Recovered Notes from 2010

This post is taken from a note I typed on my phone one night in November or December of last year. I had been in a the city only a few months. I was working at the Royalton Hotel in Midtown and the distance to home was too far to justify a cab ride. Every night after work I would take the subway- it was just getting cold- and I'll never forget those transitions from bar into winter into steamy subway. I always found it amazing that the streets of midtown would be empty and yet the subways would be full of people. So many people at such odd hours of the night going about their daily lives as I was.
My friend Ashley had died a month earlier in a tragic, horrible accident. Even writing that now feels strange, I'm still very much wrapping my head around her absence. She was a dear friend, someone I felt cosmically tied to, I had always felt it was important that I know her, that we be in each other's lives. I have so many memories of moments with her and am so thankful for them all, thankful for her and her life, thankful to her husband Adam, thankful thankful and still so sad. I only mention this as she was on my mind and in my writing in this piece.
Re reading these notes I think of how far I've come, how much can change, how much I can grow in such a short amount of time. And how much stays the same. Dealing with this endless push and pull and my fear of not changing- which works so well with the work I've found.

Here are the notes from 2010:

Train home to Brooklyn at 12am.
Peace on the train
People on their phones
Others with heads resting against the wall
Passed out or sleeping for the night. Their bags tucked beneath their feet

Headphones in ears on the kids my age in sweatshirts and sneakers
A look of waiting waiting waiting on these others faces.

Cuts on my fingers again
Nails ragged
At least at last no dishes to wash
Now the house hires us helpers
I've finally moved up or along or whatever
In the grand scheme I still feel small time
Although I entertained a crew of girls accustomed to apple martinis with drinks that contained no high fructose syrup
No green dye number blah
Who still orders apple martinis?

Jack and coke
Vodka soda
My fingers taste like metal and lime
You can dry lime and make black lime dust
It looks like dirt and melts sour in your mouth like magic

I want to thank every one for being so kind
And I wonder what else I could expect them to be
Although it's still surprising
At every turn

I remember looking at Ashley's tattoo and thinking, that girl isn't at all afraid of forever. No need for impermanence, no call for change, whatever changes, could change around her, her love, at least, would remain.
I've only been that confident when I had the cheat sheet to the test, and even still I doubted, and could never bring myself to go through with it. I'd fold up the answer card into my pocket and go the honest route.
So I wonder if she knew, if she was cheating, if she had had the answers to the test all along. And what were they? Could I steal them from her. Call her up and look for clues in her voice mail that's still turned on? I keep accidentally calling her and jump when I hear her voice. Or her facebook wall, did she leave instructions? How to live like Ashley? Or how to live so you'll be proud to die tomorrow? Or die today? She would be proud. I guess. It feels awful to write it to think it, to suppose I could know her angel thoughts. At least she was right. Right to fall in love, right to get married, right to get the tattoo, the day on the helicopter, the zipline, right to celebrate her love every day to a nauseating, baffling, awe inspiring doing Cupid one better kind of way.

I don't believe in heaven. I wish I did. Not god or angels nor hell. At least not in the traditional sense of the words. I think we make them in our minds, like imaginary diaramas or dollhouses for the dead. Video games we can dream.
I can only really deal in the lives of the living. But I miss my friend