Jersey City

Things I will miss about Jersey City:

My backyard garden, lit up at night

The flowers on Manila street in the spring

The woman at the laundromat on 2nd and Manila who speaks no english but always folds my laundry for me if I leave it in the dryer a bit too long

Basic coffeeshop

Abbie living right down the street. Although she's never home

The bike shop on Grove street with the Specialized Dolce in the window that I've been drooling over for months

Tree lined brownstone streets. Better than Brooklyn with better parking rules

Jersey Avenue Wines

Van Vorst Park

Kal down the street and always nearby

Sunday fashions at the diner post church

The man who walks the neighborhood in a pink zoot suit with a white top hat and spats

Grove Street farmer's market

LITM

The neighborhood that feels like its on the verge: kind of hip without the Williamsburg 'tude

George, my Latvian landlord

The church bells on Saturdays and Sundays

Grace Episcopal Church

Buddhism/Meditation classes at Barrow Mansion on Sundays

Madame Claude's

Walking to the Hudson River

Running in Liberty State Park

My one and only Jersey Shitty Guitar Pull Hang, that was meant to be monthly

A great apartment, garden level, for a steal

Hamilton Park late night walks with my dog

Happiness

Happiness=

Fresh ground coffee in a French Press at your friend's house after she was quick on the draw with the kleenex box the past few nights when you've needed to release the sore sore heart

A snippet of a melody or a lyric coming in with the rain as you drive to the airport to leave someplace you're learning to like

A nice little wall post from someone you wanted to hear from...an opening

A Tecate at the airport bar with free chips

Ray LaMontagne

The memory of a kiss, still burnt on your lips no matter the time that's passed

New boots

Clean underwear

An expensive, fluffy mattress with a big dog with big ears who cuddles

Drop D tuning

A convertible on a sunny day on a backroad

Honeysuckle

A clawfoot bathtub

Silence

Forward momentum

Sometimes stopping

The Morning After...

...where you wake up saying "did THAT really happen or was I just dreaming", whether it was a conversation or a dare or a pact or a kiss or a decision or a sudden new connection or a new song lyric coming in or a late night writing to the ether about moving somewhere....

...and the panic and the doubt and the turning it all over and over again in your palm like a strange new toy and the giddiness and the finding the perfection and the fault lines...

Falling in love is a strange strange thing. You think you've fallen and hit the ground and then you keep falling. Then you fall backwards. Then forward. Then you slip sideways into the forest which you can't really see for the fog in your eyes. Then you've landed in a dirt pile with bruises from all the tripping around your own gawky feet, your own awkward phrases that don't say nearly what you wish you could say but that both put up the barrier to hide your heart and, at the same time, open the curtain to reveal the big open sore beating bleeding heart that's uniquely yours and you hope the heart in front of you is strong enough to catch you the next time you fall.

I am talking about a new house here. 

Southern Hospitality

So a door opens and you notice it and then a bunch of doors swing open and you're standing there in front of this breeze from the fact that the windows and the doors of this house are just wide open and you keep doubting the sky...

Last month an idea: to move south. To head to Nashville. Again. I'd tried this before. 2 years ago. Was it 3? 2007. I paid rent on a cute little house a friend owned but wasn't occupying yet. I paid rent from April to August and maybe spent 5 nights there, on a borrowed mattress with borrowed sheets and towels, with one lamp, 2 boxes of books and journals, 2 guitars, 1 mandolin and a computer. I cried myself to sleep most of those 5 nights, in my skin knowing I shouldn't be there. I was running from rather than moving toward and I knew it in my bones and my bones were screaming at me, run back. I was in a lot of pain, I'll admit, confused and sad and scared and just wanted CHANGE. I thought that 14 hours distance would numb or fix and it didn't and I knew it and so I kept running, or driving, or playing, or writing, but I kept moving. And thought it was Nashville's fault. Big Bad Songwriter Heaven and Hell Nashville. I blamed it on the lack of good Chinese delivery. I blamed it on too many churches and too little piercings. I didn't see that the problem was me until I ran right up to the Catskills and landed in a drafty, moldy shack for a few months, fighting pneumonia, writing my way through depression.

Was it just a month or two ago that I was here, meeting new people, hanging out with my friends, in offices that have become familiar and cave-like clubs with bartenders I like who know my name and pour me a too-strong drink as a friendly gesture, when someone said "Why don't you live here?" and then someone else echoed that and then it was me saying "Yeah, why don't I live here?" and then it was my manager saying "...and you could save money, and life might be easier and..." laying out all the smart business reasons for me to be in this town as any advisor should. And as I nodded at the rightness of this, the doors started, if not flying open, at least creaking little cracks and openings, enough for little peeks of the bluesky to seep in. And I looked around at the burst of wind blowing my notes and journals around and laying my hands to stop them from blowing away, just looked up and said "yes" and then it all calmed down -- this sudden summerbreeze -- and something felt right. 

And then I said it outloud. 

And then I said it onstage.

And then it felt true. And inevitable.

And so the forward momentum, not based on running this time, but based on a hunch and a hope, has gotten me 14 hours away from the home I've known for 20 years to a town I consider small, not a city, but a town, quiet and quaint. The 2nd open door led to a house that fell through and I thought "there's a reason this happened" trusting the hopeful hunch and today I saw that reason, too close for comfort to something not comfortable, and then in the right place, I landed in a house that as I walked up the stairs to the porch, with my friend next to me giddy with glee at the porch swing, the door swung open, a breeze, familiar, and the rightness and the opening and I found a new home. 

This time, I'm still not sure. I have to be honest. I have no idea what's out there, but to stay where I am currently is to stay and not to move and not to look and seek and find and continue moving. Not running. Just moving. And it might not be exactly what I need (thank god for the 6 month sublet), but it might be what I want for the time being. And you can always go back home, it just might not look the same when you return. But leaping after looking is a good thing and I've spent a lot of time lately either not leaping or blindly leaping, so this time, I'm trusting the jump. And hoping the net under me holds, and its not going to be held by anyone else but me this time. Because I looked alone. I found it alone. And I will move me alone. And this kind of alone is a good alone. This is a choice of alone. A healthy alone. I'm not letting go of the hands that held me, but I'm saying, I just don't need you right now. Stay close by, though. Because you never know....

Altitude Sickness

My head hurts, up this high. Its only 6200 feet tonight and I'm headed further up tomorrow, but still, its dry, its high, my skin feels tight around my face, my voice is cracking and my head hurts. But Colorado calls every August and I come here beckoned. A yearly pilgrimage. Today I was thinking about a few years back, same time, a random meeting, or re-meeting, rather, of an old friend. Someone who'd disappeared and then showed up, leaning against a wall, a smirkish smile, arms crossed, looking still like a kid, but older, greyer, more life and more lines in his eyes. Beautiful, tired and unsure. And I was thinking of this old friend's fearlessness back then, perhaps foolishness, perhaps blindness, but call it what I will, whatever it was, his audacity was exciting and tempting and impossible and as crazy as Frank carrying the cross from Maine to Mexico. I leaned into it for a few days, a little while, then shook it off like a deja vu.  He's gone again, disappeared into another crack in the mountains I think, running a river or running a hill or maybe he stopped running things and maybe he's eating dinner with someone he loves, a life he ran after.  I started this blog not knowing what I was going to write about, but the fingers felt itchy to type, up here in the thin air. But I knew what I was thinking of and it wasn't this lost friend. It was something else, but now that this memory has elbowed its way in front of the other I can almost see why. He's a haunting, wisping through the movie running currently in my head. I am being oblique here. Running around my own foolishness and audacity, blind and wonderful.  I wonder if the boy who leaned will come back in 10 years, just to lean in the back corner of a theater I'm playing, with a boy next to him. I wonder if there's a reason for people to show up unsuspecting in our lives, to tempt or lead or illuminate. I'm not a woman of faith or fate. I'm a woman of concrete evidence.  But lean against a door that falls open and how are you not supposed to walk through, curious. Of course, Pandora probably asked the same question and see where it led her. 

This could all be a dizzying lightheaded dream. Or that could have been. 

Sarah Carter was in Mexico, working at a radio station, and sang a song that was heard in northern California. Someone came running who heard it. Years later. 

I have no intention of singing that song or looking to go backwards. I wrote of loneliness lately and there's an antithesis here between the thin air of memory and the heaviness of lonely. I'm just curious about the last page of the story.

Help Me Make It Through The Night

I was in Portland, Maine doing a show last month with Jim Mastro. We'd had a great show at The North Star, a nice breakfast at one of those Mom's kind of places where eggs and bacon are under $5 and when you walk in everyone looks at you, wondering who you might be visiting. We were taking the scenic route out of town, music to talk about, CDs to listen to, life to unravel, and we saw this man walking on the other side of the highway, with about an 8 foot wooden cross burdened on his shoulders, walking. Both of us saw him and both of us said "TURN AROUND." So I spun around, then pulled into a gas station that was about 100 feet in front of where he was currently, figuring I'd get my video Flip camera out and see what this was about. So I did. Jim started pumping gas. He crossed my path and gave me the peace sign. I felt like an intruder, a paparazzi, so I waved and said hello. He said hi. I approached. He was a good looking, clean shaven man. Probably somewhere in his 50s. In shape. The cross was large, larger than him and I put him at about 6'4". It was built in pieces and put together with bolts. He had wheels (smart) on the bottom, a few rolls of what I took to be clothes and camping equipment tethered to the bottom. And a big foam pad where it lay on his shoulders. The cross had been signed by many. First thing, he asked me if I'd sign his cross. Not one to turn down an autograph opportunity I obliged. I wrote "Happy walking, Amy".  He put the cross down to talk to us (by this time, Jim had come to join us, bringing a bottle of water for our friend).  His name was Frank (I think, although it might have been Bob or Bud, but Frank seems to suit him so I'll call him Frank).  He'd been an alcoholic or a drug user. Got clean. Found God. Gave away or sold all of his things, built this cross in Arizona, flew it to Maine and was now walking. He said his mission was to hope that by his walking, someone would think of God for 5 minutes every day. I told him, Frank, I said, I'm an ex Catholic, skeptical, glass is half full optimistic Buddhist atheist. I've been thinking of God and Frank since I met him in early July, so for me, he's done his job. As I've told this story, was strikes me is the balance between crazy and passion. Clearly he's been called. Is that crazy? OR is that conviction? I asked him where he was walking and he said "Maine to Mexico". Why Mexico I asked, and he had no answer. Just Nogales Mexico. Seems a long journey. How's he going to eat? Its a long long walk to Mexico. Walking his demons off. James and I came up with so many lines for the song we'd like to write. But what strikes me is that here's a guy who just put it all out there. You know, life seems limited at times. We get caught up in our own struggles. Does he love me? Does he not? Will I make it? Will I not? Can I pay my bills? And this guy just takes himself out of the questioning and the framework and creates his own. Crazy? Yes. Passion? Yes? Foolhardy? Maybe and most probably. But I can't help but admire Frank. I'm worried about being alone. I'm worried that the man I love the most in the world won't find me. OR I won't have children. Or my album won't get on I Tunes by August 11th. Or I'll never meet someone who I can grow old with. Or I won't make rent. Or this. Or that. Frank? He's got good boots and a heavy cross and he's carrying it so I don't have to. I'm no religious person and I left the church years ago but certainly, if I think of Frank, I can let go of trying to control anything other than myself and my own feelings. 

So tonight, I'm sad. I'm lonely. I wish I had a companion. I wish that I could have had my happy ending. So I've opened a bottle of Pinot Noir and I'm trolling You Tube for Kris Kristofferson to make me more sad, but in a happy way. I'm mentally packing my things for my move to Nashville in a few months. I'm plotting and planning my way back to health and I'm thinking that writing a good song is better than fallling in love sometimes and maybe I've got Frank to thank for that. Frank, who sold everything to give me a few minutes outside of my own head.