Escape from NY

Last weekend, some friends and I rented a house on airbnb, upstate in a small town 20 minutes from Woodstock. We stayed three nights, without wifi and usually without 3G, and spent the time finding swimming holes, in the pool, grilling on the charcoal grill, and drinking hundreds of beers.

It was odd how much fun the simplest things were; throwing rocks into a river; lighting and watching gas lamp; a card game; saving a frog from the pool. The city constantly feels like there's not enough of anything – we're all in desperate search for more fun, more interesting work, more friends, more love, more alcohol, more everything. Something about being away from that relentless discoverer mode, in the quiet woods with only the bullfrogs and crickets and leaves rustling made it possible to isolate and find small joy in things that would ordinarily bore us to death.

We figured out both the VCR and DVD player. It was kind of fun to see how people used to have to deal with terrible, terrible UX.

We also headed up to Woodstock for one of their outdoor weekend festivals, which was amazing. The tiny pocket of a town felt like what would happen if you took Williamsburg and aged it by 40 years. We talked about how for us growing up, 40 years ago was the 60's. Now it's the 80's, our childhoods with synthesizers and mohawks and puffy lettering on sweatshirts. All these things are probably as foreign to today's youth as peace signs and headbands on boys were to us.

I'm not sure what the point of this post is. Overall it was an enlightening trip, and helped make an already overly tight-knit group of friends closer enough to send off one of our own to his new job in San Francisco. There were stick-and-poke tattoos, there were tears (mostly related to the tattoos), there was the thrill of climbing onto a big rock overlooking a fast moving river. I think it was a success.

Meditation on meditation

Last week, I attended a peer-led sit in at New York Insight Meditation Center. My friend Jack worked at Founder Collective in the same building, which was how he discovered it, and he recommended it to me one night over drinks while I was emotionally imploding. 

Each day has drop-in hours, but Tuesdays and Thursdays have guided sittings for two hours, 7-9pm. Tuesdays are the beginner classes, but they're more formal and structured. I had never meditated before and was a little concerned about my lack of impulse control, so we went to the more informal Thursday sitting.

The experience was totally different than what I was expecting. First off, I was great at it! I was instantly capable of shutting down my brain. Listening to the guide's recommendations for beginners felt like the easiest thing in the world. Afterwards I was even a little alarmed because I could suddenly see how people get brainwashed – there's something incredibly comfortable about giving up autonomy and responsibility. It's such a relief, almost like a little brain vacation.

At first, just sitting in the silent room with all the strangers, I focused on my breathing in and out and listened. There was the hum of the air conditioner, the dim, barely audible music from a dance class across the street, the breathing of the other attendees. There was the feeling of palms beginning to sweat on my knees, so I turned my hands over. I could feel my heartbeat – I have an abnormally high resting heart rate, around 100 BPM, and I could suddenly in all that silence only feel the strain of that overworked muscle, imagining the blood flowing out into my arms and legs and up to my brain. 

At one point early on, my eyes began rapidly twitching under the closed lids. As per the guide's recommendation, I let them go, not trying to stop them, and became aware of when they began to calm down, till the point where they stopped completely. I checked in on my heartbeat and it was slower than I had ever felt it. Eventually I couldn't detect the beat at all.

Then the strange part happened! I suddenly became aware of feeling like I was floating. It was like when you smoke just the right amount of pot to be really stoned but not scared yet, or almost that too drunk feeling when your brain is just spinning and gravity doesn't pull on you and you aren't afraid or agitated by it, but happy and enjoying it. There is no thought in your head at all except how good you feel. 

Someone got up, and the wooden floors creaked. I felt snapped back into that room, with those strangers, and suddenly my heartbeat was pounding in my chest again. I breathed slowly in and out and tried to go back there.

The first 45 minutes of sitting were just like that, dipping in and out of this mental fun zone. Afterwards, there was walking meditation, partner meditation, and a weird group therapy reading passages about Zen Buddhism from some book. My favorite part was definitely the personal meditation. I tried it at home again today for only about 15 minutes, and felt incredible afterwards. 

I also realized why maybe it came so naturally to me – it was a feeling I've felt before. Like being on substances, or being at an incredible live show, where you aren't doing anything but feeling something, experiencing something, and not really even processing it. It's something I'm going to try and incorporate into every day. I don't have much of a routine in life lately, but maybe this can start to help.

FIDLAR

I love FIDLAR.

Earl Sweatshirt

I usually hate teenagers whether they're musicians or not but I love love love Earl Sweatshirt.

Directed by Hiro Murai

I picked a good time to give up health insurance.

When you don't have health insurance but are a human being, you sometimes resort to things like ordering your contact lenses from Canada and going to Planned Parenthood for birth control. I debated even writing this post but then thought that was silly, it's not some big secret, is it? But I will confess that I didn't check in on Foursquare at the last second despite convincing myself beforehand that I would.

Anyway, going to Planned Parenthood is a harrowing experience even if you're not looking for abortions and candy. There are metal detectors, a pretty serious search for weapons and other crazy person accessories, and then you get in there and it's all terrified teen couples. I went alone, because, you know, independence. You fill out the kind of paperwork that always gives me an existential crisis ("Is it possible that your partner has had other partners in the past six months?" check: Yes / No / I don't know. Isn't it always I don't know?? How could you say 'it's NOT possible'??) and then wait a couple hours.

For those who aren't women, pretty standard procedure is a weighing, a pregnancy test (peeing in a cup), and blood pressure taking. The woman who took my blood pressure made a face before trying it a second time. "Did you run here?" she asked me. (It's 100 degrees in NY today.)

I showed her my shoes. "Is it bad?" I asked.

She looked at me up and down. "You're not overweight, so I don't know what this is...You have really, really high blood pressure. But the nurse will check you again, it could be a mistake."

I followed the nurse through a maze of hallways and felt like if my blood pressure wasn't high before, it definitely was now. Not that I knew exactly what high blood pressure meant, except that my father has it. And that it gave him a stroke last year.

The nurse took my blood pressure a third time and looked at me. "Do you smoke?" was the first question. We took turns asking questions and the haze started to settle and I understood what was happening. I asked her what the risk of my blood pressure was. "Well. Heart failure, heart attack, stroke. Oh, or kidney failure." She looked sympathetic and judgmental at the same time. "You need to see a doctor either today or tomorrow."

"I don't have health insurance," I told her, alarmed.

She gave me a printout of doctors in Brooklyn who take patients without insurance and told me about hospitals that have emergency-care offices you can walk into. The word "emergency" also bothered me. She seemed surprised that I wasn't getting dizzy spells, blurred vision or fainting. "Your body has probably just adjusted to this over time." What??

It's always an awful thing to find out your lifestyle is killing you more quickly than you thought. She strongly recommended phasing certain things out over time, since a drastic change could give me a heart attack or stroke(!), and also put me on a special birth control that doesn't contain estrogen which is also really bad for your heart. I came home, read up on foods that lower blood pressure, and forced myself to eat a quarter of an avocado and beans (both of which I love usually) without salt. I felt sick after. I still feel sick.

CARTAGENA, COLOMBIA

Our last stop in Colombia was Cartagena, a port city on the northern coast of the country. Although it's on the water, it's not really known for its beaches. The nicest beaches are actually closer to where we had come from, which you can get to in less than an hour on these insane speedboats that go a thousand miles an hour and feel like they're going to break in half and kill you.

We rented an amazing apartment off airbnb that had a courtyard with a pool in it. I don't understand why this courtyard concept isn't more popular. Backyards are so dumb, everyone can see you. When I'm rich I'm going to build myself a house with an open air courtyard that has a pool in it.

In medieval times (like, 1500s) Cartagena was often attacked by pirates so the city center is protected by a stone wall with cannons. It's pretty cool. We stayed within the walls, where the streets are narrow and winding and the houses are all painted bright colors with flowers dripping off the balconies. There can be a seedy kind of feeling to the place at night, but during the day it was beautiful.

For anyone attempting to visit Playa Blanca/Islas del Rosario, here's how we did it since info on the internet s pretty sparse. We hailed a taxi on the street and asked them to take us down to the marina. The minute we stepped out of the cab, tour operators raced up to us. The first who got to us was waving a little piece of paper (which they all had) that you could mark off or tell them what you wanted – to visit the Islas del Rosario (there are multiple islands, but I'd read finding a good one could be hit or miss), or Playa Blanca, or go snorkeling, or go to an aquarium. The internet also said the snorkeling/aquarium were wastes of time/money, and we had only wanted to go to the beach, so I tried to make that as clear as possible and marked the paper. For just the round trip boat ride (plus lunch is included for free) it was around 60,000 pesos for both of us, or roughly $30.

They shuffle you through a ticket window where they write your name on a list and make you sit on folding chairs with a bunch of strangers. After about 10-15 minutes, they started calling names and pointing to different boats to get on, long fiberglass boats with roofs that have six seats across split by an aisle. Each boat looks like it holds about 40 people or so, and the only difference I guessed was which destination you wanted.

Our boat was full, all Spanish speakers. We were actually taken to the aquarium first, but everyone freaked out and started yelling in Spanish about how they only wanted the beach, so I'm glad for that. (The aquarium and snorkeling were offered at an additional cost as if it were an unmissable deal.) Finally our boat operators gave up and took us to the beach. The actual ride was insane. I loved it but I like being scared, but if you're afraid of traveling over high speeds on a fiberglass boat that feels like it's going to crack in half any minute, you might want to consider taking a car (which takes longer.) It was going so fast I was afraid to turn my head in case the wind ripped off my sunglasses. I was also too scared to take out my phone to photograph anything.

You get a free lunch (mojarra of course) and then try and stay in sight of your boat so they dont leave you when they return. You learn to recognize your group and stay near them, and we had no issues getting back on three hours later.

The one photo I was able to take during a rare lull, on the way back facing Bocagrande.

Playa Blanca

ISLA BARU

 

Isla Baru is actually not an island at all, more like a little peninsula about an hour drive from Cartagena. I had wanted us to have some rest and relaxation after touring such big cities, and this was totally the right call. We had a terrifying time getting there, if you can imagine navigating a city you've never been in before where you only really speak 1/8 of the language. The owner of our guesthouse had arranged for a car to pick us up from the airport, where we had our first little twinge of fear (is this guy in a beat up pickup truck with lumber in the back our taxi driver??) and a second mega wave of fear after getting stuck in what seemed like a parking lot full of oil tankers and angry truck drivers after the sun set. "¿Qué pasó?" I asked him, trying to sound totally unconcerned and not terrified. "La línea para el ferry," he answered. We were waiting in line for the dumbest way I ever saw to cross fifty feet of water, basically a ferry where they squeezed four or five trucks at a time to float for 30 seconds to get to the other side.

We weren't murdered or robbed, and we ended up safely at the guesthouse I had booked. We were staying only two nights at the lovely Hostal Ecológico Baruchica, a tiny place with only four rooms run by a former photographer on its own isolated beach. There are hammocks and no TVs, the food is prepared by a staff of two, and there are beers you can take from the fridge and mark down on a little sheet that Olga, the owner, adds to your bill for when you leave. There are no stores to buy things like junk food or suntan lotion. (We got pretty sunburned). Our bathroom was open air, and the first two nights I had to chase giant spiders out with a magazine. (I learned I am much less afraid of things like big bugs and ghosts than my boyfriend.) There are two dogs and a cat, and no wi-fi. It was incredible. We spent the entire time laying in hammocks, reading, swimming, and eating. Every meal was at a big table where you eat with the other guests, but luckily the people who search out such an out of the way destination tend to be pretty cool. We had a fancy French family with three children who all looked like models and were incredibly well-behaved; an Argentinian couple of graphic designers; and a young midwestern couple who surprisingly lived in Williamsburg until 2008 before abandoning New York for their roots. (I hope they thought we were cool.)

Our bed had mosquito netting. I read Márquez, of course.

Our bathroom had the cutest lock I ever saw in my life. It was on the outside of the door, not to actually lock the door (NONE OF THE ROOMS HAD LOCKING DOORS) but to hold the door from banging around since the actual bathroom was open air and the wind would blow in. The open-air bathroom freaked me out at first, but when you're tan and full and happy, you'd be surprised how fast you stop giving a fuck.

One of the most common dishes in Colombia is Mojarra, a deep fried whole fish usually served with rice and smashed plantains. It's delicious and I actually think we got sick in Bogotá eating it, but that didn't stop us from eating it constantly. We resolved on trying to find it back in the states and were disappointed to discover it's basically just a type of tilapia.

Our last night, Olga lit a bonfire on the beach and everyone sat on logs around it, drinking beer and sharing travel stories. We drank her out of beer that night.