Lonely Lovely Road

It’s January 6, 2024. I’ve been in northern Arizona for two months. I took some work here, let it be a long slow transition moving from my place in Brooklyn to somewhere else in New York. I don’t know where yet.

This trip has changed me in ways I am not aware of yet. It was hard. I haven’t slept well. I got lost in the forest. I felt more alone than I have ever felt in my entire life. I was sad to leave my people in New York behind (even though I love my people here). I let go on a deeper level the idea of who my Mom is, of who I am. I let go of death. I caught something on the plane on the way here. My lungs hurt for three weeks. I caught Covid for the new year. I didn’t take any of the fun psychedelics offered to me. I didn’t drink fine wine. I hiked in the pines. I hiked in the red rocks. I had an unexpected gentle conversation with an ex-lover about the last days of our mothers’ lives. I looked at the stars. I saw the moon wax and wane and wax again. I listened to coyotes. I smelled the rain on the earth. I smelled the cold. I met a woman who told me I have wings.

I tried to share the sounds, the smells, the views with my friends back home. I felt excited. I felt silly. I felt vulnerable. I don’t know why this makes me feel so sad. 

Maybe it’s the transition of everything. I feel my way of being changing. I watched the sky – the nights grew visibly longer and visibly shorter again. 

I will be going home soon. I was thinking about all the friends I have back east who I never thought I was gonna see again. The people who helped me learn how to live when I was just a kid, even if they were only on the sidelines. so many of them were just kids, too! John, Debbie, Tim, Luke, Julie, Miriam, Caitlyn, Christian, Lach, Bob, Maggie, Richard, Emily, Jenny, Wayne, Alice, Chris, Johnny, Elizabeth, Pamela, Geordie. So many more.

Some people I won’t see again, some are gone, some I see regularly now.

I’ve spent sixty days in the desert — it feels like it has been twenty days too long. There is nothing I can do about that now but allow myself to imagine there is a reason. More will be revealed.

I get to talk to some ghosts. I get to cut more strings, clear the way for myself.

I get to move forward now with the love and delight I wanted to move with when I was young. I’ve been around now for a while, it’s time. I’m gonna love. Just gonna be love and let people know I appreciate them and love them. 

That’s why the people who were on the sidelines are so important to me now. They saw my big heart, but knew I had to see it for myself. And they were figuring out their own hearts, too. 

I’m excited to go back to my community of artists and poets and musicians and lovers and freaks. I am so grateful I can go home. 

I almost moved back to New York in 2013. A few things fell apart all at once and my plans changed. Rather than moving to Brooklyn, I found myself back in Flagstaff after leaving an all-consuming relationship that took me to Phoenix (hell on earth) and bankrupted me of everything – my integrity, my dignity, my money, my hope. I dissolved myself in a codependent hell that has taken a decade to dig myself out of. I had to rebuild everything, and it begin with whatever I could fit into a rented pick up truck.

Looking back, I think that some power greater than myself kept me in Arizona for another eight years.

I needed to stay away from my family. I needed to not be there for my sister’s fatal drug overdose that was a long time coming. I needed to be in my body, in the fresh air. I needed to learn how to mountain bike and ride and ride and ride and race and be an athlete. I needed to camp in the cold woods. I needed to be alone. I needed to try and try and try to fill myself up with all these things to understand that no matter what – I am an artist, I am a musician, I am a writer. I needed to find art again. I needed to find music again. I needed to find humility. I needed to be in a place where people didn’t know me for who I “used to” be. I needed to be in a place where I could explore different aspects of myself and completely fall flat on my face (and I did – right over my mountain bike handlebars and into a ravine) and get up and go again. 

And I needed to make friends here, too.

And I did.

And I needed to hug trees. 

I found a lot of freedom with my bicycle and the forest. Gliding on single track, through the trees and grasses and rocks, so much of my view was interwoven with memories of New York City. My way of being is tempered with all I learned – being on stage, art school, yoga, Chinatown, the Lower East Side, squatting, spiritual teachings from myriad angles, going to parties and sitting with my black book and writing because I was too shy to talk, going to parties and dancing because the music was so good, going out to get milk and coming home two hours later just cuz I said “hello” to everyone I knew, talking about art, music, writing, the process of it all, doing the art, music, writing, feeling like I was a part of something . . . 

And now I need to go back home. And let that freedom I found in the forest weave it’s way into my being, too.

A long time before I knew I would be back in New York, over ten years ago, I thought about all those people on the sidelines and understood how important they were to me when I saw that Maggie Estep had died. I wrote this on February 13, 2013, it’s an excerpt from a post called Awake, Alive.

from – Awake, Alive, February 13, 2013

I saw that Maggie Estep died. I felt knocked out, blank, cold.

Maggie was a poet, novelist, and spoken word artist. Maggie was someone who was a part of my world when I lived in the East Village – on the periphery, yes – but still part of it. While she was able to express her rage, I was navigating my anger and sexuality quietly (and I still scared the shit out of men).

I am grateful for her, for her ability to say things I tended to keep more private.

As I was cycling home, I realized that there are a lot of people who were pivotal in (saving) my life during that time (the 90s) in New York – and so many of those people who were important to my development as a writer and artist and loving human being – I will never see them again.

There I was, pedaling slowly up the mesa, into the sunset, with cars flying past me and tears streaming down my face.

I felt awake, and more alive than I have felt in a long while.

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I’m an Emotional Idiot So Get Away from Me

Hey Baby

Maggie Estep & The Spitters – Skid Row Wine

January 6, 2024
Flagstaff, AZ