Abby Rosmarin's Blog, page 11

Notes On the Road: Accents, Longing, Belonging

“Really?  You don’t have an accent.”

That is probably the number one response I get from people when they find out I’m from Boston.  I don’t have an accent.  It can come out if I’m really tired (er — tye-yihd) and there are a few words I had to teach myself to say properly (what’s up, phah-mih-cee), but, for the most part, I’m sans accent.  Didn’t matter that my father had one of the thickest working-class-Medford accents out there — or that my family tree is dripping with variations of the accent — no one hears me talk and suspects I’m from Boston.

But people have expected southern California.  Multiple times.

“My mom did grow up in Palo Alto,” I’d say, ignoring the part where Palo Alto is unambiguously not a part of SoCal.

Prologue 1: New Hampshire

I’m at an event about a year or so ago.  A lady is giving free card readings and I spend a solid chunk of the afternoon eyeing her table until there’s an empty seat.  I’ve loved getting my cards read since college, and I’ll admit that I can lean on them a little too much when the world gets a bit heavy.

It takes a while, but eventually her chair is free and I sit down.  I forget exactly when she said it — for dramatic effect, let’s say it was as soon as I sat down — but she looks at me and says point blank, “You’re not supposed to be in New Hampshire.”

“It’s not that New Hampshire is a bad place, or that it would be bad for you to live here,” she goes on. “But you’re not supposed to be here.”

About half a year later — after a slew of synchronicitous events keeps bringing this particular lady’s name into my peripheral — I end up going to her for a full reading.  She doesn’t remember anything that we talked about previously and apologizes for not even recognizing me in the first place.

It’s not immediate, but shortly after she starts laying out the cards, she looks at me and goes, “Now…if you could live anywhere, anywhere in the world, where would it be?  I just keep getting the feeling that you might be meant for someplace other than New Hampshire…”

Prologue 2: Accents

“Your Memphis accent is terrible,” says my husband.  Memphis is our second stop on this tour of America, driving from New Hampshire to the Grand Canyon in big, circuitous loops. “Ya werds needta be a liddle softah. Hear thad drawwwl and thad slight slur a’da werds?”

My husband spent his early childhood in Memphis — but never gained an accent.  The locals used to call him the Little Yankee Boy, but he slips into one like an old leather coat.

I love doing voices and accents, but it can be extremely hit or miss.  My accents become nomadic and travel from one dialect to another.  And the subtleties of the different southern accents are apparently lost on my northeastern ears.

“I’d be the worst southern lady ever,” I say in an accent that is apparently Virginian meets Georgian.

Act 1: North Carolina/Smokey Mountains

On the Appalachian Trail, I am relentlessly referencing Cheryl Strayed.

“I’d probably be just as woefully unprepared as her,” I tell my husband, referencing not only Cheryl Strayed but her memoir Wild — particularly, her lack of experience with long-term hiking, her overpacked backpack, the fact that she was only reading the guidebook in real time as she went along. “Only I wouldn’t end up with a fancy book deal and movie rights.  I’d just be dead.”

We’re following the tiniest of tiny portions of the AT — from one checkpoint to another and then back.  You can spot the day hikers from those who are actually hiking the entire length (or at least a good portion of it) by their dress, the size of their packs, and just the overall look.  Only one set of people look like they recently showered with hotel soap.

Cheryl Strayed didn’t hike the AT, but the PCT — Pacific Crest Trail.  Aside from that and a few other details, I found a frightening level of resonance with her memoir.  Not just with how her life started to unravel, but with her personality, with the way she worded things.  The way she viewed and described the world.  I joke she’s my spirit animal, but it’s a half joke at best.  Learning she had the same birthday as me (just ten or so years apart) only sealed that deal.  The little synchronicities my New Age mind sticks to.

I think about Cheryl Strayed’s hike.  I think about the lady who recently died on the AT — an experienced hiker who did the one thing I’m petrified of (going off the trail for the restroom and being unable to find the trail again).  I think about how disappearing into the woods for a few months won’t magically get your shit together — much like going to Italy, then India, then Bali won’t mend a broken heart a la Eat, Pray, Love.

But still, there’s a part of me that hears the call of the AT.  It tempts me with compromise: start at the halfway point.  You don’t have to be on the trail for months at a time.  You could do it.  

You belong on the trail.

Act 2: Memphis

We are walking along the Mississippi when we’re caught in a downpour.

The weather has been exactly what I expected Memphis weather to be: soupy.  We see the encroaching clouds and decide to walk anyway.  My bag is waterproof enough.  I don’t really wear makeup.  My hair had already admitted defeat in a tightly braided ponytail.  And there are few things as refreshing as a pelting rainstorm after a hot, bright day.

The storm is intense, loud, and over within a half hour.  We’re outside for the entirety of it, soaked to the bone by the time the thunder and lightening subside.

You don’t get weather like this in the northeast.  Intense and quick.  Thunderstorms that you could set your baking time against.  The northeast is better known for its middling weather.  Mist and drizzle instead of storms.  Days that aren’t really one or the other season.  Far too much middle ground.

Mike Kohn’s “Walking in Memphis” has been playing on relentless repeat since we left the Smokey Mountains, and in the 48 hours we’re there, I end up living out every line, right down to being in the land of the Delta Blues in the middle of the pouring rain and walking down Beale like my feet weren’t touching the ground.

Walking in Memphis.  I was walking with my feet 10 feet straight off of Beale.  Walking in Memphis, but do I really feel the way I feel?

Beale St is alive with its live music and lights and sounds and attractions.  It is also alive with zombies that night.  We pause to pet one zombified puppy and soon learn about the puppy’s past, the owner’s other dog, the owner’s mother’s dog, and the owner’s recent move to her  own apartment.  The kind of effortless life-sharing you find in the South.  You don’t really get interactions like this in the North.

You could get used to the heat. That voice from the back of my mind returns. Live by the Mississippi.  Eat fried Catfish.  Despite your decidedly northern mindset, this could work.

Maybe you belong in the South.

Interlude: Abby Interactions

My husband calls them “Abby Interactions”.  These five-minute snippets with complete strangers.  A little passing of information.  Perhaps a little life history.  Then we part ways.

We don’t really small-talk.  We don’t try to force the conversation.  Usually we’re both two travelers or tourists.  Or maybe a local and an out-of-towner.  It lasts exactly long as it’s supposed to last.  We talk about life, not pleasantries.  And then we wish each other well as we go on our ways.  A social introvert’s dream.

It’s a staple of the travel world.  Bunch of nomads, sharing the experience of this tourist spot — or just a shared understanding of being away from our usual contexts.  Freed of the shackles of having to mind our own business and keep things to ourselves.

People ask me how I could be so “brave” to write about what I write about — to bare my own soul about my upbringing and addiction and assault and mental health — and I never fully get it.  To me, it’s the small talk that produces anxiety.  It takes bravery and work to talk about the weather and adhere to the social script.  Our conversations that essentially reinforce this idea that the veneer must stay on for the sake of society.  That we’re worth a brief surface level chat while the rest of our human condition stews in the shadows.

To me, being genuine and in the moment — sharing and baring our souls when the moment calls for it — is the most natural thing our spirits can do.

Act 3: New Orleans

Bourbon St is an interesting place when you don’t particularly drink, yourself.  It becomes a fascinating character study.  A chance to check out how people behave — the same way you would check out the French Quarter or the Garden District’s architecture.

The Perennial Observer can make a home anywhere. That voice pipes in. You don’t need to worry about fitting in.  Wherever you go, there’s always room on the sidelines.

Before nightfall, there is music on every corner.  In every bar.  On our last night there, we watch from our spot on a balcony as a 9-piece brass band sets up at a corner, adjacent to a closed-down restaurant.  Their music is joyous and loud and continuous.  They quickly attract a crowd and an intersection in Marigny becomes an impromptu concert venue.  People are dancing in the street, pausing only when cars attempt to go through.  The crowd erupts with applause every time the band pauses, even for a second.

Forget the perennial observer crap.  Where there is music, I am home.

Interlude: The Doctor Will See You

“It’s a great field to be in,” says our dinner guest, who is finishing up a simultaneous MD and PhD. “And we need more people in the medical world who understand that mind-body connection.”

I keep saying that I just like playing with the idea of being a physical therapist.  That it’s something I shelter under when I feel like being a yoga instructor/writer is too hippy and bohemian — “Maybe I’ll go back to school.  Become a physical therapist.”  Something I take cover under when I feel like I need justification for the changes of heart I’ve made as of late about my future.  Really, just play.  No big deal.

No big deal, but I Google what it takes to be a physical therapist.  No big deal, but sometimes I search job sites for physical therapy jobs — just to see what is out there.  No big deal, but I read anatomy books in my spare time.  No big deal, but I treat my yoga classes like amateur physical therapy sessions.  No big deal, but I know the only program in New Hampshire is an associate’s degree to become a physical therapy assistant.  No big deal, but I constantly scrutinize yoga classes — both mine and others — to find pose variations and transitions that could potentially be harmful.  No big deal, but I know the closest doctoral program is in Maine and that BU has one of the best programs around and that my alma mater has one too.

No big deal — and, after a decade, my husband is quite attuned to my nuance, to this quirk: that the more I downplay something, the more I must want it.  And if it involves time and money and investment, the downplaying only intensifies.

Like, how dare I want something big.  Something you’d have to go all in for.  Don’t mind the girl on the sidelines, with her obviously irrational and probably just impulsive wants & needs.  Carry on with your day.

“It’s not the right time, anyway,” I say. “For one, I’d have to move.”  For another, I’m starting up my advanced yoga teacher training in September — one to be a comprehensive yoga therapist, fittingly enough.

And going to get my doctorate is more than just an investment.  It means three years of putting everything else on pause.  It means putting yoga teaching on pause.  It means putting freelance writing on pause.  It means hitting the breaks on my newest manuscript and my feeble attempts to polish up my third one.

It means essentially saying, “I know for a fact that I should be doing this and only this for a good length of time.” And I’m certainly no where near where I need to be in order to say anything remotely like that.

Act 4: Austin

“Keep Austin Weird, eh?” I recite.  I’d heard the slogan a time or two before, but never really gave much thought about it until now.

“Yup.  Austin is filled with weirdos.”

“My type of people, then.”

Austin is called the Live Music Capital of America, and it’s living up to its name.  The first place on 6th St we check out has a band comprised of a harpist, a cello, and drums.  The lady covers Florence & the Machines, strumming her harp while warning me:

“Leave all your love and your longing behind.  You can’t carry it with you if you want to survive.”

Her fingers are sharp and fast. She plays her harp like an electric guitar. She exudes fun and confident energy.

Much like Bourbon St, 6th Street is fascinating when your idea of a night out drinking is a pint of cider with your dinner.

At one venue, I watch a group of women spend more time posing for pictures as if they are having the time of their lives than actually dancing or having fun or listening to the band or even drinking their drinks.  A woman in the upstairs area walks over to an oversized Jenga game.  She doesn’t play it, but poses with it as if she was playing.  She holds it for exactly long as it takes for her friend to take the picture.

At another venue, I watch a bachelor party group dance and play beer pong to a musician doing funky covers on his ukulele and beat machine.  One of the bachelor party guys tries far too hard to pick up one girl and fails gloriously.  I watch him hover around the night’s pair ups — including the girl he wanted, who has decided on a different member of the party — like a pack animal positioning for dominance, but losing terribly.

The perennial observer can make a home anywhere.  Just strolling down 6th St and watching the way people walk and interact and hold their bodies is amazing.  The people who strut with confidence and the people who want to make themselves as small as possible.  Off of one sidewalk, a musician is passed out drunk with 8 police officers surrounding them.

When I get back to the hotel, I Google, “Doctor in Physical Therapy Programs, Austin TX.”

Interlude: Halcyon

“Halcyon” is a word that always eludes me.  For some reason, the definition never sticks.

“What’s halcyon mean?” I say in the midst of watching a Texan sunset — a complete non sequitur to anyone who wasn’t in my head and following my train of thought.  My husband can’t remember either and pulls out his phone.

For some reason, I’ve decided halcyon means hazy, fevered, tumultuous — perhaps due to the fact the word look likes a combination of “haze” and “cyclone”.  I imagine halcyon days — usually the only time I see the word; in books describing days as halcyon days — as these delirious, whirlwind, shifting days.  Days that blur with the heat and the passion and the unraveling events.

Halcyon: origins in Greek Mythology, meaning a period of calm — particularly during the winter.

Act 5: New Mexico

The woman at the reservation is trying to tell me about all the people who have bought her necklaces and were cured of their ailments.  I don’t need the snake oil salesman tactics.  I just think they’re pretty.

If anything, I’m about the symbolism.  Bear for courage.  Feather for guidance.  The fancy stones’ potential powers is a cute detail, at best.

There’s a gigantic mesa as we drive in to the reservation.  My husband feels a calling towards it.  I feel it, too.  We find out from a security guard that we can go near it, so long as we stay close to the road and don’t climb the rocks.  We opt to go there instead of the tour of the pueblo.

We both go for some type of meditation.  We effortlessly fork from the car, my husband going one way, me the other.  I walk a little way’s away from the car and stand in front of it, careening up just to catch the edge of this gigantic rock formation.

After a few breaths, I let my arms swing back and my head tilt back.  What exactly I’m doing, I can’t say.  You could say I am in communion with whatever that mesa represented.  The spirits.  Life energy.  The mesa itself.  God.  My own psychosis.  Regardless, something is happening.  Whatever that something is, however, it’s nonverbal.  Nothing tangible is communicated, other than my surrender.

There is no better word.  Surrender.  But not in the way of admitting defeat.  There are no white flags waving.  I’m simply handing over power.  I’ve exhausted myself over the last two years — especially over the last year and a half — constantly claiming that I’ve let time sort out what I cannot, only to try to grab the reigns back at the 11th hour.  Right now, I’m officially stepping down from commander in chief.  In the face of something as majestic as the mesa, I — at least temporarily — feel okay letting go of those reigns.

A few days later, when I’d look back on it, I’d end up quoting the last line of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir to myself:

How wild it was, to let it be.

Act 6: Grand Canyon

Right before she yells at us for being too social with a squirrel, we find out the ranger at the rest station on the Bright Angel trail is on a bit of a tour.  She’s slowly going across the country, working at a state park for a few weeks — hiking the trails and checking in on hikers and answering questions — before going to a new one.  Slowly but surely, she’s heading more and more out west.

“That seems like your type of job,” my husband remarks.

And it is. There’s something so intriguing and tempting about spending the year hiking the trails, before going off to a new park, a new state.  It lines up with a small pipe dream I have — one where I establish myself enough as a writer that I can start doing yoga/writing hybrid workshops and have enough clout that studios across the country would want to take me in for a weekend.  Tour the country.  Go from studio to studio (or park to park).  Nomadic as my attempts at impersonating accents.

Yes, this is very much my type of job.

I’m fairly accustomed to what it takes to take care of yourself on the trails.  I’m also fairly accustomed to what altitude sickness looks like on me.  On the first day of the trails, I recognize that my slight nausea is probably due to changes in altitude, despite being in high altitude states for the last couple of days.  However, because of the nausea, I’m eating the bare minimum on our rest breaks.  A very low amount, even for a regular day.  A dangerously low amount, given that we spend all day hiking — burning nearly 3000 calories, according to my fitness tracker.

By sunset, I’m feeling like I’m literally 10 feet off the ground.  Surreal, to the say the least.  I continue to assume altitude sickness.  As the sun sets and the air gets cold, I’m beginning to wonder just how much longer I can stay on my feet.  I attempt to walk away from the railing at Mather’s Point, I realize that I greatly overestimated how much longer I could stand.  Two steps in and I’m finding the closest rock to sit.  Within minutes, I’m lying down on the rocks.

“Is she all right?” a lady passing by asks.

“Oh, fine, fine, I’m good,” I say, attempting to sit up.

“Your health is more important than random strangers thinking you’re okay,” my husband warns.

I lay there for a bit, attempting to look more like a napping hiker than someone who feels like her head is filling up with electric cotton.  When the spinning subsides, I attempt to get up again.  Five steps in and the corners of my vision go gray.  I find the closest railing, grip it, and slump against the side’s wall.

Whatever had been altitude sickness had long ago been replaced with a severe drop in blood sugar, and I had been ignoring it for far too long.  I slowly and painstakingly eat a few semi-melted sugar cookies.  After a few minutes, everything subsides and I feel confident that I can walk without passing out.  I continue snacking as we drive out of the Grand Canyon, stopping at a local restaurant.

As a steak dinner is placed in front of me, my husband points his utensils in my direction and says,

“This, is why you don’t travel alone.”

Act 7: Homeward Bound 

 

Route 40W brings us to the most Western point we’ll go at the Grand Canyon before looping back around home.  Before logging in two 14-hour drives, briefly stopping in Ohio to say hi to family, and driving another 12 hours until we’re home again.

Route 40W also brings us to Los Angeles.

You could keep driving, that little voice returns. Keep driving.  Hit the Pacific Ocean again.  Then keep driving some more.

One of my friends joked that my road trip is making her want to quit her job and just drive.  I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been trying to crunch the numbers in my head.  If I bought a small Winnebago in full, what would my day-to-day living expenses would be.  Perhaps the Winnebago could have solar panels.  How much food, gas, etc, would I need.  

And suddenly I’m in full-blown bohemian mode, imagining a nomadic life, never staying in one spot for too long, getting my fill of Abby Interactions, the best of both words.  If only I just keep going West.  A direct rebellion against the life I thought for far too long I was supposed to be living.

We loop around the Mojave desert, passing by endless Joshua trees reaching for the sky.  We’re 60 miles out from the Nevada border, from Las Vegas.  Four hours to LA.  After hitting Grand Canyon West, overpaying to walk out onto glass panels and scare ourselves to the bone, we turn back around.  New Hampshire or bust.

When it’s my turn to be behind the wheel, driving east through New Mexico and the tophat of Texas — along Rt 66 and towards an infinite windmill farm like Don Quixote towards his giants — the Eagles come on the radio, reminding me, “Take it easy.  Take it easy.  Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.”

New Hampshire or bust.  And I have a damn good life waiting for me back in New Hampshire.  A life that, in some ways, is already a direct rebellion against the life I thought I was supposed to live.  The fact that I’m so tempted to drop it and run is outright laughable.

Immediately after the Eagles, Del Amitri comes on, asking me point blank, “Look into your heart, pretty baby.  Is it aching with some aimless need?  Is there something wrong and you can’t put your finger on it?”

I sigh at the juxtaposition of the two songs and continue my trek east.

You can’t carry it with you if you want to survive.

Act 8: Galapagos

Eventually we make it back to East Coast time.  Kay Hanley’s song “Galapagos” pops into my head as I set my car’s clock back.

My watch is set now to Eastern Standard…

It doesn’t take long before my mind tries to finish the song, landed on a few lines down from the previous, one that seems to fit pretty well also.

Will I be safe?  I’m going home.  Should I be scared that I don’t know?

Kay Hanley’s “Galapagos” has become one of those songs that I unapologetically listen to, every line hitting a little too close too home.  One of those songs you put on when you’re ready to feel too many feelings and potentially cry during your commute.

It makes me tired how I make you tired.  It seems most all the time.

Where there is music, I am home.  Not just physically.  Where there is music, I am home within myself.  Home inside my skin and my heart and my mind.  Where there is music to navigate through, I am home with my thoughts and feelings and memories.

As a species, we sang before we talked, as I’m keen on pointing out.  Music touches in a way a speech never could.  We all succumb to doling out music lyrics like they’re penicillin to what infects us.

There’s no excuse at 29 to be so absurdly like a child.

And perhaps it touches us because to sing is to drop guard. To bare soul. And to listen is to take one person’s naked soul as a litmus test against your own — and to shine line into every crack and crevasse of the human condition.  And what a moment it is, when that mirror reflects back what we desperately need to have reflected back.

Epilogue 1: Sleep and Anchoring

Me and sleep have a toxic relationship.

One of those nasty, unresolved, codependent dynamics that, when it’s good, it’s so good that I forget how bad it can be.  But when it’s bad, I wonder exactly how much more I can take of it.

The issues come in all shapes and sizes.  Sometimes it comes in the form of standard insomnia – laying in bed and wondering why I can’t flip the switch and slip into unconsciousness. Sometimes it comes in the form of waking up the second there’s any dip in my circadian rhythm.  But the most common is sleepwalking and talking.

For days after we leave the Grand Canyon, I dream that I’m back on the trails. I sit up in bed, scanning the room, convinced I’m scanning the cliffsides.  The first night, I even get up and traipse the hotel room like I’m going around a bend in the trail.  A couple nights in, I start talking about the trails as well.  Noting the sun coming through the cracks (it was actually a cell phone screen reflecting off furniture).  Remarking on how close our bed is to the edge.  Being upset that it’s dark and we forgot our headlamps.

“It’s a sign I have unfinished business there,” I decide. “I’m supposed to go back and follow those trails all the way to the valley.”

The last night before we’re back in New Hampshire, I still continue to dream I’m on the cliffsides.  The only difference is, now, there’s a part of my unconscious brain that is trying to convince the other part that I’m actually in a bedroom.

Listen to the ceiling fan.  There are no ceiling fans in the Grand Canyon.

An absurd statement to anyone who isn’t straddling the line between reality and dreamworld.

But I listen.  I keep semi-waking up, keep being convinced I’m back on the trails and right by the edge and why am I on the trails when it’s so dark.  And then I listen to the ceiling fan.  The whirr of the blades.  The slight clink of the pull chain against the ceramic lamp.  Like I’m in Inception and this is my totem.  My anchor.  My ability to remind myself that this isn’t real and to slowly bring myself back to reality.

Listen to the ceiling fan and the anchoring clink.  Do what you need to get back to reality.  You have no place straddling the line like this.

Epilogue 2: How Do I Know

We’re in between cities in New Mexico, large expanses of nothingness in front of us.  We’re deep in conversation — the effortless flow that has always been a hallmark and benchmark of our relationship. Our easy talks.  Even when the subjects are heavy, we carry them onwards like leaves down a river.  And today’s subject certainly is heavy.

“Let me guess what your feelings are,” says my husband, ready to predict where my mind is at regarding the future.  With a few simple sentences, he dissects my brain into quadrants, each square’s hope & fear directly contradicting the others.

“How did I do?” he asks after he’s done.

“It’s accurate,” I say.  Frighteningly accurate.  So frighteningly accurate that I’m half tempted to lie or deny or downplay.

“How do you think I knew that?” he asks as a follow-up.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Because you know me?”

“Nope.  Guess again.”

“Because you have exceptional insight into what makes people tick?” I say.

“Nope.”

“Because a lot of women feel this way?” I say.

“Nope.”

“Well, then, I don’t know,” I say, giving up. “How do you know?”

“Because that’s exactly how I feel too,” he admits.

And in that moment, I feel a surging and profound sense of connection and belonging.  One that frightens me more than his assessment of everything.  It is a moment I start clinging to.  A moment that brings me to one of the first scenes in Mrs. Doubtfire, right after the Robin Williams’s character and his wife fight.

“We’ll go on vacation.”

“All our problems will be waiting for us when we get back.”

“Then we’ll move.”

There is elation and hope and a sinking feeling and now — more than ever, more than the hikes and the sites and the sounds and the bohemian lifestyle and the interactions and the nomadic spirit — I want to stay on this road.  Follow it from city to city.  Never returning to whatever it is I’m supposed to be returning to.  Chasing the towns like I’m chasing this feeling.  Onwards and onwards and onwards.

Now make this bad ride fly Galapagos.

An Ode To Hiking

“Man I HATE white people vacations!” a white college-aged boy shouts from up the trail.  I laugh so hard my voice echoes.

We were on our way down from the Chimney Tops trail in the Smokey Mountains.  The college-aged kid and his two other friends were on their way up and had stopped to ask us how far to the summit.

It would be a statement I’d repeat throughout the day to make myself laugh, especially when my legs were fatiguing or I’d lose my step or a swarm of bugs would decided I was their best buddy despite the bug spray.  One of those silly statements that tickles you pink and you do yourself a disservice not to return to it as often as you can to get as much laughter out of it as you can.

Yesterday we toed along the Appalachian Trail.  We detoured through the Chimney Tops trail, scaling the rocks at the summit until I was at my literal edge – until I felt actual, real fear, which is a completely different drug than the synthetic fear of roller coasters and other thrill rides.  We then followed the AT as it danced along the North Carolina/Tennessee border, bouncing from one state to the other as we walked across a ridge line, pausing to rest and eventually turn around at a shelter, meeting people who’d been out on the AT for weeks, possibly months.

I went to bed bone-tired, asleep before my brain could even ponder the question, “Will this is be one of those nights where you don’t fall asleep?”  And I slept a glorious, deep sleep, dead to the world, until I was undeniably awake before the sun and my husband and basically anyone who wasn’t the night staff at the hotel was up.

And so, I blog.

Hiking is in my blood.  My parents were Appalachian Mountain Club members and actually met while carpooling to a hike.  I was on the trails before I could walk, lugged along in one of those baby backpacks.  To this day, the smell of a stream passing over rocks on a hot, humid day pings at the most innocent, pure, unadulteratedly happy part of me. A completely different drug than the adrenaline jolt from scaling rocksides.

If you asked me to name the biggest, best, most positive thing my parents instilled upon me, I would unequivocally answer, “A deep, passionate love of nature.”  For all the things I might be sorting out as an adult – and for all the ways my parents’ marriage spiraled and unraveled as the decades went on – I was given the gift of day hikes and campfires and mornings on the lake and there’s nothing in this world I would trade that seed in for.

There is nothing like a hike.  I’ve learned it’s outstandingly difficult to have a bad one.  The conversations you have with other people are unlike any other.  The conversations you have with yourself are unlike any other.

It’s a renewing force, even when you’re exhausted and your legs are fatiguing and you’re shouting, “Man I HATE white people vacations!” to keep yourself from turning around early.  Especially when you’re exhausted and your legs are fatiguing and you’re shouting, “Man I HATE white people vacations!” to keep yourself from turning around early.

It goes beyond being around fresh air and nature and likeminded individuals (or by yourself).  There are few things that will help reset the Superego and Ego quite like going into Id mode for a day.  To care about the absolute basics as you carry onwards.  Food.  Water.  Shelter from the elements.  Sustenance.  Rest.  Onwards.  And all of modern man’s thinking and anxiety is forced to take a backseat.

It’s a chance to play the, “Guess again,” game with your mind.  Your mind is tiring out and ready to quit and you get to say, “Guess again.”  Your mind continues to try to trick the body into calling it in and you get to say, “Guess again,” ad infinitum – or until you reach the summit and you then get to turn around and say,

“Told ya.”

It’s a forced focus on the present moment.  When you’re on the trails for hours – days, possibly – there’s nothing that would wear you out faster than attaching yourself to reaching the summit, reaching the next checkpoint, etc.  It’s actually why I loved mid-distance running until I tore a hamstring tendon (unfortunately, the, “guess again,” portion – which is also quite prevalent in mid-distance running – is how I got injured in the first place, but that’s for another day).  After a while, you have no choice but to focus on the here-and-now.  This step.  This view.  It’s like going into Id mode, without shunning the Ego/Superego.

It’s meditation.  And I built an entire career around all the ways you can trick yourself into getting that.

Throughout the day, I talked with my husband about growing up by the ocean, but loving the mountains.  How I spent my formative years just south of Boston, my summers in the mountains of New Hampshire, and how, the older I get, the more the mountains call to me.

Both are symbolic of the vast and overwhelming wildness around us, but in polar opposite ways.  The ocean is wild in a way that mankind can’t be a part of.  We can skim the surface and we stand along the shore, but it is truly a beast that lives separately.  The mountains are a more steadfast type of wildness.  A wildness that reminds you that you are part of that vast, overwhelming beauty.

Both represent the unstoppable, untamable, unfathomable expanse of the universe.  Only one really reminds us of our place in it.

As much as the ocean air pings at a wonderful, unadulterated, pure place, I’m happy that, at the end of the day, I prefer the mountains.

 

 

Updates, Steven Tyler, and Prana & Apana

Firstly, an update on my brother, since it actually was getting under my skin that I never updated my blog about how everything was going (and it’s a monstrous pet peeve of mine, when people are quick to communicate tragedy/bad news, but feel zero impetus to communicate the resolution):

He’s doing better.  Surgery went well and he’s home resting.  His mouth is wired shut for a little while longer and there are a few other health complications we’re taking into consideration, but he’s on the mend and I still am so amazingly grateful that he got out of the accident the way that he did.

Secondly, an update in general, because I think that’s what blogs are actually for: self-indulgent platforms to just talk about your life.  And I want to talk first about the one thing I never expected to have happen: getting cheered on by Steven Tyler while doing aerial silks.

I practice and train at Bare Knuckle Murphy’s/Go Ninja, a combination boxing and aerial circus gym (and, if you haven’t been there, and live in the Manchester area, get on that, because where else will you get that combo).  Last night, Murphy’s and Go Ninja provided entertainment at Best of NH, held at a baseball stadium in Manchester.  Us aerial people got to do our thing on the silks on the greens while the boxing portion stationed themselves at the front gate.

Eventually it was my time to go up on said silks.  And, for some reason, I was genuinely nervous.  This wasn’t my first time performing on the silks, but definitely the first time in the middle of a baseball diamond and with no crash mat underneath me.  I started my routine and slowly got into the swing of things when suddenly I heard:

“WAHOO!  YEAH!”

Now, Steven Tyler’s voice is not exactly nondescript.  And he had actually been hanging around the Best of NH festivities (something us aerial peeps really didn’t get to indulge in, being on the baseball diamond and away from the main festivities).  I looked over to the balcony area and saw him hollering and waving and cheering me on.  I immediately started waving back (thank God I was in a pose where I could let go with one hand).  He started blowing kisses.  I started blowing kisses back.  And then I spent the rest of my routine going, “That just happened.  That.  Just.  Happened.”

I have a lot of weird and circuitous lame claims to fame, and now that is one of them.

The night in general was incredible.  My Murphy’s/Go Ninja people are like family to me.  My fellow weirdo, energetic, rag-tag team of misfit toys.

Oh, also I got a free pie.  An entire pie.  Once the night was over, a pie vendor just handed out boxes to those who were still there.  It pays to be part of the event.

It has definitely been an exciting and bittersweet and busy time for me.  One of the first studios I taught regularly at is closing down.  Since nothing ever slows down for me, I’m in talks with people regarding starting up new classes at some new locations.  Through this, I learned two of the people whom I reached out to (or who reached out to me) had already taken my classes and had not even realized it until we were already knee deep in discussion.

It’s also a busy time on the creative side.  I continue writing for websites like the Huffington Post and Thought Catalog.  My poetry collection was just released through Thought Catalog, and an essay I wrote on Thought Catalog regarding the Brock Turner case ended up in a collection of essays about the Brock Turner case.  Ironically, by the time the book was out and in print and I received my copy, America was already two tragedies removed from Brock Turner.  At some point I’ll write an essay for HuffPo (or whoever will take me) about America’s addiction to high-intensity tragedy (without pausing for resolution), but that’s for another time.

I enjoyed a brief (albeit short-lived) stay writing for Bustle Magazine, and I’m starting up a long-term position writing about yoga for Higher Self Yoga, starting in July.  And now I’m wading into the waters of my fourth manuscript — a YA novel, if you can believe it — while I try to get the chutzpah to re-up the agency search for the third manuscript (while the second one can stay languishing in its cell until I have the patience to gut it and rewrite it from start to finish).

I’m also getting ready to host my first retreat.  Ever.  There had been a lot of bumps and detours getting this puppy together and getting it out there, but somehow we were able to get this beauty off the ground.  Tomorrow, I’ll be spending the weekend with two lovely ladies who will be co-hosting alongside me.  The whole event is about grounding and letting go — and using spirituality to tap into the creative side of us.  I get to combine my two passions in order to help students tap into the artist within, let go of whatever it is that’s holding them back, and become the creative they are meant to be.

Speaking of letting go, I figure I’d round out this incredibly ineloquent blog post with a similarly ineloquent ramble about prana and apana.

(And to those who don’t study yoga, Hindu philosophy, or are just really bored — thanks for stopping by!)

To put it into offensively simple forms, Capital P Prana is life force; as subsets, prana is the inward moving energy, and apana is the outward moving energy.  Our breath is a perfect example of prana & apana.  We inhale vital oxygen.  We exhale no-longer-useful carbon dioxide.

Sometimes I talk about apana in my classes.  I talk about how our exhales are a type of apana.  And sometimes I’ll go further and use it to talk about what serves and what doesn’t serve.

Our lungs don’t hate carbon dioxide.  There is just no use for it.  And our lungs don’t expel it out of malice.  They just do it.  They need oxygen to function and they don’t need carbon dioxide.  If we attempt to interrupt said prana/apana, we’ll be in trouble & our bodies will fight tooth & nail to get the cycle started again, but for the most part it is done on neutral ground.

In fact, the idea of being angry at our exhales seems a little silly.  It’s just the natural ebb and flow of things.  Of everything.

It’s something I remind myself, a lot.  To be frank: it’s been a rough year.  It’s been a rough couple of years.  I’ve yet to shy away from that truth, on here or anywhere.  And while I’m incredibly grateful for all the good that has come my way (and there has been a lot of good), I can’t exactly use it to invalidate the tough.

But then again, it’s been the type of tough that wakes up you to your own BS.  The type that goes, “You really need to stop holding onto that,” — and when you fight back, life counters harder, downright prying each and every individual finger off from whatever it was you were clinging to.  Fighting tooth & nail to get the cycle started again.

Sometimes it really is a simple as how we breathe.  We take in what serves and sustains.  We let go of what doesn’t — or doesn’t anymore.  Old thinking patterns.  Old routines.  Toxic personalities — or toxic ideologies.  Frameworks that we never really fit into in the first place.  And it’s eventually replaced.  And eventually we repeat the cycle all over again.  And it’s a constant, overlapping ebb & flow; things are released in one aspect of our lives while something new comes in from a completely different angle.  We seek out while simultaneously letting go and we let go while simultaneously seeking out.

And sometimes we throw our hands up and go, “I don’t know WTF to seek out or let go of!”

In which case, we breathe.  Because, at least on the most basic level, we already know what we’re supposed to be doing.

And, lastly — because I live for adventure, or at least being really, really busy — I’ll be taking off the Tuesday after my retreat on a road trip journey to the Grand Canyon, with stop-offs in Memphis, New Orleans, Austen, and a few other resting places.  Road trips — especially road trips through states I’ve yet to travel through — ease my nomadic heart, and I’m looking forward to two and a half weeks of the open air.

I’m also looking forward to a little rest.  I was doing the math, and I haven’t had an actual day off in about 3 months (and that’s not including anything writing-related, which is kind of a constant job and always has been).  I’ve taught at least one class every single day since about late February, early March.  And it’s starting to weigh on me.  As much as I adore my profession, it will be nice to take some time to focus on that inwards-moving energy — take some time to fill up my own life force.

(…see what I did there?)

Motorcycles, Mindset, and the Only Job I Can Do

Scene: Evening. I’m scheduled to teach a 6 pm and a 7:30 pm class. My phone is playing music through the stereo. A lovely group of people come in for the first class. At 6, I shut the door and take my spot at the front.

“So, good afternoon, everyone,” I sing out. My natural singsong voice naturally cranked up to 11 for class. My natural lullaby. “As always, I love opening up the floor for any requests…”

Suddenly the music is interrupted. A 617 number is calling.

Look who forgot to out her phone on silent. Again.

“Oof, sorry about that,” I chuckle out, sending the call to voicemail. “Anyway, as I was saying…”

Two minutes after everyone closes their eyes, my phone lights up again.  Now on silent, it doesn’t interrupt the music. This time it’s my husband.

“A 617 number just tried to call. What’s going on?” I text back while the students are in the middle of sukhasana. Was I talking to them about breathing?  Did I randomly stop talking in the middle of a sentence?  I can’t remember anymore.

“Your little brother’s in the ER,” he replies back. “They won’t tell me much because I’m not blood relation. I’ll try to find out what I can.”

I’m thanking my husband as I’m telling my students to bring their hands to their heart and set an intention – something I define as a present moment mindset instead of a goal we’re hoping to attain through yoga. Today I’m tripping over my words as I try to say that very piece of information.

I’m tripping through my words throughout the entire class. I’m distracted. Frustration is compounding. What timing. What timing. What fucking timing. I’m here until 8:30. I can’t call the hospital or even check my voicemail for another hour. And now I’m messing up my words because I can’t stop looking at my phone.

Frustration is boiling over. I’m ready to boil over.

I lead my student through breathing exercises. They’re as much for me as they are for the students.

Seven p.m. rolls in and students exit. I dive into my phone.  I find out my brothers been in a major motorcycle accident.  A bystander called 911 and he was unconscious when the EMTs arrived. He’s alert now, but his face is banged up….badly. He’s going to need reconstructive surgery. He was pinned against a car so they’re keeping an eye on his legs and making sure he’ll still be able to walk. Concussed, but no signs of brain trauma.  The 617 number was not from the nurse I spoke to, but from a social worker at the hospital. They’re concerned about my mom being able to take care of herself with my brother not in the house.

My brain isn’t registering, but my eyes are. I’m in tears.

Pull it together. Students are due in any minute.  Breathe.

My 7:30. A class for veterans. A class with movements and verbiage specifically designed to help people feel more in control of their own body and breath. A class for the warrior in all of us.

A class that I end up having to dart into the parking lot to grab students for because the main door locked on the students without me knowing.  I only realize this as I look out the window and see a regular wandering said parking lot.

Great. A little more wrong for the evening.  I’m frustrated.  I’m upset.  I just want to go home.

I’m going down a rabbit hole and hitting the edges as I descend.

Said regular is cracking jokes about the situation. I crack jokes back. I don’t feel like laughing or joking or even smiling but sometimes you just have to.  Class goes without too much of a hitch. Words are jumbled. Poses forgotten. But I survive and the students aren’t complaining.

I’m hysterical on the drive home. Shock has warn off.

Scene: the next morning, at a different studio. My morning class before I drive into Boston to visit my little brother. The music from my phone plugged into the stereo keeps getting interrupted by phone calls. A 617 number. A 603 number. One of my older brother’s phone number. Guess who forgot to put her phone on silent again. Each time, I’m in a position where darting across the room to reject the call would be more disruptive then letting my ringtone play.

“Looks like I’m in demand today,” I joke.

Inside, I’m fighting a nasty fight. One I’m far too familiar with. The one where frustration compounds and I can’t sort it out and it feels like everyone wants everything from me all at once and right now and I can’t deliver and OH MY GOD just leave me alone.

I breathe. I smile. I’m singsongy. I check my voicemails after class.  I drive to Boston. I take the T in and walk.

A man shouts, “Hey boo!” to me as I cut across Tremont. Apparently my ass in yoga pants is speaking in higher decibels than the rest of my body. Everything about my body language screams, “don’t fuck with me.” Apparently he’s only hearing half of those words.

Hands keep closing into fists. Shoulders keep rising up to my ears. I can hear my own voice, talking to my students about all the ways our body sends signals to the brain that it’s ready for fight or flight.  I can hear my own advice about using exhales to help relax things. I let out a huff.

I’m playing whack a mole with tension.

Exhale. Relax the shoulders. Exhale. Unclench the jaw. Exhale. Relax the shoulders again. Exhale. For the love of God, stop strangling your purse strap.

Boston Medical Center is vast. I call up my mom – the same woman I’m supposed to talk with a social worker to arrange someone to check in on her – to get information. All I get is a headache. I’m curt with her and I feel terrible about it the second I hang up.  I find the main entrance and am met with hoards of people and flashing lights and sirens and firefighters.

A fire alarm has been set off. I still have no idea where I’m going.  What else could go wrong.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Eventually the alarms stop and the firefighters clear out and life goes back to normal. I go to the information desk. After everything that’s happened, there’s a part of me that wants to yelp, “I just want to see my little brother.”  It’s a thought I don’t focus too much on because I’ll start crying in line if I do.  Breathe.  Listen to the inhale.  Listen to the exhale.

A lot of things shattered alongside my father’s death, but my bond with my little brother strengthened in light of it. I’m reminded of this when it’s my turn and I ask for a visitor’s pass and attempt not to lose it in front of a woman who clearly has no time for this, or anything.

Scene: Surgical ICU.  I have to be buzzed in.  My brother’s out cold when I arrive. Black eyes so dark and deep you’d think a makeup artist applied them. Face swollen.  The left side is essentially shapeless.  A few abrasions, a few stitches, but considerably milder than what I had imagined. I send a message to the same older brother who had called that morning. Since that older brother is a firefighter, I joke about the alarm and the firefighters. I wait while the little brother sleeps.

He wakes up for a moment, speaks lucidly but muffled, and falls back asleep.

I breathe. I think in fevered narratives. I continue to inform friends, family, whoever I’m supposed to. I dance between the three activities.  Breathe. Fevered Narrative. Inform. If I do anything else, I’ll start crying. I start crying anyway.

Eventually the nurse comes in; he’s just been upgraded out of the Surgical ICU. I excuse myself as they prepare to move his bed and head back outside.

I walk down Mass Ave — simultaneously Methadone Mile and home to some of the most expensive real estate around. One guy on a porch yells, “Ooooooh if you let me take you home, you’d love me! I’d kiss you from head to toe, I would! “

I do the one response I know: I slightly smirk (not smile, not grin, not even fully smirk) and shake my head and keep walking.

I breathe. I wander. I take in the sunlight. If I do anything else, I’ll start crying.

*

Scene: Prudential Center. There’s a conference of some nature, for the Academy of Sports Medicine. Men with red lanyards around their neck, who look like the type of guys to be in sports medicine. Broad shoulders and gentle eyes. I hang a left and find myself by the base of the Prudential tower. In all my years living in the city, I’ve never done the Skywalk.  Not once.

Today seems as good a day as any.

Boston is laid out before me.

“If dirty water were a salve, I’d apply it to every wound,” I think to myself. Fake poetic, but I blame the speaker behind me reciting quotes about Boston from famous writers.

“Boston is a mindset,” is one of the quotes.

Damn right it is.

I’m two steps into the gift shop when my phone rings again. It’s my uncle, checking in, letting me know what the plan is for my mom (Meals on Wheels to stop by each day. Bare minimum, someone for my mom to talk to. For all our issues and worries for her, I do believe the biggest problem she’ll face without my brother there is loneliness).  I’m barely a lap around the observation deck when I get another call.

Little brother, awake and able to talk.

He tells me a little more about the crash. The details I hear are way worse than I could’ve anticipated. How he is still alive — let alone mobile — is beyond me. He asks if I’m coming back to Boston Medical. I take one more lap around the observation deck and head back.

My best friend — someone I’ve known since I was 10 — calls as I’m walking back (walking, walking, always walking. And breathing, and joking). One of many check-ins from the people I unabashedly call my second family.

“Hey, do you remember junior year homecoming?” she asks. “When your brother lit all those candles along the walkway for us?”

“It’s one of my favorite memories with him,” I say and my heart swells.

Just breathe. Just breathe. No tears on the sidewalks of Boston.

*

His accident made the news, complete with a picture of the crash. The picture makes me wonder how anyone could survive that, let alone still have the ability to walk.

I post the link online with a few raw words of commentary.  Included in the commentary are some equally raw words about how much I love him.

Just breathe just breathe just breathe don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry.

He’s awake and asking if I have a charger.  His phone is nearly dead.  I offer to run out and get one at the nearby 7-11.

As I’m waiting at an intersection, I let my mind get the best of me. I stop focusing on the breathe and the air and that fevered narrative as I describe the world around me to an audience of myself.  Instead I take in everything and it hits me over the head.

Breathe breathe breathe dammit don’t you dare cry at the corner of Washington and Mass Ave.

The woman at the 7-11 speaks in a thick Russian accent and attempts to find the cheapest charger there.  They’re all flimsy and overpriced.  I buy two.

*

A boy in a wheelchair goes, “Hey! I like your pants!” to me when I return.

Scene: Surgical unit. The non-ICU kind. I stay a little while longer. I plug his phone into the new charger. He alternates between sleep and talking.  Nurses come and go. He’s scheduled for surgery tomorrow. People are contacted.

I hang out. I joke. I singsong as I talk. I make more jokes. I breathe. I joke. I sing out optimism. I make more jokes.

If I do anything else I’ll start crying.

Breathe.

*

Scene: The vast world of yoga.  I started teaching yoga four months before my father’s health started to tailspin. Before my whole life would start to tailspin. Before every aspect of my life would be flipped on its head to the point that my feeble struggle to find my footing in the yoga industry would be the only steady thing I had going.

I would speak in hindsight that yoga was really the only job I would’ve been able to do during that time. I would’ve collapsed in any other profession. Teaching yoga in the midst of crisis after crisis, fuck up after fuck up, was a saving grace. As much a saving grace as whatever it was that spared my little brother, even though the crash should’ve paralyzed him — that, had that car hit him even slightly differently, or his bike had been at a different angle, I would’ve received a completely different phone call.

The saving grace of teaching yoga was partly due to how easily I could slip into the role – slip into the practice like a mouse dropped into a maze and effortlessly finding her way out. It was partly due to how much yoga itself was a saving grace for me, changing an Irish girl with an inwards-directed Irish temper for the better.

And it was partly due to a sense of duty. These people coming into the room are bringing the same crap onto their mat as me. And this invaluable toolset that was given to me is something I feel compelled to pass on. And not as a blissed out yogi bestowing peace on her minions, but a messed up lady shining light on the path for her fellow messed up companions.

And it was partly because teaching them reminds me of the things I desperately need reminding of, myself.

Breathe. Do your practice and all is coming.

I wait out rush hour in Boston. I have pizza in the Prudential Center’s garden. I reflect. I breathe.  I continue to inform. Continue to view life in a hazy narrative delirium that all writers know too well.

“I want to see the sunset over Boston,” I say to myself.  I want to do something a little frivolous and silly.  I want to go back up to the Skywalk in the Prudential Tower and watch the sun lower over the city. And so I do.

There’s a weird blessing behind all of this. A lot of things shattered in the wake of my father’s decline. And a lot of things hardened as other things shattered. There were callouses where it wasn’t healthy to have callouses. And it created a lot of circle running. The whole situation, that whole day, right down to the 7-11 run and wanting to burst into tears over the heart swells, were a vital reminder that not everything hardened back together.

Because life is full of overlaps if you keep your eyes open enough: as I’m driving through Medford on the trek back home, the Fellsway is reduced to one lane due to a crash. A fire truck and police car are still on the scene, their lights still flashing. As is a flatbed tow truck carrying an SUV with its airbag deployed. Two men are sweeping glass from the streets.

*

Dusk is soft and warm and enveloping. I breathe in the summer air. I breathe in a little more. Among other things, I have two classes scheduled tomorrow.  I can already hear one of my regulars noting my smile, that I always seem so happy.

“It’s important to stay positive,” I have said in response, dancing around the subject of emotions.

The sky is vibrant in its final hours.  Red sky at night; sailor’s delight. Storm has passed.

I feel the sadness of it all well up in me.  Not just the sadness.  The everything.  The whole range of emotions that such a day, such an event, such a past couple of years, can stir up.  There’s a surge of it all as I’m on 93 returning back home.

Breathe. You can cry now if you need.

My eyes well up for a moment, but instead I ride the feeling until it mellows out into the night.

No one reads poetry! And also no one reads blogs!

And also only granola people take yoga.

Clearly I’m on a mission to prove ALL those wrong (I’m pretty sure the mini-box of Slim Jims I ate last week renders me ineligible for the granola club).

So I teach yoga (and eat Slim Jims), I’m writing in a blog, but how am I going to defy that first one…

…Boom.

Thought Catalog – the very first website I started writing for, way back in the day, and the company that published my very first book (I’m Just Here for the Free Scrutiny, available in ebook wherever digital shelves are…digital) has made a very lofty dream that I made as a kid possible (I want a book, a collection of short stories, and a collection of poetry published before the age of 30.  Granted, the book was self-published and the short stories are more anecdotal accounts of modeling things, but – still – mission accomplished!  I feel like George W Bush…)

Curious what my poetry is like?  Well, if you follow my instagram account ThatAbbyRose — or like my Facebook page, you already know what my poetry is like!  But here’s a sampling in case you need it:

So — where can you buy this?

Well, on Amazon, of course!  Where you can buy anything!  Also iBooks!  Or you can check out the Thought Catalog page for it — or even check out three years worth of writing on my Thought Catalog author page.  The possibilities are endless!

So…buy it. With your money. And help me on my crusade to prove people still read poetry.

When You’re In Love With Dirty Water

I was born a mile down the street from where I went to college.

It’s a factoid I like throwing out there from time to time.  One of those cute coincidences that shows life has ways of coming back full circle, albeit temporarily.

I was born at Brigham & Women’s — and 18 years later, I’d be a mile up Huntington Ave at Northeastern University.  Even though I grew up on the South Shore, I’d proudly point out that I was actually born in Boston.  And when I moved to Boston proper, I was more than happy to call myself a Bostonian with a little more surety than before.  A title, like the city itself, I would keep in some way, even as I moved across state lines and into New Hampshire.

My main tie back to the city was my modeling agency — a place I am still signed with even as I gradually kept moving more and more north.  The agency would contact me about castings in Boston — an activity that takes maybe five minutes, minus any wait time — and I would use that as an excuse to spend hours in the city.

*

Manchester, New Hampshire is on high alert on the morning I plan to drive into Boston for a casting.  Two officers have been shot.  The area two or so miles down the street from where I taught my morning yoga classes that day has been shut down.

“It’s almost a story out of Roxbury or Mattapan,” I remark.  And, I think that’s part of the reason why I love this city.  In some weird way, Manchester is a lot like a few of the neighborhoods in Boston.  A quilt, a stitching together, a peculiar patchwork of some of Boston’s more notable parts.

*

The day I plan to drive into Boston for a casting, I park just outside of the city and take the T in.  I’m one stop down from where I used to live: my apartment during my final college years and my first few years of the real world.  An abode I lived in for as long as I have lived in New Hampshire all together.

“Rent has doubled since you moved out,” I remind myself. “And I doubt conditions are magically better.”

I wait at the platform and I listen to the rumbles & clacks as the orange line train pulls in.  Its gentle rhythm makes my heart swell.

“Remember all the times the T was delayed,” I remind myself. “How crowded it gets during rush hour. How terrible people can be when it comes to basic courtesy on public transit.”

*

My agency is just off the green line.  Instead of switching lines, I deliberately stay on the orange line and walk the distance between the closest orange line stop and my final destination.  I walk through Back Bay, past the BPL, down Newbury.  The casting from beginning to end is probably quicker than the time it took to walk from the T stop.  In many ways, it had been an exceptionally long walk for a short drink of water, but I linger around to quench my thirst.

Whether the agency trip was an excuse be in Boston, or the need to be in Boston was an excuse to go to a casting in the heart of Boston, I’m not sure.  All I know is I take off after my casting and wander around like I did as a college student.

*

The Esplanade is alive with runners and dogs and the smell of the Charles.  People are milling about the Hatch Shell, preparing for some event.  A few benches down, there’s a cyclist with his bike against a tree, jamming out on his harmonica for no one in particular.  Another man is giving a Buddhist monk money, all the while asking, “And you’ll take a selfie, right?  Selfie?”

“You just don’t get this in the mountains of New Hampshire,” I tell myself, acting like I didn’t spend the previous morning trailing running down one of the most scenic paths in my little mountain town.  Acting like, not even weeks prior, I was remarking on the effortless vistas you get while driving through New Hampshire, the kind of views you just don’t get in Massachusetts.

Off to my left is the Mass Ave bridge I would walk down my freshman year on my way to the dorm halls of MIT.  A memory so seemingly innocent and simple that it makes my heart break in hindsight.

The traffic on Mass Ave — the traffic on every street that day — is terrible.  The city was made for walkers, made for wanderers like me, making their way to wherever they’re going with long strides.

A pedestrian town.  A place where you can tell the Bostonians at heart based on how recklessly they step out into the street, or how slickly they maneuver around the slower people on the sidewalk.  The Pedestrian Death Wish, and I practice it with pride, stepping out into the street like two tons of steel could never harm me.

*

I play with the all reasons why my move away from Boston is not necessarily final, throwing lofty plans into an increasingly uncertain future like pebbles into a river.

“Boston has a thriving yoga scene…BU has a great physical therapy doctoral program…perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…”

*

It’s graduation day for a few of the colleges.  In two areas of town, I use my slick pedestrian maneuvering to dance around crowds; huddling families and emotionally exhausted graduates with their gowns unzipped and their phones pressed to their ears.

The city is electric that day.  Life and lives of all varieties are around me.  It’s a city awake and vibrant.  A city that has been painted in blue and yellow for the last 3 years.  Even with the cloud cover, I am energized, as if Boston itself is the cure against being seasonally affected.

“This is not your city anymore,” I remind myself.

*

The secondhand and consignment shops I once loved are so much posher than when I was last in them.  Everything is so much more expensive and I leave all of them empty handed.

“Told you this isn’t your city anymore,” I say.

*

I round out the day with a stop off down Huntington Ave — to Northeastern University.

I wander down the stomping grounds of my freshman year, deliberately retracing steps I used to take when I was 18 years old.  The parking lot where I unloaded my things for my first-year dorm room.  The alleyway that connected that first dorm to Huntington.  Red and grey brick paths that wake up a flood of emotions — memories so seemingly simple and innocent and beautiful that it’s almost too much.

But, just like other freshman-year memories that had been returning that day, I’m quick to shed light into the darkened corners.  Those weren’t simple times.  They were rough and complicated times.  Sad times, with plenty of tears.  Plenty of bad things and frustrating things and things that simply went awry.

But they were transformative times.  Times of great evolution and adaptation and change.  And it is those very difficulties that allow such a flood of outright gorgeous emotions to return.  It is that intensity of the past that makes its surreal in its beauty in hindsight.

“You’ll look back on this time in the same way, someday, too,” I tell myself.

Before I leave Northeastern — before I board the orange line T stop that rests right at the base of campus and I leave the city completely — I stop off at the infamous Husky statue just outside the auditorium.

People rub the husky’s nose for good luck.  I remember coming here on a campus tour in high school, knowing within five steps that this was the college for me, and rubbing that statue’s nose for good luck.  Three months later, I’d be accepted in on a substantial scholarship.  Since then, I’ve given reverence for something others would consider crazed superstition.

Besides, these days I could use a little good luck.

*

The drive through and out of the city is horrific.  For miles, I barely touch the gas pedal.

“This is just people’s commute, on a daily basis,” I say.  And this is the reality if you actually moved back.  Living just outside of easy public transit.  Dealing with a backlogged commute.  

Because, again, this just isn’t your city.

*

And it isn’t my city.  Not anymore.  With each passing year, it gets just a little tougher to come down, even for agency-related matters.  I already pass on so many castings due to time constraints that it’s only a matter of time until my agency drops me.  And I know deep down I’ll never be a Boston resident again.  Not just because the rent has skyrocketed and the T is unreliable and the traffic is terrible and all my favorite shops have abandoned their bohemian feel for something more upscale.  I simply look at the path I’m on and the paths I’m attempting to carve out and I know a return is highly unlikely.

Knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

It is simply not my city anymore.

*

It’s a bewildering feeling, loving something so deeply, but also being so separate from it.  When something is that much a part of you, but not part of your day-to-day.  That tightrope of carrying something with you everywhere you go, but going places that have nothing to do with it.  Or perhaps everything to do with it.  Who knows.  Perhaps all of my exploits, in some way, could be traced back to this profound little love.

I’ve already likened loving Boston to being a pragmatic paramour.  But perhaps it is something more.  Something a little cleaner, but a little sadder.  A bond, a love, a loyalty that has to coexist with reality.  Not as a mistress in the shadows, but as captain leaving shore.

My beautiful little city.  Cuidadita mia.  A place that still, after all these years, puts a smile not just on my face but in my soul over something as simple as the skyline coming into view from 93.  A place that shaped and defined me in little and big and irrevocable ways.  A city I love so deeply that I doubt I’ll love any other city in the exact same way again.

And maybe that’s okay.  Maybe the role of Boston — my city, but not really my city — now is to anchor down deep into my heart as I set sail from the shore, to wherever the rough seas take me.  Good luck and Godspeed.

When you’re in love with dirty water, you can’t help but get a little muddied up in the process.  But you wouldn’t trade the markings in for anything in the world.

Bad Decision

It’s getting so beautiful out, I said.

There’s too much technology and multitasking in your life, I said.

Slow it down, I said.

There’s a nearly-never-used swingset in your backyard, I said.

Life’s too short not to enjoy the simple pleasures, I said.

You’ll enjoy your coffee more, I said.

How peaceful it would be, I said.

Not to self: when attempting to find a place to sit and be with nature and be all contemplative and unplug from the world, try finding a sitting spot that’s a little more stationary.

If anyone asks, I didn’t spill my coffee; I poured one out for my homies on decaf.

Al-Anon & Onwards

It was only a matter of time.

I have a tendency to speed, to the point that going even the reasonable speed limits agitates me.  I’d had enough close calls with speed traps to know that it was only a matter of time until I actually got caught.

I was speeding down a familiar highway to a familiar destination when I glanced over far too late and saw the state trooper. I glanced down at my speedometer: I was closing in on 80 in a 65 mph zone.

Only a matter of time.

As predicted, the state trooper pulls up behind me and I make my way to the breakdown lane. I remove my sunglasses and grab my registration and wait.

“Going a little fast there, huh?” He says when he walks over.

“Heh, yeah…” I say sheepishly.

“Where are you heading to, if I may ask? What could you be in such a hurry for?”

I stumble for a second. I’m tempted to lie, minimize everything by circumventing the truth. Oh no where, no where in particular…

“Um, actually, I have an Al-Anon meeting I’m heading to,” I say. “The meeting’s in 15 minutes and I must’ve gotten ahead of myself.”

“Aaaah,” the trooper says. His voice had been jovial since the beginning, but now there’s a new softness to it. “Well, I do need your license and registration…”

As everything is run through the system, I find myself fighting back tears. For why, I can’t exactly say. I’m not afraid of getting a ticket, and the days of me bursting into tears over the slightest hint of being in trouble are long behind me. But there’s a bubbling up from somewhere deep, something from a place that, for all my radically vulnerable and expressive ways, I know I keep repressed.

“So I’m going to give you a warning here,” he says when he returns. “But be careful with your speed. That would’ve been an expensive ticket.”

“Thank you, thank you so much…” I begin to babble.

“Now, I kinda know about Al-Anon, but tell me: that’s for people in recovery, right?”

“Basically,” I reply. “It’s for those affected by someone addicted. The same way AA is for the someone in recovery, Al-Anon is for the family of that person.”

“And you would be part of that family, I gather.”

“Yup.”

“Ah…Been there myself. I know what that’s like,” he says, trailing off, his eyes on the road behind me, his voice as distant as whatever it is he’s now looking out at. There’s a pause before he directs his attention back towards me. “You be safe now, okay? Watch your speed.”

“Will do. Thank you so much.”

“Have a good one.”

I pull back onto the highway, going 5 below the speed limit in the granny lane. Before I can even check my rear view mirror, I’m in tears. The kind of tears that you can’t even attempt to keep silent. The kind that draw out whimpers and yelps before you finally concede and let yourself cry to the degree you need to cry.

I drive past my exit for the meeting and keep going. I’m in the same raw newborn state I felt when I first started meetings — meetings I’d started as my own type of recovery after my father passed and I’d realized that I had hit my own version of rock bottom. But, unlike the cathartic rush from those first meetings, these tears feel cleansing and outright tender from the get-go. A welling to the surface of things that do no one any favors keeping down.

I end up pulling off a random exit and finding a nearby park. With my face a little less blotchy, I set out for a walk along one of the trails.

That day’s meeting did not take place in a rec room or church basement or function hall. That day’s meeting did not have any readings, or a motley of people in attendance.  That day’s meeting was a simple exchange between a trooper and a speeding driver. It lasted a fraction of the usual time, but the message was the same:

I know what that’s like. You’re not alone.

A few more tears roll down my cheek as I walk, the trails thankfully void of other people.  Up until my college years, I used to burst into tears over the hint of feeling like I was in trouble.  Perhaps now, I burst into tears over the hint of feeling like I’m safe.

Projections

This is a repost from something I wrote on my Facebook writing page — Abby Rose Writer — and, if you haven’t liked that yet, what are you doing?  Get on that, already!  That is, unless you don’t have Facebook.  Then I simply applaud you for having way more productive free time than the rest of us.

This is something I was thinking about recently, in terms of people I get along with and people I seem to have the worst time around.

(Oh yes, this is poetry AND a blog post. You’ve been forewarned.)

This might be me patting myself on the back, but I’d like to think I can get along with pretty much everyone. It’s partly due to positive reasons (it takes a lot to rub me the wrong way and I tend to default towards seeing the good in everyone) and partly due to negative reasons (I can be painfully unassertive and a bit of a chameleon if I feel that showing my true colors would cause friction). But, for the most part, I like people and enjoy most people’s company.

And then there are people that, on some energetic, je nes se qua level, I just can’t do well around them.

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what it was exactly about them that would cause such clashing. There weren’t any behavioral patterns I could identify (although being a raging, hateful bigot is a great way for us to not see eye-to-eye): the awkward, the charismatic, the outgoing, the reserved — it seemed like I had just as much of a chance at connecting with them as I did repelling from them.

It took a set of conversations with someone who didn’t really seem to be actually hearing what I was saying — or was only hearing it through the thickest filter you could find — before I realized what it was:

Level of projection.

We all project out into the world. To steal from Anais Nin, we don’t see the world as it is; we see the world as we are. We project out ideals and values. We project motivations (and HOW MANY TIMES have we gotten ourselves into a sticky situation because we swore we knew a person’s motivations, only to be completely wrong?). We project out what we expect of the world and what we think is expected of us.

It becomes a balance of projection versus actual observation. And the level of projection varies greatly from person to person.

Unfortunately, some people don’t even observe the world at all. They interact with the world like it’s one gigantic movie projector screen. Sometimes, nothing bad would come of it. They project out, it lines up more or less with the perceived world of others, and we all move along.

And sometimes it doesn’t.

When that happens, those people splinter into two groups: those who realize how much they were projecting and reassess/recalibrate (this is a rare group and I applaud those who can do this, even on only rare occasions), and those who get pissed off that the world doesn’t line up with their projections.

And that’s the linking factor with every person I tend to clash with on that energetic, insert-French-saying-here, level.

And, again, I do that myself. Heavens knows it has taken over a decade of, at times, fruitless self-evaluation to notice when I’m one gigantic movie projector — not really perceiving the world so much as I am imagining it. I still get into conversations where I realize I’m projecting a whole slew of stuff, from motivations to word meanings to everything in between. This is not exactly an exact science, and I’m not exactly immune to the very thing I’m talking about.

But the key is in what happens next. Do we realize what we’re doing and at least attempt to be a little more open, or do we crank up the noise on our projectors and hope we can drown out what reality actually is? When we realize we’ve built faulty narratives about a certain situation, a community, a certain ideal or even a certain person, are we willing to reassess those views, or will we fortify them with self-righteousness and indignation?

I used to say that all it takes is a good heart and I’ll like the person in front of me, warts and all. Now I’m realizing I’m a tad more exclusive: a good heart and a willingness to shut down the projector from time to time.

//

Projections

She viewed the world

like a canvas, a blank sheet, something

flat and white to take in

what she projected out: her

ideas and ideals, what she thought

the world should be and how it all

should go

And how angry she got

whenever she found paint

and texture, scenes already drawn out

landscapes and portraits interrupting

her perfected projection

 

I be Buzzfeeding!

Blog, you know I love you, but I have something to admit: you’re not the only one.

I know, I know. It’s probably hard to accept, but the signs were all there.  If I were truly exclusive to you, I would’ve been spending way more time with you.  Instead, I’ve been sporadic at best.  I hope you understand.  It’s not you; it’s me.

(Yeah, I’m not sure where I’m going with that, either.)

But the truth is I’m a bit of a scatter when it comes to my writing (you can check out my smorgasbord of other platforms in my publishing creds section), including my blog on my yoga page (which is the most neglected little blog you’ll ever meet).  And apparently I’m now including “making lists on Buzzfeed” to the list.

And since this blog can get a little serious sometimes, despite its tagline about being a humor blog (and, hey, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I make no bones about what I talk about, if only because I find it exhausting to pretend that we don’t all have something we’re dealing with or battling), I figured I’d link up what I created for Buzzfeed over here.

And – someday! – this blog will actually live up to its name as a humor blog.  Someday.  Until then, perhaps you’d appreciate knowing the 15 Ways the Struggle Is Real When You’re an Outgoing Introvert.