by jamie tworkowski

"Should we even wonder why our hearts are torn, why our image is based on this broken city? Should we ask ourselves why our lungs breathe in sickness? Innocence is seen as weakness." - from "The Falling Kind" (song) by Vedera.

New York City, like life, is full of contrast. A man with no home is asleep outside a store. The store sells blue jeans for $300 and I am walking by, alone, hiding in headphones. I notice a small spot of blood on the man's shoeless foot. There are tourists to my left and I'm certain we're all seeing the same thing. One of them offers his buddy fifty bucks to kiss the bleeding feet. They both laugh. The awful joke cuts through the song in my ears and I feel it in my stomach. I want to scream at them. I want to call them terrible names. I stay quiet. We keep moving. We go our separate ways.

I walk to Central Park, a peaceful eye in the middle of a giant skyline storm. Bright-lit buildings lean against truer beauty, the kind they can't compete with. Progress gives way to Creation in the Park. Rich men would sell it if they could, they would trade those trees for more cash, more buildings, more rent, but someone wise decided this place needed a park, a giant, beautiful park.

A couple in love is enjoying a picnic, a moment borrowed from some perfect movie. Nearby a woman sits in heated conversation with herself, stuck in a moment; still reaching for something she lost years ago. My path divides them, and I can't shake either scene. I want to be the couple. I want the woman to be healed. I don't know how to get to either place. My own heart is heavy. Head full of songs, I keep walking.

I walk to the new Apple store; it's entrance a strange daring glass box on Fifth Avenue, the store itself underground. I smile at the architecture, stare at the glass. I check my email and find that a friend has cancer. Meghan. My eyes fill with tears, I reach to call her, but I don't have her number. I dont know her well, only well enough to believe in her. I consider her kindness, that constant smile, her dreams of change, hope for Africa and romance and music, dreams for today and tomorrow. She is young and alive, and I cant wrap my head around this, the possibility that death might be breathing in her chest now, coming to take her. I don't know what to say. I start to type. I tell her I'm sorry, I say shes not alone, I tell her my too-many friends will be praying. I tell her she's brave. It's all brand-new but I already know she's brave.

I'm reminded what's important, reminded of humanity, this beautiful, painful confusing struggle-of-a-thing called life. Suddenly, the store I'm standing in is revealed ridiculous. The gadgets, the glass, the celebrity sightings, unnecessary, meaningless. I need to leave. I need to cry. I need to pray. For Meghan, for all of us, "a prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages", in sickness and in health, alone together, in such great need.

I will leave you with this from Sleeping at Last. This was with me like a friend this weekend: "Crooked mouth quiet down, let your fist come undone. Please carry love. Be reborn when we sleep. The Devil's arms are tight but the war that we're fighting has already been won."

(To be continued...) Thank you for praying for my friend Meghan.

P.S. / a hopefully humorous side note:
I finally bought that all-black Yankees hat. It's a bit too big for me and I guess I was feeling kinda hip-hop (?) so I wore it a little crooked (only a little) for my last few hours in the city. I was on my way to get a taxi last night, two blocks from Times Square, and I walked right past Ice-T (rapper/actor/getting older). He was wearing his crooked Yankees hat, seemed pretty impressed with me in mine.

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