the empire state

So many of the conversations I have had in the past few weeks have been ones I have been fantasizing about for months: sitting down with people I have known for various lengths of time whose opinions and feelings I value highly, and trying to tell the story of this year. Drinking coffee during a rainstorm, eating onion soup in a french bistro on Bastille Day while someone in the background played "Brown Eyed Girl" on the accordion, straddling the rim of the wall in Washington Square Park imagining what the arch looks like at dawn on your way to the farmers market--such better conversations than I could have imagined on my own. What have I been feeling? Why did I break the continuity of my life so drastically this year--what was I trying to dislodge? Now I have wiser people's stories about themselves to stand in for answers. And so many reunions in familiar places to buoy my sense of self.

One more week! And then me, Laurel and trusty DC will be heading south.

Ok, here's an idea that we talked about at the Staab-Kelly barbeque that I've been kicking around for a while--does anyone have a mental list of their favorite contemporary--mmm, thinkers and visionaries and, you know, rabble rousers and comedians and culture jammers and statesman and whatever, people who express this historical moment for you or give you future-hope--a person who makes you feel like there's someone speaking for you in whatever layer of the public sphere they happen to be in? We should write them down! Who are your favorite people? Here's a very small start:

Jon Stewart
Arundhati Roy
Tony Kushner
Ira Glass
David Chappelle
Margaret Cho
*Molly Ivins* (go texas)

northeast corridor

I am sitting in my yellow childhood bedroom--Laurel and I drove in Friday night at 9 pm and I could not fall asleep until 4 that morning. My mind was buzzing with being in this place that was so familiar that I had been so long away from. I sat up and read my high school yearbook and when I did fall asleep I dreamt about people I have not seen in years, who are now just around the corner from me, reachable. It felt like everything that has happened in the past seven years was happening at once.