thispresentsojourn

Sarah and I met through the church I served. On a tip from the lead pastor, I found out she was one of the core members of the church, and knowing really no one else in the city at the time, I decided to ask her if she was willing to serve on one of the Arts teams I was responsible for building.

So I arranged a meeting with Sarah at my office. My objective: train her on the basics of the role she’d be filling, and I attempt to get a sense of her personality — at least as much as can be gleaned from a singular meeting.

Some people had asked me before meeting Sarah if I’d met her before, or if I knew her. Laced in these questions was always something articulate about Sarah’s personality, though I couldn’t tell what it was at first. I quickly gathered even before I met her, that she was a strong presence.  That she was a “no bullshit” type of person.

What I did not know was that over the course of the next seven months, Sarah would come to be one of my closest friends. Of course we didn’t share much space because I wasn’t really able, but I found myself wanting her to know me and to trust me.  It’s that desire, I think, that made it special.  Because it’s something rare.

+

After developing something strong during my time in the City, Sarah and I managed to keep in touch via text messages, email, and of course “The Facebook”  (They soon would remove the definite article for the better.) over the course of the two years following my move to Dallas from New York.  I felt like Sarah was one of those people that I shouldn’t lose contact with.

It’s probably because I knew she could see straight through me the minute we met, and though I was scared of it, I also longed for people to know me so actually. I felt like Sarah did immediately like few others do.  I felt understood. Though I might not have always been able to articulate the specific nature of Sarah’s magnetism, at least I knew I should trust my gut and not over think it all too much.  I over-think a lot of things all too much.

Of course Sarah knew that.

+

Knowing I was returning to Manhattan for a visit a few weeks ago, she asked me to photograph one of the bands she is currently managing. I knew that this would be a good chance to spend time with her, and that it would be something refreshing after two years of digital correspondence. I also knew we’d have some time after the concert we could catch up in some setting where earplugs were not required.

After the concert we parted ways.  Sarah had to stay and help the band pack up, and a good many of my church friends who’d made it to the concert were going out for cocktails immediately afterward.  Though most of my purpose post-concert was to hang out with Sarah and the band, I also knew she ran a parallel existence to most of the artists she managed and represented, so I decided to join the others until she was out and about.

A few hours went by with the group — which included my old roommate, my best friend from high school, and some others I met during my time there. When it was time for us to split ways, I let the group know I’d be heading back downtown from Union Square to meet with Sarah, and began the short pace to Astor Place.

By the time I reached the destination, I realized how late it was and decided that I should just call it an evening.  I’d been awake until 3:00am the past three nights in a row, and I thought it wise to head back to Midtown, where I was staying for the week.  It was now 1:00am, and I knew that it was dangerous to my health to begin considering this sort of hour “early.”

I turned my body 180º, facing north, and planned to take a left at 9th Street to meet the uptown 6-Train a little more than a block away.

“Hey man……You, ehh, you got a light?  You got a light?”

It startled me a bit.  I was already in a daze, sorting through thoughts of my plans for the next day; how long I would have to wait for the train; and if my mom was scared that I’d be moving back here (and if I did, how she might react.)

I stopped and looked to my right; the direction the voice came from.  There stood a skinny guy in his late 20s with a pair sunken brown eyes and wiry hair matted down down by one of those Che Guevara caps that were pretty popular a few years ago.  A cigarette hung from his lips, unlit.

“Sorry brother, I don’t.”

I translated the overcoming worry on his face as a need for nicotine, compounded by my inability to assist him getting his fix. I scanned the area just in front of Ray’s Pizza — where we stood — and noticed an open book of matches on a neighboring table.  I slid over and swooped them up, and struck up a flame by holding the front and back of the book together, pulling the match through the rough area with haste.

I brought the small flame near his lips and imagined smoke filling his lungs.  A little white cloud leaked from the left corner of his mouth.

“Thanks.  Thanks… thank you.”

“No problem man.”

After performing my duty, I intended to speed on my way to the Subway stop, knowing the trains run much less frequently this time of night.  I took a step North past the guy, and was about to bid him a Good Evening.

“Hey man .. That a camera bag?  You a photographer?”

“Yeah .. Actually .. I just got back from photographing a concert, and I’m on my way home.”

I’d hoped he’d take a hint and set me free from his grip.  Instead, he asked me inside. He wanted to show me something.

At this point, my inhibitions for spending any more time with the stranger were thinned, as I’d become extremely intrigued if by his mannerisms and appearance alone.

I walked inside of Ray’s — a place I frequented my first month of living in the East Village a few years ago — to some corner spot he’d rationed off.  His table was in the darkest spot of entire restaurant, free of fluorescent light and the the late night pizza patrons attempting to soften the blow of their oncoming hangover.

It was much darker on the street (where we were standing earlier), and so I was able to observe in greater detail. He was an unabashedly short guy — probably 5’2″ and around 110 pounds.  His complexion was a little gritty and weathered, but no more gritty than Bushwick tends to make a person. (I later found out he really does live in Bushwick.)

Across his wiry shoulder bones hung an oversize striped green hoodie contrasted by — in both color and size — a pair of women’s black skinny pants.

As I watched him prepare to show & tell me whatever he was about to show & tell me, I might’ve guessed he was on some sort of stimulant, but later I wondered if he might have just been odd, which of course is not untrue about all of Us.

I looked him in the eyes — his were a lucid green — and when ours connected, his crooked smile rose a bit on the left.

“I’m a photographer too. The difference is that I make stuff.”

I didn’t really know what he meant. I wondered if he’d meant it philosophically; providing some sort of short artist statement about the Artist as “maker.”  I also wondered how he already knew, without seeing my work or knowing really anything about me how we were so different.  I mean — no doubt we were, but I wondered how he saw it.  I inquired further.

“Oh really? What sort of stuff do you shoot? What are you making?”

He reached in a large paper Whole Foods sack and hoisted out a grey, rectangular device with the care of a man harvesting water from a well who hadn’t a sip in months.  I recognized immediately that it was a film negative scanner, albeit it a very cheap one.

He said a few things about the scanner, and while doing my best to ingest every morsel of information he was offering, I couldn’t help but notice the steno pad sitting on his table beneath a scattering of AA batteries. The steno was filled with all sorts of scribbles — all ineligible to me — and a number of shapes he had traced over so many times and with such vigor that his ballpoint pen nearly pressed and tore through the pages.

He watched my eyes turn down to his notepad, perhaps able to tell I’d be intrigued by his hieroglyphics. Or perhaps hoping I’d understand them.

“I’m an inventor. I make stuff.”

“Yeah? Would you tell me what you’re making?”

He went through a list of his recent innovations and planned inventions, and honestly I didn’t understand anything he was saying. Plus, it was getting late, and I didn’t want to interrupt my friends in Midtown by entering their home at some absurd hour.  After all, it was already an absurd hour.

I waited for a break in his speech to let him know I needed to head back north but that I would love to keep in touch with him and hear more about his inventions.  I also said I was very interested in seeing some of his photography.

“Do you have a card?” I asked, as I often do when I meet creatives.

“Well… Actually.  Well… They are still at the factory.  My cards are Lunar powered — that is — they are powered by the moon.  And the circuitry required to interpret Lunar signals is still being worked out.  So they are still in the factory.”

“Oh really?  Wow, eh.  Well that is very, very interesting. I’ve never heard of Lunar powered business cards.”

“Yes, I invented them.”

I was having a hard time processing all this so immediately.  “Well, could I write down your email address?” I petitioned. “Do you have a website?”

He thought for a bit, and his eyes turned curiously to the ceiling and then quickly turned down and met mine again.

“I tell you what. I don’t have business cards, but I do have these.”

He reached down into the same paper Whole Foods bag and pulled out a brand new package of walkie-talkies.

“I would love to continue communicating with you on these walkie-talkies. Are you… Are you a night person?”

I didn’t know the motive or purpose of the second question, so I went ahead and answered the first question first, knowing this to be an opportunity I couldn’t — shouldn‘t — miss.  “Sure, I said.  I’ll continue to communicate with you on the walkie-talkie. I like nights as equally as days.”

He looked down at the walkie-talkie package with wide, excited eyes. The packaging was one of those shifty pieces that — from my experience — are nearly impossible to open without some sort of razorblade or scissors. I watched his shaky, unstable, bare hands aggressively rip through the incorrigible plastic binding with some metaphysical strength. I was astonished.

One walkie-talkie fell on the table. His shaky hand shuffled through the Double-A batteries covering the steno notepad with the hieroglyphics, and many fell to the ground.  He inserted what remained on the table into the battery bay of the first walkie-talkie, handed it to me, and told me I was free to go.

“Channel 11.”

I honestly could not believe what was happening. I walked outside of Rays, leaving him at his corner nook, where he’d begun to insert batteries into the other walkie-talkie.

“Channel 11,” I whispered to myself.

Within seconds of tuning the radio, I heard a transmission.

“Your mom.”

“Oh yeah?” I responded.  “It was nice to meet you.”

“It was nice to meet your mom.”

I grappled with whether this was actually happening.  Knowing I wouldn’t get a radio signal in the Subway, I decided to walk north past two stops so as to continue the conversation.

For the next 15 minutes I carried on with this man about a broad variety of topics, not limited to photography, my mom (of course), and some weightier topics.

“Do you believe in all that Creator of the World stuff?”

“Yes, I do.  I think it might be a more nuanced view than you are accustomed with, though.”

He took a few seconds.

“I think as humans it’s a very comforting and secure thing for us to believe in some sense of Order — in some sense that there is an Architect and those sorts of things.”

“I agree. I think that I might diverge from you on why that is, but I’d love it if we could meet up tomorrow and talk about it a little more.”

He took a few seconds.

“Your mom.”

With that, I descended beneath the ground at the 23rd Street and Park Avenue, still trying to assess what’d just happened. After waiting thirty minutes for the train, I boarded a nearly-empty train and headed north to 51st Street.

I awoke the next morning to find Trae,  hovering above me, curiously inspecting the walkie-talkie on the table. “What on earth is this?” he said.  I responded that day with the same thing I would respond with now weeks later.