Dispatches from Swagistan.
The collection plate makes its way around, across each row, snaking its way to the back, down the bridge, then reverses its course to land back in the hands of the Treasurer and every Saturday since I've been back, somebody has folded up a dollar bill into the tiniest origami I ever saw, and frustrated, dt-ridden fingers fumble to take the thing apart. It's never not funny.
Today especially it feels like I've resumed things. Whether the stopping point was when I started law school and moved back to New York full-time or at some point, thereafter, (starting or ending certain jobs, starting or ending certain relationships) the project I'd embarked upon in February 2011 has come back to me in earnest. The meeting ends, chairs get stacked, and then folks flock to the fence across from the Chapel and each Saturday has me staying longer to fellowship with people I haven't seen in half a decade, people who still remember my name. I'd spoken hopefully in the past of simplifying my life, not quite knowing what that meant or what it would look like. But I woke up this morning after three days of waking up at 5.30am to get to New York and two days of waking up at 4.30am to get to New York and realized that it had eradicated any lingering impulses I may have guarded towards entering the city on the weekends. Formerly, I'd figured I would enter and leave the city at my leisure on those days, attend certain events, see friends for coffee or dinner or what-have-you's. But I spent the afternoon playing Journey and Flower, the two most Buddhist games ever and even though I'd salted the repast with rather imbrued episodes of Hannibal, wordless felicity was the order of the day. Those two games, played in concert, resulted in metanoia. The evening, spent among kindred souls, my familiars, many of them strangers linked by the umbilical cord of desperation and thus more intimate partners than I'll ever find, culminated in the same.
There's a bit of mystery to it. For some reason, my thoughts speed to July in 2013. In Palestine. On our balcony, occasionally, my flatmate and I will step out to find baby clothes. A pair of black shorts with red stripes down the side, splayed and wrinkled amidst the dust. A white sock. A girl’s blue blouse.
They vanish with identical suddenness. One day, they’re there. A few days later, they’re gone, sometimes replaced by new articles. Where they come from is less a mystery than where they go to.
New York and Rikers and the Sisphyean work of keeping people I recognize out of jail will have me for the workweek. But for the rest, I am home.
The train rides have allowed me time and space to really dig into Ken's book, and I suspect others will be similarly devoured.
My current professional life is predicated on a November exam, the results of which will come forth in December. Should I find my time opening up around that period, I don't think I would mind too much. Sure, I've much more of a material cushion against the possibility of impending job loss, but, more importantly, I can hear in the background the noise of construction. Often, I’ll think of this cathedral I’m rebuilding, and I know I’ll never see its end. I would, in the past, spend time daydreaming about what it might look like one day, but the cool thing about this project is that from time to time others come along and I’ll turn around and see a friend or acquaintance working on some drywall or putting in light fixtures.
Where I am is where I first met D and where I'd first learned that the blue collar is more beautiful to me than the white collar, that it was, in many ways, where I had come from. During those years, it had become a place I had to fight my way back to. It made The Sparrow. It's poetry that so many of the people work in contracting, that they're builders or plumbers or work in gardens or fix roofs. I remember them and they remember me and with each thread to New York that gets severed, it becomes easier to hear them, to note their passing. Occasionally, while I’m picking through rubble for anything that can be salvaged, stooped, covered in dust and ash, I’ll pause, thinking I’ve just heard a snatch of birdsong and I imagine turning over my shoulder and seeing one of them. Putting in a new window. Whistling a tune I recognize.
Today especially it feels like I've resumed things. Whether the stopping point was when I started law school and moved back to New York full-time or at some point, thereafter, (starting or ending certain jobs, starting or ending certain relationships) the project I'd embarked upon in February 2011 has come back to me in earnest. The meeting ends, chairs get stacked, and then folks flock to the fence across from the Chapel and each Saturday has me staying longer to fellowship with people I haven't seen in half a decade, people who still remember my name. I'd spoken hopefully in the past of simplifying my life, not quite knowing what that meant or what it would look like. But I woke up this morning after three days of waking up at 5.30am to get to New York and two days of waking up at 4.30am to get to New York and realized that it had eradicated any lingering impulses I may have guarded towards entering the city on the weekends. Formerly, I'd figured I would enter and leave the city at my leisure on those days, attend certain events, see friends for coffee or dinner or what-have-you's. But I spent the afternoon playing Journey and Flower, the two most Buddhist games ever and even though I'd salted the repast with rather imbrued episodes of Hannibal, wordless felicity was the order of the day. Those two games, played in concert, resulted in metanoia. The evening, spent among kindred souls, my familiars, many of them strangers linked by the umbilical cord of desperation and thus more intimate partners than I'll ever find, culminated in the same.
There's a bit of mystery to it. For some reason, my thoughts speed to July in 2013. In Palestine. On our balcony, occasionally, my flatmate and I will step out to find baby clothes. A pair of black shorts with red stripes down the side, splayed and wrinkled amidst the dust. A white sock. A girl’s blue blouse.
They vanish with identical suddenness. One day, they’re there. A few days later, they’re gone, sometimes replaced by new articles. Where they come from is less a mystery than where they go to.
New York and Rikers and the Sisphyean work of keeping people I recognize out of jail will have me for the workweek. But for the rest, I am home.
The train rides have allowed me time and space to really dig into Ken's book, and I suspect others will be similarly devoured.
My current professional life is predicated on a November exam, the results of which will come forth in December. Should I find my time opening up around that period, I don't think I would mind too much. Sure, I've much more of a material cushion against the possibility of impending job loss, but, more importantly, I can hear in the background the noise of construction. Often, I’ll think of this cathedral I’m rebuilding, and I know I’ll never see its end. I would, in the past, spend time daydreaming about what it might look like one day, but the cool thing about this project is that from time to time others come along and I’ll turn around and see a friend or acquaintance working on some drywall or putting in light fixtures.
Where I am is where I first met D and where I'd first learned that the blue collar is more beautiful to me than the white collar, that it was, in many ways, where I had come from. During those years, it had become a place I had to fight my way back to. It made The Sparrow. It's poetry that so many of the people work in contracting, that they're builders or plumbers or work in gardens or fix roofs. I remember them and they remember me and with each thread to New York that gets severed, it becomes easier to hear them, to note their passing. Occasionally, while I’m picking through rubble for anything that can be salvaged, stooped, covered in dust and ash, I’ll pause, thinking I’ve just heard a snatch of birdsong and I imagine turning over my shoulder and seeing one of them. Putting in a new window. Whistling a tune I recognize.