GABRIELA YARELIZ

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I kept thinking about the article I saw yesterday that says you should always carry a notebook. I forgot to stick my little field notes notebook into my bag, I thought to myself as I ran out of the door this morning. I looked up and saw the white pale shadow of last night’s Harvest Moon lingering in the dim morning sky. A sanitation truck brushed by, leaving me to walk through a cloud of its street dust. I watched as a post office employee exited his car, opening his door into the same cloud of dust, unbothered. Taking inspiration, I adjusted my burgundy jacket and adjusted my shoulders back and kept going toward the train anyway— trying to be unbothered. I tried to restrain myself from an invisible and impossible equation of how many microplastics had just been poufed into the air. My choice of the burgundy jacket was intentional— as if trying to force fall to manifest based on my wardrobe choices. Certainly, I have that power.

As I rolled along on the local train, I saw the express train on the connecting platform immediately as we approached. I said my silent prayers for the express train to not take off before we, the local train commuters, could sprint across the platform to get on. (Call it the commuter’s rosary).

Sometimes, the conductors are savage, and they leave us there. They see us, and they still pull away, as if their mission in life is to catch up with a continually delayed schedule rather than transporting us tired little overworked people. The train didn’t move. I scanned the nearby cars quickly to assess and calculate the empty seat ratios and chances of getting a seat. The doors opened, and I scurried across like a mouse in a Beatrix Potter book. (I got a seat, in case you are interested).

As I entered the train with the Mel Robbins HSR podcast buzzing in my ears, I distractedly blocked her out and thought about how God gives grace like a kind train conductor. I mean, better than the train conductor. Because God doesn’t pull away as you walk toward Him. As I sat down, and the commuters already on the train received us transfers with patience (after all, they were just sitting there as they waited for our train doors to open to allow the transfer), we sat down with relieved faces. This commute thing is working this AM. Many of us still raw from the Thursday walk-50-blocks-home trauma.

That’s how God’s mercy works. His doors open, and we sprint toward Him. We need the connection and have the intention to travel in a certain direction. He is gracious and leaves the doors open for us to take our seats with the relieved faces. We join others along for a ride. We enter dark tunnels together. We travel distances; sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly. He waits for us. He gets us to our destination (unlike the bloody MTA).

The air is cooler today. A nice soft reminder that yes, next week is November. Lately, I have felt this stirring like I just need to sit down and write pages and pages. Suddenly, I have so much to say. The word desahogar in Spanish comes to mind. And there is nothing in particular. Sometimes, you just clog up in the writer brain, and need to write until the side of your hand has ink smeared all over it. It’s like a steam vent that finally has an outlet.

I remember my 12-year-old self in the couch with my journal that had the daisies on the cover; I would write 12 pages a day. That girl is still in me. I comically had 12 pages in me, at least. Details and oddities from the day. Direct quotes and bubbling emotions combined with song lyrics. I ended the day’s scribbles usually because my hand hurt, not because I had run out of things to write about.

In older age, I find myself sometimes stifled more by exhaustion than anything else. The time I would have been writing is spent wandering the streets after failed commutes like I am Moses or something.

Still— there are moments where I dump the stale thoughts in bursts that would put Stephen King to shame.

As I sit on this meandering train under the fading Harvest Moon, I think about Bell Hook’s quote above. I am still bubbling over. I still haven’t written enough. I don’t think I will ever reach that point of enough. Enough doesn’t exist.