My Last Night in Bedstuy

Farewell to a beautiful apartment

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Late November, the goddess of scarcity descended on my doorstep and issued her decree:

“This year in your apartment will be your last year in Bedstuy. It is time to move and build a sanctuary.”

She came, as trickster goddesses often do, in the form of a greedy landlord, a new manager who sought to maximize profits by renovating all three floors in my building and by jacking up the prices so goddamn high my roommates and I could no longer afford to stay.

Although our fight was long, ultimately we lost and had to leave.

It was a good tug of war while it lasted. We fought them for about 6 months We even took the landlord to court and got some free rent in exchange for our troubles and his recklessness.

For months, he refused to provide heat or fix our doorbell. Plus he contracted with construction workers to make extremely loud renovations that shook the building every day for months.

Still, I’m going to miss this place.

I’ve been here for 7 years. It’s the longest place I’ve stayed in in New York City.

This place terraformed me into adulthood.

It was here in this apartment that I first experienced the exquisite activity of getting stoned, downloading Logic pro, and making music for hours.

It was here that I learned how to DJ.

It was here that I developed a meditation practice for the first time and committed, daily, to chanting every morning.

It was here that I dropped acid for the first time and grew some respect for fashion and saw, in complete jaw dropping awe, how color, fabric, and geometric patterns are manifestations of the divine.

It was here that my friends and I sang our hearts out in sick jam sessions, and k-holed while melting into the colorful sounds on Grateful Dead records.

It was here that I had the best sex of my life.

So yeah I’m gonna miss this apartment.

All the stories we made here now lie deep within its bones. No one will ever again experience this apartment in the same way we have, at least not not architecturally. Construction men will be coming to tear the walls down and make it anew.

I’ve confronted shadows here, faced fears here, had difficult conversations that made me grow as a person, danced feverishly for hours here, and been transformed through the persistent, undying friendship of my roommates and lovers and all who have passed through, blessing me with the gift of their lives.

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📿 Me, dancing feverishly for hours 📿

To hold both the sorrow and sense of loss I feel right now alongside the joy and anticipation I have from entering a new space, I’ve been meditating on an ancient Tibetan Buddhist practice. There are only two rules and it’s simple, really:

First, build a vibrant, colorful sand mandala.

Then tear it down.

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This process takes about seven days.

Seven days to build a mandala, seven years to live in an apartment.

The monks build an elaborate structure that mirrors the very cosmos.

They take their time.

They concentrate.

And then they tear it down.

And in this way, they turn impermanence into a meditation.

As I’ve removed my frames from the walls, packed boxes full of clothes and knick knacks I’ve collected over the years, and thrown away excess stuff I don’t need for where I’m going, I’ve been thinking about those sand mandalas. And I’ve also been thinking about a saying I found once in a Buddhist comic book.

One day I may get it tattooed.

It says:

Impermanent are all created things. Strive on with awareness.

So strive on we will.

And hey, our next journey is gonna be quite the adventure.

We are moving to Weeksville to build a sanctuary and, it’s funny, kinda’ perfect actually, that Weeksville, Brooklyn is a town that was founded by freed slaves in 1838.

We are going to live there and build a healing community for the Black and Jewish Diaspora. All ethnics welcome, heh.

Fitting, don’t you think?

Blessings to the Eternal.

I honor you, aho.