new york, i'll be seeing you.

life is bubbling right now, it's reacting. alchemy is at the controls and as the elements mingle and creations come forth they are saying that the old is the new is the old is the...in a constant rolling boil where one second you're at the top and the next you're submerged. and i'm dizzy and disoriented, both physically and via a spirit that's struck giddy by it all.

my best friend has moved half-way across this ginormous county to NYC. i want to get on that saddle. not so much to that place, but so much to SOME PLACE because my time has been spent, my wheels are in a proverbial spin in these places that i've been for a long, long time. is it the first-world-problems, narcissistic fortunate daughter in me that can't EVER be content? i don't know. all i know is that i'm in a position where movement and fluidity are at my hip-side so long as i take their hand. i feel lucky with that, but some days i feel alone. here are two people who have made me feel less alone:

i didn't meet Taylor until i was about 20, she dated my "then friend/future boyfriend" in the past and we had mutual friends and she was very nice to me at the record store where she worked (i think this is because i had blue-black suicide hair and she was fresh from a stint in San Diego and this was the late 90's and all. white belts and Drive Like Jehu and Swing Kids really brought people together). but she is my living proof that souls dictate this shit more than any culture, sub-culture, upbringing, whadda whadda ever could. she was raised in a Chicago high rise by he sweetest mom, saw Rev. Co. vids filmed under her nose off Michigan Ave. i was raised nestled between a corn field and a wheat field with good public radio and a tiny gang of skaters feeding me with era-relevancy. it's a beautiful things when chance spins two people out into a relationship that thrives on life-relevancy and you end up with memories like...

coaxing a dude into driving us in a convertible with the top down to the middle of nowhere Wisconsin to watch a meteor shower in a dew soaked field on a Mexican blanket at two in the morning on a school night.

coaxing one of the best yet most hated bands (i.e. "banned" from Chicago in some real neo-fascist b.s.) to play a secret basement show in Pilsen for a handful of people only to get their van window smashed out. at least we took full, drunken advantage of the hills next to the house.

driving from Chicago to Austin to celebrate New Year's anywhere but Chicago and getting sufficiently wowed by the King's house in Memphis along the way,

and sufficiently stuffed on breakfast tacos and Lone Star in Austin while picking up (stealing) souvenir ponchos,

and watching 2008 turn to 2009 fireside, under the stars, alongside face tattooed train punks that you could tolerate for a moment because you're happy is hell with vacation brains.

spending a memorial day afternoon with events so memorable that the memories will forever eclipse and change the true meaning of memorial day. like, literally pants pissing hilarious fun with these guys (and Steely Dan and Ned's Atomic Dustbin).

spending five nights in a desert house in the middle of the Mojave and going on "back yard" adventures that include jousting burnt out vehicles on shrooms,

and having mid-day face paint parties to honor true native americans and the british equivalent of them, Mr. Adam Ant. praise ye, savages.

i mean, it goes on an on and i feel kinda like a turd for allowing the internet a glimpse as big as this in the first place into something that it's not really privy to. bottom line, i'll miss my girl and i'm eternally stoked to have a friends that's as down to live as i am and now i have reason number one to visit NYC.

reason number two is to visit my childhood friend Billy Scott that i've reconnected with briefly and primarily under grim circumstances and now through the facebook machine. Billy's best friend and my first love, Chris Howk, died last november at the age of 32. Chris started seeding women in the early 90's and left three blood children and one step daughter and a widow. his first child came shortly after chris and i stopped seeing eachother. his name is Christian Perry (nod to Mr. Farrell) and his mom is a woman named Heather that used to wanna kill me over the dude. they split and a few years later chris started a family with his new wife, had two children and took in one of his wife's kids from a former situation as his own.

some backstory on his footing in my life...

Chris moved to my town in the fall of 1991. i was in 7th grade, he was in 8th, shoulda been in 9th. i'd had this crush of sorts on skaters since my cousin and his friends rode that fashionable wave back in '87 and my little guy friends half-ass followed it in the years between. then Chris shows up. forget the hair and the clothes that got you sent home from school, he was a mysterious, wild and free animal that fourth dimensioned my ass within minutes. he was a novelty to the kids in school, but he was the realest motherfucker i'd ever seen. i'm pretty sure we finally struck up our first conversation because he was running through the hall between class singing "Institutionalized" and i laughed, saying that i'd heard that song on 21 Jump Street and really liked it. phone numbers were exchanged, conversations that lasted into the morning hours started up (hiding in my closet to muffle the voices) and so began the most endearing realationship i've ever known, 18 years ago. i don't think i could articulate then the heaviness or uniqueness of my bond with him, still don't know if i can, even with time and perspective on my side, but it's set the bar in a postion where i can't EVER compromise what could be for a weak illusion of companionship just to "have someone" (sorry, this is my interpretation of most relationships 75% of the time). central to that bond was an immediacy and urgency to live hard and the pain of knowing that we existed in a world that battled against us when we tried to do so, a world that championed the mundane and unimportant. so we made our own.

in truth, chris was kind of a bad dude. he was a textbook broken home kid and never had anyone to go to bat for him. though i realize now that his step dad and his step dad's wife, who chris lived with, really tried to lift him up. he was a pretty hyper-sexed guy and thereby unfaithful and thereby the boy who stole my cookies, "Classic Girl" playing in the background chipping away at my hesitation as the song went on. he "borrowed" $60 of my eighth grade graduation money to buy skate shoes which actually meant weed and/or acid. but it didn't matter when i was sneaking out to make out in the woods behind his house under the watchful eye of a full moon, or ditching conformation class to hang out in the park while he skated just so i could steal sweaty kisses and stare a bunch and write Cure lyrics on my shoes. it certainly didn't matter when he showed up at my house with a hug for my mother and the most stunning flowers i've ever been given or when he met me after school, eager to show me his stick n' poke lip tattoo saying "SARA".

fast forward to the days after thanksgiving 2009 and i get a call from my mother telling me that she was cruising the obits and found his. i couldn't breath. later that night i made some phone calls, eventually got ahold of Bill's number and was told that Chris was arrested after he and his wife got in a fight, went to jail while strung out and hung himself in his cell. i should've mentioned that the impulse to live big also drove chris to live beyond and he was more or less an addict for most of his life. (i ran into him one day when i was about 17 and had a quick conversation in the park. i got home, a collect call came in and it was him. he told me that hurting me was the biggest regret he carried and that he understood why i was always on his case about drugs, because i loved him, and he wanted me to know that i never did anything wrong and if he could do it all over again he would be sure that i'd never feel as if i did.) so i called into work, rented a car, drove 5.5 hours downstate and went to his funeral in my hometown. i was met in the parking lot by Heather, the ex that wanted to kill me, and their son with hugs and a new reality that quickly squashed any teenage competition as if it never existed. i was introduced to his 15 year old son as "your dad's first love", then introduced to the daughter that he adopted from his wife's previous relationship. she said, with a quickness, "i know you. he talked about you all the time. you talked on the phone for hours....you have bitchin' hair".

i reconnected with his step mom. she got me up to speed on the past few years, how he was deeply depressed and struggling to find happiness. as i was leaving, i caught the eye of his wife and feeling obliged to give her a hug and sympathy, i did so while she pulled me close and in my ear reminded me that he loved me tremendously and that i was very important to him. "i know all the stories," she said.

i also reconnected with billy. i noticed that he had an album on FB of photos of Chris so i sent him some contributions, but this was my favorite from the collection already up there, probably from around 95 with his first son:

i told Bill "for a creature that had like a thousand illuminated features, his arms always killed me the most" and expressed that it was so rad to witness the depth of their friendship. so reason number two to visit follows from this: "Just to let you know, I talked to him this morning and he says I should write you and tell you he loves you and misses you. I have a big skate spot for him that I go by ever day and say hi. it's called Columbus Circle. When you come to New York give me a call".