spell break

The spell of New York is breaking. I thought I had to live here. I believed in order to be deemed successful and known and thriving, that it can only happen in NYC—Brooklyn if I’m being specific, between Eagle Street and Eastern Parkway even more specifically. All it takes is one little needle to pop a whole balloon. Walking home from the bagel shop this morning, after having partially eaten my mediocre, whole grain everything bagel—whole grain not because I prefer it, but because I read it is not stripped of all its nutrients and that seems positive in this hollow age—the bittersweetness of this realization crept in. My eyes caught the city scenery in a new light, not by the sun or shadows of cloud—but from the popping of a mental bubble. Oh, I don’t have to live here anymore. Just days ago I thought I did. How about that?

Not living in NYC is coming up because A. don’t most New Yorker’s have seasons of wanting to leave NYC as part of their NY identity—no? B. I want to live closer to the woods undisturbed and modified by tall city buildings and human “flourishing”, if even just for a time—if even just to momentarily trade the city skyline for tree-line. After all, NYC will always be here they say. C. because I might**¹ move home next year to complete a school program in acupuncture. I could also do it here, but it would no doubt be more challenging and expensive. This idea is a recent emergence—enticing and not something I’m totally sold on which means it’s all but consuming me. I am in everyone’s ears.

I spoke with a since retired, fellow hair artist friend who moved in with her mom in Seattle to go to school. In defense of her decision to give up her very successful career and the home she bought in CO she said, Why does my life need to be hard all of the time? Am I not worthy of peace and relaxation? This plucked me like a string. And then talking to my other, dear friend from home, she said in response to me possibly moving back, You’ve already proven you’ve got what it takes to make it there [NYC], maybe prove you’ve got what it takes to slow down and take it a little easier, give yourself that grace. I am all strings, I am strumming.

Prove you have what it takes to slow down, prove you got what it takes to give yourself grace. Personally, these are the more confronting tasks in the age of success and abundance. In the age of human “independence” and “flourishing”—accelerating tech, collapse, and burnout—I know how to hustle and I do it well. Grinding my bones to dust for money and prestige provides me with meaning and purpose, if I’m being honest. As does being a NYC resident. Even if I’m mostly a no one see: small following, no cult personality, no riches—I’m a no one in NYC, which makes me someone by proxy. But these are flags of low confidence, not high. If I truly felt secure in my efforts, in my life and even in my imagined “self”, couldn’t I… let go, let it fall apart, let it change miraculous shape—even just for a little while?

I recently read an incredible essay by twitchy witch that goes on to list all the ways one can be an alchemist. An alchemist is someone who works with and learns from change instead of being a fierce resistor. Of all the whimsical points made, the most notable was be willing to ruin a perfectly good thing. I’ve practiced this many times in my life—leaving while the party is still fun—is what I like to call it. And though I’ve still been disappointed, experienced pain, and felt “fomo”, by occasionally knocking over the fortress I’ve built, I’ve reestablished a new center of gravity—one that is far less addicted and disturbed. I’m learning that life possesses an incredible flexibility. So flexible it’s nearly weightless. So malleable and doughy, you can roll it up and stretch it out, feeling the tension and release from every angle with glee.

For an alchemist, it is precisely when we think we have things “figured out” that we kick the chair out from under our own ass. The shock of our tailbone hitting the floor awakens the old gods. Recently, I did this with my sabbatical. I gave up a great apartment on a great block of a great neighborhood (which I sometimes regret). I thought it was just going to be a nice break from the grind of which I would return to no issue. Ha. But now I’m beginning to see it was actually the jumpstart of a reset for how I want to spend and relate with the rest of my time on Earth (which is totally worth the regret).

I want to be an alchemist, I want to be someone who welcomes change even if there are no guarantees of success. Maybe the lead doesn’t become gold, but who cares? I want to practice agency instead of tracing the paths of people I don’t even respect. When I think of agency I can’t help but think of Forrest Gump. The entire film is about the balancing of flexibility and stability, about love and loss and continuing on. When I think of agency, I think of Forrest running and running across the US, wind in his beard, for seemingly no reason at all (the reason was Jenny of course). Until one day he simply decides “I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll go home now.” A true act of agency! A true following of a whim until its fated end; subtle or abrupt is in the eye of the perceiver.

I want to notice the spells I’m casting for both good and ill living, yes we do both. Perhaps mostly unknowingly, we are casting spells all of the time, opening and/or closing ourselves while orchestrating our conditions such that things might “work out”—that we might get what we want. But we would be wise to not always believe we must have what we want in order to be satisfied. Seemingly, the alchemist finds satisfaction in the transition itself.

I would be a wise agent to not mistake hustle for success, and success for worth, and worth for being allowed to play-to try-to see. Because agency isn’t about how hard we grind or how much we produce or how successful any of it makes us. Agency is the play—it’s about whims, exploration, attunement. Agency/alchemy is not in staying or going, having to do something or not having to do something, but finding freedom in the micro-movements, the style, the personalized rhythm to the sounds of the right here, right now.

Spells are breaking all around me. The relationship with the very special man I’ve chosen to share the depths of my most intimate life with is dissolving. Well, the relationship with who I made him out to be is. It turns out, I did not summon him, he does not perfectly check all of my boxes. And thank goodness for this—that he is real. A real human man with his own aspirations and flaws and beauty. He is not mine, I did not write him down and then perfectly receive him the way the abundance manifestor cultists would have it be. He is far stranger than my wildest list of wants and demands. And this makes me love him even more than my fantasy of him. And love, in all the places it finds, continually reveals it is never what I think it is at all.

Spells are breaking all around me. I don’t have to live in NYC to be successful. I don’t even have to be successful. I could go lie down in that field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn't make any sense.²

Spells are breaking all around me. I can move home to Colorado. I can also not move home, instead stay here and go to school—let’s be real, this is the way I’m leaning. I love NYC, baby, I don’t want to let you go! I could also not go to school. I can commit myself to art. I can move to Europe. I could go live in a trailer in the middle of the desert and search for UFO’s. Perhaps quit my job altogether and go lie my tender, aching body across the lands they want to build data centers over. No matter which way I go, a certain death awaits me; endless are the deaths that await me. I will do my best to greet them with open palms and love poems. Amen.

1. This is all mental masturbation at this point, I have not convinced myself I will leave this city. This city still has a hold on me, though we might be splitting our hands for the pole.

2. Poem by Rumi.