Weekend Note / 08.

Weekend notes are short-form POVs.

I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know. Twilight is the border between day and night, and the shore is the border between sea and land. The border is longing; when both have fallen in love but still haven’t said anything. The border is to be on the way. It is the way that is the most important thing. 

Tove Jansson, “Moominvalley in November”.

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I've never liked August. It's always struck me as a slow month, and a lonely one, as everyone vacates the city in droves for late-in-the-season getaways. It's also around this time each summer when I begin to lose patience with the heat, taking up Dracula-like residence in my top-floor apartment. "Remind me why everyone looks forward to summer again?" I asked Lily this afternoon, as we sat in the center of an elaborate system of fans, our laptops balanced precariously atop stacks of books to distance us from their radial heat.

Still. Tove Jansson writes about borders beautifully. So beautifully that I feel warmed to the idea of August, if anything, for its in-betweenness and for what lies on the other side.

Mikio Hasui, whose words I posted here last Monday, based an entire photo series on the fog that obscures tree-covered mountains. "I was thinking that if the fog wasn't there, and it was just a mountain covered in autumnal leaves," he says, "the experience...would've been pretty boring. It was beautiful because it was hidden."

August contains all the exquisite romance of moments leading up to something wonderful - of what's perfect and pure and unspoiled because it has yet to happen. Most uncomfortable transitions in life, now that I think of it, have given way to something better. Opened doors to strange and startling places. Illuminated possibilities crisp, bright, brilliant as fall. 

Thank you so much for reading. Wishing you all, near and far, a wonderful weekend.

Photo by Max Wanger.

Weekend Note / 07.

Weekend notes are short-form POVs.

I have a memory of swimming in a friend’s pool at the age of seven or eight, hanging on to the concrete edge with slick fingers, my ears submerged. It was night. There was a party, and a miscellany of mothers and fathers stood in clusters in the garden, trading stories and casting occasional glances poolward, where their daughters — myself excluded — were playing mermaid. The girls had rings around their ankles and were flailing to stay afloat, a cacophonous feat. Nearby, I bobbed against the wall, monitoring the way the noise shifted as I dipped beneath the surface — gone, and there it was again. For the first time, I felt alone, and liked it.

Every year around this time, I’ve written something about the importance of rest and the joys of a slower season, which for me, has always been summer. After an endless winter and the ecstatic rush of spring, it's feels necessary to find ways to slip away now and again, to escape — even if it's just below the surface of familiar waters. Even if it's to a place within. 

Two nights ago, I had dinner at a friend’s apartment uptown. Three levels down on the street, people walked their dogs, rode bikes, jogged toward the park. Inside, tucked away, we sat on the wooden floor and ate a meal in fading sunlight, candles all around. Someone read a poem. The room was still. For a moment, out of nowhere, I remembered the pool — its deep blue quiet, its waterlogged tranquility. There, in a tiny, tidy apartment three floors above the ground, I felt blissfully isolated. I might have forgotten where I was entirely if not for a breeze that found its way in through an open window, ruffling the pages of books on the windowsill. 

The poem came to a finish. Somewhere in the distance, faintly, were fireworks.

--

Thank you so much for reading, as always — and have a wonderful holiday. After spending two consecutive weekends outside of the city, I'll be enjoying this one here — with any luck, doing a lot of what's described above. Have a great one! Photo by Emily Johnston.

Weekend Note / 06.

Weekend notes are short-form POVs.

Every morning over the past two weeks, I’ve been startled awake like clockwork, somewhere between the hours of 4 and 5. It's a time of day — neither dark nor light, early nor late — that's always been contentious for me: since childhood, when the occasional nightmare would leave me wide-eyed and white-knuckled in the wee hours, it’s always been the early, foggy-headed fragments of the morning when problems seem bigger, fears seem weightier and darkness seems most grim.

I live in New York now, though, in a busy neighborhood where darkness and quiet don’t exist, where there are people on the street even at 4 AM. These days, in the winter cold, I can see their breath from my window — tiny reminders that the world keeps moving even when our eyes are closed. Somehow, knowing they’re there makes the middle of the night less bleak — and though I suspect the reason I’ve been up at this hour has something to do with stress, it’s easier to let it pass as they do: briskly, silently, without fanfare.

The night before last week’s much-talked-about blizzard (which I wrote about here), I went to sleep wondering whether the wind and heavy snow in the forecast would wake me up. As we know now, it passed through the city largely without incident; still, my eyes opened right on cue, at 4.

In place of the chaos I expected, however, flakes fluttered gently in the light of street lamps. I remember thinking it was just how I always imagined snow would look as a child — like the inside of one of those glass globes on the shelf of the souvenir shop at the airport — and I watched for a few moments before my body remembered sleep: snowflakes falling, drifting, nothing like a storm. 

--

Thank you so much, as always, for reading. See you Monday.

Weekend Note / 05.

Weekend notes are short-form POVs.

Two summers ago, on my first assignment for the website Freunde von Freunden, I interviewed an artist named Aslan Malik. At the time, Aslan lived in an apartment in Kip's Bay, which he shared with a cat named Anise and very little else. Accustomed to writing about interiors polished to magazine-quality perfection, I wasn't sure what we'd photograph. Aside from his art — which included photographs and drawings and pages torn from books — and several pairs of shoes, there wasn't much.

But there was a story. "In 2014, my apartment in Berlin caught fire," he told me. "It was the worst building in the worst neighborhood in the city. It looked like it could collapse any other day anyway, so when it burned, I assumed everything was gone. I felt a rush a joy. The building wasn't destroyed, but the happiness I felt when I thought I lost everything stayed with me. It made realize that I had nothing, really, to lose. So I digitized all of my records, and I moved away." The freedom of having nothing kept him moving — and yet, when we climbed the ladder to his rooftop later, it was clear his life didn't lack a thing. He showed me the Chrysler Building, the Empire State. "Everything's here," he said.

I tell that story often, because it was one of the first big lessons I learned in professional writing — and I think it translates to the everyday, too: there's always a story. 

Sometimes it's hidden — up a ladder, or buried under trees (like Dez's turtle), or shelved in jars (like Zoe's lamb). Yesterday, I stepped into a basement studio of a nondescript building around the corner to find what I can only call a terrarium laboratory, with plants and mysterious wooden boxes and watering systems that mimicked fog. 

It made me wonder: what would I find if I asked more questions, or dug in the dirt, or knocked on doors, or looked more closely? Whole worlds, I guessed, and new faces. Jungles filled with mist. Stories everywhere.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Weekend Note / 04.

Weekend notes are short-form POVs.

I spent Thanksgiving this year in Maine, in a big old house next to the ocean. Snow was in the forecast for the weekend, so our group of eight left a day earlier than expected, arriving just before the storm late Tuesday night. I packed very little, aside from what I knew was absolutely necessary. I also took a book and a notepad, as well as my laptop, which, in the past few months, has started to feel like an appendage. "I'm going to have to work through most of the weekend," I said, as we left.

I've noticed since posting this article — which addresses the unfortunate impulse many of us feel to answer the question, how are you? with a statement about busy we are — that I've been doing exactly that, and constantly. I've been answering every how are you? that's come my way with a response about how overloaded I am, or how overwhelmed, or how I haven't had a weekend in ages. This is almost always followed by something like, "but I can't complain!" or "I'm very lucky!" or "being busy is a good thing!" But, I've begun to wonder.

In Maine, contrary to my plans, I did almost nothing. The days felt suspiciously — and blissfully — long. I'd work for a bit in the mornings and then spend the rest of the day taking snowy walks, or eating too much toast, or sitting in front of a fire, or soaking in a copper bath. For the majority of the week, my book lay untouched on my nightstand; my laptop remained closed. My phone was perpetually missing. I'd find it underneath couch cushions at the end of the day, and when I checked to see if I'd missed anything — an email or a call or a text — I never had. 

I should take this opportunity to write something for myself, something unrelated to work, I thought more than once — but then, I'd walk down to the water or find myself wrapped up in a conversation, and I'd forget. The times I did try to write, I'd stare at a blank screen. I don't have any ideas, I'd think, but not sadly. 

I resorted to more sitting and strolling and chatting. I watched the snow. 

My mind was blank. I was thankful.

Weekend Note / 03.

Weekend notes are short-form POVs.

One night this summer, long before I knew of Marie Kondo and her philosophies on keeping a tidy home, I did a thorough purge of my apartment. I discarded anything I no longer found useful, beautiful, or, for one reason or another, didn't feel like me. This included a dress festooned with navy blue sequins; blank calendars from 2011, 2012, 2013; a high school gym shirt. It had occurred to me not long before that I might not stay in New York — or this apartment — forever, and suddenly, all of these things felt like weight, too cumbersome to carry. My parents had done this recently, before downsizing to a smaller home this summer. They shocked my brother and me with their ability to let go of possessions we'd carried with us for decades, over the course of many moves. Even the artwork we'd done as children was carefully photographed, saved to a hard drive, and then thrown away. "We have the memories," they said. "That's all we need."

Weekend Note / 02.

Weekend notes are short-form POVs.

I visited the Met this summer with my six-year-old niece, who, on a ninety degree day, insisted on walking the fifteen blocks from the subway, skipping all the way. "Did you know," I said to her, "that people from all over the world travel to New York City to visit places like the Met? We're so lucky that we have the opportunity to go whenever we want to, even on a weekday afternoon." She held her pink metal water bottle with the tip of one finger, studying my face with serious eyes. After a moment's silence, she said: "Are you a grown-up? Or are you a kid?" Before I could answer, she was on to the next subject, chattering about zoo animals, and Central Park, and the various shades of purple she'd use to paint her new bedroom.