I find meaning everywhere. Not just in books and music and movies and myths, but in moments I witness as I stroll through this world.
Meaning. Clues to Life. Reassurance. Omens good & bad. All over the place.
When I was all of twenty-four, I moved to NYC for the first time, pretty much sight unseen. I had stood on the tarmac at JFK once when I was seventeen and looked out to see the silhouette of the Twin Towers in the distance, but that was as close as I had ever come to Gotham. I stared at those towers like they were a distant castle in an enchanted kingdom. I ached to move there.
I had wanted to move to NYC for as long as I could remember. The first time I saw the original King Kong, around 5 years old, as I watched my favorite simian stomp his way through the Big Apple, I thought to myself "I am going to live there when I grow up".
I never really grew up, but I did get older. Went to college. Found theatre. became a theatre major my third year. Graduated at 24, went to the Barn Theatre and got my Equity card, got a tour for a dance show to Japan, came back home to San Jose, California, loaded up my little Hyundai Excel, and headed East.
I got there on Halloween.
And the shit hit the fan in every way possible. I was broke. Alone. And for the only prolonged time in my life (so far) depressed. I felt like I had somehow fucked up my journey. Like my spirit guides had all abandoned me. I was the poorest, and skinniest, I have ever been. The cheapest thing I could do for entertainment was go to the MET, which was free for people who lived in the city.
And I came upon this painting of a girl, lost. Like crazy lost. No hope. What the fuck will I do now?
And then shit gets really weird. We float into a room full of treasure. A well dressed skeleton lays in bed, looking through a magnifying glass at nothing, searching for a clue like a spooky Pirate Sherlock Holmes. And a voice tells us we are now cursed for having seen the treasure. Then we pass a skeletal torso in a glass case, that becomes human as we pass it.