There are some really great cultures uprising right now, and it’s totally important for my 11th house uptonian hopes and dreams, let alone the collective Uranian liberation. But for the first time, I’m hesitant to return to Manhattan for Phish New Years. Vulnerable island, high population, international crisis...Of course I will go; I haven’t missed a year since...whenever this five or more or less year-run began. Of course. Go home to begin the New Year, finish the rest somewhere else. Of course. So what's really going on in the city? Am I afraid? Or I am no longer called?
Yes, hipster loft parties are fun, but at what point do mystical animal-named bands start sounding the same? At what point do you stop trusting $2 well drinks that have you lose your fairy wings and make out with a caterpillar twice your age on a rooftop? At what point do rooftops cease feeling infinite and largely become entrapping?
So move to the woodland rocky coastline in Maine an hour from a smaller city, five minutes from one of the country’s best breweries? Hear the coyotes all night and see David Grisman the next? Be encompassed by tourmaline dripping mountains and near-blinded by the stars? In a community of self-sustaining homesteaders who haul their spring water, chop their wood, and grow their own food? Anyway. What are the spiritually inclined New Yorkers doing to free their brethern’s spirits in this universal time of chaos and fear?
Aside from sacrificing more trees to print more conspiracies to shove in strangers’ faces. Aside from wearing underwear in the subway for the sake of nonchalant publicity. Aside from manipulating gluten and calling it vegan. Is everyone defying conformist capitalism sleeping in the L-Train terminal? Bleeding more music into tunnels? Growing pot in boarded up warehouses and charging triple its worth to the corporate class? Or are they all going to overdose underfed in a mask-wearing society that doesn’t see them or anyone for what we are…One.
Not that I didn’t quote my father’s tear-jerking, emphatic memory of how united the city was when he was cleaning up Ground Zero for a decade. Not that I didn’t feel that total communion with our heartland, not that anyone didn’t feel it, experience it, and live it together. But does it have to take another tragedy to forget the space between natives and tourists or the Upper and Lower East Side? Why is it only okay to make eye contact and nod in simple recognition of another on a bus or train after a communal tragedy? Why is it otherwise common law to look away and pretend to be alone?
We are not alone. The freegans have a strong, beautiful platform. They take care of each other with selfless Free Store offerings and dumpster diving wealth distribution. And it’s good pickin’s. There is truly a lot going to waste that is bountiful to share. But while the freegans are enamoring and quite openly nurturing, I cannot got swept away. And upon my last cigarette dancing to “Mambo Italiano” under the blinding Maine stars, I randomly came up with the analogy of why.
They are the seagulls. Quite beautiful and bright, sometimes loud and laughy: “Ha! Ha! Ha!” they caw, take what they want, and fly off to vibe off the ocean and what can be felt/experienced/consumed there. And they always come back. There’s always a lil more.
It’s like this one ethereally beautiful woman I know, who converted from vegan to freegan to avoid as much waste as she could in a throw-away culture. “Would you like some mussels?” a mutual friend offered her in her home, where she had prepared the garlic, butter herb dressing a regulated vegan would refuse, along with the idea of shellfish altogether.
“If there are any left,” the freegan said, smiling with neither a nod nor a shake.
“Would you like some?” the other offered again, this time with a small plate extended. The freegan didn’t shake her head, she simply swooped it diagonally outward in denial of the plate.
“I would certainly not let you throw any away, but as of now, I am good,” the freegan explained.
Nothing was accomplished. Nothing was satisfied. It was a total miscommunication in which one party felt the other was unappreciative while that party felt the other was being pushy. And I doubt the seagull ever returned, feeling more comfortable scavenging with the flock who seemed to understand her.
New York is money. New York is time. New York is everything. New York sets the stage, turns the dial, drops the ball for the rest of our teetering country. And there are ample mediums, guides, teachers, yogis, mostly individuals in this warp to bring it together for all the boroughs. But it's not giving and taking. It's not handing out or keeping. It's not seagulls and king rats.
I empathize with both sides. I am both sides. But really, I shy away from being the seagull as well as the mothering crab, because I’d much rather go by butterfly. Cocoon all winter in a world of my own and emerge with more expansive colors every spring. That’s why I’m on the craggy beach, in the woods, ideal distance from the city. Because who knows where each new year will guide these wings?
Yes, Phish in my own Ground Zero has always fulfilled my blast off into my own calibration. Still I feel safe and rested in Maine, with the room and support yet space to be One with it all. So assuming I do make it down for Phish…I’ll be vibing that into our incessant Manhattan Earth, an apex, the climax, our culmination—hopefully of universal creation. To make a brand new start of it...in old New York!
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