I’ve been living in Brooklyn since Christmas, renting a friend’s apartment while she travels for a month. New York is in many ways familiar to me, having grown up so close by. Throughout college and after, I’ve had close friends living here, never without someone to stay with and indulge in the city’s endless offerings.
I’ve assumed an intimacy with New York because of this familiarity, but I’m now seeing this assumption to be false. Like a frightened kitten under a car, the nuances of a place need to be coaxed out with warmth and patience. It’s in the unfettered time to go for long walks that I notice the reddish hue of brownstones, an earthiness I’ve never before associated with this place. The street cleaning schedule creates a biweekly parade of double parked cars, a ritual worthy of a David Attenborough voiceover. The midnight subway ascends above ground and I’m on top of a Ferris wheel basking in a dazzling cityscape — then, swiftly swallowed back into its tiled underbelly. A flock of pigeons swirl in the sky, and for a moment I exalt them like Rome’s starlings, dancing in synchrony in an airborne ballet.
Mary Oliver says attention is the beginning of devotion. I’m feeling that these days. It’s in these attentive moments, slow and mundane, where the everyday becomes special. Like falling in love, it’s the early stages - the tender unfolding of noticing - that are the most captivating. The intimacy I had previously assumed with this place, I now feel like I am earning.
My stay in Brooklyn is only planned for January. I’m hoping for another home to fall into place for February, and then I’m scheming a visit to Palestine in March. And then… we’ll see. At first I felt hesitant about living month to month, worried that it’s some form of avoidance. But the impermanence of my stay has dusted off an excitement to make the most of this fleeting world around me. I’m eager to hop from lily pad to lily pad, savoring a type of freedom I may not always have. Living month to month is a practice in presence, an opportunity to earn intimacy within singular moments of time.
I love the subtle shifts in routine a change in environment offers. The lounge area of this apartment gets dappled by the afternoon sun, inviting me to move to the kitchen table to enjoy the speckled warmth before darkness swallows the sky. From here, I look out the window over a concrete courtyard that’s home to a congregation of cats. One of them resembles MishMish, my Ramallah neighbor’s orange cat who was a regular at my windowsill every morning. My first real animal love. There can be a romance to déjà vu, a reassurance that past loves - be it people, places, or cats - become an eternal part of the self.
The arrival of the new year has been good to me — my thoughts have been feeling clearer and kinder. This year, I’m practicing banishing self-doubt. I tend to be someone who passes the mic to my inner critic, listens to what it has to say, and then wrestles with it. I’ll generally overcome it, but not without a few bruises. Now, I’m trying something new. I’m practicing starving my doubt of attention and redirecting my energy to best case scenarios and infinite possibilities. Just a few weeks of practicing this intention has already been rewarding. I’ve made more progress on a book proposal than I have in months by paying attention to the possibility that maybe I do have a story inside me worthy of being told.
I am dreaming big this year – beyond instant gratification. I want to write, love, and live deeply. I return to what this month in Brooklyn is teaching me about assumed versus earned intimacy. It makes me want to practice applying that to my relationships and my creativity. I’m learning to enjoy the shallow end. Small talk and first drafts pave the way to deep connection and fulfilling art. I think about what it means to earn intimacy with myself - to pay attention to what I pay attention to, and to allow that attention to melt into devotion to myself. So that’s what I’ll practice this year, from one month to the next — giving grace to the pigeons, and to myself.
The lily pad in Oakland is waiting for you, my dear!
Reads like a symphony, rings crisp like the truth, and seeps love into the soul - pure and pristine 🙏🏼♥️