on balance, in all forms

Today’s title from "Every Planet We Reach Is Dead" by Gorillaz (listen on youtube).

i.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about balance: work-life, internal-external, me-you, intellectual-emotional, indoor-outdoor, even literal, physical balance.

I’ve been thinking about balance in regards to this newsletter offering, trying to find the right weigh-ins between monologue and dialogue, personal and public, micro and macro, transparency and curation. I started this because I wanted a different way to connect with people, and so far it has provided a few truly beautiful moments of connection that would not have come about without it. I started this because I wanted to write more, about something, anything, and it seemed like my life might be the easiest, most immediate entryway.

But it’s been a struggle—the exact struggle I signed up for, of course—because I am not great at sharing, though I’m learning. I want everything I share to be meaningful, impactful, important—and yet, it can’t be, because I’m also a dumb human with a limited perspective, no real impact on the world at large, and limited intellectual and emotional resources. I have learned that dialogue has to begin with sharing; that the only way to receive openness, honesty, and presence, is to first and foremost offer them up yourself—but I am still learning that doing so in no way guarantees you receive the same. That is a struggle. It feels unfair sometimes.

The one thing it does give me is a calm, a peace of mind that is brand new to me: I did it, I showed up, I worked on staying open and present, and in truth, as long as I do that, whatever I get in return is none of my business.

ii.

Though I sloughed off this identity and buried it deep underground from the end of high school to my late 20s, I was an athlete for much of my adolescence, playing tennis and basketball and lacrosse but ultimately sticking with my first and true sports love, soccer, for the longest. I have a natural relationship with my physical instrument—when I’m not overthinking it, which is less rare these days—pretty good hand-eye coordination, pretty good rhythm, pretty good innate sense of physics and motion in space.

Like many of the things that are important to me now, if Kirin from over a decade ago knew that one day, they’d be running three times a week, doing yoga three times a week, and stretching every night before bed, they’d worry that a bodysnatcher had come for them at some point in the future. I have had to do a lot of accepting of the fact that my physical health is as important to my overall well-being as my mental health is, but I know it is true, and these days it gives me a lot of comfort knowing I can do things for my body that quiet my brain and make me feel better holistically. I owe a great deal to this corporeal vessel, and now I try to thank it in a variety of ways.

Recently, I was transported back to my soccer days. I was trying to balance, and whereas I’ll sometimes hold onto things to shortcut the process, this time, all I could do was rely on the balance trick I’ve always used. I know some people touch their belly buttons or noses, or point at a spot to keep themselves steady, but what works best for me is simply picking a spot and focusing on it intently. When I do this, my mind goes quiet, my body goes still, and it can sustain itself in a wide variety of awkward positions with pretty impressive stillness. The moment my focus slips, so too does my balance.

Because balance has been on my mind, this recent example stuck out to me as an excellent metaphor for mindfulness. Yes, I’m still prattling on about mindfulness as a great source of balance, because the lesson is still proving itself to me over and over again—if my mind is an ocean, it is calmest when it picks one simple thing directly in front of it and genuinely focuses on that thing. For so long, I felt unmoored in the waters of my mind—anxiety is a storm, and I was frequently tossed on its crests and waves, at its mercy, though I wouldn’t say it was merciful at all. The body and brain are not so different, are, of course, innately connected, are nearly inseparable from each other. The thing that stills my body is also the thing that quiets my mind: focus, intention, presence in the present. It’s not rocket science, y’all, and yet it often feels like the hardest lesson to keep learning and keep learning and keep learning.

iii.

Recently, thanks to now years of therapy and a few months of Buddhism, I have been watching my brain rewire itself in the present, edit its code to change the outcome of a process. It’s been, not gonna lie, really fucking rewarding, because I can see and feel and know, deeply, its effects on my life. This too feels like a kind of rebalancing, adjusting the scales, weighting the mechanism so that it functions smoothly. While I’m using a lot of intellectual language to describe it, I have felt its effects most in moments of great feeling—another kind of balance, my intellectual mind and my emotional heart working in tandem to right the ship, talking to each other productively, collaboratively, interacting in concert to steady themselves, itself, me.

One of my go-to phrases lately has been, “It’s none of my business,” and it has been a balm. I know this is not a new phrase by any stretch of the imagination, but I heard it differently recently, and it stuck with me after that. I am not ashamed to admit that the way this phrase came to me recently was through an interview with a NFL coach. No, I don’t know which one—M might know because, though I might have changed significantly over the years, I ain’t out here watching or reading interviews with football coaches, and he is my ever-present, sometimes-accepted but oftentimes lovingly-humored source for anything and everything football. But, to summarize, the coach was asked what he thought about NFL drama that didn’t even pertain to his team, and his response was: “I think it’s none of my business.”

I think I’ve usually heard this phrase delivered differently, as either “it’s none of YOUR business,” or usually with a caveat that nullifies it, like '“I know it’s none of my business, BUT…” What I heard this time through the phrase was, “It doesn’t concern me, and therefore I don’t concern myself with it.” And I was like DAMN, girl, that is a truth. It feels similar to another idea that has been rattling around in my brain for the last year, a quote from the novel Weather by Jenny Offill: “in some Zen monasteries gossip is defined as talking about anything not directly in one's gaze.” I had a similar reaction when I read this quote, this feeling of being smacked in the face with something obvious and simple and true: if it’s not in front of you, it don’t concern you. If it doesn’t concern you, don’t concern yourself with it.

This phrase has been getting me through some moments lately with great success. One example: despite having a very independent I-do-whatever-the-fuck-I-wanna-do quality to my essence, I have often been overly concerned, sort of against my will, with what people think of me, whether they like me or not. I do an okay job of masking it, but that itself has created a deep imbalance in how I feel versus how I say I feel, in what’s actually important to me versus what I let feel important to me. In a few recent professional exchanges with a new person, I’ve watched my heart go oh no, that moment felt weird and I’m pretty sure it means this person doesn’t much care for me, and what will I do if this new person who doesn’t know me at all doesn’t like me? And then I’ve watched my brain chime in with if they don’t like me, that’s none of my business. And y’all, IT’S WORKED. May each of you make only your business what actually concerns you, and may all of us concern ourselves less with that which is none of our damn business.

a few latelies

📺 // M and I have been so burnt out and hungry for good stories that we’ve gone back to some first seasons of television shows that we think are really excellent, including Dexter and Deadwood. Both shows have such excellent first seasons, such good storytelling, such good writing—and then their second seasons immediately, in my humble opinion, suck ass, as do all ensuing seasons. But the first seasons are good enough to watch and savor on their own.

📽 // We finally watched Palm Springs on hulu, and it was one of the best new movies I’ve seen in a long time (I haven’t seen a lot of new movies in the last few years, so if this incenses you, know that it is an opinion of admitted ignorance but also that it’s still a good movie okay). Good script with solid, funny writing, nothing felt belabored or overly expository or explanatory, the performances are excellent, and the message and general philosophical landscape of the movie really resonated with me. We also immediately ran out and bought a pizza float for our pool, so expect pictures of that in the future. On the flipside, Zack Snyder’s new movie Army of the Dead was fucking terrible and still two and a half hours long and I think we should all collectively vote to STOP HIM from making movies anymore because I don’t think he’s actually contributed anything worthwhile to medium of film (fight me on that if you wanna).

📚 // The virtual book club I (re)joined last year has been killing it with the last two selections, which I will recommend here. Our April selection was The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones, which is an excellent Native horror novel, super anxiety producing and well-written and ultimately really beautiful in its sentiments and execution. Our May selection was The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara, the author’s only novel written in her short life, and an absolute literary gem that I think should be studied, annotated, and revered as much as Ulysses by Joyce—easily belongs in the literary canon, and should be taught in schools across the nation.

💽 // Two new-to-me albums that I’ve been listening to are: “Ruby Vroom” by 90s band Soul Coughing (spotify), a kind of 90s alternative acid jazz album that is beautiful and chaotic and weird, and “The Cold Nose” by pre-Grizzly Bear band Department of Eagles (spotify), which was made by a bunch of asshole NYU music students but is a really funny, clever homage album to a bunch of different types of music (“Forty Dollar Rug” is my favorite track and I have been shouting its simple refrain in my mind for weeks now).

it is summer now, and we will be outside

I, as always, thank you for being here, and remain yours, ready to receive.