hello again, stranger friends:
on friday I woke up in new york and went to sleep in berlin. to be in a time where two worlds can exist in a single day -- this is a strange feeling. i'm still groggy and finding my center again in this berlin summer -- where it's unrecognizably green and warm. here's a glimpse of the sunrise from the plane. sunrise like a laser beam.
this week: on cycles of death & birth, embracing the darkness, and a glimpse of new york city's sharp edges.
sending you a cold bottle of peach prosecco i drank in the park yesterday (because it's europe),
kening
1 | hello darkness, my old friend
I turn thirty this year. looking back at the last ten years, I can see clearly how the process of growing up, growing older, growing wiser, growing deeper into myself and into my own skin — can be distilled down to the practice of embracing my own extremities of darkness. of welcoming it as a friend, rather than trying to push it away as an enemy. because the more you build fortresses against yourself, the greater and more insidious the enemy becomes — it finds cracks and holes to seep through while you sleep.
2 | death is birth is death
birth is death is birth. the more I walk down this path of life, the more I think about death as not a thing that happens to us — a fixed event on a linear narrative arc — X character is born, lives, and dies — but as a process that moves through us, through me — an infinite number of times before the body actually dies. (and then, who knows?) it is a process of seeing death as not the interruption to life, but as the mechanism through which life can move; through which life is possible.
3 | a city of sharp edges
here: two photos from my last weeks in new york city — the financial district after sunset, in between sunshine and rain (which is to say, in a moment of rainbow) and while crossing 7th (?) ave in midtown, just after exiting penn station. I’m no longer there now, but I still carry the taste of new york under my tongue, like lozenges made out of concrete. and steel.
4 | small rowboat dark ocean
mood of the day: like being on a small rowboat across the dark open ocean. it's tsunami weather, and I can't find the moon. I've lost my paddle. what can I do, except surrender and ride this out. one storm after another, one wave after another. I tell myself that I'm experiencing this because I have the capacity for it. somewhere deep within, I have the strength. just to wait.
5 | give zero fucks be very consistent
my note to self #152. from the archives - almost exactly a year ago.
thank you from all the trees populating berlin for reading my weekly digest. write me back anytime.