6/28/14

On June 28th, 2014, I had one of those nights where my brain was sprinting a million miles an hour in every direction. Something was in the air that night, something good.

During that Summer, I had gotten into the habit of walking in Hudson Park along the river every single night. Every once in a while I would sit on a bench next to a homeless man singing jazz or next to a couple enjoying the warm sticky breeze and I would write. I would write music, or I would write a bunch of random words. Whatever came out of my brain went into my humidity dampened notebook.

Nights have always been my private time to collect my thoughts and process anything and everything. I used to walk around my hometown at night years ago doing the exact same thing. I would share everything with the trees and the concrete sidewalks that I walked by.

Last Summer I got to share everything with the Hudson River. I always felt like the river liked when I wrote there. It became a part of my stories without me ever having to mention it. I shared my thoughts and ideas, and it would listen and give me advice in return. It was a very peaceful and brief relationship.

The other day, I came across the notes that I took that night on June 28th. I had written about a bridge I used to walk under in my hometown. That bridge had witnessed snapshots of my life and I tried to remember everything that the bridge would remember of me. Every scene that transpired while I walked underneath it. There weren’t many, but there were some very important ones.

That bridge saw bits of a young romance. It saw two children start to figure out who they were and grow into young adults who thought they knew more than the rest of the world. The bridge also saw the frustration and confusion those two kids felt when they figured out that they actually knew less than the rest of the world. It saw them realize that no one really knows what they are doing and it helped them learn that anyone who seems to have life figured out is a liar.

That’s who I am to that bridge: one of those foolish kids trying to make something out of nothing.

And now, years later, I am a friend of the river. I can’t decide if the river knows the same person that the bridge knew, or if the person I was when I walked under the bridge no longer exists.