The Capsule

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I saw her sitting on a bench on the train platform in what looked like shredded pajamas. She sat there with a satin looking shower cap on her head, surrounded by clumps of mashed potatoes. At least five clumps. She sat there smiling to no one in particular.

The people on the platform and later trapped in close proximity in the train car were like a collection of misfits or forgotten toys pieced together. Like when a mini Barbie’s head pops off and you stick another doll’s head on it.

So many perfumes dancing together. Body odor. Some people wealthy and others not. People with friends, gesturing wildly with their hands to show off their jewelry. The metal clinking together. Some flirting, with a push of a hair strand behind the ear. One man is crying out like he is being hurt by some invisible force. He is mostly ignored. We make eye contact.

A small Hispanic woman starts mumbling an unintelligible (in any language) garble offering candies, one can only assume. She sounds like a machine. Repeating a senseless noise over and over again. No pause. She wears a tight tank top with tiny roses. A timeless pattern that looks like it could be from now or 1997. A tall black man holds his watch up to his face with a giant slightly psychopathic grin. He just holds up his wrist for twenty minutes straight. The smile never breaks.

A guy who definitely works in finance avoids eye contact and tries to move away from the short haired woman sitting very close to him reading a book about Bob Dylan that is a neon yellow and looks about 20 pages long. Suddenly, it smells like pot. I am annoyed.

One woman’s unnatural wig is hanging by a thread. An elderly man is texting on his 2001 flip phone.

Everyone so different. A different world. All of us in this capsule barreling through the tunnel just trying to make it to our destination. Everyone just trying to make it home.

Orange Water

“Don’t forget to look up.” Ren

By: Gabriela Yareliz

My head was down. I was reading. I missed a train stop earlier this week because my head was down.

I was on the train going over the bridge when I looked up. The sky was orange. It was so orange that the water looked orange. Everything but the silhouette of the bridge was orange. It was impressive. Like the sky was on fire. It was beautiful. I almost looked back down and kept reading. But I didn’t. I watched the sky across the entire bridge. A man who was standing kept watching my face and glancing out of the window. Eventually, the majority of our train car was watching the sunset.

In law school, my good friend Ren and I would walk for miles. He would often run (even in the winters), but he would take the time to wander with me. We were both not from NYC, so walking was a task in exploration. Sometimes, I would happen to look up and see some beautiful part of a building I had passed a million times. I would chat about it with awe. My surprise was often when I looked up.

He gave me a book on walking, and in it, he wrote a reminder that I should always look up.

Today, I did. And it was worth it. The water was orange, and I have never seen anything like it.

Let Them

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Humans— we are strange little creatures. We try to sometimes give advice— that often fails. We try to pretend like we are the exception to the rule— that often fails. We pressure others and ourselves— that often fails.

I have been reading Mel Robbins’ Let Them Theory and reflecting on the many moments in a day when I break this theory. We all do. I don’t know why it’s so hard to accept we only control one thing— our own life (and even that has its limits based on circumstances, at times).

Let them… and let me. It needs to be a bootcamp.

Nobel

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Alfred Nobel is known for the Nobel Peace Prize— the Swedish chemist also invented dynamite. ⚡️

Perhaps lasting peace is only possible by those willing and ready to create a destructive explosion— maybe this is the only way it has integrity. Otherwise, it is just cowardice or an inability to act with a side of built up resentment. A postponed reaction, if you will.

As I have been reading Originals by Adam Grant, it seems it’s the disagreeable, those willing to confront and start fires with their personalities that become the greatest advocates and channels for change.

We shouldn’t lose our dynamite. Sometimes, the spark of dynamite is the path to a better tomorrow.

Winter Hydration PSA

By: Gabriela Yareliz

This is your PSA to hydrate your eyes, this winter. We don’t often think about eye hydration, but boy do we feel the dryness in the winter. Here in the city, the salt that gets ground into powder on the streets blows into your face every time the wind blows.

We slather on the lotion— don’t forget your eyes. It’s part of self-care.

Times Square Circus

By: Gabriela Yareliz

There is a circus that does not travel. It stays underground, but it is anything but hidden.

Times Square station is like a collection of every performance you wish you hadn’t seen. How this group comes together and decides to split up into every corner of the station, while the rest of us run frantically from tunnel to tunnel, is a mystery. You know, the mysteries life is truly made of.

A woman dancing with her young child who I am sure is supposed to be in school, a man drumming on paint buckets while NYPD officers dance to the beat (I feel safer already), a woman who sings on a karaoke machine off key with the regular track (mic on full echo), the man who sings Spanish Christian music tracks from 2004, and the man dancing bachata with the skeleton.

It becomes a blur of noise and memorable faces as we rush from destination to destination.

I arrive at work, which happens to have musicians, and I lock myself in a stall to pee (because let’s face it, I always need to pee), and suddenly, a woman starts signing an opera in the stall next to me. Full volume. Could fill a theater. At this point, I am just peeing resigned, you know? There is no escaping the music. I wash my hands as I hear her warm up like she is Sharpay from High School Musical, laughing to myself. There is no quiet moment in this city. Not even when you pee. The circus doesn’t travel because it’s everywhere.

X+Y=Z

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I was listening to a biohacker from Poland’s podcast (I really do like her), and she had on another woman from Eastern Europe. They started talking about how Americans are so encouraging and the acceptance of success that exists in the United States— even unmatched by Canada and Australia, in their experience.

After this, they went into almost a mockery of some things that make America, well, America and Americans, Americans. It caught me off guard. And listen— there is plenty that can be criticized, but what made me confused is that they were mocking the very things that make the life in America and the environment in America that they were praising, possible. They want the exact cake without the ingredients required to make that cake.

Sometimes, I think people fail to realize there are equations in life. If x, then y. Things render certain results. So you can’t despise communism and talk about how America is so different, but then criticize the very things that makes the American system communism-proof. The minute we lose those things, we look just like the countries you left behind, ladies, I wanted to tell them.

It’s a deep ignorance of how humanity and the world works. Nothing is flawless, but things have consequences. This is inevitable.

We recently started watching a series about American battles narrated by Kelsey Grammer. Just one episode in, and I have learned so much. Loving it.

It’s important to look into the past to see the courage and audacity that has led us here. What gives us the talk-back, brash, world-admiring, caring, scrappy, unfolding, optimistic and indomitable American spirit.

One gets tired of hearing people who come here for a reason, but then unload why everything here is so wrong. I think people owe the ideals and concept of America a bit more.

May we always remember x+y=z. It’s how math works. Our equation is different. You can mock it, but it gives you the very thing you desire.

Look Again

By: Gabriela Yareliz

This time, I wasn’t wearing headphones. I was walking, and I heard a small noise. I turned around and saw my wrapped cough drop on the cement. I was surprised I had been able to hear the small thump on a NYC street and that I had taken the time to turn around and see it. It was certainly mine.

Life is filled with small moments. Moments that can be fleeting, where we might miss something. Moments that we just might catch if we decide to turn around and look again.

Wrestling

By: Gabriela Yareliz

“If you believe you can completely map your partner, then you do not really know that person. […] A real relationship is a wrestling match; it is a grappling phenomenon from which you both emerge transformed.” Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

The truth is none of us is static. We are ever evolving and changing. We contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman said.

Dr. Peterson reminds us to not settle for basic knowledge or boredom. Curiosity in life is key for success.

Life requires an affirmative action from us to grapple with things and each other. This evokes the image of Jacob wrestling with God, telling God that he will not let Him go until He blesses him.

Wrestling is a fight where you don’t let go until something is achieved. The goal and result being transformation.