My Sabbatical
On absence, avoidance, and not giving up
February can be brutal, despite its shortness. Four weeks pass and suddenly you have gone from the beginning of a new year, full of promise, to March, which is almost spring. It’s jarring. The potential of 2025 sours, and suddenly the park is green again, full of crocuses and snowdrops, the daffodils are budding, and you can’t look at yourself in the mirror anymore.
I hate therapy. I have never found excessive inward searching to be helpful; it’s constant cycling over the negative lends itself too easily to the neurotic. I would prefer long walks and tennis and gardening and hunting, like a turn of the century English gentlewoman. I guess a lot of them kill themselves, so maybe it is not an apt comparison, but FOR ME, not “letting the side down,” as it were, fixes a lot of my problems.
I cried a lot, but maybe not enough. I am a huge baby, I cry at everything: the swell of music in a trailer for a children’s movie is enough to do me in, but sometimes in intense situations I will have to quiet myself and try to hold it in. People say that crying is healthy as a release of emotion that would otherwise lodge as chronic pain in your shoulders and hip flexors, body keeps the score style. I was agnostic about this kind of thing, but recently have been using yoga blocks to unlock tension in my traps and suboccipitals, two places that seem to be emotional wells where I do feel somewhat chronically tight. My hips on the other hand don’t usually feel tight, but working with a kettlebell to “press” out the roughness there does increase my feelings of safety and security. I’m giving myself grace in the form of giving into the most woo-woo beliefs; I hope that by doing so, I will be able to *believe* enough to actually heal my emotional responses via somatic stretching, and journaling, and putting my bare feet in the budding grass, and eating spoonfuls of sea moss, and pressing meridian points. I realize that a lot of this is luxurious, and smacks of overconsumption, but not the way that I am doing it now.
I spent a week at my parents’ house; they live in a major city but for the past five years when I go visit them I am essentially isolated to their neighborhood, by choice. I don’t drive and staying local feels like I could possibly be in a small town. We arrived at the tail end of a week of rain, so everything looked extraordinarily fecund. The wildflowers were blooming, the fruit trees were beginning to bud, and it all makes my heart hurt. After all, these things arrive only to disappear – the buds on the avocado trees will eventually turn to avocados that will be fought over by my parents and the neighborhood squirrels, or eaten and then promptly thrown up by my dog. Everything good and beautiful comes only to leave again, it is all so fleeting. I think that is part of the draw of Los Angeles; come here, we don’t have the beauty of fall because there is barely a winter, all that is green will mostly stay green, unless it is burnt to a crisp.
My mom has mint and lemon balm in the backyard, they are both essentially weeds and my thirst for their calming tea does very little to diminish their growth. My mom and dad are set in their routines and do not like a lot of chatting; I use my time there to raid my mom’s collection of books and walk 7 miles a day. I quit drinking coffee because of an upsurge in my recurrent insomnia. I slept a lot. I found it all to be boring but healing. When I got back to my apartment there was a dove nesting in a pot on the fire escape outside the kitchen windows. She sometimes leaves the nest, and I can see two eggs. It feels auspicious: the symbol of peace is currently nursing her hopes for the future. She does not seem to be bothered by me, though I spend a lot of time in her face (the oven is right next to the window). I sometimes see her husband visit her. I try not to think about what will happen when the babies are born; I do not want to fill my life with unnecessary grief via worries about the future anymore. I am not afraid
.
My favorite recent books:
No Room at the Morgue and Skeletons in the Closet by Jean-Patrick Manchette: A French detective story a la Raymond Chandler, whom I love. Get them from the library and read them in a day. These would also make great gifts for a Dad or Grandmother. I am waiting for similar books by Patrick Modiano and Georges Simeon.
Shame by Annie Ernaux: I nodded the entire time. Yes, adolescence takes a whole lifetime to unpack and process.
Cheri and the Last of Cheri by Colette: turns hetero relationship dynamics on their head, imagine a younger man acting like a bitch all the time and being always forgiven because of his beauty. Colette is a lot like Didion in her desire for fame and fortune and praise, but her prose is short and to the point where Didion’s is flowery. I read an old copy that was translated in the 70s, but NYRB has just published a new translation of “The Pure and the Impure.”
My favorite recent food:
Pickles: cut garlic, jalapeno, carrots, and cabbage into bite sized pieces. Boil the jar and lid to sterilize then add your vegetables to the jar in pretty layers, and then add in a mixture of half white distilled vinegar, half water, and a tablespoon of salt that has been boiled and cooled. Put the lid on and let sit on your counter for 2 weeks. Use the brine in salad dressings or to heal a hangover.
One ingredient prep: We are doing our 12 week cut right now so here are some of the things I have on hand that can be made into a meal:
Salad Greens (remember that arugula doesn’t last long, and kale needs a lot of work to be pleasant to eat.)
Rainbow Vegetables (You need to be eating the rainbow. Radishes, carrots, beets, and celery are all delicious raw, steamed, or roasted)
Frozen Broccoli (it can be roasted from frozen with just oil spray, salt, and a very hot oven)
Frozen Turkey Burgers (these also cook from frozen)
Baked Potatoes and Baked Sweet Potatoes (so much better when made in the oven, but I hate waiting the requisite hour. I will cook them on Sundays and keep them in the fridge wrapped in foil to round out a meal)
Sardines / Tuna / Trout in cans (lovely on a salad or toast or over rice)
Hot Sauce, Kimchi, Pickles (necessary for dieting. The green cholula is my favorite hot sauce right now)
I will be posting regularly again, thank you and love you~~~
Liv