The NYT does an annual feature called “The Lives They Lived.” It’s a roundup of folks who’ve died this past year and who impacted the world in one way or another. I always find someone among them who I’ve never of and who I want to know more about (in this case, Michaela DePrince). The article also gets me thinking about lives currently being lived. Mine and others who mean a lot to me. This year especially given I’ve made a few trips into the city now that we’re back on the East Coast and I always feel the breath of my past self breathing alongside me when I turn a certain corner in a particular neighborhood and suddenly the way-back time is in front of me.

The further into life I get, the more those moments of wandering the wild side seem almost surreal. I mean, it wasn’t always wildness but knowing what I know now, it was for sure a kind of blind trust moving to New York in the eighties and then just plunging into whatever was in front of me because it was an experience. I definitely muttered to myself more than once “This will make a really good story … someday,” because for sure in that moment I was either a) terrified, b) confused, or c) just lost. (And either one of those three could be read literally and figuratively.) Sometimes I’d walk into a situation and get the inkling it was the wrong place to be. (Think, taking the subway home from a party in the early morning hours and being the only person in the station except that dude down the platform who was slowly making his way toward me with a weird look in his eye and I could either leave the station now, even though I couldn’t afford to get back in so would have to walk home or just stay put and … oh-mi-gawd, here’s the train. I’m on it. he’s not. train is crowded. adrenaline crashing waves in my skull.) So stuff like that.

The courage might have been the East Coast from SoCal move itself, which really is courage only in retrospect since in the moment it just felt like the right thing to do. In fact, as I remember it, there wasn’t even an alternative. It was more: Naturally, I’m moving to New York City because that’s where my (music, writing, creative) people are. Nevermind that I didn’t know any of those people yet, except for one friend who’d moved the year before. Once I was settled in ’84, my good friend M came the following year. Of course, we did some things that in retrospect were borderline bananas, which again fell under the heading “This’ll make a great story” since I always figured I’d live to tell. I know some people don’t. When she told me she’d seen someone get shot in the playground outside her apartment building, which was around the corner from mine on Norfolk St., LES; mine was on Stanton between Norfolk and Suffolk), it wasn’t like the news was delivered with a shrug but in some ways it wasn’t altogether a shock either. There was always a certain amount of danger and anarchy in the air. The Tompkins Square Park riot happened down the street as my then-boyfriend and I were on our way back into the city from camping upstate (I don’t much care for camping, so missing this event because I was attempting to start a small campfire in a rainstorm felt particularly wrong, although in retrospect there may be something wrong in me preferring a riot to the wonders of a starry sky. Anywho.).

There was a fine line between fantastic and foolhardy; heady and harebrained. When I’m in the city now and remember how I rode my bike to work in 1986 from Stanton Street up to 57th and Fifth where the Rolling Stone offices were, I’m flabbergasted on a few levels: bike lanes? WTF were those? Although apparently in the mid-70s there was movement afoot for them to be a part of city streets. Helmets? WTF were those? Um, no thank you because my hair. Buses and congestion? Yes, and perhaps drivers cared even less about cyclists on the streets than they do now. One time I had just started riding home down Fifth and was marveling that there was no traffic. Zero. I thought maybe a parade was happening/had happened, then suddenly I was swarmed by what felt like hundreds of cyclists (probably more like fifty) and I became a defacto part of a pride ride. Were these my people? For the moment, yes, and it was glorious as long as I could keep up. When they turned west at Fourteenth Street I remember being sad.

And I guess that was the thing: keeping up, moving forward, trying things while also attempting to be smart about it, even as I often didn’t think about the smart part. As M and I made our way into life figuring out what worked and what didn’t (she: milliner, photographer’s assistant, restaurant owner. Me: waitress, coat check gal, music journalist) there wasn’t much talk of their being a plateau where we’d rest. It was all in the moment. Now, at this age with the ghosts of the city past and present whispering stories, I sometimes think the future is challenging. Did I buy into some “It’ll get easier” advertisement about an era called the golden years? Have I not recognized how important it is for corporations to sell the dream of all stages in life so that retirement (whatever that means) is represented by laughing oldsters holding wine glasses? (Hello postMenopausal, metabolismShifted hangover. No thanks.) Truthfully, every single stage of life is challenging. Always has been. And yet fantastic and foolhardy; heady and harebrained. I’m glad those choices still exist. It’s all a steady shot of courage.

Three “this’ll make a great one someday” stories: