55. The geographical cure.

and cardamom cornmeal banana bread

Roses in bloom, Rittenhouse Square, May 30, 2024.

They (Confucius, Jon Kabat-Zinn, the 12 steps of AA) have a saying: wherever you go, there you are. Meaning, among other things, that there’s no such thing as a geographical cure; that you can’t fix your problems by moving, by uprooting your life and setting up shop in another town; that your demons, your heckling inner Greek chorus, will just follow you there, and set up their own shop across the street, lining up and loudly chanting rhyming verse regarding your failures, your shortcomings, and your defects of character for all the world to hear every morning when you go to dump the mop water onto the cobblestones or hang the wash out on the line.

And I think that they’re right, to an extent, in that serially discarding your life every time it gets too messy will ultimately catch up to you; in that trying to get sober by moving to another town might just give you new and creative ways to get fucked up, but without the accountability or safety net of people you know.

But I also would like to think that maybe you get one or two passes in a life, a few tickets to wipe the slate clean and start anew, where it sticks. Where you leave, and the distance actually lends you some much needed perspective, and clarity, and maybe even some newfound goddamn appreciation. There you go, and it turns out there you are! New flowers, new gardens, a train that takes you to the shore, or New York City. And sure, maybe the demons come along, too, but maybe instead of living across the street or hiding in the basement, they move a few blocks over, and get into pickleball or beadwork or ethical polyamory. Maybe you have them over for dinner every so often, and laugh about old times. It’s good to not give up on your demons. After all, they worked so hard to keep you safe. And it’s nice to have people in your life who have met your family.

Since Sugar dog died, I’ve been riding my bike most every day, and it has opened up new channels, new streams and tides and rapids on which I float to new corners of the city, every block a cloud of barbecue smoke and somebody’s front, back, and side yard lined with folding tables draped with red plastic tablecloths, a front porch with an elaborate balloon display for a prom photo backdrop or a 5-foot-tall photo cutout of a beloved child’s face in a graduation cap, a crowd of people laughing.

Last week, I rode my bike to the food co-op farm for my first worker-member shift, and spent the morning planting lettuce and Lively Italian pepper plugs alongside a dozen or so congenial strangers, some with perfectly squishy babies on their backs, all of us conversing idly and pleasurably while sharing a task; a rare and exquisite delight, the sweetness of feeling at home in this still-new place where I live, giddy with new-friend energy.

farm life in the city

And still, like always, every pleasure shares a bed with pain.

Another day, I rode my bike to City Hall to participate in a public grief ritual with Families For Ceasefire. As instructed, I brought a piece of my child’s clothing, a little blue striped onesie that Jasper grew out of before he was six months old, retrieved from the yellow memorabilia box in the closet. I hung the onesie on the clothesline along with the hundreds of other items of children’s clothing, and took my place in the long line of grievers, dressed in black, as we marched silently and somberly through the streets of Center City, in mourning with the world, as my friend Renee shared her gifts as an opera singer by performing Lascia ch’io pianga (let me weep) from Handel’s Rinaldo as we processed.

Families for Ceasefire Philly public grief processional.

I shed my tears while horns blared as we held up traffic to read poetry in honor of lost lives and legacies; then I rode my bike to get tacos and ate them in Rittenhouse Square, while a busking saxophone player switched from Coltrane to Baby Shark every time a nanny pushing a stroller rolled by (it worked like a charm), ricocheting from grief to pleasure and back again.

The pain is forever entwined with the joy; there’s no other way.

Think of your person who died. How much it changed you. How many layers of processes you had to go through to give them a dignified laying to rest. The physicality of it, the heft of their body, the ashes, the urn, the cost. How they still come to you in your dreams. One person. Now imagine every person in your whole hometown, then the town itself. If I don’t make this—this grief, this hope—the unifying principle of every aspect of my life, the way of moving in the world, then I’m betraying my love for them, I’m betraying the love of my family—everyone I’ve lost and everyone I’m lucky enough to still love in the flesh.

Last week I had a mammogram. Sorry to say it, but I hate mammograms, maybe to a phobic degree, every time afterwards I crumble like a child, crying in the changing room into the soft, pink hospital gown with pink velvet trim because I don’t have elders to talk to about how much I hate mammograms and because even the kindest mammogram tech must push and pull and pinch and I do want to be touched and rubbed, I do, even pulled or pinched in the way of healers, but not this way. I want to lay on a bed of stones in the creek and feel the current pummel my head; I want a calabash of milk and honey and Florida water and cornmeal to be rubbed over me in ritual. I had that once, and afterwards we slept through the night on the bridge over the creek, rum, tobacco, a machete, candles all around, and it set my feet upon new soil, but I don’t know how to get back there, and even if I could, no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man, and besides, I’ve never met a bridge I didn’t want to burn.

Hail Erzuli Dantor.

How can I be so old and yet feel so helpless? I am constantly comforting myself like a baby, soothing myself like a child, cooing when my gears are grinding going up a hill, shhh shhh shhh, it’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK, take your time, you got this.

Its OK to take your time slicing and peeling and eating a Korean melon for the very first time (the internet was right, the flavor was somewhere between a cantaloupe and a cucumber). It’s OK to take your time making chicken-fried tofu with all the doors open and the breeze blowing through the house and the lightning bugs finally out and Bizarre Love Triangle, the Frente! version, obviously, playing too loud on the speaker.

It’s OK to take your time because the light comes so early now and it stays so very late, and you want to keep it all, you want to gather the light in great bundles in your arms and store it under the eaves, you want to eat the light for supper and save the light for winter. 

It’s OK to take your time because this in-between time is not a break from your life, this is your life. This is what your life is, what the living of it looks like.

And the loss, the way love slips through your fingertips like silt. The pain of it is so impossible, you’ll do anything to make it stop. You want to shore up the levee, build a dam, sandbag the riverbank, curse the rain and call it a boundary. But you know you have no power to stop it and the fact of it drives you wild. You’re helpless and powerless and you just want to assert some kind of control in order to evade the pain of knowing that you left your heart here, it was right here yesterday, we had a picnic, right here on the riverbank, not a cloud in the sky! But it’s too late. Your heart is gone, slaking its thirst in the cold water, sailing out to sea, never to be seen again.

Oh, how it hurts.

There is no cure, geographical or otherwise.

But it’s the only way fresh love is born, the only way new sand and soil can churn and settle, the only way new seeds can take root. Love is not interchangeable but it always changes.

If you’re lucky, everything does.

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Home.

Cornmeal Cardamom Banana Bread

We ate half of it right out of the oven

This week’s recipe brought to you by: cleaning out the freezer.

Cream in a stand mixer:

• 1 stick butter

• 1 cup sugar

Add, combining after each addition:

• 2 eggs

• 1 cup mashed bananas (3)

• 1/2 cup yogurt or buttermilk

• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

• zest of one lemon

Sift together, then combine with wet ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

• 1/2 cup cornmeal

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

• 1/4 teaspoon cardamom

• dash cinnamon

• dash nutmeg

Pour into a prepared loaf pan and bake for 50-70 minutes at 350 degrees. Cut a thick slab, toast it on the skillet with butter, and enjoy with a nice cup of Earl Grey.

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Dear Temperance.

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