dream of another city

Have you ever come (not gone, but come) to a place like a center, a hard magnet, dark eye of the moth, darkness being the thing light must find and light being the way darkness wants to go? I have, now twice. The first time was New York, and I’ve spent the rest of my life and at least two books since then trying to understand it. The dark eye pulls me in daily. I wake to it, dream by its dim light. Who lives here is who can survive it, who wants to try to understand it. All others are turned away, before, most often, they ever attempt to arrive. I did not “go” to New York. I was drawn here, and cannot say exactly how. If you have not read this poem, please do.

The second time I came to a place was to Paris. I did not “go” to Paris. As if one could compare it, could come from anywhere else that forms a point to which a line could be drawn, a connection made, no. One comes to these places, and every other place recedes into the dark matter of the brain that is sensed, that quietly lets us know we’ve lived, we’ve done things and somehow understand that a mass of time and change and city and weather and love and loss has elapsed and hardened into memory, forming what we will later call “a life.” Coming to a place like Paris throws one’s life into relief, just as another shocking and strange monument looms up in the rain, making everything around it fade, seem ordinary, but making no shadow, giving no direction, merely saying, “I am here, look for no reason, just behold and find yourself in yet another form of awe, and then walk away changed without knowing exactly how or why.”