the Taste of Fear

Wednesday, October 11 th , 2006
New York City

My heart raced and my eyes widened as I ran out into the street, breathless. My friend Carter had just called me with a report of a plane hitting a building in upper Manhattan. The adrenaline was pumping as I scanned the sky for any signs of the fighter jets that had been scrambled to patrol the skies. All around me I could hear the screaming of sirens as fire trucks from all over Manhattan seemed to be let loose to fight the fire that erupted after the crash. The city whirled about me with a circus of sounds and unconcerned crowds, still unaware of the tragedy.

I made my way back to the studio and immediately skyped my daughter for more information. It turned out to be a small plane and I exhaled a sigh of relief. I checked the web for any reports I could find on any major news site. They all seemed to confirm that it was a small plane and that it had all the appearances of an accident.

The fear I felt was so real. It was like a small taste of 9-11. There had been rumours in the press recently about terrorists planning to strike New York again in the near future with a radiological bomb. When I was outside I even checked the direction of the wind just to reassure myself that I would be safe in that instance. I went out again and stood on the corner of Allen St. and Canal trying to get any view of the smoke but the crash was on 72nd Street and too far north for me to see anything.

The drizzling rain slowly intensified. I walked slowly back to the studio looking skyward for fighter jets. The rain pelted my face and blurred my vision. I calmed myself and thought once again…

…just how lucky I am to be alive.

With a slight sadness in my soul for the victims, I entered the studio building and closed the door on the outside world.

Love,
Wallace

the Forgetting Ghost

Tuesday, September 26, 2006
New York

My memory of my homeland is fading fast the longer I’m in Manhattan. It feels like I’ve lived here for years and it’s barely been two weeks since I arrived in the city. I felt this sensation as I made my way back to the studio this evening from the grocery store. All the buildings and the streets in this area of Chinatown now seem so familiar to me that I’m sure I’ve lived here before in some bizarre mirror world. As I slowly plodded along the garbage-strewn streets filled with mysterious green liquids, I feel so at home suddenly, I fear I’m forgetting my former life. The faces of my loved ones are becoming vague impressions of the originals and the places I loved at home are smoky phantoms that I cannot fully recall or see clearly.

I have become one of the millions traveling these streets and in doing so, have become part of a greater organism that threatens to absorb me into it’s genetics. I’m just another tile in the subway; another jaundiced taxi on the street or just one more of many billion pieces of graffiti scrawled across the landscape of this metropolis. I’m submerged into a greater consciousness that insists on individuals to make it a dynamic and chaotic whole.

My mood today is light and undefined. I spent so much time running errands and thinking of opportunities that I almost forgot to enjoy the simple pleasure of another day in New York City. It seems so unreal at times as I’m walking through traffic in front of the Flatiron Building that I feel as invisible as I do in Chinatown. I feel like some spectre gliding down the avenues only recognized by those for an eye for the unseen and internal. I’m transparent to all and it gives me the luxury of looking deep into those who pass me by, unaware of my ghostly gaze.

My new life is of many flavours….some days sour or bland.

…and some days it is the sweetest taste I’ve ever felt on my outstretched tongue. Like tropical rain.

Love,
Wallace

I'm Happy when I Work!

Wednesday, September 20, 2006
New York City, NY

I wandered up Fifth Avenue tonight to drop off some more cards advertising my comic book lessons at Jim Hanley’s Universe. It’s the only comic shop in New York City that stays open until 11pm at night.

As I made my way north, passing thousands of stranger’s faces, I began to feel pretty down for some reason. I’m in the greatest city on Earth and I love it and hate it at the same time. I so ached to have someone by my side that it felt like a phantom pain for a limb I no longer possess. Couples waltzed by me not knowing how lucky they are that they can hold their loved ones to their breasts still. I seen lonely men and sad eyed women pass me by like I was looking in a mirror. Is love that elusive and strange in Manhattan? This was given the lie by many of the people I did see together, sharing the innocent luxuriousness of intimacy.

I couldn’t halt the downward path of my thoughts as the skies grew darker and the air cooled to my skin. I know there’s no use trying to make sense of Linda’s illness and death but I can’t help it. I loved her with a ferocity that would scare off any other suitor and she returned my passion with a love that never waned or soured. After ten years together we were as madly in love as two silly newlyweds with their heads clouded with love and devoid of any doubt.

After a short time in the comic store, I headed back east and stopped at a Starbucks to have a cup of Earl Grey and see if I could untangle my mind enough to do some work. My mood softened and the more I drew, the more I relaxed and began to feel a smile creep across my mouth involuntarily. I finished up after about a half hour of drawing and writing. I packed up my little knapsack and made my way back out into the fresh night of midtown Manhattan.

I was smiling. Smiling! It was then that a sentence came to my lips and the more I said it, the stronger I felt.

“I’m happy when I work.” I repeated this again and again as I made my way to the Sixth Avenue subway station. As I descended into the underground arterial system of this vast city, I stood straighter and walked with a firmness of purpose and lightness of thought that felt so natural and comfortable; my spirits soared and the night was no longer an interminable darkness that I would face alone and vulnerable. This strange truth that I barely understand took me back from the precipice of tears.

I was myself again and I must never forget that sensation. It’s my naked soul and I must keep it precious and strong to navigate the life that lies ahead of me.

I will not falter.

Love,
Wallace Ryan

Bad night

Monday, September 18, 2006
New York City, NY

The sun blazed a trail of sweat up my back as I forced my way through the modern madding crowds of Manhattan this afternoon in search of opportunities. I dropped some posters advertising comic book lessons off at two of New York’s bigger comic book emporiums and then endured a quarter hour waiting in the 42nd Street subway station for a train. It was stifling deep underground and when I emerged in Chinatown I could do nothing but slowly saunter back to the studio.

Last night was one of the toughest nights I’ve endured since Linda left us all. I was listening to REM’s “Man on the Moon” when all of a sudden I welled with tears and began to cry like an orphaned child left adrift. I cried for a half hour before I felt the well of sorrow go dry. I dried my tears and thought of my Les. And the rest was easy. I have to make it for the both of us and I dare not disappoint myself or my darling Les. After I composed myself, I got suited up and went for a five mile walk from Chinatown to Times Square. The night air and endless crowds of streaming humanity filled me with a sense of certainty as I pushed my way north. I was in a Starbucks near Times Square getting a cup of tea and the fellow next to me at the milk and sugar table commented on how his girl friend who was just behind us had just taken off. Next thing, there was a knock on the window in front of us and his smiling lady friend beamed back at him. He laughed and I said, “She must love ya man!”; to which he rewarded me with a full luscious laugh.

As I left the café, I felt like my soul had been refilled with an excitement and love for life that I’d spilled on the floor of the studio with my sadness.

I turned and started to sing as I made my way east to the subway station on Sixth Avenue. My mind is clear and my purpose is certain.

Love to all,
Wallace

the Vanishing World

September 14th, 2006
the World

My world seemed to vanish underneath me into darkness and my heart shattered into a million pieces July 4th, 2005 when my beloved wife Linda Boddie passed into the great unknown after a brave battle with cancer. For months I was lost and except for my dear daughter, Leslie, I felt so totally alone in a now colder world that I thought I could never continue on. I thought my life was over without my sweet baby.

In late April of 2006, Les and I left Newfoundland for a getaway to New York City. We spent 2 fabulous weeks exploring Manhattan and it’s boroughs; we breathed deep everything the Apple had to offer. From New York, Les went on to Chicago to visit her friend Emily and I took to the rails.

I spent 4 incredible weeks circling the United States. I seen canyons ever so deep; a city on the Gulf in ruins with a heart as big as Katrina that saved my life; I toured the sun soaked Hollywood hills with a movie star; I crossed the Great Plains underneath a monstrous storm that lit the darkened countryside with savage lightning and within half an hour in upstate New York, I seen both a deer feeding on the track side, followed by the looming bulk of a nuclear power plant just across the Hudson River steaming with silent menace.

I spent a month in New York’s Chinatown with my dear friend, Carter Kustera helping him with his art and ways of promoting it. My life was becoming brighter and my heart’s many cracks had been freshly healed by the many wonderful people I met along the way. I could think of Linda without it tearing me apart and all the painful feelings soon changed to wonderful memories of a woman who meant more to me than my own life. I will never forget my lovely Linda and I have sworn to live my life to the fullest to honour her brave soul. I began to plan my new life.

I returned to Newfoundland a day after the first anniversary of Linda’s death and began to work for the Eastern Health Corporation at St. Clare’s Mercy Hospital for two months. But the memories and spirits were too strong and I felt myself slipping. So many days the tears were welling just below the surface of my eyes and I could see Linda in every corner of the city. I had been planning on returning to New York in the fall to help Carter out again but before leaving New York I’d met a beautiful young woman. We’d talked all summer and I wrote her letters every week. I decided to head back to Manhattan in mid-September instead and explore the stormy waters of romance. It was time to take some chances.

I love New York and everyday is filled with excitement and wonderous sites of beauty surrounded on the edges by danger and intense sadness. I only know a few people here and I miss my dear Leslie so terribly but I am undeterred. For both of us, I’ve undertaken a three month self imposed exile to Manhattan to establish a whole new Wallace Ryan. One whose soul is unburdened finally from the grief that almost killed him.

I cannot fail.

love,
Wallace