a year ago
Oh, let me tell you.
The car was going too fast. Uncomfortable in my heavy winter coat and scarf (my hat pulled down a little too far) and a little winded from gossiping with Becca, I gasped as the car zipped over the ridge and the city unfolded before me. I've felt this before. There's a point on the train ride between Newark and Penn Station, when New York and Queens unfold like old fashioned theater sets. The hazy cardboard cut out skyline in the far back, and the houses and bridges of Queens slide in and out of the view. City streets wind and disappear, in tune with the sweep of sunset and spotlights.
Swaddled in winter clothes, I saw it in my hometown and gasped. "It's beautiful!" I said to Becca.
"What the hell are you talking about? It's a bunch of street lights. And a gas station." she replied, and I felt a little crushed. I wanted her to see it.
"You know, the hills. If you look past the street lights. They're beautiful," I said. She said "Yeah, I guess," before returning to the gossip at hand.
But the thing is, I wasn't just talking about the crushed blue velvet of the hills past the river. They are very beautiful, but I was talking about the skyline of the town, folding apart like a pop up book. I was talking about the stop lights and street lamps set against a pink sky. I was talking about the whole scene, and I wanted her to see it.
You notice things about Connecticut when you leave it. I find myself staring out the corner of the car, wondering if I ever saw that field or that post, if I ever noticed the alleys and pink dusted hills. They really did look as though they were covered in dusty pink color, as though the color were flaking off the trees into the atmosphere.
I know I risk sounding very goofy or foolish in all of this, or as excited as a new puppy tumbling about in an alien world. Mostly, though, I feel quiet and pensive about it. I notice it as long as I'm quiet. The cities unfold for me, all I have to do is watch.
---
It all happened about a year ago. When I think about it, I usually start to cry. I mostly remember the intense clarity of light, blinding and painful but brilliant at the same time. Here lives a New England type of coldness, and it left me brittle and fragile. It is the coldness of the granite outcroppings (iceberg like in their ability to hide so much weight under the surface) and of the muffled silence. No one touches anyone else in New England.
Now that I beam smiles and laugh often, people don't recognize me. They tell me that they love my laugh. And I think I've discovered that I can love my laugh and love New England at the same time, that they can coexist without any worlds imploding.
2000-12-31, a year ago
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