My Facebook posts can be intense. People tell me so.
About a year ago, I started wondering what I was really using the site for.  When the impulse arose to broadcast a fleeting frustration or anger – a long line at Staples, say, or some reaction to rudeness – what was I really looking to tell people ? What reply was I hoping for?
As a writer, I began wondering if I couldn’t use the time it would take to type a status as an exercise.  How honest can I be in the five minutes it takes from my door to the Subway, jabbing at my iPhone screen to get FB likes?
Then Sandy happened.
New York City spilled out all around me and I was grabbing for anchors.
Then Newtown happened, and shit got dark inside for a while.
And I was using Facebook statuses to spew out my existential unrest for likes.
The narcissist in me was surely spurred on by the likes and comments – the attention – but the Me in me appreciated the seemingly genuine intimations that people enjoyed the words.
A friend asked me if I had any of them backed up because he wanted to use them for a film.  So, here are some selections from the past year or so of Facebook rambling.

August 6th, near New York  
The slender, playful waitress gains nothing from my open defense of her against the abusive patron seated next to me – except more scorn from him and a discrete early dismissal from the French management. Knowing I tried to save her day to save my own, I find her inside, rolling her apron, and give her a 20 for the 6 dollar bill and wish her well. I head south in Harlem. “Central Park, sunset;” I think, “nature will, like, make your mind better.” I sit on a bench north of the pond and try to be a better person by virtue of looking at water and sky and ducks and shit. A man sits next to me, smelling too much of his own skin and sweat and I know he’s homeless or close to it; he pulls off a scrappy shoe to scratch at callouses. Forgetting him for a moment, my eyes go wet, remembering traces of losses and promises, and in my periphery are the saucers of his eyes and I feel them fixed on me. I turn my neck to observe a diapered toddler laughing at the grass, and I chuckle, and so does the man next to me. I take out my phone to check the time, and seeing the screen dead, I snicker at myself. He snickers. There is an invitation in it; a question. So I turn to look at him. He’s looking at me, his cheek bones stretching his dirty skin. “Hi,” I say. “Alright,” he says, and his arm rolls out from his side like a flower blooming. His hand stays open in front of me, and I think of my friend who congratulated me for holding a stranger’s hand and wonder if she had considered I did it just as much for myself. I slap my palm into his palm and we hold hands for maybe three seconds, and there’s the lake and the couples jogging and the turtles and the lamp posts. “I gotta head back,” I say, rising. “Don’t got a cigarette?” I smile an apology and he laughs – a deep, full laugh, like the last laugh I had with a lifelong friend. I leave the park and he follows me. The cars running the red lights and Lenox Avenue sprawling north to my lonely night and he’s a few paces behind and the teenagers calling across the avenue to each other and the drunk asleep on the corner and he’s a few paces behind me, following.

April 15th near New York
The cat may have heard me whisper to myself that I was going to try harder, because he was determined to wake me up at 6:00AM. I tossed the comfortable sheets and jumped into the day: I will exercise, I will read and prepare lessons, I will write vital theater, and I will love people. Coffee in hand and spirits high, I breezed down the shale and rose colored Harlem street, heading for Central Park where the better version of me would begin. And then it started raining, and I was like, oh man. But… wait. The guy in front of me isn’t wet. The moment one realizes that one is covered by – like engulfed in, like pools in your hood – the green, steaming, barn-from-hell-smelling shit of maybe like 6 or 7 mythical pigeons is a moment that one gets closer to primal roots of rage. Nothing was open because Better Nick decided 6:30-fuckin-am is a good time to be vital or whatever, so I’m just looking for anything, anything to get this stuff off, OFF. People on the street don’t really look at you funny when you are all-encompassed by just awful terrible pigeon shit. They just don’t look at you. You’re not there. The yellow glow of some Harlem counter-diner – it may have even been called Harlem Diner – pulled me inside, where the eyes of the ‘hostess’ made a quick outcast of me. May I use the bathroom? There was no bathroom for me (despite the visible door with the blue man/woman on it). Then may I please just have a napkin? There was nothing like that for me. I WILL BUY BREAKFAST HERE, CAN I JUST HAVE A NAPKIN?! It was actually the moment the cooks came out of the kitchen, ready to eject me, that I thought of the homeless guy on 127th who asks for help to get a little something to eat. There are no napkins for him. Ever. I walked back home, encrusted and starting to smell like the inside of a worn-out beach ball, considering the idea that getting shit on by monstrous demon pigeons is good luck. Maybe the feeling of luck comes from knowing there’s a hot shower at home, and a cushy life in which one can write sprawling status updates. Or maybe there is no luck, and feeling like a pariah for 5 minutes made me realize how little I have to struggle against.

March 4 via mobile
It was the way the subway magician touched and held people’s hands that impressed the young writer. Not the dusty, faded foam clown-noses he made pop out of their ears or the stained red cloth he pulled from his mouth, in between reminders that “none of this is real, folks, it’s not real.” No, it was that he held their hands: papery elderly palms and hairy young wrists, and a wedding ring impressed below cold-cracked knuckles. And people smiled shyly and glanced at each other. “When was the last time someone held my hand?” thought the writer, who uses Facebook statuses to convince himself of things he only wishes for. “Don’t believe your eyes folks; I’m not here” – the magician had timed it perfectly; the doors opened and he was gone and the train riders jostled wordlessly until a Labrador led a blind man through the crowd, who mumbled “thank you, thank you, thank you.”

February 21 via mobile
A woman had just tripped over another’s bag. She landed in the subway car’s doorway just in time to get pinched. People moved to help her until she started shouting obscenities at everyone and everything, and there seemed to be breeze from 34th street that hissed “swallow your pride, lady.” I went back inside my headphones: cheery tunes meant to put me on the brighter side of shitty news. The big, steely man next to me tapped me; I thought he wanted to joke about the lady. “Does this go to the memorial?” He asked. “9/11 memorial?” He nodded, sliding his eyes away as if I had just let out a sad secret. I confirmed. “I used to live here…” I waited for more. Then he looked at me and that was all that needed to be said. We swayed together in silence until my stop, then told each other to be good, and I think we meant it.

 

January 6 via mobile
Round the bend into queens on the N; manhattan skyline against clear winter; more graffiti is left to live here than in other boroughs and it brings back memories of kids shoving fireworks into street lamp wiring to get more dark and of my grandfather helping me climb across city gates wrapped up in vines.

January 3 via mobile
The lonely writer blows a day’s pay at the bar.
He is out of his league; the people here describe their weddings by how much they cost.
He realizes he never wants to be like that.
The band starts up without pretense. There’s abruptly live jazz in the air.
He realizes he’s lead himself into one of the many places where he fell back in love.
He remembers laughing, and thinking, and revealing.
He feels like the cliches are true. Having loved at all was worth the deep dark pit. He thinks his friends are saints.
He closes out.

January 1 via mobile
“Is rough one for you?” the hot dog guy says, applying mustard.
I wonder just how much of it shows on my face, or how particularly it betrays.
The money blows out of my hand and into the street. I laugh, watching it go, and wonder how much could fly away before I’d care.
But the the hot dog guy runs into the street, saying oh no, and gathers each bill carefully.
“You okay my friend?” He asks me flatly.
“Not sure. But thanks.”
“It will get better.”
I leave him to looking through his portal, waiting for the next two dollars, looking forward to wherever home is, trailing kindness and not knowing it.

December 25, 2012 via mobile
“And you, you uh, you get home,” he was drunk at midnight at Bryant Park on Christmas, “and spend time with your family. Or whoever!”
“Yes!” His wobbly girlfriend said, abandoning her heels in the rain in favor of leaning into her beau.
“With your loved ones!”
They stumbled off, eating kettle corn, sporting no umbrellas or hoods, hair dripping, laughing, off into whatever Christmas they had planned together.
I turned the lights off, texted the night’s total to my brother, locked up, and jogged through the rain and into a cab, where the driver told me to be grateful for every moment I am alive.

December 17, 2012
They ducked into the bar, she with more the intention to laugh and confide, and he with more the intention to prove himself, to impress. And there was their president, unexpectedly, on every big screen. Twelve of his faces, solemn. And the bar was quiet. This usually rowdy bar now full of low voices and bowed heads.
“I feel like it’s such a serious moment” he said, lamely, to the hostess.
And he kept on trying to impress, with his research and his empathy and his insights, and she kept on trying to have a good night with a friend, and a list of names was read that brought him to tears in front of the waitress and the sports fans looking to the bottom of their beers.


December 15, 2012 via mobile
Dread before reading the paper, and that familiar compulsion to search. A whisper inside upon waking: there must be an answer. A naive insistence, always, that there is an answer. Or a way to answer. And off into the city; the only goal left being to be kinder, and more patient, and to shrug off no one. To disregard no one. To tell every little child with my eyes and my smile “it’s worth being here.”

November 8, 2012 near New York
Mustafa drove me home tonight.
I was too drunk and too self-involved to remember the details of his life, but he is from Senegal. His family wants him to be here. He had a better job there.
He leaned over the seat at a red light. He looked at me. He told me they would forgive me. He told me that writing is important.
He dropped me off. I couldn’t figure out the card machine; I was, and am, drunk. He helped me slide the card through the machine the right way; our fingers touched.
He sent me on my way: snow blasted me.
I couldn’t bring myself to look at the cab as it turned the corner and Mustafa went away forever.
He was kind.
There’s work to do tomorrow.

November 5, 2012 near New York via mobile
“I can’t get a fresh salad to save my life!” she lamented through her scarf. Several faces in the shoulder to shoulder subway car turned to her, dagger-eyed. Her cheeks went red and her eyes flitted around. The stop rolled into view and people tripped over each other, whispering thank you’s for small favors and grunting ‘for fuck’s sake’ over nothings. The city ambled on above ground, maybe foolhardy, while elsewhere people fed each other and passed out blankets and stood guard in front of their homes with bows and arrows and sat looking at their children, and other storms grew healthy over oceans.

November 1, 2012 via mobile
People stop by the booth; they’re happy to be out and to see little kids laughing around the fountain. They tell me about strangers letting them charge their phones on portable generators. A man had been down to the highline to collect water from a pump; he laughs walking away, telling me he’s gonna watch some classics on his portable DVD player. One man with a bandaid over his eye – disheveled, nervous, shy – just can’t imagine Breezy Point. Can’t imagine, those people! he says, standing at my counter. I give a free bag of kettle corn to a couple with three kids who have no power at home. They’re gonna be fine, they assure me. It’s quiet in the park. There’s no ice in the rink. I’m lucky. I’m happy to be here.

October 3, 2012 near New York
A few months ago, the guy behind the counter at the deli told me I carried myself well, shook my hand and asked my name. His name was Ahmed. His coffee is the same price as the other delis, one on each corner of this particular intersection, but I go to him because I feel like he considers the person in front of him and not just the change in their hand. I haven’t seen Ahmed in a couple weeks. I asked the new guy if he had found another job and he said “Ahmed sick. Hospital. Hit by car. Don’t know when he’s better.” I looked at him for a moment, hoping for some mutual shows of concern and hope, but he wanted the change in my palm. Handing it over, I said “I don’t know if he remembers my name but tell him… tell him one of his customers says hello and get well.” He was on to the next customer, and I was out the door. And the world spun on.