Feel the contours of your skin

On presence, winning, rains, visions, liking the internet

Aleksey Vaynshteyn

The sun sets so quickly on the white terrace. 

The air is chilled after ages, the terrace scrubbed clean, white and pink dreamy clouds, drizzle of rain, the swaying palm trees, inhale and exhale, tautness of limbs, it is all so new but it is all built sinew by sinew. For an instant, I let my consciousness fall away because this moment is so green, fresh and new. I feel it on my skin. I feel it in my bones.

The chatter always wrestles the minute after I feel things, but this moment is all I have, touching me, soaking me. It is fond of me.

The only reason I can turn up here at all is because my survival instincts won so many times: I cleared off to do lists, I abandoned the book in which the protagonist gave me a headache, I cooked up all the leftover vegetables for lunch, I added and subtracted from my bank balance to get granola and new shoes and good deals. I rinsed the rice and saved a new recipe for dinner.

I am here by cosmic design but I am also here by choice.

Both things can be true: my knowing everything and knowing nothing. 

Feel the contours of my skin: the dopamine rushing to my brain with the first sip of cold coffee in the morning, the glow from the skincare routine, the slightly awkward smile that I repeat in front of the mirror, willing it to become beautiful, the hair growing longer by the day, straighter, shinier. Feel the way I build walls whenever I sense someone starting to resent me. It happens more frequently now, I feel it, I understand it, it corrupts me but it does not affect me, again and again in the same way forever.

I am losing you here.

During the pandemic, for a month in between the throes of grief and healing, I was ruptured by the image of performing alone on a theater stage with one person in the audience, and then, when it ends, not good or bad, I was sitting in a deserted cafe, writing in my diary. Foreign lands, unfamiliar, heavy rains outside, not remembering if it was coffee or hot chocolate or if there was food to go with it. Just remembering the feeling of being stranded in a cafe while it keeps raining. I wanted to write in that vision but I kept looking out the window. Something was lost. The words would never be read.

Which was a metaphor for: I will never be understood again.

I am not an arrogant person, and most days we keep jumping levels without remembering the fibers of what has changed. But something has, it must have, because I am not where I once was. Neither are you, my dear reader. 

I am not an arrogant person but lately, I am a little proud.

You win if you are happy wherever you are. 

The other day, and this is embarrassing, I googled myself. 

There was a fully updated linkedin account yes, but I stumbled across a quora profile and an old prezi account and soundcloud and pinterest. It has been eight years, and my twitter and youtube and instagram and this substack are nowhere to be found. I was glad, actually, because this means I had always been putting myself on the internet in one way or another, and it bore so lightly on me that I forgot and moved on to something new and even more exciting. 

You win if you keep adapting. 

You win if you never change, but also don’t stay the same.

That last sentence, borrowed for infinity from Taylor Swift, who is an actual legend now, though I knew it from the time I heard Jump then Fall.

I love the tiktokifcation of social media. I love memes and reels and “day in the life” vlogs and the writers I follow on substack and I already love whatever fresh hell will come next.

You win if you are having fun.

You also win if, as it turns out, someone is reading this. 

I am not in a cafe but I did write again. There is an audience. There always has been, even on soundcloud. Who is Derek from Copenhagen and why does he follow me?

Perhaps there is no answer. Perhaps that is the answer?

No one can tell me for sure.

I can only ravenously eat the hazelnut butter and sweet chili nachos and sit 30 minutes in silence and do bicep curls and stretches for my side split and eye those new forever 21 workout leggings and feel the fresh, green dew on my skin. 

I can only feel a little proud, and relieved, and grateful. 

You win if you are still wondering.