So It Begins
on Pilates, metaphorical sleepwalking, and little else
___
ORIGINALLY POSTED ON NO CERTAIN TERMS ON SUBSTACK. READ FULL POST HERE.
___
I’m lying supine on my back, sacrum pressing heavy against the vinyl of the carriage bed. I straighten my legs together and float them up, heels reaching for the ceiling, folding my body into a sideways L—inhale—and separate them—exhale—each leg now stretching out to its side, drawing a half circle in the air before connecting again at the bottom. Like chemtrails or Harold and his crayon, I can imagine the lines my legs leave behind, a wobbly circle drifting in the air.
In other words, I’m in a pilates class doing leg circles on the reformer.
—
Now, I don’t think this is a relatable way to begin anything. Not a conversation with a friend (obviously) (can you imagine earnestly texting a friend that paragraph?) (can you imagine texting a friend enough coherent sentences to form a complete paragraph?) and certainly not the introductory post for a Substack where I one day hope to have more than five subscribers. But yesterday, I read in Zadie Smith’s “Changing My Mind” this frequently-quoted sentence: “The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.”
We’ve all seen this quote before, in bold graphics on a poster at your local indie bookstore or on some girl’s Tumblr page (it’s me, hi, it’s my 2012 Tumblr, it’s me). But yesterday, it meant something to me, the way Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch” after two glasses of wine at 4pm can still reveal new truths to me after all these years. Pause for me to watch a lyric video of this song on YouTube.
What I’m saying is that I’ve been sleepwalking, metaphorically speaking.
I—who once was a master voyeur of people in grocery stores and parking lots, who once was a three-Moleskine-carrying-stereotype, who for years stayed in my college bedroom on Friday nights and wrote essays about said people in grocery stores and parking lots while my roommates threw parties—have been sleepwalking through the last seven years of my life.
If you’re ready to tap out now because this has become too sincere, don’t worry, it’s only performative. All I’m trying to say is that I’ve stopped paying attention. My original thoughts have been dwindling now for years into moments so rare that when I do have an original thought that people respond to, I have nothing to follow it up with. It’s as if I am no more than a beta version of AI, scrambling frantically to create a sentence that isn’t a regurgitation of words from my funnier friend, that podcast host I love, or even my quicker-witted former self, and my algorithm can’t create more than one thought at a time.
See? I can’t even create an original simile.
Anyway, Zadie Smith’s sentence felt like a slap in the face. Like I coulda had a V8 (I regret this sentence already). And so I vowed to start paying attention again.
As it happens, this revelation comes about fifteen minutes before my Pilates class, so that’s where this next chapter of my life begins. It begins as I slide my feet into stirrups and circle my legs in the air, doing exactly what the instructor tells me and nothing else. It begins while Prince whistles those high notes at the end of Purple Rain over the studio speakers, and I try to decide if the smell in my nostrils is my own stink or the guy’s next to me, whose dirty socks are getting closer to my machine with every stretchy leg circle he takes. I bend my knees, pulling them into my armpits by the arches of my feet, and decide during Happy Baby that the stink is probably both of us. The beauty of awareness.
I have Zadie Smith to thank for this.