Set Theory.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s a bad thing when you recognize as you’re standing at the corner of a certain place in your life, that at one point in the past you’ve stood there before in a way you never can again.

I was at the corner of 68th and Lexington on the way to work, pushing through the morning crowd all hunkered down in a silent hurried rush, and for a brief moment my eye caught sight of the grey pavement of the sidewalk littered with old gum, the newsstands of The Village Voice (on Wednesdays) The Onion (that I never read) and AM New York, and I saw myself and how I’d stood at that corner near the street sign at past moments in my life that I can never get back again.

The paths of our lives keep stretching out in front of us at different dimensions in so many different places and cities -that at one point, at some point, they have to eventually intersect and catch up with us (even on a Tuesday morning during rush-hour).

Because I’ve stood on 68th and Lexington waiting to cross the street feeling that naive newly-arrived-Manhattan feeling that I can never get back after so many days of dealing with the harshness of its reality. I’ve stood there being heartbroken over a love that’s long since faded. I’ve stood there with people who at one time were a strong presence in my life but no longer are, along with those I still can’t fully accept that I’ll never see again. And yet, the corner remains.

It is perhaps at the fastest moving moments of our lives that we can’t help but reach out to try to make sense of things, to try to find the right angles at which to see the world. Most intersections of life don’t make much sense as it’s in a state of constant flux. Like the woman who was interviewed on NY1 on Saturday having left her apartment on 51st and 2nd just moments before the crane fell and crushed the building, killing many nearby. I was just there, she uttered in shocked disbelief to the reporter, to the camera, to the city. I’ve lived there all my life. I’ve lost everything I have.

There are (aren’t there?) so many corners in life that hold so much of what was, that it’s hard sometimes to make sense when you walk passed them (either just in time, or a moment too late) of what will become of them in the future.