Two Sundays ago, I had gone to sleep the night before at some ridiculous hour approaching dawn as I so often do on Fridays and Saturdays—which really is a terrible habit, but time just seems to disappear from me those nights—and I awakened in the early afternoon to slanted beams of sunshine that lit the white walls of my room with long angular planes of light. It was a welcome change, as the days preceding had been overcast and wet.
          I left the house soon after with vague plans to spend the day in a nearby café several blocks away, but the weather was so warm and golden that I turned right on 10th instead of going straight, and found myself in Prospect Park. I walked along a dirt path that cut and curved through the park grounds, keeping under the expansive stretches of shade cast by small scattered groves tall and rich with foliage, and after a while, stepped off the path and into the grass and walked until I came across a small hill, where I kicked off my sandals and sat down. I decided to spend the afternoon there, in the generous shade of an enormous tree whose long outstretched branches sank with the weight of its thousands of leaves that rippled and shimmered in the sun like millions of little feathers.  >> Continue reading..

          Two more have taken the dive and made the well-traveled migration from Point A to New York City, the land for the restless and hungry. She is my oldest, dearest friend, and he is her fiancé, one of the nicest, most genuine people I know: they have said goodbye to their families, to San Francisco, to their beautiful apartment with the bay windows, and flown three thousand miles eastward. Now they are living out of suitcases and duffel bags and sleeping on the small grey sofa-bed in my room while they wait for next week when they can move into the apartment that will be their new home in Brooklyn.
          It is nighttime now, and I am sitting by the small wooden countertop in my kitchen, trying to keep quiet; they are both asleep already, because she is a morning person and likes to get up early and because he loves her and is accommodating to bizarre preferences. I am not a morning person, although sometimes I think I could be if I tried, and so I am here still, wide awake at this late hour when the house is at its most quiet and dark, not yet willing to go to bed.
          I have been such a solitary person this past year that it is a little disorienting to suddenly have close friends who are nearby and who are not leaving after a week or two but staying for good. I have gotten used to being by myself wherever I go, and although I have met people here whom I would call friends, I’ve become used to feeling alone, even when I am not. It feels strange now to come home and have people there to chat with and to listen to and to talk with about the day—and my mouth feels to me slow and clumsy from disuse when I share aloud thoughts and ideas and observations that have grown used to keeping inside.  >> Continue reading..