Still Sundays

June 6th.

I have never been able to articulate the stillness of a Sunday. Those quiet hours of the early morning before a city, town, or village takes a big yawn and stretches itself into your routine which may include bills, laundry, emails, phone calls, errands, groceries, etc.

These mornings are especially unique in New York because the City doesn’t sleep but she just takes naps. And the longest naps are on Sunday mornings. I love Sunday mornings in NYC. I try my best not to have anything planned, not even a yoga class, before 12:00 p.m. If my mind is quiet enough I borrow the stillness and share some thoughts with a few friends or family members via email or a phone conversation. Some mornings I  simply wrap the stillness of a Sunday morning around a pen and put fragments on a paper.

I have been asked by a few people to share more of my own thoughts on this blog, website. Usually those are reserved for my circle of friends via email, not necessarily for privacy concerns but because when I created this space last July my intention was: it is not about me–but for some thoughts on the process of writing. So this new category, Still Sundays, is my attempt to merge the two without betraying the original purpose. To allow for a fluid evolution of my intention. What I will write on “Still Sundays” is just as it comes, the spell check being my only editing, because frankly at this point I don’t have time to do more.

I don’t watch much TV as it is but watched barely a day or two while I was in the village at my parents’ farm house in California for the last couple of months. Having returned to my apartment, I turned on the television. I have been reading news and others’ opinions via Twitter links provided in my stream so to hear people just argue about obvious things was plain noise. I could not decipher what was being said. I really mean this–I couldn’t process the information being thrown my way. What is there to argue about the oil spill?

I am told I have an ancient looking Television set–if you don’t have flat screen you are really missing out–I want to ask what am I missing out? The Earth looks like it is bleeding, I flip the channel and instead of the Earth we are talking about which celebrity was seen where, I flip the channel and cartoons are not even what they used to be. What am I missing on flat screen HD ? Sports? Sure, I suppose FIFA World Cup games would look amazing. But a game is over and then just colorful noise but for a few TV shows and some good journalism reporting. And back to the images where the Earth looks like it is bleeding, the dirty maroon oil spreading.

I was out with some very good friends last night. I recognize I am very lucky to have such good friends. A group of people who believe in personal and professional development and exploring creative potential into a lifestyle. We have remained friends because we all have continued to grow, change, laugh and cry during the challenges which come with pushing against the status quo in personal lives and society. I told them about the twitter friends I have made. They weren’t surprised. They wanted to know when are they meeting them…

I plan on having a twitter comes to life party. No one believes me but I will. Not this year, but soon. My mother believes me.

I am anxious but equally excited about having signed up for Bindu Wiles project 21: 5: 800. 21 days which involve 5 days of yoga and 800 words of writing during those five days per week. I was going to do the yoga anyway but 800 words a day? I don’t even know how to count to 800. Numbers scare me. I don’t know how to visualize numbers. But Bindu Wiles said anything is possible with support. Writing is not how I pay my bills–not yet anyway–so that is going to be a tough balance. My father says work expands with more time. I think I will manage.

A night ago, a friend, a woman in her early 70’s, while walking around the neighborhood, asked me if I saw her as White. I told her she had passed the coolness test–I didn’t see her color. She had cultivated her life as such that she couldn’t be boxed by skin pigment, something determined by where one’s ancestors were roaming around decades ago.

A woman in my neighborhood, very hard of hearing yet knows everyone’s business, wanted to know “where the hell” I had been. Thought you went up and ran away from us. She wanted me to know some folks were saying something about me being “bi” and what did that mean. Bless her eighty-three year old heart. I told her bi-coastal, meaning back and forth between two coasts. She replied, “Well, I tell ya, folks get me so confused.”

There are moments when I feel so alive because I write or after certain kindred exchanges with friends and strangers, on twitter or on the streets. There is something with that energy—that energy that makes you feel alive—that can really change things.

Well, it is 12:33 pm which means…there are things to do, places to go, people to call, errands…

~a.q.s.

Related posts:

Still Sundays Still Sundays Just a small note to note a year of Still Stundays