A Chair Is Just a Chair.

Funny thing. I took the red-eye back from Los Angeles on Monday night. Got into JFK on a rainy dawn Tuesday morning, 5:20 a.m. Had to be somewhere at 8 a.m., which made it awkward timing, because I couldn’t go home, drop off my bags, and then come back into Manhattan. So I grabbed a taxi in the surreal dawn and hauled ass into the city. The morning was bleak and chill. Just like I like it. But maybe on this particular morning I felt something else. Maybe. A hint of the soul-chill that was to come? I think so. I hadn’t been able to grab a coffee at the airport before getting the cab, so I was really only half-human during that surreal drive. My body jittered with withdrawal. I had slept on the plane from start to finish, so I was well-rested. Although when I finally did get home that night at around 6 p.m., I lay down on my bed fully-clothed and slept a straight 12 hours. Obviously I was working some shit out. We hit some traffic on the way into the city, but not too bad. I got to my final destination at about 6:30 in the morning.

You have to be really strong and sure in your own place in the world to face New York on a rainy dawn. You have to know who you are, and know in your heart that you are loved, and that you can say the words “It’s going to be okay” to yourself and it might be true. Because otherwise, it will crush you. New York on a rainy dawn can have a washed-away quality that can make it seem like all your hopes, all your dreams, everything you have ever held in your heart, the best part of you, are all for naught, of course they are, and weren’t you silly to even think otherwise. The cabs careen by, empty, prowling, sending sprays of dark water up from the puddles, and nobody is up but the vendors, the mailmen, and the hookers. It’s easy to get lost in a rainy New York dawn.

I needed coffee. That was my first priority. I had two hours to kill. The rain was not pouring anymore, but everything was wet, there was dampness in the air, and if the sun was up it sure wasn’t giving it away. I had my huge rolling suitcase with me with my 20 goddamn outfits inside, not to mention my Velcro curlers, and I awkwardly navigated myself to an open deli and got a steaming hot cup of coffee.

Then I went to the park. The park I go to on sunny days and cloudy, to sit and commune and take a breath, in the middle of my busy days. I sit on the green wrought iron benches, sink into them, iPod on, and lose myself. Sometimes I can only afford to do so for 15 minutes, but it rejuvenates me. It has kept me in the dreamspace, where I have lived for the last three months (to the day, yesterday), kept me in the game, kept me in touch with myself, not an easy thing to do for me in my best hour. But this past year has been shattering. To talk about picking up the pieces is ridiculous in this particular context because there are no pieces to pick up. Shattering does not leave anything behind to salvage. Just wait for the dust to settle, wait to see who you are in the aftermath, and then take your first step forward. My times in the park have helped me to do that.

I have never been to the park at 6:30 a.m. on a rainy New York dawn. There was one homeless man wrapped up in plastic across the way, but other than him, I had the place to myself. The benches were soaked. I took a plastic bag that I had and spread it on the bench, perching on it, sipping (or inhaling) that hot coffee. I started to enter my body again. Enter my life. Here. The here and the now. Not the potential futures unfurling before me, or what I hoped for, the dream-castles erecting themselves in my head – but here. Now. In this particular moment.

A movie crew, with all their trailers, was on the opposite street, bustling with dawn-time activities, blocking off the street with yellow cones, talking into walkie-talkies, a beehive of movement and purpose. I found their presence comforting. And I started to let LA go. Like little droplets of water flicking off my skin. I started my re-entry process. Never an easy thing – I’m not a particularly facile traveler at any time. I don’t just go to another place. I am transported.

I have no regrets.

And suddenly, I noticed that across from me was an empty chair.

Recently, I wrote a post about sitting in that very same park, and looking at an empty chair, and what that meant to me. It seemed to mean something. It seemed to have some import. Perhaps a prediction? Oh, but no, I am too chastened by experience to believe in predictions, and you say “everything happens for a reason” to me at your own peril. It wasn’t a prediction. It was more a sense, a hunch. It was so clear to me on that day, all full with the experience I was in, and not being able to write about any of it, not just for reasons of being discreet, although that was at play as well, but because I could not yet put it into words. I also had (and still have) a superstition about writing things down before I know the ending. This was not always the case, as my voluminous diary entries from the past show. I used to be perfectly willing to put down in my journal every up and down, every nuance, of any experience as it was unfolding. I have lost the taste for that now. But I remember so clearly sitting on my bench, a mere month and a couple of days ago, and looking at that empty chair and glancing at my empty journal, and wondering if something was going to happen. Something I couldn’t see yet. I felt like something was going to happen.

Well, something has indeed happened.

There are many facets to life, and the point seems to be (to me) to figure out how to not recoil in ALL areas of your life, just because you have experienced a disappointment in ONE area. My friend David made me see, yesterday, that that is, in essence, what my script is about. Sometimes in life, we over-correct ourselves, after a bad rejection, professionally or personally. We take a huge swerve in the other direction and then have to go about undoing all the damage done by that swerve. My recoil instinct is not intellectual, at this point. I am a grown woman with years of experience. I am not an idiot. I am not overdramatic (although I am dramatic – there is a difference). And so when I recoil, I pay attention. This is not the reaction of a silly young teenager to her first disappointment. This is an awareness of true danger. It is touching a hot stove. You don’t have to tell me twice.

In a funny way, I feel comforted by that. I do not live in a Groundhog Day universe, where I keep making terrible choices and wonder why the hell I am so miserable. That is not my life story – or (word of the year) my narrative. My narrative is something else, and I am still trying to figure out what it is.

Not so much so that I can understand it and nail it down, but so that I can write about it.

The dawn was rainy and wet, and the coffee was hot, and I looked at that empty green wrought-iron chair, identical to the one I had looked at not so long ago, and I found myself struck by the difference in perspective over what is a relatively short period of time. How quickly things are lost. I suppose that could be seen as tragic, but I am not willing to put that label on it. Not yet.

I looked at that empty chair, and saw an empty chair. It was not trembling with potential, or a clue, or a possible ending to the unfolding narrative.

It was just an empty chair. That’s all.