I love NY. I left NY years ago because one day I stepped over my second naked body passed out in the street and thought nothing of it, other than later thinking maybe I'd become something I didn't want to be. Also, there was this thing called winter, it was cold and it was dark. I needed light. NY is different now, other than that winter thing. I may go back one day, I think about it all the time, but I've not a single skill to sustain me.
After a week in NY I went up to Connecticut to stay at my brother's house, to stay with my nieces and sister-in-law. When I called to make plans, she suggested I come up on a Wednesday and stay the weekend. I suggested this was way too long for anyone to suffer me, but that's how it went.
And they suffered me.
My brother was the only civilized one amongst us. We are barbarians, all. Whilst amongst the civilized, my sole goal is to curtail my natural barbarian instincts. I am matter so filled with primal holes and primal need I don't trust myself to mingle with the general population. One microscopic breath of kindness and I will wring it to smithereens. Don't mean to, don't endeavor to, ever vigilant!, still do it.
In the house of my brother's family, and there is nothing but generosity and kindness. Vigilantly I leaked all over the place and became tiring rather quickly.
On my last day there, I drove with my niece to get a tour of her school. Once upon a time, my niece was a young person who looked up to me as the Other Artist in the Family she could relate to. On this day I would learn she had grown up and I was obsolete. When she accompanied me to the train station at the end of our tour, she would be silent minus nostalgia. I'd said, been, become everything wrong and she was eager to get back to her real world.
These people were amazingly wonderful to me my entire stay there and there were no sad goodbye's but the eternal one inside me.
The next day I flew back to Los Angeles.
chapter 3.