The Roses always told me that when my eyes are happy, they turn blue.
I don't think I've ever been happy like this since January, though....
They're pale. They're so pale they look like glass, really, with green twinges.
Wendy even asked if I had changed my eyeshadow--I laughed and said I'd changed my life....
I love this city.
I love the big spectrum of people--old and young and stylish and frumpy and energetic and slow and fat and skinny and beautiful and modest and religious and sarcastic--to start. I love the buildings that pierce the sky so much, I'm worried it'll bleed in that cute, Wisconsin-born-girl sort of way. I love the men's style, which is distinct. Men don't all dress alike here, unlike at home.
I love the advertisements that are everywhere, especially when you don't expect them. I love the televisions in the taxi's backseat that show flashes of funny little commercials and recommendations for shoe shopping.
Recommendations are everywhere. To a hundred people, their way is best. Because this city is so big, I think they're all right, too. Just because there's a good pizza joint on Forty-second doesn't mean there isn't one that's just as good (if not better) on ninth.
Oh, I went to Rockefeller Plaza today. The Top of the Rock, they call it.
It stopped my heart. I channeled it, maybe I shouldn't have, but I wasn't overwhelmed. Overwhelmed, with channeling, is for the Eliac--no, my heart is my own. I took video of the edges, too, on my shitty little cellular phone. I took picture after picture after picture--I bought two disposable cameras and I only have nine left!
The top of the world. I touched it, it was there, and it felt my feet on its back. I spent all day looking for the tallest building-tips I could find and thinking, today I looked down on that. Today when I waved my hand on the top of the Rock, it was on top of this building. I wondered what it would be like to clean the windows....
Oh, God, the Top of the Rock. When I'm in a car, I lean forward and pretend I'm flying....Fuck if I wasn't a fledgling before I flew from Top of Rock. Wendy and Juliette have so little patience sometimes. Yes, it's their ToM, but regardless.....
They were here for a miracle, and they did much more complaining than I would've liked. We ate dinner at this Sea Grill (that's really the name, the Sea Grill), in the outdoor section I assume is open seasonally; as it sits on top of the skating rink that Katie mentioned when I told her where I was by text.
I rode a train earlier today. I liked it and I want to add it in here before I forget: it was clean, not dirty or grungy. I always assumed trains would be just as angry and edgy on the inside as they were out, but I was wrong. That said, I'm never eating any food from them again. Moving on.
For dinner--the Sea Grill, again, sorry about the Rant--I had Crab cakes. Two of them, big ones. Smothered in something that was mustard-y but wasn't, with a plain garnish that curled my toes.
I took one bite and I looked up at the top of the building I'd just seen the heavens from and I closed my eyes and I cried. Tears. Legitimate tears. I took big bites of the fucking deliciousness and I waved my hands to myself like I were praying, trying to choke the words out, the gratitude that was so deep and heavy I couldn't manage a single word. The Waiter actually thought I was having heatstroke and kept having water brought to me--oh, the irony, for it's water I missed most just then--but really I just couldn't speak. I was so happy I couldn't speak.
My eyes, when I saw them, weren't blue. They were pale, almost green-white, with flimmers of blue. Like my fingernails. Rimmed in forest green.....
I barely paid attention. There was so much to see, constantly to see, to touch, to smell and whatever else. The people everywhere--I can't even begin. I don't know where to start. Oh, there were things that grabbed me, but that's just because I liked them, not that they were any more noticeable than anything else present. Shops where they sold recycled clothes, where vintage was the mainstream, where Van Gogh had unwittingly decorated the t-shirts....... A Hollister whose whole outside was television screens, showing live feed from whatever ocean they're so fucking fond of.
A fountain I'd seen a picture of on tumblr, that Karen Gillian and Matt Smith had been sitting at (I squealed like a tiny child, and people stared for a second).
The outside of these buildings are like the crevices of my heart, because they're balanced. They're what they were chosen to be, nothing more or less. Some are exquisitely complicated, others are brown-brick and fuck off with your architecture, thank you. I can smell the smoke and the smog and the sweat of the people. I can taste the cologne of the man muttering to himself about cab fares and pulling at the collar of his stained, red shirt. I can see the woman who is well over forty, possibly even fifty, and still looking like a rockstar. I can see the man with broken sunglasses, jangling his cup.
I belong here. There's no question, there's no doubt. It's like I left a big coat of judgment at the door of a Party--- that's what being in this city is like. Like endless streaks of lightning. Like every dream you've ever had or even don't remember having gathered your preferences, put them in a pile, and UPS'd them here, first class.
The lights in the sky at night make the streets like day. I'm waiting for the Gargoyles to fly overhead....surely, if a place like New York can be real, they simply must be. Goliath owes me a date.
We went into a place called Free People and I policed the clearance, bought myself a new shirt. The woman there was so amused by my blithering idiocy regarding my "wisconsin girl" city shit she gave me a discount, opened me an account on their website, and everything. She didn't do that for the person ahead of me, either.
It goes to show that character, that kindness, can matter. Even in a place like this. Even in a city like New York.
Times Square. I was there. I saw things and we went into Disney store.... I'll let my pictures talk for me. My fingers are so happy to hold on to the things I felt today that I'm too lazy to offer them to the nobody that reads this.
I saw at least one fine, beautiful pair of boots, but none of them fit what I wanted. What I was looking for.
Oh, the women here are beautiful, little blog. I took pictures of a few when they weren't looking--but only the ones that were so beautiful they made my heart stop. I could be happy here, I could make friends here, as easily as breathing. As easily as sleep is tempting my eyelids here....
Blisters on my feet, snarls in my hair from the wind, one-hundred degree heat and a barely-controlled bloodsugar, you say?
I say, best day of my life.
I say, I'm coming back.
I say, Fort Atkinson can't keep me there. When I inherit that money come my twenty-first I'm back here, I'm bringing Katie and maybe Finley and whoever else and I'm going to be there with them. The people I love. The people who loved me when I felt like I was nothing--four days ago? Five?
Katie told me today that Fort was a little empty without me. Rather than saying, I know, that's what my summer would've been like, I said I missed her.
I do miss her. I miss her so much I doodled her and finley last night, when we were still in Greenville. No matter how tremendously happy I am--and by God, am I happy, am I alive and well and flourishing for once in my fucking life--I still miss them. I want them there because I love them just as much as I love a city that accepts me.
Realizing that was the most important thought of all.......
New York, New York, New York!
Home.
No comments:
Post a Comment