Evensong IX (6 February 2024)

The last time I came to the Battery Park Esplanade was when B had a conference and put me in her hotel room across from One World Trade for the weekend. She was out during the day, checking in every few hours, returning in the evening for dinner and sleep. I stayed in the room even though it was late spring and the trees along the Hudson were in full splendor, leafing out a golden green canopy that taunted me with its hopefulness. I wanted to throw myself into the dirty water. When I left the room it was to walk, and I quickly found that walking, walking, walking, became automatic once I started. Simple. Keep it simple. Walk.

Nothing was simple, though.

Grief pulls your body way down to the ground while your head is off somewhere else. The disembodied feeling is a haunting of the self. What I mean is that it’s there, that not-there-of-the-body feeling, even when you’re paying attention to it. Working a mindfulness program of meditation or somatic movement is an eery way to witness one's own cleaving of body from mind and spirit. You see your body as separate from your head. Your head watches your body wash itself or make the coffee whenever it gathers itself from the bed. You see it send phone calls to voicemail. It doesn’t matter who's calling.

The chasm between the head and the heart is as wide as the chasm between inspiration and realization. We work to close the gap but nothing is as good as what is envisioned in the mind. Reality is flawed. It’s a group work with many collaborators, many of whom are unwilling or unable to do their best, think into possibility, accept that they deserve better than what they’ve been given.

February 2024 along the Hudson River is different than May 2022 in a lot of ways, it’s true. Yet this day I walk and think of one of those days, on the phone with a friend’s father who called because the friend couldn’t. You know you’re in trouble, that shit is really bad, when even your friends can’t call and their parents have to do it for them. When you’re so shattered that the cracks have extended out into your constellation, breaking everyone who loves you, too.

Feel your feet in your shoes and take a breath. The body is still walking, taking notes from the head. The head is still thinking. The head hears the heart in its ears, especially when it’s cold cold, wind along water cold, and sunlight has no leafy canopy through which to strain some warmth. It is February, after all.