Edition #126: What I Remember of Places
Plus, how do you know if you're with the right person, the only child bias, and the best movie of the year
A Note From the Editor
What I remember is the cafeteria of my elementary school. The way it smelled; yeasty and warm with an afterbite of the grassy sweat of children. The milk choices: blue, red, or brown. Fruit Roll-Ups for a quarter, cotton candy flavored popsicles for two. The back lobby of my dance studio. Cubbies filled with bulging backpacks and sweaty socks and water bottles, the Frutopia vending machine. The first bedroom I ever had to myself, finally, at 16 years old. How I yanked up the carpet and put in peel-and-stick floors to look like hardwood. How I painted the walls a bright yellow and took great care choosing posters; Bob Marley and an art-deco style beer pong shot. How I swept that room every day, how the act of it made me feel hopeful.
Two weeks ago I was taking a slow stroll around Greenwich Village, my beloved neighborhood for the past two years. I walked the same route I always walked, down Bleeker, passing Murray’s Cheese Shop and Faiccino’s Italian Grocer, Rocco’s and the Five Guys with a not-so-secret cocktail bar upstairs. I made it to a small park and began to read the dedications on the benches, my favorite New York pastime. The first bench I stopped at held a quote by Frank O’Hara. Fittingly, it was a quote about New York, about its buzzing vitality. Fittingly, I was on my final stroll through the neighborhood. A lump formed in my throat.
The emotion surprised me, for I had been attempting to feel something about the fact that I was leaving New York for the longest consecutive stretch I ever had since moving there nearly six years ago, but I couldn’t manage to feel anything. In the days leading up to my leaving I tidied my apartment and spent a lot of time in it, nesting and looking around, taking note of everything I loved about the safe little space I had created for myself. I had long, languid dinners with friends, the people who make New York feel like a soft place to land. I said my temporary goodbyes. Yet it wasn’t until I read that bench dedication that it hit me: I was leaving. For now, at least. And this place wouldn’t be here when I returned because I would not return the same. Already, I was changed from my months away this summer—more sensitive to overstimulation, a bit quieter. More in need of breathing room.
The neighborhood would change, too. Storefronts would turn over, new places would take the place of old ones. A season would pass, snow would blanket the ground and melt away. My friends would move through milestones—getting into grad school, changing jobs, starting and ending relationships. Though I would return to this physical space, I would never be able to return to what it has been for me for the past year. I would never return to this season, to this moment in time. What a privilege, I thought, to know a place like New York so intimately. A line from a two-man play put on this summer by my talented friend sprung to my mind, “I have not left and already, I miss this place.”
What I remember is the tree behind the yellow rental house on our block, the one my neighbor and I claimed as our spot. How we’d call each other on the house phone from across the street and say, “Meet me at our spot,” without a greeting or a goodbye. How we’d climb up as high as we could, escaping the chaos of our homes, clinging to each other and to our little sliver of nature. How one day, we managed to gather the materials needed—a rectangle of wood, nails, and a hammer—to make a step for our gangly limbs so that climbing our tree would be easier. How a British man poked his head out from the rental house we assumed was vacant and yelled, “Don’t nail that wood to that tree!” How the line became an inside joke for years—don’t nail that wood to that tree! How we giggled and scurried away in the moment but were left with a bit of heartbreak, losing a sacred place that was never really ours.
About a week ago today I arrived in Costa Rica, the same small beach town where I spent a few months this summer. On my second day here I drove my new quad on the main stretch of road and was accosted by a stream of memories. It was as if I deeply inhaled a freshly washed sweater and instead of smelling linen, I caught a strong whiff of an old perfume I wore in high school. The memories rushed in; I saw ghosts of myself all over. A party here, a hand held there. A first meeting, sunsets and sunrises, friendships and loves and the blurred line between them. It was not pleasant as I had expected it to be, but ripe and overwhelming. I thought of how different my arrival was last time. Knowing nothing and no one, having no memories to associate with the physical spaces I would visit and revisit. I envied who I was back in June before I moved through the feverish, formative summer. On my darkest day, the morning I couldn’t stop the tears, I was angry with myself—can you not be content anywhere? Why are you crying?
Then a day passed. And another, and another. I woke up each morning momentarily confused, a lull before remembering that I was in a different country, in a new home. One morning, I awoke to a small herd of horses in my backyard. I fed them carrots, attempted to pet their soft snouts. I sat on my back deck and stared at the jungle, the bugs, the butterflies, the hummingbirds. I drove back through town and it was far less painful this time. Drove through again and ran into someone I knew. Then another person, then another. I began to notice the differences in who I am now, just three months later, compared to who I was the last time I was here. Amazing, how much can change in such a short time.
What I remember is the ocean, that summer when I got my first taste of a different kind of life. Small town, everything walkable, everyone friends or acquaintances. Training bras, on the brink of teenage years. Eating at a diner with new friends and feeling the most innocent version of autonomy. And the ocean—submerging myself beneath the water I thought was far too icy for swimming until my body got used to it. Floating on my back staring at the sky, diving beneath the current, letting the tide move me until my fingers pruned. How I felt so free—sand in my ears, salt stiffening my hair, freckles brightening my face.
Places have a certain way of cradling our memories, preserving them in time like a petrified bug caught in amber. Sometimes we long to return to certain places because we liked who we were when we were there, other times we avoid places that bring us back to memories we’d rather not face. A dear friend of mine recently wrote, “Every new iteration of our lives is a death of what came before,” and I saw so clearly that I’d been looking at it all wrong. Places can change us, but they cannot transport us to who we’ve been or who we might become. They provide context for the breadth of the world and who we are in it. Everything can only be processed in relation to something else, it is the way of the human mind, and so seeing new places gives us new means of comparison. What we like about here, what we miss about there. Places exist only to hold us for a time, to bring us closer to ourselves by way of the things we experience. The people we meet.
I’ve spent much of my adult life as a leaver. Itchy feet, hard to stay still, so much world to see and only a limited amount of time in this body to see it. But I am only now starting to see and understand—that returning is just as important as leaving. Returning is the only way to go on, not running and running but coming home again. To new homes and old ones. Facing the ghosts, embracing them, remembering how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go. And, throughout the journeys, learning the slow lesson: That the only true home is within ourselves. Everything else, everywhere else, is just context.
Cheers, my dears, and as always thanks for reading. This weekend I will be easing into my new life here—getting back on a surfboard (pray for me), eating papaya, and taking long walks on the beach. Wherever you are, I hope you feel right at home today.
A programming note: Now that I’m in a different time zone, you can expect this newsletter to start hitting your inbox a few hours later than usual, pending where you are in the world.
Three Pieces of Content Worth Consuming
How Do You Know If You’re With The Right Person? The delight of discovering this one was two-fold—one, I was transported back to what I believe to be a universal question one has after ending an ostensibly good relationship: Did I fuck up? And two, I discovered the funny, delightful writer of this piece, John Paul Brammer. His advice here is painfully spot on, yet penned with grace and empathy. I especially like when he points out that the future isn’t just five years from now, but that it is also tomorrow, next week, and next month. WOOF!
Food Prices Soar, and So Do Companies’ Profits. I’ve never been one to order in much, but I recently ordered lunch for a family of four (two adults, two children) as a surprise on UberEats. It was nothing fancy, just Panera, and I was wholeheartedly shocked by the price of the meal—nearly $65, before tip and delivery fees. I’ve been feeling the price pain at the grocery store, too, as we all have. When I brought up the insane food costs to a friend, she mentioned how she recently read about how certain corporations are padding prices well past the “necessary” inflation uptick to pad their bottom line, and this article clearly spells out how it’s being done in the food sector. Very, very gross—CEO’s basically admitting that they’ll keep raising the prices if people keep paying. This sums it up quite clearly.
Why Are People So Weird About Only Children? This one was fascinating. I’d never carefully considered my own inherent bias towards only children, though it blatantly exists, especially in dating. I’ve dated enough only children to proclaim, to myself and to others, that I never want to date an only child again, coming to conclusions that may or may not be correct about what having no siblings signifies in a person. Especially interesting when you consider the origins of the only-child bias and the way Americans have romanticized the nuclear family for decades now.
Perhaps You Should… Watch Triangle of Sadness
I mentioned this movie when I read about it winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes earlier this year, but after seeing it in theaters I can confirm it is a masterpiece. I can’t remember the last time I caught the giggles like I did whilst watching this—you know, the sort when you’re laughing so hard that you can’t stop, and you continue laughing long after everyone has returned to normal? That was me in this movie. It’s a funny, dark, genius commentary on the effects of gross social inequity, the pitfalls of capitalism, and what value capital holds in situations where money is no longer useful. Do yourself a favor and go see it ASAP.
**Bonus Content** (Benny Drama)
I still haven’t listened to midnights—sue me!—but this made me laugh out loud.
Also, me in court, the marriage proposal that made me cry, we love depression humor and crude baking humor, and this gorgeous dinner party.
A Quote From A Book You Should Read:
“Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.”
-Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
This newsletter is best served with a side of conversation, so drop your opinions, reflections, and thoughts in the comments below and let’s get to talking.
Or, share the most thought-provoking piece from today’s edition with someone you love, then call them up to discuss, debate, and percolate. As a wise woman once said, “Great minds discuss ideas.