broken rituals.

It’s a summer evening. I’m sitting cross-legged on the couch, sans pants, because that is my animal instinct on how to manage the heat and any heat-induced rage that might follow. There are the sounds of cicadas mixed with the rush of the fan and the rumbling of the HVAC next door. Cicadas are my favorite summer sound. (Even more after listening to this!) For whatever reason, they always transport me to the summer I lived in St. Louis as a child. Summers were hot there, too, and we had an enormous yard at our second house and an enormous yard at our third house. Those yards were a wonderland for a kid with plenty of imagination. And whatever I spent my nights doing was soundtracked by cicadas.

It’s been nearly a month now since we moved. Like it or not, in our old place, I had formed a weeknight ritual. Walk or take the bus home, make dinner, feel exhausted, watch TV. We don’t have a TV in our new place, and although I can just as easily dive into Netflix on my laptop, it feels less obvious. So the ritual is happily broken. I’m biking home from work now (which is the best! I love it! I love it so much! I want to bike everywhere all day every day!) and there are little projects to be done around the apartment, and everything about the new space is inviting me to cook and to write and to read. Even with the best of intentions (believe me, I have them) sometimes a circumstantial nudge is what I need to get back on track. 

We’re choosing to keep the air conditioning off in our apartment, to save money, to save the earth, and I think now also as a badge of honor signifying how tough we are. There are moments when it feels a little much, but the answer is easily enough: sit down and stop moving, take off the pants, and eat/drink something cold. For this reason, I’ve switched aggressively to salads this summer, more than I ever have before.

journal.

The beauty of journalling, of writing a lot, writing all the details of your life, is that it helps you drill down into awareness and presence. It lets everything, the everyday-ness of life, each thing, become valuable. Everything is worth taking note of.

I used to journal a lot when I was young. I don’t remember when I started, but I have a stack of old journals in a shoebox in the closet that date back 15 years. In some ways, I struggled with the same “I-must-write-I-can’t-write” tensions that I feel today. But I still wrote quite a bit, and I carefully documented feelings. I wasn’t the sort to record each thing that happened in a day, but I never failed to capture the emotions.

Those journals, all of them, are incredibly transportive for me. I can open any page and almost before reading the words, the feelings come back to me in a rush. I was always excellent at journalling in the midst of heartbreak and loneliness, so those are the themes of most journals. My most recent journal more or less ends three years ago, just after I met Jacob. I burst in for an entry or two each year, but really I stopped journalling the moment our relationship began.

There are reasons. Jacob is my biggest writing fan and believes in my ability more than I ever have. With his encouragement at my heels, I started writing and sharing my writing outside of a journal, something I had never done before I met him. And journalling, for me at least, has often been the way I hold loneliness at bay. I have always been a lonely person, even when I’m not alone. Somehow a journal is a witness to life when it feels like no one else is watching.

spontaneous.

Last month went by in a blink. I’ve been barely reading and writing, save a two-hour late bus to Durham that got me halfway through this book. I’ve been overwhelmed and busy, and I’m not the sort of person who wears that life well. I stay up too late, I have anxious dreams, I start drinking Diet Coke even though I gave up on that toxic stuff years ago. Balance and peace in my life are sacred, and when I can’t protect them, I don’t always cope very well. But here we are.

Last month I powered through some very long work weeks, a major work event, two weekend trips, my re-entrance into bike commuting, and last but not least, a spontaneous move. Jacob and I found an apartment that is a) on a park, b) cheaper than our current place, and c) not a basement. For the last two years, we’ve been living DC-style in an English basement apartment. It’s cozy and it’s been a good home to us, but there are no windows and…...there are no windows. We couldn’t pass on the chance for cheaper rent + windows, even if it meant moving at literally the busiest work time for both of us.

Our basement apartment came furnished, which means we’ve been on the market for most things. It’s turned into a joint late night craigslist addiction, which is tiresome, but also thrilling when you manage to nab an awesome wood dresser for $30 (among other things).

After moving the last of the boxes and running one million errands last weekend, it’s done. Everything’s been unpacked or temporarily hidden from sight, so now I can chip away little by little at a) finding places for everything b) buying a few more pieces of furniture and c) getting some stuff up on these soaring white walls. I’m scratching odds and ends off my list and making lists on top of lists, because that’s how I do.

two.

I wasn’t planning to write here today (although I was planning to write in the way that I always do, the planning and failing way). But so far this year, I’ve only pulled off one blog post a month. I want more. Today is the last day of April and by god I’ll put up more than one post this month.

I’ve been listening to hard rain all day. Leaves have collected at our front door, which is at the bottom of some steps, so the drain is blocked and the rain is flooding the steps. There’s a bird out back that I can’t see, but he’s been chirping away. I don’t know many birdsongs, but Jacob said this morning that it was a chickadee because it’s saying “dee-dee-dee.”

I was listening to some spring pop, then some Beethoven, and now good old Langhorne.

Most blogs that I read these days are full of beautiful pictures. It’s such a thing. It’s a thing that makes me think this will never be a blog blog (athough I’m not sure I care) because a) I don’t take beautiful pictures, although I try sometimes and b) most of the time I forget to take pictures anyway.

Jacob and I had a blitz day in Philly last weekend. I finished a work meeting at noon, and we hopped in the car with sandwiches and made the two and a half hour drive north. There was traffic and it was sunny and beautiful outside. By the time we got to Philly, the sky grayed and it rained. We parked in the scariest parking garage I’ve ever seen, but not because there was a shortage of parking garages. We joked the entire afternoon about how we managed to find the scariest parking garage in the city. There were two elevators, one was broken. A sign was taped to the wall that said 4 person max. It was because the elevator was the size of a roomy coffin. But these are the things you remember.

stories of people.

Meet me where I am. I spent the evening wandering, walking further than my tired feet wanted to go. I came home and put on a long, flowy skirt, because the wind was blowing and it was warm and blooming and spring. And I walked some more.

I had chip-dinner, which is a real and valid thing. It involves walking to the corner store and buying a bag of chips, fully knowing that I will eat most or all of it for dinner tonight. I walked in the door and felt guilty that my splurge-y, single lady dinner wasn’t vegetables! or fruit! or whole grains! I eat all those things all the time and sometimes, sometimes I need chip-dinner.

All of the stories in my head tonight are stories of guilt. I’m not sure why. They are stories of people I saw on the street today, but they are cut through with my own emotion. Those people have stories that exist in the world, but I only know them through the lens of me.

The man this morning, clearly mentally ill, who kept wandering off the sidewalk and into traffic. The man with the small grocery cart, sitting on a bench, a weathered white beard down to his belt, smoking a stub of a cigarette. The other man who dropped his cigarette and picked it up, put it right back in his mouth. The man in the wheelchair, still and stark, head hanging low. The woman on the bicycle and the car that honked at her even though she had the right of way. That other woman who left the doctor’s office after me, and I held the door for her. She put her sunglasses on as she walked through. I see these people in the context of suffering, brokenness, loss. Why?