Yoga With Adriene With Catharine

Across the street from where I stretch there is a building with the address “215.” I notice it every time my legs are spread and my back is flat and my arms are outstretched.I grew up in a building with the address 215, and I guess you could say that I am always reaching towards it. That 215 that is thousands and miles away from the one I am looking at when I stretch. I wasn’t born at 215 (moved there when I was 1) but I may as well have been. 215 was a delicate shell of a home I grew up inside of. With a rainbow flag on the door and lemon trees in the backyard. Where I was allowed to write on the walls but not allowed to bounce a basketball on the floor because the noise was too much for the neighbors who lived downstairs. Where the landline phone’s voicemail recording always had me or my sister’s voice saying something silly but clear. The home is still there but the landline is gone, like me, like 2023. I get into a new stretch position and I briefly wonder if the number 215 is following me or if I am following it. I lay on my back and decide to decide: we are following each other, around and around and around and getting nowhere. Nowhere is exactly the place I need you to be while you read the rest of these ramblings. Are you there yet? Good.

On the first day of 2024, I told my mom I can’t stop this wanting to clean things. The car, the basement, the bakery, the airbnb we are staying at until we can move into the new apartment and I will clean that too. The apartment we left was above a coffee shop turned DIY music venue turned hard to sleep at night turned stubborn neighbor argument. The owner of the shop dug his heels in and we dug in ours. We all dug so hard our heels began to hurt, it wasn’t sustainable, so we left.

***

When moving, you have to lean into that manic energy. Even if January is telling you to stay curled up inside with a book. Throw it in a bin, tape the boxes shut, use your back to bend and bend and snap. Our new apartment’s address is 18 which is a holy number in Hebrew called “chai.” It means life. It’s lucky. It’s the amount you get on a check when you have a Bat Mitzvah. I hope for luck while I am here and I hope to go to the park nearby as much as possible.

***

At the park, there is a large rock you can climb up using stairs someone carved into the side. I always call my mom on those stairs. She can hear me panting and I can hear her washing dishes. All the way over there at 215. Cleaning. My mom says: “Do it now before that feeling goes away.” Carpe Diem. Sieze the broom.

***

On the second day of 2024, I go for a walk with a friend Chiara whose words I will now paraphrase. Chiara says: “Art will come out of you without you even trying.” So guess what? I am not trying. But it’s hard to not do the the thing the moment you say you aren’t going to. I get an email that day from a writer friend and she says she writes slow, that’s why it’s taken awhile to get back to my email. I admire both of these women and so even if I find it hard to do now, I decide to put both of their words into my bones for later.

***

I’ve been thinking about the cracks. The cracks between social media posts and misunderstandings, and to do lists, and toothy grins. There is goo there. There is goo in the cracks that I feel like I need to address before the goo hardens. One of the ways I addressed it was by texting a friend who was in mourning: I am sorry I didn’t reach out sooner. Heart emojji. Smiley emoji. Back when I lived at 215, this friend came over a lot. This was before our phones could text, before I could hide. It was high school. I had to find the courage and the words to tell her to her face: We have a crush on the same boy. But that boy and me are dating now. I am sorry I didn’t let you know sooner. How far and how not far we’ve come from then. Both my text to her now and my face-to-face interaction with her then feel like two sides of the same coin. Bill thinks I am being too apologetic, but I don’t think so. I think I am just trying swim through goo the only way I’ve been taught how

***

Nightsky. “I am trying to make art that is a question and that isn’t an answer, ”Chiara tells Orion’s belt. We are one block from their apartment and there is a wicker chair on the curb. Seconds later, I am sitting on the street chair and eating some dried apricots and Chiara is washing the dishes and music is playing from her cellphone, and our two men are chatting their comforting foggy white noise. I decide that the chair that holds my butt might be an answer to a question I haven’t come up with yet. When we leave I try to catch the address number on Chiara’s door, but the night is too dark to see and the air is too cold to linger

***

I hate math but I love numbers. 30 days of Yoga with Adriene, Emma’s birthday is on the 2nd and Catharine’s is on the 7th. The address of every place I have ever lived in: 215, 545,911,1325,4544,2,18. 123123 is not an address. It’s the last day of the year. I missed celebrating the specialness of the numerology. 123123: One thing leads to another. One foot in front of another. The Jackson 5. Etc. On New Years Rocking Eve, we had pizza on our floor with our neighbors. What kind of pizza? Papa Johns. What kind of neighbors? Divinity School Gays. Cat lovers. Hockey fans. You name it. I can’t remember if I tried to tell them about the goo but it seems like something that might have come up.

***

So anyway, I am stretching. Stretching is good. If you have trouble stretching you should go to YouTube and type in Yoga With Adriene and follow along to her bajillion videos. My friend Catharine and I ritually do this every top of the year. The ritual goes like this:

1. I text her or she texts me something like: “you free/you up/you down/tomorrow/in 10”

2. We FaceTime and have a brief catch up.

3. We press mute on one another and volume up on our computers

4. Play. Go, go, go.

We know all the flows by now and could probably do this without this mid-thirties Texan on our screens. But as working artists and writers setting our own schedules and measuring our own progress, there’s something incredibly gratifying about a beautiful woman in a beautiful apartment, wearing beautiful active wear, telling us exactly what to do and when to do it.

I love beginnings but I also love endings. Drunk on wine I write an email back to my writer friend :

I think I am both a fast and a slow writer. It takes me awhile to get to the page and then when it starts coming out of me it comes out in goo and then at that point I just want it to be over. I think if I set a timer that could be good. Then the numbers can tell me what to do. Does that make sense? Love, Ida

***

215, 545,911,1325,4544,2,18. I am not counting the address of the Airbnb where we had to stay for two days before our new apartment was ready. That’s liminal space and liminal space gets no number. That’s goo. And goo gets no number. It’s just goo.

***

Adriene tell me to “Find what feels good” and my mom says “Do it before that feeling goes away.” Catharine moves and I move and we are quietly communing in slightly delayed unison. It’s peaceful, like yoga should be, even if Bill is in the next room arguing on the phone with a gentleman who is insisting that he can go to go back in time and install the bakery’s AC yesterday.

I feel bad for the man on the other end of the phone call. Something tells me installing AC’s for other people’s callings and dreams is not his calling and his dream. He’d rather be doing anything else. But I also feel bad for Bill who says “his heart hurts” thinking about all that needs to happen to open his bakery in three days. Luckily, or unluckily depending on your perspective, feeling bad is a pose I can only hold for so long. Regret, remorse, and being hard one oneself doesn’t do anything in the long run. But, also what is this “long run” we’re always speaking of? I always seem to be trapped and unable to see beyond the very short walk.

***

The address of the bakery is 942. It’s Bill’s bakery but we say “we” because we are married and because we is a good marketing tactic. Ownership is frustrating and complicated but the smell of fresh hand-rolled croissants baking is undeniably beautiful. When someone asks how I feel about the bakery I tell them: Opening weekend was great! But in a tone of voice that gives you my subtext: I am trying to figure out how to stay holding without gripping, how to keep asking without answering, in all areas work, life and art.

***

I promised Catherine that I would “blog” everyday about her and me and Adriene. But this plan, like our plan to start a podcast called “Pay Our Bills” (bc both our partner bear that name) falls into the cracks and gets trapped in the goo. That’s okay. Thought that counts. Thread the needle, downward the dog. Adriene says: See you tomorrow! and now it’s tomorrow: my pointer finger hurts. There is something trapped underneath my bright blue nail-bed. Maybe it’s last year.

***

Everything that is new is actually old, says the number 215 while it stalks me around this planet.

Old, like how this year you don’t have to be more stylish you already have a style. Old, like how this year you don’t have to make new friends you already have so many. Old, like the feeling of not wanting to do something actually always means you should probably do it.

What I want to know is how many things do we think we are doing for the first time that we actually have been doing for a very longtime? How many things are brand new but we feel like we’ve done before?

The biggest lesson I learned in 2023 was that I had never actually seen The Hunger Games movies. I thought I had but when Bill and I started the first movie on the plane midway through it hit me: I’ve never seen these films! A Never! I coulda sworn I had but just like Katniss after she gets stung by tracker-jackers, this was something I clearly hallucinated. A mandala affect of one.

***

Last night at the pizza restaurant, I put a quarter into a bouncy ball dispenser. I thought at first the balls said “Good” or “God” but upon further inspection noticed that these bouncy balls definetly say “Goo.” The pizza restaurant is Brick Oven Pizza in New Haven. You should go there. The pizza is decent and it’s only one quarter for your own personal little buoyant goo. What a steal.

Adriene has really got me addicted to routine again. I think this is the only explanation as to why I’ve eaten a PB&J everyday since December 30th. Dani told me that Michelle Obama also eats a PB&J every day. Dani said it all started because Michelle’s mom wanted her to eat eggs but Michelle didn’t like eggs and her mom said, but you need protein! and Michelle said, But Mom, “find what feels good”. And her mom said, huh? And Michelle said: Sorry, I mean, Peanut butter is protein right? And her mom said: I guess you’re right.

Another thing I try to do everyday but kind of forget is call my congressional reps.

There is a huge war going on and it feels weird to be lying on a pink mat listening to this lady tell me to slow down. Catharine thinks that maybe in 2024, Adriene is going to announce she is pregnant. It’s almost the year where I have to decide whether or not I want to be pregnant. But not yet. I can stay in the goo of this choice a little longer. Bring a kid into the world? This world? This awful world? I don’t know. That might be for Adriene, not sure if it’ll be for me.

***

What Catharine doesn’t know is that I am cheating on her. I am also doing yoga apart from our Adriene rituals. I go to an in person studio that’s across from that 215 address. It’s not a secret I just haven’t told her yet. And when I do I know she will laugh. And then I will laugh. Catharine has one of the best laughs I’ve ever heard. If someone asked me to tell them in one picture “why I make art” I would show them a picture of Catharine laughing. Catherine was the one who inspired me to text the mourning friend. She has this way of making me feel like it’s never too late.

***

Certainly, I’ve been here before. Certainly, I’ve done it all before. I’ve certainly moved homes before before. Certainly sat on the floor of an apartment with no furniture and ate a pizza before. Certainly kissed Bill at midnight and woke up the next morning and thought: Where is everyone now? I guess I’ll call the bank tomorrow. Yoga with Adriene with Catharine is a ritual as old as time itself. And by that I mean we’ve done it for three years.

***

Catharine couldn’t do Adriene today because she was getting a haircut.
I couldn’t do Adriene today because I was running errands.
Catharine couldn’t do yoga today because she was on a flight back from Arizona
I couldn’t do Adriene today because….I don’t remember.
None of us shame one another and there is very little guilt.

***

Before I left her apartment, Chiara handed me a small quail egg. Chiara is Italian and eating quail eggs on New Years Eve is an old Italian tradition. I ask Chiara what the symbolism means: “It has to do with abundance: they are so little so you make many.” Chiara and their family were supposed to eat the eggs on New Years Eve but they forgot. “It’s not too late,” I tell them. As if I, whose just been told this tradition one second ago, am the expert.

Adriene has a video called Kindness
Adriene has a video called Center
Adriene has a video called Balance
Adriene doesn’t have a video called Cracks or Goo
But I wish she did.

***

During our sessions, Catharine and I are so very present. After we close the laptops, we talk about where we are headed next. After Day 13 I went to the movies. I saw Poor Things and thought it was good, even though I also understood Chiara’s gripes with it. After Day 16 Catharine had a commercial audition callback for the Perkins fast-food chain. They want her to say: “Shrimp is my Spirit Animal” but she won’t do it. Atta girl. At the in-person yoga studio I never “Om.” I bring all this up to say: 1. Actually maybe there are some things this year you are going to not want to do and that means you shouldn’t do them! Trust your gut. 2. Give us our good-white-lady-medals already! Please and thank you.

***

For some reason (stubborness, naivete, hope) I expect the things I’ve never done before to come easily to me. Peeling the tiny egg Chiara gave me is no exception. I thought the shell would be easy to come off. But I was wrong. I spend about ten minutes just trying to get through. Bill, on the other hand, has no problem. His eggs outer layer comes off in one fell swoop a swift simple motion. He offers to help me with mine, claiming he knows a trick, but I will not let him and don’t want to know the trick. This is my egg. This is my year. I’m gonna peel it. But fuck! Why is it so hard? And how to interpret? An omen for what’s ahead? A lesson in patience and presence? A punishment for my sins? Chiara tells me not to make a wish on the egg. That isn’t part of the ritual. I keep going, crack by crack.

***

In two days, Catharine and I will put on Adriene and it will be “Day 18". I’ll try hard to not to miss it and be otherwise occupied. Yoga video 18 feels special. It’s life. It’s a Bat Mitzvah check. It’s the number I live at now, right now, for now.

***

When the egg finally gives way to it’s insides, it looks different then how Chiara described it. “It’ll be bright, bright blue” they told me. But it’s more white. I worry this is a red-flag (a non-blue flag) but I pop it in my mouth anyway..and…and…and…and….and: I swear to god this egg tastes better than any hardboiled egg I’ve ever eaten in my whole life time. And I’ve eaten alot of eggs. I don’t know what those tiny birds are doing to make it so delicious, but I hope they keep it up.

Happy New Year!

❤