April 13

My sister is here, and she notices that I’m more at ease, that I’m not so much a different person in a crowd or among friends, I’m just her crazy baby brother who loves to dance and laugh and chit chat over cupcakes and coffee. I still pause mid-sentence, but I’ve always done that; a mind must intake after an extended exhale, and like my sister’s palpitating heartbeat my breaths go from pitter patter to gggonnnngggg.
We’re off to dance tonight, but first we’re going to grab a beer, and while we drink that beer we’re going to confide in each other how hard it is to keep up a meditation practice. I’ll tell her about my blind spots and my lackluster posture and she’ll complain about the noises of London and her recent break-in and her occasional breaches of a not very strict vegetarian diet. Oh, before the beer we will sit in Central Park and feel the rocks beneath our bottoms and set a timer for thirty minutes of soaking it—Central Park, the air, New York—in.