to go to THAT video store, live down the street from that Mobil station. Where would I buy my bread? Where's the best take out place? Is there Indian food? When I go back to a place I know better than I'll know anywhere else, it's a strange feeling. New York is entirely new to me now, because I have the space of 6 years to give me some perspective on things. I'm also, obviously, 6 years older. I have the accumulated (albeit nominal, but comparatively speaking mighty) wealth of someone who is 30 and married. I go back to the places I used to go, now, with Nick, with friends, with my friends who have kids (god, KIDS! I didn't know kids 10 years ago!) and I see myself 10 years earlier doing exactly the same thing, in exactly the same way, but I have an ease of living now that didn't exist then. Remember being poor enough to only smoke half a cigarette at a time? Yeah, me too. Remember sharing soda because you and your friends, combined, only had 80 cents (remember when soda cost 75 cents? Yeah..) and you knew that one of you was going to have to jump the turnstyle because you only had one token and you needed to get back to Brooklyn and you were on 81st Street and Amsterdam and maybe, maybe if you were feeling lively, you could walk all the way downtown and even across the Williamsburg bridge but jesus, it's August or it's February or whatever and all you wanted to do was go to a museum and see something beautiful for free. The poverty of youth was fun. It was an adventure. Now, I go knowing that there is almost nothing I can't buy for myself within reason, that I don't need to look for the cheapest thing on the menu because I want a glass of wine (okay, 4) and need to kick in three dollars for a tip. I go knowing that my truck (Dear Dana, 1987-1994: You will drive, quickly and to many locations! Have patience, and rethink the "I will never drive!" proclamation) is sitting in a lot in midtown, waiting to bring me to my next location, a location I may or may not have chosen yet. A location that probably will not include passing around a 40 ounce of Old English or sitting on the still-5-years-from restoration West Side Highway piers, watching my step carefully as not to fall through the rotting wood, lounging quietly with my friends, watching the water, smoking and listening to the muffled sounds of sex around us, but not minding at all because, well, you have to do it somewhere, dangling our feet down over the water, swinging our doc martins, our creepers, our one pair of shoes, the one pair we wear every single day. A location that will most likely not involve staying up all night, just to watch the sunrise, to hear that pre-dawn silence of the city, one that, if you could look into your future and know that it's something you might never, ever see again, that you would be sure and make a point of doing it as often as you could because there are some things you just don't get to do forever, there are some things that don't go past 25 when you leave your home for somewhere else. And the phenomenon of wanting to stay where I visit applied back then. Coming to Connecticut, seeing the cool little town greens (towns?!) and Yale and the long island sound (no ocean?) gave me that excitement, that feeling in the bottom of my heart that this is someplace I'd like to be, at least for a while. The problem is, I feel that way about everywhere. On Saturday, we drove down to Pennsylvania for a family get together. As we were going home later that night, we stopped for gas. I was struck with that same wonder: what if this was where I got my gas? what if this was the street I drove to get to work every day? The purple sunset made everything soft, glowing, liquid practically. The houses were perfect. What if I lived there? I could live there. We got onto the highway and passed through Philadelphia. I wanted to stay, to look around. "Let's stay for the night! Let's stay! Let's sell our house and stay here! I want to see the liberty bell! let's go to the mint" Here is as good as there, or anywhere and just when things start getting familiar, leave for somewhere new. There's always the option of going back, but it'll never be the same. I'd like that.
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You can say the sun is shining if you really want to
I can see the moon and it seems so clear
You can take the road that takes you to the stars now
I can take a road that'll see me through
I can take a road that'll see me through.