trying new things

Lois Dodd, Laundry Line, Red White Black Pitchfork, 1979

Hi! As you may have heard, I’m doing a workshop on conflict and friendship in SF on May 18th :) Paid subscribers get 20% off with the couple BOOKBEARFRIENDS. Please consider coming!!

I saw a line in a Substack post this morning that went, “My Dad gave me a piece of advice then: he said that he felt strongly that you can never know who the love of your life is until you’re much older” and that distressed me. But then I saw a tweet on my timeline that went: “Sometimes I think I love too many things and people and it stresses me out because how does one maintain all of it? Then I remember my only job is to emit that love to all I feel it for from my heart area like a beam and natural action follows . I don’t have to make choices” and that reassured me.

I used to be absent from my body during sex and I realized today that it’s exactly the same as how I used to be absent from my breath during yoga. My teachers would always say: “Are you breathing?” And I’d be like, “… I am?” But there’s breathing and there’s breathing. This morning during class I was like: oh, okay, the whole point of yoga is just to be one with your breath. Being able to breathe deeply and evenly through difficult poses, through being upside down, is a metaphor for radically accepting life through your most challenging moments. I’d heard that phrased in different ways probably a thousand times before it clicked.

I was suffused with a warm glow after having this revelation. We had chai after class and it was delicious. Then I pulled out my phone on the way to Kantine and saw a text from A and got extremely annoyed. The point of mindfulness, I suppose, is that you’re always starting over.

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My resolution of 2024 was to try new things. I’m letting friends read chapters of my novel. I’m doing in-person events. I moved apartments. I’m letting myself throw spaghetti at the wall and watch it slide off.