The breadth of my meridian.
This sits on our kitchen table. A model for something Jonny's working on that's gonna be good. Coming soon to a YouTube near you!
On Friday I was phenomenally depressed. One week of my life gone, and what did I have to show for it? I had done a good job at work, had done everything they had asked me to do and more, and there is a certain amount of pride in that. But in the end I had that same feeling I always have when I take a corporate job, that sad, existentially empty sensation that too much of one's life is wasted indoors.
It did not help that I had been reading the new Jhumpa Lahiri book all week, one of the stories from which had made me burst out in tears on the subway that very morning. I did not feel jealous of her brilliance - that's like an ant hill being jealous of a mountain - I only felt jealous that she had probably worked on something of substance that week, and I had not.
Jonny was working late and I had nothing to do. I texted around. Someone was going to the Whitney. I should have thought of that, I thought. Something culturally or socially relevant. Jennifer Armstrong invited me to meet her for drinks after 10 on the Lower East Side. It was 6:30. And anyway I wasn't fit for company. I just decided to walk. I walked from 33rd and 6th Avenue to Delancey and Essex to catch the JMZ home. I stopped for a martini along the way and read some more from Unaccustomed Earth
Jonny got home late, and I had already gone to sleep. Early in the morning we rustled under the covers and then I rose and waited anxiously in the living room. I ran back and forth to the bedroom every so often and stuck my head out the window. Finally I saw what I was looking for: my landlord, surveying the streets as he does every morning. I ran downstairs and said breathlessly, "Can I get my bike out of storage?" He had locked it in the shed behind the garden apartment when I first moved in. It was winter and cold and I would not be riding it anytime soon and there was no point in lugging it up three flights of stairs. But lately I have missed it. Especially as I spend forty minutes of my life each day on the subway (reading brilliant and depressing books), when I could be spending far less time indoors if I had my bike. Now I can ride it to work, or at the very least down to the Bedford L, where the travel time to my job is about 15 minutes. And there will be fresh air and maybe along the way I will stop and take a picture or two.
A few hours after I rescued my bike, Jonny and I went to our first acupuncture session. I had met the acupuncturist, Isobeau, at Kate's PEN/Faulkner celebration (still mentioning it because it's still awesome that she won), and immediately liked her. Plus her office is in Greenpoint and in general I like most things in Greenpoint, where people seem to have a better quality of life. (If you don't mind the massive oil spill bubbling beneath the streets.) I had never considered getting acupuncture before, but there had been so much going on, both with me and Jonny, in the last six months - biopsies and book launches and career changes and evictions and more and more - that I thought we could both use a moment to just sit and collect ourselves. Under medical supervision. With tiny needles sticking out of us.
Anyway it was awesome. I was an instant convert. It was too strong at first, this throbbing rush of energy in my right foot and arm, but then Isobeau came and dialed it down a bit and all was well. I particularly enjoyed the way the sensation traveled through my body, starting on the right side and then addressing little points along the way over to the left side. I totally got high off it, and glided through the session in a weird dream/wake state, a standard reaction to the treatment. I could have done it forever. And interestingly while I did not mention my ankle (which never fully recovered from that sprain last fall) as an area I would like to focus on, I noticed immediately after that it was tender, but also it was completely loose and flexible, as it had not been in months.
It felt a bit of a cheat I have to say - in many ways the sensations were similar to things I achieve with a long yoga session. (I never have to excercise again, great! I'll just pay someone to do it for me.) But of course this was more directed and focused and certainly more intense. Jonny liked it too but probably not as much as I did. He's more interested in the cumulative effects, so we're going to keep going and see what happens. Mostly I was just happy to feel like I was a little bit different than I was before.
Later on I wrote 500 words of the novel. I wrote about two women sitting on an airplane during a snowstorm, waiting for clearance to land on the ground below. One woman is going home for the first time in a while, the other woman is giving her support. Everyone on the plane wants to get off it except for the woman who is going home. She is scared. She is not as brave as her friend who sits with her thinks she is. She doesn't know what she's doing. And then the pilot comes on the loudspeaker and announces they have started their descent and everyone on the plane applauds.
(03/30/08)