Day 6
One thing about writing every day to you, is that I feel more strongly the pull of wanting to please you, of writing so you don’t leave the page. I guess I feel it more now than when I wrote once a month. I’d like you to come back. The clicks, likes, followers. Are all about you coming back. I think about maybe doing an outfit issue. Doing a pretty house items issue. A houseplant (in my world plants are sexy) substack where I go through each of my plants and have little conversations with them. Ok I might still do that.
Some of these impulses are sketchy, and might derive from whatever people-pleasing I still do. Some of these impulses are practical because I am trying to understand the making money side of doing this as paid work1. I want to give you good reason to spend your time reading me while always always pleasing myself. You have so many places to spend your time. A good question to ask is why you would spend it here? What is the value you might find here?
I think that’s a question for you, not me? But can I just say, I can no longer deny the below. I will write the way my brain just IS, if you like that, then this is the space for you.
The honest thing about a daily writing practice is that it is pure process. It is a constant balance between a few things:
having a thing to say
having enough time to say it
writing generously for the reader
I find it thrilling to witness something in process. A piece of artwork, the behind the scenes, but really I think of finishing something as being mostly a time limit we put on ourselves which determines the process done. Not so much the product. Which is to say everything is pure process that has been presented to us in different packaging.
Today I took my kids to Prospect park. After we parked the car, we exited my Subaru, with my two mixed kids and dog. A man (he was Black) was walking slowly in front of us, I could tell he was taking us in. Our mint green slouchy hat, the vintage blue baggy over-sweater, the kid in earmuffs with reversible sequins and a silver pompom hat, the kid walking the dog like a kid walks a dog. All over the place. Me with my multiple bags of snacks and hot chocolate because I’m always thinking about their comfort. Our kids truly have it good, my god. My shiny gold cross-body Adidas bag.
The man was mumbling loud enough for us to hear, things like, “newcomers who walk their dog on a long leash like they own the sidewalk”, and other things that were not about us as individuals doing actual things to him. But us more as an idea. In NYC you can pretty quickly discern between the two.
We passed him and he continued mumbling behind us. Both my kids were looking at me, looking at him, confused about what was going on. I stopped, squared my body straight towards him, held my dog close and asked if he wanted to pass. He said no, while continuing to mumble those same things, adding that he had grown up going to this park, and us newcomers with our dogs, something something something.
I didn’t mention I was born in Queens to immigrant parents. It wouldn’t have mattered.
So I entered the park with my children a bit off. What is the right thing to do? To feel? On the way to our regular spot, I talked to my kids about gentrification, our role in it. How what this person was saying about us may not have been true exactly (re: the obnoxious dog walking, and the newcomer part), but how what may have happened to him, his experience most certainly was. How we had to figure out how to sit with our role in these systems. How I was also born a New Yorker from Queens, but that wasn’t exactly the point either.
What I didn’t say to them, was how I wondered if I and my children were easier targets for this rant then a man would have been. Than a man of any race. How I believe they will likely get their own random man rants, random man whispering all the ways they want to fuck you on the street, random man sort of following you and being creepy on the streets, random man taking out whatever they need to take out on you because you represent a safe place to take it out. Read: another man might attack you. A white woman may be more protected by systems like the police than I am.
I don’t know. I just wonder these things. My kids don’t need all of that. But I’ve been walking around in this body long enough to know it’s not made up, that I survive both by holding on to my experiences, but also leaving space for more. I’m actively in the process of leaving space for more. So I try not to over-explain to my kids either, so I can leave space for their more.
It’s all complicated as we say. Somehow I try to do the impossible task of holding compassion, while remaining in my strength, constantly examining my own place, and modeling some weird way of existing for my own children that doesn’t require making exact sense. That requires just witnessing hard true things, but also being able to carry on? In other words, I’m winging it all.
Writing about the actual true face of gentrification as me, myself, a Brown Asian femme person is also part of my work.
But I wrote all this because there was some connection to the writing. Please dear god don’t let me have lost that connection.
Maybe it was:
I don’t think I always have to say everything to you, and there will be things kept private. Keeping myself and my children whole and safe is my primary purpose on streets and in writing.
I have come a long way to exist on that sidewalk and have a full range of complex thoughts which do not begin and end in fear and anger. (Not to say that fear and anger didn’t exist: just that they don’t begin and end there.) The same is also true of my writing. I need constant reminders of this fact. I have been simmering many ideas for a long time which I haven’t seen written about enough.
I tend to back away from black and white explanations. Right and wrong. Simplifying declarative things. Especially in America, where not being either Black or white, means the write up about your people or your experiences will be especially sloppy. Flattening. Exotic.
Sometimes I think oh I just have to write these categories and I will “make it”:
declarations of things I definitely know
hardships I have faced in America while being Asian
going back to India stories
some sex things
some motherhood pain
how-to guides
I actually don’t mind writing any of the above categories, I just want to do it on a casual walk-about through racism and misogyny while sipping on vermouth and showering my plants in a Jaipur rug den, bopping to Lupe Fiasco. Would you come back for this I wonder?
While in the park, one child chased my dog who chased her ball, another one drank that hot chocolate, saying it had remained perfectly warm. While we walked the trails, I pulled out the shrimp chips, while the dog pulled us toward everything. We found the merry-go-round that I had never been to. They rode it for $2.50 each and emerged with those wide smiles, even the 12 year old, upon exiting. We picked up honey sticks and pricey dog food on the way home to the neighborhood in Brooklyn that I was not raised in, but is next to where I was born, which I’m not sure I really belong to either to be honest. I came home and made some rice balls for school lunch while the kids relaxed. It was a Sunday in this place I live.
I hope your Sunday brought you some beauty and reflections.
Hire me for things. Thanks.