Ah, here we are. Another ending, another beginning. Particularly during a year that feels as if the Earth has simultaneously stopped spinning and ricocheted towards the Sun at a frightening pace, I’ve found comfort in marking the time by soft, real, tender, everyday moments. We are still here, we are still alive, we are still breathing. At least for today, and that is all that is certain.
This post begins a new series, “In Sum,” where I’ll summarize my month for you by recounting those little moments that all add up to a life.
In addition, scroll down for a non-inclusive list of What I’ve Read & What I’ve Learned in the illusive, transient month that is October.
In Sum
“It’s a wonderful time to be barely alive.” - Jim Carrey on Marc Maron’s podcast
*****
I was lying in the grass in Washington Square Park, half reading, half people watching. My eyes landed on the group about 10 feet away, three girls and a boy, all in that really-hard-to-guess age range that I call “mid-20’s-ish but honestly maybe mid-30s.” Two of the girls stood up, wiping their damp hands on their shorts (early October in NYC = basically still the end of August, with a whisper of fall teasing us in every late afternoon breeze). The girls assessed the wet patches on their back pockets from the grass as they began the brief stroll to the park’s public restrooms.
Their voices slowly emerged from the background hum of an early fall afternoon in the park (a symphony of birds chirping, breeze filtering through the leaves that are clinging onto their branches for dear life, children playing, the very specific New York City nostalgia that is a saxophone melody and the occasional gravelly, smiley voice that you can tell has born witness to more breadth of life and depth of emotion than most of us will encounter in our lifetimes).
I caught their conversation mid-audio clip -
Girl 1, very assuredly: “No, because it’s on your cheeks not in the places where piss would go.”
Girl 2, nodding her head and smoothing her hands on her thighs: “Also, weird question...but have I lost my ass?”
Girl 2, without missing a beat: “Oh, no! Definitely not.”
Their voices faded back into the hum as they passed my spot in the grass, and my eyes flicked back to the two remaining members of their group that were still seated, underneath a small tree (they nabbed one of the coveted Shade spots) and still angled towards each other in the curve of a semi-circle. One boy, one girl. How did they know each other? I couldn’t tell whether their initial silence and shifty, smiley eyes were because they didn’t know each other well or, on the contrary, they knew each other so well that they didn’t have to fill the pause created by the other girls’ departure.Were they lovers? Secret crushes? Old friends? New friends who met just that afternoon? Were the soft smiles a product of forced niceties and filler conversation, or a secret harbored?
*****
Out of the window of my Uber, I see people gathered on the sidewalk outside a tall grey building, holding signs and clipboards. They looked disheveled yet chaotically organized, an “organized mess” of hand-made signs, waving flags, and a few scattered matching T-shirts that indicate a local protest and/or march from a mile away. As I craned my head to catch a glimpse of their signs through the cab window, I saw that they were marching for Cuba. Two minutes later, my cab passed the UN building, and I connected the dots.
*****
In the laundromat, the calendar still said it was September. What is time anyways anymore?
*****
I’m on one of my early evening Sanity Walks, a habit I’ve always had but that only received a name this year. I have my headphones in but nothing playing. I take out an AirPod out of curiosity, when I see a young guy and a girl seated on a ledge across from the entrance to the park, strumming a guitar and gently lilting from humming to singing and back again. The red hand says wait, so I pass the time by trying to figure out what these two are all about.
Another young-ish (late 20s - mid 30s?) guy walks up next to me, clocks the singers, the cardboard sign on the sidewalk, and the red hand in less than a second. My mind immediately predicts the next 30 seconds -- the Guitar Guy comes up to the Walking Guy and asks for money or a “moment of your time,” Walking Guy shakes his head and mutters some rendition of no, sorry / not today / I’m in a hurry, the light changes and the moment is passed.
Of course, I’m wrong.
Guitar Guy, setting down his instrument and slowly approaching Walking Guy: “Have you ever had a reason to seek God?”
Walking Guy: *eyes flicker, a moment of hesitation, then a clear flicker of decision across his face as he plants his feet firmly to face Guitar Guy*
Walking Guy: “Yeah, actually, I have.”
Guitar Guy (I don’t catch it all, because I still have one noise-cancelling AirPod in): “...I’ve found that music sometimes opens up an access to the Divine, a portal straight to it…”
Walking Guy: *nods in agreement, wrinkles his brow in thought* “Yeah, me too. Actually, --”
The light changes, and I lose their voices as my legs instinctively perk up to carry me across the street.
*****
“Kiss me in front of the plaza.” - me, on the evening of a particularly magical day that began as a picnic in Central Park and ended in front of The Plaza Hotel.
*****
Coming home from an evening walk, the sun now completely set and the city opened up in the magical way it does when the light now shines from the inside of the seemingly infinite edifices, illuminating the humanity within. I delight in the glimpses of bookshelves, art (maybe from a flea market? A local gallery? A trip abroad?), wood-beamed ceilings, and elaborate light fixtures that leak from the glowing windows.
I spot a full moose head hanging on the wall of an apartment on the corner of Bleeker & Bowery. I’m taken aback by the commitment to decor; my mind wishes that these people had a post on Apartment Therapy.
I mention this moose head on a work Zoom call (no idea how that came up in conversation, but alas, the few minutes when people are still trickling into a virtual meeting are a new brand of small talk). My boss says he is more a fan of “tasteful taxidermy,” which he then goes on to define as birds, feathers, more like suggestions of the animal rather than the full thing. I write down “tasteful taxidermy” in the margins of my notebook.
*****
What I’ve Read
“The Ingenuity & Flair of Chinatown Seniors,” an essay excerpted from blog-turned-book Chinatown Pretty.
A web spiral of both high-brow and low-brow coverage of Chloe Sevigny and Sinisa Mackovic’s “cool parents style.” Kind of into this kind of banal, superficial fashion coverage at the moment.
One of my favorite pieces I’ve read this year, “Dear Sadness, You’re Welcome Here But Your Rent is Due,” by Beth Price. Excerpt below -
“Good job on that too, by the way. You really convinced me that if I don’t hide you behind a pile of upbeat social media posts and fun coffee dates that I’d end up being absorbed by you; a great big lump of writhing, messy sadness that does nothing but gross people out and push people away. That the only thing that keeps me socially acceptable and lovable at all is the control I have over you; my Resident Sadness.”
The Substack comments thread for the Hemingway challenge: Write a story in six words. Not a day has gone by since that I haven’t thought about it.
Another favorite read, which so perfectly articulated the inexplicable pieces of the grief we are all feeling right now, the unnamed element that sits next to the very real, explainable, more obvious losses and is somehow almost equally painful - Courtney Martin’s Oct 7th newsletter, “Who are we going to be now?” I’ll leave you with her words —
“We miss lives we thought we would have had a chance to live into by now. We miss people we never met--strangers and lovers and babies. We miss the variety of touches we would have felt, the ways we would have shown up for one another, would have hugged one another after our eyes became pools of tears. We miss experiences we were going to have and the ways they were going to shape us. We miss that shape of ourselves. We miss so much of who we might have been.
It’s a great humbling, a great loss. And yet there is still hope in it. I look into this baby’s eyes, this country’s eyes, and my next thought is: okay, so who are we going to be now?”
*****
What I’ve Learned
The art of crafting a caption, a la Joan Didion
The history of alphabetical order (well, a summary), upon reading the jacket of Judith Flander’s book A Place for Everything. Spotted this baby in a lovely little bookshop in Woodstock, and boy, am I glad I did. I just love people. I’m so glad people exist on this earth who are as passionate about pursuing niche and seemingly arbitrary topics and turning them into a truly erudite discussion piece.
An AirBnB for cars exists
About Louise Gluck, the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 27 years. The judges praised her “unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” Oof. (A sampler to get you started.)
Stay strong, stay safe, stay inspired, stay close to your heart and your loved ones.
xx
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