#40 | lingering, still
hell fucking yeahhhhhh 40.
I am writing the shit out of this blog. It's because I've been suffering! lol. But I'm grateful to have placed writing back in my life. Writing is a muscle of mine that had been atrophying for a while. After getting in the habit, I've begun to experience the world again in the way that only regular writing can facilitate, with lots of curiosity and close attention.
Yesterday after work, I visited a couple places I had been wanting to check out for a while. I did some shopping to burn time before an 8 pm dinner reservation, first checking out a local dishware shop in Flatiron called Fishs Eddy that has been around for forty years. They sell surplus restaurant dishes and other quirky items at very affordable prices. Framed on the wall was a letter written to the shop by a lawyer (surname Fish) who detailed how his great-great-great grandfather founded a town called Fishs Eddy in New York, and generations of his family all lived and worked in Fishs Eddy until one of them left to work in NYC, which is how he came to be a lawyer in the city. Then he ended it by writing, "Anyway, I thought you might find this interesting. I wish you success in your business."
It was nice to look around, but nothing really suited my needs. What's sad is I wound up crossing the street into the Crate & Barrel next door and buying something there instead. I know. I suck. Then, I stopped by the Wegmans on the other corner and got some expensive sourdough and a couple dips. I'm part of why new york is dying. :-)
When walking 20 minutes between Flatiron and St. Marks, I put on headphones and listened to an old playlist of classical music that I excavated from my spotify account. In the remaining few days of my previous lease, I was using the empty space to practice cello and remembered how cathartic the instrument can be for me. If souls had a language, it would be music. When I play with friends and hear their style firsthand, I get to interact with a unique part of their being. One friend has a playfully modest style, another is focused and sharp. My style has been described as solid and warm, but also withdrawn. I've been told I need to let loose more, to be less afraid of making mistakes. I was reconsidering picking up lessons; cello is my first love.
Anyway, on my walk I felt like I was floating on clouds, listening to Jacqueline du Pré and taking my sweet time since my friend was going to be late. We had sukiyaki. A fellow Chinese-American friend of mine told me about that restaurant years ago and insisted sukiyaki is better than Chinese hot pot. I was incredulous but wrote it down. I had suggested it a few times to friends over the years as a meetup spot, but nobody ever took me up on it until this week! I suppose it's hard to convince people to have sukiyaki because it's more niche. But now I regret not going earlier because it was sooooooooo tasty and flavorful, honestly much better than expected.
After dinner, we met up with another friend of ours and got beers and watched the Knicks game. Never thought I'd say this, but I like beer more and more these days. My previous roommate made his own kombucha and also got me hooked on water kefir, so my affinity for funky beverages has just been developing for a while. I still don't quite know what kind of beers I like though. Guinness is good, Montauk pumpkin ale is good... definitely don't like anything super bitter. I generally am a lightweight and have difficulty finishing even half a pint, but I was on a very full stomach, so I kept sipping and sipping and all of a sudden my glass was empty and I sighed and burped and said I missed her so much.
The breakup and my ex come up all the time, even when I don't mean for that to happen. It's a terribly awkward way to ruin a light conversation with someone you don't know that well. The talks follow a now-familiar pattern: they want to know the story of why I'm in new york. They ask how long I've been here, why I moved here, what neighborhood I'm in, etc. The answers are: 3.5 years; I worked a fully-remote job and wanted to be closer to my then-girlfriend; I lived in Brooklyn, but stayed with her all the time in Queens; I just moved to [neighborhood]. Then they ask why I decided to move there, and my answer is that I don't really know. I blurt out that it was because I just gotten out of that relationship. That is the point where I should actually just change the topic or lie but I simply don't have the energy to sometimes, so I accidentally let it continue.
Because I spilled personal information, they then take that as a cue to ask me more questions about the relationship. They think I want to, and/or they feel obligated to, because it's rare that people reveal such things in small talk. The questions are things like how long the relationship was or how we knew each other. I reveal that it was five years. They react in a sympathetic manner and ask me how I'm feeling, to which I start bumbling out answers to speed things up and I talk faster and faster: Um... well yes and no, there was a quite rapid shift due to [description that varies depending on the person, but I've settled on 'family issues'], she needed to be alone, I guess it was on 'good terms' but also really confusing, I mean I'm surviving but it's tough of course, which is small-talk speak for I'm fucking suffering and I hate my life and I feel bad for talking about all of this, but it was inevitable for it to come up and now I know you feel awkward and I feel awkward too. Cue topic change!
It's nobody's fault.
Today:
- Ate japanese curry for lunch and them my roommate made a huge pot for dinner, so I ate it again. ha.
- Got a haircut in my old neighborhood on the way home from work, and it looks sick. I walked into the same shop as last time and coincidentally got the same stylist as before. He told me about coming out to his dad and how he became estranged from his sister because of him. When she reached out years later in adulthood, he sobbed on the train about it.
- Walking through my old neighborhood brings back a new memory every time. I walked past a familiar wine shop on the way home. In summer of 2024, before we got evicted, we went for a stroll and spontaneously partook in a free tasting of Italian wines. We bought a white, something we rarely drink, and ate soup noodles on our old apartment rooftop, watching the sunset. Later that evening, we snuck the rest of the bottle into a movie theater to watch Challengers.