February: What Can You Give Yourself?
Central Park, February 2022
"One does not lose the ability to enjoy pleasure when it does not come around often, or when it is something one has given up entirely. Rather, the question becomes, how can you still enjoy being alive and enjoy being human even in the worst of times? What can you give yourself that helps make living feel worthwhile again?
Your life is still happening. The best thing about 'nothing' is that it costs nothing to make. It can be something you recite to yourself, phone dead, no paper, while waiting for the subway. You can have nothing when you are alone in your home quarantined from your loved ones. The beauty of art is that it makes the nothing we can give ourselves. It never ceases to be nothing. It can always come home." - Yanyi
The other day I read this passage from a recent Yanyi newsletter, a brilliant poet who gives invaluable advice. This was from the letter titled "I Haven't Had a New Idea in a Year. How Do I Think Again?"
"Lacking new ideas" has been my M.O. lately. I've felt stuck overall: I'm waiting to hear back about graduate school applications I sent out in December and January. I'm in a transitional period with my job, not in terms of changing jobs (for once!), but in terms of what my role at my organization encompasses. I'm drafting a novel, I just started a new story which suffers from failure to launch, and I haven't photographed with intention for months. Finally, before I let my letter become a therapy session, I'm trying to figure out my role in my family, in a pandemic, while still feeling the "without" that my mom's death has left.
Another way to describe this sense of stuck-ness: in a cute video of a kid snowboarding, the dad who's recording asks, "what kind of dinosaur are you?" Struggling to stand after having fallen down on their snowboard, the kid says, "I'm a stuck-osaurus!"
All of this has been why I haven't taken the time to write my own newsletter for a while. How do I think again, I ask every night as I sit down at my computer to write. If I'm stuck, any movement I make becomes my thrashing against something, like talking to a wall, or huffing at a subway train that will only take its sweet time to get to me. If I have a new idea, I have to make sure I either get it down on paper or set an iPhone reminder for later, like a trail of breadcrumbs, or it'll be gone. Every artist I know laments the great ideas they have in the shower, in a meeting, in conversation, that are then washed down the proverbial drain of forgetting.
Blame the pandemic, blame a busy job, blame a relative lack of a social life - it seems like the little bits I want to hold onto that keep me curious and creative are more breadcrumb-y than usual, more ephemeral. Yanyi gives more credit to surviving and continuing to create than I give myself. I've been doing a 1-second-a-day video "project" since January 1st, which seems like the definition of "ephemeral." Other inspiration comes from some other art, a poem, friends' photography: in today's case, a newsletter snippet. Still, trying to string these bits together into something cohesive for you to read, I'm guessing on your phone, feels like I am a server at a fancy restaurant, using a bent file to scoop remnants of a meal into my hand. So, a mess.
If I try to answer the question, what can I give myself, I think about these breadcrumbs. Upon closer inspection some of them are actually more hunk-like than crumby. After hearing Marie Howe interviewed by Padraig O'Tuama in person at a church in Manhattan, I walked outside and crossed Fifth Ave into Central Park. New York had just had the blizzard at the end of January. The city was still under a thick blanket of snow and ice and the wind chill was in the single digits.
As I entered the park, I remembered a powerful panic attack while watching the blizzard scene from Akira Kurosawa's Dreams. It occurred to me that not only was I that same soldier in the snow, but also, I was walking into a city park after dark, alone. Then I remembered that I've lived in New York for eight years and kept moving. I took the above photo and marveled at my own breath and crunched along from 91st Street to 63rd Street. I saw two raccoons the size of terriers, but more than that, I saw the city in a rare, magical quietude.
There's a more scientific way to describe this, but idle walks are so great for the brain. Ever since I applied to study and live four states away from the place I have spent my entire adult life, I've felt an odd shift in my contentious relationship with living in New York. I thought about how, of all the fantastical landscapes I've tried to craft for the story I'm drafting, I have yet to write about snow. I thought about how a long walk feels like a rinse on the soul and how lucky I am to be able to use my body with few hindrances. I thought about taking a walk with my mom even though she hated, hated wintertime and being cold, and how when she was displeased, she'd make a sound that was neither "ew" nor "ugh" but something in between.
I wrote about this in my last newsletter, but the sentiment still applies: motion remains vital. I'm writing nearly every day. I'm reading more - I have a library stack that I hope to get through before the month is out. I'm setting time aside to make a franken-draft of everything I've written of this story, in order to connect some very spaced-out dots. I'm reminding myself that the "doing" can be the same kind of rinse a long walk can provide, the same kind of relief I get from going into a forward fold while doing yoga. Anything to move the plot forward, whether that's on the page or in my body.
In his newsletter, Yanyi says, "Your life is still happening." The only thing that reliably allows me to think is continuing to "do." I want the happening of my life to feel more intentional, I want to take advantage of every moment I can, even when it's cold and all I can do is avoid the abyss of a New York gutter.
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More stuff:
- It is properly winter; have you listened to Bridge Over Troubled Water yet?
- If you haven't read Marie Howe's poems, I recommend starting with one of her most famous, What the Living Do.
- Some short story collections I have enjoyed lately include The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans, Lot by Bryan Washington, and Transmutation by Alex DiFrancesco.
- I turn 27 on Saturday the 19th, and I'm finally going to the New York Aquarium to celebrate.
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