The Perfect Moment

St. Andrews

I have begun to notice that every once in a while, without trying at all, comes along the perfect moment. They come in different shades. I’ve experienced one as an evening of pure aloneness in my room writing songs on my guitar, and a few others were looking around at a room, or a table, or a run-club of people and feeling rise up from the bottom of my stomach to the top of my heart, a feeling of full-embodied warmth and gratitude. Two key characteristics of love, really.

Yesterday I woke up hungover. The night before I participated in a drinking game at a post-graduate “Borg night” that did not leave me devastated in the moment, but did set me up for a sure sample of small hell the next morning. I woke up alright, actually. Surprised, really, at how great I felt. But within two hours a steady fog had descended on my brain, heart, nervous system, and I no longer felt connected to any of it, nor to the world at large. My small sample of hell had arrived, and although not purely physical, it felt like a disconnection from everything, and an inability to check back into the world.

So, I walked through the morning trying to get back in touch with reality. I ate breakfast with some friends in town, chatted, walked to the bookstore and then the sea. May have shed a tear or two (I am an Enneagram 9 and it is said that disconnection from people, and from self, is number 9s greatest fear. I think that is true). I walked back home and took a long, easy nap. It was the kind of nap that my body gifted me as if naps were the cheapest currency in the world. One moment I was slipping into bed, and the next I was slipping into sleep. A bit of peace, at last.

I woke up from my nap; outside my window is a small little tree - beech, maybe? - and the edges of the top of the tree are turning yellow. My window takes up most of the wall on the south side of my room. The sky was clear, sun pouring across it in a golden way, touching the yellow leaves right outside. My plants waited on my windowsill, like always. My sunflower duvet wrapped me up, keeping me warm.

I checked in with myself. Ah yes, there she is. Adeline Shaw. The woman I spend every single day with. The fog had lifted, and I thought: there you are! I couldn’t stand being apart from you for that long!

And so, with the majority of the recovery in tow, I put on my purple flowy free people pants (one of my absolute favorites), a black turtleneck (it is starting to get colder these days), my favorite yellow sweater (if you know me, you know which one), and a long black oversized raincoat. All my favorite clothes. I grabbed my hair and put it into a messy bun, and god bless, it was one of those blessed buns that look so great for no reason. One of those buns you can never recreate again, that perfectly. One of those god-given buns you don’t touch once they’re up, you don’t mess with, you just let them do their thing, grateful that this bun has chosen you today.

I hopped on my bike, ordered a $6 order of noodles, and within 5 minutes was in town. I parked my bike at the edge of town, walked into Dr. Noodles, and put in my AirPods (thank you mom for gifting me those for my bday). I picked up my small box of food and some chopsticks and started walking to the sea for a little picnic. All my favorite songs were queued - Burbujas de Amor, Talk it Up, Honeybody - and I danced a little in the streets, in little small motions that could be strategically taken for walking from an outsiders perspective. At least I think.

I walk danced the three blocks to the sea and when nobody was around my dancing got a little less mistakable for walking. When I came up to castle sands, my favorite beach, I saw the tide was high, I found a bench, sat on it, opened up my delicious box of noodles, and BOOM there it was:

the perfect moment.

On this bench over the North Sea, I was filled with the most intense, profound sense of gratitude, love and joy. Oh! To be connected once again to myself and to the sea, to be living in St. Andrews!! To have a list of literature about anthropology I get to read every day. To be meeting new people, to be wrapped in my yellow sweater, to have the perfect bun (if only for an evening)!!! To be eating a takeout box of noodles. To be listening to my favorite music with AirPods. To be looking out to the sea, to live next to the sea. To choose to swim or not to swim in the sea. To be touched by the steady breeze.

The sun was slanting, sunset within an hour. There was a medieval castle! right to my left. The sea at this hour is so dark it’s almost navy blue and the air was perfect levels of crispness, with my clothes being the perfect level of warmth.

My re-entry into the world this way felt like a hug from the whole universe, enveloping me in warm love. I dare say it was nearly worth that foggy sad morning, those hours of disconnection so when the fog lifted I could feel more profoundly: you are part of this world. You belong to the world, and to yourself.

My re-entry into my body felt like a dance party, enlightenment, joy. A reminder: this is the body you always live in, don’t forget to notice that gift.

After thirty minutes, I got up from my bench and walked to the postgrad library about 4 minutes away by foot. I have a lot of work to do these days, I am playing catch-up in some classes, getting ahead in others. It is wonderful to have this purpose again, to use my brain in this way again, to have to sit down just to think and have that be an acceptable way to spend a few hours, again.

At 9 pm, I walked out of the library and strolled through town. Despite the cold, out on the patios of the pubs were friends, partners, families. I looked into a restaurant and saw two middle aged couples dining together in a warm yellow light. I saw two 20 year old guys playing cards with their pints of beer, sitting in the shadow of the streetlamp. A girl walked out of the pub to sit outside with a pint of Guinness and a winter coat. In my torso I felt that familiar ping, the same one I always felt walking around Cassis after dark or watching 100 people swing dance at Rosa Parks Circle: look at humanity being humanity. We are so, so beautiful and weird and lonely and full of love and drinking and eating and smoking, and we’re all here together.

From disconnection to connection, I’d made it.

I could feel my place in the mess of it all.