Late August in New York has a texture. It's tired. The city is sweaty and over it and somehow more honest for it.
I spent my Sunday in Astoria doing laundry, which sounds like a complaint and isn't. There's a laundromat off the Ditmars Boulevard N stop where the machines are cheap and the light comes in yellow and everyone minds their business beautifully.
I sat in a plastic chair reading while my sheets tumbled and let the whole afternoon just happen to me. No agenda. No fitting. No emails. In this industry that kind of empty Sunday feels almost illegal.
While the dryer ran I walked to the Greek bakery down the block and bought a spanakopita and one absurd custard thing whose name I mangled and the woman corrected me so gently I nearly hugged her.
Astoria in late August is my favorite version of Queens. The old men outside the cafes on 31st, the kids running through a hydrant somebody opened, the N train rattling over head like punctuation.
It reminds me a little of Ahmedabad in the way neighborhoods here still belong to the people who live in them. Nobody's performing. Everybody's just surviving the heat together.
I carried my warm clean laundry home in a canvas bag that dug into my shoulder and I did not care at all. Fresh sheets in summer are a small religion.
I made chai even though it was 89 degrees, because I am nothing if not committed to bad decisions that feel like home.
Some Sundays don't need to be anything. This one wasn't, and it was perfect.
Love,