Sundaze: reacclimating

charles harper webb’s how to live

I went to Emily Chertow’s jazz & journaling on friday after the most chaotic week and dissipated into the pen.

“Check in with yourself.”

“I find myself writing only when I feel heavy. From now on, I’ll write about the little things, the things we overlook. I’ll write the way 9 year old Aaisha wrote.

Today, I went to the park. Saw a cool leaf.”

Which brings me to my current state. How do you come back to regular life after a trip?

Disconnect before reconnecting. Binge watch One Day, twice, back to back. Have a large pizza topped with mushroom and pina. Go to Emily’s jazz & journaling in McCarren’s Parkhouse. I always reach for a comfort show or a comfort meal to come back to my city.

The second step is then trying to find a remnant of the trip locally. I went on a solo trip to Colombia between jobs a few years ago and came back on the hunt for pandebono and agua panela. I finally found a place in Queens that scratched the itch in the bottomless pit that is my stomach.

Find your friends or mom or partner and snuggle. That’s it. No notes.

Keep moving. I like to ease back into it with a yoga class and lots of walking. I walk to all my favorite corners of the city, almost to make sure nothing has changed while I was gone. Coffee shop still making my latte. Check. Sunny’s still selling petite bouquets. Yes. Sunset over park. Mhm.

I am reacclimating. Haven’t fully processed my emotions from the past trip but also not rushing to. In the peak hours of jetlag, catch the sunrise, clean the apartment, buy flowers from the morning market. I am pacing myself. For now, I am writing about things that feel light, eating jerk chicken and candied yams, binge-watching One Day.

A prompt from Emily’s journaling class was reading a poem by Charles Harper Webb, “How to Live”, and then writing your version of it. Excerpt below.

Eat lots of steak and salmon and Thai curry.

Kick-box three days a week. Stay strong and lean.

Play guitar in a rock band.

Read Dostoyevsky, Whitman, Kafka, Shakespeare, Twain.

Collect Uncle Scrooge comics.

Love freely. Treat ex-partners as kindly as you can. Wish them as well as you're able.

Snorkel with moray eels and yellow tangs.

For today’s prompt:

I invite you to write your “How to Live.”

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Solo date idea: Find a workshop or community near you, meet new people. If you’re in the New York area, here are a few accounts to follow on instagram:

@journalingclasses

@artgurl__

@happymedium

@apstudiobk

@storytellnyc

@reading_rhythms

@nycdrawingroom

@asalaromas

Song I listened to while writing today’s prompt here. Shuffled to this.

Gracias mis amores and Shaban Mubarak,

Aaisha