I have never been someone to put much weight on the beginnings of things. I don’t place meaning on New Years or Sundays or first dates. I can’t tell you when I first came alive. I can’t tell you when New York began for me. But I can probably tell you, to the moment, when things ended. I can tell you when I lost certain teeth, when I got the news certain people had died, the day I quit certain jobs, the season I lost certain friends. Endings have always held for me a clarifying quality that I crave. You cannot have hindsight without endings. In fact, I have long thought that it is for the blindingly sharp perspective of hindsight that I have always wished to be older, like the way I find myself living my life according to what stories I want tell my hypothetical children some day.
Sometime around mid-April, beginnings and endings began to blur. I traveled and arrivals and departures seemed to occur often, with the touching-down and taking-off of Dreamliners. 24 ended and 25 began in the middle of an afternoon in March. Winter receded into spring, which took bloom on quiet blocks and there were suddenly flower petals everywhere. I finished a book, I started a new one. Even New York was starting to take on certain rhythms as my third year in the city came and went like the passing of a tide—NYU students with their caps and gowns in Washington Square Park, interns moving into sublets and taking over subways, restaurants lining sidewalks with tables that fill up quickly on Saturday mornings. Life was feeling particularly contained, existence taking on a noticeable roundedness, and things were beginning to bloat.
When I was in Mexico City earlier this month, I had this craving to be profoundly changed. I couldn’t remember the last time my life had taken on a new shape but, walking around, I wished that I could bend to the art that was scattered all around, letting jagged edges and smooth curves decide the lines of my person. (I would have also accepted any collision or explosion or some sort of brute force if it meant some sort of rebirth.) Like, when I was at the Frida Kahlo museum with my sister and my cousin, all I could think about was, “why doesn’t this change me?” Which is effectively the same as asking, “why do I feel so stuck?”
It was like no place I’d ever been before, the literal manifestation of her creative whims. And then suddenly, I couldn’t remember the last time I had been confronted by something so awash with inspiration that my life, in its wake, changed forever–I wondered if this was a phenomenon reserved for youth. I wanted the blue walls of the home to dye the color of my blood. I wanted Kahlo’s vision, her determination to create.
Desire turns envy when it seems that what we want, and what we crave, is decidedly out of reach. Or, perhaps worse, it springs from a staunch mindset of scarcity, whereby, if someone else has it, then of course we can’t. And I’ve been feeling this more and more recently, as though things are happening for other people and not for me. The door feels like it’s closing, the air I’m breathing is recycled while others get to experience the air of spring.
Going to Mexico City was actually an interesting exercise in fluidity. Most of the spaces we entered didn’t even have doors. Restaurants were “enclosed” with open doorways and large windows and the uncovered roofs of sun terraces. What was naturally occurring and what was man-made bled into each other unimpeded. Where one thing ended and another began was all a matter of perspective. And it was hard for me not to infuse this truth with some meaning. I have been so resistant to the way things carry on that I am inclined to create my own enclosures, manufacturing endings in order to materialize change.
When I got back from Mexico City, I was inches away from closing the door on the way things were. I made a grand declaration to friends that I was going to give up on my dreams, maybe I’d become a banker, maybe I’d let the creativity drain from my body like a tub of dirty bath water. I needed things to end so I could move forward and look back and know that this time in my life had meant something. To my dismay, everyone told me this was a horrible idea and encouraged me to keep going. One of my friends even made the astute observation that I was viewing my life through a pin-hole sized lens, a force of habit from childhood when we were encouraged to squint in order to see things that seem far away. Narrow our focus and suddenly things will become clear. But narrow it too much and lose sight of things completely. Things went dark. All clarity had been lost.
I’m in France for the next two months and perhaps this will be the exact distance I need from the cycles of my everyday life to witness change in the middle of its arrival. But if you’re still wondering what’s next, truthfully, I am too. So then what is next? I guess, in some ways, it’s more of the same. But I do have one exciting announcement. I’m going to be writing a mini cookbook! Which means I’ll be sharing a lot more recipes with you all. Placing something on the proverbial horizon. Distance is necessary for perspective regardless of which direction you’re looking.
Things I’m Loving
My Brilliant Friend, Book 1 and Book 2 (the aforementioned book I finished and book I started)
This post from Chloe in Letters which is the summation of everything above
This song:
Muesli.
Have a great time in France!! xo