Monday
I wake up with the sun in Sand Pond and do morning pages. I write about how wrong I feel. Incurable, flawed.
Then I walk down to the lake and swim out to the middle of it. And it is just me alone in this warm water, being lapped by waves, the leaves of the trees blowing in the wind. And I look out at them, all of these billowing leaves around me, swaying in the breeze and think: how can any of it be wrong? For a branch on a tree to be flawed. It’s not possible. It just is. It flows and sways in the breeze. Just like me. And by that logic, I cannot be wrong. I can only be judgmental; that is what is separating me from the trees. My mind, judging reality as if it can control it. It cannot. The only thing it can do is keep me from enjoying the wind in my hair or the sun on my face.
I take the train back to New York, a peaceful two-hour journey that I use to obsess over whether or not to buy a pair of $115 leather sandals. Decide not to.
Get back home and start eating a bar of frozen chocolate. On my second bite, I feel a burst of pain and watch as a little off-white rock tumbles onto the placemat in front of me. It takes me a second to realize it’s my front tooth. Or, the veneer for it, at least. I call the dentist.
Tuesday
Get my veneer re-cemented back into my mouth, onto the third of tooth that remains from the fall. The nerve is exposed, it’s painful. The dentist injects my gums with a long needle of anesthetic and for the rest of the day, half of my face is frozen like I’ve had a stroke.
After work, I go meditate for twenty five minutes in the dark, in a little basement lit up with Christmas lights with a room full of strangers. I close my eyes and try to breathe into the soft parts of my body that feel hard. The hardness is mostly concentrated behind my eyes and in my forehead. I keep breathing into it, into all of that tightness, and then around halfway my body starts to feel less like a combination of different parts (in which my feet are just a concept) and more like a whole. My pinky toe as much a part of my awareness as my face. It all feels soft and gooey.
An image cuts through the stillness: an older woman, smiling. She’s running a comb through my hair, the hard teeth gently tapping my scalp. Comforting, calming. All is well, her smile says.
God? Is that you?
When I realize what is happening, the image—dream or vision—is already gone. I try to conjure her back, ask her what I should do. But then the tightness returns to my body.
Afterwards, under the red glow of the twinkle lights, someone shares that when they’re living in the moment, flowing down the river of life like Huckleberry Finn on his raft, they feel light and free.
I exit the meditation den and see a baby bird on the sidewalk. His downy feathers are fluffy and soft like a golden retriever puppy. He hops around, chirping anxiously and failing to fly. I pull out my phone and google: baby sparrow on street nyc should I help?
No, AI Google tells me. The bird is learning to fly.
I hear another, louder chirping and look up to see a big, fat sparrow in the tree above me. It watches its baby with a close eye.
I give the fluttering fledgling one last look before walking away in the pale June night.
Wednesday
Meditate, go to the office, finish Yesteryear. Hate it. Felt like an insult to my intelligence, an abuse of the sacred trust between reader and writer.
Stress eat greek yogurt and sour cherries during the Croatia England game. Afterwards, go salsa dancing in Washington Square Park, where I learn to mambo with a group of strangers in the early evening sun, still surprisingly strong at 6. All the worries of the day (am I Bad or Good, am I on the right path, what do these people think of me) disappear as I am faced with a very real problem: not knowing how to dance.
I am reminded, once again, of the answer to life’s imaginary problems: get a real one.
I walk from there to writing group at Evie’s on a bustling Orchard Street and think about the impending end to my twenties. Make a note to dance more in my thirties.
Thursday
I get up at 6 AM and blame my poor sleep on Denis, whose fault it was not. The real culprits: hormones, leaving New York for the summer, the looming end of my twenties and my own mortality. I walk to the gym in a half-asleep state, try to squat but all of the racks are taken. Make a mental note to cancel Equinox and switch to Crunch in the fall. Come back home, meditate, shower, make myself a smoothie with frozen blueberries. Go to the office where we have cod for lunch. Say thank you to god for that. On my walk home, the streets are warm and swampy with the breath of a million Knicks fans.
After work, venture to the West Village for a $28 massage in a little basement room that shakes and rattles when the 1 train goes by. My masseuse, David, does not speak English but does speak the language of the body. He knows where all of my tight spots are. I lay on the table and try to breathe into the pain, sticking my tongue out like a dead dog through the face hole as David compresses my spine like a tube of toothpaste on its last legs.
Afterwards, I go to Greenwich Letterpress, a tiny, brightly colored stationery store in the West Village that reliably makes me feel just as bright. Pick out a card for a friend, a Father’s Day card, and a birthday card for myself. On my walk home I come across a boxing match inside the fountain of Washington Square Park, two men with gloves on, sweat trickling down their bodies in the heat as hundreds of people gather round. A group of girls jump rope nearby. I am incredulous that all of this beauty and this life is my backyard. Yes, I think, living in New York is worth every cent.
Friday
I wake up early again, at 6. I cannot sleep. It is my last Friday in New York until the end of the summer. I get up and go to the gym and am pleased to find a squat rack empty.
Afterwards, I meet friends for coffee at Madman. I ask them to write me little notes to put into my birthday card that I will mail to myself in Croatia. I contemplate whether or not this is self-obsessed or not and do it anyway. Have German class online, feel utterly stupid and blissfully smart at the same time as I find myself constructing sentences in this strange language.
At night, Denis and I host a dinner for friends. I attempt to make oatmeal cookies, which melt into one big puddle that we eat like a pancake.
Saturday
Wake up, feel awful. No sleep, once again. I meditate and my thoughts are loud, violent. I feel certain I will have an awful day and an even more awful life. I want to get back into bed and not move again. Decide to take opposite action instead and put on my running shoes. I set a goal to run one lap around the park, which feels like the most evil torture I could submit myself to in my present state. Every step is pure pain, and I keep looking at how big the park is, thinking: I’ll never make it, I don’t have the lung capacity. My legs will give out, I’ll die before I finish. Decide to start reciting poetry in my head. I have five poems memorized now. I recite them over and over, continuing to put one foot in front of the other.
Before I know it, I’ve completed three laps around the park. I am amazed. My legs and lungs both feel fine. I am reminded, once again, that it is my brain that is the problem. I reflect on how poetry recitation is probably a form of mantra meditation. A guy walking by me yells: “stick your chest out, you’ll get less tired”. I glimpse my reflection in the mirror of an NYU building. My shoulders are rounded forward, slouching.
I come back home, happy to be alive with my new PR of three laps around the park. Shower, eat lunch, and go to Dakota’s book swap. I bring Yesteryear (poor soul to whoever takes it) and come home with The Oldest Bitch Alive, which is exactly how I feel walking around the Lower East Side.
At night, I walk through Times Square to see an off broadway play about gay gorillas. Even after eight years of living in Manhattan, it still feels like a spiritual experience. Times Square, not the gorillas. I stand up straight as I walk through the neon lights, sticking my chest out. I feel different, proud. A middle aged cop winks at me.
Sunday
I wake up, make breakfast. Again, no morning pages. Feels freeing. Go to group meditation. My mind is racing, once again.
For lunch, Denis and I make salad and tuna sandwiches. Halfway through, the tuna starts to taste abhorrent, metallic and bloody. I finish it with a plugged nose.
I walk down to Soho to see if I should buy anything before my travels. I am afraid to leave for the summer, afraid of the unknown, afraid of my birthday. Like a squirrel preparing for winter, I go into a variety of stores in search of nuts: a pair of cork sandals from Dolce Vita, a Glutathione supplement from Happier Grocery, a turquoise cotton top from Brandy Melville.
I think of the woman with the comb and put it all back. Push my shoulders back and take a breath.
"the bird is learning to fly" 🕊️
The Twenties are hard. The Thirties are better. You've made meditation sound interesting in this, a feat!