The Slow and Unyielding March of Time | Episode 4
On my recent trip to NYC, I was early for something. It was a hot, humid day; I was sweaty, but luxuriating in the free extra time to just wander around Brooklyn. Suddenly, my neck prickled and a sense of dread welled up in my stomach. My shoulder blades clenched. Scanning the area, I noticed some nondescript benches. I realized, breathing heavily, that I was at a little cluster of benches where, a decade before, I sat as my emotionally abusive ex devastated me over the phone.
It was a peculiar feeling. I've worked very hard and moved past that man and that devastation in the last few years. Intellectually and emotionally, I don't feel a way about him, or that space. But my body somehow recognized it, and evoked the the same physical sensations. Some places lodge themselves into my body; they evoke a physical response along with an emotional one.
Last week, a good friend got married in Palm Springs. The wedding was in a beautiful estate built into a hill; it overlooks the Coachella Valley and the San Jacinto Mountains. My heart just about burst with beauty the whole time. I caught up with some folks I love very much. I goofed around with two of my best buds. We all got VERY drunk off of vanilla vodka and coke. Shadae talked me into getting incredible fake eyelashes. The boomers would be *furious* about how much avocado toast I ate.
I stayed at the Ace Hotel, a place I've returned to a few times, usually with Lauren. I sent her a selfie overlooking the pool. "Ugh you look so WELL," she sent back. "i always feel well here," I responded. When I think about being at the Ace, the tension that lives in my upper back momentarily unspools; actually being there makes me feel loose, like all my joints have been lubricated.
Lauren and I went there for the first time in January 2012, when it was cheap and empty and I was depressed, and very, very slowly healing from emotional and physical trauma. I needed a space to swaddle me and make me feel safe. We lay on giant, circular cushions by the pool all day, and ordered burgers and drinks from the servers who came around every now and then. I wondered at the sky full of stars, every single night. It feels really silly to point to a bougie hotel and say, "this is a place that helped me heal," but, it's a place that helped me heal.
It was interesting to go to Palm Springs not driven by need -- a need to escape my life, my brain, the weather -- but rather by love. I'm super glad and grateful that I don't need the Ace in the same way that I used to; but I'm also glad that it still resides inside me, giving me a safe space to retreat to if I ever need it.
Debris:
* I went to see Hanif Abdurraqib read some poetry from his new book, A Fortune for Your Disaster. It was the best Seattle Arts & Lecture event that I've been to, I think? His poems were great and then he and the interviewer spent the first ten minutes of their time talking about the Seattle Storm, so it really felt tailored to my individual interests.
* A boomer sitting behind me at a dance performance was whispering to her boomer friend "I just can't handle millennials anymore." GUESS WHAT LADY. We're not so thrilled we're stuck with you, either.
* I had a sore throat all week and totally lost my voice. Being sick sucks. Do not recommend. The twenty minutes of having a sexy/raspy voice are not worth it!
* Although because I'm sick, I had time to watch the season of Bojack Horseman that just came out and I really need someone else to watch all of it because I would really like to talk about it! (But don't get sick, it sucks.)
What I'm Reading:
Currently:
Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram: I listen to a podcast called Spell Check that is 6 YA novelists playing Dungeons and Dragons and it is truly great. Adib plays an incredibly dumb, sweet Paladin named Corrun. Anyway, this book is not about that, it's about an Iranian-American kid named Darius who has to go on a family trip to Iran because his grandfather is dying of a brain tumor. He feels different and othered everywhere he goes, even his own family. It's very relatable and quite good so far.
Finished:
The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson: This book was so fun! I loved it. It was full of magic and adventure and squabbling and friendship and some truly scary monsters, like religion.
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori: This book was short and odd and really compelling to me. It's about Keiko, a woman in her mid-30s in Japan who has never fit in -- she's never figured out how to be "normal" and whenever she tries, she fucks it up. So she's delighted when she gets a part-time job at at convenience store that gives her a manual on how to be successful. Her family and the couple of acquaintances that she has can't fathom the satisfaction that she finds in creating a life that is small, with clear boundaries, and as she struggles to give them what they want, she throws her own internal happiness out of whack. There was a quote that I really loved:
She's far happier thinking her sister is normal, even if she has a lot of problems, than she is having an abnormal sister for whom everything is fine. For her, normality -- however messy -- is far more comprehensible.
Whew, they're getting longer. My apologies. Love you all. Hope you have the best week and that my voice recovers soon.
-davida