Summer 2022

It’s been a special summer. So many ends and beginnings. My little human experience is expanding in grief, love, dance, gender, humor, earnestness, meals and long walks.

I’m sitting on the roof in the sun and the breeze. It’s been an off-day. I woke up with dread for the day that I was never able to completely shake off. I worry that being still is becoming hard for me again. I want to integrate some old practices — more reading, new crafts, unplugging, eating fruit.

It’s so beautiful out. Has been all day, but especially now. The sun is lower in the sky, lighting up my whole right side and the red bricks and casting everything a very long and distorted shadow. There could never be fear in this light because even the long, distorted shadow has a warm glow.

I wish I could really describe how I feel. Just this specific feeling — it’s not depressed, really. More of a long sigh and then some kind of waiting. Holding a fuzzy gaze into the distance forever.

The breeze reminds me that I have a body, as does the pain in my right-side rib that I haven’t figured out yet. The sun’s warmth from so far away reminds me that I am a human. Both a blip on a blip and an expanse in the expanse.

All kinds of little machines and doodads spin and make rattles and hums up here. My long shadow is all lost in the long shadows of this and that. Everything is just wind and light. Everything in New York is just bright light and hot air.

The pain in my rib reminds me that I kind of feel like crying. My forehead tucked into the crook of my elbow reminds me that perhaps I need a hug. Perhaps something really funny will remind me that I can laugh and laugh until life is soo easy again. And it is! And it isn’t.