Nudist Colony of One

I left Spain and showed up in London by airplane with a roller bag and a gnarly cough. The plan was to stay with my friend Eliza in her flat for a few days. Instead, I booked a serviced apartment nearby so as not to infect her. Suddenly, despite the less hang time with her and unplanned rental expense, I was gifted this odd and unexpected window of time and solo space. The European heat wave churned like the hot breath of a beast. Like others without AC, I drew the shades and set the fan on high yet my sweat still created rivulets and rivers down my body. So naturally, I took off my clothes. Off it all went, and off it stayed for 5 days. Even underwear became a burden.

I now have a PSA announcement to make. To be clear, being naked wasn’t a radical act for me. I walk around my house naked a lot. But this kind of consistent naked (and without underwear) had a new and different flavor: meditating naked, scrubbing the dishes naked, stretching naked, cutting an apple naked, sending voice texts naked, eating food naked, sleeping naked, writing in my journal naked, talking on FaceTime (neck up) naked, reading naked. Oh, let me enumerate the benefits!

• I only left the apartment 2x a day in the early morning and late evening when the heat had simmered (and because my cough had me pinned down). Putting clothes on for those outings made me feel like a strange bird. The balance had tipped. Being naked was now normal. Clothes were foreign and sort of awkward.

• The apartment’s floor-to-ceiling wide mirror put me on vacation with myself. Every time I walked across the room, there she was! Oh, see how her right knee turns inward a bit and how easy it is to correct that by twisting her hip back and up. Her scars. Her robustness. Her strength. With only my own gaze, I fell in love with my 46-year old body anew and saw her pinch points and weaknesses and adaptations to life events from that loving lens. As Oliver Burkeman (who I’ve started to read and feels like a brother with shared ideas) says, I went “to the shed.” To really face the state of my own union. Charge dissolved and a brighter fire lit up for wanting to take care of her differently. There she is.

• I got to work on my next book. Not on my computer. By “work” that means rolling around on the ground, stretching, looking out the window with wonder, noticing a sudden flood (it has that felt sense) of ideas pour into my brain and then grabbing my phone to dictate them into notes. Very animal body. Very me. Lots brewing.

A few years ago, I traveled to Ireland with my mom to meet a homeland, to inquire about what we came from, and to pay homage to a land of green and moss and rocks that felt familiar to both of us. Now I’m off to Glastonbury (or the Isle of Avalon) to meet up with my cousin Lauren for an ancestral cauldron type of being together. We are the first borns. We are the revolutionaries in our family. We were little girls seeing the patterns before our family members knew there were patterns. We grew into women wanting to disrupt the systems living inside us. We are also both rising out of some ashes. We shall see what happens.

Go well everyone,