Times Square

Listening to “Jealous of the Moon,” by Nickel Creek. One of George’s favorite songs. I am alone in a hotel in Times Square. You’ve come too far to turn around now.  It’s snowing down there, back home. Little bit here too, but I must be too close to the water for the heavy stuff. George was loading wood onto his wheelbarrow to build a fire when I called him. It made me feel so darn far away. So far from home. Lonely. This song seems to put even more space between me and the world. You’re back where you started from.

I’m debating on whether or not to go down in the lobby and deal with millions of people. I feel claustrophobic. Over-stimulated. When I look out the window here all I see are a gazillion dots. Car dots. People dots. Window dots. Dots inside a million dot windows. Snowflake dots. Blinking pixel dots. Light bulb dots. M&M dots. Coca Cola dots.  I have to close the curtain to block out the dots.

And I hear the hum buzz of the generators and beep honk of the traffic below. You drag your pretty head around- sware you’re gonna drown. There’s nothing you can do.

I tipped the bellhop a crinkled up five dollar bill. He actually unfolded it in front of me, looked at it as if it were a rolled up, dirty napkin and put it in his pocket, in disgust. Welcome to New York.

As I look at all the bright blinking lights down below where all the stars make their bread and butter I am shocked and amazed that there are people in the world that actually enjoy this glitzy crap. Like Tim. He’s going out tonight to jam in some rehearsal hall in Astoria. Out in the cold. Out in this mess. Catching a taxi. Sucked into the abyss of dots. He’s becoming a dot! Oh god. Am I dot?! 

(A circle is an infinite number of corners. The opposite of an infinite number of corners would be no corners….which could also be a circle. Therefore, the opposite of a circle is a circle. The opposite of dot is a dot.)

Anyway, I said goodnight to my boys. And to my mother. And I decided that we aren’t going anywhere tonight. Despite all Tim’s tips on great bars in the Village. I’m thinking, “like hell.” I’m not leaving this place until the symposium is over. I’m putting on my ugly girl pajamas. Reading my torn-up copy of  Paint It Black. And holding on to my hard lines of identity.  I refuse to leave this room only to get sucked up into the chaos so some paranoid, claustraphobic suburbanite looking out her hotel window can see me down below and say, “Oh, look! A dot.”