where the heart is

(Another post resurrected from the certain death of my draft box. This is one from Boheme, started several months ago — around the beginning of August ’07.)

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Something strange is going on. Two similar events this week from two different people have really resonated with me.

First ….

Earlier this week, a customer gave me a belated birthday present: a CD of images of New York City. Years ago, this woman, a native New Yorker, found herself transplanted here, in southern California, where everyone is “friendly” and “mellow” and entrenched in the pursuit of cluelessness. She’s single, runs her own business — a kind of southern California ideal — and she couldn’t be more miserable here. I don’t have any friends in this town, she’ll say while she sips her coffee, her New York accent punching the air. You’re the only one who gets me, Tracey. It just seems like you get me. Then she will gaze at me for a long time from behind her huge bug glasses.

She’s an older woman, my friend Angela, with straight hair hanging in stiff sheets to her shoulders, dyed — no, coated — a blazing siren red. Her brows form a wide black V, furrowed into a valley of constant frustration. She’s short and stocky and intense and disliked by her employees. She’s a broad, you know? She talks straight, frank. I can see how some people don’t like it but I love it. You get what you get with her. There’s no pretense. She’s not a poser. She talks and you see who she is, not some carefully crafted image she wants you to see. But here in mellow, shallow southern California, she’s perceived as a bit much. Too much. Too blunt. So she hates it here and longs for New York. Her heart is there and her people are there. I almost cried when she handed me the CD of New York saying in a , “Well, I guess you can see where my heart is, huh?” So it was more than a mere present, really; it was a gift. I mean, I’m not from New York. Once as a teenager, I sat in La Guardia with the rest of my family during a 5-hour layover. That’s the extent of my experience of New York. Even then, though, loitering in those seats silently watching the people, I noticed the heartbeat in the air and how it pounded out a rhythm so different from mine. But Angela’s heartbeat says New York and with that small CD, she gave a glimpse into that heart and what’s most important to her: This is where I’m from. This is where I belong. This is where my whole heart is and I want to share it with you.

I was so touched, so blown away that she allowed me into this aching place, into her private longing. Because we all have private longings about all kinds of things, but I think it takes a trembling leap of faith to share them with someone else. Much safer to keep them hidden away and keep your secret light under a bushel. If you expose it to the air or give it room to breathe, it might burn bright enough for someone to see. And maybe they’ll laugh. Or maybe they’ll call you on it, and say What are you going to do about that now that it’s not a secret? Suddenly, you’re not the solitary flamekeeper anymore. You don’t get to hoard it and call it self-protection. Someone else sees it, someone else holds it with you, even, and there’s a nudge to do something about your secret light. A nudge to reunite you with your heart.

I sat there with Angela, fingering the CD in my lap for a moment. Finally. I looked her in the eye and said, “So tell me about New York.” I paused a second. “And tell me when you’re going back.”

Then, today …..

A man who works next door at the 99-cent store wandered in this afternoon. We’re friendly with each other; say hello and casually chat about this and that from time to time. He usually gets a small coffee, but today, he didn’t order a coffee. No, today, he just marched up to me, no wave, no greeting, hands full of postcards — postcards of Rio de Janeiro — shoved them into my hands and started talking. I listened, as best I could. His accent is thick, he’s frequently hard to understand, but I felt like I was just supposed to listen. There was no context established. We weren’t continuing a previous conversation. There was no introductory chit-chat. He simply walked in, handed me these postcards — beautiful postcards — and started talking. No, not talking, even. Dreaming. Remembering. Telling me what it’s like to be there. Imagining himself there. As he talked, my eyes kept wandering back and forth from the cards to his face and his eyes. This was no casual travelogue or random sharing of a possible vacation destination. No, this was something beyond that, because his normally deadpan expression completely changed. He looked like a little boy telling me about his private hideout in the woods. His brown face was ablaze with something that looked like hope and fervor. His eyes glistened with this new light, a light I’d never seen before — again, that secret light, it seemed, of things that only he could see. Where I saw gorgeous images of a glittering city that I could only appreciate abstractly, he saw complete emotional context. Personal beauty. Streets he knew. Places he loved. His whole heart, maybe his whole life. It was a distant, exotic place to me, but to him, it was home.

Do you think you’ll go back someday, Sebastian?

Oh, yes. Soon. I must go back. I must go back.

And, oh, the wistfulness and determination in his voice! That twinge of sadness that he had wandered so far afield, was so separated from his heart! His days are now spent standing sentinel at the door of the 99-cent store, chainsmoking his brown cigarettes, but his heart nurtures a tender flame for a faraway place he calls home.

After a moment, he left as abruptly as he’d come, stuffing his postcards in his shirt pocket as he went. Duty called, I guess. Back to the 99-cent store. I don’t know if he knew and I doubt he’d planned it, but he’d left a piece of his secret light with me. My heart ached for his heart to be made whole again.
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It’s months past these episodes now and still, they’ve stuck with me. There’s a reason why I rescued this post from the no-man’s land of my drafts: Perhaps we’re all living apart from our heart in some way. Perhaps we’re all hiding a secret light, a meager flickering flame, that we’re afraid to