new york from all our eyes

"six words. capture a moment, a feeling, or an idea. write one for each day. we'll put them together and maybe we'll create a three dimensional look at our time. or would it be four dimensional because there are four of us looking at the same things and seeing different ideas?"


FRIDAY

Only Jesus knew what was coming. kj

Long drives need music and books. mh

And that’s when I understood Watsky. he
We settled into each other’s space. kb

SATURDAY

Blonde boys make the best drivers. kj

I left my headphones in Virginia. he

The anger was for your protection. kb

God got us to our doorstep. mh

SUNDAY

Wow, so transubstantiation really is important. mh

His earnest belief made him lie. kj

Underdressed in the presence of royalty. he

We didn’t turn on the TV. kb

MONDAY

Giddy sick broke and too happy. kb

I prefer people watching to shopping. mh

Lost among a sea of words. he

Everyone's looking but no one sees. kj

TUESDAY

Road-trips and remembrances help make stories. mh

I gave him cigarettes, not money. he

Her words unlocked both of them. kb

Ten year anticipation made me choke. kj

WEDNESDAY

I was a time traveler’s tourist. he

Snow covered all my past sins. kj

Your nostalgia is greater than mine. mh

Your fall took me with you. kb

THURSDAY

Cold weather, warm strangers, good friends. mh

Standing alone among millions, he cried. kj

All the words melted away today. kb

Take some of my body heat. he

FRIDAY

Subway windows are haunted by faces. kb

His plane ticket was his escape. he

Walk a mile, drive five hundred. mh

Saying "heading home" is a lie. kj

SATURDAY

We didn’t leave Hillary at McDonalds. kj

“I love you.” “You’re stupid too.” he

I was awake for 22 hours. mh
I realized your floor was home. kb

the anger was for your protection

text and photography: katie beth

Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York; the red barns, silver silos, and swaths of snow stretching over grass hills.

 

The long stretches of highway. "Drive two hundred. and twenty four miles on. I-81 North. Then continue. on I-81 North." We found the ends of highways and discovered new twists of road.

 

With the wheel in my hands, I could feel the car hum over the highway. As we got closer and closer, I could feel the urgency of the cars around me rise. Rushing rushing always having to be somewhere else. Anywhere else but right here--as if they couldn't stand sitting still even as they hurtled over the pavement at eighty miles per hour. Then suddenly we swooped up and around a bend in the eight lane highway and saw skyscrapers, blue in the polluted evening. 

I gripped the wheel tighter.

"Guys...is that it? Is that it?" No. No it wasn't. It was New Jersey. But there was no going back to calm. Every nerve went taught. My neck stiffened with lactic acid then there they were. The always theoretical skyline suddenly real and touch-able out the window.

I threaded the car into the depths of the city through wormhole tunnels and behind trash trucks nearly scraping the road barriers. Seven hours in the car and three hours driving. Strung up on excitement and a kind of fear and the deeply maternal need to protect the women in my car.

They'd never seen me like that: aggressive. Angry. Complete control over the car flowed from my legs and pelvis, not my fingers as it usually does. My whole mind consumed by picking out the road lines and scattered pedestrians in the glaring lights.  The same feeling as when I hear a little one shout out in the first shock of a bloodied knee. Everything in me must respond.

And then the car settled to the curb in front of the apartment that wasn't yet ours and my hands didn't stop shaking for hours.

That sip of scotch shot to the top of my head, soaked up by the frayed ends of my mind. Then bed sucked me down until I couldn't stop falling anymore.

god got us to our doorstep

The Second Day
text: molly holleran
photography: katie beth

Saturday morning was easy and relaxed as we breakfasted and talked with T and R. R had grown accustomed to us and felt free to bring out his Nerf guns and Spider Man outfit. I, a willing sacrifice, allowed Spider Man to tie me to a chair and be shot at. After he showed us his tricks on his toy ATV we piled back into Bruce to finish the journey. The drive was fairly uneventful. We stopped and ate lunch at a gas station somewhere on I-81. It was a chilly, clear day with a slight breeze and just enough sun. It was like a day in Vermont when it’s gearing up for spring but hasn't quite made up its mind yet. We sat on the curb and ate boiled eggs and chicken and grapes. I brought out welsh cakes which are delightful. Lunch over, we piled back into the car to finish the drive. When we neared NYC KR volunteered to do the driving and took to it well. After a couple minutes, in which we might have gone a couple of hundred feet and were honked at quite a lot, she began to imitate the spirit of the traffic.

After some confusing directions we found ourselves in the right part of Brooklyn. We found Clark Street and the house we would be staying in. We rounded the block a second time, NYC being riddled with one way streets, and looked for parking. Just as we rounded the corner with parking in sight, the lights flickered and died, the engine stopped, and we rolled to the side of the road. 

[kb: note how both of these women are grinning as we learn that our car is absolutely dead. praise be to God who didn't allow the car to break down on the williamsburg bridge, in heavy traffic, or somewhere in no-where virginia. he is merciful to us and oh how we felt it then.]

Before we had time to panic a man ran across the street from where he had been sweeping his steps and told us to pop the hood. We were not sure whether to trust him, but we didn't really have much of a choice. He worked with us for a while that night and determined that the engine wasn't starting and WD-40 was not fixing it. Clearly, we had a problem. He left his number with us, and we took up residence in the basement of a Brooklyn Brownstone that we were subletting for the week. The owners of the apartment were very nice and hospitable. They had a very friendly dog named Arya who took an immediate liking to us. We had a kitchen and fridge open to us as well as a stocked liquor cabinet, two bedrooms and a full bath.

we settled into each other's space

text and photography: katie beth

A little less than a year ago a couple friends and I decided that we wanted to drive to New York for spring break this year. Senior year, taste of travel in Europe, why not in the United States. So. I wrapped the little I need up into my backpack again, doubled my state count, trembled a lot, and saw more with my emotions than my eyes.

The four of us piled into a tiny 1991 Honda Civic LX named Bruce, prayed that God would sustain him and ourselves, and proceeded to drive up the east coast.

So much to soak in as we whipped past it. My camera could only catch so much. Wide open spaces and southern mountains. Trees on trees softening the edges of great ridges. Glimpses of people's lives through their car windows as they passed us. Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia. All rolling past.

We turned through the last stretches of road and into the driveway of a simple white one-story. Met at the door by a petite friend, we collapsed into the rooms, careful not to open the closet and disturb the little blond-headed, spectacle-wearing sprite of a boy. He finally came out to go to bed but, as I so often wish I could do, he threw a blanket over his head to do so.

With the sun down and our hands beginning to shake from the driving, we slipped into bed and fell asleep before the cold edge was off the sheets.

long drives need music and books

The First Day
text: molly holleran
photography: katie beth

On Friday afternoon four girls piled onto a car named Bruce who was older than half of the occupants to drive roughly nine hundred miles to NYC. The day was pleasant and there was a charge of excitement and perhaps a little trepidation in the air. A little sense of “are we doing this? Okay, we are actually doing this!” tinged the excitement. KJ and HE showed up at my door in Bruce and we laughed about the Sophie's choices we made concerning clothing, I over sweater-vests, HE over band T-shirts, and KJ over jackets. We speculated that KR would be making the choices over scarves as we drove to her house. The group set, we prayed and explored the novels brought for the trip. We decided on Dear Daddy-Long-Legs, which is an excellent book and one I heartily recommend. Books, music, and good conversation enlivened the drive all the way to West Virginia where we spent the night. 

Our host was an old friend of KJ and has an adorable, though he would not choose the adjective, five-and-a-half year old son. He was shy, so he hid himself in a closet as his mother showed us around. When they walked next door to sleep, he hid himself under a blanket. Remember, if you can’t see them, they can’t see you!