Love Is Strange

Last night I was coming home from a screening down on Houston Street. It had been a long day, with some arduous ice-chopping and shoveling to get my car out of its current hock, and my muscles ached, but they felt good. It was raining, and the banks of snow (dirty ice really) are still piled up at every corner and along the curbs, but the night was strangely beautiful nevertheless. I went to my screening, and then headed back uptown to take the bus home. It was 9:15, and I’m usually getting into bed by then, but I was talking myself down from the little cliff of anxiety about my sleep, a little mantra: “It’s okay, Sheila, you can sleep in tomorrow, you’ll make it up.” I was listening to my iPod as I made my way to the F train, and then transferred to the A train. I got off at 42nd Street, and walked through the underground passageway to the escalators leading up to the street-level. And as I disembarked from the train, the Everly Brothers’ “Love Is Strange” came on, and for a brief moment, I don’t know how long it lasted, maybe 100 feet, or 200? as I walked through that busy underground passage, the music not only surrounded me but felt like it lifted me up into the air. A warm sense of ultimate well-being flooded through my body, something I almost never experience, and it was such a happy sensation, so all-encompassing, that it is still with me today, at least the memory of it. It was sharp, and sweet. It was powerful. The moment I had with the angel in that same underground passageway was not exactly the same, but it had a similar echo. I felt that when I looked at her I was in the presence of something truly healing, and that is not something you expect in that bustling tiled passageway filled with commuters and lunatics.

Last night, I felt that the feeling had to do with the song, the song clearly brought it on, but there had been something trembling throughout the day, as annoying as parts of it were. It was a sense that I am doing what I have to do, and I am busy, but not overwhelmed by it, and I have plans and things I need to do and move from back burner to front, but I have faith that I will get to all of it. I don’t have that sense of desperate grasping for a handhold which was my normal mindset for, like, ever. I still have my moments, and I still wonder how I will get everything done, and I worry about money and health insurance, but obsessive worry is now forbidden, and I am learning techniques to stop such thoughts (it actually can be done! Color me amazed!), and not having such thoughts ambush me has really swept the landscape clean. There’s still wreckage and debris, stuff left over, and I still trip sometimes. But it is incredible how the mind can be trained to break thought-patterns and destructive habits. And what is left in its place is nothing specific, nothing “happy” or “good” – what is left in its place is SPACE, pure and simple. That space could be filled with anything. Sometimes it is filled with grief and sadness, that’s okay, although it sucks, those things are a part of life. Sometimes it is filled with … nothing. Like, nothing is going on except what is in the moment. Petting Hope, reading a book, going running, cooking, laughing with Allison. “Nothing” has been impossible for me for years. I can’t even explain what that was like. It’s different than just being overwhelmed by the stresses of life. Never having “nothing” going on meant that worry – in a global way, about how I would “end up”, “what would happen to me”, the knowledge that I would come to a bad end at my own hand, it was just a matter of when, all of THOSE kinds of worries sap the pleasure out of life, and makes it impossible for “nothing-ness” to exist. I’m getting into a groove with “nothing”. I’m far too busy to have “nothing” going on on a regular basis, and my doctors still think I am too hard on myself. Doctor #1 said to me last week, “You need to do things just because they are fun to do.” My dad used to say that to me too. He never had to worry about my work ethic, my self-discipline, my drive to make things happen and do well in life. But he did worry about the fact that I never had any fun, never prioritized fun, and rarely let off any steam. He wanted me to enjoy life. That’s pretty much the best attitude for a father to have towards his child! Anyway, I didn’t set out to write all of this. It’s just that the feeling I got as I walked through that subway passage, almost floating above the tiles as the Everly Brothers’ swoon harmonies filled my ears, was so unique, so beautiful, that the reverb of it has lasted.

I am learning. I don’t need to have an office job now so my time is my own. I have work, and then I have “nothing”. I prioritize both. Or, I am learning to do so. So when I work, I WORK. And when I do “nothing”, I do NOTHING. (Nothing meaning: reading, Supernatural – obvi – taking a bath, doing laundry, seeing friends, dates with the Hitachi which I mention because it’s almost as important as exercise in terms of having a good day vs. having a bad day, and I also mention it because I have no shame, cooking, shoveling, whatever.) It’s a delicate balance and I don’t always manage it. Time gets ahead of me. I race to catch up. But the “nothing” helps slow me the fuck down.

My Everly Brothers-accompanied floating swoon last night in that highly-trampled urban passageway was clear evidence that I am doing something very very right. I slept like a baby.