Fooled

I can’t believe my time here is more over than it is to come. . .I head back to Portland on March 26. Not even three weeks away. I’ve honky tonked, soaked in incredible art, eaten beautiful Italian food, watched Jeopardy at a Brooklyn dive bar with battery-operated massage wielding locals, navigated and gleefully smelled the dank subways, and walked. and walked. so. many. miles. Been stunned by architecture and the age of things. Marveled at the way rats and garbage and humans can all carve out a harmonious existence, side by side with designer heels and darting mopeds and city bikes, and some of the fanciest strollers I’ve ever seen in my life. As if it’s just drinking water. As if it has always been this way. I have to remind myself to close my mouth and stop gawking.

This is a song that I heard Bea Arthur sing in a bootlegged recording of her one-woman show. In the recording she is old — must be toward the tail end of her life. She is heavily made up, and looks like a fucking diva from the heavens. She is gaunt and statuesque and sparkling. I don’t know if she wrote this song, or if it’s from something else — I haven’t been able to locate it. Here, it is my love letter to New York. I know when I return to Portland, all of my heartbreak and upheaval and fear and insecurities and worry will all be waiting. But I hope I can take a shred of the hope that springs from this place and wraps itself around my soul, back with me to plant in some kind of spiritual garden in the Pacific Northwest, where it will yield the most foolish of joys, for as long as I have the energy to tend it.

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