if anything could ever be this good again

Experiences never die. They keep coming and they always will. They're infinite, and so is the learning we gain from them. We find answers through them just walking down the street. From them, we ask questions. We find desire and that gives us motivation to grow, to keep moving forward.

I've experienced so much. I've learned many lessons, yet there's so much more to come. And that's terrifying- we spend our whole lives trying to figure it all out, figure out ourselves, and then we're grey and fragile and busy reading to our grandchildren, or feeling the weight of regrets, or having everyone around us die. Our parents are gone. Our children live in different cities or they're rotting in their hometown. We retire from our job and are left with nothing but time. Hours to feel nostalgic for the nights we don't remember and to remember the nights where we didn't take the chance- kiss the boy that used to flirt with you at work, travel to that city you never lived in, get that dress that fit your hips like a glove. But in our old age, we'll still be experiencing, with paper thin skin and wrinkles on our face and have a brain like a book that has a lifetime of stories. Keep on writing and learning and breathing the air we love the most until it's all over. 

Life happened today and it was one of those experiences where you just learn a lot. You feel the lesson hit you like it's something you can wrap your hands around. You pick its skin apart and look inside and watch it become apart of you.

People aren't always what you thought they were. They may be more selfish than you can remember. They may focus on relationships instead of friendships. They may treat you like an object left on a shelf or in a drawer that they can retrieve and wipe the dust off of whenever they please. They get so lost in their own lives that you wonder where they went, searching in this never ending fog for their presence- but they don't want to be found. They keep drifting- or running rather- further into themselves, away from you. You're grasping at empty space. You hear nothing but white noise. And it hits you- this isn't going to be the last time this happens. People come and go and you feel older as the phrase "best friends" becomes a silly title, an idea you left in your high school locker. It doesn't hold the honor, the trust, the closeness it once held in its name.  It rolls off your tongue like something useless, the flavorless gum you've been chewing for hours leaving a bad taste in your mouth. 

You're left by yourself thinking of that line in that song from that band you both loved listening to:

 "I guess this is growing up." 

Teaching myself how to live in the present

Sometimes life just hits you really hard, but this time you're happy with the blow.

It doesn't hurt. It isn't making you sad, or nostalgic for a better time; it spreads through your bones and makes you smile with your eyes. And you realize you're not thinking of the past, or having anxiety about the future, you're just smitten in the present. You're comfortable.

So why not anchor the feeling?

Things to tell yourself/do/say:

Lingering on negativity isn't healthy. Smile at people instead.

Take more deep breaths.

Laugh, a lot.

Wake up early. Enjoy your full day. Watch the sun set.

Take more chances and stop saying "no" so often.

Cook freshly and experiment with flavor.

Call your family more.

Keep your friendships strong.

Drink more water. And tea. With a book in hand.

Forget and forgive. Don't hold onto grudges.

Stop over thinking EVERYTHING. Let's things be the way they are. They're that way for a reason. 

Create and be creative.

Don't only be confident but feel confident.
  

Walk in the sunshine. 

Enjoy the blue skies and beautiful weather. Thinking about yesterday's grey clouds or how tomorrow the news said it might rain, pondering what hurricanes will cause a disaster in the fall or wondering if there will be sunshine at your sisters wedding- don't do any of that. Just marvel in today for being a beautiful day.

Last, but not least, look at the boy in front of you and smile. 

Don't picture him angry at you. Ignore the thought of what his back might look like walking away from you, out your door, out of your life. Do not miss the memory of him yet. Just look at him and take in the sight of him, feel good that he's yours- for now- and in that moment, that snippet of worry about the future- just be happy.

He's probably looking at you trying to do the same.

the landlords daughters

they giggled like normal girls
ate kosher candy wrapped in
plastic hebrew
wore black flats with tights

 they sat next to their mother
her face hard, hawk eyes
she glanced at me
glanced through me

back at her daughters
adoringly, gentle eyes
blue like the sea she
may have never seen

a bag of candy drops to
the train floor
and her thin wrist is revealed
a gleaming watch, gold bands

and I thought
that must be where
all my money goes
when her dad collects rent

you're the sea, you can move everything

You: "Lauren, it's March."

Me: "Yeah, it's March."

You: "Think back to what you were doing one year ago."

Me: "Um. I was couchsurfing here in Brooklyn while on spring break..." *Pauses*

Me: "Oh wow, and I had no idea that I'd be living here a year later. Everything was different. That's a really nice way to look at things."

You chuckle: "You're welcome."

And I smile.

A week of March has passed since that conversation, making me reflect on the duration of my New York Lifetime so far.

Two months ago from today, I moved to Brooklyn.

Everything has been beautiful and difficult and refreshing and consuming and stimulating- sometimes it's all too much. Many times it happens all at once. Sometimes I'm so tired from working too much and barely sleeping that getting out of bed requires strength and a will I didn't know existed inside me. There's frustration. And anger. And some mornings I look in the mirror at my tired eyes and wonder, "what the fuck were you thinking? What are you doing here?"

I picture my good friends in Gainesville, my old house on the corner, the boy with the long sandy hair and strong hands, my baby niece growing up so fast, my little brother becoming a man, my mother getting it together, my cat sleeping under palm trees in the sunshine- I miss all of it, all of you, so much that it makes me cry sometimes. At night it's the worst, it hits home the hardest.

Home, so, so far away.

But I breathe deeply and walk through the wooden doors of my new apartment. I look to the right at the doors and rows of stairs that resemble my building. I look at the tall dead trees that line my avenue and picture them green and full of life in the summer heat. I feel sunshine on my face, or the ghost of it lost in the grey winter clouds, and walk down the stone steps watching my feet, still tired, still frustrated.

By the time I'm on the train, my eyes are smiling. The negative feelings have all dissipated within me, spilled onto the sidewalks above the tunnel that is the G train, the coldest tunnel of them all.

But all I feel is heat.

 The warm feeling of a new place becoming home, becoming a part of your heart.

train anxiety

i bite my lip on the train
avoiding eye contact
while
staring at everyone and
wish to be invisible but feel
wanted needed
outstanding like someone other than myself

and my lips stay clenched between
nervous teeth
my thoughts
their eyes

my toes curl under
pressure
judgment
confrontation
competing lips and unsteady hands
that reflect my own

it told me
we're all mirrors of each other

he yawns, she yawns as well

It's the end of summer and you're ready for school to start. You stuff your brand new folders with clean sheets of paper with perfect lines. You sharpen your pencils or buy mechanical ones. You pick blue or black ink. You get some new clothes to add to your wardrobe and wear it all in the first week of classes. You style your hair a little, change it up a bit. You smile a lot. The air feels fresh and new and full of opportunity. You walk into your new classes with your head high because you feel different. This year will be different. You're ready to own everything, be responsible, stay on top. 

And then you lose yourself. 

It's the end of the school semester and winter break is starting. You drink heavily because you need the distraction. You wait for your grades and press refresh on your computer or laptop or phone ready to face the results. 

Your parents ask how you did. And you wait, and you begin to wonder.

Where did time go? How was the semester over all ready? When did studying become so stressful and when did you last feel like you were in control? Like you knew what you were doing? You want to run, you want to go to a place far away. Because you have no idea what you're doing. Auto pilot has turned off and you want to be somewhere else and make all the decisions and all the right turns but you don't know how. 

You look around and everyone else seems fine.

But in the mirror, a stranger stares back at you, with dark circles under their eyes. 

You're not even happy anymore. It's all been lost in the text books that put you in debt or the bubbles you filled in during midterms. And part of you panics, but it doesn't even know how. 

A blurry week later and it's January- the semester is about to begin. 

The air is full of change, and hope, but this time you're not in your seat with a brand new notebook. You're gone. 

And you're smiling, wherever you are. You're free. 

I can always go back.

Sometimes I wonder when I started to feel so much.

we should always know that we can do anything

Not knowing what you want is an alienating feeling. But really knowing what you want, down to your bones, to the very core, in your heart and in your mind, may feel just as strange.

Before you know it, it's all you can think about. Inevitably it will consume you, invade your thoughts, take over you. And it's terrifying. You can't control it.

At times, it will make your smile stretch so far across your face that your cheeks hurt. Or your stomach knot up from all the laughter it has incited, all of the happiness. You start to gasp for air as you begin to lose yourself; the desire being too strong, you give in, because you want it so badly.

Those are the highs.

And then there are the lows. Bringing you down, making your feet drag. The loss of control of your face muscles, your feelings, your thoughts- it scares you. You cannot tell yourself apart from what you want, or who you want, any longer. It seems to all blur together. You're so lost you don't know where it started, how it got so bad. And in this limbo, time doesn't matter. Where it started and where it's going to end, is too distant from you now. You can't recall the important things, only the highs, only the smiles and the laughter or the love. The desire.

But you worked for it. You waited. You fought.

And no matter how far away you are from yourself- you find yourself left with no regrets- with weak bones, and a heavy heart. 

New York is the ocean

It's hard to determine why I love living in New York City so much. Not hard to come up with the reasons, of course, but to pick my favorite reason of all. 

The first thing that comes to mind is the sounds. They're everywhere, all the time. An infinite buzz. In my building. In my room. Even at 9AM when I'm showering before work. A dogs paws clacking against wood floors as it runs to greet its master. Or children screaming through the hallways two floors below mine. Or the loft above ours- drunk girls in heels ready for a night in the city, their roommate blaring Dubstep, coughing in between bong rips. Doors opening, closing, slamming. Laughter echoing. Couples making love, or the neighbor girls one night stands. Gasping, or panting, or breathing. There is no privacy- rather than seeing someone naked, I can hear it.

And then there's outside. The buses, the train underground, the beeping taxi's, music flowing from open windows whether they're apartments or cars, three different languages on a street corner, or shoes slamming against the concrete sidewalk. In the distance there are sirens. Or wind blowing sharply around the corner of a tall building, howling.

I wait for the silence but it never comes, and in that way I never feel lonely. I'm never alone.

The second thing that comes to mind isn't my favorite but it can't be ignored- the scents. So many scents. And no matter where I am, the wind will bring them to me, shooting them up my nasal passages against my will. The trash outside the market, rotten and fishy. Or the fresh baked bread I can smell in the hallway of my building, leaking out from underneath an apartment door like delicious slime. Or recently the smell of pine trees near my train stop, christmas lingering in the new year in heaps outside an apartment to my delight. Sometimes bum piss wafts up from the sidewalk. Or cigarette smoke smacks me in the face.

In the city, the scents grow. They multiply. Outside fashion department stores, expensive perfume sails through the air. Sometimes they're floral and sometimes they're sweet, but they're always alluring. And then there's pizza- it's every where. Each street corner, each stop light. Pizza is wafting all around me. I can't get away from it. But that can barely compare to the coffee, supplying thousands of New Yorkers with their fresh dose of caffeine from nine to five.

And that saves the best for last. I love living here because of the people. Because like me, they had a life before mine that was normal- driving a car around, living in small town, or maybe a different country, or maybe in the South, having a quiet life in the dark- and then you're here, and it all changes. You become constantly surrounded by other people and noises and lights and it's mesmerizing. The things people wear or the things that seem to wear the people. The art. The music. The buzz- it comes from everyone. And everyone went through the same process- moving here and having their body acclimate. Their lungs getting used to the air, their skin getting used to the weather; your body literally has to condition itself to sustain living here.

At least mine has.  

And I've never felt apart of something so big, so beautiful as a whole. 

one/twentyfour/thirteen

"It's like each and every room is its own little sex playground." 

oh man what I used to be, oh man, oh my, oh me

Every time I hear the Fleet Foxes, I think about sitting in the back of Richie's white hatchback that had a bumper sticker which read, "don't tow me, bro." It was bright yellow with thick, black font.  

I think of how the sun felt on my face and tired eyes, body weak from the late night of drinking that just ended a few hours ago when the sun greeted the morning. 

Madison's long, flowing hair would be blowing around the seat in front of me uncontrollably and it always looked beautiful and some what dangerous, the way something wild would appear.  

She would glance back at me with Richie's aviators on, and they'd fall down her nose, her blue eyes peeking through outgrown bangs, smile brighter than the sunshine. And something about the way he'd look at her, and the way she would shyly stare out the window at the heat on the pavement, or the wind blowing through Gainesville's greenest, tallest trees, I could tell it was history in the making right before my eyes. 

And I'd curl up under a towel, or blanket, or shirt Richie kept in his car- he was handy like that, always having the right thing at the right time. Always prepared. Always responsible and caring. I loved that about him and knew down to my core that he would be good for her, that they would be good for each other. 

When she called me with the news, I cried. I knew they'd get married someday, I think everyone did. It was just a thing we all shared like common knowledge. 

They were meant to be. 

But that's not why I cried. 

I cried because I was there. I cried because I watched them grow, not alone or apart, but together as two people would do trying to make things work. 

And they did.

And it was so beautiful that it made me cry.

 

you felt as if you just woke up

It was the red brick that set the first wave off.

The natural, yet completely unexpected wave of nostalgia that went rushing over my entire body like freezing water. Not tap water cold, but the kind of water that is leftover after a bunch of ice in a cooler melts on a hot summer day- that cold. I felt the impact at first in my chest- in my brain I felt something click. My eyes widened. And just like that, staring at that red brick, on that corner, in that intersection, across from that park, it came. The wave. The nostalgia.
I stopped. The familiar building with the red brick- not real brick mind you, but a tacky painted brick- I read that it was a bank. And the waves continued, reaching my toes. A conversation came to mind.

"I'm at the corner," he said.

"Like, the corner, corner?" 

"Yeah, it's a bank-"

"You remember what the corner looks like?"

". . . Is that weird?"

I answered with silence at first to hide my immediate smile. 

"No, that's really cute."

And he replied with a smile that I could hear through the sound waves. 

This feeling wasn't one I could ignore as Charme and I crossed the intersection. I always told myself I'd never remember what the corner looked like- it was too dark and rainy that night, a memory lost in translation and through abused reminiscing. Instead of it being the truth, the actual setting, it felt more like an idea. More like deja vu or a scene I read in a book.

But the feeling kept on, nagging at my brain.

I looked down Sixth Avenue and remembered how wet the streets looked that night, reflection of the stoplights rippling in each puddle, and all of the broken umbrellas that were turned upside down resembling black entangled spiders. I remember how cold we both were, odd for New York weather in August, clothes stuck to our skin and our trembling legs, teeth chattering, sitting close. Or maybe we were just using the cold as an excuse to sit side by side in the cab that I hailed right after you questioned if I could do it. You were new to the city then, still learning, still soft. I remember sitting in that cab on the way to the Ace Hotel and having your hands all over my knees, lips on my neck, my fingers lightly pushing you away but more so pulling you in. I remember laughing, and you telling me how much you loved my laugh, how much it made you smile. Your voice sounded like silk in my ears.

All of this runs through my head, sending the waves throughout my body, before I am done crossing the intersection. Indecisive, I am unsure if this corner is "the"  corner, but every part of my body and the way it was reacting felt like all the proof I'd need.

*  *  *

Time passes. After Charme gets lunch, I am still undecided. Or am I?

I needed closure. Or did I? 

I needed to know. No, you don't. 

I swallowed the nausea I felt rising in my throat and kept making excuses.

It would make me feel less crazy.

It would feel more real, proof that the night even happened. Evidence that it wasn't a dream and he was a real person. 

I go back to the intersection, the bank, the red brick. 

I had one way to solidify this memory, a bar we ended the night at. We were going to play pool but it never happened. I don't recall the name of the bar, yet I knew if I saw it then that was it. This was the place. This was the spot that incidentally changed my life, or a part of my life, up until now and maybe for years to come.
And even though it may have not done the same to his, I was becoming okay with that.

"I don't know what we're looking for," said Charme getting aggravated that I was making her walk in the cold. But there it was, The Four-Faced Liar, with one patron sitting alone at the bar, sipping a beer slowly.

I saw my reflection in its window and knew this is where you first kissed me and it wasn't messy or nervous or weird; it was perfect, just like in the movies. Our mouths fit and moved the same way. They were soft and warm and eager. By this point your friends had left. And a girl across the street got mugged and screamed. You said smiling, "welcome to New York City." And this was after you found out that I didn't live in New York. I lived in Florida, a state you moved away from just a few months ago. And this was the last night of my visit. This might be the last time I see you.

"Dont leave," I recall you telling me outside my hotel room after I wrote your number down on a bank envelope and kissed you in the hallway corner for hours.

And almost a year and a half later, I'm sitting here writing this living in New York, thinking about that red brick and that cab and your smile, wishing I had never left. 

My phone rings in Charmes kitchen and knowing who it is already, I am wishing it was you.

come a little bit closer, hear what I have to say

Jumping up and down in her red skinny jeans, she turned the volume on her iPod on full blast. 

"I just can't listen to this quiet, it's a song you have to hear loud," she said to me, raising her voice over the lyrics, bleached blonde hair falling into her eyes. We both sang.

"Is that what you call tact? 

You're as subtle as a brick in the small of my back, so let's end this call, and end this conversation. 

And is that what you call a getaway? 

Well tell me what you got away with. . . "

I ate soup as she flipped through songs and sat knitting at the newly cleaned kitchen table. Her sweater was an off-white color and had "shut up" written in black cursive font across her chest. Around her neck on a long chain was a crystal- she loved crystals and found them to be very beautiful. Her boyfriend lived in Toronto. She didn't eat meat. And her cats name was BreadLoaf. She smoked Camel lights, or "blues". Her laugh was boisterous and would sail across the room.

Again we shared a nostalgic moment with a song we both used to scream out car windows in high school, a moment where we remembered singing along to it with a girl who used to be our best friend. We both knew all the words, when each chorus would start, and familiarized ourselves with the feelings each line would convey then and now. And afterwards, she would go back to knitting. I would go back to eating soup.

She let me into her world where I found a piece of my own inside. 

It felt comfortable and relaxing, like those days back when you were sixteen and your friend was driving with the windows down, wind blowing through your hair, fingers tapping on your knees, sunshine on your face.