No Thoughts but Scones
Scenes from a weekend.
Saturday, that’s what it’s about. Freedom, relaxation. I never liked Sundays. There’s this lurking sense of disquiet that spills over the entire day, like my own internal Jaws soundtrack. The anxiety of what work I need to do this week inches ever closer, gets louder and louder by the time the day is over, and I’ll inevitably wake up at 4am unable to fall back asleep for two hours. And the cycle repeats.
A fun thing happened recently, though, and that was a sort of icky sluggishness that pervaded my body the week after I turned in my next book proposal (Yes! Fingers crossed). I’m not a person who naps in the middle of the day, but trust and believe my face was wedged into a pillow as the sun pulsed through the window after lunch for multiple days in a row. What in Christ was wrong with me? To the point that it was distressing and I didn’t feel like myself at all. Can you imagine me wanting to stay home all day and watch TV on a Saturday when the great wide world of New York is sitting there waiting for me?
It turns out there’s this thing called post-achievement crash, also called post-achievement depression. As psychologist Dr. Richard Brown wrote, it “can produce a complex range of emotions, including lack of motivation, tiredness, restlessness, frustration, self-doubt, sadness, or an overall sense of melancholy and existential crisis.” The best thing to do, it seemed, really was to relax.
It was one of those magical days in early spring, where the sky is cloudless and blue like a sheet of colored paper. Even from inside, you know what the air feels like from memory alone, cool and crisp, meant for a jacket but not a sweater, and thankfully so. After what feels like a wintry lifetime of sweaters it’s a dream to not need one anymore.
And there I was on the couch. I hated it. Around 3pm, however, I got up enough energy to move myself around and asked Chris if he wanted to come on a walk with me. I knew exactly where I wanted to go, that walk that’s too cold in the winter with no shelter from the inevitable frosty wind. He walked with me and held my hand as we made our way toward Yura for coffee. I eyed the chunky scone dotted with masses of fruit–turns out they make it without sugar and the sweetness comes from the blueberries, bananas and what was it, raspberries, maybe? in the batter–and grabbed one to go.
We walked up the river, and saw quickly we had the same idea as many other people in the neighborhood. Cascades of owners with puppies walked past us, exclamations of “puppy!” and “look at the floof!” leaving our lips. “What’s his name?” I ask Chris as a particularly distinguished dog walks past us. I do this often, because he usually comes up with a great name, though I’ve also heard him christen many a dog Dexter and Roscoe.
At first it seemed like the whole of our neighborhood had all found bird-poop-free benches before us–another sign that this was the first day people could traverse the river walk comfortably instead of just their feathered friends (or foes). But eventually we sat and I tore off crusty knobs of this scone for us to share, the flavors of each fruit arriving in big (blueberry) and small (banana) ways. It was nice to sit quietly, to have no thoughts but scones, to hold my partner’s hand as we walked up the river.
The next day, Sunday, also moved slowly and I let it. It was one of the first Sundays in a long time that Jaws-like ba-dum of anxiety didn’t linger in my brain. I relaxed until I needed to move, then I went for a long walk up to the bridge. It felt like ages since I had been there–my long walks for a few years were through the park on the other end of the neighborhood, but on the walks that started during the pandemic, where I lived closer to the water, it was a daily feature. I try to remember to be grateful for the ability to move my body, and I feel that today.
Today I’m listening to Joni Mitchell’s Hejira, smitten from the first three words of “Coyote.” In college I used to take boys I liked to the record store. I was a big fan of Joni’s Blue and I was looking through some of her other records that day. “You would be someone who liked Joni Mitchell,” one boy said. I never really knew what that meant but I think about it often whenever she comes up. Listening to this album, I take it now, some 20 years later, as a compliment. Each song is an intricate story flooded with language that floats like delicate flowers cast about in a breeze.
On the river walk, people jog past in sweatshirts and shorts or push strollers. I trod silently past them in loafers, finally delighted to be able to wear them without socks, breathing in the air, ignoring the cars, looking at the water flap and swish against itself. There’s more landscaping here now than there used to be, and I’m grateful for the attention someone paid to making this a nice experience for all of us, when something that seems so small could easily be dismissed as inconsequential.
When I get home, I’m refreshed and relaxed but tired. My brain is quiet. Chris makes us tomato bacon pasta from that New York Times recipe I sent him this past week. It seemed easy enough, not too-too caloric, and we had all the ingredients, but he took it upon himself to make dinner for us. He puts his own spin on it, successful as usual, with the addition of parmigiano reggiano and parsley and szechuan pepper. My heart is full. The crash, it seems, is lifting.