Thank you New York for taking me from California’s sunny
arms and placing upon my forehead your wintry kiss. For the rusty leaves of
fall, creaking upon the trees, reminding me that despite what feels like a
lifetime on beaches, I will never be a sun and surf girl. No, that is work for
me and sandy shores have been my office place and my paycheck has come from
wearing shell necklaces. I know some mermaids…they are girls with sparkles for
eyes and skin that has bathed in the sodium of the sea. Delicious and free and
warm with tangles in their hair, they ride life’s waves on the backs of sea
horses. How much I have wanted to be one of them and on my best days sometimes
I have been as deep as the ocean. But no, I am a mountainous creature, full of
dark caves, frosty edges, tall and easy to fall from, peaks and valleys, and
always high, high as a kite. I am not tempted by salt but by the sweetness of
herbs. The heather and pine and the heavenly scent of magic grass burning. I
know now that my heart lies not in the splash of the wave but in the crisp
whispers that blow in the air channeled between valleys and carried up to the
peaks. And this season, this which you call fall, here in this big city, is a
season reminiscent of that. Autumn leaves/bitter breeze.
Thank you New York for reminding me that I am not a beach
bum/bunny/babe and neither will I ever be a city fox, but I am deep down a ‘mountain
girl’. That name first given to me by my childhood love, a boy who took me to
the Himalayas and made me his own. He opened my eyes so wide to that sort of
love, they have never closed again. The best lovers I have known have been
mountain men. Boys who have dipped their feet in an ice-melted stream. Boys who
have drunk tea in the morning mist and stood with me under a million-star-sky,
blowing tiny puffs of breath into the night. Boys who have promised me Tibet,
treks, Kilimanjaro, the moon... Thank you New York for making me walk your
blocks – they reminded me how much I love using my legs. That I am never
entirely satisfied by the comfort of a car seat, and a belt across my chest
should be a bag upon my back. Thank you so much for your skyscrapers, they made
me understand how much I was craving craning my neck to look upward in humility
at something so high, you wonder how it was created in the first place. Thank
you for your bookshops, quiet crannies, shelves full of knowledge that I
needed. Deep in one of them I found a book of translated Chinese poetry called,
“When I find you again, it will be in the mountains”. What a name, what a
thought. And I did not dedicate that line to any boy in that moment, any
ex-lover, or lost family and friend, not to anyone but my own spirit that has
been in ‘wandering’ for months now.
I am grateful for your cafes, so many of them like the tiny
holes in the hills. Cosy and cute. With scarves around my neck I sat watching
the steam rise off hot drinks, and wrote with the peace I have only found in
one other place. And for the long hours you have offered me in the quiet of
Brooklyn, in the parks across the city, on the subway between stops, in the
backs of taxis and sitting out on fire escapes. These hours that allowed my
mind to wander, and it wandered far enough to find my soul and take her hand
and bring her home.
Many thanks for your people, so weathered by the changing
winds, the harshness of a life constantly climbing, but so inspired by the
zeniths they have reached, the things they have seen that no one else knows.
As you can see, o wondrous city, my imagination has thought
that you are a mountain range. The season fooled me into believing it. And now
on this last dark morning, looking out at the peaks of Brooklyn Bridge, with
their lights like tiny villages on cliffs, the tiniest flicker of sunlight on
the 5am horizon, it is not hard to see why. Thank you, for reminding me where
my heart lies.
