It's strangely quiet tonight and sleep has again refused me. I'm denied entrance to the realm of sweet dreams and tight sleeps where the bed bugs don't bite and the boogie man doesn't lurk in the closet or under the bed. I'm denied entrance perhaps, to the realm of a great nightmare, where even if it is an adventure with Poe or Kreuger, at least I won't hear the familiar snore and the occassional grinding of teeth beside me.
I'm so envious of YOU-you who find it easy to fall asleep once you're in bed. How do you do it? I've tried many things but to no avail. Very rarely have I been afforded the natural state of falling sleep. Mine is an unnatural one--pills.
So here I sit rambling on hoping two things; firstly, that my mind will soon exhaust itself and the pills will kick in or vice versa. Secondly, that if I begin to "sleepwrite" that when or if you read this it will be somewhat logical.
Sometime later 1:57 am
I'm reminded of my high school years when I was known among friends as a vampire. An unusual nickname I thought back then, in the sense that unlike vampires I didn't sleep on schedule as soon as daylight broke. (guess I should mention that I've also never bitten anyone or drank blood--ever!)...
I'm grateful for the gentle breeze now ruffling the curtains by the window. The pair of them (the curtains,) are panicked--flapping wildly against the pane and, from what I could gather they bickered about having their skirt-tails held higher than normal by the breeze. I don't care though let them bicker.. I'm happy for the breeze. The respite from the scorching New York summer heat with the sun leaning on almost every New Yorker's back is great for a change..yay!
It was impossible to walk away, for under his gaze I was hypnotized. The life force within me, that delicate, intricate organ--my source of love, paused and rendered me breathless for a few fleeting seconds before the conducter announced the next stop.
This was not the first time we met like this by chance, and always at 96th street where simultaneously he embarked and I boarded the #3.
This time the train had paused too, for what seemed like nanoseconds and, on seeing each other we engaged in the same old silent ritual of staring into and through each other, oblivious to the others--the passengers who occupied our space.
An artist--Michaelangelo perhaps, might have rendered the scene in "Still-Life" had he been there. He once humbly explained of himself that he is not as great an artist as people say, for to him Art afterall, is everywhere; he merely reveals it.
This scene then; the chance meeting, the distant, desperate, silent conversation and frozen stares between two beings--He & I--in awe of each other, is etched in my mind like a work of Art. I throw cursory glances at it now as I write.
But only nanoseconds before the train departed and we went our seperate ways.
High above the rooftops in the neighborhood in which I live, hang hundreds of shoes on powerlines, from one post to the next. You can see them dangling by their laces sometimes in pairs or sometimes singularly, year in year out--season to season like now; scorched and worst for wear under the blazing eye of the New York summer sun.
If one observes closely, they are usually hung in lose proximity to each other, tons of them it seems like, in the sections in my neighborhood where children play basketball on the sidewalk by the corner bodegas, and where men gather outside all day long playing dominoes.
I've always wondered at this peculiar sight--it's as if exhibition of shoes have a statement to make. There are times when one or two find their way to the ground, as if having had enough of hanging around. Who hung them there? When? How? Why? are questions I always ask myself when on some days I bother to take more notice of them than on other days when I get on with life. Yet, the mystery of them until today at least, has always been a mystery etched in my mind.
Today I came upon an old man sitting on a wooden chair outside the corner bodega and I approached and asked him what the shoes meant by hanging there. He summoned someone from the store at which two men came out and to whom he posed the question in Spanish...soon the mystery of the dangling shoes was solved.
"We have put up many shoes" said one, "to honor the men, women and children who died in the streets. They are our friends and family" the other said as best he could in English. "I've seen my friend hit by a car, and a little girl fall out the window" he went on, "so we save their shoes and hang them late at night to remember them."
So if you my friend, who is reading this, ever happen to visit my neighborhood in West Manhattan in New York, and you come across shoes dangling from their laces high above the rooftops on powerlines and now on trees, and sometimes even a dead bird's freshly feathered body is wedged somewhere between remember, they are reminders of the dead and buried of the streets.
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Last modified: 9/13/09, 1:17 AM
