Found a roommate, and we’re looking at apartments in Central Harlem — the one we’re applying to is amazingly beautiful. Incredibly high ceilings, which I feel like is rare for New York, tons of light, a community garden across the street (!), I’m very excited!
Went to the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells with my mom this past weekend. Being in the stands amongst the crowd is so much more exhilarating than watching on the television. For some reason, I had the preconception that tennis was a “stuffy” sport live — I had the mental image of heads swiveling to the left and right in complete silence so as not to disturb the flow of the players. But in reality, the crowd is invigorating. There were cries of joy, uncontainable gasps of shock (when Andy Murray won via an underhand serve to take the first game of the second set!), and cheers of encouragement being sent towards the players. It reminded me of the oneness of humanity and the emergent powers of camaraderie.
Another thought crossed my mind while I was watching Andy Murray v. Carlos Alcaraz in Stadium 2. It was an especially hot day, and the tournament organizers provided everyone with handheld fans to cool themselves down. I was observing the crowd across the stadium, with many of them fanning themselves. While I was watching them, I “zoomed-out” my eyeballs, which is a process that I sometimes partake in that I’ll explain in greater detail in another post, but essentially it amounts to switching the context or attention of one’s perception from singular objects to one’s whole field of vision. In doing so, the crowd across the way turned into one cohesive whole, with the flicking of its fans reminding me of the intricate ticking of some gigantic clockwork, or of the pulsating of an organism, or of blades of grass dancing with the blowing of the wind. It was another reminder of oneness for me.
The final thought I had was when I was walking to our seats in Stadium 2. I made a point to try to be more aware of all of the people walking by and to take note of their behaviors. But the crowd was like a swarm — there were so many faces, noises, sounds, smells — and I got the same feeling of overwhelming sensory stimulation as I had in LA State Historic Park during the peak of my Crisis, when everything sounded like it was booming and echoing in my ears. The feeling only lasted for a couple of seconds, but it made me appreciate how much filtering of input and information that our brains do for us on a daily basis.
Rene (my downstairs neighbor) has a beautiful cat (gold, blue/green/yellow eyes, leopard spots), which I’ve intermittently seen roaming the halls. Sometimes the cat meows right outside my door, I open my door and try to coax him over to pet him, but he leaps away skittishly. But this time was different. He meowed, I opened my door, and he came right in. He explored and looped around every inch of my apartment. I got on all fours and explored with him, and he started purring! I wonder why he chose this day to come inside. Maybe he knew I was leaving soon and he wanted to get a peek before all of my stuff was gone. Who knows!