And the hum and rumble, and click and clack, and whip and whoosh form an orchestra all around me, as my body flies under the earth. Then, suddenly – the train slows to a stop, mid-tunnel. I look up and that’s when I see it…

When the train starts moving, everything outside melts over the window past me, slowly and then very quickly. A flurry of light and tile. A clunk of iron. The wheels munch on rubble-crumble. The birds outside hear a low hum under the earth. This is the secret place underground where time bends itself.

When the train starts moving, it sends vibrations up the bottoms of my feet and into my legs and I remember I have legs. It’s an odd sensation and a sort of comforting one, feeling my legs. I’d forgotten I had legs for a while. I’d forgotten I had most of my body, when I was back in the black.

When the train starts moving, I think about how I ate breakfast too quickly – a couple pieces of whole grain toast; a large mug of lukewarm tea. It got lukewarm because I let it steep for too long (typical). There goes time again, moving the heat out of my tea when I forget about it.

When the train starts moving, I look up and around and see people have face masks on. The year is 2021 and people have face masks on. The year is 2021, which makes me grateful it’s not 2017. (2021 collectively kicks rocks, but 2017 was worse. Much worse. Horrific. For me, anyway.) It’s nice to know that time is moving my body further and further away from 2017. Good thing time only moves in one direction. Time is quite reliable in that way. Predictable.

I know I just said time is predictable, but I might be wrong. Or, it’s only half-true. Time’s direction is predictable; but its pace isn’t. Its pace seems to answer to another master. For example, why did March feel so long and April so short? And May has been stop-and-go like this train I’m on. Why does time fly when we don’t want something to end? And other times, crawl so slow I could scream. Drag on so long it feels like it’s standing still, very still, having its portrait painted. If you’re lucky, time will get quiet and lag while something unutterably good is happening. This is rare.

An example: once upon a time, the year was 2011 and my chestnut eyes locked with a pair of jade ones. Everything felt like it stopped. Everything. It was a July. It was a Wednesday. It was a cool, inky kind of evening. Everything stopped moving and the stars stared down at us until they were dizzy, and Orion’s belt vibrated, and an invisible hourglass got knocked on its side. After ten years, I remember that night like it just happened last night. I think in those slowed-down moments, time pauses long enough to tattoo part of the moment to us. Almost like an apology. Almost as if to say: “I wish I could stop here longer but I can’t. I am unable to take breaks. I’m not at liberty to play favorites. But sometimes, I can drag my steps out a little, slow them down for you – like an explosion in an action-movie that lurches across the screen in slow-motion. Only for a moment. A crumb of a second. And from this crumb, you’ll make a cake; and you’ll ration it for the rest of your life so you can eat from it in all the years that follow.”

When the train starts moving, my legs become still. My arms nap in my lap. It’s 2021. It’s a May. It’s a Monday. And my past is whispering to me. It croaks out faint colors and shades of memories, it gurgles little messages. There are textures to my flashbacks. Some feel like jelly, others are jagged and sharp. Others make every organ and blood vessel in me freeze. My eyes twitch and flutter.

I am sitting in this time machine headed downtown. It glides across a different dimension. There’s no sunlight. No signs of earth outside. Just tunnels rolling through, this way and that. Me sitting with other meek, tender human bodies, dressed in so many colors, eyes to the floor, minds elsewhere and beyond. These are fellow travelers. We are all elsewhere and beyond.

With the train traveling and the faces breathing through masks and the mumbling of the tracks and my hands napping in my lap, I close my eyes and float backwards. I go anywhere I want: 2011. 1996. 2015. 2004. 1994. 2009, Last Month, inside a shiny metal tube that cruises through the dark, and I am completely swallowed up and it’s good. It’s good here. It’s good to be in the dark, where I can remember who I am; where my past and I can lock eyes, and gently, I can feel my now-10-year-old hands resting in my lap. And the hum and rumble, and click and clack, and whip and whoosh form an orchestra all around me, as my body flies under the earth.

Then, suddenly—

The train slows to a stop, mid-tunnel. I look up and that’s when I see it: through the pitch-black window, Time peers into the train car. It has crackling, obsidian eyes. Just above them, I see all the upcoming stops on the screen disappear. They are replaced with the titles of memories, hopes and fears. They are replaced with ages I used to be, names of people I’ve loved, and dreams I don’t tell anyone about. My blood runs cold. A train conductor comes over the speaker and announces: this train will be making express stops, we apologize for the delay, we should be moving momentarily. I look back at the window and it’s empty. All around me, everyone’s eyes are shut and fluttering. Everyone is elsewhere and beyond. I feel uneasy. I don’t want to be elsewhere and beyond anymore. I want to be right here. I want to be in this train car in 2021. I want to be where my body is and only where my body is. I’ve been elsewhere and beyond countless times. I’ll only be right here in this moment once. Just once.

I keep my eyes wide open. My now-adult hands feel heavy in my lap and my feet feel like bricks against the floor and I remember that I have legs and a deep breath tumbles out of my mouth.

This is when the train starts moving again. Time reappears at the window through the dark and winks at me.

…why does it feel like she could eat the world?

She has had to learn to make herself delectable. Not fully a woman, but with all the illusion and perfume behind the fog machine of femininity. She exits the bathroom through a plume of powder and steps onto the tightrope. She’s rouged in plummy purples and peachy pinks, glazed in silky glitters and juicy gels. She has a higher education in pretending she likes all the things you like. An expert at pouring her personality into a silicone mold and letting it set overnight, just how you like it. She tucks away the parts of herself you might find challenging; hides them behind the button in her high-waisted jeans.

She makes herself smell like cookies. She tells herself she has to shave her body all over so she’s smooth and shiny like marble. Sometimes she feels that looking perfect for a boy is more about survival than seduction. Heaven forbid you see her armpit hair. Or worse, the hair on her upper lip—OH! THE HORROR. Maybe her body hair disgusts you because it reveals she has opinions—and opinions would make her “difficult.” Less manageable.

When she was little, in the throes of a temper tantrum, bellowing in anger for the world to hear, her dad told her girls don’t get angry. That it’s not pretty. That it’s not lady-like. That it’s not serious, true anger—like her brother’s. Or like his. So then why does it feel like she could eat the world?

In womanhood, instead of eating the world, she eats a pill at the same time everyday so you don’t have to worry about becoming a father and so she doesn’t have to worry about becoming a single mother, or about getting an abortion. But mainly, it’s because it’s you who coos: “I don’t like condoms,” like it’s cute. So, her body is automatically volunteered as tribute, and over time, a steady hormonal feed fills her breasts with lumps and her brain with chaos. It’s her with the annual date at her gyno’s office. It’s her feet up on cold metal stirrups. It’s her cervix being scraped and prodded. It’s her waiting for lab results.

The artificial butter on the popcorn is this: she’s taught it’s her who has to keep you. You: the one who won’t shower for hours after going to the gym. You: the one who doesn’t use lotion (apart from the sad one on your nightstand). You: who has no skin care routine and saves hundreds and hundreds of dollars not buying beauty products. You: who has never owned a curling iron (or burned yourself on one). You: who can let all of your hair grow freely. You: whose body doesn’t get worshipped, shamed, sexualized, and degraded in the same breath. You: who feels entitled to the bodies of other people’s daughters—this legion of young women being yelled at to close their legs and open them at the same time; who stumble into their 20s dizzy with cognitive dissonance.

She is a one-woman show in the bedroom, playing all the different women from pornhub-dot-com who live rent-free in your head. She pretends she’s “into that stuff.” She tells herself to treat sex casually or she’ll become a casualty who’s written off as “clingy,” who’s demonized as some hostage-taker trying to tie you down and suffocate you. Meanwhile, it’s her who can’t breathe well as she watches you back away. It’s you who becomes more and more see-through. It’s you who vanishes through the wall like an apparition. You see, her track record is haunted being so full of ghosts.

She gets exhausted using all her muscles to walk the tightrope. The smell of her perfume gets nauseating. Her shoes make it hard to balance her hormone-riddled body. The concealer and mascara around her eyes congeal into a grey goo. Her vision gets blurry. The underwire of her bra is breaking tiny blood vessels around her ribs. She gets this awful sense that there is no end to the tightrope up ahead. Walking it so long, it seems she’s been duped. She starts to feel like a toy that’s lost its shine. Time and again she is placed on the top shelf like an old trophy, gleaming and glinting through the dust. And when she looks at the bottoms of her feet, she can see all the boys’ names there, written sloppily in black sharpie.

She takes herself out of rotation.

She lets her hair grow—all of it.

She remembers what she used to like to do when she was little. What she liked before boys became her sun and her dreams were sent to live on the moon—never full for long, always waxing and waning from focus.

She remembers how to say her name in her own voice. One in a lower register than the high-pitched note she’s been screeching for so long. The texture of it becomes richer and more grounded with gravel. Then, women on the earth below start to hear her on the tightrope, high up overhead. Wiser women who speak in the same tone as she does now. Wiser women who were once tightrope-walkers themselves. Wiser women who also used to have names written on the bottoms of their feet, names faded and worn now. Following this newfound voice, they float up alongside her, take hold of each hand, walk her off the tightrope and down out of the clouds.

With her sore feet on the grass at last, the earth pulls all the wreckage out of her. The names start to fade. She stops eating pills and her ovaries balance themselves out and the lumps in her breasts stop growing and her brain gets turned right-side up. Her skin is scrubbed clean by the hands of the wiser women and a shock of cold air hurtles into her lungs.

With her eyes clear and sharp, she watches the tightrope high above her head and listens for other voices that sound like hers. She becomes one of the wiser women. She has a trained ear now.

And even higher up, she can hear the moon and the sun switch roles, as her dreams take their rightful place in the center.

Here is where time gets zapped… Here is where we venture deeper into an everlasting, sweet-n-sour wormhole and further away from ourselves.

Open Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit. Scroll, scroll, scroll, double-tap, bookmark, comment witty comment, share post to story, scroll, scroll, rewatch story 3 times, scroll, double-tap, share meme with friend, scroll, share another meme with friend, check to see who watched story (did they watch it yet? not yet. that’s okay, it’s only been 6 minutes), scroll, screenshot useful post about banana pancakes, scroll, scroll, rewatch story, tap through everyone else’s stories, close Instagram. Feel sensation of restlessness surge through body, sigh deeply. Go to bathroom. Turn on shower. Wait for water to warm up, open Instagram again (oh good, they watched my story), make mistake of clicking on explore page, click on post about astrology, go down 14-post rabbit hole (oh wait, the water’s been running this whole time). Close Instagram. Shower. Come out, dry off, brush teeth, pick up phone again.

STOP.

What happens when you sit still? What happens when you put your phone down? What happens when you actually feel the weight of your body planted where you are? Why is it so uncomfortable to put your phone down? What Loch Ness monster slinks under the surface when your attention isn’t hijacked by the rectangle in your hands?

Everything on our phones exists in a vacuum of blue light. Here is where time gets zapped, attention span: zapped, self-worth: zapped, productivity: zapped, work ethic: zapped, energy: zapped, circadian rhythm: disrupted, dopamine: depleted, brain chemistry: altered. Here is where we venture deeper into an everlasting, sweet-n-sour wormhole and further away from ourselves. People are even recommending blue light glasses for our eyes and face creams with not just UV but also blue light protection for our skin. And more invasive than the blue light are the addictive algorithms of our beloved apps. They’re made this way on purpose, like little candies. And like candies, these algorithms are quietly rotting away our attention spans, among other things. We’ve become Hansel & Gretel traveling further into the gingerbread house with every swipe, double-tap, and scroll. And the witch who lives here only wants one thing: our viciously undivided attention.

You’re probably tempted to stop reading this now because I’m touching on something we both don’t want to hear. But don’t. Don’t stop reading. Because I have something that might help. I’m not here to tell you to stop using social media – I’m right next to you inside this cyber gingerbread house… But I am here to tell you that I know where the back door is. And that’s what I’m going to show you.

Follow me:

What happens when you stop scrolling and you sit still and you let your breath fall to the very bottom of your diaphragm? Deep, deep down where the well water is (aka your tummy). And everything that’s troubling you in this moment, everything you’re trying to anesthetize with your scrolling, allow all of that to drop down to the bottom of the well, as well. Let it all drop. Your breath, your hips, your head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes. Allow your breath to be the vessel that carries your worries, your fears, your insecurities, your restlessness, all of it, down to the bottom where your stomach can digest it. Try it now. Get your eyes off this screen and take a few deep breaths, focusing on the sensation of everything dropping way down. [Do not keep reading until you’ve done so, please and thank you.]

Did you do it? Okay good, now you can continue:

Want to try something cool? If yes, continue reading. If no, exit out and go back to scrolling (no one will know…except you though…)

INSTRUCTIONS: Allow your body to follow through this next paragraph. All you have to do is place your attention on each part of your body as I mention it, one at a time. And to quote my favorite band, Radiohead, Go Slowly (listen to the song here):

Your toes, your toenails, the soles of your feet rooting you, the little hairs on the tops of your feet (yes, we all have them), your Achilles, your shins, your calves, (take your time) the backs of your knees where it feels ticklish, your strong knee caps, the sides of your knees that sometimes like to high-five coffee table corners, your quads, the softness of your inner thighs, your tough hamstrings, your hips that square you to face everything, your glutes that you’re probably sitting on right now, your lower back, your reproductive organs, your belly button that once connected you to your mother, your waist, your gut that digests both food and fear and sends you little intuitive messages, your ribs like two perfect cages, your solar plexus between them where your dreams live – begging you to take a shot on them, to give them a chance, your nipples that are as unique as your personality, your chest plate guarding your heart, your arteries that send blood all over the map of your body, your spine that supports you like the trunk of a thick tree, your shoulders that are starting to drop away from your shy ear lobes, the space between your shoulder blades where grownups used to put their hand to comfort you when you cried, the backs of your arms, your elbows which you can’t lick (though you’ve tried), your forearms, your quiet and resilient fingers, your hands that want to hold another set of hands, the sides of your neck where you like to be kissed, your throat through which your voice travels up and out – announcing your existence, your jaw that holds back the dam, your brave chin, your lips that are warm from the heat inside your mouth, each shining white tooth and your soft tongue dancing together as you talk and chew and sing and laugh and taste the world, your cheekbones high and mighty, your nose pointing you in the right direction, your ears gifting your soul with the holiness of music, your eyes that can never hide anything – with pupils as deep as outer space, your eyebrows: their umbrellas, your forehead that can soothe the rest of your body if you place your palm on it (try this), the top of your head where you used to have a soft spot, remember? And oxygen flowing into your life-giving lungs whose exhale carries ease to every corner of your being: physical and nonphysical. Did you forget this all started with talking about our phones? Do you see how little that matters now? Can you accept the magnificence of your own body and how it can rescue you?

And listen: our phones, computers, and tablets can be wildly useful and nothing short of miraculous. The issue is most of us are losing ourselves in them (and it’s not our fault). We lose time. We lose contact with our bodies. We press mute on our true dreams. If you can, only for a moment, return your focus to your body, it will refocus your attention. And in this refocusing, you’ll begin to hear something else. You’ll hear your dreams and your soul singing to you. A duet more fulfilling than anything the blue light vacuum could ever deliver. When you come back to your body, you come into contact with something else. Something much, much larger. That’s the back door out of the gingerbread house: returning to your body. Like Dorothy clicking her heels, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” So come back to it again and again. What if something good happens?

Oh, and one more useful (and vital) thing for the road: when I throw myself into a creative project, it makes social media feel distant and less appealing. Creativity is a diamond and social media is cubic zirconia. Creativity brings me closer to myself and social media carries me further away. Creativity is energizing and social media is draining. It is contact with my own body and contact with my own creativity that leaves me feeling like I haven’t left myself behind, covered in gingerbread crumbs. 

(Recommended Supplement: Tristan Harris’ veil-lifting article “The Slot Machine in Your Pocket”.)

If you could put a filter on a feeling, this would be it. Soft and airy like powdered sugar. Elusive like cotton candy when it hits your tongue.

The sun is in my face when I wake up. I’m on top of the covers, because it’s a sauna under my comforter. My alarm yells at me in a smug, self-satisfied sort of way, like it’s proud to still be employed during a pandemic. Why do I even use the alarm anymore? I don’t need to be anywhere. I could lie in bed all day if I wanted to, but that would be depressing. It’s June 13, 2020. It’s a Saturday, which doesn’t mean what it used to. A Saturday is a Tuesday is a Friday is a Monday is a Thursday is a Wednesday is a Sunday. They all go by so quickly, careening into each other.

I have to get up because my Pomeranian, River, needs to use the lavatory. I wrap her in a harness and reward her with little peanut butter treats. I step into a pair of worn sweatpants, slip-on sneakers, and pull a mask over my face. I pinch the hidden wire to fit around the bridge of my nose.

When we get back inside: shoes off. River’s paws are washed with warm water, polished with a wipe, and have paw balm massaged into them. Then, off come my outside clothes. The suggestion is twenty seconds, but I wash my hands for forty. Mask off. I tidy my bed and give River a dental chew to start her day. Then, an inky black gel pen and I sit down together. We dump all my festering thoughts onto paper for thirty minutes. The Pomeranian child parkours triumphantly around the living room, chew in mouth.

Now I feel a little better. I feel I’ve accomplished something. I look at the calendar on my computer and decide how to organize my unemployed day. Then, I commission a soundtrack from some Wes Anderson or Hayao Miyazaki film to restore a little wonder to my shelter-in-place wasteland (think: The Grand Budapest Hotel or Spirited Away).

~This is where something in the air changes. It starts with the music. If you could put a filter on a feeling, this would be it. Soft and airy like powdered sugar. Elusive like cotton candy when it hits your tongue. And then, the rest of the morning just seems to melt into place, like a dance~

It goes like this:

[Read quickly.] Day-old water from the kettle feeds the herbs in the windowsill. Fresh, cold water goes back into the kettle and murmurs over a bright blue flame. With music waltzing through my apartment and the kettle preparing to hit the high note of its solo, I brush my teeth, wash my face, finish with a rosewater mist, and press a sweet, cheap perfume oil into my wrists. It smells of oud wood and dark vanilla, which is the smell of my junior year of high school, which is the smell of pure nostalgia and enchantment.

Then, the grand finale approaches. The inside of a pearly-white teapot is soaked with bubbling hot water and stained with Earl Grey tea. Chilled oat milk is poured into a petite pitcher. A teacup clicks into place on its saucer with a small silver teaspoon at its hip. A round, pink breakfast plate is topped with fresh, homemade bread that’s encrusted with seeds. I split the roll open, steam rising as I slather it with butter and apricot jam. River’s dish is filled with soft sweet potatoes, a drop of olive oil, a fleck of cinnamon, and a handful of her kibble. (I mentioned she’s a Pomeranian, right?) Filtered water sloshes into a glass goblet––for added fanciness. Now, we’ve arrived.

[Slow down.] I’ve learned the subtle art of not staring at a screen while I eat (sometimes), so we eat listening to the soundtrack that’s been playing on my 2008 iMac desktop computer (who, 12 years later, is honestly just happy to be here).

A shy breeze cruises around us, mild and a little muggy, and River and I sit together while the world outside walks across the earth on its knees, and its blood is collected by the soil as interest, and we wait. Almost a hundred breakfasts so far. How many more like this? Will the world be able to stand after destroying its knees for so long? Maybe this is what we’ve earned, acting as the planet’s landlords and not its tenants.

[Speed up.] But let’s not pop the bubble. Let’s go back to breakfast. Yes! Breakfast: the extravagant entrance to an alternate world, existing separately from everything outside. All those things that might make me lose my appetite. How about another cup of tea? Another seeded roll? Did you know this apricot jam has no added sugars? They only sweeten it using apple juice! Have you tried the blueberry flavor? I love that one too, but it turns my tongue and teeth purple and makes me look like I had Merlot for breakfast. Lol! More tea, though, absolutely more tea. Tea. Jam. Oat milk. Pink plate. Glass goblet. Blue sky. Soundtrack playing. More tea, more tea, more tea.

Oh, bummer. The teapot’s empty now. Curtain on breakfast.

~An ambulance siren screeches down the block…the first of the day. The filter peels off and the portal to our alternate world zips shut~

Now what?

[Pause. Take a deep breath before reading the rest.] It’s almost like that feeling when the lights come up at a bar after last call. You remember. Just before it happens: all those twinkly candles and luscious drunkenness, time stretching out like taffy; the dark glowing, pulling everything in sight inside it, and then––BOOM. Lights up! Dissolved. Evaporated. Blown out like a birthday cake. The end of breakfast-time is a lot like that, stumbling towards something sobering and sickly.

So. This is where we are: crawling across the ground, six feet apart, with masked, anonymous faces, eyes frantically searching for something familiar. Searching for each other. Searching for relief…relief is the sound of tea dribbling into my teacup, of River crunching kibble, of the way the bread crackles when it’s right out of the oven––those sounds are like stepping from hot sand into cool grass. All the while, the sky looks at us, blue and quiet, and the earth turns coarsely like there’s rust on its axis.

And every flimsy answer to almost every feeble question is: I don’t know. We don’t know. They don’t know. No one knows. No one knows when we will know, how we will know, what we will know, or who we will know. No one really knows. No one knows if we’ll have the knees to stand again. No one really knows anything…but I know something. I know one thing: I know when breakfast is. And I’ve mastered the choreography of it. For a short time, until the teapot is empty, I can pirouette into this plush, vanilla-scented daydream, and my shaking hands try not to squeeze it too tightly and make it burst.