(Week)Endings and Begins

What a blurred, crazy fast forward fast rapido ff >> weekend.

First weekend back in NY and I was feelin' kind of like.. maybe I'll hibernate.  It's getting cold, the city is strange, and I wasn't connecting.

So I told Junsta, "It's all right, I'll play Wii with you and your friends later" on Friday. Then I told her I would meet her at The Park but didn't show up. I know I'm a flake. But I had a good reason.

I was with the B-girls on the east side watching their tequila intake (me and my weak-ass sangrias, they said) while listening to the wonderful wacky world of bonuses and stupid analysts. But then things got headied and blurred and a little silly and we finished the night with a couple of beers at some bar I forgot (I also forgot my bag with my journal there)...

The next day was sort of like the college bar hop days.  I dashed down the orange line to catch up with He-man and J-girl in Chinatown for some shabu shabu. Spent the time between gulps of sichuan broth and the pitter patter of light talk...

But it was all lights and noise and peanut shells crackled crackling at McSorleys where the supreme queen of cool Stellargirl held court with a dark beer in one hand and a camera in the other (I met the coolest couple there)... India and Laos and poker faces and the madman politics of Bush flew past, like a pebble skidding on a pond.

Happy Taco and K-Dawg jabbered on about Shakespeare and existentialism at Dempsey's on 2nd, but while all that hot talk and jazzed spirits were cannibalizing each other, Chris Noth (Mr. Big himself) dropped by the  window to wave hello to our collective dropped jaws (I saw him second, just right after the girls who were with the boys poked their heads out the window like a gaggle of ostriches to silent screams).  I think he was lost. Or maybe looking for a bar.

The rain-dusted night gave the streets a rubbery glow of green and red luminescence and streetlamps were bouncing off the slicked puddles in the empty morning, spraying the walls with their music.

Bingo came the next day!  From college til now, I haven't seen the girl but once. It was Bulgaria for her and Asia for me, and now it was like unwrapping candy, like finding a pair of favorite shoes, or the B-sides of a good rock band, or.. or a dollar in your pocket... she came she came to visit and we spent the afternoon walking around in our memories.

Munched at Sea on N. 6th before we tramped towards the surreal Grand Ferry Park (my favorite waterfront place), where we stood on the rocks like statues in tragi-comedies, like beacons for a sars-cosmic & silent world where grown ups were kids and kids could grow up without losing themselves.. we watched ships ducked under the Williamsburg bridge as the lights flicked on across the river, as the great machine of humanity blinkered and yawned before grabbing fistfuls of night.

Had a great cup of green tea latte as only Supercore could do it  – we sputtered on about death and dying and life and laughing as only a couple of old college buddies could do – until we got sick of it and dashed over to the Island on the rickety JMZ line, scooting on the grafitti encrusted bridge where we just saw moments ago from below...

Xicala. Have I said that I loved love - loving this place? (So much so that I forgot my credit card here.)  Bingo picked at her strawberries (in her sangria) while I picked my my olives. Wine wine vino sweet sweet wine. Tired from all the dashing around, we mulled over ourselves, our discarded habits, new addictions, removed emotions and closed secrets.  And like tired sadhus under the bodhi tree, we scrambled passed past present future to that jibber-jabber, frightening, and gorgeous hollow where understanding came through silence and strings became waves while waves disintegrated into a complicit appreciation of the invisible ties that knotted us together in weird crazy fantastic loops... then we (I, me) stumbled out and...

Munched on fried chicken and mojitos at 2nd Floor in the thirties and.. ran, panted (hurry hurry!), leapt, dashed, skidded – rushed to the train station so she can catch the last bullet home.

Then I hibernated. (And went to retrieve my forgotten belongings.)