Studio Update 27

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I stared down at the New Yorker page at the colorful painting. It looked so familiar. I then glanced over at my painting in my studio and then again at the page. I glanced again at the painting and then the page. Of course it was familiar. On the page was the same painting a kind widower had gifted to me after I had helped him with something. I never quite understood the painting, but now I understand what all the little men with their hats mean. The New Yorker published an entire piece about it. It was hilarious. Mystery solved.

Today was a strange day. The week is almost over, and as I watch some episodes of The Office for the first time, I realize more and more how much my work environments have resembled the tiny, bizarre Scranton office. Except the Steve Carell version is funny. You wouldn’t need a script for my life, just follow me around with a camera. We would be a highly rated show. There is suspense, absurdity and so much randomness.

I did laundry today because I decided that doing it tomorrow after my planned grocery shopping trip and the three hours it takes to clean and put everything away would be too much. I would need an ambulance to come and hook me up to an IV, and let’s face it, they aren’t coming. They have bigger problems.

Today, it has been exactly a month that I have been sheltering in place. NYC decided to commemorate the occasion by announcing another lockdown month is coming. When I got the text (yes, they still text me), my eyes filled with tears. I think I am just tired.

The weekend is coming. I am trying to focus on that and the beautiful card I got in the mail from my love, today. I am going to read a bit more Slightly South of Simple before bed. Whether it’s the weekend or a good book, we all need an escape.

As the lady who passed out Metro newspapers on Court St. used to say about Thursdays, It’s mini Friday, people! Smile!

Studio Update 26

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Find yourself someone who makes your face hurt from smiling and makes your heart so full.

Update: The ants are gone. They must all be partying in the orchid pot. Also, my accountant screwed up my taxes— so we are getting that fixed. Imagine you wake up and the IRS has taken half of what is in your checking account. That was me this morning. With this corona mess, it should be sorted out by December. (We love extended tax season drama— what else is happening? Seriously, what else is happening?) And trimming candle wicks is addictive. (Recent discovery).

I’ll be here, you know, trimming the candle wicks of the candles I am burning for my tax situation. Kidding. But at this point, I should.

Love and light, friends.

We have our health and life— nothing else matters.

Studio Update 25

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I am up like a kid, under the covers while the space heater hums in the background, waiting to get in trouble because I should be asleep. There is no one to berate me. My apartment still has a coolness to it from having the window open all day.

Yesterday’s rain reminded me of the brutal summer thunderstorms we would experience in Virginia. The red clay would turn into mud under our feet, and the humidity would make every piece of fabric stick to your skin. As a summer camp counselor, I remember the nights we would have to take our tent portion of the camp to drier grounds when the rains would pour. The lightning would light up the forest and snap the trees in half as we would race around in a frenzy taking campers to the cabins and/or sturdier buildings.

We counselors would finish the night drenched and talking to each other softly into the night in the room where we had taught cooking classes the day before. Blue skies always followed. Today was our blue sky here in NYC.

I woke up and the sky was blue. Not one cloud. I found a little line of tiny black ants marching into my orchid pot. No idea where they came from. After spending a good amount of the morning trying to murder ants and then when I failed convincing myself it was good to have company, I started my new book.

I miss walking outside. I did yoga because it felt like my back was going to break from so much sitting.

It was nice to come near the open window. To see the light pouring in. To smell the spring air. Places sometimes make you hyper aware of the smells, sounds and light. It’s like a memory is recorded in that moment. Those are the moments of presence we remember forever. I surely won’t forget yesterday’s howling winds.

Many of my memories revolve around rain. Moments like my father riding his bike through the rain past a patch of daffodils, with kindergarten me perched up on his bike with him. The late night downpours in rural Virginia or running through Paris in a summer hail storm. Moments record themselves in our memories. How does the brain know which ones to keep? I am not quite sure— but I am grateful for the beauty and warmth they bring us. The truth is, we never know which moments we will keep forever. So, stay alert. Breathe. Take a pause and look around. Remember it all.

Sometimes, it’s the most ordinary moments that we never forget. Sometimes, the storms are more memorable than the recovery. We usually remember the downpours and the euphoria we gained in them, when the sun starts to shine.

Sometimes, it takes a storm to remind us that we are alive.

Studio Update 24

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Today, we had the fiercest storm. It felt almost like a hurricane. The winds were bending the trees, tangling the wires and rattling everything in sight. At one point, I had to lock myself in my bathroom to take a call from my boss because I couldn’t hear her over the howling wind and loud sirens.

In these past few days, COVID-19 has hit closer to home base. I have been home in an effort to be smart, though part of it is fear. (If we are being honest). I check the mail once a week, so they know I am not dead. I still have to take the elevator to take down the trash. It makes me nervous. Everything takes ten times longer because you have to literally strip down when you come home.

I have learned to do more facial massage from the lovely French lady. I learned to do a Brigitte Bardot hairstyle, I watched Naseem cook Persian style eggs on IG live, I led a Bible study on Easter weekend, and I finally finished Giver of Stars. The ending was my favorite part.

I have been locked inside for more than a week. It feels safe, after today’s severe weather.

It was one of those days where you feel everything wants to destroy you— from the fierce winds to the shared surfaces in the apartment mailbox hall. But then the winds calm. And all is still.

Tomorrow is another day. The mailman will come. The sun will shine. And I will start another book.

That Nicholas Sparks Love

By: Gabriela Yareliz

He once said they had that Nicholas Sparks kind of love.

What makes a Nicholas Sparks kind of love story?

It’s not the meet cute. It’s not the passion. It’s not the affinity. All the stories are different.

You know you have a Nicholas Sparks love story when the love lasts forever.

If you aren’t healing, writing letters all the time, making someone else’s small dreams come true— if you aren’t there in sickness and in health and holding hands in old age— it’s not Nicholas Sparks. It’s another author, but not Sparks.

You don’t have a Sparks story when the story is legendary. No. You have a Sparks story when the love is legendary.

The Convenience of Religion

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I grew up in the churches where you could find half the church in a hospital room holding a prayer vigil, as someone held the sick person’s hand, while praying. It didn’t matter who walked by. The prayer was loud. Hell, we prayed for the nurses, doctors and whomever was sharing the room. We came so often they knew who we were and that we would be there as visitors as long as the patient was there.

They were churches where you could call the church at midnight and tell the pastor your brother went missing and that pastor would show up in a car at your house ready to start a search party into the dark hours of the morning.

Churches where we bought groceries for people, and we went camping together. They were churches where you would spend hours at people’s houses, and naturally invite them to every big event in your life, not as a formality but because you couldn’t imagine doing it without them.

Today, churches all over the world are striving to foster community. But I guess we should go back to the root of what community means.

Community— it requires being deeply inconvenienced. It requires love. Love always requires sacrifice.

We are proud of our stages, awesome billboards, digital announcements and marketing and our Zoom links. Churches are offering community, they feel. But community should go beyond our gatherings; even go beyond small community group gatherings.

Community is found in the darkest of nights. Community is the people around you at your hospital bed. Community is the person who shows you they care enough to be inconvenienced.

We can keep our Zoom links, if that’s what we think community is— if we think it’s singing worship songs together and discussing Bible passages, and making a list of prayer requests— we are so blinded. Community is the hand that holds yours when it’s too dark to see what is in front of you. We need to redefine community to what it truly means, and then maybe, we will find what we are so desperately trying to counterfeit.

Whose hand can you hold tonight? What perimeter can you walk and pray for with passion until your feet hurt? What can you lift up, even if your legs and arms are shaking? I want to go back to what I knew community to be. It was the knowledge that the beeping on the hospital monitor was scary but that the people who surrounded you made it less scary. Community— many stars coming together to light up a dark sky.

Studio Update 23

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Today, as many Christians around the world, I spent time deeply reflecting on the cross. It always brings tears to my eyes, not because of its darkness, its gory nature or the subject of death. None of these things alone are what compels a deep surge of emotion in me.

To me, it’s simply the love. When one experiences the deepest of wounds available in this human flesh— things like betrayal, abandonment, neglect and instability— one knows what it’s like to be shattered. Truly shattered. And in Jesus’ walk to Golgotha with His cross, I see a God whose love for me was so deep that He picked up every single shattered piece of my heart along the way. He did this for me. He loves me. And this knowledge has made it clear to me that in the end, it doesn’t matter what I face in this life, who likes me or doesn’t, or what I may think I have need of— it doesn’t matter because He loves me.

Love is an action, and God illustrated it because that is who He is. He embodies love. Love rescues us from the pits of our own hell. Love is so powerful that it tears us up inside when it arrives. It cuts us to heal us. When we experience the depth of love, we can never be the same.

I sit on this Good Friday, and watch the movie of my own life, up until this point. I see a love that has never let go of me. It moves me deeply because it has made me whole.

What faith in Jesus means to me, isn’t always easy for me to explain. If you have a couple hours, I would tell you significant details in my life. It’s something deep in my bones. A conviction that can’t be removed. A truth that impacts every aspect of my life. A shelter from the storm that is this life.

The cross to me is a symbol of being whole. My relationship with God is whole, and all gaps have been bridged. Because of Jesus. My heart is whole; all pieces were seen, found and loved. Because of Jesus.

Complete.

Studio Update 22

By: Gabriela Yareliz

It’s the 100th day of quarantine. Kidding. But that is what it feels like. I am ready for the weekend.

Today was a stormy day. It matched the whole Thursday before Good Friday vibe. Thunder. Black clouds. Rain. Hail.

I finally sat down and read for a bit. I spent like an hour doing facial manipulation and learning face massage techniques from La Semaine Live.

On my mind was this idea of the philosophy of minimalism. In times of crisis, this philosophy takes hold and gains more traction. We are all cleaning our closets and trying to find what sparks joy. (When in reality, Marie Kondo just wants us to buy her branded drawer dividers. Ironic.) I was thinking about how we can move around external things and chuck what doesn’t spark joy, but how this resolves nothing on the inside. You can still be a materialistic minimalist. Throwing out what doesn’t spark joy doesn’t mean joy remains.

I have been thinking about what it means these days to really return to the essentials, and that to me means seeking God and His righteousness and nothing else. He promises to add what we need to this search. Matthew 6:33 says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.”

It’s about searching for Him so passionately that we end up realizing that He is all we need. Nothing needs to be added.

Studio Update 21

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Hello from the land of virtual parks— they are still trying to sell us on that. I tried to make the Dalgona hot chocolate. It did not work. I ended up with a syrupy chocolate milk. I whisked and whisked. On the other hand, I was able to make a good decaf chai latte with my milk frother. So good.

I woke up from another nightmare. This time, I remember nothing except one of my brothers was calling out my name. I woke up, thinking he was in the room with me. I was alone. The voice had sounded so real that this was what mentally woke me up. What is it with these quarantine nightmares? And apparently, I am not the only one. Leandra Medine Cohen (Manrepeller) and Danielle Bernstein (WeWoreWhat) have also reported strange nightmare dream activity. Hmm.

So far, all of mine have played on fears. Being trapped, having something done to me against my will (when they cut my hair— it’s not the hair cutting that is scary to me— I have done that a million times), and now something regarding my brothers. What do I know. We won’t figure this out tonight.

I made biscuits today and ate a salad. I am impressed. I got a surprise letter in the mail from my love, and then sat down to study my Bible for a bit.

Throughout the day, I hear the birds chirping. Freedom. I did my yoga challenge of the day. It was all about synchronizing breath with motion. If I needed more proof that I am terrible at breathing— this was it.

I realized I grew impatient with the video. It’s not even that it was going too slow, though I have been known to be the girl who double taps the fast forward button on a yoga video. (I will come up with my own genre of it called speedy yoga). I know. But now, there is nowhere to rush off to. I am not speeding through a down-dog to catch the train I need to get to court. There is no hurry, anymore.

I think what frustrated me was the intentionality. Synchronization doesn’t necessarily require a slower or faster speed. Instead, what it requires is intention. Maybe part of what has frustrated us all about this lockdown is the quiet that requires us to see where we lack synchronization. When we see it, we grow frustrated because synchronization is not easy, it requires focus.

Rather than getting frustrated, hitting pause or fast forward, maybe all we need to force ourselves to do is breathe. Stick with it and breathe.

(exhale)

Studio Update 20

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Have you found yourself doing something you don’t usually catch yourself doing? Stress can sometimes make us do weird things. Sometimes, we clench our jaw, and sometimes, we even sort of hold our breath. I have caught myself, on occasions, reminding myself to breathe. Ridiculous, I know. I used to find I held my breath a lot at the library. I guess books take my breath away? (Take me away— Calgon. Oh man, do you remember this body spray that was available at Walmart? I can still smell it, when I close my eyes).

Word on the street has it that Joanna Gaines and Magnolia have a new cookbook out. I only got thirty copies of the same promotional text message, today. It must have been a glitch. I even unsubscribed, and I still received ten more. Fix it, Jesus.

I am going to reduce my work hours. I am putting in a ton of hours. I need to use this time to catch up on my New Yorkers. I am two issues behind.

I got a surprise care package today! This was so exciting. My boyfriend is the best. And then, I FaceTimed with my brothers and my lovely ma. We are all getting used to Zoom life.

My brothers have become nocturnal. I am feeling a new groove now, after two months of taking evening primrose oil supplement. I read about it in a French health book, and it has changed my hormone life. I love it.

I need to go back to reading nonfiction. I started a fiction book that I am dragging myself through. (It’s not bad; it has just taken me a while to get into it. And now, I am into it— but I keep filling my time with phone calls and workouts, and then, it’s time for bed). I need to finish it because I have some reportedly good books waiting.

I used to have my time slot to read when I was on the train. I would sit by the window, and read until my stop emerged in the tunnel. I always have words floating around in my head, at the top of the morning. That’s how it always is with me. Words. Words. Words. And while I don’t start the day sitting in my 70s yellow train seat with a book, at the moment, the rest has remained the same. The words still come.