what kind of artist am i?

I have just spent a refreshing few moments catching up on the last several months of the lives of dear friends in Texas. Just before i moved to New York City, they moved to a tiny pueblo in Mexico. It is a mystery that the soul path of my friend from dusty Mexican town back to small Texas town could be so similar to mine in the city of all cities. I read about his brief encounter with a tarantula that awakened a long-lost sense of nature, of space, of Other dwelling right outside the door.

Of course, there is plenty of Other in the City, but still not. The summer sounds of soccer played across the street, the wafting of garbage baking on the curb, the "mystery moisture" misting down from the heights above, all that man-made otherness is still too familiar.

I am salivating for a vacation coming soon. I made a hard choice to take my first few earned vacation days and Not Go To Texas. Not go to what is perhaps the last Arts Festival at Hope Chapel, to Not See people i love. Mainly because i currently require more days of silence and solitude than even this brief excursion to the lakes of Michigan will allow. And if i flew myself to Austin, i would find myself little silence and solitude there (or if i did, boy would i hear about it later).

So i am dragging my once-clippingly-quick feet down and up the subway steps, closing my eyes to rest them in the ride up to the 15th floor. I am cancelling dinners in order to go early home to sit and sit and sit.

I am hoping that the weary will wear off, that i will stop dreaming of sleeping, and will wake up to the life i am living. I do have moments. There are still moments, like yesterday walking north on Lenox Avenue, crammed with late afternoon neighbors, walking, and i thought, "This is the life i am living. It is Harlem. These are the days i'll remember..." and then, of course, i smiled and sang along with Natalie Merchant in my head all the way home.

Image: Lenox Avenue, Harlem. 1927