Will I ever stop emailing you about beds?

Maybe not...

** As per usual, there is an audio voiceover of this newsletter. But just a warning…. I go pretty off the script this week…….I talk a lot about Nathan Fielder… like a lot….

It is our first morning living together.

We eat ice cream for breakfast. Frozen bananas and avocados and vanilla. All blended and scooped into a cocktail glass to commemorate the occasion.

I oscillate between feeling awkward, like a welcome guest in an unfamiliar home, and like an overgrown seedling taken out to the garden. My roots had started to rot. I couldn’t get the balance right — between light and water and nutrients. But now, somebody somewhere has lifted me up, detangled my tendrils, and placed me in fresh soil. And, just as some plants do well together in the garden, like carrots and tomatoes, I’ve found myself next to a welcome neighbour. Like one full breath, it seems simpatico — symbiotic.

About three months ago, Sofia and I stood in the Housing Office with our request to have a couple’s apartment for the Spring term. The lady behind the desk eyed us warily atop the frame of her glasses. Me, with my sunken cheeks and sweatpants covered in strings of thread. And Sofia in her apron, caked in clay, Crocs dragging across the linoleum. Headphones hung around both our necks like chains.

“Well… that apartment is for couples only. It has only one bed.”

I turn back to look at Sofia when she insists;

“But we are a couple?”

The lady raises her eyebrows and starts typing.

I didn’t know if we were a couple or not. But I liked the way the words sounded and Sofia’s thick Estonian accent when she arranged them in the air.

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One night in December, we were walking home from the studio, the cold air finding a path between our interlaced fingers.

“I feel like doing something illegal,” she had said.

Laughter and a familiar feeling swelled. It was a good temperature for looking in garbage bins. Not so cold that we would freeze, but cold enough to keep things from rotting. But we didn’t have bags or bikes and maybe needed an activity that required less effort.

We got back to my building and I remembered that I’d figured out a way to get into what would be our new apartment, Suite 103. I led her through the hallways which smelled of sawdust and fresh paint, before coming upon a door that still didn’t have a number above it but I was fairly certain was ours.

“Welcome home,” I opened the door for her to step through. Our salty boots left a trail of water on the fresh vinyl flooring. It was empty, newly renovated.

Like a couple in Ikea, we started cosplaying our lives. Sofia examined the kitchen. I opened the window to the riverside and wondered if we could move the table against it. Finally, we arrived at the bedroom.

The bed was truly tiny. Bigger than a twin but smaller than a double. Barely big enough for one. We consider how to solve this. Maybe we could create something in the wood workshop? Find something on the street?

I turn my vision towards us doing yoga in the living room and reading before bed. Cooking meals together and making art on the floor. I imagine how we would laugh, and play parallel to one another, like two kids in a sandbox.

And then, I remember the reality of who I am, who I have been, and who she is. My erratic sleep schedule and tendency to enjoy a midnight snack and scroll on my phone. How sometimes I call someone just to cry for an hour. How I cry often. How I take showers at random intervals and leave dishes in the sink and clothes on the floor. Before moving to Norway, I had never lived alone and I have since somehow grown accustomed to it. I love my freedom. I hate the loneliness. I love listening to whatever I want and leaving a mess to clean up when I feel like it.

And somehow, when I watched Sofia sizing up the smallness of the kitchen there, and how there was no oven for her baking… I looked into her eyes I saw a slight apprehension that mirrored my own.

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Lately, I’ve been participating in a pretty cheesy practice that involves inviting miracles into my life. This requires seeing everything that happens as potential for a miracle. Whether that is the lady at the cafe who is overjoyed to collect avocado pits for me and my fabric dyeing, or my old boss asking me if I need a job this summer or when a friend wants to collaborate artistically. Maybe a miracle is Sofia telling me, one week before we move, that she’s been considering other options.

There’s a bedroom open in her communal home, up the river from where I live. We could share a big kitchen, and a bathroom with plenty of hot water. We could push the two twin-sized beds together in one room and have a dance floor in another. Or we could keep them separate, and share space when it felt right. The vision is so clear and rests gently in my mind’s eye. We would have a fucking dishwasher.

I’ve been thinking about surrender and scanning for areas of resistance in my life. I’ve been wondering what it means to pivot, to release attachments, and to welcome change. How to listen to the whispers of apprehension, to any sacrifice that seems sanctimonious? I’ve been wondering what it would feel like to be a singular being, still somehow connected to everything else.

The miracle is canceling a contract and saying thank you. The miracle is not knowing if you’ve given the receptionist and her internalized heteronormativity some smug satisfaction by applying for separate suites. The miracle is knowing you need a space of your own to let the saltwater pool in your eyes, and a hook to hang the mask on, at least for right now. The miracle is having a space of your own, at all.

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The List!

a segment for sensory exploration

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5 things I’m looking at:

• a pile of old hospital scrubs begging me for a new life!

• my things settled into new homes in the corner of my bedroom. I feel so happy.

How To with John Wilson. I have a story attached to this that may be considered a minor miracle which I will probably explain in the voiceover component of this letter. All that to say — I love this show!

• the pages of a book, flying through my fingers. Like a kid told to turn off the light, I stayed up all night finishing a novel for the first time in a very long time.

• the small patch of forest outside my window, unfamiliar birds picking at a crust of bread.

4 things I’ve been feeling:

• a deep warmth radiating up through the soles of my feet from the heated bathroom floor.

• inspired to form new habits within these new walls.

• welcome and cared for, when I see my groceries placed carefully, strategically on new shelves.

• comically full from eating a frozen pizza, cross-legged in my old apartment, with just my hands. I had already packed up my plates and knives. So I ate the whole thing in one sitting, in one piece.

3 things I’ve been listening to:

• this album, Soon by Hana Stretton… moody, melancholic, atmospheric, and minimal. Good for long walks in the winter air when you don’t want to drown out all of your own thoughts.

• Alice Coltrane’s Jai Ramachandra.

• so much Okay Kaya.

2 things to smell:

• A mix of lime, salt, soda ash, and fermentation during the process of dyeing fabrics in the textile lab.

• Cardamom, a sprinkle swirling in my cup of coffee.

1 taste:

• fresh banana bread, at midnight last night.

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Songs you heard in the Voiceover:

Intro: Problem Numero 6 - Bruno Pernadas

Transition: Right Down The Line - Gerry Rafferty

Outro…. cut short: In Regards To Your Tweet - Okay Kaya