Changing My Mind About Time

 I am a fan of string theory. At least what I think I know about it. I recall watching a PBS documentary on the subject and thinking to myself that this explains everything. The idea that we exist on multiple plains at the same time enacting variants of our choices that lead to different outcome and thus different realities was a pleasant ordering of surrealism that resonated. I figured that for all the vastness of possibilities that exist in the universe, surely our lives - both physical and spiritual- could not be reduced the linearity that we have adopted. That made less sense than a million of me existing at the same time moving about life. I am thinking that maybe I should stop referring to myself as "I" or "me", but rather "us" and "we", as a proclamation of my vastness? At the bare minimum, knowing that in some parallel universe, I am getting various parts of my life right puts me at ease. 

Yesterday I spoke with my baby sister, as we always do, about random life stuff. Usually work, purpose, and the feeling that this cant be it. I mentioned string theory and how I am starting to think differently about time and existence. Unlike her, I do believe that once the energy that is you is spun into motion, you will never stop spinning. How you show up and when is a matter of choosing. Today I am Simone. Yesterday I might have been a spider. Tomorrow I might just decide it makes the most sense to just float in the ether. The way that I see it is existing is like musical chairs or speed dating. We keep moving about in search of that thing. I still haven't figure out what that thing is. Interconnectedness? Elucidation? Presence? I don't know. Lately I keep hearing a whisper that says get out of your head and rest in your body. This same voice suggests that there is no future and the past fades melts away like a cheese curl on your hot tongue. Stay in my body in this moment because this is all there is. That voice kinda challenges the idea of infinite being in some ways. If I am resting in this body in this moment, then are the other versions of me doing the same? Is that the point?

This is why I love string theory but try not to sit with it too long. I don't have the answers and the dots don't always connect. Its dizzying. A maze that can consume.

An entire year of living in New York slipped past me undetected. Its odd because I am constantly marking time; running to a finish line at which I am sure there is no prize awaiting me. Just another race to be ran. I don't know if I have been swallowed whole  by the strange nature of this pandemic, where time feels irrelevant, or if finally, I have landed somewhere that doesn't feel existentially threatening. I simply stop keeping time. Maybe its the pang of finality? While 40 is still spry, its not youth. I am not young and the changes in my body have become a sort of alarm clock. Yes time is ticking but I am no longer interested watching the hour long and second hands move about. It doesn't really mean much. At some point I'll spin out of this form into another. Its inevitable and to keep watch of it feels torturous. I suppose that we use time as a whip or flog to spur us into action; hence the sayings "time isn't on your side" or "time is of the essence". But is it really? If I fail to do something on this plain, according to string theory, I did in fact do that thing in the time given... or at some point. This again comforts me. We never really miss out on anything in life... if we are part of a vast network of self.

Somewhere in this universe, Simone has already left New York. Simone is leaving New York. Simone never made it to New York. In this one, I do not lament my decision to stay. Maybe this is the reality where I do not count the days but instead I live them.

Since the advent of this pandemic, gentle nudges have commingled with unnerving jolts of mortality. At the height of this pandemic, NY witnessed 900 plus COVID-related deaths a day, and this is what they could account for. For some reason this number, though high, was never alarming enough to break me. I thought about all of the people who transition on any given day and reemerge anew the next (if we are holding on to my machinations about string theory). It brought to mind the refrain of "(s)he left before their time". If we are recycling and existing in multiple possibilities, then, again, they haven't gone anywhere. This might sound callous or flippant of me. I lost my 43 year old cousin 2 years ago, and I am convinced that he still exists...somehow, somewhere... and maybe he is better in this way. Maybe Montrell is part of the ether, or maybe he is split neatly among his two great nephews and niece that were born shortly after his transition. He's here, and that's all I can know for certain. That truth is buried deep in my gut.

[I pause to cry]

My tears remind me that I am trying to rationalize and give reason to something that is beyond my comprehension. I just know that we never really leave. We just keep spinning, and spinning, and spinning, like Whirling Dervishes. Keeping the motion gives us meaning. It gives us life.

By the way centrifugal motion of spinning out is key to string theory: In string theory, spin is understood by the rotation of the string; For example, a photon with well-defined spin components (i.e. in circular polarization) looks like a tiny straight line revolving around its center.

When we spin well, it all looks like a long straight line with a start and end... this life. But in fact its not. Nothing is ever linear. Its the lie we tell ourselves to make sense of the world. Life and everything about it, including time, is generative. One motion begets another. One possibility spins out a million others.

[I pause to think]

I imagine that life might make more sense if we stopped believing that there is a stop and start to everything, and started to believe that we exist on an infinite continuum. Maybe we wouldn't rush. Maybe we would value pausing because there is no rush. Maybe I wouldn't need the constant internal reminders to be still and be in my body in this moment. I'd intuitively know that being here is enough - just focus on the force of my spin and the vastness it creates.

I don't have the words to make this make sense and I do not yet know how to convey intuition and inner knowing in a way that feels tangible; something that minds can grip. I don't feel that its my job to convince you, the reader, of this illogical logic. I just wanted to plant a seed that causes us to question these social contracts we have entered into. I feel like we all know this in one way or another, and I've just decided to not turn a blind eye to it anymore. Time and space as we know them are ruinous and fatalistic. Life is too glorious to be ruined by a chosen shortsightedness. I'm trying to settle in my vastness.

Changing My Mind About Home

According to the counting app on my phone, I am now 165 days into pandemic induced exile, and I am feeling the weight of it in ways that I haven't previously experienced it. I have been restless in my tiny little apartment. Cooking is no longer soothing; it has been reduced to a grey-tinted chore. Afternoon naps that I once relished have given way to lying in my bed scrolling the internet, remembering to buy things that I had no prior memory of needing. My dogs now look at me as if I am getting on their last nerve. The monotony of it all is a brick wall that I have crashed into in slow motion. Amidst this wreckage, I have been pondering life choices, which upon closer reflection, might be too heavy for this moment, although the abundance of languishing time yields itself quite nicely to this kind of torture. Friends close and near always ask of me "How is NYC treating you?". A closer confidant asked me "How am I feeling about being in New York right now?" This is a more befitting question, as it causes me to be honest. And as if I am wearing a cloak woven by Veritas herself, I am able to say "I miss the city and wandering through it, but I don't know what this place actually is without that. And as such, I don't know my purpose in being here." Yes, I could easily get in my car and head south on I-87, wandering through the Bronx to the Isle of Manhattan, but as a recent transplant, I'd only jut begun to adapt to NY in its pre-COVID existence. That in an of itself took a lot. I don't know that I have the energy to learn it anew. If I stay, I know that this is now part of the syllabus. A master course in flexibility. I tire just thinking about it. I suppose that I am lucky in that if I decide to leave, there is always home, or the place that carries the moniker. The South is the devil that I know best. The one that creeps into my thoughts and my speech when I am deep into an emotion, good or bad. Recently, when I got a call that suddenly my mom had to have a kidney removed, I seriously considered waltzing with that demon once again. There is a subtle joy and agony in thinking about being home. The Brazilians call this saudade. The emotion of an unexpected health crisis coupled with missing the idea of a thing had me ready to pack it all up and figure out how to get back home. In the time since that phone call, I've talked to my family and they seem to be well in spite of my physical absence. What would I be rushing back to other than the mental machinations of being tethered to home and falsely believing that I am needed? While I am loved and will always have a place there, there is a clear reason why I left. I am not needed there. To realize this is sobering, but you would think after nearly 4 years away, it wouldn't knock the wind out of me the way that it does. Moving to New York was always meant to allow me to sit in the idea of needing myself and giving her all of the love, care, and attention she required to be whole and full. Stripped of distractions, I now realize that what I am needing is a place to belong. One of my favorite quotes, and ironically, the one I butcher most often, is "the place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it". When he uttered this words, James Baldwin found him self deep inside a phases of incessant wandering, looking to escape American tyranny and the angst created a world that never seemed to open up enough to accommodate someone like him. I've not wandered globally for extended periods of time, but like Baldwin, I have found it hard to stay put in any one place for very long and not be met with the feeling of being out of place. I am reading a book and in it the author, far away from home, finds herself in Burundi, uncomfortable, but unwilling to relent. She says something that is reminiscent of what my former trainer used to say about completing repetitions: "...the moment you want to leave is probably when you should try hard to stay." Like her, I stay because I don't know where else I'd go at this moment. Unlike her, I don't think that I have given myself permission to continue the process of personal exploration. The process of making. The process of unfurling. I still don't know who I am if I am not crumpled tightly. I don't know the terrain of my edges and ending well enough to ascertain fit. Even in my attempts to open up, I am still wrinkled and worn by the creasing of my need for safety, stability.... predictability. Things that I can control. Being in New York was always meant to thrown me into things I cant control; things that pull me apart so that I could discard what no longer worked and reconfigured the bits and pieces that do work, while leaving room for new things to take hold. I don't know that I am doing such a good job of that in the midst of this pandemic. I find myself wanting to recoil, and in many ways I have. I don't venture out much, and I use this pandemic as a fitting excuse not to. Its all a lie though; pretext at its worst. I am ready to run again; not knowing where I am running to or how long before I come up with another excuse to run again. Hearkening to the whispers of Baldwin's quote, I feel like maybe I have given up trying to make a home. I spend too much time entertaining the "what ifs" that I don't know the true nature of "what is". I fancy myself on notions that home is on the other side of another move. Again, its a lie that I have told myself so many times before. I've moved a lot and I still evade doing the work of creating a sense of belonging. I reasoned that maybe I am not at home in my own body, having real experiences, interacting with places and things in real time. Place becomes a convenient scapegoat for avoiding hard things... I often wondered what would have become of me if I stayed in places that I fled? Who would I be now if I just dug my heels in and resolved to stay beyond the moment I felt like leaving? I don't linger in this thought process long because it wont change my current situation. So yeah, living in New York during a pandemic is not what I'd imagined it would be, but that doesn't mean that I cant continue to deconstruct a tightly-wound me such that I can finally touch the raw edges. Feel what I need and figure out a way to make me home no matter where I might find myself. There is no need to flee New York, I tell myself. Its not the thing that is making this hard. It's me and I'm running out of energy trying to escape her. I have to make peace with this home I call self.