the man with his arms up

the whole block belonged to one thing for a night. i couldn't, and i'm still not sure why.

june 14, 2026

the knicks won last night, first time in 53 years, and the people on my block lost their minds. i heard it before i understood it, a sound coming up through the floor at eleven o'clock that wasn’t traffic and wasn’t an argument, just thousands of people deciding in the same minute to be happy out loud. i went to the window. the bar down the street had emptied onto the sidewalk. strangers were holding strangers. a man i’ve never spoken to in almost a year on this block stood in the middle of the road with both arms up, not saying a word, just holding the shape of a person who got what he wanted.

i want to tell you i felt it too. it’s the easy sentence, the one that makes me look like i belong here. but i stood at that window and felt what i almost always feel when a lot of people love the same thing at the same time, which is nothing, and then, underneath the nothing, a small familiar wariness, the one that says: a week ago half of these people couldn’t have named the starting five.

i’ve never been able to want a thing just because the people around me suddenly wanted it. not a team, not a band, not a mood that shows up fully formed on a tuesday with everyone already agreeing on it. something in me steps back the instant a feeling becomes a crowd. and i’ll be honest, because the whole point of writing these is that i don’t get to keep the flattering version: i don’t actually know if that’s integrity or just a wall i never learned to climb.

and then somebody started setting off fireworks. i never saw them. that’s the thing about fireworks in a dense city, you almost never see the ones near you, you just get the sound, the flat concussion of them coming off a rooftop a few blocks over, one after another, no rhythm to it. the crowd loved it. and my body, a full second before the rest of me could catch up and explain that this was joy, that this was a basketball game, did the thing it learned a long time ago in a different country, where that exact sound was never once good news, where you found cover and counted the gaps between the booms. i stood at the window with my heart going and my shoulders up around my ears, and for the next half hour i was not, in any way that counts, in queens. the people in the street hadn’t gone anywhere. they were having the best night of their year. i was somewhere else, years back and an ocean away, taken there by the same sound that was, for everyone around me, pure happiness.

so when i tell you i couldn’t throw my arms up in that street, some of it is just temperament, the old stepping back the moment a feeling becomes a crowd. but some of it is older than that, something my body keeps on file without asking me. and some of it is plainer still: those people get to belong to the night because they get to belong, full stop. it’s their city. i’m here on a different footing, in a life that hasn’t technically been cleared to continue, attached to a decision in an office i’ve never seen that nobody will give me a date for, open so long it’s older now than most of the good things i’ve got. it’s a hard night to lose yourself in a basketball game when part of you is always, quietly, waiting to find out whether you’re allowed to stay on the block at all.

i don’t want this to read like i think i’m better than the man with his arms up. i don’t. some nights i think he got the better deal by a mile. he can be carried off by something bigger than himself, and i apparently can’t, and i’ve spent a good part of my one life calling that depth when it might just be distance. the people who can join are not shallow. they’re free in a way i’m not. that’s the part i don’t say out loud at parties.

my mother called this morning and asked if i’d seen the game. she keeps track of the life i’m building here from an ocean away, the way you keep track of weather in a country you used to live in. i told her about the man with his arms up. i didn’t tell her about the fireworks, or where i went when they started, because she was there for the originals and there’s no reason to hand it back to her now. we talked about the weather here and the weather there, and whether i’d eaten, and the cat. somewhere in there it landed on me that the only crowd i’ve ever really belonged to is one person, an ocean away, on a bad connection, three mornings a week.

i finished the vocals this week. i’ll mention it once and leave it there, because tonight it isn’t the point. the block is quiet again now. someone swept the glass off the sidewalk. the man with his arms up is asleep somewhere, happy, and he earned it, the wait was 53 years. i’m at the desk, in a life that hasn’t officially been allowed to continue yet, making the realest thing i’ve got, which is the only thing i’ve ever learned how to throw my arms up about. and even that i do sitting down, alone, with the door closed.

low tide, fri jun 26. pre-save lives at this link if you want it. no pressure, i'm not done with it yet.