stuck

summary: I'm feeling stuck and thinking about cities an hour away from me.

yoga

(this section from 12/8/25)

as a matter of indulgence, I spent quite a bit of time today reading yoga opinions and journalism. this was a result of trying to find some actual, concrete information about practicing yoga for exercise since it feels like it would be a nice way for me to connect to my heritage and get my body moving despite the freezing temperatures outside. there's a part of me that believes I should stick to expressing myself through particular tones and deep, thoughtful reflection when I write here. but good grief, I think I hate yoga people.

what I've done today, to be clear, is read articles on yoga (and tangentially, some intersection with astrology and related spiritual drivel) and I can hold in my head that most people who practice yoga are fine and probably not engaging with it all that much. but this has illuminated a world within yoga to me that's hateful, venomous, expensive, overwhelmingly white, and that fascinates me.

I don't care about nuance here. I don't care about it because someone somewhere is writing articles about how they, a white person who has known inconvenience but not persecution or oppression, is the victim of their fellow yogis being too friendly with them by greeting them every time they begin class. not satire. incredible. someone somewhere is being personally targeted by their yoga teacher giving them feedback on their posture and the edges of their mind are beginning to fray – they're falling apart because they can't stand this baseless criticism and persecution and they're about to fucking SNAP they can't TAKE IT ANYMORE. someone is writing about having their yoga mat stolen and they throw a line at the end about how karma's a bitch.

I'm just here to gawk, dumbfounded, at the lives of these people. I mean, what must it be like to be you in other contexts? at the store? what do your peers think about you at work? I'm so curious. I'm looking for any reason to hate you and I'm just fine with it because I've reasoned you away as caricature by your incredibly pointed opinions about who this is and isn't for. what else do you guard so jealously and bare teeth to protect? what happens when I show up and I've already tied my practice to spirituality – not to your New Age bastardization of medieval hatha practices, but to my god in the abyss?

providence and worcester railroad

at one point, being poly, I was dating two people locally who lived about an hour from me. one lived an hour and a half away, but was only on the other side of town. it would take so long to visit because Boston, even with its abundance of public transportation routes and options, is a dense mess of roads and buildings that are laid out in the old city style, predating the widespread adoption of grid planning in the US.

the other, meanwhile, lived in another state entirely, and by rail it would only take me an hour to head south to Providence, rhode island. now I live near my now-ex on the north side of town and I hardly see either of them since we broke up. its neighborhood is now my neighborhood and I experience it daily. overall, it's a better place for me than the south side of Boston. as for Providence, however, I keep looking for excuses to visit and associate myself with more there than just my ex. I haven't been down there since summer.

Providence is a very beautiful city with some natural areas that I hold very dear to me even now. I think she helped me see the beauty in it. and yet, it feels like if I went there without something social in mind, without more people to associate with the place, I'd only be chasing her ghost and secretly hoping to myself that we'd run into each other naturally. I have a bad habit of doing this with people who have grown distant from me, walking down streets that are out of my way with some sliver of misplaced hope that we'll encounter each other again.

incidentally, this has led me to disassociate the place from the person more than once before, as I invariably never end up seeing them in their habitat. instead I spend more time appreciating the surrounding area. the very act of going out and being there, even misguided and alone, often helps. now, living in the same neighborhood as my ex, it helps as well. there was a time when I was speaking with it about a place where we'd skated together just before we started dating, how if it left massachusetts, I'd feel like every time I passed that place, I'd feel haunted by its ghost.

it's just an empty bit of concrete now. that place hardly means anything to me anymore. I kissed my hot neighbor over there a couple months ago and I have to pass by it when I run errands anyhow. when I think about that place, I think about my girlfriend and I walking back home after we did drugs and went shopping one night in autumn.

because my girlfriend lives in Worcester, I've been spending some weekends there. I think some parts of the city are really quite beautiful and I'd like to take a lot of time to explore. it's a very charming city, in the way that "second most important city in the state" is charming. in oregon, Eugene would vie for that title bitterly, but Salem would win out on account of being the capital. Worcester, MA and Salem, OR carry the same kind of spirit.

it's too cold to keep my hands outside my pockets for too long. unlike Boston, snow has accumulated and has been shoved aside into half-melted snowbanks. I missed the nonexistent saturday noon train back to Boston due to the MBTA website showing me the wrong timetable. in search of breakfast, I meander away from Worcester Union Station, up Summer then Foster then Main to visit the dunkin on the corner.

I shuffle in, get a sandwich, decide it's too crowded and leave. overheard from jovial men: "so I settle down for the night. I light a blunt and I smoke it. then I smoke a cigarette. then I smoke another blunt. I don't want to be hearing shit about no singles for sale." I push outside and walk a few blocks before unwrapping the bagel in the white paper bag. the cool air nibbles at my nose and my fingers, but it's welcome. we all have to eat a little bit. I allow the wind spirits a little of my warmth.

the predominant color of Worcester is gray nearly every time I'm here. I pass the hulking stark white brick that is the mercantile center parking garage. I pass the dingy, squat Worcester County sheriff's office, a column and brickwork building with two fake hedges made of concrete and plastic pine needles, housed within an old bank. I approach the WCCA TV building and peer in through the window to see a beautiful lobby that I hope they use in their public access broadcasts. the DCU center advertises some WWE wrestling event in january on a board that is blindly bright even for an overcast midday. few are walking the streets out in the cold.

I'd like to visit Providence again. I'd like to visit Detroit again – it's been so long since I lived there. I wish I could show my girlfriend the places I lived when I was even just a little younger. I wish I could visit my hometown.

walking around downtown, I wonder if one day, I'll feel the same disconnect I feel with Providence. I wonder if one day, I'll stop having a reason to visit this city. if it'll become the ghost of another time since past. I worry that one day, I'll imagine visiting and the thought will be stricken from my mind once I'm crushed by the realization that nobody is waiting for me there.

I never used to worry about that kind of thing. what happened to me that I now believe the places I once loved have become sealed tombs, never to welcome me again?

stuck

maybe I'll go to the ocean in the dead of night in the freezing cold to ask how to become unstuck. I probably won't because every time I've done this during the winter, I've endured such terrible temperatures that it feels like it takes me a day to fully recover. it could be a tradition, something I continue to do every winter season for years to come. I've done it multiple times two years in a row now. but then, suffering pointlessly and recklessly for what I pretend is for my god and peace of mind is probably related to that drive to throw myself in front of a moving train, "just to see."

I'm a little frustrated that I don't know what I feel driven towards right now. I know that some part of this is because I'm tired and it's difficult for me to consider my desires after a couple days of poor rest. I don't feel motivated towards making music. I don't want to write poetry. I have a story I make progress on in small increments. I want to write about magic and that's been too overwhelming for a while. I want to be making things. I feel like I never learned how.

if I'm not making something, I feel as though I'll wither away and die. my spirit will become small and shy and I'll become unhappy and miserable and I'll shrink into a raisin and no amount of cooking in hot liquids will fill me with life. this is one of my greatest fears. of course, I am far too hard on myself about this, and despite this being one of the perennial problems of my life, it's not until now in this present downswing that I've been reminded that this is the case.

I've known several people close to me who have confided that they feel insecure or jealous about how much of myself I pour into the act of creation, how I constantly preoccupy myself with making something, anything. I so rarely feel satisfied or fulfilled by what I make. I worry that I will never be satisfied, ever. in practice, I know that I actually am at times, but I struggle to hold onto those moment in my mind and to keep them for myself.

it's a small assortment of creations that remind me I've made something substantial or worthwhile. a dating app profile. a poem. a song I wrote. a picture of a dish I made once. a drawing I did in marker. this website – but even then, this feels oh so incomplete. usually it's to my liking and I'll just stare blankly at the home page when I want to look at a screen but need a place to rest. other times, I'm bothered by everything I want from this project.

I'll burn the fires of my passion to create relentlessly until all the wood is ash and ember. then, like now, I'm left feeling hollow and lacking. I do this in cycles. I have to trust that it will come to me again if I take a break from pursuing everything so seriously with such intense determination. I worry, though, that if I stop and allow myself to rest, I'll never make anything again. I worry one day I'll settle down and relax too hard and that my drive to create, this animal that eats at me constantly for months on end, will never come home.

it's in my nature to create. I just worry that my nature will abandon me. I don't know what will remain of me if that happens.

note to self

don't let your eyes glaze over. get out of your own way. ease into it. allow yourself to relax. get rest and watch some movies. you are inferior to no one and your friends adore you. the more you stress yourself out about creation and your connection to the world, the more you will feel discouraged and disconnected. it is in your nature to find the flow. you are highly attuned. those are not empty words. you are an animal first. you must remember the beans, the knots, and the sacred things that guide us, that you must stay nourished and in touch with loved ones and keep an open heart to love. things will turn out okay and it's not the end of the world to slow down a little now and then.

you can have everything you've ever wanted. you have been calling out to it. it will come to you. give it a little time.