Turbulence

For the second time in as many months, my fellow passengers applauded shortly after our safe arrival at Newark-Liberty International Airport.  It's not because we were all so delighted to be in Newark; then again, maybe it was, I didn't exactly take a survey.  I do feel reasonably confident attributing the applause to the 'safe' part of the arrival following a choppy approach.  Two months ago, it was Sandy.  Tonight, it was a low visibility approach through Wintry Mix.  Both times, my fingers firmly acquainted themselves with the adjacent armrests.

The situation lends itself to superficial interpretation.  Was the city, with its black clouds and angry winds, making it unmistakably clear that I was no longer welcome here?  Was the Great Spirit suggesting a little extra reflection with its application of minor terror?  Is safety not in flight but in l'atterrissage?  

Enough of that.  That's not what I was thinking.  I did put my book down, an absorbing one at that, but I was not scared.  Shaken, a little.  But I gazed out above that bouncing, obscured land below, sleet pouring in sideways over the engine and illuminated by the modest wing light directly out my window.  I thought about the professionals inside that cockpit.  I thought about how I've been on a lot of these flights, seen a fair bit, but not like these guys.  They've been in Situations.  These guys napalmed 'Nam or spiraled their way into Baghdad, been manning a 'copter in a Perfect Storm while their Coast Guard buddies dangled on a line above an Atlantic raging a few feet below.  This was flight 1205 to Newark and it probably wouldn't even merit mention over beer.

And then I thought, what would?  On those nights when they're not seducing in hotel lobbies or saying early prayers, when they're with a colleague at some far-flung bar and having a good ol' fashion Drink Up away from the missus, what do they talk about?  What were the real harrowing times, the ones where they thought they might disappear off the map forever?  the ones they can't share with you or me, the ones we'd appreciate but could never properly understand because we hadn't Been There and have no proper frame of reference?  And I thought about how I have those.

Not those, at least not the ones where I was in The Shit or hanging by an ice pick on K-2.  I won't pretend I've got anything near it.  I say those in the sense of having Been Somewhere else, been an odd bird and deviated a little bit away from the prescribed path.  Maybe at some point turned a couple heads or received some odd variant of acclaim, or what passes for acclaim according to my own idiosyncratic currency.  What do I talk about?  At that bar.  What am I slurring about to some kindred spirit when the bartender is still reluctantly serving?  What's inside of me that doesn't or can't come out everywhere else in the day-to-day?  Who is that kindred spirit? 

I suppose we keep flying, just keep going to wherever it is we think we're going and pass through as best we can whatever turbulence lies in the way.  We bag the story, compare it to the others, bring it to light after a few cold ones if it's particularly deem-able.  And, shit, I guess the path, not just the Flight 1205 path but the whole path, with all it's little air pockets sprinkled throughout; that whole path just really makes you question if you want to get to Newark.  Do you want to make it where you are going.  I smiled because I did, and because I felt there was a reason I was supposed to make it.  I felt protected.  I just hope it's because of the kindred spirit.

A pause

I didn't want to come home for the holidays.  Not owing to anything against Home per se, mostly the hesitancy against leaving my other home so soon before really leaving for my next home.  There were a handful of Goodbyes already accomplished and departure does involve a certain momentum.  Being gone for one week felt like an off-set lunch break in between grueling takes in the film's most dramatic scene.  Who am I again?  What's my motivation?

It hasn't quite been that way.  Coming back to one of those places that is Not New York affords some simple vanities, like time to think.  Entire hours pass when my only movement is to play some smart phone chess or choose a new tabletop magazine to mindlessly flip through.  That's not all I do, of course.  Ionized by a millenial's attention span and a New Yorker's need for action, I walk the dog more than its accustomed to and use any excuse to drive and surf satellite radio for some new tunes.  I fly past old haunts and drum along the top of the steering wheel and think about this that and the other.  Life seems far less haunted than it did on the other side of that most recent plane ride.

Part of the reason is the new park I read about.  It's long and leans on the Mississippi with one of its two points of access just a few blocks from my next home in the Bywater.  It doesn't appear to be open just yet; then again, I've seen no signs that it's closed.  This was just something I looked up online and served as fodder for a very lucid vision.  Or, to be more specific, a very lucid and five-sensed projection of my very soon-to-be life.  Then I looked up Storytelling, because I might want to get into that.  Farmer's market locations.  Dive bars and coffee shops.  Nearby restaurants.  I probably spent a good half-hour looking at various maps and satellite projections to better appreciate the next labyrinth I'll be biking through.

Which is to say I'm excited.  Which is to say I will be, once again, some moment in less than two weeks when the wheels are pointing south and The Great New York Experiment is fading in the rearview.  Before that time is anyone's guess.  I'm not much of a crier, but I'm damn certain the causeways will spill open for some saline as great friends and good times come to their adieu.  I'll likely drink too much some nights in revelry, others in convenient escape from the emotions still a bit too raw for scabbing.  It might not make for great television and may not be desired, but every now and then you've got to put your soul through the wringer if it doesn't come along frequently in its own right.

And these are all just guesses.  That park might be filled with pederasts and dirty winos and I may find in the storyteller crew just another group that does not reply to my emails.  The bus could break down and I could leave Brooklyn one week before I would have met the enabler to make me the Next Big Thing.  I might end up in penury and heartbreak and the perfect manifestation of all those who never bothered to consider me.  These are all possibilities and not to be lightly considered.

But it's Sunday.  We've got a big holiday coming up and I'm little more than one week away from actualizing another one of my Crazy Whims.  I said "I'm moving to New Orleans" last March and after nine months, three addresses, one savings account, and a whole mess of Life Matters that are worth getting into but not for purposes of concluding These Thoughts, I'm here.  I made my decision, I stand by it, and I'm going to do it.   After all the legwork and emotions, the acquaintances great and small, the goodbyes tender and brief, the myriad experiences of a peculiarly average nine months in my peculiarly average life, I feel calm.  And I feel good. 

  

Earbuds

The cinephile in me wishes I was citing something by Jim Jarmusch.  David Lynch.  Ingmar Bergman.  Alas, for this one, we're going with Penny Marshall and a vehicle driven by a pre-A list Tom Hanks.  I can't help being swayed by what sways me and will not feel ashamed if this particular body of water is more Great Salt Lake than Angry Pacific.  That's the sea and this is my boat.

That final scene of Big is remarkable.  Not only did Marshall manage to show a grown man in an overcoat staring at young children and not evoke anything with the -pedo prefix, she made it sentimental.  In this case, and on these days, I feel myself transported directly into the same heart chord as the protagonist.  He's there, in the same physical space as the world he is witnessing, but he's removed.  He's staring at a world that once was his and soon will be again.  He's in a body that will soon disappear only to emerge some distant day in a different context.  His timeline's been interrupted.  His present is uncertain.  The Big Damn World is just doing what it always does and pays no mind to the landscape of the displaced but all-too-present foreigner in its midst. 

Yesterday I'm in Prospect Park for perhaps the final time as a resident of the borough of Brooklyn.  There are a handful of joggers, a couple dogwalkers, a few tourists snapping photos of denuded trees.  The sun is out, so there are some other amblers.  It's a weekday morning and the air's got that late-autumn chilly snap to it, so it's no surprise that I follow some of those sinewy trails without seeing another soul.  There's the empty green space where I ate mushrooms with friends a few months back.  There's the knoll I rested on to read the New York Times with my ex-girlfriend and a thin blanket so many Sundays ago.  I've covered that ground and my shadows are still out, nudging me into one final sense of appreciation.  I've got my earbuds in, the playlist on shuffle, and somehow DJ Algorithm is hitting it just right.

O, to walk.  The anonymity of New York City is frequently cited disparagingly.  I have it as an asset on my ledger.  I see the counterpoint, the whole idea of this being a heartless place what with all our ignoring of the homeless, the indigent, the star-crossed lovers we pass by unawares.  But do these detractors see the beauty in sauntering with a soundtrack of our own designs, fodder to exercise our semi-conscious on the treadmill of self-reflection?  Do they see the good of escaping into our own mind even as we stroll through overwhelmingly public places?

I'm all too aware that I will relocate to some strange place where people greet one another.  Family, friends, strangers alike.  There's something beautiful in acknowledgment of someone never before seen, if only to offer a Hot Enough For Ya.  I'd file it under Community.  But goddamn it's been beautiful to walk straight through the belly of the beast and have it leave me well enough alone.  For all the talk about this place being heartless, it sure does seem to understand the concept of Me Time.  And that I appreciate.  Always will.  And so I'll soak up a little bit more of it in between these Fare Thee Wells and goodbye dinners and soggy-eyed gatherings that pass for parties.  I'll likely need it.

Address

August 26, 2005 was hot enough for me.  I arrived from LaGuardia and did little more than set my bags down when I got to that loft on 1st avenue at 20th; I had a friend in town and packing could take place later.  It was a good thing too because by then end of that weekend one of the Dartmouth Kids called to tell me they found someone for the room.  Not to worry, though, they had agreed I could stay there beforehand and I could avail myself to one of the two massive leather sofas facing the dark dinousaur-silhouette of the big screen tv.   I could keep my bags in that perch above.  I need not worry about rent.  It was all well and good until a different Dartmouth Kid had made enough suggestions about Brooklyn and Chinatown to get the writing on the wall.  I didn't quite take his advice, at least not yet.  But I got going and by the end of September, that year,

......I had a weekly sublet on 149th between Broadway and Riverside.  Just until I could find my proper spot in the East Village.  I already had a job, so at least I wasn't worried about that.  I could be selective in my choosing, which would have to take place evenings after my commute back from the Bronx.  Arrange to see an apartment each night of the week, knowing that one of them would choose me, had to choose me.  I could see a movie or visit a bar afterward.  And then get back to my place, being real quiet and modest with the light, what with my Dominican subletter and his wife asleep on the bed in the living room, and catch another good night's sleep before class in the morning.  Fortunately, the Dominicans arose at the same hour, so I didn't have to worry about needlessly waking them.  They would fold the bed back up, reassemble their living room, and go about whatever they were about to go about.  As long as I paid in cash by Sunday night, we need not say much more than pleasantries.  And then of course explain that I would now, and this must be about the end of November here, I would now explain that I had found a new place

.....in the East Village, on 5th between B and C, which was really more like D because 5th street does not go through at B, because there is a school there, so one must really walk to C and around the block to get back to my apartment building, which was right behind the school.  I love walking anyway, so no big deal.  To tell the truth, it was a challenge.  Initially.  I'm about as big a champion of every liberal cause to grace a website or a petition in the Real World, but was far removed from being able to deal with that in my own home.  Of course, it never turned out to be like that, and I think it's rare that it actually does.  So I played it cool and put on my headphones those weekend nights when Ben's boyfriend would be staying over.  The walls were thick enough, but I needed the precaution.  My virgin ears and sentiments didn't want to quite hear male penetration coming through the adjacent wall.  And they never did.  It was a really clean home and Ben was a pretty nice chap.  Still, that dog never did take a shining to me, and I took less to him, and $1000 was way too much to pay for a square not much bigger than my own bed.  I'd just as soon go away over the summer and find a place in

.....Prospect Heights, like the one I landed in on St. John's at Washington in October 2006.  My only real anchor to the neighborhood was the museum and The Islands, which is enough to keep a body in this city if you hear me tell it.  I could discover more, maybe track down those legendary nights of funk music and sultry marijuana inhalations from the year before.  That place where the colors collide under harmony and let that borough of beggars, braggers, and post-modern racial reincarnation move our feet for us, let are hips sway like they're bearing the weight of seven waves of immigrants.  I saw it, sure enough.  There was this great place called Prospect Park nearby with grass as suitable for reading a novel as any other under that sharp afternoon sky.  I could walk past stately architecture, past young families and fellow post-scattered contemporaries in the urban dream without any verbs like "hurried."  It was something all right.  And I was more than content to survey it with the one roommate with the leg tattoo always playing video games.  He was a good dude, really meant well, but I wasn't quite ready to cast myself into iron as a homebody.  Not in this place.  If the girl with the huge head and loud voice, loud walk, loud door opening and closing, loud being had been there more than ten minutes each night, it probably wouldn't have taken me so long to move in with my girlfriend

.....in Boerum Hill in August 2007.  Really nice place, home-y as home-y could possibly be for a one-bedroom in a five story with a window looking out on the back of some austere construction site.  This was a pre-war.   Fantastic molding.  Back when builders were craftsmen, when work was done with pride.  And the neighborhood?  Wow, the neighborhood.  I guess I liked it before, but maaaaaan, I loved me some brunch after living in that place.  The Israeli place killed it with the Mediterranean Crispy Dough and it felt so refreshing to be walking arm-in-arm down Smith Street with a hot cup of freshly roasted coffee.  That little lounge tucked between Atlantic & State on Hoyt had a drop-in bluegrass band on Sundays, perfect for a beer and a listen.  That Thai place was great on the wallet, if crowded on the weekends.  Seemed like we only splurged at that sushi spot when times were tight.  It was all worth it.  Of course, I moved in with her, so when I make the decision to stop being we, it is incumbent upon me to pack my bags, two of which would go with me

.....while I shuttled between one friend's couch in Washington Heights (on the weekend) and another in Carroll Gardens (weekday) in October of 2008.  One bag had clothes, seasonally appropriate, while the other had my necessary texts and notebooks for grad school.  So much is done online these days that I really did not have much of a weight burden with the school supplies.  Friends in the rooms around these couches were so good to me, didn't ever hold my feet to the fire.  I still had it underneath.  So much so that I refused their offers of more time to

.....relocate to another weekly sublet in Harlem, at 147 on the opposite side of Broadway less than one month later.  At least this time, the family members had their own bedrooms in the apartment.  They had wifi, so I could search for apartments, in Brooklyn this time, wherever, as long as it wasn't the Boerum Hill/Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill area.  That was verboten as per my ex one month prior.  I wasn't too particular about the particulars.  I really couldn't be.  Midterms were approaching, my student's budget not quite able to reach the top shelf if you know what I'm saying.  Just a roof over my head.  Close enough to the train.  Somewhere safe and cheap, and maybe, interesting?  What do you know if I didn't find just that

.....in Sunset Park in November of that year, right on 58th street, and right near the express N train.  The room was tiny, the twin-sized bed took up more than half.  But it was $400!  Incredible.  Goddamn I loved to get reactions out of that one.  In a brownstone.  I had huge bay windows and two guys sharing a room on the opposite side of me.  The Palestinian was a bit off his mark.  But the Japanese guy, fuck that Japanese guy was cool.  We could talk about the world, our travels, that feeling of being foreign in the dark kitchen as I made my tea.  For once, I had a roommate who was gone just as much as I was, but intersected at home in the same hours.  And he was interesting.  We would talk for ten or fifteen and then go back to our quiet rooms on that quiet street, sleep well even if there was a street light just outside our windows.  The girl from Washington was on the other side of the apartment and inclusive in party invitations.  She was (still is) pretty, but not my type.  We hit it along famously until she left and Maria took her place, that sweet Spanish girl.  She overlapped with my Japanese friend, and, soon, his pregnant girlfriend, who had taken the Palestinian's spot.  I remember we missed the Super Bowl that one year (Saints-Colts) for one last dinner before Maria had to go back home, to be replaced by that sweet Russian man.  Of course, by this point, our Japanese friends had found a spot to raise their son in Jersey City, so I had them find Nobuyuki.  Not that I asked them to find him, so much as a him that would turn out to be such a great friend.  He was

.....on the other side of my new room which is to say my old room, same address, and not so good with the Engris.  I taught him.  And introduced him to pot.  And got him really drunk with my friends where he would say some pretty funny shit.  At first it was funny, and it still is, but it eventually got to be so beautiful.  When a person speaks a second language and they don't speak it well, but know enough to carry across their meaning, there is absolute poetry there.  Forget the grammar and the syntax and the subject-predicate agreement; hearing them speak is to hear human expression in its purist form.  It was insight into the human spirit and all the more wonderful because it came from a friend.  And a great insight into language.  Or at least I reckon.  I likely have this association because he was on the other side of the wall on those nights, at least four per week, when I had one lamp going and my laptop in front of me, placing prose in my Great Life Venture.  I played soft, sad, rhythmic music, because of the three breakups of the previous two years and because it set the mood.  Against these solemn notes I could compose.  Pour out my fragile heart and delicate dreams into something that mattered, something that was me, something that could define me were I so fortunate.  A man at work on his life's work and I would do the bare minimum of part-time jobs to keep that going.  I just needed 500 words per night.  I got over 2000 one night, but give me 750 and I would go to bed content.  And I was ready.  The wine and marijuana catalyzed the somnolence, but all credit belongs to The Process.  Each night was a marathon and the only ribbon I could run through was the promise that I would do the same the following.  The downward motion I made to the bed each night, for fifteen months, could not be described as anything other than "collapse."  It was total.  And it was endless.  But night after night, over and over again, till the words were north of 100,000, then north by another 40g's, I pounded the letters.  And on my own laptop, the keys battered and bruised, now sits a work of fiction that represents the total exertion of one modern man.  That's something, even if that's all it is. 

It seems like my own date of departure got set the minute Nobuyuki told me he was moving out.  It didn't happen for almost another year.  But the seed was planted.  The novel was done and I needed a break.  From this.  From the disappointment of not being published and frowning away the daylight hours at tasks I not-so-justly deemed beneath me.  There would be an exit, but not without -plan or -strategy, and damned if my own wouldn't get Style Points.  I had to travel, so I did, including a stop to see my friend, and when I got back I decided that I'd had enough with a lot and resettled in

.....Bed-Stuy, where a friend had a small bedroom for me while his girlfriend was away in the summer of this past year.  It was difficult moving from such large quarters (my second room in Sunset was like a spacious studio) into another closet.  The double bed was a squid that ate half the face of that room.  All those bookshelves and chests of drawers accumulated, the nightstand and the glass coffee table, couldn't exactly be laid out.  So it was stacked.  At the foot of my bed.  Another few months and it could have been messy enough to cameo on Hoarders.  The understanding, which was that this was a sublet, kept me through.  I would move on after the summer so there was no need to worry about not settling in, or vice versa.  And who settles in during the summer?  That close to Fort Greene Park?  What with the Euro games on by day through June and the daily opportunities for beach, beers, a free concert in the park?  I didn't feel comfortable in that room and damn right I shouldn't have.  There was no sense in not taking advantage of finally living within a bike ride of going out, a drunk ride back to sleep in my own bed.  It was summer, I had goals and they needn't be reached now, so why not work hard and live well while I was at it.  And just so serendipitously, one of those nights, I learned

.....about the upcoming vacancy at this place, in Crown Heights, beginning in September.  I wrote about it then.  It has lived up to its promise.  It's arguably the most comfortable, aesthetically, of all the places I've lived in New York with soft lights overhead and smooth wooden floors throughout.  It's home-y in the living room, in the independent female sort of way, owing to my three independent, female roommates.  We get along just dandy grand and the whole logistics are copacetic since my arrival and departure are bookended to complement everyone else's.  I really have liked it here.  And I reckon

.....that I'll like it in the Bywater, at that place I'm renting on St. Claude starting in January.  I'll have the big room and Laura assures me it will be great.  She told me that it is an old Victorian, formerly a Catholic convent, that was converted sometime last century into a school for boys.  Or maybe the other way around, I'm not sure.  I just remember her saying that there is a theater in the backyard, with a backyard behind that, and then behind that another backyard with a grill set up.  She added that there's a front yard too.  It all sounds so well and good, and well, I guess I'll have to see it for myself. 

Signs

I really hate the debate.  Predetermination can go fuck itself, for all I care, and still there's something so naked, in a vicious and raunchy way, about the idea that we're all just spinning our wheels on a destination-less highway's shoulder.  Get deep enough into the process and it's hard to find the desire to look beneath life's hood.  The scenery is catching at times, and some of the rest stops provide ample nourishment.  Still the miles go on and your concerns inevitably regress to Making Good Time.

And yet, if it all does matter, gee it sure would be nice if any greatness was of our own doing.  In this one instance alone, I'd like to think of a benevolent Great Spirit dangling an uber-subtle fishing lure leading to that One Great Destiny.  There's some fate involved, but we have to pursue it.  It's the same feeling a socialist would get when they win the award for being the Best Socialist.

In all likelihood this is my instance of getting mired in the quicksand of narrow-objective attention.  I make a decision, dig my fingernails into the armrests and look frantically around for confirmation that I'm doing a not bad thing.  I'm sure my behavior could be easily explained.  Psychology, being the wet blanket of sciences, is worthy of convenient dismissal, which is exactly what my present circumstances call for.  I know that if my conscious is privy to some armchair psychoanalytics, I rest comfortably that I've at least by now reached by own conclusion. 

Signs, I speak of.  Not quite semaphores on the Santa Fe, yet neither the tea leaves Aunt Trudy reads ever since she had The Incident.  Isolated, they are meaningless.  Together they are something, if still not the forward motion of an attentive Gestapo agent directing traffic.  They are selective, random, small, and timely.  They may be no more than the image of the white rabbit's tardy ears as he bends another corner.  But we've followed him this far.  And he seems to think we should keep going. 

First one came via the screen.  I have only shilled for the cinema a handful of times this year, literally five, and three of the movies have been taken place or reached their denouement in New Orleans.  Beasts of the Southern Wild is not on this list and I have been unaware of the Bayou connection each time.  I sublet a friend's spare bedroom for the summer and the only thing adorning a wall when I entered was a picture of New Orleans.  Everyone I meet, everywhere I turn, there seems to be some reference to Louisiana.  If I want to go Close Encounters of the Third Kind on you, I'll mention where the upcoming Super Bowl will be held and tell you I'm starting to sculpt.

And then there's the financial.  I returned to Brooklyn following some soul-enriching or -whatever travel with enough to pay a couple month's rent.  The old job I performed middling- to, um, -middling at wanted me back and I could start right away.  One month later when I realized I needed extra income to afford the move, the very day I set out to look for an additional source of employment, the very moment my email uploaded at the coffee shop, there was a message with a friend's unsolicited job offer that complemented my schedule.  I could start right away.

I held this image in my head.  How Perfect, I thought, would it be to buy an old VW bus in Maine and drive it down to New Orleans.  It would be like doing the last thing I haven't done out here, plus the geographical significance of taking something from one of the northernmost states, down to the one of the southernmost, with a guy hailing from somewhere in between behind the wheel.  I pictured it light blue.  And then last month I found one, and last week I bought one, and it all fits snugly within that little budget allotted by that serendipitous job offer.  Timely, too.  True to form, I trust the mechanic's assessment that she'll be a dependable vessel.  True to form, she's unnamed as of yet, but she's light blue.  As for Maine?

As for Maine, well, I'll take her there.  Next week, after I retrieve her from the mechanic.  I know that doesn't exactly abide to the aforementioned imagery.  I won't pretend it does.  But she'll get to Maine, and we'll both get to New Orleans.  As of the last few weeks, I know I'm ready.  The mechanic assures me that in a week she'll be ready.  And I will start that part of the dream the morning I arrive where I bought her, it's just outside of a little town called Providence.

A writer's life for me

A man with base instincts, I pride myself in probity.  A man with salty lips for the drink, I'll tell you I'm fond.  Good intentions and soothing words galore, I'll be the first to tell you I come up short in the Friend Department.  I don't see nothin' wrong with an unrighteous shortcut to a Good Feeling and I likewise won't bear false witness about the method and means.  I run polar to the bombastically sanctimonious and on meridian with the most noble in the alley, in more ways than I'm terrified to admit.

Upon this mantle of self-bestowed honor I am building a nest of lies.  I am asked the purpose of my relocation to New Orleans and I invariably respond about the seven-year itch and the need for more space.  The chance to belong to a community and maybe the taste of dad-gam delicious Cajun fare.  If we're really talking, I just might mention that I want to fall in love.  But so convinced in my own deceit do I become that even I forget the true reason.  At least in conversation.  Every now and then I get those Quiet Nights, the ones where I put on a little music, pull a little bit from the pipe, exhale and stare out at a quiet city downwind; the ones where I stare into the still pond and see my reflection from the outside.  And I remember.  It's just one I don't really want to tell.

I decided to write my first novel with the same glee my younger version would have received 50-yard line seats for a Buffs game, the whole endeavor teeming with excitement and entitlement, not a little pride and fear.  There was a sense of purpose and identity.  There was an engineer's trust in the machinery and a pioneer's faith in the destination.  There was an agent who showed her own confidence in my thought bubbles and a few friend's lent their paddles for encouragement along the way.

And then I saw how the sausage was made.  Not the writing, at least in terms of production.  It may not have rolled off the assembly line with a degree of efficiency pleasing to Mr. Ford, but it did roll, and I'll be goddamned to hear anyone say that thing don't got a gas pedal and a passenger seat.  I just don't know if I rolled out a pristine 1934 Bentley or a rust-colored and blood-stained 1984 Chevette.  The market is supposed to decide that for me.  But the market is not deciding.  Or, better said, my salmon's not yet allowed to spawn in that stream.  I've not been given clearance from the tower and entry into the Big Presses, the sidewalk rags, the urban journals we're all supposed to have read before having brunch with the Sleek-Framed Spectacled of the learned world.  My only remnants are odd blogs and the giant manuscript taking a giant shit on my hard drive.  It's lonelier than sad masturbation and piercing like divorce with the same exact, aspired and unattained middle that towers above the two each time.  Say hello to the writer, working at his day job.  Say hello to the writer, feeling sorry for himself.  Say hello to the quiet one agonizing over his existence and ordering another drink.

Somewhere in these depths I saw another novel.  Set in New Orleans.  Written in contemporary times.  There is no other mind that could see or voice that could deliver, so I, north of thirty and inching further, had to decide if It was going to be done.  It could just be another fuel-inefficient,  busted mid-80s domestic with a negative Blue Book value; could be the first feasible electric.  All I knew was that I was the only automaker with the blueprints. 

So I decided to write and that implied the relocation and that has led to all sorts of life disruptions and disassociations.  And my well-concealed shame at not actualizing the dream the first time around means that I'm not quite comfortable telling the body public.  Better to talk about cost-of-living and year-round okra.  In my guise and soft untruths and unmooring from home port I have at least not forgotten my purpose, if only on these Quiet Nights.  When the bus arrives and the bags are unpacked, I will appreciate the space and the chance to read my book by porchlight.  I'll manufacture the rent and learn a strange custom or two.  And when the time comes, the destiny returned and words sweating off my tongue, I'll sit down and pound the keyboard each night for an hour or two, see what comes out.  For a couple years at least, I'll be content to be a work in progress and a rare among the Gray Hairs to keep chasing them silly flies called dreams.  O a writer's life for me.