always in flux

closeness is no accident

Beyond Capture by Christine Hayman

A grand exodus is happening, externally and internally. Friends are moving out of San Francisco, people are sweeping in.

Everything moves, breathes, never stagnant from one moment to the next, especially in a city like San Francisco or New York — where the trajectory of your life can turn in one single golden night, one plane flight, one conversation. Everything is always in flux. These cities are holding grounds. You love them so intensely for a while, then you leave. Or maybe you stay. Flow in. Flow out.

Distance is what shapes us, or rather, how we react to distance. I’m terrible at texting but I’m sincerely trying to get better at staying in touch. I have hazy plans for July and October — Norway, Taiwan, Japan. I feel like there’s nothing keeping me here, a friend tells me. The secret is: nothing can keep you here, I say to her, it’s always a decision to stay, as much as it is to leave. Nothing we love can stay fixed in it’s exact formation forever. And we shouldn’t want it to. I’ve grown to appreciate the evolution of knowing a place or a person: from an alien strangeness, to a familiar comfort, to realizing I could spend a lifetime studying it and still learn something new.

S and I come to the conclusion that since there are no seasons in SF there’s no way to mark time passing. Has it been one year, two years? five? No drift of snow. No light scattered across autumn leaves, only wind and perennial foggy sunlight. May blends into August into September again. But that doesn’t stop the crabapple flowers from being beautiful. Pink petals collect in the cracks and edges of everything. I look down at the grille of a sewage ditch beneath a tree and it’s an ocean of pink.

At some point in adulthood you come to the jarring realization that closeness simply doesn’t happen by accident anymore.

It used to in college, in high school. In the dead of winter we left ours doors ajar and roamed the halls looking for a warm room. Memory is a warm room. An ageless place, a standstill moment, a suspended myth: who you were to me, who I was to you.

I remember thinking in certain bright moments how connected I felt, how close to people I used to be. Hours, days together. When friendships faded later on, not for any particular reason, I couldn’t reconcile the potency of that feeling with how rapidly it could dissipate, boiling down into a crumb, an echoing peal of laughter, then finally — a calmness. The fondness still remains, even if the closeness doesn’t.

Closeness, it seems to me now, is a constant active pursuit.

To invest time and thought into our platonic or romantic relationships gives them weight and texture. With old friends it means engaging with how they are changing: how they adopt new ways of living, new thought patterns, new selves. And with new ones it means discovery and context: asking them where they’ve been, their turning points, how they became who they are.

Just the same as we choose to stay or to leave, we opt into closeness or distance in our relationships with others. Words of effort: I’ll call you tomorrow. I’ll buy the books you recommend. I’ll listen to your playlists. How are you doing? This reminded me of you.

Here’s the paradox: though we are far apart I hope our closeness won’t fade. Though everything is in flux, I hope you’ll always be my constant: the still point of my turning world.

---

PS: “At the still point of the turning world” is a phrase from a T.S Eliot poem. I adapted it for this essay today.

PPS: If you are so inclined, please like and subscribe to this newsletter. Your support helps me curate more posts and reach more readers, thank you :)

You might also like: transitions, big and small & dear friend or perfect stranger

I am also starting 2 new little segments here - life inputs (which discusses things I’m chewing on/metabolizing/reading) and life outputs (which will talk about art I’m making/things I’m doing)

Quote of the Week

“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”
Carl Sagan

Life inputs (consumption)

• Picked up 4000 weeks by Oliver Burkeman

• I am now a warm salad girl ever since I discovered Violet Witchel’s recipes: I’m loving her strawberry, brussel, chicken thigh recipe. I add couscous/crispy chickpeas on top. It’s delightful.

• A and I had an interesting conversation about Ernst Becker’s concept of ‘immortality projects’: in which an we create or become part of something that we feel will outlast our time on earth. Do you have one?

• My friend Ashley’s beautiful piece on walking the Camino de Santiago:

  All my learnings seem unbearably trite: that the most beautiful parts of life are largely unplanned; that we should follow our instincts; that we’re stronger than we believe ourselves to be; that we’re never truly walking alone. That if we approach the world with curiosity and love, the world will open itself to us in return. But perhaps that’s why clichés are such — the truth is often obvious. The real challenge is not simply knowing what’s true, but living it. 

  Not all those who wander are lost

Life outputs (creation, life etc)

• A seemingly effortless 3 mile run across panhandle and golden gate park with A

• The loveliness of SF (I don’t take for granted) in its smallness — I’m always running into people I know on the street/in coffee shops/in workout classes nowadays and it’s pretty neat

• A new notion page for what I want my career to look like, the mentors I wish to cultivate and the spaces I want to create

Journal prompt of the Week

Abstract Futures

Ursula Le Guin wrote about considering the future as a no-stakes thought exercise to try out possible outcomes (a “safe, sterile laboratory for trying out new ideas.”)

List a recent future-fantasy of yourself. What does he/she do? What types of environments do they exist in?

I adapted this prompt originally from Moon Lists

French Song of the Week