The Easily Seen End

It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was. 
- Joan Didion, “Goodbye To All That”

We’re leaving New York. And so it begins, the goodbye. The swift departure from and lingering analysis of everything I’ve known for so long.

This, I promise you, is not an attempt to emulate Joan in the middle of my thirties; this is not because of promises unkept, or Washington Square at dawn. I could never say my goodbyes as well or as eloquently as she said hers, but saying them is what I have to do. This, I promise you, has been coming for a long time.

You can see the clues if you look hard enough: the places where my heart bursts lie outside the five boroughs, the places where it aches often lie within. It goes as far back and as deep as some of the very first posts on this blog.

I'd much rather sit on the edge of lush forest, smelling the dirt on my hands, overturning rocks to find pill bugs, than to be sat on a park bench listening to the hum of humanity just beyond the thin line of trees. 

My heart, it seems, has always been at the bottom of a ravine in Ohio, just waiting for me to come back and pick it up.

New York: you were a torrid love affair. You were debonair and dashing, flashing me your billion-dollar skyscraper smile, tossing me into cabs and whisking me off to dinner in one of your many crowded, lauded restaurants. But you had mistresses, millions of others who you let roam your streets. They too talked about their love for you as if it wasn't just the two of us alone here. It's never just the two of us alone. The polyamory of living in you with eyes and ears wide open absorbing the sound of ladies humming to themselves on park benches, falling in love with the peach sky and the gray asphalt and the sound of bike wheels and sirens and someone calling out into the night. You made my hair go gray with your infidelities. I fought you and I wrestled with you and then one day when I thought I couldn’t take any more of you, you’d turn up on my doorstep with a bouquet of springtime blossoms and an invitation to a show. You’d take my hand and beckon me to sit on a blanket in your parks and all was forgiven. I danced in your streets and ate your food with howling ecstasy. I got lost in you once or twice. The sun rose over you and set upon you and you were all I thought I needed to know even when I knew I’d never be with you forever.

New York: it’s not you; it’s me.

I can’t help but wonder if like all ex-lovers, you too will boil down to nothing more than a small nugget of memories, if the scent of you will fade from my clothes, if the notion of you in my mind will be reduced to a shoebox of photographs showing What Once Was. I will wonder how your musical tastes really influenced mine.

I’m leaving many love letters behind. Tear-stained, torn in places where the memories are too raw. Perfumed with the scent of a deep dark tunnel at the height of the summer heat. The writing more urgent in places where I was head over heels.

There’s still time for goodbyes, New York. There’s still some sitting in your parks to do, some remembering to be done to Herald Square. A few weeks left of pastrami on rye, of your clickety-clack subway trains outside our window like a serenade.

And then.

And then?

The moment it ends.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Comments

[jen]

aw, I thought I had lots of time to get to know you better. I wish you the best on your new journey! Looking forward to seeing new things through your eyes on flickr.

[wendy]

While New York must be sad, the midwest will be oh-so-happy to have you home. Make sure you get here in time for Farm Day! (October 8th.)