We all know that one day we will walk through the front door for the last time. We just don’t know when that will happen, and we also won’t know when it will have happened. In other words, you walk through the front door, onto the wooden landing on the stoop, you turn to lock the door, jangling your keys. This happens hundreds, thousands of times, but one day it will happen and then never happen again, and nothing will ever indicate that it will never happen again. You might not even realize this unless you happen to be paying attention - say you’re moving out of a house you loved living in, say you’re fleeing in distress, heading somewhere else with your tail between your legs. It’s then that you note it. You pause, thoughtfully, and magnify a few details - the particular curvature of the numbers of your address, how they’re nailed to the siding, the woodgrain of the door, the oily dark swirl where thumbs meet the doorknob. But then there are the times you leave walk through a front door not realizing that it has, in that moment, become a portal, a star trek transfiguration, a wormhole between this life and that. Like when your parents move unexpectedly, or when a natural disaster diverts you to another location, the a-frame taking to the river, or, god forbid, those times you never make it back to the front door, those times you had every intention of walking back through it but, for whatever reason, never got the chance.

Everything we ever do might very well be for the last time. You just never know. You might never get another chance. That person might dump you, that restaurant might go out of business, that band might break up, the venue might close, the landlords might kick you out, that friend might move. Mighty, lastly. I think about last times a lot, these days - when was the last time I went dancing, when was the last time I saw a group of friends, when was the last time I had sex, when was the last time I walked outside without a bandana tied around my face. When was the last time I went out to eat at a restaurant, when was the last time I ran on a treadmill. When was the last time I went to work, when was the last time NYC felt as odd and empty as it does now (that one’s easy - Hurricane Sandy, but we’re living through a weekly Sandy now, it seems). When was the last time I saw my sweetie. When was the last time I rode a train. When was the last time I left the city. When was the last time I brushed my teeth, changed my clothes, took a shower, did my laundry. When was the last time I played a show. When was the last time I felt free from the clutches of this manic fog of paranoia that this creeping illness has me under (that one’s easy, the last time my sweetie was in town. No no, not the last time, I mean the most previous time).

Losing grasp a bit, and unsure of these answers. Days and dates blend together, new anxieties (am I going to get laid off at some point) replace the old ones (am I going to be allowed to continue to live at my house, am I sick, is it okay for me to try and get people to listen to my record). I feel tired and lethargic, uninterested in most things. I feel that I am either rapidly gaining weight or experiencing profound dysmorphia, maybe a bit of both. I often feel helpless.

But there are actual joys, too. I find myself cracking up on FaceTime. There are inside jokes, there are quiet, thoughtful gazes at each other. Lately I have been riding an exercise bike first thing in the morning blasting music in my headphones and dancing along and sometimes crying very hard, my whole day’s catharsis at once. The last two mornings I’ve gone so hard on the bike so hard that my room heats up and I have to crack the window to let in some air - I hear birds in the just-budding trees up and down the block and, improbably in the deep urban area where I live, a persistent woodpecker. I read an instagram post from a friend of mine about how she is offering online doula consultation - I imagine someone terrified to welcome a life into the world in its current state finding comfort in my friend’s calm assurances and this fills me, for a time, with radiant optimism and good feelings of pride and humanity. Similarly I sometimes see or am sent photos of people’s young, young children enjoying my music (the littlest ones are merely serenely in the presence of my music) and these bring tears to my eyes, every time. I am very sincerely enjoying playing videogames - the thrill I get from successfully doing something in a game is immense. I finished reading a Margaret Atwood book recently, and now I’m reading a George Saunders, and the crispy papery feeling of their pages between my fingers in the quiet of the morning before my roommates get up is truly delicious, the opposite of blue light fatigue, almost like holding a lover in your lap. Recently we got really stoned on the back patio and watched Star Trek and I thought about how quiet space is, I thought about the whooshing sounds of the doors opening, I pondered - earnestly and with no anxiety - whether or not the android is human. My roommate bakes bread every few days and offers me a warm slice or two when it comes out of the oven - I permit myself to enjoy it, and I do. As I write this I can hear the neighbors holding court on their stoop. It seems like someone they know has walked by, and they are talking loudly at them from the safety of their steps while the person waits on the sidewalk. They are happy to see each other, you can hear the pinched corners of their smiles in the way their words tumble out on top of each other, relieved to be speaking to people not on a conference call. They are making eye contact and laughing and bemoaning the current situation and exchanging tips. They are helping each other get through this, in this providential moment (what are the chances of running into somebody these days?). They are helping each other. They are helping. I hear them say, as they part ways, laughing loud and clear:

We’re gonna get there.