From The Layers
8:15 a.m. This week, I’ve been sleeping with and waking up to my phone. Not sure what prompted this attachment, but I hate it.
Heading to Philly to see Taylor. Nervous and overjoyed.
I’ve never been too pressed about delayed flights. Airports are both still and rushing with life. I feel closest to myself when there’s motion around me. I don’t want it to end. I don’t want to reenter the staleness of city systems. This life in the emptying and filling terminal belongs to me. I am mine and grateful that the plane gives me all the time my mind and heart need to soar.
The gorgeous piano conversations of Sonderling by Joep Beving waft through my headphones as I finish the last chapter of You Made A Food of Death With Your Beauty thirty-five thousand feet above the ground.
The Uber pulls to the curb at 2:00 a.m. Senegale music fills the car until we arrive at my Airbnb.
2:22 a.m. Fall, chest first, into the cloud of a bed and sleep
9:00 a.m. Prayer, water, Facetime with dinosaurs & bananas. “This one is extinct.” Miles says, “Did you know that, Daddy?” I do, but pretend I don’t just to see his face brighten with excitement and accomplishment.
I break a glass. I am tired and should be sleeping still. To think about it, I’ve been tired for years.
The human experience is all about disasters, no? Surviving those of others, creating our own, and healing from the layers. I think it’s why, if you’re lucky, a few similarly crushed folk actually see you in the rubble of your collected shards. All others love the small parts of you that make them feel shiny and try their damnedest to tolerate the pieces of you that are too sharp for them.
Tried to eat the worst Philly (chicken) cheese steak I’ve ever had.
The Uber driver writes horror and is pleasant but thinks I should write my own damned fish story.
Running hugs are the greatest when owned by a long-missed Taylor. She is thirteen now and beautifully expansive and stretches throughout any room and is absurdly good at dancing games on iPhones and can do a proper British accent and also really enjoys Japanese rock music. I pray she never stops bending the wind around her wings.
Bookstores, pizza, and (re)learning.
Philly Muslims all seem on edge. Yikes! Inshallah. Imma’ hand out chocolate-covered dates next time I’m here.
When she's done, Ways to Die in the Holland Tunnel will be a great collection of stories.
Attack of the bubbles and elders with hair dyed the color of sunset.
Here’s to connecting with old friends just before your flight, who have become lovelier with age. Here’s to the families who receive, hold, and release their hearts over and over again. So happy for you, Safa.
An airline agent argues with her husband and sees him in all of us.
Everyone is problematic to a cause.
Everyone is a hero to a cause.
Warm water & lime.
With all my heart…Té
