Stargazing Behind the Met (The Day After An Insurrection)
The view from our living room window, early one morning last week. I find it kind of wonderful to be living in New York City, which feels so immense and huge, and to catch glimpse of the moon, or the stars, and remember how teeny tiny all of this actually is.
After dinner on Thursday night, we took a walk with a friend, who also happens to be our downstairs neighbor. (This is one of the best parts of the new building we moved into.) A lot of the paths in Central Park are well-lit at night, which is a godsend during these short winter days. We looped north, eventually taking the path that runs behind the Met. There was a soft glow coming from the direction of the Modern wing, and when I turned to look at the windows (why does an empty museum at night have such a powerful hold over the imagination?), I noticed the night sky, too. I was struck by how many stars I could see.
Okay, let me temper that “many.” I’m talking maybe a dozen stars, and then, as our eyes adjusted, maybe a dozen more. But to see any stars in the middle of Manhattan? It felt kind of miraculous. There was Mars, there was Orion’s Belt. We stopped for a while, craning our necks as our friend pulled out his stargazing app and held it up to the night sky.
I thought of the places where the night sky has dazzled me the most. Montauk in October, where we could see glimmers of the Milky Way. South Africa, where we saw the Southern Cross for the first time. West Texas, where we attended this nerdy but awesome event (seriously, if you ever find yourself near Marfa post-Covid, I highly recommend doing this) and watched dying supernovas through massive telescopes. I thought too of my childhood bedroom in Whistler, of how I could lie on my stomach in bed and look out the window and see the Big Dipper hovering above Sprout Mountain. Far-flung places—remote, empty—the memories of which I treasure like gems, and which seem to have nothing in common with this dense, hard-charging, skyscrapered life in New York City.
Thursday, of course, was the day after the insurrection at the Capitol. We inevitably talked about that during our walk, commiserating about how strange it all was, how upsetting, but also how distracting and fatiguing. How it had short-circuited our attention; how hard it was to get even a modicum* of work done. Wednesday was insane (it was more than insane, but do any of us yet have the words to adequately describe it? I sure don’t), and the next day, I felt incredibly drained. On Thursday morning I sat down, opened my computer, tried to press forward with work, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I felt like my brain had turned into mush.
One of the reasons I love New York is how much it energizes me. It makes me feel so awake; it leaves me hungry for the experiences of being alive. Which is not to say that every experience needs to be intense and loud, but life in the city has a way of shunting you toward those flavors. Think back to those pre-Covid times. Even weekends, those precious occasions of rest, often felt kind of intense. Brunch with one friend, drinks with another, dinner with a third. Workout classes to attend; errands to run; museum shows to catch before they close for good. (And of course I miss those things! I can’t wait to elbow my way up to a crowded bar. I can’t wait to sit in a coffee shop. I can’t wait to order popcorn and Junior Mints and Diet Coke at the movie theater. I REALLY miss that.) It was certainly possible to slow down, to find those moments of stillness, but—for me, at least—it took a certain amount of effort to achieve that stillness within the confines of the city. And this effortfulness seemed to defeat the whole purpose. Often I only managed to find the stillness by actually leaving city, whether for a weekend visiting family, or a vacation somewhere further afield. Different geographies, where the shape of the place itself forces a certain stillness upon you, and you can finally flip the switch from “on” to “off.”
But during Covid, I can’t really go anywhere. I’ve had to find those moments of rest, and stillness, within the confines of my normal life in New York City. And this can be hard—but as the months stack up, and we approach the one year mark, I hope I’m getting a little better at it. Back in the Normal Days, would I ever have thought to take a nighttime walk through Central Park, just because? Would I ever have thought to stop, and stare up at the night sky, and squint for Polaris? Covid makes it harder; our lack of a functioning government makes it harder; but both of these factors also mean that we’re in need of rest and stillness more than ever; and harder doesn’t mean impossible.
And not everything needs to be this poetic. Earlier that Thursday, in my state of brain-mush-fatigue, I finally conceded defeat. I abandoned my efforts at work, made a cup of tea, got in bed, and watched Emily in Paris, which I had snobbishly been putting off because it seemed, I don’t know, too silly? Too light? (I’m happy to report that I was completely wrong. Obviously I am LOVING it.) It felt ridiculously indulgent to get in bed on a Thursday afternoon and watch Emily Cooper prancing around Paris (and I recognize what an enormous privilege it is, that my self-employment affords me this flexibility), which meant that a small voice in my head felt guilty even while partaking in the indulgence. This feels weird. It’s a Thursday afternoon. You really should be working. Have you earned this break? And maybe I can’t get rid of those voices, but so what? I’m trying to seize the stillness in whatever shape it may come, even when the stillness feels strange or unnatural. It takes practice. That’s okay. I remind myself that the world is constantly changing, and we are constantly adapting to it, and that everything takes practice.
(*Anne Helen Petersen, who is always so smart on these questions of productivity/burn-out/capitalism, just wrote a really good piece about this.)