This year is my second zodiac year so I’ve been wearing a red bracelet for the past eleven months. My mother told me it’s for good luck and my friends told me it’s to ward off evil.

I still find this bracelet uncomfortable to wear. The gold-plated clip has rubbed silver from sliding across my desk and the dragons head has fabric caught in its teeth from the multiple sweaters it’s chunked. Perhaps it’s my fault for putting it on my dominant side, but I also could have removed it at any time, though I haven’t. Will taking it off undo the spell? Does the luck come back when I rebind it to my wrist, or do its warding effects rely on my continuous commitment, dispelled as soon as remove the bracelet even for one second because I have succumbed to temptation? At the beginning of this year I decided I will no longer allow fear to influence my decisions and I pasted a reminder on my door. This bracelet too functions as a reminder.

… for there is no one but yourself …

I am still not accustomed to just how lonely it is to return to an empty home. The apartment is exactly how I left it in the morning. Two pairs of jeans not quite sliding off the futon as if they’re the ones who collapsed there drunk the night before. Coffee grounds form a landscape on my counter. The refridgerator is often empty, so that, in this apartment, the day-night cycle is the only evidence of the passage of time.

This year I am inconsistent about stretching in the morning and buying groceries. Even laundry, which I once religiously washed and put away every Sunday night without fail, now falls sporadically on weekend-adjacent days. I thought the maintenance tasks would’ve become easier by now. I thought I would have made more progress in the gym and at the piano by now. I thought I would have exercised more agency in reshaping my life into what I wanted. It has been 7 months since I stepped foot in the studio. It has been 3 months since I last hosted a coffee tasting. 2 months since I last attended a book club meeting. Weekly yoga became monthly and is now a last-resort pick-me-up. The world with all of its commitments and obligations fell by the wayside while I sat for an entire year, planted on my brown Muji beanbag, watching the boats go by: red barges each morning rain or shine, mega-cruises when schools let out for break, the rare three-mast sailboat. Helpless, I sat there frozen watching the passage of time down the Hudson River, wondering to what degree my actions align with my values and what to make for breakfast. M calls it my anxiety beanbag. I find it quite comfortable though.

How much living have I done amidst all this…thinking?

though you are never alone

It was a Sunday in the middle of the summer. We cooked dinner together that evening. Well, I cut the vegetables and you did the actual cooking. And before that you were doing homework while I practiced piano, after you accompanied me to pick up my copy of The Line of Beauty from the neighborhood bookstore which was one the way back from the Japanese market I get all my groceries from these days. All you said was that you wanted to see the bookshelf I made; I’m really glad you liked it. That Sunday started like any other: thirty minutes on the L train to a new cafe - soon to be one of my favorites. They had this watermelon co-ferment I wanted you to try but I don’t think you liked it. I liked it a lot. Did I ever tell you that Sunday was one of my favorite days of this year? I don’t remember anything we talked about. The sun was bright. It wasn’t too hot or humid yet. When I crave soup I think of what you made that day. You insist that it was nothing fancy and maybe it wasn’t, but I don’t think anything I make will taste as good as a warm meal made by a cherished friend.

There was another Sunday, one month earlier, that also stays with me. You weren’t there. I wished J could be there but he wasn’t either. And I thought about texting a couple others, but when I stepped outside into the sunshine I felt that everything would be alright. After years of dreaming I finally started learning Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto. 30 minutes on the L train. I order my espresso and seat myself in a faded strawberry-starburst-pink armchair directly in a sunbeam. We’re reading Piranesi in the book club and I just got my copy. Someone comments that he loved the book. “I’m just starting it today!” He’s busy fiddling with his film camera. This Sunday ended like any other. I make my way down the steps on the corner of Charles and Hudson stepping over a puddle of water that’s decided it’ll stay for the summer. Every summer I worry the restaurant won’t make it to the end of the year; no one wants ramen in the summer. I lift the bowl towards the ceiling in prayer as I finish the rest of the broth. I tip generously and wave to Ed on my way out. Someday I’ll ask him to tell me his story, how he made his way to New York and how he makes the best ramen in the city.