Resonance

Reclaiming wildness through pleasure and rage (and the best plate of spaghetti in New York)

My energy is too open for New York. All the dogs want to meet me. A man on the street calls me sweetie. I look for what he’s selling, but he’s not selling anything. It’s clear I’m not from around here. Everything amazes me. I’m ten years old again, seeing this city for the first time, burning my tonsils gaping at skyscrapers and putting my nose too close to the candied nut stands. I turn in circles on the sidewalk.

When I take the subway the right way on my first try, I feel gratuitously proud of myself. I scuttle behind the real New Yorkers who cross the street against the light. I have four items of clothing in my wardrobe that feel New York appropriate and they all require the same pair of pants. In my hotel room I change my shirt with the window shades open, forgetting that even though my room is on the eleventh floor, someone else’s is, too. It thrills me a little, if I’m being honest.

At the Italian joint around the corner, I order a glass of wine I can’t pronounce and the simplest pasta on the menu. I want to slow down, to taste it without anything fancy getting in between us. The wine is what an expert would call full-bodied, and I smile at that, me and my full body, full of resonance and dreams and joy. Isn’t this what I can never stop writing about—cracking life open between my fingers and sucking out the marrow? Is there anything more wild than pleasure?

I have forgotten my notebook again. I want to ask the waiter for a pen and some napkins, but this isn’t the pub on the corner in Maine. It doesn’t seem like the place where you do that. So, I type it all into my phone under the table like I’m cheating on a high school exam, and when the waiter comes back I toss the phone down as if I wasn’t, and it feels fun, like I’m breaking a rule, even though everyone in New York is on their cell phone all the time. It’s actually probably the most New York I’ll be on this trip.

A plate comes with one slice of bread on it. One! It is accompanied by another smaller plate with olive oil, vinegar, and cheese. I may not be rich in money, but I am rich in plates. Next is a bigger plate with hazelnut orange radicchio drizzled in hot honey, broccolini with pine nuts and juicy yellow raisins, and onion truffle gratin. I have to Google gratin. I thought it was a potato.

I know that there are eight hundred shades of New Yorks and many are darker and some are even brighter than this, but this is the New York I get tonight, and I am open and ready to receive it. I am awake. Awake to the man stacking cans on the grocery store shelf; he sets them down so gently. Awake to the driver parked in the intersection, grooving to music with his windows down. The little girl and her mother wearing matching black sparkle shirts. The woman at the bar, alone like me, her head bowed in deep conversation with the bartender. My red-purple lipstick on the white napkin.

When I went for a walk the other day back in Maine, I asked the ocean why my writing felt slow and blocked. What came back was that I needed to raise my resonance. If you do that, the ocean said, it all could happen quite quickly. I asked if maybe we could hurry it up a little. My book deadline is at the end of February. The ocean just laughed.

Here’s what I’m learning: resonance is the level at which we are vibrating on the inside. I raise mine by connecting to source—pressing my hand against a tree and feeling the tree joyfully leaning back. Breathing in the electric pause when someone says something so true everyone’s stomach drops a level. Asking myself a question and trusting the answer. It’s a matter of how connected I am to myself, to the earth, and to you. It’s about honoring the current that runs through all of us. It’s not about the spaghetti. It’s about noticing the spaghetti so much that it fills me until I’m buzzing. It’s about being alive enough to taste it.

And if being alive means being awake to pleasure, it also means being awake to rage.

Last week, I sat down and tried to write straight to the place where my rage lives. Rage is hard for me; I’m always trying to turn it into beauty. I was surprised to learn that my rage lives in my womb. I don’t have children, but in my womb, I hold the earth and its children. I hold the girls I have mentored, and the girl I used to be. I hold my neighbors who are getting torn away from their families and terrorized by ICE. I hold the world’s wars. I even hold the politicians with their twisted ideas of right and wrong, of natural and unnatural, who have strayed so far from their hearts and souls. Yes, them. The fuckers who go to work every day and try to sign away my rights. This surprises me the most. I love them—not in their current form, but their highest selves that got lost, the parts I hope they will someday return to. Because if we really are all connected, then to hate them is to hate myself.

It’s not just the politicians, either. We live in a culture where those in power need us to be dim inside in order to stay in power. As a child I had such magic in me, such knowing. I was connected to water, rocks, trees, and mountains. I breathed in sky. I was wind and dirt, bloody knees and wild laughter. They tried to make me hate my body. They tried to control me. They tried to tame me. And for a while, they succeeded. I let in the fear they were pedaling and sold that girl out for a hollower version of myself.

Call it what you want: Resonance. Magic. Life-force energy. God. The reason I write about reclaiming wildness is that each of us has a flame within us that, when lit, is too powerful for someone else to control.

I’ve noticed something happening lately, and not just to me. It’s happening to a lot of people. As the world grows darker, I grow brighter. Not in an ignorant way. Because of the dark. In response to the dark. I am an aurora trying to fit into woman form.

Why write about resonance when the world is burning?

Because our resistance needs resourcing. It needs people who are lit. Because we need to feel in our bones what’s worth building toward. If this is my way of tipping the balance, I will throw all of my weight behind it.

(Jenny, you are saying. I thought this was an essay about spaghetti.)

The pomodoro comes, handmade noodles and a spoon. I have never used a pasta spoon and I don’t start now. I let the pasta hit my chin. It’s got five kinds of goddamn tomatoes, it’s allowed to go wherever it wants. Except on my pants; I need those tomorrow.

The cannolis have a chocolate medallion engraved with the name of the restaurant and it’s so over the top it makes me laugh out loud. The waiter brings a clean fork but I eat them with my hands and lick the cream off my fingers. Cannolis are a silly thing to eat with a fork. I save one sip of wine for the very end.

Outside the restaurant, people are walking fast and I go very, very slow. I take a picture of an old green door. I take a picture of the sky, framed by skyscrapers. I take a picture of the bronze butt in the restaurant doorway. Isn’t this what it’s all about? I am unembarrassed, a tourist in a strange town. I walk back to the hotel, turning circles the whole way home.

Tonight, everything feels resonant.

Everything feels new.