( A song for Kelsey who wrote a poem and me who is too soft for all of it. )
I like taking the long way home. It’s something I learned to do from my father. Few outings and car rides, walks or expeditions were exempt from the meandering desire to see the changing coastline of the beach neighborhoods my family grew up in. A grandparent's old rental, the moon in whichever phase above the ocean, new construction which had once been a house a friend of a friend had a baby in before they moved somewhere else. Until he stops at a stop sign for longer than needed to exercise caution in looking at the world head-on. We complement the moon, the air, the evening, and then we move along. Sometimes if I’m alone I take a longer way home. An idle street and dormant neighborhood, even in the warmer months, we refer to as around the block. I’ll stop the car before the American marram grass and watch the waves through it. There is an inexpressible existential contentment when I have the chance, as rare as I do, to look at the ocean or the grass. No pressure to appreciate the moment, even with the knowledge that it will end, but a gladness rippled and pleated. I see the worn creases of time and routine, I have done this before. How naturally I fall into my own enjoyment.
So often when I’m home my mother will ask me if I want to do anything and the answer is always no. I want almost exclusively to be at home. I want to go on a long walk. I want a fire in winter or a beach trip in summer with the five of us together. I want to lay in the grass at the center of our yard then sit on the porch with my book. I want to do enough nothing that the days stretch so slowly they add up to an eternity. I want to be slow in a way I feel incapable of in New York.
And then one afternoon I was not going home. I was walking with a clear destination. I left my bag at my apartment. I had only a wallet and headphones. My hands free, it was the last day in the season I knew I’d be allowed out without a coat, but it felt awkward to have no place for them. I put on a song that relaxed me to my chest. I was moving quickly through parts of the neighborhood I didn’t like, listening to the song which had no words. 14th street and its double lane, a gritty karaoke bar, brunch spots turning to dives turning to dog cafes. The blocks became more familiar and then, so too, did some other thing. Or, less a thing more of a sensation. I had walked this route often but only this time was it a return. I knew what to do even though I had never done it, not here at least. I slowed. I thought of each step, decided to make it, took it, crawling down avenue A. The moment I hit the right stride I felt a clicking into place. It was as if something primal had finally revealed itself. A dormant sleeping thing with its eyes now open. I looked out through its gaze towards a life that had just ripped its seam to reveal the other side. The slower I went the more the eye opened to a more authentic full self than I ever remembered losing in the first place. I felt the enormity of no longer having to try to be myself. Maybe, I thought, maybe I was never made to do life as it had become.
I want to go slow.
Standing in the neighborhood I had been often, had rushed through many times, it occurred to me I didn’t know it. I knew maybe how to get from one place to the next but would not, if asked, been able to articulate any real detail from memory the way I could almost any street I had or hadn’t grown up on back home. I often said I loved some city neighborhoods but hardly ever had I truly beheld them. When I did, though, how lucky I felt to live in such a place. Yet it was rare still. Maybe because of the beliefs I had for the city, the feeling that my ex was always somehow watching me and judging me if only in my own mind. Or the strange idea I had that I was never really seeing the same street twice. Even though that would be all the more reason to take it in. I have many theories, but no matter. I realized somewhere between Connecticut and New York I lost the sense of appreciation that came with taking the long way home. With looking at things I had seen dozens of times to see them in a truer way. To take in life as it was as one day it will not.
The world has trouble allowing for such a thing, for the life I feel most drawn to. One where I read fewer books, but take proper care of the ones I finish. To think about what they said, let them haunt me for a while, before I move to read something new because I have a greater goal to reach. Perhaps my only goal is to be touched or moved. I like the idea of a life with daydreams and lounging, a life where I’m allowed to take things one step at a time, to be a novice where the world likes an expert. I want to learn to knit and speak french and I think there is an existence I might take up where I won’t be upset if it takes me a lifetime to do it. I see now though, I can’t keep up with everyone as I have. I am so tired. All I can do is close my eyes and enter my dream. I’m trying to remember, as I did that afternoon walk, how to live within a better means even when it feels strange or incompatible with circumstance to do so.
When I think of the slower future I am overwhelmed by how little shame there is. How content I was before I knew just how much more everyone wanted to do than me. Ambition of a different kind, living of a different way. Maybe we should ask ourselves why we go as we do more often, because we want to or because we're told to.
I stopped halfway down a block compelled by the new circumstance I felt my old desire. A woman was packing her car trunk with boxes. This detail revealed nothing to me, no greater story of the human condition other than there will always be things to throw away. Clothes that don’t fit, ideas about how we should be. It was nice to look upon something because I had time to do so. I feel I haven’t truly looked at the world for quite some time. She turned around and though I was compelled to move I didn’t. Instead, I averted my eyes so as not to stare. There were more things to see and I had all the time in the world to look at them. Light in a window on a ground floor apartment revealed a library. What books would I put in once I began to read them more fully, slower, with care? What items would I collect of real value if I only gave myself time to find them? Instant gratification had gone lackluster. A spell somewhere had been broken and I was fanning away the remnants of its fog.
I walked on, walked the rest of the way then took detours to the next place I had to be. There were moments when I returned to the fast set pace of the city, but it required only an instant for me to step to the side and allow the crowds to pass so I might go as I was meant. I thought of enjoying the last warmth, I thought of winter and how even if it were cold I would try not to get anywhere too quickly. Luckily I still had time to enjoy fall.
That was then though, now, winter is nearly here. People dislike this fact and I understand why, but I am glad for its arrival. I have my manifesto. I’m going to take the long way home. The lights of every avenue restaurant will be spilling into the streets, and the wind off every crossroad will send my hands into my pocket, my chin beneath my scarf. I will always be pulling myself closer for warmth. No one will be out and the streets will be mine to take in. I’m in no rush, the days will already begin to get longer. I don’t forget that sweet gift of winter, that its arrival marks the elongated stretch of life and light ahead. The slow descent to night to day, permission if I have ever seen it, to take my time.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, my resolutions each year are often recycled over and over until I feel they are instinctual and fully integrated ways of living. For a few years I’ve been working on the resolution of not shaming people for what they do and don’t know, what they have and haven’t done. I must admit I am still working on it as Kelly likes to remind me. I’m not afraid to admit I can be an asshole! This year though I have something new to add. As you might have guessed my resolution is to slowmax. I’m still working out just how many ways I can do this, but I’m starting with books. I have decided to make no reading goals. I want to read big books and I want to take forever to finish them without the fear of failure. I want to get a proper skincare routine and take my time after I finish my shower. This was a luxury I used to partake in before I started working closing shifts at a job I no longer have. I’m going to lay in bed again and daydream. I’m going to drink my tea slower, wake up earlier to enjoy my morning. I don’t know. When I think about my life I see the time I’ve allowed things to flesh out, whether it be my sense of style which I totally revamped from nothing from 23 onward, or the genuine foundational love I invested in for my sense of self, but it brings me happiness. The long haul is where you’ll always find me. Its where I’ve always been.
“If you grow a forest in your pain, it will forever lie in rotten leaves. The rain will turn sour as the ashen earth snaps its teeth, and the roots of the tallest trees will shrink from the salt in which they are set. Find your shovel amongst the weeds and dig once more– dig through clay and stone and pain until you are at the seed that started it all– and give it love. Give it kindness. Plant it in soft soil and forgive its false springs and withered stalks; it grows in new earth now. Someday its branches will kiss the clouds and taste sweet summer rain; for now, you do not need a forest. You only need time.”
Bonus, since there is time and I could not narrow between these three:
“It takes courage to live softly - to move slow, to be gentle, to not rush to judgment, to take your time, to speak unhurriedly, to fully listen to someone without being so readied to interrupt and speak, to not force or hustle, or to stay connected to your life force and deeper wellspring of creativity. It takes fearlessness to feel worthy of not constantly taking in new information. It takes an act of bravery to decide to feel safe to just be.” India Ame’ye
“I do not know what will happen as I begin to love more slowly. Maybe I will read four greek retellings and finally finish the illiad. Maybe I will read only one bok, but either way I would like to appreciate each setnece. I hope no one reads my books too fast. I picked each word myself.” November 14th, 2022 12:45 AM
“I am making use of every step. I am trying to remember what I learned in school Seaward winds, what were those?” November 12th, 2022 1:25 PM
Here is your December 2022 mood board. You have more than enough time to take it all in. It will be waiting for you when you’re ready!
The next time we talk it will be a brand new year. I wrote recently, it was a bad year and its over now the love is ongoing. This year was one of the hardest of my life. I remember so, but when I look back its hard to see just how. As if all that terrible muck has disappeared entirely. Maybe in a way that is how it always is, but I find the strange phantomlike feeling. As if it never really happened even though I’m sure it did. When I first began 2022 I chose love as the theme. I have to admit I did this because when I chose healing the year before the whole year seemed wrapped up in that very theme and I desired at the time deeply for a soft new year. I found a kind of hardness waiting, and yet it is true, the love is ongoing. I am leaving this year with a heavier heart than I began with. There are more people for which it holds, bigger feelings for who it keeps, and a greater capacity to see this life in all its terrible glory and open its arms despite what it has endured. The theme for Januray was love, and onward it will go.
Next week paying subscribers will receive their own newsletter where we will slowmax and see what has been mulled over. You can subscribe for 5$ a month down below.
If that’s not your thing, don’t worry about it. We’ll see each other somewhere groovy soon.
That’s all this month! If you enjoyed the little conversation we had let me know! Save, share, and tag @chloeinletters
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My Goodreads where I sometimes write reviews but keep updated is right here where more of my library is contained as far as books go.
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My email, if you want to cut to the chase, is letterstochloew@gmail.com where you can let me know what you think or ask me a question about what you saw here!
Here’s to Starbucks Fridays, to slow paced living, but onward
Love always,
Chloé
your writing feels like a tight hug