Edition #131: Two Women, One Woman

Plus, toleration as a virtue, writing your Wikipedia page, and fish and chips on the beach

Jan 05, 2023

How to transcend duality and think in universal terms

A Note From the Editor

The first sight of morning breaks. The sun, in all of its glory, pushes its way through the smogged horizon. Millions are already awake, but she is still sleeping. Her alarm will begin to yell at her about an hour earlier than it needs to. She chooses the softest song, something gentle to rouse her out of a fraught slumber, but the melody is still mechanically harsh. A manufactured wake-up call.

She opens her eyes and can immediately feel the presence of the day. Its weight presses on her from the inside, heavier than normal, so she decides to leave her apartment first thing. Shoes on, sunglasses on, Airpods in—a makeshift disguise saying please, do not disturb—down five flights of stairs and onto the street resembling that of a party the morning after. Discarded pizza boxes, soiled napkins, a pack of pigeons picking at a pile of garbage. Men in baseball caps hosing off the grime, cleared away only to be sullied again a few hours later.

At the park, she walks past the dog run and pauses to admire the handsome owners and their enthusiastic companions, everyone itching to occupy space. Past the park benches with their heartfelt dedications, past the sleeping barefoot man, the morning coffee drinkers, the strollers, and joggers. This is her favorite part of the morning; the way putting one foot in front of the other makes you feel like you’re going someplace, reminds you there is a world outside of the four walls of your home and your overactive mind. She momentarily forgets about the to-do list, the words she has not written, the plans that have not transpired. As she rounds the corner past the Arch, the bored policemen, the dried-up fountain, and the hotdog cart, she becomes aware of the weight once more. But now it is smaller, it has mutated into something like inspiration. And so the day begins.

“I felt the culture in its deepest sense, what civilizes people, as only a thin veneer, like the new houses which turn out to have a brick façade pasted onto some other material. And how incredible it was, in autumn, to swing past acres and acres of fancy French provincial, Spanish, or Tudor houses where not a leaf is allowed to rest on the immaculate lawns!”

The first sight of morning breaks. The sun, in all of its glory, moseys its way through the dawn, rising higher over mountains and oceans and dense forests. It rises behind a thick bed of brush, mostly concealed from her eye, but she is still asleep. If thousands are awake by now she isn't aware, for up here it is only her, the trees, and the construction workers.

She rises to no alarm, no sound. Throws open the bedroom curtains, pulls up the bathroom shades, lets the morning light flood in. She feels like a blank canvas—a rarity—and wants to maintain this peace for as long as possible. Outside, she unrolls the dusty blue yoga mat, lies on her back, and listens to a Dutch man guide her through three rounds of deep breaths. Her eyes remain closed even after the video is over, after the Dutch man tells her to have a good day and a good life. She lies there until her body tells her it’s over. She stretches, slowly, comes back down to Earth.

Then a French press, a cup of coffee sipped outside. She reads a few pages of something beautiful to usher her mind into the creative flow—Clifton or Sarton or Baldwin—and jots down passages that speak to her. Afterward, she might pen a few pages in her journal, write a poem. Only then does she consider the hours that lie ahead. Open, beckoning, waiting to be filled. And so the day begins.

power of the situation
a basic premise of social psychology that assumes people’s thoughts, actions, and emotions are influenced substantially by the social setting.

Two women, two vastly different settings. Two versions of morning and two versions of life. The first, a city girl. Concerned with piecing together the right outfit, being seen with the right sort of books at the right sort of bar. A neighborhood inhabited, when shared with a stranger, is the initial basis for her personality. She did not make these rules, they are the rules of the place. Where do you live? Greenwich Village. Ah, I see. Here, people are taught to collect information as quickly as possible in order to classify one another. Outfits are information, neighborhoods are information. Vital clues to decode a person.

The second girl, the jungle girl, lives by different rules. Makeup is infrequent, outfits are small and strewn together haphazardly. She might wear a swimsuit out for a drive, her hair a matted mess from the ocean, concealed beneath a stained baseball cap. Status, here, is having a mode of transportation to get up the hill, having your own place to sleep, having AC in your bedroom. The rules are different, too, but she did not make them. ¿Hablas Español? Un poco. Teach yoga? No. Surf? Getting there. Ah, I see.

Since uncovering the duality that exists within me, when plucked from one setting and plopped into another, I’ve begun to see two opposing sides everywhere. In this song, two boys are with the same woman. One throws her around and leaves her feeling sore the next morning, while the other brings her breakfast and gently rouses her from sleep—but they are the same boy. Different in every way, yet coexisting within a singular human shell.

A friend of mine in New York is a no-nonsense, high-powered lawyer who takes no bullshit. She knows exactly what she wants and isn’t afraid to vocalize it. I often wonder if she’s ever known shame, if she’s ever questioned herself. But she is also a poet—the softest, most sentimental sort. When we’re sitting down for tea in her well-decorated apartment, we’ll discuss her most recent poem and its inspiration, often close-knit familial ties. I’ll look her in the eyes and be met with soft tears that eventually spill down her cheeks. She won’t openly acknowledge that she’s crying but there’s no need to, for I can see it. She is tender, exposed, not the lawyer with concrete opinions but a regular woman coping with complex feelings. She knows everything and nothing.

Two boys, one to love you sweetly
One does so discreetly
Never will he meet me

Duality has always existed within us and around us, but my thoughts on its function have shifted as I’ve begun to play in the sandbox of my polarity. Rather than acknowledging the opposing half but struggling to understand how she can exist alongside a very different woman who is also me, I’ve begun to separate the two. Two girls, two settings, two varied ways of being. This works because I’ve landed in a setting in which I can fully inhabit the other, less explored half in all of her mercurial glory.

Before, it went like this: I’ve always been spiritually inclined. I pray, I believe in miracles or magic, in angels and ghosts. While living in New York, this side of me wasn’t nourished because it wasn’t in line with the life I’d cultivated there. At times I felt so starved for spiritual connection that I would wander around the city searching for a place to fill the void—I found it at a social justice church near my apartment. Sunday service was at 11 am. I attended for a few weeks in quiet, for admitting I was attending church would require a degree of explanation amongst my New York crowd. On Sundays at noon, I would stumble out of church in a daze. The light streaming over the park, the same light I saw every morning during my dread walks, became something deeply holy, as close to God as I could get. That hour was never enough but it was something; a method of keeping the other side of me alive.

Now, in Costa Rica, my entire life is centered around spirituality. I don’t have to explain this side of myself to anyone here, for they’ve only met this woman and not the other. Here, I can meditate and breathe and pray with a group, feeling the compounded pull of what happens when a community converges to connect to something higher. While I’m here, the other side of me fades—my ambition, my desire to become a certain type of acclaimed writer and certified cool girl. In this setting, she is less relevant so I let her slink into the shadows, knowing she will be back upon my return to New York. I feed her by writing and keeping up with those I admire on social media, whose work inspires me and whose lives I think I want to emulate. Occasionally she wakes up but mostly she is hibernating, sleeping for the season.

This new method of operation suits me well. To know there are two halves of me, probably more undiscovered still, and that these two halves need not be forced together. We hear so much about integration, about becoming our “whole selves,” inhabiting all sides at once in order to feel more complete. I am content, instead, for those two women to never meet. Or to meet only in passing; acquaintances who know one another but who don’t feel compelled to stop to say hello each time they walk past, who don’t force small talk for the sake of social niceties.

I enjoy nourishing these two women separately, for what they need and what they crave are so different from one another. One wants sunshine and dirt and stillness, the other wants noise and escargot and a darkened theatre. One is content to rest while the other needs to strive. What peace it is, to know yourself a mystery. To live two lives, both genuine and fulfilling. To accept these sides as two halves of a whole. To release the torturous act of trying to decide which is more true, more real. They are both real, and I admire them equally for very different reasons. I like getting to know these two women, letting them surprise me.

__________

Cheers, my dears, and as always, thank you for reading. It’s 2023, wow! Welcome to another year on Earth. In the coming months, I’m committing to staying focused on my three major priorities whilst in Costa Rica—creative writing, surfing, and Spanish, I start my first playwriting course next week and I’m frustrated about 60% of the time, for I am still not good at surfing or Spanish. But it’ll happen one day!

I’m also thinking about my writing projects and priorities for the year to come, which means relooking at this newsletter and deciding how it fits into the mix. I’ll keep you updated as I gather a stronger position on that front, but until then, I hope you enjoyed this week's edition. Have a beautiful weekend, eat some fresh fruit and take a nap!

Perhaps You Should… Write Your Own Wiki Page

Here me out on this one. As a former full-blown, sickeningly type A Virgo in goal-obsession recovery, I’ve avoided spending too much time and energy writing out 5 or 10 years goals in recent years. But the other day as I was going through my Google Docs to read some old short stories and I came across a doc entitled Meghan’s Wikipedia Page written a few years back. It was fascinating to see what goals I have for myself back then compared ot now, but what was even more interesting was attempting to write my future Wiki page today. Writing in the no-nonsense, Wikipedia format is an exercise in drilling down on the things you really want while also looking at the macro picture. Even just penning the first line makes you think about what you want to be known for. Meghan Palmer is a………screenwriter? Writer, activist, novelist? Where does she live, what themes does her work explore, and in which formats? I highly recommend writing out what you’d want a Wikipedia page to say about you in five or ten years’ time.

Bonus Content (We Are All Orchids)

You’re an orchid, darling, and so am I.

Also, I love him, wish I could surf like this little duck, LOL, out for 2023 (but still very much me), and in for 2023.

A Quote From A Book You Should Read:

“Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long.”

-Journal of Solitude by May Sarton.

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.

that's so interesting

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