rambling

I Don’t Have a Map

I haven’t really felt like sharing in a while.

That’s pretty evident, being that my last blog post was written almost two months ago.

I’ve been busy kind of being captivated by life.

The way it moves, and lives, and breathes, and swings us from one end of emotions to another within just a few days.

Life is endlessly filled with lessons, and honestly, sometimes I get overwhelmed just trying to learn them all.

To learn from the pain, from the good, from the sad, from the happy.

From every person I cross paths with.

I believe, fully, that everything happens for a reason.

I believe, fully, that in every situation we find ourselves in, we are there for a very particular reason.

Yet, I often struggle to know what the reason is.

I often wonder what is being asked of me. Does this moment in time require considerable effort and depth, or does it require me to let go, and let it happen?

How are we ever meant to truly know?

Even doing my best is too vague of instructions – what part of my best? My best could be to work until dawn or my best could be to get a good night’s rest and start again tomorrow – how can I know?

Someone once told me that if G-d wants us to know, He’ll let us know.

Just knowing there is a reason is enough. Knowing the reason is not up to us. It’s not up to us to dig up the sand, to glue together the map and follow it until the ends of the earth.

If G-d wants us to go, He will hand us the map, and the right shoes to wear to walk towards our destination.

If He doesn’t hand us the map, perhaps He wants us to stay put.

It doesn’t mean that having the map makes it easy, and not having the map makes it hard.

Having the map could be an incredibly stressful experience, as we toil to read the signs on the road, and agonize at the length of the journey.

Not having it could leave us feeling lost and abandoned.

I’ve been in both of these made-up scenarios, and I can’t tell you which one I prefer.

I don’t know that I have the map right now.

This doesn’t mean I’m unhappy, it just simply means I’m not sure what G-d is asking of me in this precise moment.

And this can often lead to frustration. Confusion.

Heartfelt prayers that seem to go unheeded.

I know that I’m where I need to be, I just wish I knew what I’m supposed to be doing while I’m here. What kind of things I should be collecting, or sharpening, or finding.

Or if I’ll be here for a while, or not, or what.

Life is full of these moments.

As a writer, and a sharer, I often wonder if I’m in a particular place so that I can write, and share for the sake of giving someone the gift of knowing that someone out there is feeling that way too.

So.

If you’re out there.

If you’re feeling like you’re in a moment in time that doesn’t seem to quite fit, I’m here to tell you that there are countless others in that space with you.

Day by day, each of us will emerge. Each at the exact right moment. Each for the exact right reason.

But it will happen.

For now, if you have a map, seize it. Don’t be afraid. Follow the lines, tread carefully, and you’ll get there.

If you are mapless, as many of us are, breathe deeply. Soon, the way will unfold itself in front of you. For now, absorb the joy of being mapless – explore every inch of the space you are in, examine it, question it, and learn from it. Without a map, all you have is trust, and you just have to trust that this is where you need to be. For now.

For one day, this space will cease to exist, and you will be all the richer for it.

 

–
Etti Krinsky

Photo by Finding Dan | Dan Grinwis on Unsplash

 

 

 

 

An Ode to NYC

Over the last few weeks, my words have been stagnant. Unavailable, I should say.

I’ve had ideas, yet their formation was distant, just slightly out of reach.
It took approximately 45 seconds on the subway for my words to come rushing back, fighting to be heard and written and that’s why I’m standing in a subway car, writing.
This city is magic.
It usually smells bad, it’s overcrowded, it’s nearly impossible to get anywhere by car, and there’s only a few days a year that the weather is pleasant enough to actually enjoy the entire experience of walking down the street.
But man, what it gives in place of all the above is pure magic.
It’s a city that never sleeps, meaning people don’t stop doing. People spend less time dreaming and more time exploring, demanding and making things happen.
Today, I overheard a woman talking about climate change and it threw me for a loop – I was shaken by how much we share this world, how much we intake all the same images and words and messages, and we all live our lives so, so similarly.
Oh man, this city is magic.
Today, the fog covered all the tops of the buildings, almost begging me to just focus on the here and now. I couldn’t see the soaring sky scrapers, I could only see the people who walked near me, on ground level.
I’m obsessed with the way that I’ve lived here for 7 years, and I know my way around, yet I’ll never stop finding new treasures, new ways, new adventures.
What could be more inspiring than sharing a city with thousands of souls, all sharing this city that has stories etched into every stone, a city in which every path is so beaten it’s already new again.
I’m in love – in love with a city that keeps giving me reasons to smile, that promises to never be boring or slow or tired. It promises to show up when I seek inspiration, when I seek different and unique and excitement.
And I know, I know one day I’ll leave this place behind, for another lover – a quieter world in which I can once again hear myself think. Expansive space in which my imaginary children can run and not get hit by cars or kidnapped by strangers. Somewhere I don’t silently curse all the way home from the supermarket, the bags not digging into my palms, because I’d be driving  and they’d be in the trunk.
But that’s tomorrow, and today is today, and the fog told me to stop trying to peek at what else is out there, what might be next, what else can I find.
Today, I still have a wealth of adventures and treasures, a world far from completely explored, new alleyways and tiny bookshops, people to observe, these busy streets are waiting for me to hurry down them, and watch, and write, and learn, and write.
Because man. This is a city of magic.

25/52.

The Things I’ve Seen

I’ve been MIA on this blog for a few weeks.

It doesn’t really matter if anyone else noticed, it was a weight on my mind that got heavier with each week that passed without a blog post.
I like the me that is able to get a blog post out every week. That is a productive me, an eye on the prize me, a sticking to the commitment me – the me that I always believed would be a writer.
Alas, the last few weeks (five, to be specific), have been busy in a different way. I’ve been on the west coast twice, with full-length flights between each visit, I’ve spent time at the pacific and the Atlantic Ocean, I finished a summer term of college just barely submitting my last assignment on time, I’ve been laughing until I’ve cried, taken more pictures than I really ever have, I met my brand new nephew and created the sweetest memories that I’m now packing away for safekeeping.
And I’ve written about 25 blog posts that I hated.
Nothing has felt right.
I felt a little like good writing requires devotion that I don’t have, and that I’ve been relying on the seat of my pants for years, and I’ve been swimming in the sea of kind words, forgetting that writing requires serious work, and I can’t just hope words are waiting around when I’m ready to find them.
I have to present myself every day, and write, every word.
And as I prepare to teach creative writing for the third year, I need to give my writing a new promise of commitment, of showing up, of giving it what it deserves so that it returns pieces to me that I’m proud of.
The last few weeks have been busy, in the best ways, and I’ve discovered G-d hidden between cracks, in his every creation, and sometimes sitting in the wide open.
Like in the bluest water I’ve ever laid eyes on, in the mountains near Vancouver, and in the tiny blue eyes of my newest nephew as he lay in my arms, his entire being trusting me to care for him and love him.
That’s when He was revealed.
But I also saw Him in the eyes of homeless people on the streets of Seattle, as I found myself inching away from them, feeling horribly guilty but genuinely afraid, I closed my eyes and I reminded myself that we came from the same cloth, life just took us two very different directions.
And I wondered why G-d gave some an easy, happy life, while He gave others countless challenges that left them begging for food in a city that didn’t want them.
But I saw that we are each G-ds creations and that there is no way to measure anyone’s worthiness, because all I saw was the effect of life circumstances, nothing more. I could not see their souls, I could not see where they were in the pathways of life.
I saw G-d’s handiwork in the people, all the people that I came across, in the flight attendant who was dealing with boyfriend troubles, in her friend who grumbled “men, am I right?”, in the little family that sat next to me, their small baby playing peek-a-boo with me, in my nephew that played peek-a-boo with me through a phone, his infectious grin making my heart leap, in the mom at the airport who just wanted her daughter to have a challenge-less life as she demanded to speak to the airline manager, in her daughter who inched away, red with embarrassment, in the TSA employee smiling widely with a hidden joke as each passenger went through security, in my Uber driver who is just trying to make it in LA as a makeup artist who talked me through my tears as I left my three little nephews after living in their home for three weeks. Because I hate goodbyes, always.
I’ve had endless reminders of just how much we all have in common.
I’ve seen G-d’s beautiful wonders, as if He looked at the world thoughtfully, pulled out His paintbrush and painted breathtaking landscapes just for our enjoyment.
I think He did it because He knew we’d build cities that blocked our view of the sky and the sea, and we’d forget that the whole world is not contained within a couple of blocks, piling our frustrations and anger up and up and up until we found ourselves at a sea that’s more beautiful than we realized it could be. He put those there for us.
And I realized I seem to write about the same things, over and over and over, I’m drawn back to the same themes and the same ideas.
Maybe rather than hating that, it’s time I embrace it, and see where it takes me.
By giving me words, G-d asked me to create, to add to His glorious world, to connect to others using a most powerful tool.
I don’t know why words float through my head and onto a paper, I don’t know why they sometimes flow and sometimes don’t, I don’t know why I write poems in my mind in the shower only to have them flutter away as I pick up a pen.
But dreams are a procrastinators life-source, so now, I say: I am a writer.
20/52.
Photo was taken by Chanchie Krinsky, in Porteau Cove Park.

Do I Overthink?

“I used to live right over there, on that corner!”

“I made it very very clear…!!!”

“Someone take over, I can’t do this, I don’t know where we are!”

“Who is watching Billy?”

“Excuse me, is this Christopher street?”

I have a moment in which I am at home in a city that likes to remain a stranger as I tell a stranger that she is, indeed, on Christopher Street. It’s really a fluke that I know that, as this is my first time in this area, but I had just checked which street I was on, and what do you know? I can blend into the world, act like a local, tell her “yes! You’re on the right track.”

I’m in this part of town because I’m in a bad mood, and I hate bad moods. I’m not talking about a bad mood that is there for a reason, and therefore gives fire to my writing, or inspires me, or pushes me to be better. This is a bad mood that just sits in me, causing me to get irritated more easily, and feel generally low about how little I’ve been able to actually accomplish so far in my life.

I woke up in this bad mood, and I don’t have time for it. This week requires creativity and joy and excitement, and I can’t make time to wallow in self-pity, or whatever the bad mood required to allow me to slip out of its clutches. So I do something that usually works. I take myself to a part of the city I’ve never been to, and try to lose myself in the unfamiliar.

What initially attracts me to the area is a park that I found on google. They call it a secret garden and it looks like the perfect place to undo this bad mood and take deep breaths and realize that no matter what, life is going to be more than okay. I find the park, I find a seat, and I sit. I read my book, but I begin to feel antsy. I move to the other side of the park, yet deep in my stomach, I feel uneasy and uncomfortable, and I’m getting frustrated.

The park is silent, other than the squawks of birds who have the liberty to not care what humans think of them, and the occasional buzzing bee, yet the peace I’m so desperately seeking is refusing to settle in.

After trying to force it for all too long, I turn on my google maps to check out what else is around me, and I see that I am only a few short blocks from the water, and it’s like my legs know where to go before I realize it.

As I get closer to the water, I feel my heart begin to lift, and I wonder why I ever thought a silent park would be the perfect place to release the tension that was building up inside of me. I sit down near the water and take a deep breath and feel the tension ease out of me at last. I stare into the depths of the churning sea, and I feel the calm I had been seeking begin to enter me.

The other day, one of my students and I had a discussion about what calm is. I argued that calm is when you can find a place that is quiet, distraction-less and peaceful. She argued that calm does not have to equal that, that you can find a calm amidst the chaos.

I don’t truly grasp what she meant until I sit near the chaotic sea and feel a depth of calm I haven’t felt in a while.

It’s true.

As the waves slam themselves into the walls of the pier I sit on, I’m not sure precisely what it is, but I know that there is something so magical about the waves that keep returning to the shore, with the same intensity every, single, time.

I sit at the water, and breathe, and think, and cry a little because that’s how all of my bad moods finally leak out.

I leave, and I get on the subway, and I’m standing because I always stand.

A man, homeless, walks on, muttering intelligibly, about to walk past me, but then one man looks him in the eye and asks:

“What’s going on, man?”

They start to have a conversation, human to human.

It’s beautiful.

I don’t know if this man is a real man in all parts of his life, but today, right now, he is, because he isn’t afraid to talk to someone that everyone else avoids eye contact with.

Maybe beyond money, beyond medical intervention, beyond anything this homeless man needs is a human to look at him as a human.

“Excuse me, is this Christopher street?”

“Yes!”

“Thank you!”

But wait, I’m not a local, I’m as lost as you are, maybe more because I’ve convinced myself I know my way around, but I don’t, and that can be taken literally or metaphorically, but either way, I like your dress, and we probably have so much more in common than we think…

The thing is, either you can read this sorry-excuse-of-a-blog-post and pull a thousand meanings from it.

Or you can read it as my very detailed account of my day that may seem meaningless.

Or you can read it like I wrote it, as someone who sees meaning in every encounter, but is trying to come to terms with the fact that I don’t always know the meaning, and some moments in life can be taken at face value and appreciated and remembered, and not everything has to be the life-changing moment I wish it was.

Sometimes, bad moods come, and they go, and that is that.

 

10/52

Photo by Oscar Keys on Unsplash

Finding Time

Last week I wrote a blog post with my eyes half closed, forcing the words to come out, one after the other, in a way that made any sort of sense.

I wrote it, I published it in the last couple of hours of the week, and called it a day.
I didn’t share it on my facebook like I usually did. I didn’t attach a photo. I even forgot to write what number blog post it was.
I was really close to skipping it altogether. In fact, in my mind, I was already writing this weeks post, all about how I finally missed a week.
But my heart, my soul, my words wouldn’t let me cop out.
So, I put everything aside and got it done.
It wasn’t great. I wouldn’t even say it was good.
But sometimes, life demands everything you have.
Sometimes things get so busy that hobbies, projects, and pretty much anything selfish has to take a back burner for a while.
And I came really close to breaking my blogging streak. Before camp started, I could count on one hand how many times I’d skipped my daily morning prayers in the last 3 years. Since camp started, I don’t have enough fingers to count.
Sometimes, life demands everything you have.
But I didn’t want it to take this.
I’ve been blogging weekly for 43 weeks now.
In a big way, it’s selfish. I don’t expect anyone to care if I miss a week. I don’t expect anyone to care to hear my thoughts. So it’s pretty much entirely selfish.
But then, there are those times that my writing reaches a soul, and it transforms that piece of writing for me.
And this week, someone texted me after Shabbat to tell me that they were quite alarmed when they thought I had missed a week.
And my heart sang.
Because it is moments like that that assure me that I am not yelling into the abyss.
Yes, these blog posts are selfish.
I was so close to not writing one at all last week. My brain was too full of schedules and games, to-do lists and errands to find any creative words floating around.
But then, in the quiet night, I sat and I reflected and I wrote.
And it put everything into perspective.
I didn’t push that blog post, I didn’t share it on Facebook. Almost nobody saw it.
But I did. I reflected. I wrote. It put my exhausting week into order, it reminded me of what it was all for.
With just a week and a half left to camp, I will be able to give my blog more attention soon.
But for now, I couldn’t skip a week, because for one moment, I had to be selfish.
Blog Post: 44/52

Featured Photo via Google.