America, My Love. I'm coming.

It's been three years since I've been in Bombay.  Almost five since I was living in America.  Goddess, it's been so long that I forget sometimes the man I was there.  I forget what the steam felt like coming out of the manholes at night on those suddenly deserted New York streets.  I forget the taste of a two dollar slice from the shops that stay open all night long.  I forget Central Park in Spring, with all the beautiful girls out walking their beautiful dogs, and the young couples finding themselves breathless and awkward under the laughing trees, and the old couples sitting quietly together, and how they'd look at each other and smile, a lifetime of love and understanding passing between them.

I forget San Francisco and it's manic fog, and the bells on the street carts.  The feeling of hanging out the side as they trudged uphill.  And the ache in my legs from walking up and down those steep, steep streets.  And the smell of that Senegalese restaurant down the street, with the grill men outside, sharing a laugh and a cigarette.  And the breakfast burritos from the Whole Foods across the street, and the feel of Solomon in his feline joy, asleep on my chest as I awake.

And tomorrow I catch a plane, and I try and wipe away three years of Bombay stress and Bollywood heartache.  Remember the joy of who I was, and see the joy in knowing who I've become.  Tomorrow I return to the country I love as a man.  I'm filled with so much hope, and positivity, and anticipation, that it's making me afraid to go to sleep.

This trip is sorely needed.  Somewhere over the last three years I strayed from who I was meant to be.  Not in a grand, disappointing way.  But in the way of a pilgrim who stumbled from the path for a moment, lost in the laughter and the lust and the allure of a roadside inn.  I need to remember who I am outside of acting.  I need to sit in my favorite coffee shop in Gramercy Park, and write for hours.  I want to sketch everything that I see as fast as I can.  I want to walk from Harlem down to the Villages and then back up again.  I want to see the street corners I stood as a bouncer, stamping my feet to keep the cold at bay, as people went laughing inside.  I want to stand where she and I waltzed while I sang Sinatra's "It Happened in Monterey" badly.  I want to walk past the restaurant where she told me she was leaving the country to go home across an ocean for good.  I want look through the window I saw her getting into that cab, where I didn't move for an hour afterwards.

Tomorrow I fly towards a friend who's face will light up like a child's to see mine.  Tomorrow I'll learn again what that kind of friendship feels like.

I have so much hope and so much to discover.  I have so much love, in this weathered and bruised heart of mine.  Goddess fly with me.  Keep me in the Light, keep me in the blessed shade of your arms.