Loving

New York

When you love a place, really and almost hopelessly love it, I think you love it even for its signs of disaster, just as you come to realize how you love the particular irregularities and even the scars on some person’s face.
—James Wright, correspondence with Leslie Marmon Silko, 1978.

Dashing around on errands the day before leaving for Uzbekistan, I was persuaded that two intended destinations demanded a trajectory across Central Park. A week later, 6400 miles away, it is clear that the park demanded the crossing and the one who steered me into it knew more than I what I needed to take with me.

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