Paths Crossed: Birthday/LA
Hugs, slaps, and scallops.
Winter is feeling itself in Berlin and New York, sending the ice, snow, and teeth-chattering temps. In both places, subletters inhabit my spaces, my south-facing windows looking onto the Fernsehturm and the Williamsburg Bridge, respectively. I didn’t go west this winter for weather-related reasons. Still, I picked a winner—a light jacket and hours on end outside without my pinky toes turning white (Raynaud’s Syndrome, anyone else?) are pretty cool byproducts of my current life choices.
Last week I spent my birthday in LA, on break from the gorgeous beauty of the Oregon Coast, where my community is still of the more-than-human variety, at least so far. Some people don’t do birthdays, but for me they have always been infused with some kind of stirring in my soul on approach, a little nod to existence, a day where, even if for a moment, I finally energetically feel myself, or at least take the time to try to.
What did I get on my birthday? My period, for one. It took me 46 years to be thrilled about this gift, a sweet relief of the tension and tears of the day prior, even as I gratefully stared up at orange trees, splayed out in the grass to a sunny symphony of birdsong (LA parrots included). It was a moment to celebrate my womanhood, femininity, and health, and the maternal line that brought me here, now gone, but enfolded, felt, and thanked every day. (I also currently hold my aunt Mimi in my heart, the OG of sending birthday cards with checks and love in them.) Right now, I have friends with breast cancer, friends scared and advocating for parents who have landed in the hospital, friends going through hellish divorces, and all the various and sundry life things that will always be life-ing. It is the sisterhood and strength of women that is the greatest gift to me right now.
LA brought love, creativity, care, rain flooding the canyons, sun, again, all the good food, all the music, all the art. Spending my twenties/the aughts in New York, dating too many musicians to count, getting invited into the food scene, studying art history and working for a moment at the Whitney Museum—I do love the little hit of culture, LA Art Week, seeing paint, picking up a guitar, snacking about town, and bumping into many from the past.
There were my favorite cafes and coffee shops to write in, all the hikes, and all the books, crystals, and oracle cards I was gifted. (Climbing, my other later-in-life love in CA, will have to wait, as snow dumped on Bishop.) With all of this, there were still plenty of times that my heart felt the pull into the suffering and confusion, an ever-present part of my emotional body I wrestle with, and that all my friends know I am being with and transmuting day by day. My work is to transcend it all, drop by drop, by attuning myself to the unfamiliar, spacious, available, kind, capacity-matching energies of life. To let a steady person find the crack in the surprisingly tall walls inside my tiny frame. To accept, receive, and understand I don’t have to work it all out by myself. To speak to myself with love (hello, the hard moment you see how deeply you’ve turned the victimizer voices on yourself, carrying on and bullying yourself even when they are gone). Age is just a number, and so be it that such things take the time they take on this journey.
Essentially, for my birthday I got hugs, slaps, and scallops—word play and laughter with specific people always bring these phrases into my phone’s notes to be found days later. But try to see it: a drive-through with three consecutive windows as such. Being ridiculous. Being light. Being present. Embracing confusion and curiosity. Recognizing alignment when I see it, even when it is scary and unfamiliar to stay with, even if it entails loneliness before its dawn. Protecting but celebrating my open heart—those are my offerings to myself, and hopefully, in turn, to you.
One more year on planet earth: a birthday self-portrait from Runyon Canyon. Thanks for being here on the journey as we all orbit together.
