A funny thing happened on the way to the G train this morning.

But first this: I was 16 on my own, on a train in Italy, listening to an eclectic mix of music on my walkman.  Appropriate to the time, the mix included Nirvana, and inappropriate to my age it also included Pavarotti.  As the initial swells of the tenor's Nessun Dorma played I looked out the window...I felt so alone. So in love with being alone. With the tumult of  adolescent thoughts swirling within, I looked out at Italy rolling by and saw a sign, it read: Modena.

I did not take this. But it's pretty, no?

Pavarotti's birthplace.

A sledgehammer couldn't  have put it more succinctly: Helen, you are exactly where you should be.

I felt that same rush of realization at 19, reading Howard's End when I, again on a train, rolled into Waterloo Station just as I read that the character, Margaret, was doing the same.

Later in life I met a quirky guy who told me not to ignore such things. That to celebrate these coincidences, revel in them, write about them, read into them, is to live your life like a poet.  An echo to an earlier lesson that being beats doing. Being beats doing. (An ethos that to this day has ruined me as a writer, prolific in the blankness of my pages.) Being a poet, beats writing the poems.

I did take this. Somewhere by Harris Ranch on the 5.

Driving up the 5 freeway - LA to San Francisco - one brutal summer day, I had a thought and with it, a crushing feeling.  Preceding the road trip,  I had engaged in lots of asshole behavior...I'd hurt people who didn't deserve it and on the road, I had hours to think about the ruin I had wrought.  The San Joaquin Valley - the fecund agricultural heartland of California - was brown, bone dry...like my little dust bowl heart, the stupid poet in me said. Cracked. Unforgiven. Woe is motherfucking me. And through tears I fancied myself this lonely romantic...I am that horned beast leonard cohen sang about.  That's me.  And as if the universe needed to put a finer point on the matter,  an 18 wheeler truck flew by hauling what this all actually was.  You are not dirt, Helen, you are not good enough for dirt.  You, Helen, are a wrecking ball, capable of knocking down buildings, you stupid stupid girl. Havoc, is a euphemism for what you do.  Look at this wrecking ball. Reflect. 

As a poet one has no choice but to accept these judgments.

The universe can be vague at times, but not on that day. No, on that day she was one blunt bitch, all up in my grill.  And I cried four more hours until I arrived in San Francisco and rested/wrested my sorrows into a glass of whiskey.

But getting back to the original point - the universe was telling me something else that day, aside from the pity party I was all wrapped up in, the universe chimed in with a sign. That wrecking ball on the back of that flat bed truck was telling me... Helen, you are exactly where you are and maybe even need to be, but this is where you are. Deal with it.  So I did.

Whoa. I digressed there a little bit. 

The G train is exactly a 10 minute walk from my house.  I make it longer because I tend to walk while reading a book or magazine or listening to podcasts.  I do it to block out the madness of all the construction going on around me.  The Atlantic Yards was a disused train depot but is now fast on the way to becoming a basketball arena and I have to cross it daily.  Its hard to block out a basketball arena being built in your eyeline...but I try.

I'm 3 months away from being 35.  Lost are the romantic notions of being and doing and looking through the rosy tint of poet spectacles.  Long settled are my wrecking ball ways.  A stasis of comfortable living and pay checks and summer holidays cloud the yearning for these things.
Everything is sort of alright.  But this morning, as I ambled toward the train that would take me to my desk job, I was reminded of my former life of 'being a poet'.  Stevie Wonders's Golden Lady shuffled onto my ipod and I looked up, smiling, because how could that song not make you smile...and I looked into the store front I was passing. A book caught my eye...Little Stevie Wonder.

And I thought about all those little moments...growing up into me, when I let it all in and how I was shocked by the coincidences and how I felt like I was living in the verses of a poem.  And I was reminded that if I kept my eyes open, I was still right there in the rhyme and meter of it all.

Anyway, I was late to work.  But fuck it. I'm a poet.

average morning, walking to the g train.

There are New York mornings when you can traverse miles and miles, on foot and by train, and not talk to a single person. Surrounded by the multitudes equally unimpressed by the brand new day, you just blend in and play background. Its ok, because you haven't had your morning coffee yet and to have to speak would probably pull a muscle. This morning however several people spoke to me, no matter that they were conversations so mundane that when I list them here you'll be angry you read this far.

Not 3 feet from my door a Park Slope Mom was getting ready to take her child to school. She was asking her what she would like to eat...cheese stick? Graham crackers? An apple? The child who did not like her choices and was probably waiting for her perfect size 4 mom to offer up a marshmallow, did not reply. I wanted to scream at her: don't give the child a choice! TELL her, here's your apple. Eat it. Anyway, that was only somewhat of a digression because no one spoke to me, but it does illustrate why my "ire" level had been raised.

Soon enough though, I would be disarmed by the kindness of strangers. Shortly after that exchange, I stopped into my local bakery and got myself a morning coffee. As I reached over another costumer to get milk then the simple syrup I simmered with a silent rage...the other customer was quietly measuring out her splenda packet into her coffee. Exactly half a pack. As I attempted to roll my eyes to myself, without prompting, she handed me a lid and a straw. Exactly what I needed to get on my way and start my day. Such a nice thing to do. We exchanged a few nicey nices and I was on my way. A block from the cafe, a couple stopped me and handed me my jacket that I hadn't noticed i had dropped a few feet away. Thanks, I said. They both smiled, your welcome. Small, yes, but I felt like something had shifted in the universe. 3 pleasant people in a row.

random picture of my mom walking down Park Place, towards 5th Avenue

Now it was my turn, a man looking bewildered on the corner of where about 8 streets converege. Flatbush, Atlantic, Dean, Pacific, 5th Ave, who knows what else. Which way is 4th he asked and I answered, helpfully. It had all come full circle. New York had made me mad then softened me up, and then I gave my share of goodness. All this before I even got on the subway. On the way to work I pondered all this and smiled quietly to myself. I am a part of all this. And that guys would be lost with out me and that jacket would be lost with out that couple and that coffee would have spilled had that lady not though for me in the blue sky bakery.

I'm pretty sure that mom was useless though. Also fairly certain that the kid is gonna grow up to be a dick.