Birthdays

February 7th, 1:32 am in a friend's attic guest bedroom in suburban New Jersey, only a few miles from the apartment I left in the hands of a friend in October; a few miles from the apartment I shared with a man I still love but from whom I am de-coupled; a few miles from the river I crossed 10 years ago to leave the East Village to move to the wilds of Jersey; a few miles from the trains and subways and bridges and tunnels that were once home to me that are now not. It is eleven hours before I turn that next year over and wake to a new age, another number, one that is just that - a number - just a clock that ticks steadily, a reminder that everything moves on and as the moon rises the sun sets and as the moon sets the sun rises. I place little stock in numbers. I was never good at math. The reason that college on the hill let me in with my inadequate SAT scores and my lack of lineage and money was that I hoodwinked them with an essay that justified my poor math scores with poetry. And so I am back in the northlands, in a cold cold February snowscare. Blizzards are trailing me north and south. I rode the subway north to 100th Street and remembered that summer I first stood there, with the rumblings under my feet, riding from W. 99th to Houston and Prince every day to do ballet at 8am and study Stanislavski and Checkov and Shakespeare and dance and sing and move and emote. My skin shivered with the memory so close as if the me that was then hovered around the me that is now like a penumbra. I sat in my plastic molded seat in the crowded C train, my guitar, my gear suitcase, my purse, my scarf and hat and coat all pulled in tight around me to not take up too much room, as the hunched and scrunched people around me emitted a congestion of annoyance and frustration. I tried to see how long I could study the features of someone before they'd notice my staring and find my eyes. I tried to listen to Bon Iver and keep my energy light, keep air in my field of being, maybe give off some southern light here inside this dark crowded train. I thought of all of my fears of that move, that first one, so long ago, so afraid of citynoise and rumblings, and think the thing for which I am now homesick is a lightness, the space between people, the large hollow chimes of the tree on Russell Street.

So, on the eve of this turning, I am fine with the page that I've passed. Its been a big year. A good year. I made it to the stage of a major festival I've watched from the sidelines for almost a decade. I made it to Mountain Stage, a show I've listened to for years. I got to meet some heros of mine, got to sing with Nanci Griffith and have a drink with JD Souther and have dinner with Ian Hunter and listen to Judy Collins sing a song I wrote. I watched the snow fall with my parents in my new house in a southern town and I watched my nieces and nephews grow and smile and laugh and stumble and get up again. I spent a lot more money on shoes than I should, but I walked a lot of miles and I wrote some things I'm proud of.

So, later this same day, I am in another's house, and, although I have played in the largest venues of my career this year, on stages near Broadway, thousands of people in gold gilded red velvet seats with Playbills and black and white photos rustling in tiered balconies, tonight I rest in a strangers home, having played to a handful of friendly Pennsylvanians who had never heard of me, because their neighbor or sister or daughter or friend is a fan and had invited me into her home to play a small house concert. And I shared things I'd never eat in my life like tomato pie and little hot dogs in croissants baked in an oven. And I played a song about a boy who dies while a 3 year old girl in bright green danced in front of me and I could hardly bear the beauty and oddness of it all and so I closed my eyes and thought of the unbearable lightness of it all, stealing a phrase from one of my favorite authors, and thought of how far away and how close sometimes perfection is.