Big Apple, Banana Peel

"...That every willful solution carries us into a self-achieved isolation is true even when the decision 'to do' is of the most commonplace variety. That was demonstrated to me on a short ferry ride with a friend. As I sat chatting with him, I ate my way through a banana. When it was finished I was left with the skin and thought, naturally enough, 'I have to throw this out.' I knew where the garbage cans on the ferry were and planned to pass one as I disembarked. A minute or two later, I realized that though I continued sitting and chatting, one part of me was somewhere else, waiting to throw out the peel. That's all it took: so trivial a plan as that was enough to compromise my ability to be present. Once I realized that, I was able to return to the simple pleasure of sitting on the boat, talking with a friend, and holding a banana peel in my hand. I returned to the wakefulness of the pelvic intelligence. As it says in the Tao, 'Know the male, yet keep to the female.' When we keep to the male supervisor, we become mired in the abstractions of self-consciousness," from Philip Shepherd, New Self New World

So I have been reading this book, New Self New World, since I moved to NYC and it has been an exhilarating ride thus far. You know when someone can say to you something a million times and you just don't get it... until one time you hear it and it clicks?- well I've been having a lot of little *clicks* lately.

Everyone asks me, "Sarah, what are you DOING in NY?" Well, I tell them, I am doing really not a whole lot- and it's wonderful! For the first time in my life I am not horribly anxious, exhausted, obsessed with finding life's meaning (well sorta), and am ENJOYing my life! I sit in a office M-F and answer phones and direct people to this way or that.. but my job has a lot of free time. I can read, journal, watch movies, contemplate, not contemplate... it is a whole lotta "nothing" yet exactly what I needed. It is also the first time in my life where I have actually put down the violin. I have been saying I want a break from violin for the last few years, yet have never done it. Truthfully, there is just a ton of pressure to "be a violinist": go to grad school, take auditions, play in orchestra, teach this or that, be famous, be good (enough), etc. It is actually totally overwhelming and I never realized how exhausted I had become because of it. Not to blame my anxiety on violin itself; it was just my relationship towards violin that needed to be examined.

So I still have a little anxiety when people say "Where are you playing?" or "How is violin?" but when I take a moment to relax and come back to the PRESENT, I realize I have no reason for worries. I love that I am just living: running or walking through the parks, seeing close friends, working and (attempting) saving money, feeling NY as home... It feels incredible to be living here, now, in NYC of all places. It does actually feel like home more than any other place has. I guess I feel gratitude towards you, life, universe, myself.

I am learning to be more receptive to what is- giving in to the moment rather than planning and controlling... (I feel a class in that would have been more useful than any other college course I took)

*photo above is view from office