Welcome back to If You Can Make It Here, the only diary about New York and new beginnings currently available on the internet. Hello from the end times: did you hear we had flooding? Did you hear we had an earthquake? Did you hear we had an eclipse? Did you hear that between those things we all tried our hardest to pretend like everything was normal, which takes more energy than when things are at least publicly weird?
(For what it’s worth, I loved the eclipse and the earthquake. Those uncanny shared moments when nature says, hey you. Yes, all of you. I’m bigger than you.)
((And yes, I recognise that it’s a luxury to get a 4.8 earthquake, officially referred to on the richter scale as, “a bit of fun.”))
Apparently there’s a plague of cicadas coming in a few weeks. And after that, if last year was anything to by, you’ve got the lantern flies in July.
There’s a lot going on, but I’ve found a little oasis of calm: the brand-new Ridgewood Writing Workshop, ten minutes from me in Woodbine, a venue which calls itself a “volunteer-run experimental hub in Ridgewood, Queens for developing the practices, skills, and tools needed to build autonomy.” AKA a little miracle. Some day I’ll explain what it really is, though to do that a) I would have to really understand it and b) it would need to stop changing shape, and I don’t really want that to happen. But at least for now, every other Thursday its shape is: writing group. I haven’t had a writing group for years, but it had the strange familiarities of structure, mood, characters. I was strangely familiar to myself, too. I’m not quite the same person I was, but looking at people’s drafts woke up some old parts. Good or bad, I’m not sure. In the main, the obsessive search for words, phrases, paragraphs to delete. I love cutting.
And so, this issue I haven’t come to bore you by going on about what things mean or what they have to teach us. Instead, here’s a little piece. We were all asked to write a few words on the theme of ‘Strangers’. So here’s 350 words about a new stranger in my life. The more time I spend with him, the less I think I know.
Ged is normally very vocal, not with what he wants, but that he wants at all, that something is missing and I am the one to give. I chat back, filling the gaps rhetorically: you want something to eat? You bored? Yes, I gotta go but I’ll be back really soon! He grunts: fine. That’s what passes for banter between us. We’ve only been together two months, and every noise is a wonder. At the adoption event, a tent with a single space heater, they’d said: he’s normally so friendly with people! We think he just… hates the other cats. I looked to Ged for confirmation. He stared back, bug-eyed and silent. Now, in his new house, he has a hot take for every occurrence: that I am home too late, that the food is acceptable, that the cactus-shaped scratching post is good to climb on. Like a stepdad who’s built his personality around a running commentary.
I catch myself once more - there it is, that tendency to anthropomorphize our animal friends. I think about every instance of “fur baby”, of people’s instagram accounts made for their dog, written as their dog. “Mommy took me to the park!” Ged is two and a half - does that make him a teenager? I like to imagine so: I call, he comes. I call, he doesn’t come. I sit on the couch, he climbs on my leg. Then he falls silent, and whatever understanding there was between us disappears. The hips brace, the back ripples, the air around him shivers. Ged is going to hump my leg.
What am I to him? What is the tree to the woodpecker, what is the moon to the howling wolf? What is he, to himself? In that moment, all of us die to ourselves. I feel bad, pushing him off. I want to lend him my leg: I get it dude, I’m a bachelor too.
And later that night, when he creeps over and places a single paw on my shoulder, I like to think it says: I get it too.
Aftershock
☞ That’s it for this week. Issue #9: who knows? The rush of events doesn’t slow: there’s a Brooklyn half-marathon to hobble my sciatic frame around, two deep friends visiting from the old country, my birthday party / first house party / one year anniversary (oh yes, that happened)… you’ll get something. Even if it’s just party photos.
Until then — just breathe, yeah? Unless the sky is full of cicadas.
James
From Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Ged sound perfect. My friend Leah, an animal behaviourist, says we get the pet we need. 🧡