the air conditioned (nightmare)

. We're
alive and shall be:cities may overflow(am
was)assassinating whole grassblades,five
ideas can swallow a man;three words im
-prison a woman for all her now:but we've
such freedom such intense digestion so
much greenness only dying makes us grow
(ee cummings)


Ok, so the Henry Miller title is a little extreme - lets call it a daymare - but seriously, summer in New York and I've never felt so goddamn cold. Here I am a month and a half later, the three week trip stretched (far too long) when I found out the searing pain in my jaw were my wisdom teeth crowding my too-tiny mouth. Though a year is not quite as extreme as Henry Miller's decade abroad, I can sympathize with his feeling of alienation in this country I grew up in, happy there as I can be at times.

The air inside is sharp with recycled cool, bossy, as if it's doing me a big favor sparing me from the wrathhful sun. Well thanks alot, but I think I prefer the wind outside, humid and hotdog scented as it may be. Everything is in neat little squares here: pockets of laundry or sewage smells, blocks of Russians in Brooklyn and Africans in Harlem, the old Jewish ladies in the Upper West Side, and square little dog parks for tidy little dogs. And ah, how smooth all the surfaces are - no rubble filled roads here, no hand-smoothed mud walls or stalls made out of old wicker mats. Yes, all the beds feel like clouds, and the grocery stores make my beloved Kita market look as lame as a lemonade stand. And then theres the pizza, bagels, sushi, tacos, cheese, cheese...

So sure, New York City can be wonderful in the summer. It puts on a beautiful face despite the humid days; free concerts in the park with wine hidden in paper cups, Michael Jackson tribute raves in the subway cars, galleries and museums, concerts on ferries. But then, without a warning, I soon found myself fluttering with stress. I trembled near the cell phones that refused to sit quiet, decisions of where to go and who to meet that filled me with guilt and that urgent feeling of short timelines. What I re-discovered, of course, was the familiar stress of frivolity, the privilege of picking which bar to spend our ready cash, what throw pillows will match the framed mirror. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I think we'd all be better off finding enough food to eat, but what I've really begun to see clearly is stress is everywhere, and always as real as you make it. But theres this new part of me that I felt clawing at my throat, the state of panic I felt at the huge department stores (I think the devil lives in the Palisades Mall), and try as I did to push away these hippie-fits, there they were. Sadness cried rhinestones, sat on thin toilet-seat protectors with the dark-skinned nannies as they pushed someone else's child. Oh, the tragedy of breast pumps.

I was able to get to DC for the Fourth to see my college friends. Of course it was oodles of fun, but as I looked around there it was again - though the families in practical fanny packs felt a little more comforting, I couldn't understand how these people could all be together waving the same $5 flags. Where is the passion, the need, the grasp? How can anyone hear their own thoughts in this sea of eyes on iPhones?

After, I took a trip up to the Catskills, and there I finally felt the paranoia subside. I forgot how green New York can be, how entertaining a watering hole. We sat by the creek with Kerouac asking ourselves how the Tao is unnameable if God is God, and it felt nice to be present in an outward sense, without vicarious internet or our outfit to notice. It stormed one night up there, the mountains silhouetted in purple as the bonfire raged on. I loved its defiance, so real as I held onto him, or Him, or the rain soaked air.

But back I go to Mali, and I'd be a liar if I didn't say how much I'll miss dear America, shopping and movies and cheese. It'll still be there, and maybe when I get back I can feel as alive under steel as I do under straw. Until then, goodbye air conditioning, you've tried your best!