I had nowhere to be today and I want to talk about it because it almost never happens.
A Sunday in Astoria with no plans is a specific kind of wealth. Not the money kind. The time kind. The kind New York usually taxes you out of.
I took the N up to Astoria Boulevard with no destination. Just the train rumbling above 31st Street, that elevated rattle that somehow feels cozy, like the whole neighborhood is talking under its breath.
I got a spanakopita from a Greek bakery whose name I can never pronounce and ate it walking, flakes down my entire front, no shame. A Sunday in Astoria is not the day for dignity. It's the day for warm pastry and slow feet.
The thing about a neighborhood that isn't yours is that you get to be nobody in it. In Bushwick people know my bodega guy knows my order. In Astoria I am simply a woman with pastry, unobserved, free.
I sat in a small park and watched three old men argue about something in Greek with their whole bodies, the way my uncles argue in Gujarati about cricket. The language changes. The hands stay the same. Everywhere, uncles are uncles.
I thought about how a Sunday with nowhere to be used to make me anxious. Empty time felt like failure. Like I should be networking, thrifting for the blog, being productive, being someone.
The city trains you to fill every hour. And then one day you realize the unfilled hour is the whole point. That's the thing nobody tells you when you move here at twenty-two chasing a fashion career. The rest is the reward.
I walked all the way down to the waterfront eventually, where you can see the Manhattan skyline doing its show-off thing across the water. Cold wind. Good coat, this time. I learned my lesson earlier this week.
I didn't take a single photo. That felt radical. A Sunday in Astoria that exists only in my memory and now, badly, in these words.
Go somewhere with no reason this week. Report back to me.
Love,