I asked for a sign and I got a sign. C says, Yes, it’s a sign. Now what? Yeah, now what? I write back. Now you start to throw doubt around, which is what you wanted the sign to combat in the first place. All the doubt. The doubt you don’t actually have, but that other people make you feel with all their resignation about what happens in life. In love. Last week, A, who I call my oracle, said, “Trust what happened. Trust what you feel.” But I’m so inherently good at that already. It’s other people who lack faith. Is it really a sign?, I ask. Talking myself out of it again. But the first thought/feeling when I see it is undeniable: I believe.

Doing errands this afternoon, I walked by my favorite Manhattan graffiti, “Love is telepathic,” which I’ve written about before. What I saw I knew was coming. The wall was exposed last spring. A native New Yorker, and a child of Lower Manhattan (Soho and Tribeca), I’d never seen this graffiti before, so I don’t know how long it’s actually been there. Was it always behind the building that recently came down or was it put there after? Maybe it has been there forever, maybe only 6 months. Either way, I knew it wouldn’t last long. C knew this, too.

It’s now almost gone. I took a photo of the new construction and sent it to C. And she immediately wrote back:

noooooooooo I KNEW that was gonna happen soon after we were talking about it, because everything gets obliterated.

I replied:

Yeah, exactly. If I were an urban planner, I’d leave that graffiti up and exposed like a modern day Mother Mary to guide people. Give them hope. I can’t believe it will be lost like some cave painting.

Then again C:

god forbid there be any open space anywhere in New York

like the day I walked up to the nursery to get new plants, and it was totally decimated, ZERO plant life, just a ruinous lot of cinder blocks and the promise of amnesiac misery.

Then again me:

I hate it. Disgusting yuppie city that has no relation to the sacred.