I visited friends this week who live about two hours northwest of Los Angeles. Their neighbors are citrus farms. Their refrigerator is always stuffed with good food. I needed time to write and sleep, time away from my routines. Of course, city worries followed. I took long walks by groves of orange trees and the brooding trailed me, the old gremlin voice, good times/bad cheer. Then, Thursday morning, time to think about this essay, to come up with something I find beautiful, my imagination felt so ragged, I couldn’t picture one thing.
Last month, a friend at a house party asked me if I ever struggle for ideas for these emails. The same week, I spoke to a class of writers at the University of Southern California, and a student messaged later, she wanted to know how to get past a case of writer’s block. They’re not the same, those two things, but they are second cousins, I think. On Thursday afternoon, idea-less, upset, pacing my friend’s guest room, I remembered that student’s message and for once did what I tell students but often forget to practice myself, when I can’t find the old flow: accept it. Be okay with it. Be kinder to yourself.
A moment later, an idea popped into my head.
There’s a concept in Buddhism about the world being perfect. Let’s be clear, I know very little about Buddhism. But I think this is right: that for all the flux, our suffering, our dishonesty, the world is perfect. Forever perfect as-is – it’s a really stunning, fucked idea. I brought it up after dinner one night – my friend had made a tray of eggplant parmesan – and he said, looking pained, “I find that really difficult to accept.” I mention all this because beauty, finding something beautiful, regrading the act of observation, the pleasure involved in standing both inside a moment and a step removed, feels to me more connected to sensuality than aesthetics. To turn to something new with excitement, also anxiety, and absorb it. It’s not voyeurism, it’s immersion. It’s a first date without nerves. My friend used to work professionally as an art critic. At one point that night, he said he missed it, he’d loved almost nothing more than spending hours thinking about one single thing.
This was the idea I had: go outside. Lie in the yard. See what happens. It wasn’t too cold out. I went outside and took off my shoes, lay in the dirt and dug in my fingers. Clouds were chiffon, gauzy. A small bird in a tree cheeped. My attention rested on the bizarre fact that I rarely register the ground beneath my feet as curved. A minute later, a delivery truck pulled into a neighbor’s driveway, the neighbor said how are you doing today, the delivery guy said oh, just okay, I guess. The honesty!
I lay there for ten minutes, got up, brushed off from my pants, walked inside and wrote this. Then I went outside and lay down again. Conserving calm. Wanting for nothing. A few minutes more, I got up and reheated some leftover eggplant parm. It was even more delicious the next day.
In tomorrow’s supplement for supporters
Oddball favorites from the year in reading, listening, watching
New films to look forward to
What the what
Meditations in an Emergency is a weekly mini-essay about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with three-plus ideas of things to love, plus a longer piece once a month for paying subscribers, from the woods ⛰️