Make your body into a house
Make your body into a house
On crying in public in New York City
I am a crier. It’s pretty much the only way my body releases emotion — sadness, frustration, anger, fear but also joy, gratitude, relief. Often multiple emotions at once! Sometimes mixed with shame for crying in an inappropriate setting! Although I try not to shame myself anymore, try to accept the tears as inevitable and ride the waves of them. From Heather Christle’s The Crying Book:
Maybe we cannot know the real reason why we are crying. Maybe we do not cry about, but rather near or around. Maybe all our explanations are stories constructed after the fact.
Yesterday I cried in public and I love New York City because you can walk down the street with tears streaming down your face and no one gives you a second glance. It’s not that they don’t notice, it’s just that it’s fairly normal to process one’s emotions outside here and unless you clearly need help, people will just leave you to it.
I found myself in Union Square and laughed because I have cried in Union Square so many times. Once, in 2005, I full-on wept in the Verizon store at the corner of Broadway and E. 17th Street. I wasn’t crying about the terrible customer service, but rather around the fact of my culture shock, having just moved to the city and understanding nothing about how to navigate it, and near my fear that I would never fit in here. Ironically, crying ugly tears in Union Square, sipping from the bottle of water that the Verizon rep gave me, I began to feel more belonging in this place. Maybe a place is only yours once you’ve cried in it.
That memory is almost a happy one now. How far we’ve come, New York.
Yesterday, I bought myself an insanely overpriced ice cream cone and stood on the far end of the subway platform, waiting for the Q train. The train pulled into the station and the conductor had a big smile on his face. On the train, there were three young women dressed to go out, playing loud music and vaping and generally being disruptive in the way that young men are more likely to be and this made me so happy. “People say I look like Doja Cat,” one of the young women said proudly. I hope they had a fun night. My friend Sarah texted me a silly meme and I laughed very loudly. I was the crying laughing lady eating an ice cream cone on the train.
This morning I pulled The Emperor from my tarot deck and read the corresponding passage from Jessica Dore’s Tarot for Change, which included this bit:
The Emperor is the fourth card of the major arcana and the number four is associated with grounding, like the four corners of a house or a table. Make your body into a house or a table when you feel afraid.
From The Crying Book again:
People cry in response to art, more frequently to music. Poetry gets claimed second. People can even cry about architecture.
I can confidently say I have cried about, near, and around architecture, though architecture is actually my go-to to stop tears. When someone says, “Go to your happy place,” I go here. Make your body into a house, a glass house with sunlight streaming right through it.
This week in reading
I finished Sloane Crosley’s Grief is for People. The book starts with Crosley experiencing two losses exactly one month apart: first, she loses her grandmother’s jewelry to an apartment burglar, and then she loses her closest friend to suicide. The way she documents how grief twists the weight of the burglary in her mind, making her think that if she can just find the jewelry she can bring her friend back, fascinated me. I found the book moving as a grief memoir and nuanced as cultural commentary. Crosley reads the audiobook and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to her tone of dry amusement at her past self. Recommend.
This week in writing
I keep dipping in and out of half-drafted essays, maybe trying to finish a few more. I have my Rockford essay to begin. I might do that this afternoon.
I also did a little submitting and pitching! 🤞
Love to you all.