New York light sparks.

With an overwhelming flurry of heart-warm moments just behind me, flipped like a stack of playing cards from hand to hand this past week, this morning I am grateful.  I sink these memories steadfast, like a flagpole on a ship, like a mast, like a lightning bolt struck through the ground.  This morning I want to acknowledge the WHOLE, the stacked layers, the overall feel of beauty and gracefulness, of sustained warmth.

Recently, I have been trying to cultivate heightened awareness in beautiful moments, complete presence/present, a recognition and celebration of momentary gifts-- three-dimensional, round, all-sensory.  Years ago, living in Rome, IT, I made a habit of getting lost, continuously, luxuriously, sunk in a racing feeling of lushness-- thrilling through a trust that I would find my way back to something familiar, a deep belief that important things waited for me around unknown corners.  As a hopelessly visual person, I got lost so many times that I made a constellation map of the city, pictures that I walked strung together by colors and lights, sounds, smells.

I devoured books by Baudrillard on the topic of similar wanderings, and Henry Miller, and Rimbaud, all celebrating the aching loneliness and sharp etched beauty of the wandering 'flaneur' through cityscapes.  As I learned the beautiful old cobblestone streets of Rome, I felt new branchings in my brain, I felt capillaries and neural networks growing that corresponded to the winding timbre of wind-whipped city streets.   

If you asked me today, I could never remember street names, but I could close my eyes and guide you on a picture walk to any place in Rome, through dark streets covered in wood shavings, past ruby red butcher shops, meats in cases, cakes behind glass, Christmas lights hanging askew, steam from coffee counters, metallic puppets in the wind.  I believe in following a haptic path-- a visceral gut recognition that relies on all physical senses at once, with the palest shimmer of a frail and golden string ahead.

The street of antique dealers in the center of Rome is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.  Each shop crowded next to each other, lit from within like stage-sets, like jeweled dioramas.  Each shop painted different brilliant colors and lit with soft falling lights that collided, overlapped-- chandeliers, candles, otherwordly lights.  Packed tightly with objects, each shop was a tiny version of home-- a microcosm, a condensed version of beauty and comfort and light.  And they were strung; catenary, each to each, lit chains. 

My memories of this past week in New York have been coming back to me in that same same way this morning.  I flip through slides, loud with the whirring sound of childhood, smoke and plastic smell, dust in the light from a projector, quiet as each flashes on the screen.

I remember the lights, the loudness, the shadows, and soft creams and golden hues of restaurants at night.  I remember the color of old and rare sherries swirling in my glass, and the heart-sparks of my friends around me.  As the atmospheric (too dark) photos I am always taking, thin pin-pricks of light spark out of the frame, just enough to trace the outlines of the scene.

Like a Caravaggio painting of faces angle-lit, light as a rain of grace falling, and warmth from the golden insides of restaurants that are full, clinked glasses and steam.  I am grateful for this spate of stacked slides, these crystal refractions, chandeliers overhead, and sparks deep in my glass.