Glimpses are brief impressions from the past week. There and gone.
Burger at the bar, at JG’s.
An older couple makes their rounds of Brower Park as the sun is setting, getting their exercise in the cooler evening hours. She is wearing khaki shorts and a bubblegum pink shirt, her large breasts swaying from side to side as she labors up the small incline. He reaches his hand back to her, tugging her along. On the decline they pick up the pace. No smiles pass between them, or words, but there is the quiet physicality that is achieved only by years spent beside one another. Their bodies in a constant shared rhythm.
I go to the Upper East Side a few days ago, to see my cousin, who will likely be giving birth this time next week. A few days prior, I was getting to know this man Ross who is often sitting on the stoop of our restaurant’s building. I asked where he’s from. “Here” he says. “Brooklyn, Brooklyn Hospital.” Then he asks me. I say, “Manhattan, Lenox Hill Hospital.” Coordinates of a city kid. Borough by building. Sweet to think of city kids sprouting up into city, into their lives, through various buildings. My cousin’s baby: Manhattan, Weill Cornell - I believe. Same as my nieces.
On my way uptown on the train I look at words on people’s shirts. “Rich.” “Important.” These words make me feel a brief defeat. Like collectively, we’ve lost the plot. I’m probably being judgmental.
I take myself to JG Melon’s for dinner, since I’m already on the Upper East. We’ve been deep in the process of building our restaurant and I’ve found myself itching for spaciousness. For an open day to read and write. For something outside of logistics. I am reminded of the Robert Hass quote “it's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.” This does feel true to me, if not to a slight lesser degree than hell. Maybe dis-ease, discomfort, which is a sort of hell. This is something I need to know about myself and take seriously. This never-ending yearning for spaciousness, observation, solitude, for writing. If the need goes unmet, I am beside myself, bitter. Silly, because it’s quite an easy need to meet, just need to give myself an hour or two.
It occurs to me, when enjoying my medium rare burger and fries and glass of Pinot Grigio, that I am feeling how I always feel at the beginning of something large and new. Threatened. Like whatever new aspect of life that I’m entering into is a threat to my old way of being. Which it is, but I think that is good. Aren’t we supposed to continue to die to past versions of ourselves? I hear that’s a good thing. That these small deaths are in service to a life unfolding? Or simply, death is life? Things are born, grow, die, compost, and are born again. So this energy of clinging feels like an inefficient use of energy, which makes it all the more frustrating. I am the one who thrusts these changes upon myself, or at least agrees to them willingly. I placed myself squarely within these circumstances. Every time I have felt this threat, the result is complicated, but it is always richer than I could have planned for. Also, you take it all with you, from one experience to the next.
This dinner, burger for one at the bar, was just enough distance from my every day to return me to a larger perspective. An hour to watch people. To observe others in the midst of their stories. The smallness. The Amstel Light’s frosty exterior, the hostess in her little crocheted top and commanding Irish voice, the various melon paintings rendered with oil paints watching over the scene.
I grab my seat at the bar, and surprise myself with a hint of self-consciousness. Navigating where to put my knees and where to hold my kindle so that the light doesn’t bother those next to me. I notice my large, unruly head of hair and face of no makeup juxtaposed to a handful of corporate girlies with their neat blowouts and studied application of highlighter. Quickly the self-consciousness slips away and the joy of solo dining spreads over me. A woman my age sits beside me. Also, alone. Also, with unruly hair. We order the exact same thing, as do most at JG’s, with the exception of my wine and her water. She eats only the meat between the buns, but does get the fries, whereas I keep the burger in its integrity. We pass condiments back and forth. Are clearly finding comfort in our brief companionship but show no interest in talking to each other. A relief. She goes to the bathroom; I watch her bag and vice versa.
We’ve been back in New York now for two and a half years. It coincides almost to the day that my sister’s twins were born. It takes me, (takes anyone?) two years to settle into a place, even if it’s the place that I’m from. New York is all the things one can say about it. A bit chaotic, messy, expensive, intense. It is also accepting, funny, full of wonder. Mostly, it is charged. There is energy coalescing here. Life force coursing through each street. Who knows how anything will pan out, but I think New York works for me, for us - for now. Balanced with many escapes, it compliments my habit of observation and eavesdropping. To watch how people move through life. I feel very loving towards it all right now which is not always the case. This has actually been a core existential dilemma of my life. I feel now, that the parameters of the city are more enabling than limiting. The pleasure of existential queries sloughing off.
It was 102 degrees on my birthday. I have some aversion to birthdays, only my own, which is so odd, because I’m in love with being alive. I wait until the Sunday before the Tuesday of my birthday to make barely a plan.
The day goes like this. Coffee, quiet, reading. A little work. Pack a beach bag. A cotton tablecloth as a blanket, donut peaches, cut watermelon. Pet-Nat, Gruner, Ghia. Friends bring sandwiches, pasta salad, peach cake and crème fraiche. Dipping in the ocean with sunglasses on, slipping under waves. Not putting on sunscreen, not wanting to block myself from the wholeness of the day. Getting very burned, of course, but it feels good. Dinner with Henry at a sweet spot where we tuck into a corner. Snails in tamarind, peach (again) cucumber, tomato, herbs, fried shallots. Cold wine. Full too quickly. As always.
There are two girls on a scooter who ride by our window every weekday around 7:45. Sisters, it appears. The older one in the back, her arms wrapped around the other. They just barely tip left and turn elegantly on to Brooklyn Ave. I catch the pink stripe of the Adidas logo on her backpack in my peripheral vision and look up. There go the sisters.
The Stack
What I’m reading!
Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel, and the Christianity We Haven’t Tried Yet
Meggan Wattersen
Not proud of this, but I have always glazed over at the recounting of biblical stories. They have never felt applicable to my life. The language too stilted and far away from my reality, the narrative centering men in a way that simply does not draw me in. Not so in this extremely readable, thrilling illumination of Mary Magdalene’s role, and the feminine, in early Christianity.
“I thought of salvation then. The definition of it as something that comes from within, salvation as simply ‘to be made more alive’.” - Megan Wattersen
Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion
Father Gregory Boyle
Father Gregory Boyle’s organization, Homeboy Industries, employs formerly gang-involved and incarcerated men in a bakery setting. Using the vessel of food production and the dignity of work to help these men regain their lives, a sense of community, and direction. I’ve listened to him on many podcasts, but this is my first time reading his work. Beautiful.
“Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.” – Father Gregory Boyle
Pussy: A Reclamation
Regena Thomashauer
I’m only slightly embarrassed to share that I’m reading this, but that’s just a result of cultural conditioning and shame around the female body. In this backslide of feminist ideals and progressive values (in the U.S. cultural zeitgeist), I have found myself called to understand my own sense of sensuality and feminine power. Why is the female body so feared and regulated? Too powerful, obviously…
The Emperor of Gladness
Ocean Vuong
Have just begun reading this and it’s so far as gorgeous as I was hoping.
“He was nineteen, in the midnight of his childhood and a lifetime from first light. He had not been forgiven and neither are you. The sky a benevolent grey as the afternoon drained to evening and the cold turned his breath to fog. Under his boots the tracks hummed from steady gales slamming the steel straps. Yes, it is beautiful here, which is why the ghosts never leave.” - Ocean Vuong