Colorado sky
I woke up into complete darkness. And quiet. For a second I didn't know where I was.
I knew I was comfortable, I knew I was warm. And I had a curiously content /excited feeling inside of me.
And then the impact of quiet hit me and I realize it's the silence of mountains.
I am laying on Greg's couch in the dark of the pre-school hours of the morning here on the outskirts of Denver Colorado. The sky is still dark but I know that back in the city, where I live, two thousand miles away, the sun has already gilded the apartment building next to ours with golden fingers of sun.
The memories of the day and night before, bubble to the surface and I smile into the dark.
The adventure started yesterday morning, waking up in my apartment in Harlem. My roommates sneaking off to dancers yoga and myself stretching in bed, planning in my head what to pack along with the excitement that had been rising in my stomach like champagne bubbles for a week. I switched my phone on to the country station and the familiar twang and talk about dirt roads, a good woman and a damn fine truck got me out of bed. I find that when I'm struggling the most to feel at home in New York, I listen to country music and it immediately takes me back, to a Sunday morning driving the old truck down a familiar deserted two lane road. The radio on, the steel cans of milk warm and waiting to be fed in the back. The sun poking a bright spoke above the edge of Mt. Lamborn, drenching the valley in light. I can practally feel the dirty steering wheel under my calloused hands and the purpose in my days, then. It's a little bit of sanity. For when the city is a little too hard, a little too foreign and I am taken back to the simplicity of life simply existing and working without the soot of the proud city struggle.
To be fair, these last couple of weeks have been amazingly intense, even for New York. Inducing many evenings and mornings too, of country music to get me out of bed and into my boots again.
You see, the holidays were rough, they were the first official ones I've spent without family. And although I was blessed by some of my favorite people on and just next to Christmas, the shock, grief and loneliness of losing my friend Clay on Christmas eve was a sadness not to be removed.
The turmoil of grief and trying to grapple with losing such a young, vibrant and inspiring life, rose in me like a storm. I was still loving him, will go on loving him, even though he is gone. But trying to explain death to a heart that loves unobstructed is a heartbreaking moment in life. So that was Christmas. New Years Eve I got the flu and as the rest of my roommates climbed into black dresses and lipstick I climbed into bed, sick with a fever and flu that shook my bones and made my head swim. I slept as if drugged until 11:30 pm on new years and then my body awoke to a quiet house, even the sound of the wind had stilled. I laid there for a moment and checked the time, watching as the last minutes of the year slowly ticked away. I texted a couple of my dear friends, who's tradition is ours, to call each other always on new years. But tonight I simply texted them a little early and then put my phone away. Content to listen to the sounds of the new year as I drifted back towards my fever dreams. I laid there. In the dark, just listening to the queit. But just before midnight I could hear something; the quiet rumble of sound as if a million people were chanting out the last ten seconds of the year. Because that's what it was. And with the final count down came the stroke of midnight and through the queit I could hear the sound of a million voices raised, renting the air. Whooping and hollering with yells of Happy New Year! The ball had just dropped, and for the very first time, I heard it go. I turned over beneath my down comforter and went back to sleep. Grateful for such a beautiful start to a whole new year.
The problem with having the flu was that for me it felt like I had been given my own personal isolation penance as the rest of my roommates scurried out of my way, leaving me alone to the dark with the germs they, nor I, wanted them to share.
But as the first days of the new year ticked away, and I slowly improved, it left me so much odd isolation, time to think. And feel a little lonely. This city is a hard place, but one I am happy to have chosen to live in, but some days it's so dark and there is so much concrete and so little dirt that I feel as if I can't quite breath.
Finally I improved enough to go back to work and the first morning I stepped out of the subway in Chelsea, I was hit by the sparkling joy that this city wears so well. I really do love living here. I really do. As odd and strange as that may be, I really do love this city. But there was something else in the click of my step, something else lending itself to my smile that day. I was counting down the days till I climbed aboard an airplane and flew the two thousand miles between my new home and my Colorado.
I had been given a golden ticket. My Christmas miracle of a chance to fly home and see my dance family at the fusion exchange (largest partner dance weekend extravaganza in the country) in Denver for a weekend and then trundle over the mountains and the great divide to my little hometown, and my cabin on a hill, and my border collie and my family who I plan to hug and not let go of for five minutes each. I am home for a week before I come back to the city and the life I am making here.
So there I am, in my apartment, climbing out of bed, listening to country, happily packing my red dress and wool sweater into my little bag. I'm trying to travel as light as possible so that I can bring more of the things that make up my life in Colorado to my life in New York when I return. After noon the twins return from yoga, and make me the most beautiful send off lunch. We sit together at our black kitchen table eating carefully seared salmon and steamed kale. I found myself looking across the table at two of the most kind, courageous and real women; who I am blessed to live with. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for this life.
Two o clock came and it was time. I shouldered my back pack and checked my boarding pass. We gave last hugs in the hallway and the last a saw of Tracy was her open face in the chink of our open front door as she sent her love with me, out and down the stairwell.
Out into the sunny street and a smile I couldn't wipe off my face found its place. I walked the ten chilly blocks to the bus past the dirty streets empty but for a few passerbyers huddled in jackets and coats. I waited in the cold for the bus, holding my backpack firmly on my lap. It finally came and I climbed aboard, finding myself a seat and turning so I could watch the busy streets of Harlem we drove through. The fronts of buildings dressed in furniture displays and large dilapidated sale signs flapping in the wind. The streets were cold, but sun swept and the color of the sky, when you could see it, was a miraculous shade of blue.
Half way through the journey from Harlem to the airport in Queens I looked up and noticed a man standing not ten feet from me. A man that I know. A dancer here in new York. "John?" I asked a little incredulously. He looked up and it took a moment for it to register. "Hey!" he said as he came over to stand next to my seat on the semi crowded bus.
"You going to fusion?" he nodded his enthusiasm "What flight are you on?" "Delta. It just got delayed" I smiled. "So did mine. Looks like we're flying together." at the airport, after we'd gone through check in and the tsa screening process (getting my usual awkward pat down since my stubborn nature demands not to go through the ex ray machines.) we walked to our gate. Where we sat and waiting and ended up running into not one, but two more of our kind, from the blues world of New York. We waited and chatted and finally Boarded about the same time.
The flight was fairly uneventful, I watched a movie until my computer died and then I tried to sleep. But the excitement of soon being in Colorado was a good match for my drowsiness and it wasn't long before we were flying over Kansas and losing altitude as my giddiness grew.
In the airport I trooped our crew to baggage claim and then left them for the ride waiting outside.
Greg, was the one who dropped me off at the airport, back on October 1st and so somehow it felt fitting that he was the one to pick me up, literally, in a giant bear sized hug on the chilly tarmac outside DIA. We drove straight to the hotel the dance event is housed in and as we got out and he parked I looked up the the sky and saw my same moon gilded in silver, sailing in the dark velvet of the familiar sky.
It always makes me happy, no matter when or where I see it. It's always my moon, tethering me to a world that is my home.
We didn't even make it in the hotel before I saw someone I recognized on the street and the second hug that swept me clean off my feet happened on the sidewalk.
It feels so good to be home.
Inside the hotel it was chaos, organized chaos, for no sooner had I hugged someone I love and missed, did our conversation get cut short by a yell with the arrival of more of my dance family, trickling in from all angels and states and towns of this massive country. Bags and jackets were thrown to the carpeted floor in lue of giant hugs that lifted me again and again off my booted feet and reminded me so solidly that no matter how isolated life can sometimes be, I always have family here.
In the car ride home for some sleep before the dancing tomorrow (today!) I sat in my seat belt, paralyzed with joy.
I had forgotten how excessively wonderful it feels to be loved and to love with so little restrain. That's what dancing does for me. It unrestrained me. And it gives me a place where I belong. I sat, just feeling it wash over me. So strongly and I felt humbled to know such joy. I realized; it's not about finding a happiness you can contain and control and capture.
We chase happiness, always.
But it's not about attaining the success or material gratification that comes from amazing amounts of money or time or a beautiful wife. Sure they're lovely and I'm excited about a day I don't have worry about where my next meal is coming from. But life, it's not about buying or suffering for some distant happiness. It's about now. It's being wide enough to let it, that joy that makes your heat leap up, when it comes to you, fully in. It's about finding the happy spots in each day and instead of trying to put them in a vault and keep them for later, to let them be real now and to fill yourself with them. That's what real living happiness looks like. At least that is what I have found in my humble opinion.
I woke up this morning in the dark and didn't know where I was. And then I remembered. And with a silent smile I climbed from my blankets and tiptoed to the door, pulling a blanket around my small frame. I walked outside into the dark chilly morning, my bare feet on the frozen ground.
I watched the strings of pearls that are early morning headlights on their way to work, trundling across the bason towards the glow that is Denver.
The unobstructed wind hit me and it smelled of wild and snow and lonely mountains.
It smelled like home.
And it felt familiar, running it's icy fingers through my loose hair.
But best of all, I tilted my head back and my eyes met with a sky that twinkled with my stars. The big dipper and Orion's belt smiling down at me as if they've missed me as much as I've missed them.
My toes in the dirt. Dirt. Actual dirt. And my head frosted from feasting my eyes upon the frozen sky.
I feel supremely blessed. This moment is a moment I get to live. I have today, as many don't. I have people I love whole heartedly and that makes the glow of lights inside my heart burn with a beautiful white hot fire.
I am so thankful for my life in New York. Thankful for the person it is teaching me to be. But this morning it feels damn good to just breath in a world where my favorite dancers, most beloved dog, incredibly wacky and best family, bright stars and silent mountains, collide.
It's a beautiful life we ride. Isn't it?
