Homecoming

home·com·ing

/ˈhōmˌkəmiNG/

noun

New York isn’t really home though, is it? Home was a street in Pennsylvania that shaded us in the summers and kept us warm in the winter. It was a little bit country and a little bit city and it was the simplicity of spaces that comes with being young and youthful and I guess naive as all adults say. And then home became a place at the foot of some mountains in a land far away, away from the country and away from the city but it was western and wild and it included short trips to deserts and palms and it took me to places that my other home kept me sheltered from.

But New York is home for now and before I know it, I will feel that connection like I have in all the places I’ve left my heart. There are days I’m walking around in a dream-like state in awe that I live in this chaos. It’s sensory overload at every corner and sometimes I find peace in a cheesecake or a market selling flowers or buying a $1.00 coke from the street vendor a few blocks down from our apartment. I mostly find it in other humans, in strangers.

I know that mercury is in retrograde and a few other planets and I know it’s nature and the ways of life that humans go through phases we can’t quite explain, that come slowly like the moment before a car accident when everyone says time slows down and you defy the laws of gravity because the objects are really coming at you fast and with force, something Carmen (see photos below) and I experienced only a few short weeks ago. 

Days have both sun and rain like my moods and I always think back to Sierra’s words:

Sierra Smith, 2016

Screenshot of a corrupt file of Chavi St. Hill, 2019

Carmen, 2019

Nancy & unknown woman at NYC Bagel Shop, 2019