February 20, 2022 by Elizabeth Lerman
Something strange happens when I sleep too much. I think maybe it’s winter and the way it feels more allowed, the staying still, staying shrouded, half hidden by curtains I cannot close all the way or else who knows how long it might go on, all the purposeful time spent salivating over split seconds in another world and it's not that I prefer one place to the other, though I suppose that’s the problem, it’s that I’m after the unreal, the blurred bodily chaos that comes with waking in the evening and sleeping while the sun is up and everyone else is up with it. They are there and I am here and the separateness of it surges through me like a stiff slap of surreality and the sting, it seems, is a feeling I want to swallow like water.
February 19, 2022 by Jordan Myers
Lunch in Chinatown at the Golden Unicorn on East Broadway: dim sum and dumplings and sweet and sour chicken and all you can drink Jasmine tea. We linger in the lobby downstairs for a half hour, waiting for the host to call out number 92. We take the elevator to the second floor. The dining room is 1980s chic, red carpet, gold chairs, large circle tables with pristine white tablecloths. Gold letters hang along a wall lined with deep red felt at the very back of the room: “Happy Birthday James.” Outside February teeters in between winter and spring. The balmy morning begins with sunlight. By noon snow flurries circle and dance in the air. And at 2:00 p.m. the three televisions inside the Golden Unicorn are all tuned to NBC4; there’s breaking news: a snow squall is headed straight for New York City.
February 18, 2022 by Jordan Myers
I like the way the rain falls in the city ––– all of the sudden. First you hear the rain beating against the tin and glass and steel. It always sounds like the rain is falling faster than it is. Sometimes, sure, there’s heavy rain of course. But more often, it’s just all of the structures between the sky and the ground that the rain beats against. Every downpour becomes torrential. This morning it rained for ten minutes straight. Silence, then heavy and loud and clamoring, then nothing.
February 17, 2022 by Jordan Myers
Standing at an intersection across the street from the Javits Center, I wait for the light. It’s almost dawn and I’m pacing back and forth. It’s as dark as the city can get. All the way over on Eleventh Avenue the Hudson feels close. I look west at the Javits Center. All of the lights are off and everything is glass and steel. I’m running. Three miles in and I’m waiting for the light to turn. I want to keep going north. I think I’ve timed it just right. The stakes are low as only a few cars are out this time of the night. It’s not quite morning. I look left and all is clear. I take a few more strides and then a green sedan appears out of nowhere. The driver honks his horn and I’m stranded in the middle of the intersection. I look west and up at the light. It’s green. I find my way back to the sidewalk again.
February 16, 2022
“Pause”
I was walking out of the movie theater after the movie and had that strange feeling: the one we feel when life resumes after a movie. I couldn’t place myself into the character I was ––– I had merged with too many I encountered in the film. The night seemed brighter than it usually would be at the hour and street. This happens every time. My heart beats faster, my legs are heavier, and I believe I can say things I usually wouldn’t. I become vulnerable. Maybe I’ll think I was being too serious. Perhaps I’ll laugh at my unconscious caring. Yet I am obsessed with the way I open up for about two hours every time to consume a story, let it change me, and then face the world and myself. This is an essential pause.
- Rahil Najafabadi
February 14, 2022 by Jordan Myers
Awash with memories and moments lived through and survived in this city. The years come in waves. Some quick and fast, as short as a few moments or heartbeats, others long and overflowing ––– more like infinite and blended seasons than specific marks of time. I like how memories layer here ––– how I can walk west along West 47th Street in August of 2016 and stand at Tenth Avenue waiting for Suzie outside of an Ethiopian restaurant without knowing that four years later I’ll walk by the same intersection day in and day out again and again. Each Avenue a wave, each street an undertow: places to walk around and surf in between as memories and moments blend together in one eternal and endless brilliant flicker of the imagination. Did it all really happen? It did. Is it all really happening? It is. Will it all really keep happening? It will.
February 13, 2022 by Elizabeth Lerman
Lately I’ve been dreaming of sand and waking up to snow. Disorientation drenches most mornings, maybe something like euphoria too - a contrast of body and mind where, for one unbelievable breath, I am in two places at once. I keep my eyes closed as I comb through the chaos, sorting scenes in the dark as I search for my senses. Adrenaline tends to follow me in those moments, when I am flung from one world to another and oftentimes reality comes as an utter shock. I can never quite get over how persistent perception is, the way it begs me to believe, the way it spends endless hours urging me to surrender, to give in and say okay, this is life now and here I am in it.
February 10, 2022 by Jordan Myers
The older I get the more fragile my body feels, but in a good way. I can feel things right before they’re about to happen. If a muscle needs special attention, I can be gentle with it before it becomes too soar or tears. When I was in my twenties, I knew how to go fast all the time. And in this way, being inside of my body was fun and exciting, but also often painful, because I didn’t understand how to work within myself and how to take care of this person who I was carrying around inside of me, myself.
The speed was a thrill, but the recklessness and lack of experience made things hard. Now the speed is still there, but it takes greater focus, concentration, and intention to feel it. I can’t eat and drink just anything, and I can’t eat and drink at just anytime. I can’t forget about the breath without consequences, and the farther I get away from taking time to sit down and breathe, the farther away I feel from myself. I can push through pain and discomfort if I want, but knowing that the chances of illness, fatigue, anxiety, and depression are higher now than they were ten years ago, I’m less inclined to push through, and more likely to rest, trust, and wait.
I’m talking about holding my life with a lighter grip, or no grip at all. The city makes this more and less difficult. Less difficult because it gives you more chances for practice, and more opportunities to fall into the rhythm of life around you while still remaining collected and in control. It’s more difficult because more data and events present themselves for processing than you would face in the suburbs, or the woods. And I’m talking about competing forces: voices; the energy of pedestrians around you; the intentions of drivers turning left and right into crosswalks; and the sounds of radios playing, ambulance sirens crying out, and traffic cops directing your steps. The body has to respond to all of this. The only question is whether the response will be conscious or unconscious; whether these events will happen too quickly to understand, or whether I’ll slow down, stay still within myself, and try to feel into these little moments of time.
It’s not easy, but I’m better at it now, in my thirties, than I ever was in my twenties. I felt all of this in an instant today. I was in Dewitt Clinton Park and working on my tennis game on one of the handball courts: paying close attention to my footwork and hitting forehands and backhands against the wall again and again. After about twenty minutes and a few moments after a water break, as the ball approached, I pulled my racquet back to prepare for a backhand, but then just before I swung my arms forward, my left forearm cried out and I heard its pain. The muscle did not tear, but it did speak to me: “Hey, remember me? Be careful with me. Be gentle. Be kind.”
February 7, 2022 by Jordan Myers
Grey clouds. Fog. Rain. Mist. Everything moves in slow motion as I walk up Ninth Avenue a few moments before one in the afternoon. Every bus and semi-truck has an engine that roars with more strength than before. The volume is turned up, but the pace is slow. It’s a gift; the clouds and the light rain. I do not rush; keeping rhythm with the world around me, I take my time.
February 6, 2022 by Elizabeth Lerman
I don’t know if memory is meant to be trusted. Mostly, in the time it takes a feeling to come and go, it becomes foreign to me again and the immediacy of moments makes my head spin. I can close my eyes and play back pieces of time but there is always a falsity to the fragments and I’m not sure it’s such a bad thing, memory being malleable, because maybe some moments are only meant to be felt once before the mind sends us back in time, letting us swim in an ocean of if only.
February 5, 2022 by Jordan Myers
This was one of those winter days when it’s far colder than it looks outside. If you glance out the window you see a bright and sunny Saturday. You forget that the heat is on high inside, so high that you push open the window beside your bed to let a bit of fresh air inside. February begins swirling around your apartment and the cold from outside combined with the clanking radiator makes it feel a bit like April or May inside. It can’t be that cold, you think so you go outside, dressed for spring. Then the wind and chill hits you and you realize just how much work the radiator and the pipes are doing in your building, and just how frigid the early February air feels. Walk quickly. Keep pace and keep the blood flowing.
February 4, 2022 by Jordan Myers
There should be a weather stat for how many days snow fall still covers the ground. They’ve got stats for everything: number of inches of snowfall, amount of rain, how likely it is to rain, hourly forecasts, heat index, wind speed, and the list goes on. But what about how many days pass in between a heavy snowfall and the morning when all traces of that snowfall have vanished. It takes a heavy rain in between to wash everything away. First snow. Then rain, followed by sunshine. Then it’s cold again and the city is grey. No snow at all.
February 3, 2022 by Jordan Myers
The rain is steady, then as the night falls, it picks up, falling across the streets in waves. Men and women carrying umbrellas lift them up above their heads as they walk past each other, nodding their hellos. The city’s foot traffic picks up again around seven. The evening commute begins and you can watch the elevators in the office buildings descend toward the lobby. Their doors open, and everyone is released once more.