Birds chirp on Sundays near my window.
That’s not entirely true. They chirp every day. I listen on Sundays. And in the summer, for exactly three weeks, I can turn the AC off, turn on the fans and open up my windows, like we do at home.
I’m on my bed with the special 100th issue of New Yorker. I fished it from the stack of untouched magazines from the larger part of the year, an eyesore piled on the living room side of my kitchen counter, that I finally set away this weekend.
The open windows leave me with a greasy face. Disoriented flies battle against every opening in the apartment to return to the outside world. The roads are noisy and the rising hot air from my downstairs neighbor’s balcony smells like detergent. It feels like Sundays from home, except that I never used to wear sunscreen indoors, or any sunscreen at all for a majority of the time I lived at home.
My apartment has Sticky Notes and pencils/pens handy at arm’s reach no matter where you are (expect the bathroom). There’s non-fiction for me on my bed along with bookmarks and pencils. More library books on the kitchen counter so I never forget a deadline.
It’s one of those weeks. Birds still chirp at a blinding 3pm and now my hair is greasy too from the humidity. I could sleep now and wake up drenched like it’s an afternoon in the tropics. But I don’t sleep. I pick up another book instead. I would’ve watched Black Mirror on tv with my balcony blinds drawn to shut out light, but I finished all episodes already.
I love this city I live in. People here mostly avoid conversations about work. Unless you work at CDC or for the government. This is important because I hear of circles where where do you work/what do you do for work? decides the rest of the conversation, if at all there is one.
I love it for all the things you can do. You take a dance class one day and meet your instructor from your other class there donning a student hat. You could meet book editors and authors, tv artists and dancers from the New York Knicks team. On Saturdays when the whole city is out, you park on a crowded street to go the park opposite, envying people who live in the houses you parked next to, adding Maybe not as an afterthought. And most importantly, being an introvert is low-key a crime here. You will be greeted in the elevator, at the DMV queue and on the street. 23 year old me wouldn’t have survived, but at 31 I thrive.
epiphany
On some days, while driving on a less than crowded interstate-85 I see the road ahead and slow down, thinking about the time I was a grad student and knew little about the city but had a lot of ideas about what lied outside the 3 mile radius of my university. I take a deep breath, unsure when this time will be cut short. I don’t want anyone to know because I don’t know if I’m supposed to be this happy with my life even without a man in it, even with my family away from me. I don’t know if I should enjoy it so much even while knowing it might be brief. But if it has to be kept a secret that’s fine, cos I can keep one! Clearly.
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