November

Zohran, marathon, first snow, Nebraska, eye-level with the moon

November 1

We went to Knockdown again, dressed as a rat czar and a bloodied boxer. C went off with my costume, making a nose-heavy rat mask that gave me an overly friendly appearance, a thick fleshy tail, and a fur-lined coat bedazzled with tassels, a gold chain, and cat buttons.

It was our first late night in a while. We almost left after the costume contest, but we stayed on and I’m glad for it. Even though I had sobered up by then and it was 2am, I didn’t feel tired and neither did C so we kept dancing and I got another beer. We wandered out back for a change of scenery and to burn a grit and met a lost soul K-holing. I invited him to sit with us when another guy came over to bum a cigarette. The lost soul asked if we were all friends, and the guy said, “Oh yeah, we all went to different high schools together.” He delivered it without missing a beat, and I couldn’t stop laughing.

The day after was a lazy one. First, a big pot of coffee and an ep of Stranger Things. Then a bike ride in search of a pastry that ended at Frankie’s where we splurged on a $100 lunch because we hadn’t spent that money on cabs the night before. The cavatelli with sausage was excellent. Chewy, handmade pasta with oily coins of sausage burnt crispy, all crusted in salty parm. Tiramisu and coffee for dessert. Then a stop at Caputo’s for more handmade pasta, castellano olives, and to re-up on calabrian chili oil.

Back home we watched House of Dynamite, a bureaucratic procedural built around a nuclear attack on the U.S. You get three different perspectives — situation room, military, president — but no sightlines into the outcome, which made for a very disappointing ending.

November 2

Today is the NYC marathon, daylight savings, Sunday. That extra hour of sleep was put to good use by all runners and Halloween partiers. We biked up to Peter Pan’s without course interference until Greenpoint, where we saw the first contenders: a line out the door for the best donuts in Brooklyn. We ordered half a dozen thinking we’d link up with C’s family but that never happened so now we have a half-eaten old fashioned crueller, half a blueberry, and an apple cinnamon sugar donut.

We set up camp to wait for C’s cousin Julian, cheering all the while and shouting the name of anyone whose shirt bore it. The sun inched farther and farther until we were cloaked in shade. Three hours in and we finally got word that Julian was near. By then, the crowd had swelled into a nonstop sweaty, smiley procession as the glut of the middle pack labored its way up Driggs and Manhattan Ave. The only way to take in the tsunami of faces rushing forth was by not focusing on any one point. I opened my eyes wide and didn’t blink in my best CCTV impersonation, but eventually my vision was corrupted by too much data and I blinked. Around that time we also received some intel — we were told he was wearing a lime-green hat. Finally, a piece of information to fixate on. We trained our eyes on lime green headwear. A minute passed. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Unless Julian was gravely injured, surely he would’ve appeared by now. A photo of our marathoner was shared in the family group chat revealing that we had been given faulty info — Julian was wearing a lime green shirt, not a hat.

Inspired, I ran 7.5 miles, my farthest since the double knee surgery. Knee didn’t feel great and my right calf threatened to cramp but I made it home in an hour perfectly intact and found C sitting on the fire escape smoking. The dappled light coming in was so beautiful. The tree outside our window has finally turned and its leaves blaze red against the buttermilk sky.

Ice my knee, heat up soup, fry an egg, settle in for Stranger Things and Scrabble. We make coffee, eat more donut, have sex, rewind, keep watching.

November 4

Today is election day. The turnout has already been historic for Mamdani v Cuomo v Sliwa and the results, I suspect, will be close but decisive. This morning, Mamdani revealed he would vote yes on all three contentious housing proposals, which sought to fast-track the approval process, stripping Councilmembers of their veto power, which they say strengthens guardrails and gives them leverage to push for more affordability. I voted yes on one, no on two others, fearing it would concentrate too much power in the Mayor. I tried to take the long view. Mamdani, it would appear, bet on himself.

Out for lunch in Bryant Park, a punk in tight jeans clad in all-black hopped up on the ledge next to me with a transistor radio blaring and cracked a beer. Like something out of the 80’s. The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” came on as I was wondering the same, which made me chuckle and think of my Dad. His birthday is close. Idk what I’ll do. Maybe see a movie with C.

Feel the need to get back to the basics, to relish in the duldrum of life, find a new rhythm to release my current one. That means going into the office, running, writing not for Substack, but for me or a future book or editing the manuscript I need to dust off and punch up.

November 5

A historic day, not just for New York, but for American political history. NYC elected Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist with a high wattage smile and limitless charisma and a clear affordability agenda to be Mayor. On the same day, Dick Cheney, arguably the most influential Vice President ever and a chief architect of the post-9/11 world order, died.

I went to see Bugonia the night before at Village East, walked there from Midtown to kill time and for something new. I remember how I used to speed walk through the Financial District’s curved, medieval layout, footing the curb and stepping onto the street to overtake globs of tourists and bluetooth yakkers. How I’d swim through the crowd, twisting my torso and drooping my shoulder, avoiding any and all collisions.

I needed this hour of wandering. I have felt aimless, alone, disconnected. I can think of possible reasons why but I can’t pinpoint it and am reluctant to articulate any of it. Fear of dredging up old hurt. Fear of new anxieties surfacing. Better to look straight ahead. But yesterday I chose to look around. Being on foot encourages this. My bike, though I love its velocity, shackles me to the same avenues, the same green lanes blackened with soot. It restricts my observational powers, trains it on movement, thus obliterating all buildings. Stillness, great heights, sky — these all go unnoticed when I’m biking through Manhattan.

November 7

I don’t even want to write about this but I must in order to stop thinking about it: my nemesis is back.

November 11

I have been running again. 7.5 miles today, 6 yesterday, 10 the day before. I feel surprisingly capable for having barely run the past two years. And in this moment, where I feel adrift, running has grounded me. More than that. It has represented a return to my fundamental self.

I finished an essay today that I’ll publish in two days on what would’ve been my Dad’s 70th birthday. It’s about poetry, and my attempt to better understand the form I’ve never had patience for and that has never opened its wonders to me — until now.

An overnight cold snap has brought Arctic gales to the city. Coldest day of winter, no work, and yet C is away in CT for a job. Had she been here, we would’ve gone to the baths or made soup or gone to a movie. Instead, I edited, ran, read, had leftover salmon and made chicken for dinner.

On Saturday, we drove up to Rhinebeck to visit Dana / plant ferns and bulbs for spring. I took furious notes along the way. It was the first time I’d been back since I proposed to C on July 4.

November 12

I’ve also been drinking again.

November 13

Today would’ve been Dad’s 70th birthday. I scheduled my essay on How To Read Poetry to publish at 6:30am. Woke at 7:10 to feed Chicken. Left the apt at 7:20 to get oat milk for C. I don’t even want coffee at this point, I want to write before I have to go to work.

There was a big fire down the block last night. You could see and smell the smoke from our building. Five fire trucks responded and they brought it under control by the time C returned from Hartford. This morning I could see the damage under the gray sky which amounted to blown out windows with curtains somehow still white billowing like wind-full sails. There was a single fireman idling in a van outside and a sign on the front door that said vacate.

The streets were quiet at this hour. Only delis and breakfast joins were open, and only school children and their adult chaperones were on the street. I considered starting my days with runs again.

Compelled to document this day and its strange little moments. On the subway, a full cup of coffee spilled right next to me. A healthy dose of cream by the looks of it. As the subway accelerated toward Manhattan, the spilled coffee rivered across the floor. Less like tributaries and more like a subway map of its own, not mapping the transit system but the transit of this individual car through the dark underground.

I made coffee in the office, made a note to buy milk for here too. En route to the bathroom, my favorite sweater caught the corner of a stanchion which tugged a thread loose, unspooling the cable knit Oscra de la Renta sweater C gifted me. The urinal smelled oddly sweet, like bubblegum fluoride from the dentist’s office.

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Already dark out. I don’t remember walking through darkness this time last year, when I tried for a beer and pho and cried myself home, feeling sad, confused, treasonous. This year I tried instead for a beer and a burger and a movie at Nitehawk with C.

Two old guys seated next to me at the Double Windsor. One will be 73 next week. The other said he’s physically well but mentally unwell — he knows the end is near. “I wanna ride my bike, play pickleball.” “You play pickleball?” They ordered scotch to toast his birthday and quoted Rocky 2: “No shame in getting old.” Long, unworried pauses broke up their intermittent conversation.

November 17

Woke up fog-headed. Watched Twin Peaks with coffee and apple pie to stabilize myself and then went for a long walk in Prospect with C. It was all sun and wind. The explosion of autumn leaves overwhelmed my toxic, depleted brain. I didn’t know where to look. Felt slow and weird biking to Prospect and was glad to dismount as I felt like a danger to myself. Prospect was as beautiful as ever. We walked the circumference of the lake and felt the full chilly force of the 40 mph gusts exposed in the shadow of the bluff. We looked for the swans and found them in a feeding frenzy. Felt early in love with C, like she was all I needed, that we could depend on each other and would never disappoint the other. Draped my arms around her to eliminate any space between us so we had to walk in lockstep.

We stopped at Unnameable on the way home and I bought the second Ferrante and good thing I did because the first, which I finished later that evening, ended on such a cliff hanger. But before I finished Ferrante with coffee, we watched The Girl With a Needle — a black and white Danish film so expertly shot that all the miseries depicted — a horribly disfigured vet, an ether-addicted baby killer — looked silvery and beautiful. A startling contrast to the warm explosion of color that overwhelmed me in the winds of Prospect.

November 21

I said something good to my therapist today. I said I worried my obsession with writing, my desire to live my life like a novel, sometimes eclipsed or occluded real feeling. In other words, sometimes I’m unsure whether the things I do, say, or feel are genuine, or whether there’s an odor of artifice fudged for the sake of drama/narrative. The precise word I used was “corrupt.” I liked that phrasing. As in: do my writerly compulsions “corrupt” my life experience?

She pushed me to consider what it was I really wanted or felt, separate from writing. I laughed, told her it was impossible to unwed them. Writing was desire; language was feeling.

November 24

From November onward, sunlight is reserved for weekends only. Or at least that is how I spend my weekday: toiling at my desk, vacuuming, washing dishes, putting dishes away, wiping the counter free of bread crumbs and coffee grounds. That or reading in bed with C asleep next to me like a human furnace under the comforter. The days escape me and I do not know what I am prisoner to — my apartment? work? literature? — but I nevertheless feel ensnared by something. This cell is by no means coarse or rough. It is buttery, warm, safe. It is movies, dessert, tea. It is absolutely enough, but there is an unhappiness stalking the edges. Sometimes I pace with it, try to coax it to reveal its terms and desires, to see whether we can strike a deal. But it guards its silence fiercely.

I’m flying home to Nebraska. I read Ferrante until the words passed by without ever leaving the page, without projecting the fragrance of the sea nor the heart quickening tension of clandestine love. Now, as never happens, I am above the moon, which creeps by my window with pace, as never happens.

Tonight’s moon, seen somewhere over the frostbit prairie, was the same alien glow of New York — a candle soft orange, coloring the night sky with oil from a century ago. But whereas the moon is brilliantly alone, New York is a network of lights — some still, some moving, all dull on their own, but spectacular together — collectively needling the dark descent of night.

I read wondering if I might die in a plane crash after enduring several minutes-long bouts of turbulence. Last time I was scared of dying on a plane was on a return flight from Buffalo where the cabin shook so violently it spurred all passengers to buckle up, pull out their ear buds and look around. But no announcement ever came, which was most alarming of all. Instead we were left to measure our fear in each other, quietly calculating whether our heart rate was warranted based on our neighbor’s dewy face, the seconds between each blink, and the berth of their night pupils. In this near-death moment, I pulled out a muffin I purchased in the airport the hour prior and devoured it in three panicked bites. In between furious chews, I laughed spewing crumbs, laughed at my very undignified response to mortality and meeting it with muffin mouth.

November 28

First snow. The pockets of undeveloped land in this distant suburban enclave feel like tundra. The hard crystals of snow sit atop the cold-packed prairie, skittering easily across the year-old sidewalk. Two summers ago I ran to where the sidewalk ends and kept going. But now the houses that were once foundations of concrete are furnished and fleshed with people lining their doughy stomachs with hearty holiday foods. I feel something chrysalising within, a winter moth waiting for its wings.