palm reading
I sat there on a slab of concrete in a concrete jungle with one of my favorite people on this planet, a close friend that I didn't see nearly enough. We breathed. We laughed. We smiled and stared through the trees and streetlamps and people, drunk and sober, who shared the night with us. We were floating in the clouds of New York City at 2 o'clock in the morning on a Thursday night in August. The air was fresh and we breathed it in, knowing both that is was a gift from god, and also that we were lucky for it. We soaked up the night and it nourished us, like water to a dry, hard sponge. We had a purpose again. More than ever, we were acutely aware of the very real possibility that we might not wake up the next morning. Even better, we knew that it was much more likely that we would. Our lives weren't perfect. We were in transition. I was fresh out of college and beaten down that all my hard work and hopes of changing the world didn't materialize the moment I walked across stage and received my Bachelor's degree. She had just quit a 9-5 job in the accounting industry to move 3,000 miles from everything and everyone she ever knew and loved. She was happy, and I was happy too. We are and always will be happy people, but she had a lot more figured out than I did at the time. We were in our twenties. We were in New York together. Some people live their whole lives wishing to come here just once. Some people see New York in their dreams. I'd had it just withing arm's length for my entire life, and I was neither better nor worse off for it. I had beautiful parents, beautiful brothers, and beautiful friends; that was that one and only thing that mattered.
We were not invincible under those skyscrapers, pizza shops, tattoo parlors, and dive bars of the lower east side; we were flesh and blood. We were human, we were connected to everything. We were perhaps two of the most vulnerable people on planet earth that night...but doesn't everyone think this way? We were not invincible, but we were safe. We were safe on the streets of the biggest, most beautiful, most progressive, dirtiest, most crime ridden, most cultural, most hated, and most loved city in the world. Neither of us knew what to make of the last forty five minutes, of the total stranger--Stephanie-- who had taken brief, fleeting glances at our palms, smiled comfortingly, and pulled out even those things that, for whatever reason, we kept hidden from even our closest confidants.
"I felt a very positive energy when you walked in," she said to us, and we believed her. And we believed she didn't say that to just anyone who came through the door.
We were not invincible under those skyscrapers, pizza shops, tattoo parlors, and dive bars of the lower east side; we were flesh and blood. We were human, we were connected to everything. We were perhaps two of the most vulnerable people on planet earth that night...but doesn't everyone think this way? We were not invincible, but we were safe. We were safe on the streets of the biggest, most beautiful, most progressive, dirtiest, most crime ridden, most cultural, most hated, and most loved city in the world. Neither of us knew what to make of the last forty five minutes, of the total stranger--Stephanie-- who had taken brief, fleeting glances at our palms, smiled comfortingly, and pulled out even those things that, for whatever reason, we kept hidden from even our closest confidants.
"I felt a very positive energy when you walked in," she said to us, and we believed her. And we believed she didn't say that to just anyone who came through the door.