YCD, this is yours, wherever the heck you are.

january 1995. tokyo, japan.
on a layover from bangkok, we wait in narita airport. our return flight is delayed; no reasons are provided the passengers. we are traveling in a large group. we tie our backpacks together, take turns walking around the terminal in pairs and threes, kill time by playing a card game whose rules i can't remember. gazing out our glass enclosure, we spy mount fuji in the distance. moments before exhausted by three weeks climbing pagodas and trawling the red-light district, we're now edgy, restless, taunted by the thought of being stranded in a world we won't get the opportunity to explore.

five hours later, maybe more, all our liquids are confiscated as we get one step closer to boarding. due to an apartment fire in manila two weeks earlier, authorities have uncovered a plot that would have resulted in the explosion of up to eleven u.s. aircraft departing narita on this day--an early phase of ramzi yousef's project bojinka. we get home in one piece, and i've still not been any closer to mount fuji.

august 1995. new york city, usa.
at midnight when we close the theater, we change our clothes and meet in the parking lot at midland beach. so many of us, in concentric circles of cliquedom, all but few loyalties shifting with the sand. but keri wants to dance tonight, and i'm with her. if we leave now, we'll hit the dance floor just as things get interesting. then we can lose everyone else in the crowd, and the darkness, and the trance.

july 1996. new york city, usa.
at work. again. i've stopped counting the hours, but i continue to think. if i have to change one more tank of CO2, count out one more cash register, or inventory one more case of straws, i just. might. kill someone. i can't believe they let barely-post-adolescents run this place. yet every major tenet of management that i will find valuable in the next decade, i learn here.

the next day.
lollapalooza music festival, randall's island arena. thousands upon thousands upon thousands stream in. a humid new york city summer day. metallica. the ramones. and some good younger bands, like rancid and the screaming trees, as a bonus. baggy pants and ripped jeans, goths and ravers and hip-hop kids. i wonder which locales of which multi-billion-dollar conglomerates they'd been running yesterday--whose doors they will unlock tomorrow morning without having slept.

april 1998. london, england.
i climb the steps on the monument in trafalgar square. marble beneath me, i mentally commune with the inanimate admiral nelson. then i gaze at big ben and think, "it's big ben. do i really need to get any closer?" just now, i'd rather watch the pigeons, and the people relaxing or strolling under the momentarily clear sky. i wonder how many of their paths might have crossed mine elsewhere, or might yet again, on some ordinary day in the future.

july 2001. key west, usa.
there's a tremendous, gnarled willow near the hemingway house. i run my fingers over one of the knots on its trunk, wondering how long the tree has lived before me, for how long it might continue after me, and how soon it will be before i see it again.

june 2004. fiesole, italy.
seated high in an ancient amphitheater, i look down upon the outdoor stage installed for the summer festival. its modernity--sleek and black and minimalist--contrasts starkly with the curves of the cypresses and the richness of color in the small valley harboring the etruscan and roman ruins. paradoxically, the presence of the stage, the curtains--the lights, even--doesn't seem paradoxical at all. this amphitheater is what spectacle was; and that stage is what spectacle is; and i want both their spirits in my work. i survey the performance area, imagining all i could do with a theater like this, all i could bring to life on that stage.

july 2004. bayonne, usa.
a native new yorker never can head south without seeing a familiar face. i board a caribbean-bound cruise ship expecting to encounter at least a dozen people i know. it turns out that two people at my dinner table share my zip code, yet not a face on board do i recognize. certainly, someone aboard this ship must have crossed my path at least once before. but who?

and who else might have missed such a crossing by moments or minutes, days or decades; treading the same steps, yet never at the same time; harboring the same spirit, yet never in the same hemisphere?

Borrowed Words

It is as if I’ve always known you. The way the details fall into place—the tilt of your head, the line of your back, the crisscross of your arms folded in front of you. I watch you walk and know it is you. "Oh, THERE you are," I think. But I have never seen you walk before this day.

I think I am imagining things, the way I am imagining history to fill in the crevices—places you’ve been, places you’ve loved, the things you love to do. Songs you sing when no one’s listening, songs you sing in your sleep. Until they turn out to be true. This is more than imagining. “I know exactly who you are,” you tell me. I don't doubt it.

I have always known you. I know it, but somehow don’t believe it. Without you. I don’t believe it without you. With you, there is no question; without you, it is lost. Because I am afraid. What I don’t admit: I want someone to tell me it is more than just imagining. No one else can. The hints between two people who have known each other all their lives but only just recently met seem obvious to only them. No one else can really know this. No one speaks that language they share.

You’d tell me, if I’d ask. But I don’t. It’s not something I know how to ask. The words aren’t there. And in those moments when I could try, when you're listening, there's no need.

A heartfelt thank you to the insightful people from whom I borrowed the italicized lines. Cupcake and Brandon, if only I could sing on key, I'd serenade you both.