Camino del Sol
When I remember to fall in love with life
written on January 13th, 2025 at 10:05am
I am a lot kinder at 7:47am when the F train is holy under the light of the sun. There at 18 people in this train car with me. We understand the sanctity of a communal silence. We have beat the overactive teenagers and obnoxiously loud financial analysts. We are in a joint moment of movement. Our souls are not in sync, but our bodies are. We are hurtling uptown and towards the rest of our lives.
part 2, written later that day
I often do my best thinking on the train, when I’m surrounded by life. It is one of the only spaces where strangers are pressed against one another, but suggest no alternative arrangement. It’s a consensual symbiosis. The hairs of someone’s camel coat will inevitably end up on my cashmere sweater and the footprint of a young, unaware child will adorn my boot. In weird ways, I take these strangers with me. I take life with me. There’s a narrative about sonder and its hold on metropolitan sociality. You have no choice but to be confronted by everything. And if you’re anything like me, you get into a spiral wherein you about the trains people take and their showers and their keys and the history of public transportation in New York and how so many varieties of keys can be cut, and where the water for a shower comes from, and how an underwater tunnel is made and — my personal favorite — how there are so many phone numbers. And the funny thing is that there are detailed answers to almost all these questions, but they feel unapproachable and so maybe it’s better to just remain anxious and ignorant and place a blind faith in systems that we forget are man-made. And man makes mistakes.
written sometime in December, 2024
Sometimes I want to reread every book I hated to see if there is something, no matter how small, that I love. It could be the way an author uses a colon instead of a period, or the way they describe a character eating a meal, or intentional page breaks. There is something to be worshipped in everything.
written on January 20th, 2025 at 12:09am
I like to think about the variety of lives I could lead if I chose to be uncomfortable. I’ve had a recent fantasy about living on a Louisiana swamp. Sleeping in the heat under a fan that is unable to provide a steady breeze. Crickets mating in the thick heat. A comfort in knowing that tomorrow will be the same as today, which will be the same as yesterday, which will be the same as next Tuesday.
written on January 24th, 2025 around lunchtime
I want to be in Paris in the winter in nothing more than a navy overcoat, warmed by brandy and a cashmere sweater. I want to know that, despite my shivering, my laughter is burning. I want to feel the future stretch out before me, long and slow and elusive. I want to meet a Parisian companion and speak in broken tongues. I have always wanted the impossibility of Paris. As a tourist, there will always be something about it that escapes me. I am not sure how long I would manage living there. My body would miss aluminum and Panda Express. I’m so American. Quel d’ommage. I do not feel sophisticated enough for Paris.
written February 12th, 2025
Last night, my friend, Maureen, and I did an imaginative exercise. Curled up on the couch under blankets and whispering to not wake my roommate, we reflected on who we think the other should end up with romantically. I worked my way down physically and then honed in on her future partner’s character. She worked her way up and I could slowly imagine this person being brought to life. It was a gradual reveal, one that caused a unfurling somewhere in my heart and my belly. She said that he will be as kind as me. He will be a caretaker the way I am. He will known how to make my tea and lay out my slippers before bed. With this little exercise she has born, in me, a reassurance that love can be gentle.
written March 8th, 2025
I have showered and brushed my teeth without looking in the mirror. Technically, there was a brief moment when I met my gaze, but I was not wearing my glasses so it was basically like I didn’t look at all. I am sitting outside and feeling the sun on my face. If I tune in to my left ear, I can hear my aunt running water and preparing her breakfast. If I tune in to my right, I can hear chirping and howling and crunching leaves under the feet of my deer friends. I don’t want life to begin. I want to sit here until the sun goes down and wait for it to rise tomorrow. When I close my eyes, all I see is green. I have never been good at meditation for the simple fact that it is impossible for me to turn my brain off. But today’s routine has been close enough.
written on March 28th, 2025
I woke up this morning at 6:16am and, instead of attempting to meditate myself back to sleep, I read every Substack I have posted. There have been times where someone will quote my work and I will have the joy of re-reading a couple sentences or a paragraph, at most. I have to say that I am incredibly proud and fond of myself. My ability to mix life with music and literature and thinking and feeling. The fact that my voice is so clearly mine. When I read some of my favorite authors — Baldwin, Belcourt, Levy, Morrison, Ernaux, Howe — there is always this moment of “oh” that feels right in my bones. Upon re-reading my work, specifically this one and this one and the one you are currently reading, I realize that there are phrases that, with an editor and a couple of creative writing classes, could become an “oh” or maybe even more than an “oh.” I am wondering if this affinity for myself is because the sun is rising in a hazy pink, my favorite type of sunrise. It makes everything soft and impermeable. There is a light in the corner of my shower. I am going to try and stick my face in it, pajamas be damned.
I am currently reading Deborah Levy’s “Real Estate,” and feel deeply connected to her wonderment at seeing her work translated at global literary events. The gratification of writing, for me, is not the validation of a repost or comment, but the recognition that I have written something that can birth a connection — between ideas, between experiences, between people. What a gift.
written on March 28th, 2025
There’s a pink towel at my mom’s house that has been with us since I was about 4 years old. Every time I come to visit, I use it. Despite the fact that it barely covers my body and is slowly unraveling on one end, it is the only physical item that holds my childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. If I stick my face deep enough I can feel the hot steel trunk of my aunt’s car under my thighs, waiting for her to rinse the sand off my feet with an ancient jug of water. I can hear the tattered newspaper under my feet as we drove home barefoot and with the windows open, running away from the sun and towards the moon. I can taste the oxtail and peas and rice I would inhale while waiting to get my hair washed and braided by my grandmother’s neighbor, Rashida. I can hear the TV, which was permanently showing cricket re-runs and the faint hum of the fluorescent lights in my grandmother’s dining room. I can feel the intensity of wildly searching the corners of my room, looking for lizards and being convinced that the silk curtains brushing against me were something more harmful in nature. There was an oscillating fan expertly placed in a corner between the living room and the dining room and I remember the beauty of waiting for the five seconds when it would turn my way and I would not feel stifled by the heat. And it’s funny because I could have just turned the rotation operation off, but it felt better to earn the chilled air. Most importantly, however, I remember being 18 and using that same towel to dry off after the beach, while my grandmother told me that she loved me and “would see me in two weeks” to help me move in to my college dorm. That was the last time I saw her, those were the last words she said to me. Funny that a towel can hold all of that.
written on March 28th, 2025
The closest I can get to swimming in New York is sitting on the floor of my shower, pretending the either too-hot or not-hot-enough water is a waterfall. The water isn’t salty and the rumbles of a train are not similar to the crashing of waves, but if I let the bathroom get steamy enough I can pretend it’s the suffocating humidity of a distant foreign island. This is a way of surviving, I guess.
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I’ve been holding on to this for a while, clearly. I’ve re-read it about five times and I am filled with joy and pride with my work and my capacity for vulnerability. I hope anyone who reads this enjoys it, at least half as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Have a great weekend, internet strangers.
Lots of love,
Jasmine
That was such a joy to read! Thank you for sharing with us!
Breathless, my girl!
Your writing takes my breath away!
Thank you for so clearly and powerfully capturing precious moments from our “shared childhood”