“do you need a visitor’s guide?” the kind woman at the welcome desk is gesturing to a neat pile of gray cardstock handouts after scanning my ticket.
“no, no thank you,” i insist, shaking my head with a knowing grin. “i’ve been here too many times.”
“a frequent flier! welcome back, and enjoy,” she laughs, and we part ways.
✸✸✸
mindy kaling has this “about the author’s heart” diagram on the back of her memoir why not me? that i’ve loved, and adopted as a practice in my own life, for a few years now. here’s hers, alongside mine from last year.
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it’s been a tough, untethered season for me. i could rattle off a number of astrological reasons why this is true (eclipse! mercury retrograde!) or point towards my ever-growing to-do list (both in my personal life and at work). but i think it’s a both-and: busy and unpredictable times, and a lack of feeding my soul with the things that i know will ground me, i.e. the contents of my heart map.
i got off work early this past friday and decided to use my two hours of freedom to venture to the museum of fine arts, as i’m prone to do. (it’s right there, in the valve of my heart map: art museums!) i wanted to see a new exhibition with my favorite artist, matisse, and experience the space during the quiet of a weekday. during my visit, i got the chance to see a painting i’ve saved on pinterest countless times, open window, collioure, in person. i braced myself for a letdown, thinking maybe it would be underwhelming after looking at it so many times. but i found myself still struck by it, emotional, even, as if it were brand new.
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a small dispatch from a busy season: sometimes when i’m clawing at a craving for tear-my-hair-out radical change, what i really need is to return to my touchstones. the caverns of my heart map. the simple pleasure of a museum jaunt or putting on a favorite outfit or devouring a plate of truffle fries or slicking my eyes with something metallic and eye-catching. coming home to myself a little lighter.
and a small bonus: as a part of my commitment to Doubling Down on the things i love in april, i’ve been embarking on escapril with some friends from my writing group (hi WWINers <3). i’ve felt very disconnected from my writing process while i’m preparing to query (!!!!) and i wanted to get back to the basics of the generative process, grounding myself in a quick prompt every day. i might do a larger reflection post on this once i make it through the whole month, but as a final act to this little dispatch, i wanted to share with you a couple of my favorite prompts i’ve done so far:
day 4: “trip”
i am drinking prosecco before most of the plane has boarded. i have forgotten how it feels to sit in the middle seat. the memory of a patagonia-vested chip gaines lookalike offering to buy me a drink and trying to flirt with me during my sacred in-flight viewing of bridget jones is erasing itself from the record. i am general boarding cinderella, given one chance to go to the first class ball, and i hate that i’m enjoying it this much. a mantra at the end of a yoga class sponsored by Delta Airlines: the luxurious monster in me sees the luxurious monster in you.
my unglamorous destination is a macroeconomics final i haven’t studied for or even paid attention for, so sorry dr. rumbaugh, hope you’re well. i cried in the airport this morning when my flight was canceled and now i am eating a biscoff before my layover in atlanta. i am freshly twenty-one and wondering if i deserve this. i do not yet know that deservedness is a pointless benchmark. for now all is forgotten— or undiscovered— at the bottom of my second glass. maybe life is gorgeous after all.
day 13: “purr”
my social media feeds are full of mammalian self diagnoses: golden retriever boyfriends, black cat femmes. when it comes to myself, i’d probably tell a date something outlandish for a laugh. i’m one of those little pink fuzzy moths. i’m an otter who holds hands while she sleeps. but really, i come from Cat People. i’ll always be a cat. one of those speckly, spotty ones, or a persian, maybe, with a bushy tail. i always feel my personality reloading in a patch of sun, horizontal, zero obligations. sometime in a past life i was a beloved neighborhood fixture, living between cobblestone alleys somewhere on the italian coast, purring, subsisting on shrimp and the kindness of strangers. scratch me between the ears and i’ll go down easy.
obsessed with your handwrititing tho!!
Brilliant as always!!!! Reading you discuss art is on my heart map