Weekly Reflections, Week 1

It seems too easy to say that things have changed, and yet, in the midst of this particularly difficult year, I find myself clinging to any sense of ease that happens to presents itself. Relationships have changed, shifted under the immense weight of passing time like the shifting of the tide. Institutions have changed. What was once the foundation from which a sense of routine and purpose grew, has now crumbled, only to be patched up and put together by the likes of tape and glue. What is left of college, the weeds growing on the razed landscape that was the comings and goings of classes and clubs, is the just simple reminder that “virtual connection” is nothing but an oxymoron. So things have changed. And what makes college so unique is against the soft and mundane drum of its constant and subtle evolutions, how easily one can feel so abandoned by a place that has the power to all consume.

What I am having a hard time grappling with is that, in the midst of all this change, I feel in some ways almost stagnant, suspended in time, contained in space, like a bear hibernating in winter, protecting itself from the elements’ wrath. When you look around my apartment, there are teacups everywhere. Books are strewn across every table in the same way pillows are thrown on a couch, with a deliberate carelessness. The yoga mat that is usually tucked in the corner by the door is unfurled on the stained white rug. There are clothes on the floor of my bedroom, but the counters in the kitchen are well kept and wiped down. This is home and also a world beyond. Hand-washed dishes drip dry on the rack next to the sink. Two of the four chairs at my kitchen table sport half-empty bags from one or another grocery run or a day at work. Sneakers have been left out, not returned to the now empty wicker basket in which they are meant to be kept. These are the marks of a busy life contained. Music is likely playing from the small speaker on the bookshelf by the window. Recently, I have been listening to a lot of new music on new Spotify radios that I have newly discovered. A candle is always burning. There are bobby pins everywhere. The room in which I sit is illuminated by the warm glow of fairy lights that weave between and curl around the corners of picture frames hung above my couch. The shrapnel of a mind on the outs with an institution that I am so steadfastly clinging to during my final year in its midsts, on the outs with itself, scattered across the living room floor. These are the things I find myself looking at for the better part of most days.

Things have changed and what change has the power to do is strip us of a sense of autonomy that I, in the earliest stages of adulthood, was already working so hard to hold on to. Autonomy, the power to think and make and act upon decisions for ourselves, providing some degree of control or power over the events that unfold within the goings-on of our everyday life. To no longer be stagnant in the midst of my own clutter, sprawled out before me in every corner of my apartment, I am going to be writing these reflections, reminders of the ways in which I am slowly coming to not only reclaim, but also hold on to a sense of autonomy in a world on the outs with itself.

I woke up at 5:30 this morning. I had to set an alarm, although I was not tired when I awoke. I love the mornings, I love to find productivity in their silences. I picked up my tea cups, four of them, one on the table by my bedside, one on the coffee table, two on the kitchen table, and I put them in the sink. I plugged in the fairy lights and sat down at the chair by the window and began to write.

How are you doing this week? Are you coming to terms with change? Or are you pushing back against its every tremor? Do you take comfort in how temporary everything is?

on repeat

scenes from the week

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Things I’m Loving

~almond milk lattes with cinnamon and nutmeg

~freshly squeeze lemon juice. I add this to lemon water in the morning, salad dressings, smoothies, roasted salmon, you name it, it probably has lemon in it

~David and Goliath, by Malcolm Gladwell (September read!)

~hygge. burning a lot of candles and drinking hot tea (is it fall yet?!)

~These articles from the NYT and the New Yorker: How to get the most out of college and Late Bloomers

~Listening to NPR’s Code Switch and Arm Chair Experts on long morning walks. (Did I mention morning walks?!)

~gold hoop earrings, the perfect accessory