Dear You,

Someone asked me the other day What's the Craziest Thing You Ever Did?

I would have to say  many things in my lifetime, too many to name - I tend to live on the edge quite a bit. So instead I will name the last.

It was quitting my job and booking a last minute flight to NYC and boarding the plane within a day, WHEN clearly I couldn't afford it. It was going out to breakfast with a complete stranger. Taking a chance on life and people.

My recollection of our time together, sometimes we have a plan, sometimes God has other plans.

We walked, and walked and walked for three hours.  no one was around, just you and I and the silence of the very night, a few cars passed, a few other drifteers walked past, but the majority of the streets were empty and still. There were factories and buildings and gravel roads even a few trucks, but nothing else. No one else, except this stranger whom was fasting becoming a friend. The stranger i had met merely an hour before, this stranger with his curly hair, white shirt and unshaven face.

 Where were we? I don't know, I didn't care. I was doing just what I felt like and that was walking the streets of NYC with an unknown soul. Exploring, listening, talking, seeing and hearing about his life.
All that mattered was feeling alive in that moment, taking a risk.

i know we were out in Lexington Avenue, but you can go far in three hours on foot. We had the city to ourselves but I wasn't afraid. I felt safe. I took photos. We talked about life, and family and Dali and his great work. ....about Natalie Wood, about the Broadway and about wicked. I remember it all so clearly. You spoke about your dad, about your awe for him. Your mother and sister.........

But neither of us spoke about love, was it because i was trying to avoid the very reason I had come to NY, the very thing that I had discovered and was now running from, that very four letter word, which had now gained and lost it's meaning for me.  And you? Why didn't you bring it up? Who would have thought that this time, a year on, that very word would be costing you your freedom and maybe even your life? You never mentioned anyone special to you. i never asked. Perhaps the answer would have hurt to much. At that very raw stage of my life I didn't want to know about that four letter word.

It was crazy, we eventually found a diner and had that breakfast, the one we set out to have three hours ago. You shared your meal with me. I think it was crazy, sitting down and having a meal with a complete stranger. We continued talking about everything from dreams, to hopes, family, to careers, to songs, to words, to religion - you said you were antagonistic - the papers say you're Jewish? That is the only thing that doesn't match up to what i read about you and to what you told me....everything else fits like a glove. That is how i know it's you.

'What Was The Craziest Thing You Ever Did?' - they asked


It was saying yes to walking to central park with you after our breakfast, it was asking you to come inside my apartment and wait (and ever so politely you did - by the door, arms folded) -  as I changed my shoes and forgot my phone and my purse as I left for central park in the early hours of the morning....with a complete stranger without a phone or a purse without any identification or emergency contacts. My life at their mercy - thank God he is always watching - even when we slide away.
I am torn, between more adventures like this, more crazy nights walking along the outskirts of a unfamiliar town - not daring to plunge in further or the fairytale...

Now Nicholas, what was the craziest thing you ever did? Tell me it's not true. Tell me that - 'that' isn't the craziest thing you ever did. You're a too beautiful soul to spend the rest of your life regretting something. One crazy night on the streets of Manhattan and the man i met is not the man they describe you to be. Tell me something...anything. Tell me you didn't do it. Because I wouldn't pick you for him. You were so softly spoken, so fragile, so sweet, so carefree..Could you be him? Tell me I wasn't yet again decieved, when deceit was the very thing i was running from in search of freedom. In search of truth.

And the knowledge of me risking everything to walk the streets with a stranger that night...the thought that it could have been me - scares me, but what scares me more, is that i would take that risk again, and walk the streets with a stranger. What scares and shocks me more  - is my mind, and  that it wants to live on the edge, where it's so dangerous but so safe.

That is what frightens me. My ability to run wild in search of an experience, however dangerous it would be. That the very experience is what stops me from going after what my heart really wants, or is it that this very experience as dangerous as it is, is still safer than opening yourself up and letting some one real in? Someone who could crush you and leave in more of a mess than a stranger ever could.

So I continue to run free, night after meaningless night, searching for yet another experience to numb me from the pain of reality. Hoping I make it out alive. Taking photos like this, in the middle of nowhere, careless and free, oblivious to the fact that it could have been the last.