The subway doors open and a toddler boards, pushed forward by her mother. I hop out of my seat, so they might sit, but the little girl, made much bigger by her puffy lavendar coat, does not want to sit. She wants to hold onto the pole with one hand, hold her half-eaten morning bun in the other, look up at me, blinking.

At my station the escalator is not running again, and so I run up the four flights of stairs to surface. Cross the street to say good morning to the old man who hangs out on the low stoop of a tenement in the mornings, sweeping and chatting. I tip my head to him, and he does the same, without interrupting his stream of conversation.

Into the corner store for a croissant and the man who says "Good morning, Beautiful." He does not know how much I need this today, both kindness and sustenance, kindness as sustenance. I cut through the little park by my office and that woman is there again, the one who takes off her shoes and walks on the gravel barefoot, the tiny cool stones crunching under her firm step. And now I start the business of this day.

Friday night presents an opportunity for adventure so I put on my brassy hard-candy self and go out. I am a loud-mouthed ass-kicker and I am drinking to keep up with the boys.

At home I wash my face, pull off my clothes, brutally rid myself of the last three shots of tequila which my body tells me it does not need, slide into bed and into a hard sleep.

The next morning, I see my mouth is red, there is white and red greasepaint on my sleeve. I call my friend on the phone, “I kissed a clown last night!” She laughs and says “Aren’t they all!” and I laugh too, because I know how big a fool I am.

My sailing friend posts whenever he gets near land. This is the most recent, from the coast of Mallorca, on the lip of a momentous crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. I thought it so beautiful, simple, evocative:

The boat was covered with the dust of the Magreb this morning - the seagull’s singing the prayer call - I will continue to fish

On this train noone is telling me a story. The girl across from me, her face is closed down to two vertical lines between her eyebrows and I wonder if she is in pain. That man with the sunken face is staring blankly, unblinking. I look at the girl next to me and she shifts her book away from me to keep me from thieving a read, but it’s a book I’ve read already, a book I own.

So I think about my friends, how they tell the stories of themselves, how they illuminate their childhood selves like a flash bulb going off in the dark revealing for a single awesome moment the bottom of a tiny pink foot, the small hand clutching the suitcase handle, the spinning spinning and falling into the grass drunk on joy.

I'm not dead. Quite the opposite. I have so many words, so many ideas, I can't pick through them or get them down fast enough. This is usually when I post photos instead, but even though I have some things I would very much like to share, they are not downloading correctly. I will be back soon with more joy, decrepitude, rot and wonder.

I have a car mostly out of inertia. It has been years since the 7-minute commute, flying down Vanderbilt Avenue with the lights timed to 40mph. Since the designated parking spot, the City Parks Department sticker, the walk to my office along the Long Meadow with mist or green or snow. Now I mostly play a game of street hockey, knocking it from one curb to the opposite in accordance with street cleaning regulations. And that is what I am doing this morning, circling my block, looking for a legal spot, when my hiccuping engine idles down and dies. I don't even have the battery power to turn on the hazard lights, ward off the encroaching aggressive B25 bus, the B26 bus and the morning traffic stack. I have an incredibly important meeting at work this morning, it's raining out, and this could be the start of one bruising day.

But. I discover, with great satisfaction, I can push my car down the street all by myself. It's a small car, sure, but I get it rolling from a dead stop, with rain slick pavement, Fulton Street rush hour. How cool is that. Get it manuevered to the curb, stick a note under the windshield, go home to call my mechanic.

But. I don't have his number. And he's not in the phone book. It's a little out of the way place, near my old house. It's an off-the-books, we'll work the system for you, Sanford and Son kind of place, and so I set off on foot. I take a path past my old house, and they have done some masonry work. I look through the lower clear glass of the massive front doors and see a stroller folded neatly in the vestibule. So good.

And at my mechanic's there is a new pit bull! He is all white and all wagging tail and his name is Crisco and his broad happy snout reminds me so much of one particular best dog ever. And so I give him some exuberant love and I head off to the subway and to the rest of my day.

A couple of days ago my boss and I are sitting at the conference table eating lunch. We are chatting about, you know, whatever, when another staffer joins us in conversation. But what she is saying isn't making any sense. Then she starts mumbling, staring down into her hands. It's English, it's sentences, it just isn't connected with anything. My boss and I exchange a startled look, the word balloon over our heads says "WTF?!?!"

This morning I have a bad dream, and in the dream it is the same situation, but I am the one who is not making any sense. I think I am making a valid point, contributing to the talk, but the wide-eyed horror of my boss and colleague tells me I have gone off the rails. I am not speaking gibberish, I am just completely disconnected from logic, totally out of touch. I wake up sobbing.

On the downtown 6 train I am watching the guy next to me flipping through the Village Voice. I am watching his hands rapidly turn the pages, skimming through. He is the the bar/nightlife section when I see a flash of the familiar, and I want to yell, wait! go back! I am surprised, but I know what it is. It is a photo I took, being used as an ad for the Subject Bar.

At first I think oh! When he places that ad, which he must renew every week, he still thinks of me. I still exist, I still have value, what I made is still appreciated. And then I think ugly things, selfish things, dark things. I get angry about him being the last man who did not tell the truth about loving me, about his ability to do so, about it mattering. I want to withhold from him the things I make, the things I made, that are beautiful. I don't want any man who has lied about their love for me to ever see those things, to have that access. I want to dig it all out of their heads, their hands, and burn it all, destroy it all, slash it to pieces. Oh, there is my fury, whip edged, razor fingered, splattered, ferocious, and I know that later there will be more sadness and shame at my loss of grace. Starting, now.

Work until 1AM means I am riding the train much later this morning. I'm in my own head-pod with loud crashing joyous music, so I am not able to hear his. He is small, stocky, swarthy, stationed in the middle of the car with a battered old squeeze box. Down the side, in glittery lettering it says "Los Bohemios" and I would give him money just for that.

But I only have a $20, no ones. I don't even have any change to prime the pump, to get others to dig into their pockets. I know that scouring the bottom of my bag will be fruitless because I did it yesterday. The spirited young girls at the cafe mugged me with their guilessness, charmed me out of all of my silver. As I waited for the enormous, ferociously tasty latte needed to work into the small hours, one of them went off shift.

Counter Girl: Bye, honey!
Going Off Shift Girl: Bye! I love you!
Counter Girl: Have a good day at school!

They are playing with each other, but their affection is clear. So I gave them all my change in appreciation of their goofiness and now I have none. But the guy adjacent to me gives the accordionist a bill, then another person does, and he winds up with $5 for just one stop. Not bad! He moves into the next car, and I hope he find the rest of the Bohemios and I hope he has a beautiful day.

I see you.

You were seven years old. You were jumping out of a tree, bath towel safety pinned around your neck to make a cape. You were flying, flying, until the jolt of the ground, the clipped grass found you and your fragility.

You were fifteen years old. You were up late at night when the whole house was quiet. You were looking at your face in the bathroom mirror, wondering if you were attractive enough to inspire a hotly desired kiss.

You were twenty years old. You were turning your anger into knowledge, or your knowledge into anger. You were devouring books and ideas with a terrifying inspired violence.

I see you on the train, in front of me in line at the grocery store, tucked into the corner of my couch. I will ask what I have to. Because I am not so generous that I can just give this away. Because I want reciprocity, because I want the same empathy from you that floods me when I look at you in your beauty, in your flaws, in your raw humanity. I will ask what I have to: do you see me?

Our comptroller smokes on the roof. I think I am the only person who knows this. It is an odd, old building, and I have the only office with a view across the courtyard and up to the top of the building.

Sometimes I know he is there only because of the faint frisson of white smoke, a dissipating sugar lace fading into the flat blue sky. Sometimes he sits on the parapet and I can watch him, examine the curve of his back, the angle of his head as he looks up, imagine his squint into the free air so high off the ground. Sometimes he paces, patrolling the rooftop, and I catch a faraway slice of his rough, not unhandsome face, his interestingly, dramatically, badly broken nose, there in contrast with his beautiful fine shirts, the cuffs turned back in casual elegance.

I get on the C train coming from Bed-Stuy. It is surprisingly empty, and so I sit. The man across from me is a wonderful sight. His dreads are pulled back from a wide smooth face. He is dressed, well, he has a style I have never seen before. It's urban, but not street, hip but not hip-hop, pricey but not flashy.

I am just sitting there enjoying him as the train pulls into the stop at Cobble Hill. When the doors open, his face lights up, like someone just set off a flash bomb inside him. The woman getting on must be a co-worker, they nod their greeting and she settles in next to me. She has great style too, and as she fumbles in her bag for chapstick, ipod, whatever, he is taking her in, delightedly. I watch him as he absorbs her, doe colored suede heels, skinny black pants, artful hair.

He so clearly has a huge crush on her it is a joy to watch him be besotted. When I stand to get off at my stop he slides in next to her and I am so happy he gets to sit next to the pretty girl.

Last night I am reminded of how potent a symbol is the toothbrush. Do you remember? The first time you spent the night at his place? It was unexpected, unplanned, and in the morning you asked to use his toothbrush. For just a second, before he answered you were anxious, whatever intimacies the night before had brought, whatever intimacy you had then, in the morning light of his bedroom, what would his answer be? The yes of acceptance and acknowledgement, or the no of regret and dismissal?

Or the time you went to the CVS to replace your own toothbrush. You bought your favorite kind, in your favorite color, and got a second one as well, but a different color. A guy color, not pink. You put it in your medicine cabinet, but you did not tell him. Did not tell him of your hope, did not tell him of the tiny dream sleeping in the dark in your bathroom, did not tell him of your tender ludicrous fantasy contained in such a mundane item.

Do you remember the thrill of the invitation? When he asks you to bring your toothbrush over, or even presents you with one? That he offers to let you own a precious two square inches that formerly belonged to him. Two inches, of mostly hole, there, to hang your toothbrush. You can plant your tiny flag of ownership, its handle twinned by his, what joy in that.

Last night I came home to the vacancy left by my weekend houseguest. Tonight there would not be the simple pleasure of having a meal prepared for me, no laughing ignorance of the stacks of dishes, no conversations with feet tucked up on the couch. I went to shower, found the soap pleasantly askew in the dish, the shower head adjusted for someone much taller, and in the toothbrush holder, yes, his toothbrush. It does not mean all that one would hope for it to mean, it does not mean that at all. But the sight of it, oh the sight of it is so evocative.

Out of the subway at night and there hanging low in the sky over Fulton Street is the full moon. I stop to let it shine on my face, I want to feel it hit me, not the street lights, the stop lights, the shop lights, the headlights of this urban maze. I want the moon to light me up, its glow, its promise, I want that to enter me.

When this moon was waxing I stood on another city street corner and said my goodbyes to a friend going on a long sailing trip. We looked at the gorgeous moon along with the full bore honk and hustle of Flatbush Avenue and I thought of how the next time he looked, he would look at the exact same moon, but from Corfu, a place that sounds like wildness and whistling wind. I wish for him that he falls in love, with a place, a boat, a girl, and finds a way to live free of the grid and grit that defines us here.

Once a man edged into my life, as thin and golden as the slice of moon visible at the very edge of your night-time window. Like the moon he waxed glorious, and then he waned, and I could see him going, predict it, wish it would not happen, be powerless to stop the dwindling. Now, like the moon, he feels near but untouchable, both visible and remote.

Because some days my heart is pressed right up against my ribs.
Because sometimes I am so full of joy I want to carom around the inside of this subway car like a superball.
Because some days I am brave enough to pick up my head and look you in the eye.
Because sometimes a stranger opens the door for me at the cafe and says "For you, anything is possible."

This is the message from the sidewalk in front of my house this morning. And for today, oh today, what other dictatum could you possibly want?

I am walking and I am alone. Alone, not lonely. Alone, but smiling. Because I am thinking about you. I don’t know you, but I am imagining you, imagining coming home to you the first time, the thousandth time, the ten thousandth time. Imagining you sitting on the high stoop, in the fading evening light, because you have misplaced your house keys again, because you love to turn your face to the dimming sun, because you want to catch me turning down our street and unaware, to see what I am like when I am alone, just like now.

The upswell of people boiling out of my subway station means I have just missed a train. Because of the time of the morning, most of them are students at the nearby junior high school, a rough mob of tight shirts, baggy pants, gold fronts, big earrings. I press myself against the wall as they surge past, I know in their boisterousness, their youthful entitlement, their up-front attitude, they will take up the whole stairwell and block my passage. I could be irritated with this, but I hear something ricocheting against the tile walls, building as it draws near. Singing. They are singing. They are singing “happy birthday!” and as they turn the corner on the steps to ascend I can look down into their joyous faces.

I did it! And it didn’t even really hurt that much. So thank you to everyone who wished me well, here, other places, with emails and phone calls. And thank you for the lurker power, too (yes, I know you are there, I can hear you breathing).

People ask me a lot of questions about this. Perhaps I will answer them in a series. Often I get “Isn’t it boring?” Um, yes. In between thinking about things that I can’t really remember by the time I’m done, this is sort of how my long runs go:

Mile 2: getting everything adjusted, hitch my shorts around, play with the cord on my ipod, scrunch my feet around in my sneakers. sweat is dripping off my chin.

Mile 4: notice little things that hurt, a shin, a toe, a knot between my shoulder blades. sweat is dripping off my elbows.

Mile 6: lungs start to seize up, use inhaler. my entire body is covered in dried sweat, and the fine crust of salt is acting like sandpaper wherever two body parts come together.

Mile 8: the little things that hurt don’t hurt anymore, endorphins are kicking in.

Mile 10: the pounding has compressed my spine, so my center of gravity has dropped lower into my hips, this makes me use different smaller muscles to pull my legs forward, different muscles to push off in my feet.

Mile 12: lungs seize again, more inhaler. I am tiring, and my emotions are rocketing around unmoored and loosened by my brain chemistry. My back is so tired it’s a struggle to keep my head up.

Mile 14: body parts are starting to holler at me, but I can only hear them dimly as my lability makes me have to control the desire to sing or weep in joy and frustration.

Mile 16: I am using every trick in the book to keep going, counting seconds, counting steps, doing math, making myself promises, berating myself, whatever it takes.

Mile 18: I feel like crying out of relief and amazement. Now I realize how stoned I am, as I walk, sodden, to the bus stop and watch the Empire State Building lit up like a bomb pop, red white blue.