Edition #135: Waves
Plus, Fran Leibowitz on life without the internet, how to behave, and a very cool dance
A Note From the Editor
All the tropes we hear about finding love—you can’t go looking for it or you’ll never find it. You have to be happy with yourself first. You shouldn’t chase too hard; allow yourself to be chased. You’ve got to be coy, you’ve got to be healed. We talk about love with a superstitious lilt—don’t step on the crack or you’ll break your mother’s back. Forward this email to ten friends or a long-haired demon will be waiting at your bedside. We watch strangers make fools of themselves on television, bearing their hearts and their underbellies, crying and kissing and arguing and confessing to the camera all for the sake of finding love. If humans are all different on the surface, with different skin colors and preoccupations and desires, then we share one commonality: the perpetual treasure hunt. We are seeking love as we move along, peeking around every corner to find it.
I am no different. I feel every emotion at its full height—the closed-throat hopelessness of a downward spiral, the expanded-winged soaring of a new beginning; every gradient of gray in between. I’ve been seeking love since it last held me tenderly, sometimes with a single-minded determination, other times with subtlety. I open my old notebooks and find scribbled observations; the curve of a jaw, the trailing of fingertips over skin. And I find that all my poems are love poems. Some express longing, others loss, others yearning. I like those best, the yearning kind.
So I’ve been looking and looking and it seems I have finally found it once again: Love. Or rather, love has found me. Here’s how it began: Last summer. June. I arrived in a new country alone with no plans, no expectations. I traveled seeking relief from the self I couldn’t escape in my regular life, in New York. I needed distance from that self; she had retreated into the darkness, the shadow world. Being present was impossible, she lived in the entrapment of her mind and the confines of her small, beautifully decorated but stifling space. Life in the city, you know.
I meet my love for the first time the morning after my first sleep in this foreign land. It is not love at first sight but there is a spark straight away. I am equal parts exhilarated and afraid; I sense imminent danger. Maybe my conscious mind doesn’t yet register the seismic shift that has already begun to take hold, but a part of me must know, for my physical body reacts. Elevated heart rate, thickened saliva. Any thought of coyness goes out the door; I forget the rules I’m supposed to follow, the playbook I’d all but memorized—play it cool, don’t be too needy, don’t chase it. From that first morning, the sun beating down on my back, I am already in it. Wading through the waist-deep waters.
My love blossoms throughout that full, fateful June. I am physically marked by it—my skin grows a shade darker. The tiny spots of melanin around my face begin to light up, making me look younger and more innocent. I feel younger; full of energy. I wake up with purpose. I am falling in love. I am lighter, I don’t want to stay in bed for those extra few minutes, because those minutes mean being away from my love. I grow child-like once more, back to the younger version of myself, before I was hardened by the world. Before I tasted loss. I am silly, playful. I can be anything. I am so in love that I can’t tear myself away and so I extend my trip for one more month. And, as it does, my love begins to turn, to shift.
That second month, July is heady and marked by words unsaid. I spend less time with my love; I grow to fear it. The end is in sight and I haven’t gotten to where I want to be, I am not secure. I leave and I put my love out of my mind, but I leave with plans to return. I have unfinished business here. I know things will not be the same when I get back, but I cannot stay away. There will be a sequel to this story, an act two of this fraught tale of yearning and love and loss.
That’s it; that’s how it is; everyone standing around as if just out of the pool,
drying off, standing around, that’s it, standing, talking,
shuffling back and forth on the deck of the present
before the boat slowly pulls away into the future. Because it hurts
to say goodbye, to pull your body out of the warm water;
to step out of the pocket of safety, clinging to what you knew,
or what you thought you knew about yourself and others.
-The Party, Jason Shinder
I pull my body out of the warm water only to return to it. It is December and all I’m thinking about is my love. I still don’t realize the depth of it, the extent to which I’ve entangled myself. The first time I get back in the water is a disaster. I am clumsy, weak, uncertain. It is my very first time returning with no instruction, no safety net. It is just me out there and it takes me twenty minutes to get past the tumbling whitewash—my neck strains, the muscles in my arms sear with sizzling heat. And then I am out, in the lineup, but I am unprepared. A massive wave comes; overhead. I panic and forget the moves of this old dance. Down I am dragged, my body tumbling like a Raggedy Ann doll in the dryer. No control, no gravity. my head gets smashed by the board. Beneath the seal of the water’s surface, I see stars. I panic, I strain—I should relax into it. Ragdoll, let myself be pulled around to conserve energy, but I forget. After, I go back the way I came from, back to the shore. It’s been 23 minutes. This is our homecoming; the unwelcome return I hadn’t planned for.
Yesterday I got a massage. The studio was in a woman’s home, messy and lived in. Beforehand, she spoke to me about her work. We stood on either side of the massage table, facing one another. It’s energetic, she said, and physical. “While you’re laying on my table, I want you to be present. When thoughts come you can say thank you, mind, but not right now. Be in your body.” I had rushed from a pre-production meeting to the appointment; my mind was a carnival of distractions. I was glad she gave me this directive. When she spoke, she looked me deeply in the eyes. Hers were Coca-Cola sateen; wide and Bambi-like. I resisted the urge to break eye contact as she spoke.
On her table, all the muscles in my back strained. Five days in a row in the water. My neck resembled that of a gnarled tree root, stiff to the touch and oddly lumpy. She understood my body; for she shared the same love. I thought about how I wanted it, how I always wanted it—rough, relentless. I wanted her to throw all of her weight into me, to press until tears filled my eyes. I thought of JJ, my masseuse in New York, who is about three times my size. The way she would put her full body weight into the balls of her feet and stand on the soft part of my shoulder blade, releasing the tensions of living in a chaotic city with her extreme force. How, when I winced in pain, she would not let up but press down harder; how much I liked it.
But this woman was not JJ. She did not make me hurt, she did not make me wince. Instead, she gave me what I didn’t know I needed; a forgiving hand. She located my pain in a softer way; pressed upon it and, eventually, relieved my body of the tension caused by my love. As she moved between areas, from my shoulder blades to my arms to my hands, her touch was gentle; as soft as a suggestion. She cradled my face in her palms and moved her thumbs over every part of it—lips, forehead, cheeks. I forgot where I was, who I was. I followed her command; be present.
After, we talked about our shared love. She said for a long time, she struggled to understand why she needed it so badly, what continued to draw her into the ocean despite the challenges, the frustrations, the danger and pain. “I realized the appeal is in what is required of us when we’re out there,” she said. “Total inhabitation of the physical body. Full presence. When we’re out there, we are most alive. Not in our heads; in our bodies.” And, I said, our hearts.
It sounds silly, trivial, perhaps, to say I have found love in a sport, but there is no better word to describe the feeling. It is a process; painful and rewarding, and I have been damaged by it many times already. Last week, I took two fins to the forehead so that when I emerged from the water, I had the buds of a pair of horns growing. The week before that, a smash to the right ear so that my hearing was damaged and the side of my face was swollen. A few days later, a right of passage—I was deep, deep in the ocean at the lineup. I turned my board around to catch a wave and realized it was far too big, so I jumped off, only to realize a few moments later that my leash detached from my board. I was floating in the ocean much further out than one would ever swim, frantically searching for my lost board, wondering whether I’d make it to shore. And I was alone; abandoned by my love. I began to swim but the current had other ideas, ripping me further and further out to sea. And still, despite the hurt and the fear, I returned to the water once more because I no longer have a choice in the matter. I’ve found love.
In the ocean, a new life develops. I meet a man from Spain who will eventually come to my home. We will share wine and dinner and stories from two vastly different childhoods. I meet a man from Germany, a mystery who listens intently as I drone on about the sport. He gives me tips and matches my enthusiasm, which is good because I have tired my friends and family with all the surf talk. There is only so much interest they can feign. He tells me I’m a good surfer because I am not afraid; I do not yet know enough to be properly fearful. I decide to embrace this stage of it, to go for every wave I think I can catch, to let myself fall and be smashed and dragged and to get back up each time. When he is watching I turn around and paddle for a wave that is far too big. I surprise myself with an easy pop-up; I glide across the water. Then I forget about him, I forget about everything but me and my love. I am so alive.
Before bed, I close my eyes and think about the feeling of getting on a wave. This is a new sensation for me; I’ve switched to a shorter board, 7’8 with a pointy nose. I am no longer a full novice on a long boat of a board, I can catch a wave. I’ve felt the drop—that precious moment where, suspended in the air, your board finds the water and you’ve managed to remain standing. You land and you fly; it’s unlike anything I’ve felt before. I go to sleep holding the feeling in my mind. I wake up early and apply a thick layer of sunscreen to my face, covering every inch of exposed skin. Later, I’ll have to scrub hard to get it all off. There will be a pile of wet sand that falls from my swimsuit as I peel it away from my skin in the shower. My hair will be brittle and dry, my body sore and stiff. If this isn’t love, I don’t know what is.
Cheers, my dears, and as always, thanks for reading. As a reminder, I’ll be relaunching the paid version of this newsletter starting in March. More details to come next week, but expect a portion of this weekly edition to become paywalled. I’m doing this to keep the newsletter going—as a freelance writer, the time I spend writing/editing/curating each week is time I don’t spend taking on paid projects, so paid subscribers allow me to spend the time and energy needed to write new editions each week. If you haven’t yet opted to pay but you have the means and look forward to reading along each week, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to paid come March. Enjoy your weekend—call an old friend you haven’t talked to in a while and go for a long walk near some trees if you can.
SHORT FILM UPDATE: Last week, I mentioned a new creative project that has been taking up all my free time and energy this year: writing, directing, and producing my first proper short film. There has been a lot of movement this week—I spoke to the man who owns the land we want to shoot on and got his permission to film there. He said the moment I contacted him, he got a warm, positive feeling about the project. He also asked me if I was famous, to which I laughed and laughed. After we spoke, I sobbed on my kitchen floor—to feel your dreams moving in the direction you’ve so long wished for is a physical miracle.
Yesterday, I had my first meeting with one of my actors. We discussed his character’s background and motivations and dissected the script in a way that gave me a new understanding of the story I wrote, which was a very cool experience. Then I met with the second actor and we talked about the fraught mental state of his character; how he will need to access a dark place to find the man he is playing. Later, we did our first table read.
Two of my closest friends (a supremely talented editor + a killer cinematographer) arrived in Costa Rica with all their equipment this week. Between eating all the fruits and swimming in the ocean, we’ll be having production meetings, a crew dinner at my house tonight, and a second table read. We begin filming on Sunday and I still need to find someone with a drone. I’m running around town borrowing clothes from boys I know to throw together some costumes today as well. I’ll share an update with you on how it goes next week. Godspeed!
Three Pieces of Content Worth Consuming
Fran Lebowitz on Life Without the Internet. Wow, I cannot express how much I enjoyed this. A rare interview in which the author didn’t write in the detested (by me) Q&A format, but actually went through the trouble of incorporating well-timed quotes into the piece. Hallelujah! Fran Lebowitz is hilarious and I chucked aloud at a few instances whilst reading this. It’s endlessly fascinating to hear about how icons got their start and to read about the gritty glory days of New York—Warhol and Patty Smith, etc. Also, I am still off Instagram and seeking out reasons to never return, so this headline pulled me in.
The Lammergeier Daughter, A Poem. I read this poem for the first time last week and its visuals have stayed with me over the course of recent days. It’s dark and ominous but also tender, in a way. I suggest reading first, then listening to it.
The New Rules for How to Behave in Polite Society. There’s been a lot of discourse on the internet this week about how we’re all becoming antisocial. I’ve read a variety of theories to explain this decline—a symptom of the internet age, because we’re overtired because we think it’s cool, etc. I’m not so interested in the discourse, but I did like this funny, astute list of what is and isn’t socially acceptable these days, lumped by groups (by dates, lovers, friends, coworkers, etc). I strongly agree with 7, 9, 20, 21, 24, 41, 47, 65, 69 (!!!), and 72 (can’t say I always do it, but I’d like to).
Perhaps You Should…Buy Some Indigenous Groceries
Last week, I was working on a piece about a cool Indigenous restaurant and education company in Alberta. After interviewing the restaurant owner and doing a bit of research, I discovered Tocabe Marketplace, an online grocery store specializing in Indigenous products sourced from small producers. The moment I return stateside, I’m ordering this and this—the personal pancake party continues.
**Bonus Content** (A Very Cool Dance)
Pardon my French, but holy shit, this dance! I often think about how you can spot a trained dancer in a crowd by whether they’re dancing to the words, like most people do, or to the rhythm. If this doesn’t make sense to you, it will after you watch this video, which made me hear beats and sounds in that song that I never noticed before. I grew up in a dance studio and imagined these supremely talented young girls rehearing this odd and satisfying piece—wow. What a treat. I’ve watched it seven times already.
Also, this song and this one have been on repeat for me this week.
A Quote From A Book You Should Read:
“Tenderly, it seemed almost painfully, they smiled at one another, saying nothing, and their questions were the same, am I the one you think about, when we made love were you happy, have I hurt you, do you love me, will you always.”
-Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
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.