The rush and the calm

a t-shirt at the grocery store reads: more haste, less speed

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Last night, many hours passed before I realized I was digging an endless tunnel without actually holding a shovel. I was sitting at my desk, rigid and out of body. My shoulders had stiffened, I felt agitated and wired, the threat of a headache loomed in my jaw. I forced myself to take a deep breath, annoyed that I had to take a deep breath. 

I removed my eyes from my laptop, where they’d been fixed, perpetually hungry and unsatisfied. I left the apartment and tried to focus on counting the coins in my Kinokuniya¹ bag so I could go to the grocery store. It’s an overly familiar walk, an overly familiar practice of counting what’s left in my Kinokuniya bag, and this frustrated me too. 

For the last week or so, I’ve been abstaining from being online—in almost any capacity—for the first half of my day. I allow emails after ten thirty-ish. But nothing else is acknowledged until after noon. Unsurprisingly, this has allowed my body to begin returning to itself. Though, yesterday, once again, and despite my best efforts, it was co-opted in the evening by the relatively unavoidable chase of Trying to Succeed, and it’s thought-cousin: Earn More Coins, Please—Please, Earn More Coins, of which, innately, is a beast with a two-sided name. 

I want to make a list, and then erase the list. 

1. The cat that sits in the window across from the apartment, the grey cat

2. Don’t look at things for too long

3. Don’t listen 

4. Locate the blue-ish green butterfly near the neighbor’s house, give them a name so it feels more real, so all this feels real

5. taxes , they have    to    be    sorted, papers,     please look at  them, again  ,   soon 

6. Fire 

7. Must look less

8. Must look more

9. Must do nothing

10. Must do something

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Haircut

I got a haircut in January, and when I touch it—and feel the back where there is nothing where there used to be something—I feel calm. As if cutting off roots is the making of roots. Gardening.

I had asked the stylist for something different, something specifically different from before. I left the salon smiling, amiable, and saying thank you. But when I saw my reflection in a nearby store window, I crumbled beneath what looked like me from last August. The effect was surprisingly strong and immediate—I can’t go back to August. Crying, I frantically ran my fingers through the curls that the stylist sculpted but didn’t need to sculpt. I finally calmed when I saw something in my reflection that was different, when I realized that the haircut actually was different. I hiccuped. Then I laughed. Felt relief spreading back into my arms; blood moving from my heart into the roadmaps of a January body.

(Words by Unsupervised writer and artist,

Anna Fusco

. The strange glitch screenshot taken on my iPhone in a moment of closing and opening and getting stuck).

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