I had dinner with an old friend the other night

His attention left me high and I glided back to my car, parked steadfast where I’d left it on the Friday side of Riverside drive, and drove home on the coattails of familiarity – the sort of superficial friendship easily slipped into after three sips of wine and two smiles.

I rode out of the city with the windows down – neither a part of New York nor an outcast from it and listened to three quarters of Court and Spark before the music became too maudlin and I unearthed a crud encrusted CD case from beneath my seat. Looking for something new.

I flipped over albums -old friends-whose songs weren’t enough for the moment.

It was one in the morning. The road stretched out, an empty grey chord ornamented by sporadic pools lamplight. Stillness settled over my speed and I needed to hear my own voice, singing along. Needed it to act as the deciding factor in the questions of loneliness and freedom now circulating my mind.

Balancing my eyes between the road and the assorted discs, I tried to read each title. But couldn’t and finally settled on a CD without one. With only the handwritten notation, “Blue Sky” across its face.

Track one: Nobody’s girl.

I am reminded of the times I’ve felt this way. I am reminded that once, I thought it romantic to do so. To be so. Lonely.

Now I only think it sad. She’s alone in this world, she’s nobodies girl. But I sing along anyways. Loudly.

Wonder, quietly, if I’ll stay nobodies girl past the point at which it’s still acceptable…and not sad… to be so.

I wait in suspense to see what might come next – like an unexpected old friend through the kitchen screen door. Like the next chapter in a book pointed at uncovering something essential – some central component of someone’s personhood. Yet in place of chapters, there are songs. Strung together, like pearls over plastic thread, the story. Note by note, recalling. Rebuilding.

Track two: Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes

She makes the sign of a teaspoon, he makes the sign of a wave and I do too. Steering with my knees as I roll both hands through the air, palms down, the movement recalling how I sat, cross legged on my bedroom floor, the scratchy green rug making imprints on my thighs. How I held my sneakers in one hand and a hot glue gun in the other and carefully pasted twelve plastic diamonds onto the bottoms of my Keds.

They all fell off eventually but not before the gym teacher banned me from class for inappropriate footwear.

Track three: Romeo and Juliet

Reminisces of first infatuations. Of the Thursday afternoon on which the first object of my first affections played this song for me. Of the deliciousness of first kisses and the angsty frustrations that followed.

Tracks four five and six:

New York Minute

Heart of the City

New York State of Mind.

I walked to these songs - these odes to New York – unleashed and invincible in the City. Infatuated with myself. With an imagined impenetrable skin, the likes of which we all assume, to some extent, in the years of our youth. Before something, or someone, punctures and deflates us. Brings us back to tears and our own tenderness.

Each cut at once an ode to the City and a note to myself. So cheesy but so pure in their messages of adoration. I try to picture myself, years ago, carefully picking these songs and placing them, back to back on the wings of New York butterflies. I was, in the earnest adulation I turned on each object of my affection, so pure, so endearingly innocent. And so dangerously unconscious.

I am not so today, a point I am reminded of by these songs. This album I made, sent out and found again, like a message in a bottle. A musical time capsule, penned in the past, played in the present to remind myself of the distance I’ve come.

Track seven: Blue Sky

Walk along the river ... sweet lullaby
It just keeps on flowin, it don't worry 'bout where it's going