#115 - Rabbit rabbit! It's August – can you even believe?

Good morning!!! It’s 66 degrees and literally anything feels possible!

It’s week 31, the humidity finally broke on Saturday night, and life feels worth living again!!

The weather for last three days have been a string of what I can only describe as perfect.

The thing about new york is, right at the moment you're ready to leave the city forever because it's just Too Hard, we have a perfect weather day and suddenly you can't remember why you would have ever even considered for a single second that this isn't the greatest city in the world that you're so lucky to somehow live in.

Sleeping with the windows open??? Flinging apart my blackout blinds first thing in the morning and letting sunshine into my life again??! Laying on a deck chair up on my friend’s roof while the city goes eerily still and I deep breathe my way into temporary nirvana???!

Truly uncanny timing—the second I start wondering why I even live here anymore (this thought occurred to me when I was walking home and a rat got scared and proceeded to jump over a fence at me) (ring ring, Rat Czar?? I have to report a crime!) it immediately provides a flawless day to get you right back in its pocket.

It’s been five years since I moved back to the city. Which means New York is now tied for the longest contiguous streak I have ever lived in one place.

And yeah, I’ll admit it.

I love New York.

I’ve lived a lot of places!

New York City is the best one!!! Yes, we have trash and rats and a mayor that pretended to be a Democrat to get elected but we also have 24-hour bodegas where I can buy pre-cut fruit while the guy in front of me gets his loosie lit by a lighter on a string on my way home at 2 in the morning.

It’s the juxtaposition that makes me feel ALIVE! It’s the convenience culture, it’s the rush of “being a regular” at a place that serves 7000 people a day, it’s the access it’s the art and the culture and the clothes and the parks and the compliance and the shared space and the intrinsic community-based solutions to problems!!

Recently, on the way home from a comedy show there were a total of five people on a train car hurtling across the Manhattan Bridge when a guy came through the back doors and asked for someone to light his blunt.

Now, I have never been asked if I want to buy drugs by rando’s. I was once told I have “big narc energy” and usually I resent it because it means that anytime I have wanted to buy drugs in the middle of a park, no one will offer me any.

But in this instance, it just meant the dude assumed I didn’t have a lighter, and for that, I am grateful because I would have just lit it for him because I uuh, fear confrontation. And while I was actively stoned having smoked a spliff moments before boarding, I hate being trapped on smoke-filled Subways. Another guy on the train said he would light it for him, but not until the next stop. So after a tense few minutes of foot jiggling, we arrived at Canal and The Lighter made The Lightee step out onto the platform before lighting his blunt and we all watched as the dude walked off down the ever-damp Q platform while a gaggle of teenagers shuffled on through the other door.

And then those teenagers launched into the single most beautiful choral rendition of Amazing Grace I’ve ever heard???

Like I uh, started crying between Canal and 14th street.

Only in New York babeeeey!

I went to Times Square in July (because that’s where Broadway is located—a fact I seem to always forget) to see Hadestown and like, being reminded that midtown is a place is bonkers. Also, it’s…just screens. There are no 3D ads anymore, it’s weirdly flat and bright and packed with people doing tiktoks in the middle of crushed crowds and everything else about Tourist Culture that makes anyone who actually lives here bananas.

(Hadestown was really good though, obsessed with the staging of it. During intermission, I admitted to my friend that every time the middle opened up I readily resisted my urge to yell out “Show hole!” and apparently I thought that joke was so funny the audience for it needed to be broader?? So, like a cat bringing home a dead trophy, I lay it grossly at your feet, dear reader.)

“I’m coming to New York next week!!! Is there anything I should do?”

Idk I have a great smoke spot in Prospect Park I can show you? We can like order food from one of the five places I get food from and watch something and walk around aimlessly and go…thrifting? There are these amazing bagels nearby that you have to unhinge your jaw to eat! Do you, uh, want to go up to my friend’s roof?

I honestly think New York is a weird place to visit. Everything is close together but somehow takes a long time to get to, you really can’t judge the quality of food by price (no, not every hole-in-the-wall is a hidden gem I promise!!), and the touristy stuff has no actual New Yorky-ness tied to it.

My friends roof though? I legit transcended up there the other day I’m so serious. We smoked and housed burrito bowls and collapsed onto deck chairs (a la Barbie stiffly tipping over) and stared up at the clouds.

Years ago when we had first moved out to Portland, we ended up in Laurelhurst Park on a very sunny afternoon, exhausted from the fruitless housing hunt that engulfed Portland in the summer of 2014. We read a little, did a personality quiz out of a Chuck Palahniuk book, and fell asleep in the shade.

And we were so tired, and the ground was so soft, that we napped for two hours. But we kept half-waking up when the shade would retreat only to crawl into the shade and collapse back into our naps.

It is, to this day, the best nap I’ve ever taken.

So we were careful enough this time to not fall asleep up on the roof. I was so full of rice & beans & corn salsa that I kept focusing on taking long, slow breaths. Ever since I read this pop-sci book two years ago, I have become somewhat obsessed with learning how to breathe properly. All nose, all the time babeeey! Inhale and exhale! (No, I have not put tape over my mouth to sleep-train myself because I heard that someone died doing it once and I read The Darwin Awards too many times to take myself out like that but I’m gonna give myself that one!)

But somewhere in the midst of those you will not puke if you just keep breathing breaths, I started to float. I meditate every day (shoutout to getting my sister/boss for letting me include it in our daily task list so even if I don’t do it on my own I always do seven minutes of it in the morning) but I’ve never felt this weightless before. Nothing ached, there was no noise, and the world suddenly felt lighter and brighter.

More saturated.

Life, however temporarily, made sense.

Not in a faux deep/profound/answer to life way, but in a this much pleasure can’t be present all the time way. And I realized in that moment that I had finally slowed down enough to enjoy it when it came.

I spend a lot of energy worrying. (Mostly about the past.)

Oftentimes about myself & the perception others have of me, but as the climate reaches boiling points and I have to watch, helplessly, as those I love deal with the fallout of natural disasters, and politics feels so bleak and enraging, and leaders refuse to lead, and I need more money because my teeth are Sold Seperately, and I can’t escape WeGovy ads on the Subway or Ozempic articles delivered straight to my inbox from the New York Times, and we deal with the lack of narrative imposed on us by religion, and and and—

But in that floaty moment, I became aware of how The Worrying isn’t helpful. Feelings are great, but not if you get so stuck in them that you fail to act.

I’ve been stuck for a long time and I’ve known it and that has felt wildly frustrating. I think I was waiting for some acknowledgement of the feelings as if that would set me free from them.

But there is no such thing as closure. Apologies don’t fix everything, only time can. This is the first year of my life I’ve felt like An Adult Who Makes Adult Choices and most of that has just meant that I’m taking full responsibility for my actions (and/or lack thereof).

It’s me, hi, I’m the problem (and solution!) it’s me.

(I do believe we’re a community-based species that suffer in the current culture because everything is driven by capitalistic individualism (the easiest way to increase sales is to convince everyone they need something that could easily be borrowed/shared) and we are more isolated than ever before while also having the illusion of access to life via screens. Like I’m so fucking grateful I don’t have a car or live in car culture because spending time alone in a little metal box that I am constantly terrified of hurting people with was not a fun time! For all that I enjoyed driving and roadtrips, I’m so much happier getting on a bus and reading my little book while I wait to arrive. No muss, no fuss, no merging!!)

Letting go of The Suffering has been a huge thing for me in the last year. Like I focused really hard for a while on ~overcoming trauma~ but that existed in somewhat of a vacuum and like, now that I had gotten my brain back on board: what life did I even want to create?

We heard you liked healing so we put some healing on top of your healing. Yeah, you’re actually just at step one but the good news is the 0-1 step is the biggest/hardest hurdle and now you know the motions so the next ones get easier.

What is worth spending my time doing?

What happens if I stop chasing perfection and learn to find beauty in mundanity?

What are the things I’ve always wanted to do but been stopped by the fear of others’ judgment?

The thing about living here is that my body knew before my brain. All roads led back to the city every time, even if I didn’t know why. This city, this wonderful magical too-humid wind-tunneled city is the place I’ve always been able to be myself instead of some approximation I was trying out to see if it was more likable.

(There was always a question of why someone with tremendous anxiety would live in a place packed to the brim with people, bursting with energy and observation. But the anonymity provided was perfect. I wasn’t the center of attention—or ire. Tripping and eating absolute shit on the flooded subway stairs is actually not even the most embarrassing thing everyone around me had seen that day, and that freedom allowed me to keep going as I moved through/on from the negligence of my past.)

My addiction to being the best (so that I had empirical evidence to point to in terms of Being Worthy) was tempered by the fact that there is always going to be someone more talented, more willing, and more able in this city. And that knowledge gave me so much comfort because I realized it was a stupid game to play in the first place.

Welcome to Whose Life Is It Anyway where everything is made up and the points don’t matter!

Self-obsession manifested in some fun ways (👋👋 hiiiii decision to lean into personal essay instead of poetry eleven years ago) but getting over it has been so fucking freeing! Not thinking about myself all the time has really opened up the possibilities of what other thoughts get knocked around in my skull.

The curtains are open.

The light is pouring in.

And I am finally aware enough to relax and enjoy it.

So, thanks, New York. I love you, I really do.

And I think you like me okay.

(And you know what? I’ll fucking take it!)

Rabbit rabbit!

From the vault:

Two years ago: #10 - Onion Jam & My Sanity

Last year: #55 - Week 31 Has Begun