I found this today. I wrote it my first year in NYC. I sometimes forget all the fortitude it took to get to the place I now sit, here in our (i never would have guessed "our") brownstone abode. I forget the pain and suffering that I forged through w/out giving up. It's good to reflect. And it's good to remember I used to write a lot. A. Lot.
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"hope deferred makes the heart sick..."
it's more than swimming around with a big fish in a little pond complex. and more than 'Transition takes Two Years...." or North vs. South. it's humanity condensced. it's hope demolishment exposed without apology. it's the magnitude of possibilites for failure:
- subways to barely miss with the door sliding together in your face.
- buses almost caught, but not
- brushing shoulders in Whole Foods with the unsung millionaire and wondering 'is there something else i should be doing?'
- it's seeing the rush hour crowd and feeling like a number, an ant, an imposition.
-it's wondering if the sunglasses and I-pod's keep others from wondering what i'm thinking.
one more audition lost. ten more dollars spent. five more people bumped into without recognition. BUT one hundred times less likely to give up.
i heart ny, but we're sleeping in different beds right now. or not. or...i've lost my ability for meaningful metaphor. i suppose it went with the southern gentility act when exiting the subway. gone with the smoggy wind and romanticized ideals of mice-free apartments in Time's Square.
straving artist, however, is checked off my do-before-i-die list. that's the plus for the hour...and that i'm breathing in the most amazing country on earth, but that is a given and takes away from the pained poetry of my penning. but - this dream; sacrificing for my art: the dream that's more pleasant to endure while sleeping than awake, but a dream none the less.
i regergetate all this. mmmm. tastes good to let go and let it out. let in the Blood and breathe. and why do i always follow this pattern of stress relief?
wouldn't it be much more vogue to just have a full-fledged nervous breakdown - tabloid style - followed by a month in the Hampton's or on the beach slathered in sea-weed body masks with sweet tea and codine tablets next to my smashed-in-a-fit-of-revelatory-freedom-moment beeper?
well...no because i don't have a beeper first of all, and also i don't know a soul in the Hampton's except mel brooks but he's not a friend yet, just a 'hello, how's your musical?' type of thing. and also because there's nothing in life that should fester in my soul to such a point that i think about the george washington bridge and my eulogy in the same gray-matter sentence. nothing, elizabeth. shall we say it again for the slow of learning and hard of heart-hearing? life is not about you.
life is not about you. say it with me, now. life is not about us.
sleep well and splash around in Grace.
amen.
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