ludlow & eldridge
i always feel like things are happening and i’m not there.
there’s an energy somewhere - where? here, i guess. i mean i do feel it. the pulse, the pull, the wind gently tugging at the space between my belly button and my pelvis telling me go. seek. find.
there is something out there that is not this.
i call myself a seeker, but don’t we all just want to find?
i watch the girls in cropped tees and bronzer walk with a purpose, fingertips on keyboards, hands shading eyes that gaze up to the building signs but not all the way to the sky.
i wonder where they are going, if they are excited, if they do this every weekend, if it feels like groundhog day, if they feel like they are wearing a costume of themselves having fun.
things are always starting to happen as soon as i’m going home.
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do you ever fill your days so far to the brim with to-dos, might-dos, should-dos, and could-dos, that the never ending news ticker in your brain somehow confuses itself for your life?
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i always feel like everyone is going somewhere.
i sit in a cab and watch, watch everyone going.
then i think about all the times i’ve walked the streets aimlessly, probably trying to make it seem like i had a destination, absolutely lost and most likely anxious and just trying to find something to do with my body and my racing mind.
and i look out on the humans on the sidewalk - that hot, smelly, trash-laden sidewalk littered with hansel & gretel breadcrumbs that if you just keep pecking may one day turn into a dream fulfilled - i look at the humans on the sidewalk and my heart absolutely bursts for every single one of them. look at you, alive! you are doing it! i love you. you got this.
yesterday i told that to myself in the shower and i burst into tears.
we must not hear that enough.
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speaking of tears, i got acupuncture today and when a needle punctured my epidermis just so in my upper right shoulder blade, i felt a guttural sob well from deep within me. it didn’t escape my mouth, it just swelled up in my ribcage and sent SOS flares out into my nerve endings, my body signaling to my heart that a scared little girl still lives down there and she just wants to be held.
my brain signaled to my body to swallow, and the aching tide retreated back into my hips (the body keeps the score).
have you ever done a pigeon pose and felt the tightness of hot tears leave your hips and enter your throat?
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i want more more more and then its too much. i want to be in the center of everything and i want to get away, im always wanting to get away.
i want to perch at a sidewalk table, with my journal and a coffee, and pretend that i am a part of it. the day, the city, the world, the buzz of conversation on the air.
i don’t tell the barista that my voice breaks when i order because she’s the first person i’ve talked to all day.
i always wonder where everyone is going. what they are doing. everyone always has to get somewhere. everyone always is behind on something. everyone always has something to do, somewhere to be.
there are all of these people on the street, but surely there are still some people up there in the sky? doing their dishes, sitting in a chair by the window, reading a book and not thinking about how they should be out doing things. i wonder what that feels like. to just exist, without contemplating alternative permutations of existence.
i want to see the movie about all the people who aren’t at the corner of ludlow & eldridge on a saturday afternoon.
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xx mm