I live in New York, New York, the city that never shuts up.

Ani Difranco, Cradle and All

I didn't know what to say when the
crazy guy who played the same
two chords on a harmonica
for coins in the park finally cracked.

He was carried away, pants around
his ankles, for humping the
bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi,
yelping like a
cowboy in freefall.

"Nigger don't wear pants!" he explained,
before beginning his final performance to
a sold out crowd.

"And the colored girls sing...!"
(wheee, honk)
(wheee, honk)
(wheee...)

before posted bail
in quarters and nickels and
wadded-up dollar bills.

When I was a child, there were three movies.

One had a mermaid.

One had a karate-chopping pig.

One had hounds of hell who awoke from stone statues.

And over and over and over, until memorized.

So: it was a magical mythical land. Its spires and sprawl no less defiantly impossible.

One day, to stand there, to see them. To know.

*

I came at the age of seventeen. From the ferry, I saw the Twin Towers. I knew. Here, was my density.

Now, another decade is past. And when I travel:

Stars and sky and sea and sand. Nothing but natural. Yet it unnerves me. As though something waits to descend. To intrude.

I've become an agoraphobe, crippled by civilzation.

I think I need to let go of too much everything.