Writings

The Hamster Dynasty

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“The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought, comping out of Regent’s Park, and holding his hat in his hand, was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained - at last! - the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence, - the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.” - Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

“She wasn’t shopping for experience. She was trying to survive. I was the one shopping for experience. I remembered her and everything she had said to me, and that was enough. It was enough that I remembered her.” - The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

Heavy petting hands

The beast blushes in release

Milk, or baby cheese?

A haiku sent to me by a Bumble match

1.24.22

What happens when you get to the point when you’ve achieved a level of self awareness that leads you to believe that you’re no longer valuing the same things as your friends? Friends that you don't’ want to lose, that you don’t want to break from but also don't know how to maintain that intimacy when what they want to do is meet people and create a community and find love and what you want to do is write stories in your head and eat chocolate covered popcorn cuddled next to a soft (oh, so soft) memory foam lumbar pillow. 

To clarify, it’s not that you resent your adventure-seeking friend, or that you hate yourself for prioritizing finding a sense of calm. But you miss that urge to say yes to any invitation that obviously still inhabits those around you, and you wonder if you’ll ever find it again. There’s a crevasse that opens between you that is filled with the detritus from your conversations that slightly missed the point. The ghosts of the articulation that you didn’t have in the moment, trying to describe the hole you’re in while maintaining a sense of humor about what you both know you used to be while not making the friend feel bad that you are (maybe) getting left behind a little bit. 

You can feel sparks of that excitement, but they come less and less from meeting someone new and more and more from making a vision board about your aesthetic goals in a Google Spreadsheet. And that’s ok - you remind yourself that there is no wrong or right and if this is what feeds your soul, then keep copy/pasting. So as a next step, do you lean in? Do you take pride in that vision board because the world needs more beauty and you see it in the images of beautiful colors and lines on a screen? Do you find company, as a person living alone, in the camaraderie and overt human-ness of the contestants of past seasons of the Great British Baking Show, on repeat while you create? The answer could be, and has been: yes. There is no right way to go about figuring this all out, and the only thing we can truly do is ask ourselves constantly “is this happiness right now?”. 

We are, neurologically, not the same person we were one second ago. You were not the same person you were when you started reading this and I was not the same person I was when I started writing it. The opportunity for change is infinite and will never disappear, but there is change we work for and change that happens slowly to us, fraction by fraction, because of every microdecision we make.

Feature 3

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