This has been the first time that I’ve taken a self-induced hiatus from my weekly newsletter. And that’s only because it’s felt hard to be a voice amid silence. In a city of millions and thus constant, human-induced noise, we now are met daily with muffled greetings. It’s hard to know what to say when perhaps saying anything that could be heard is seemingly profound. An outreach may feel like a spatial breakthrough. Every word I wrote felt like it simply wasn’t enough to hang on to.
Walking around with all these words in my head and love in my heart and no seemingly appropriate way to communicate it,. I can’t tell you how badly I try to make my eyes say, “I’m smiling behind this.” I’ve tried the slow, double blink, the way apparently cats communicate “I love you”. I’ve attempted the slow and rather fatherly nod of discerning approval, wordlessly telling neighbors, grocery store cashiers, and the man who owns the liquor store, “I approve of you.” Nothing seems to feel right, other than me squeezing my smile up into the tops of my cheeks and through my eyes as much as I can and hoping that the designated recipient doesn’t cower away from what might be an oncoming sneeze.
But as much as my hesitance felt valid, so did a few other things. The man at the pizza shop knocking on the window and handing me a plastic bag to help with my groceries-and-bike struggle. The community coming together to feed a cat left behind in a bodega that had been burglarized. And the ‘7pm clap’ going from a few hands hesitantly outstretched on a stoop to a block-wide nightly celebration of connection. The cacophony has become unity, as the rather ambivalence to the 7pm clap has become an endearing connection between neighbors we never knew were neighbors (who all, somehow, have tambourines?).
I felt perhaps, a place for myself, if you’ll still have me. The relative mindlessness with which I began to approach my ‘weekend guides’ became a stalwart fight for small businesses and the community we must maintain. It is so important to have a voice in all of this, to have a response, to make an outreach.
And my outreach here, while normally it is to help you get out and explore, really is just to help you find joy- in activities, in opportunities, in connections, in so many words.
Brooklyn, I’m just trying to make you feel better.
So I’ll still be here trying to figure out what to say. But just know that if the words on this screen feel hard to connect through, or if you see me masked up while walking around town, I’m smiling behind this.
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