The cards you are dealt
Look back, look forward, be here, it is a lifetime
You could start anywhere and still read meditation: from cold start to mastery, take notes on a google doc and revisit them a year later. You would remember you had wisdom in you
You could read “going places” at 23 instead of 17 and still identify with the yearning
Your grandmother could be alive, she could tell you that she loved reading detective novels when she was 35, and marjorie would not burn your arms so much, and you could keep going
You could pick up the straw, drop it, watch your good habits wean themselves off you as you get into slumps and blocks and then, almost on a whim, feel the texture of your days and habits again
The cards we are dealt include the things we consume. Sometimes, consumption is absorption. Lyrics have always intertwined my relationships, stories have changed my choices
You would be a black sheep even if the phrase did not exist. You would find the vanilla croissant in the grocery store, cheryl strayed would teach you about grief and mistakes, elizabeth gilbert would tell you about creativity and living an artist’s life, you would realize you are not a black sheep in the right plot
You could have gone your entire teens without romance but you found good boys, interesting ones. This was a bonus gift - the anticipation, memories, their kindness, their wonder, tracing back to taylor swift songs that remind you of each of them. You swore you would hang out with their families one day but you never did. You remember them so closely that it feels like you did
When I think about this substack, I sense that I am edging towards a transparency that is dangerous. I sense that I will reveal so much that I will run out of words
Maya angelou disagrees, and then I think of oprah, and all the tarot card readings that I sleep through when I don’t want to sleep. In my notes: “I like sleeping with a radio hovering over my head”
A chilling realization the other day, because I have come so far, farther than I thought I would, and suddenly I find myself in a different place than my peers, though we all stumbled the same a few years back. I realized that everyone has someone and I have been doing sales alone. I have been doing sales alone, surrounded by people, yes, but all the others I know who went to fancy colleges but couldn’t shake the itch of immersing themselves in the grime of the day did it by sharing very specific trials and tribulations with someone really close. I never did. No one gets it and I am going through it not once, but twice, alone
I think about the person I was holding hands with in Bruges on valentine’s day, I think about sneaking out of the opera in Vienna to make out, I think of the tour guide on a Budapest party boat telling us to to kiss someone under the bridge for good luck and laughing because we did not need a reason
There is so much I have still not told you. Some things, almost instinctively, are just for me. Clean breaks, loving in secret, not thinking twice, laughing a lot, coming out of the shower to someone cooking for me
I spent last week in a fisherman’s town, in a house so beautiful that it took me back to Lyon, days spent scribbling in my journal and reading and taking lots of pictures and then one evening, my friend and I, we ate some brownies and watched the world spin. At a local seafood restaurant as the calamari and prawns came, I looked at the floor and saw pure gold. I looked up and saw blue light. I saw old fashioned bars and thought I was on a movie set. My hearing was clear, my sight was sharp, there was a cat scurrying at my feet, my friend was calm and giggling
I am still dealing cards, I am still being dealt, I oscillate between pastoral fantasies and european ones, a writerly infliction to romanticize it all, life has been interesting, sometimes it has been lonely, many times it has been filled with the best of people, what are the odds of any of it, you just keep living, running in the right direction usually, sometimes running away, you would have found these words in all the lifetimes, you would have found me in many of them
This one hit different