I never have an idea of where I’m going and I love that more than anything.

SUNDAYS ON THE UPPER WEST SIDE

Most days, I walk to the train and impulsively hop on a line. I have learned that trying to plan your days in New York is a futile endeavor, for one thing is alway dragging you away from another. Like how the other day I set out to get bananas and came home with a giant antique painting instead. I thrifted it from some vintage store in Brooklyn and hauled it through the streets like a proud mom.

Or like how few days later when I decided to take the local C train as deep into Manhattan as it would go, arriving on the Upper West Side where I stumbled into a street market. People shoved their faces with somosas and candied fruit, iced lattes and fruit smoothies. Others did backward dives into plastic bins labeled vintage, reaching back to 2007 and 1985 for the earth-shattering fashion looks of tomorrow. You should see the things these people wear. They could pair a trash bag with thrifted Gucci sunglasses and I swear everyone would follow suit.

I was watching the competition heat up as one hipster friend group descended after another, when I saw it. The unmistakable, colorful chaos of Basquiat. A framed print of one of his pieces stood unclaimed in the distance. One does not walk, one runs. Elbowing my way through the crowd, I arrived at a stand full of messy canvases and framed vintage prints. I pointed to the Basquiat. I’ll take it.

I picked up another piece I loved and hauled them onto the train and all the way back to Brooklyn, wondering if my neighbors are amused yet at me always hauling canvases through the streets and up into my apartment. Nothing to see here.

RAINY TUESDAYS ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE

My brother, my clone and fellow book nerd, is in town for a few days and we spent a rainy Tuesday gallivanting around the Lower East Side. We sat in some ridiculously charming diner and drank coffee while rain spit from the sky. United by our draught-ridden childhoods in San Diego, it was nice to be around someone as enchanted by water falling from the sky as I am. We’re still clumsy with our umbrellas and wide-eyed at the glistening pavement. We ducked into a long, narrow book store with creaky wooden floors and old jazz music playing. I went to the memoirs while my brother loitered in the novels, each falling down our own rabbit holes of prose, when a song came on that pulled me through space and time.

Van Morrison’s “Moondance”. As the melody cranked out I saw my best friend from high school dancing in her bell bottom jeans to the beat like she would do so many times throughout those years. Also a nerd for old books and architecture, I thought of her while standing there and how much she would have loved the place. We’re not close anymore. I don’t know where she is or what she is doing, but when that song came on, it was like she was right there. I thought of a postcard she sent me once where she wrote the lines, those girls that we were would have loved this. I thought of us at sixteen, ditching pep rallies to drive around in her old car, blasting Van Morrison and Nirvana CD’s, swapping opinions on Player Piano and Jane Eyre, still just dreaming about whatever would come next. We had not the slightest idea of what would come next, and while that made the fall into adulthood all the steeper, it was an innocence we would not have traded for anything.

So she was there. She was there as I last remember her, seventeen and dancing to Van Morrison, a version I am sure she has long since transcended, but it’s the only one I have. I wonder all the time what versions of me are frozen in other people’s minds. If I ever appear like ghost in the cereal aisle or the science-fiction section of a janky old bookstore in lower Manhattan. I am always seeing people, am always being reminded of this person or that. Whether we knew each other for years or just moments, they come back to me still. And even if I loathed them, even if they were spark note readers and red solo cup drinkers who did more harm than good, I love them all in memory.

My brother found some gem by Tim O’Brien that I am going to steal from him and we left, ducking in and out of the rain until we were so frozen we had to call it. I rode the train back to Brooklyn with a gaggle of middle schoolers, my worst nightmare, an experience I would not wish upon anyone, and trudged through the rain into the warmth of my apartment. And then, like the 30 year old that I am, I poured a glass of wine and cooked dinner while listening to tires roll against the wet pavement.

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