rambling about the ocean...etc.

I've spent two days sneezing, coughing, sleeping. So much for all my great plans for the weekend. I did not watch people at Union Square, Chinatown nor the coffee shop at seventy-something and Lexington. I did not go to the ocean at Rockaway Beach which even if it is not my ocean is better than no ocean at all. I'm burning vanilla & mango incense in the room with the window open and the chilly air coming in so my bed and the air in general won't smell like sweat and sickness, and maybe if the air is at least from outside I can pretend that somewhere in the haze of city smells I can almost find a clean ocean smell to make me feel well. I think that's one of two things I miss the most about home vs. NY, you can forget the ocean here. I mean NYC is a couple islands really and you'd never know it. At home you couldn't forget it, or at least I couldn't but maybe it's just me. There the ocean was in the coffee, the rain, the wind, in the easy tidal flow of conversations, in the way the clouds would go foam colored, in tears when I cried. But here rain, wind, talk, tears, whatever, aren't the ocean, they're just themselves, and it's a relief sometimes to finally feel free of the pull of the tide in everything, but sometimes it was nice to have at least that guidance when you felt lost. Here there's just city, but city disconnected from anything besides people, and all the people disconnected from each other. Every so often I dream of being hugged and it's the strangest thing to remember. Back home everyone hugged, or maybe just we did, the Coffeehouse people and the drama kids. Here the only person who hugs me with any frequency (by which I mean he's hugged me at least twice) is Rick and when he hugs me I feel like he's about to take me by the shoulders, shake me, and yell, "Devil, get thee from this girl!" *shrug* I don't know. I guess it's something I've gotten used to. I was startled by hugs when I went home for spring break, and when Jade came to visit. When Jade was here he said something about swimming and I realized I haven't swam since August, a strange thing after being in the pool nearly everyday for three years, and every second or third day for most of my life before that. I learned to swim before I could walk, and when I was old enough I was a lifeguard and taught swimming lessons. There was a little girl--Sarah--I taught her how to float in level one, up to trying to perfect her crawl stroke in level five last summer. I wonder if she'll be gone. I think missing people like that is worse--the people you may not see again--, worse than the coffeehousers like Y with his eyes shining like stars from whatever he is mixing with his blood this week, and Dawe with his photos of naked women being fairys, goddesses, spirits, muses, and Em always with five new bands to tell me about and five new guys in love with her, and Stef who can make anything grow anywhere who just got married to a grinning skinny giant when they'd both said they'd never get married again, and Marianne who owned the house and loves New York and told me not to be afraid of it and puts my postcards on the fridge next to the picture of five of me that Dawe made on his computer. ...ok...so...gonna go write a paper... "Don't tell me to look at myself. I know that I don't exist." -Fiction Plane