Since my return from China, I have been trying to acclimate to the time zone and to start deploying a general commitment to myself to begin making an effort of getting re-calibrated to a life without my baby bro. The end of 2011 didn’t allow me much time to think, nor did it offer me much time to pause and genuinely think, even remotely, about a real short-term strategy.
For the most part, my days are like any other day before David died: The routine is just that, routine. Shit, shower, shave, bills, job, gym, unpack a couple more boxes, and try to complete a move that started some time in October. I wake up promptly at 4:00 a.m. in the morning like I used to—the silence of NYC before it has had a chance to wake up providing me with a little bit of time with my own thoughts. Sinatra was wrong: This city does go to sleep, especially on a Sunday/Monday morning. And it’s a bit lonely.
I woke up this particular morning with a feeling. A monochromatic feeling. It was a feeling like, while everything will work itself it in due course, there is also a lack of flavor. It’s like black and white before people realized there could be a color. The detail of the picture is all there, but you sometimes look at pictures and wonder what colors may have existed when a particular picture was taken. Was the subjects shirt blue, red, yellow, or pink? All the details are there, but you are missing key indicators to firmly state whether the color was this or that. It is only varying shades of gray. It’s a narrow frame of the light spectrum, limited only to a particular amount of color. Like a meal prepared without any butter or salt.
