PINTA PARADE

 

He’d still talk about it-yes. Still be able to recall with fondness what New York City felt like as he flew over it. Tell his children and Beth and Jenny’s children about that contest he won, many moons ago. Talk about the slants and stalks and shadow’s that New York City becomes as you fly over it-hovering above it on a pekowski gray day, thick curtain strands of clouds occluding any chance of the sidewalk getting smashed by even a hint of sunlight. Then, suddenly, it happens, just as you are saying goodbye, Mark-Andrew in another vector of the airport, wine dandled in his arms like a papoose; just then it hits you that you are leaving-going, departing. It hits you that you will never again see these individuals again. It hits you as loneliness hits you, cold sobs and terse nightmares and buckled above now, in the same vessel deporting Chris and Justin and somewhere Heath, you are going to a place that is now longer your home because you address is the planet. London was simply a jaunt down the avenue, a hop over a puddle, a brush down the gravel road. You feel at home anywhere you go-regard the earth, as a casket for your bones, so you feel that whichever side of it you stand on it, you are being viable, adding something, imbibing copious amounts of hydrogen and oxygen, feasting off of invisible bacteria moment by moment, your skin shielding you against unwarranting intruders. The stars dictating your movements. You are now a citizen of the earth. And you think about this as you recall your voyage home form NYC; tell Beth and Jenn’s (presumably precocious and indefinitely musical) prodigies that about the airport in Newark, asserting your raconteur skills to good use as you describe LaGuardia as stale coffee with excessive cream that is hastily beginning to turn. Describe the way (with your arms parting like Moses) the way the clouds smeared and drifted apart and how you saw New York as a fortress which just seemed to go on and on like an endless gray cornfield and, flying over it, you realized that Chicago, in all of it’s grandeur had nothing on NYC. Absolutely Nothing. The next thing you know the clouds have parted and the city has dissipated and the sun stares down at you form four miles above the sidewalk, beating hard. Justin, behind you, playing with the nipple that exerts the rush of air. Squinting hard in the reflection you can make out mark-Andrew, his narrative. You can see Harmony chewing lunch with her mouth closed, cutting her food up in petite shrimp sized parcels before spooning them through her lips. Sam, on yet another plane, the counselors, waving teary goodbyes as well. Trevor Vernon and Sir Charles with their cologne husk anticipating graduation in less than two weeks. There will be Manual. The thought of college will not arrive for three years and even when it does it will not be taken very seriously. You’ll have devoured books like Saturn snaps the neck off a preemie.  You’ll have colored sunsets in ink and dialogue. You’ll have created your own labyrinth that will keep you psychologically at bay, an albatross, water being everywhere around you, only you’ve been heavily drunk off the most sapient, succulence of the most sweetest wine….