Performance
I moved to Boston 2 months ago, and there’s a lot I want to say -- but haven’t yet, because it sounds too saccharine, too naive, too sentimental.
I wanna talk about how I’ve dreamed of living in a big city since I was 8, young mind taken by the endless potential of human proximity, imagination running wild through seedy alleyways, bustling train stations, public libraries; standing triumphant upon gleaming skyscrapers, gabled rooftops, crumbling bridges; gorging itself on greasy cookies, greasy pizzas, greasy stir-fries; dancing with Dionysian abandon at rain-slicked crossroads, sold-out concert venues, dim-lit nightclubs.
Yes, it ran fast, that imagination, but I chased it for years and years -- and in the end? I caught it, caught it someplace between Chestnut Hill and North Station, sometime between seeing my first perfect sunrise from Boston harbor and rushing to catch the last train home, somewhere between the word choice at a late-night poetry slam and the glimmer of truth tucked away in the American dream, somehow hidden in the ecstatic soreness of my muscles after they moved all the furniture into my new apartment or the beads of sweat I shed to be able to afford it -- to be able to call this place “Home."
And sure, home is what it is, but home is not all it is, because home feels too banal for that, because home is not a place where you are compelled to rhapsodize about the feeling you get when you’re not sure how to get there but you get there, the feeling you get when you work hard to achieve something and achieve it, the feeling you get when every passing moment exceeds your expectations, the feeling you get when you lay your head down at night and are proud of what you’ve accomplished, and so you cling to that half-lucid state between waking and dreaming because you don’t want to fall asleep just yet, because your dreams got nothing on your reality.
Because who could’ve dreamed of the pleasure of bearing witness to the vastness of the great Atlantic, or doing card tricks outside a club until the bouncer gives you VIP status, or basking in the same lamplight that inspired the Declaration of Independence, or marvelling at the richness only time can bring from atop Prudential tower, or making funny faces at toddlers on the T? Cuz see, they don’t have trains where I’m from, so it took me until now to understand Petro when he said, “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation” --
-- and yes, my car’s been towed twice since I got here, and I’ve gotten triple as many parking tickets, but I would do it all again just to feel the elation I felt after I went to the RMV and got my vehicle registered properly, like “Yes, I live here -- and now I got the paperwork to prove it,” official government documentation attesting to the rhythm of my heartbeat, incontrovertible legislative evidence verifying the culmination of my efforts, formerly manifest as words and wishes, now wrought in ink and metal.
So just as I bear witness to this city, so I ask you to bear witness to me as I say all the things I’ve wanted to say, but haven’t yet, these things that beat against the riverbanks of my ribcage like so many insistent raindrops, each one rippling in my bloodstream until those riverbanks could no longer hold them, and so they burst forth at last, flooding my body from stubbed toes to split ends with glorious affirmation, because sure, wounds take time to heal, but aspirations take time to ripen, and the deeper they extend their roots, the longer they grow their branches, the sweeter their nectar tastes, and it is no accident that to “aspire" means both to hope and to breathe, because we need both for our survival.
Yes, I am surviving the way the Torah survived Abraham, they way the pyramids survived the pharaohs, the way Armstrong's footprint survived the lunar landing, surviving in Boston as Boston survives in me, in the form of countless quiet moments and countless loud ones, some gentle, some breathless, some splintering under the weight of centuries, some raw as an uncut umbilical cord, some begging to be said, others begging to remain unsaid, but I have said them nonetheless, and now that I have said them, perhaps you think I am looking at a broken world through rose-colored glasses with doe-eyed idealism, and perhaps I am, but at least I will have said them.
Cuz see, I’ve wanted to say these things for a while, but I restrained myself because I was afraid
words would diminish them, and so I kept them private, but now I realize: The flame of joy does not diminish when shared -- it only fans hotter, bigger, brighter, and so I stand before you to describe the way my breath caught in my throat like <gasp> when I first saw the moonlit horizon eclipsed by sparkling towers of terrestrial starlight, or the goosebumps that appeared on my arm when my car came ‘round Memorial Drive and the full splendor of the Boston skyline was suddenly captured within the confines of my windshield, or when I crossed the threshold at Chinatown’s gate and happily paid in cash to abet tax evasion, or when I was sitting above the Charles and my happiness bubbled up and spilled through my lips as laughter, because smiling was insufficient, because it had to make itself known to the world as something more than “something more”, because I felt so whole I wanted to break something -- and there was nothing to break but silence.
