Start here.

Tell me it straight. Was it February or March, April or November? Were you wearing the red sweater or the green one and was the sun out? Did you say hello or hi or how are you? Did you look both ways? I could have sworn you didn’t, but—did you?

I tell you nothing.

I tell you that none of it matters. It didn’t then and it doesn’t now. Whether the sweater was red or covered in the stripes of a zebra, it wouldn’t change the fact that it was simply a moment of knowing. A moment of irrevocable understanding that no one within a five mile radius could have shielded themselves from the light of. It was that bright. There was so much light, all at once. I remember that. And it’s what matters.

The sun was coming up. I was standing on the desert floor, understanding all kinds of things. I was finding the answers to my life if we’re being honest. I was crying but I had never felt such relief. Such lightness. I remember wanting to reach down and cup all of that golden light in my hands and drink it like the blood of Christ, just like they taught me before I decided I didn’t much care for their lessons.

If I were to pinpoint the exact moment that led me to my life here, across the country—if there could ever possibly be just one—it would be that. It would be standing in the desert, the cold, dry air permeating through all my layers and all my cells, knowing with an unmatched certainty, exactly what I had to do. From that moment on, all I remember is doing it.

So I am devoted to that light. It finds me all the way over here in Brooklyn and I find home in the warmth of it’s rays. I sit in it’s ever-deepening pools and feel the weight of the world sinking beneath me. Suddenly, I am floating. I am on my back in the ocean and it is July or it is June and I am either 8 or 18 but it does not much matter. I am there and the saltwater is in my eyes and all that time between the two is just a sneeze for the universe. It could sneeze again and my whole life might pass before my eyes. I could be 80 tomorrow. I could know a lot of things I don’t know yet. But don’t tell me.

I am having so much fun figuring it out.

Look.

What?

I open my eyes. It is late. All around us rustles the drunken murmur of a Saturday night.

It is limping down the sidewalk with it’s heels in its hands. It is the red light gone green, the screech of the taxi cabs, the distant, distinct laugh of a first date about to turn into many more. It is Saturday night in New York City and you think you are dreaming. You look up to find yourself encased by twinkling skyscrapers, each one carrying the promise of something you can never know and you are okay with that. Bars ooze into the street as Chinese lanterns appear overhead. There is music, somewhere. Everywhere. It begins to drizzle. The first of the fall leaves flirtatiously chase each other down the avenues, encircling one another in midair.

Manhattan has put on her best for you.

The MoMA is packed. I think. We are standing in front of some Pollock masterpiece and you and it are the only two things I really see. We are underground, tucked somewhere beneath Radio City, eating sushi. You make fun of my novice chopstick skills and I laugh like a kid. I don’t know when I stopped laughing like that but it must have been a very long time ago. I realize that only now.

It is raining and the streets are glossy sheets of black ink. Every color you can imagine is spitting it’s hue into the blackness and it becomes something of a Pollock itself. I am mesmerized. I am someplace that feels like another dimension of any world I ever knew and it has me by the wrists. It pulls me under.

Click here to support a small artist with big dreams (me)