2003-01-22 1:07 p.m.
disoriented

Life's strange when you're poor and sick.

I sit at my desk and dream up designs to draw on my hands, henna-style, whorls and swirls and fractal nightmares that my fingers can't possibly fulfill.

I close my eyes on the train, dreaming, sinking, and find myself back in bed with L, mind's eye agog, dreaming of ecstatic moments through hallucinogenic filters. She becomes a wash of color, a soap bubble woman with the flush of her cheeks in contrast to the rest of her, the vision rippling, never popping.

I see a homeless woman on the train, surrounded by her five bags, one of them a full garment bag, rescued from certain curbside death, no doubt. She's shivering and rocking almost imperceptibly to herself, the faint scent of urine rising from her body enough to drive workbound well-to-do's to find a better vantage point for the smells of New York City, namely one not downwind. But I catch the slightest glimpse of her eyes and they're so sad, heartbroken. The things could be her things, fragments of a broken life. What looks like an unopened bag of tortilla chips pokes out of the top of one shopping bag, and another bag looks like well-wrapped fruit.

Did this just happen?

Did I go last night with Des to a women's open-mike stand-up night and think about getting up there myself and talking about fantastic drug trips, about the monkey bars in subway cars that we're not supposed to swing on, the midnight stripper poles that hold up the junkies of the world on the A train downtown?

Do I wish I could shower L with presents, take her out everywhere, fill our eyes and minds with sights and sounds, soaking up everything this beautiful goddamn city's got to offer, give her some signs of how warm she leaves my heart? Do I wish I could leave work whenever I want to, sneak off to make her a stew of lentils and and parsnips and chicken apple sausage and spices that makes her smile and jump around like a gleeful little kid?

Yes.