The Invisibility Myth: Kiss me, demonstrations and free hugs in NYC. Therapy in the sky.

graffiti in the closet

🇺🇸My Man and I happen to find
ourselves in 🍏New York on Inauguration Day 2017.....Friday 20th January 2017 -The day the 45th POTUS, who’s name I cannot bring myself to utter, officially gets sworn into office in Washington DC.

☔️The weather is grey and wet.

☁︎Heavy skies.

♥︎Heavy hearts in need of free hugs.

✒︎Police everywhere, response fingers on the triggers of their machine guns. Life and death decisions at their fingertips.

✒︎People demonstrate. In the main peacefully. Democratically.

Every cab we take, the conversation is one of negativity, dislike, fear, despair. We share our mutual concerns as we see them from across the pond in Blighty.

✒︎We connect, with wry humour and belief/hope that it will all be ok in the end.

✒︎We accept that democracy has spoken.

✒︎For now.

✒︎Homeless people abound on the streets, as they do back home in London, but with no free National Health Service to gather them up when they fall, they beg with a sad intensity and it has to be said- an inventiveness- we don't often get to experience back home.

✒︎This is the uneasy backdrop to our visit.

....Bizarre then you might think, that we are having the most awesome time! We weave through the real time events and demonstrations taking place in and around Manhattan and DC, steeping ourselves in the cultural, the shopping (despite the appalling exchange rate), the endless pit stops in iconic delis for coffee and eats and cheesecake - always NY cheesecake....propping up the hotel bar supping Dry Martinis and Old Fashioned's, Madison Square Garden for Kings of Leon gig, viewing great art at
MoMA....walking, talking, buzzing, looking up and out literally and metaphorically at the history and people of this great vibrant city.

It has survived and evolved. Because it has to..

💠So have we.
💠Because we have to.

The alternative is surrender and acceptance to other people controlling and dictating our lives. Not an option I would consider for me or those of my Tribe. I think maybe I can be too much of a naive idealist,....but then again, I prefer to have the audacity to Manifest Hope. It was after all the 44th President Obama’s mantra in his original presidential campaign. A very, very different vibe back in 2009 when we witnessed his inauguration in Washington.

🚂 The pleasure bus has to eventually stop at its final destination sadly. So after leaving my man at Penn Station where he is taking the Amtrak train to Washington for work meetings, I walk disconsolately back to Times Square and find myself drawn into "Smokey Mary’s” - a French Gothic church, a city block deep and 80 feet high, hidden in midtown Manhattan. Statues and images of Mary, Jesus, saints and angels inspire reverence or at least respectful silence. It is a quiet haven for the homeless and dispossessed to nap safely and warmly. A time alone for me to reflect on my life blessings. As I prepare to leave, I notice a pile of coats in the gloom - only a pair of rather beautiful, gnarled yet elegant black hands show there is a human within - a sad woman’s face in shadow. I gently touch her arm and slide dollars into those hands, blow her a kiss, say a silent prayer to whoever may be listening, and leave in a big yellow taxi for JFK Airport.

Homeward bound.🇬🇧

Safe haven, for a short while.

✈️… I am blog writing in my wired state (as I so often am after midnight) in the middle of the night somewhere across the Atlantic Ocean en route back to the UK. After an uneventful wait in the departure lounge and despite the threat of storm chaos as wind and rain once again lash the East Coast, I take up my seat on the BA plane next to a seemingly edgy anxious young Trinidadian man. He is clutching a cabin sized bottle of red wine and requesting permission to start drinking in order to quell his flying nerves…Not exactly my idea of the perfect partner of choice for a long flight, but I decide to try and engage with him in light hearted banter-type distraction during a slightly turbulent take-off and see where it takes us. Half an hour later up above the clouds at cruising speed we are best buds on first name terms!!!!….Strangers on a plane, connected via the human condition - In particular; family, religion and the pursuit of individual contentment and happiness.

🎯Nothing trivial.

🎯Straight in there.

🎯The BIG ones.

🎯Life, death and everything in between.

🎯Nothing off the menu.

Best. Flight. Ever!!!!!!...

I discover my fellow traveller is a banker turned psychologist…Yay - a 6 1/2 hour therapy session - me grilling him about his Jehovas Witness upbringing in Trinidad (harsh!)…Fascinating stuff: the theology, the dogma, the indoctrination an ohh, oh, the eternal judgment. He forged his escape (as I myself had done) at a young age, to another country in order to create the dialogue of his own life, in his own words and seek a destiny free from the daily crushing criticism and guilt back in Trinidad. The legacy of such a life change is always seeking to find sense and order in the chaos of emotional thoughts and reactions to life events, always seeking peer and parental approval despite knowing it is unlikely and also unrealistic. My new BF grills me about my relationships, how my responses are informed by my background, how I avoided recidivism…..

❓How many times in my life have I had these discussions or a variation on the theme of with people❓

❓Including my own “choose life over a living death” story, the answer is; too many to count.....

↪️Continued sometime later, back home in my sweet, sweet island of a bed, pooch, cat and tea to hand:

Writing from the warm safety of my bed!

Our animated chat was broken only once by a short nap taken after supper, accompanied in the psychologists case by downing half a sleeping tablet with his 3rd cabin bottle of wine... We found ourselves sharing the kind of intimate confidences it is, for some reason easy to divulge when you know time is limited, there is no escape and you are unlikely to ever see the person you are confiding in again! Suitably oiled by his consumption of wine and mine of Bloody Mary's from the trolley, we ploughed on through the minefield of life’s adventures until we descended to land through a thick London fog.

Oddly and I realise probably to both of our relief, the sheer volume of people impatiently exiting the plane and me stopping to take photos of the crepuscular dawn, meant we did not even get to say goodbye, bonne chance…..

🔵An enlightening brief encounter.

🔵A reminder that we humans share the same inner doubts and insecurities, but rarely have the opportunity or feel secure enough to express how we feel.

🔵It feels good to share😉……