Just barely getting over jet lag. Still kind of fuzzy in possibly the least fuzzy place in the world. This is a bold city, tall buildings, bright colors, lots of noise, lots of accents, different languages, and music-music spilling out of car windows out of sewer grates, from vendor stands, from everywhere. Salsa, merengue, Al Green, Run DMC, Grand Master Flash provide the sound track for my aimless walks, where I jaywalk belligerently like the New Yorkers do and pretend I am walking towards something rather than just around. This is a vibrant place. And it's been so great to share it with veteran NY dweller DD and newbie ex Seattlelite Peaches. They each tell me about it from their perspective, what they've seen, how it's felt, what Columbia is like. "You should be a student," they both tell me in independent conversations over tea or sitting on the couch. But that time in my life is over for now at least in the formal sense, my education is always continuous.
I made my way to the Schomburg Center for Researching Black Culture, passing from White Harlem...aka Columbia... to Harlem Harlem where an older Black couple had linked hands and were bumpin and steppin on the sidewalk in front of a bootleg CD table playing Teddy Pendegrass. I like to walk around Harlem and pretend I belong here and that if I just round the corner I might run into Langston Hughes or Lorraine Hansberry smoking a cigarette and looking crazy. What famous Black person hasn't passed through Harlem at one point in time in their life or another? Will I be one more? Hmm. Don't think I'm that ambitious. I've got that Tupac mentality...fuck the fame, I'll take the cash. But still I like the History of it, knowing this is where great poems and plays were written, where songs were composed, works of art birthed into being...and here I am somehow accidentally a part of it.
DD thinks I should move here, get a job and write on the side, join the ranks of starving artist living in an over priced poorly fenshuied apartment with six other people sharing a bathtub in the kitchen. I used to want to live here, even applied for several jobs, but now, I don't know. Maybe. I can see the appeal of living somewhere where on any given corner I can buy Shea butter or hair oil, where a tall good looking Black man can walk down the street and not be the only one I see all day. I could learn to love that. Plus there is the Nuyorican and the poetry scene. I'm not ruling it out, but there is the whole fact that after several months I really don't know what I want to do other than right...or what I'd be willing to do anyway. The list of things I'm sure I'm not interested in has gotten considerably longer, whereas the other list is beginning to read more like a bibliography with one source...me.
Yesterday I found myself catching the subway to a part of Brooklyn I'd never been to before, Williamsburg. Take the 1 to the A train, transfer to the L and get off on Bedford. Then what? I stand on the corner looking touristy until my friend shows up and takes me to a Thai restaurant with a rectangular reflecting pool at the base of a statue of Buddha in front of a lotus tapestry. All around us are swings and long metal beaded curtains that look like they should tingle like bells.
"So what do you do again?" We make our way through the basics...new friends that we are communicating in a familiar mix of Nihonglish /Englanese. She is a designer and I am? Writer? Ex teacher? Ex Academic? Traveler...yeah, that fits my current identity. I am a traveler. A woman of leisure as DD would say. We eat until we're over full then wander around the mixed artsy neighborhood looking at books and scarves and funky lamps until she has to go. I linger a little while longer, then pass by a young lady telling fortunes. She is light brown with big dark eyes, slender, and with an accent that doesn't disclose her origen. Mexican? Turkish? New Yorker? Bimio. Hard to tell.
Her: "It's $10 for a palm reading."
Me: "Okay"
Her: "You are a traveler. I see a lot of travel in your past and in your future. And you're spending money like it's water."
Me: LOL. True.
Her: "But it's okay. Money isn't your problem. Yes, you will have money."
Me: Really? Good to know. I thought it kind of was part of the problem.
Her: "You're going to live a long life. Very long...longer than you thought you would."
Me: Hmm. How long did I think I'd live? 80? 90? Old for sure.
Her: "And you'll be successful. You're very creative. But your success won't come as soon as you think it will. You're going to be frustrated."
Me: I paid $10 for this...she's right, I am spending too much money.
Her: "You have to be patient."
Me: She can see all that and not see that I'm a totally impatient person.
Her: "In the last five years you've experienced a significant loss. Did someone close to you pass away or something? You're sad and worried. You don't sleep well for all the worrying."
Me: "Actually I sleep pretty well." Even in different beds every few days.
Her:"There is someone in your life who is a negative influence. YOu have a lot of close friends and family, but there is someone who is more of an acquaintence who is negative...it's like that person is jealous and doesn't want to see you succeed. Though it might not even be a conscious thing, that person's negativity is impacting you."
Me: "Can you see a name or something? Can you tell me more about the person."
Her: "I don't know the name, but you should be careful. You are a positive person, even with your sadness, you still live and act in a positive way, but you must be careful of other people's energy."
Me: "You see all that from looking at my hand?"
Her: "Well I also read your aura. Oh, and that guy you're with...it's not gonna work out. You haven't had very good luck with love. I don't really see it working out. Maybe in five years or so...maybe, but I don't see that very clearly."
Me:Maybe it's just time for me to go. "Thanks."
I decide not to get the Crystal healing or the past life reading. Maybe the palm reading was enough.
I look at my palm and wonder if it reads like a subway map filled with different routes, but with fixed destinations, points of fate that cannot be moved or tempted? Another mystery to ponder while getting lost in New York. Naw. Time to go to DC.
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