Stumbling through...
I am: a poet, an idealist, a realist, a lover of life, an extroverted introvert, a seeker of challenges. I don't want to just walk through life but, rather, dance, laugh, cry & stumble through.
Rhythmic language, photographs, and gratitude
Back to the real world.
What I realized on vacation was that I was dying for a break. And this trip, at its very core, was a sweet invitation to slow down and feel myself again. Through a series of circumstances, I ended up spending the first part of the vacation by myself. I was timid about this and mildly annoyed. I schlepped my snorkeling gear out to the water's edge and lay in the sun until my city skin began to sweat and burn. I alternated the day between napping, swimming, and fumbling with my mask in the warm, salty water.
After day two, I began to see the bright side of this, the peace, the lightness that comes from not having to speak, the small noises your ear will pick up that makes the world feel magical. I made friends with the local cats and iguanas, observed the island while driving a golf cart. I went hunting for alligators in lagoons. I met people, mostly from New York, and shared a beer or a meal with them, traded small bits of information but mostly just laughed and was on my way. Freedom to the solitary! Oneness to the self! I learned to listen to the water when I wanted to speak. I feel in love with solitude.
I had planned to write about the whole of the trip, the disappointing quality of the rice & beans, the awful attempt at dancing, the uncanny moon so bright and powerful in the wide open sky. Wanted to write about each of the islands I visited, the small planes and the ease of the people. But I should have written it earlier because now the moment has passed and my mind and heart are somewhere new, in that delicate moment before you enter back into life. That moment when you turn the key to your apartment and smell its unique scent as if you are a stranger visiting.
I had taken the vacation to find some answers to questions that have been looming. But what I found was a complete intolerance for thinking, a down right refusal to participate in it and a deep sense of joy for living moment to moment. None of my questions got addressed at all. Upon my return voices began to whisper all sorts of truths. Voices that have been speaking for months but have not been given the space to actually be heard. This morning I woke up with a thumping heart. Anxiousness was quickening everything-- my actions, thoughts, feelings. My body was in panic mode, preparing for flight. It was disturbingly familiar and I could feel it all the more clearly since I'd had a brief break from it. Curious. Very curious. Is this how I always feel in this apartment on this street in this life that I have been living for the past four years. What is it trying to tell me?
I wanted to listen to its rhythmic language and hear what it needed me to do in order to not feel so unsettled. What big thing in my life needs to give? I made loose leaf tea, boiled oatmeal, cleaned the kitchen, but no wisdom spoke. I put on Sigur Ros, unpacked my things, uploaded my photos, and still no clarity. By noon the thumping had relaxed into a soft patter and I stopped throwing deadlines on myself (bike by 1pm, go grocery shopping, do laundry...). Instead I lay, belly down on the sofa, attaching photos to this email without any greater understanding of anything except that vacation is necessary and not thinking is bliss...
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Today.
Placencia, Belize. Today. ( no sense of date)
Tried to touch a manatee off the end of a fishing boat, heard monkeys howl, ate snook & rice & beans, got bit by Mosquitos that made my forehead swell into a soft bubble. Tomorrow I go home. Have to travel in an eight seater plane back to the main airport. The sea is very very salty here. Have much to write about, like the brightness of the moon and golf cart rides with strangers. Will write soon. Good evening to you.Sent from my iPod
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In transit
The world is blue at 5 in the morning. A muted blue, see-through-you blue, the color of veins piercing through pale skin. And trains move through the sound of silence, rolling on their intertwining tracks...
Sent from my iPod
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Grief & a bag of frozen edamame
My friend moved to San Francisco last week and I drank a bottle of wine. I took a picture of her leaving, she was holding an empty pizza box and smiling as the elevator doors swung open. I wasn't smiling, but I took the picture anyways. It's the appropriate thing to do when someone is moving. You have them over for dinner, photograph them, drink a bottle of wine.
I also prepared myself to cry, created a nice little spot on the edge of my bed, complete with pillows and a box of Kleenex. But it didn't happen, not one tear. In fact, there was this weird feeling of indifference surrounding the whole state of affairs as I stared cluelessly at the box of Kleenex.
Now, she is one of my best friends, the girl I call when I need family and family is hours and state lines away. She knows what I am going to say before I do and teases me without mercy. This is the deep kind of friendship. And nothing? Nothing at all? Not one measly tear? Just last week I cried when I almost stepped on road kill. But my friend leaves, moves across the country and I feel nothing?
Grief has a weird way of making an appearance. It sends its friend, Apathy first, to soften the blow. In the days that followed Erica's departure, this weird indifference sat within me like a heavy stone. I couldn't understand my lack of caring. What was wrong?
It took an innocent trip to the grocery store to set the indifference into a tailspin, morphing it quickly and painfully into grief. Sad, scary, confusingly ungrounded grief. It was as if her move signified the end of a chapter in New York living.
- -
I was standing in line at the grocery store with a bag of frozen edamame. I thought of Erica and something stirred inside me, opening up a well of memories: her and me at 23, the electric vibe of the city, late nights at the bar drinking vodka and talking to boys, taking pictures in photo booths, stuffing our faces with sushi. These memories hit me so hard that the cashier practically had to scream NEXT (okay, so maybe she did scream) before I dropped the melting bag and pulled out some cash.
Wave after wave of nostalgia came. I was drowning in it. The lifestyle we used to have, the ones we have now, all the ways in which we changed from bright eyed innocents to clear headed professionals. New jobs, new apartments, new men, all these transitions mapped themselves out in my mind. And I realized that this move was bigger than logistics, this move was the end of an era. Or at least the end of the early and perhaps mid-20s. Yes, this was new ground we were walking on.
An odd eery stage of life had begun. One in which everything was analyzed under a heavy handed microscope, questions like is this what I really want? what do I want? arise in a fevered, never ending cycle, questioning everything from occupations to apartment appliances.
Some call this the inevitable effects of the Saturn cycle, which begins again between the 27th-30th year of life. Saturn cycle's are supposed to be turbulent times where hard lessons are learned. Well, Saturn cycle or not, weird things have been happening. Erica quit her job and moved to San Francisco with her boyfriend. They bought a convertible. I stop having big nights out and instead spend copious amounts of time talking about energy, life, psychology. My sister cut her hair short. And keeps cutting it. My other sister got married and practices gardening.
There is so much upheaval in new chapters, so much surprise. I can now feel the effects of Erica's move, the gaping hole of loss like a hollow hug. This is something I may not have felt before, in my younger years when I was too busy being busy and stumbling around in my fun house full of fun. And, although sometimes painful, this is something I've come to love, these quiet moments of non-doing when I can really feel what is happening for me in the moment, no distractions, no numbing agents. It reminds me of when I was a kid, feeling everything in its rawest form. And it reminds me that we are all just a part of nature, metamorphosing, transitioning, blooming ever more open with time.
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12:05am on a Saturday night...
Took the subway home tonight beneath a growing moon. My friend Steve and I stood underneath its vibrant glow. It reminded me of a lover's eyes in the morning, clear and crisp with something all at once frightening and refreshing in them.
A cool summer breeze is sweeping through August now. Spent the day at an over-crowded beach in a Russian neighborhood of Brooklyn. Ate beets, cabbage and meat cushioned in dough, salted herring and mayonnaise salad, and a delicious cherry filled pastry for dessert. Bought bread in Russian, not knowing a stitch of it and traveled back, the hour and a half, to my tiny little apartment in Manhattan.
There is something in a summer night, some language all its own, that speaks to you after a long sun filled day. Whispers into your tired skin a secret about being alive. This weird pulsing story that has no words but has been told to you a million times. My desire tonight was to write those words, but I've realized I have no clue what they are.
Because like all passionate, elusive things,
I can only
paw
around them. Feel between the solid lines. My wish is that
I'm not alone. That you
have felt this too. That we may take solace
underneath
the waxing moon.
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