One Perfect Moment

July 10th, 2010

I had a beautiful night tonight. I walked from the West Side up to my East Side home. I let the music pour over me, the city fill my eyes in the fading light and God hold my hand and speak softly in my ear. I was still and peaceful, floating through my city and resting in my life.

I thought about all my treasures, all my people. I thought about the beautiful possibilities that keep being handed to me like extravagant gifts from a new lover. As though NYU wasn’t enough, as though being given the opportunity to chase my dream was enough, I am now being given the opportunity to live another old dream while doing so. I’m also being given the opportunity to love. It seems that when I say “thank you” and tell myself that what I have is enough, I am suddenly handed more than I could have ever dared to ask for.

I said, “A career is enough”. I said, “My friends are enough”. I said, “Being comfortable alone is enough”. Minnie is offering me the opportunity to chase a dream and live one simultaneously. He is giving me the opportunity to let someone love me, to trust. I had enough, yet I am being given so much more.

Neither is guaranteed, neither can be earned, they both must just be hoped for.
I was beginning to let the doubt and fear push Him into my heart like a knife. Today he gave me the reassurance I needed. He wants to move to New York. He wants to be with me. He is working on it and I trust him. He told me it would be a year or so, he asked me if I would wait for him that long. I simply said, yes. I did not ask him if he could wait that long, I didn’t even think to. I am learning to feel without fear. Accept and give boldly. I am learning to be strong even when my heart is in the open.

I am learning, I am learning so much. I am so afraid so much of the time. I am so afraid of my desires, so afraid of forgetting, so afraid of falling. I never knew I was so afraid. I am learning to live courageously; I am learning that the fear that is not the issue, just what you do with it. It is courage, not fearlessness I need. Fearlessness comes when you slay the dragon. Fearlessness comes when you look it in the eyes and walk strait through it, through it and into your desires.
I have these beautiful moments where the blindfold of the day to day battles is removed and I am able to see the shining splendor of my life. I was struggling, wondering whether the pain or the pleasure was the mirage; the pain seems so real sometimes. The radiance is real; the pain is merely passing through.

I watched the shining lights of the city drifting past me as we sped down the West Side Highway on our way from Hell’s Kitchen to the East Village. I was on my way to my third party of the evening with my best friend. I had spent the day with amazing, interesting people who were all vying for my time. I was on my way to celebrate the success of a beautiful artist who loves me and wants to share her victory with me. I knew the man I am falling in love with was dreaming about me and devising a plan to be with me. I knew that everything I wanted to be, I was starting to become. I knew that I was loved and savored by an amazing array of people. I knew that I lived in the most glamorous city in the world. I knew that I was living the dream. It was stunning.

My story is being written, it is building in an amazing arc. I have trouble beginning in childhood, I’m not sure if it is relevant to the story anymore. It may have begun in November 2001 when I sat in the CU Denver library, e-mailing a recruiter for the US Army.

I grew up on the bases of Ft. Jackson, Eustis, Bragg and Campbell. I was lost and found in the Deserts of Iraq. I died in Oak Grove, Kentucky. I began to come back to life in Atlanta, Georgia. I jumped from a burning ship into the dark arms of the unknown as I drove north. I fought my way out of Newark and into New York City. I wandered the city, like a lost child, until I decided the only way to find home was to build it. I transformed an angry, lonely, desperately ordinary life. I grew a community, fostered an army of friends, and created an adventure. I found my passion and I found a way to chase it. I let go of security and embraced freedom. I took every chance. I have the life I once dreamed about. I have a romance writing itself, that I myself never could have written. I have a career building around me. I have little control, but that is teaching me how to hope. It is terrifying to have so much to gain and so much to lose. Who knew that the greatest leap of faith would be living the life I fantasized about?

Hemingway was right, I own it all. I own it with each keystroke and each image I absorb. I looked at the beautiful apartment in the West Village, and it was mine. I looked at the Eames chair on 6th Avenue and it belonged to me. I looked at the giants and apartments I had seen on television, rising up before me, and I possessed them. All I seek to keep locked-up close to my heart, are those I cannot own. I desperately cherish the only assets that matter to me: the players in this story. My best friend, my crazy characters, my sisters, my someday lover. In a way they belong to this page like all the rest, but there is simply no substitute for their flesh and bone and voices. That is the story I am really trying to write, the one in which they will all belong to me forever. The story in which I can share this amazing menagerie with those who can only live this life through the pages I write. I want to write a story to feed the soul of the woman I once was. That story drives me, as I live it I try desperately to capture it before it passes through my fingers like fine sand.

I do want to clutch someone to me. I have felt the familiar desire lately to have a character who lives and breathes and will be mine in more than typeset alone. I want my love to be transformed from a fantasy to a reality. I want this romance to exist in this world where anything is possible; I want it to be the proof. I want to touch him, I want to hold him in my arms, knowing that he doesn’t not belong to me, but fought to be embraced by me nonetheless. In short, I want the love story, the fairytale, to come true. I want to slay cynicism with that long awaited kiss. No, it is not a ring and a happy ending I deeply, deeply long for: it is a happy beginning. It is desire fulfilled, it is tragedy overcome.

These are the two gifts I am terrified to reach for. It is these two dreams I need to bravely embrace.

The only way to live in a dream is to let go, open your arms, and let it swirl effortlessly around you. As soon as you try to grasp it, you will be left clutching yourself in anxiety. I must let go of security and fall into the freedom of living with wild abandon. That is the only way to truly live the dream.

I was wrong. It is not a matter of free falling. The key is to love every minute of the present and believe in your heart that whatever you lose will be replaced with something even more perfect for the next moment of your life. Faith, faith in the goodness of God and life. Bad things happen, but the most beautiful things can be just on the other side of the desolate hill. Perhaps that is why I love the Iraq of my memories. The beauty amidst the desolation is what hope is built on.