January 8, 2022 - There is a man in a navy blue bomber jacket with white khakis and white socks who keeps standing across the street outside of Shelia’s window. by Jordan Myers
There is a man in a navy blue bomber jacket with white khakis and white socks who keeps standing across the street outside of Shelia’s window. He smokes cigarettes and holds a navy umbrella whenever it rains. He probably works at the coffee shop around the corner, although he isn’t patient enough to work at a coffee shop. He is very fidgety with his hand movements ––– always closing and then only a few moments later opening the umbrella again. Often, between puffs of cigarettes he is zipping or unzipping his navy bomber jacket, regardless of the weather. It might be a tic or something.
One time when Shelia was getting off the bus at the corner around the way from her apartment she saw the man reading a National Geographic magazine and smoking a cigarette. It was after sunset and the coffee shop was closed, but he was still standing there beneath one of the yellow street lamps: standing and smoking and reading. Shelia nodded hello to him and said good evening in a very low voice. He looked up from his magazine at the same time as Shelia had looked over at him so their eyes did meet for a very little while.
Once Shelia was inside her apartment again she closed the door behind her and before she took off her jacket she set her hand on her heart. She wasn’t sure why. This man in the navy bomber jacket did not scare her. He did not frighten her. He was fidgety and stood on a street corner without any regard for time and without any purpose, but he was not unkind.
Later that night Shelia was cleaning up after dinner. She had made a big pot of Spaghetti that she hoped would last through the weekend. She was standing in front of the sink in her kitchen and washing the baking tray where she had prepared the meatballs and tomato sauce. It was April and she had left one of the windows in her bedroom open so a little bit of the balmy spring air would fall into her place.
She found herself thinking about him and guessed that his name was either Keith or Karl. He wasn’t tall enough to be named Keith, but Shelia thought that he may have an older brother who was much taller, Kenneth, and that their mother thought Keith (or Karl) would grow up to be just as tall. Shelia though Keith’s mother’s thought about her second son’s height was within reason. If one son was tall then the next son would likely be tall as well. After Shelia finished drying the baking tray she decided that when she saw the man in the navy bomber jacket again she’d ask for his name.
January 4, 2022 - Different apartments, same space by Jordan Myers
Next door the neighbor opens his door and the super stands outside in the hallway, asking about a leak.
I can hear the door opening and then the door closing, and an hour later, a sound like a foghorn plays on
through the wall. The foghorn is gentle though, soothing in a way. The building like the city has a pace
all its own: we create these memories, these little flashes of life together; different apartments, same space.
January 3, 2022 - The moon & the ocean by Jordan Myers
The way the smoke stack blows white steam
toward the sky at the top of the building three
blocks north of 91st street and West End Avenue
makes me think of two winters ago, when every
other week I’d walk up the Hudson River Greenway
at dusk & look for signs of you, the moon & the ocean.
January 2, 2022 by Elizabeth Lerman
It is the coldest it’s been this season, but the sky, at 4:38pm, looks like it’s on fire. Orange heat burning brighter than the sun has all day, and from inside it almost looks like you might feel it if you stepped out, thinking there’s no way a color like that doesn’t bring warmth with it - but it is the coldest it’s been this season.
January 1, 2022 by Jordan Myers
All of the winter memories that I told you about have started to appear, out of the blue. The new year brought wind patterns and weather systems that have shifted all of the ideas that I used have have about living in a city, this city. Something quiet and strong is about to happen. I don’t know what or how or when, but it’s clear.
December 31, 2021 - Here lies one of the most beautiful and powerful aspects of being human by Jordan Myers
With or without a pandemic there’s nothing like the end of a year, a time when a collective imagined reality comes to life with more fervor and lust than the ordinary day. Here is the end of a journey we’ve all agreed should cover three hundred and sixty five segments of twenty-four hours ––– one year. The pragmatists point out the arbitrary nature of our calendar and forego the nonsensical task of resolution-setting, why bother? Yet, here lies one of the most beautiful and powerful aspects of being human: the fact that the words we speak do not have to correspond with the emotions we feel; that we can dismiss the significance of a new year, while still feeling the burden of year’s worth of setbacks lift off of our shoulders; and that the hope of a new beginning can still live within us, regardless of whether we call-forth and welcome the new year’s arrival or not.
And for a city this same scenario remains true: the clocks and the calendars will turn, and although the intellect may see through the facade, the heart of a place, any place, will retain the ultimate last word. And for New York, what can we call 2021 other than a swing year ––– a slow and gradual journey back to what once was: an untouchable metropolis unafraid and unbothered by the threat of a deadly virus, one that would wreck its engine and total its body. If it was a gift to survive and live through 2020 at all, then 2021 offered, at least, a glimpse into what may come next. First a new president, and then with a vaccine, millions of masks were removed until a new variant named Delta arrived. For a while, the city fell into a new post-pandemic rhythm ––– vaccines were abound, and although masks were still around, the Delta had been tamed. And even if just barely –––– you could see it, and you could feel it: the city before the pandemic: crowds gathering without care for social-distancing and diners inside and out sitting knee-to-knee without the mention or thought of SARS Covid-19. Yet still, despite the Omicron’s arrival, that glimpse into a city recovered from the pandemic still remains, regardless of how faint.
This evening 2022 awaits at the door, and while there are other global cities –––– London, Paris, Tokyo, Los Angeles –––– that draw the world’s interest and attention, at least on New Year’s Eve, whether New Yorkers are proud of it or not, the world watches our city simply because we have Times Square, and a ball that drops to boot. The discerning mind can see through the fiction, of course, yet the heart, as always, will have the final say.
December 26, 2021 by Elizabeth Lerman
It has been a warm winter, for the most part, less snow, more sun - a disillusion of weather, a misinterpretation of months, a stretch of scattered seasons that dissuades the notion of tempered time. It feels, almost, like it would out West, where days come and go without hostile heat or all-consuming cold. On that end of the ocean, the cold is sought out, chased up the coast in a hurried effort to taste all the raw, ripe, earthly elements, needing to know what winter wind does to bones, needing to know what freezing feels like.
December 25, 2021 by Jordan Myers
From the shoot with Allison Theresa and Leo Aquino (Beatriz Kaye), from Issue No. 7 - Autumn 2019.
