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travel far now

rants and revelations from a life lived at the edges

contrary essays

State of Mind: New York City

11/15/2013

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New York state of mind. I am astounded by this place. I am poetry on the trains, hip hoppers and pole dancers on the train. I am wearing my red patent leather body suit on the train. I am the grand time capsule of magical library reading rooms. I am the stranger I saw twice in one week. I am the silence of these streets at one a.m. in front of Kosher pizza joint. I am Hebrew script on yellow bus. I am wigs and tefillin. I am tattooed and lanky, round and freckled, lip-smacking and shrinking with exhaustion. I am type-typing in a mind-grill of inquiry. I am late-night bar and central star and all things for everyone. I am lonely on the city pony ride for one. I am those artist-talks in the well-lit lofts of Bushwick. I am the tucked-in confessions of me and my old friends. I am the impossibility of coordinating with lost friends, I am the possibility of strangers. Pathology, the study of paths. Erotic. Erratic. Gay boys and their caged cats. Russian doll girls with porcelain moon pouts. The ones with smart cat-eye glasses, the ones with bloodshot eyes. Astounded by the distances trekked in a day. Where the mind travels, its own complicated subway map of stops, stopping, lurching, going, gone.
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    Essays by Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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