I drew you taking a shit

and other things I did at the park today.

Today I left my headphones at home. Not as a gesture. Not in the name of presence, or mindfulness, it wasn’t some virtuous bid to “connect” with the sounds of the city. I didn’t want to hear birds or buses or babies. I just left them. A consequence of moving too quickly, thinking too little, smoking too much and of being a silly bitch. There’s nothing interesting about it.

Without them, the world came rushing in, unfiltered and indecent. The city, unclothed. I heard everything. The scrape of skateboards against the path. Children barking. Dogs shrieking. Or maybe it was the other way around, who knows where the animal ends.

I sat. Then I moved. Then I sat again. Seven benches in total. I didn’t count on purpose, but somehow I know it was seven.

I just sat and created situations in my head. Sometimes I texted.

I drew a picture of my friend on the toilet, she’s got the shits and she lives in a different continent. I didn’t draw her suffering, I gave her dignity in ink: calm, composed, mid-defecation. I think drawing her life makes me feel a part of it, like I’m helping. It felt like a communion. Or maybe I just romanticise the people I love, even their diarrhoea. I canonise their suffering. I make shrines of their small miseries.

I watched a man and his girlfriend take pictures of each other by the big ‘MEXICO’ letters. I think they’re in love, or they’re pretending. Either way they documented their joy so earnestly it bruised me. I hoped the pictures turned out nice. I don’t know why I cared, but I did. It felt important.

Three teenagers danced with alarming seriousness next to a speaker and in front of a camera. I didn’t feel irritation or judgment. I felt implicated? As if I’d been them once, although I hadn’t. I didn’t do TikTok dances in parks. I also felt a kind of envy. They seemed born into confidence. Unafraid of space. So certain of their place in the world. I don’t remember being that sure of anything at their age. I smiled at them, almost proud, nostalgic for a version of my youth that never existed. A habitual response now, this softening towards youth I no longer belong to and increasingly can’t relate to, the one that forgives youth for its trespasses, and forgives itself for not having been younger.

Dogs passed me on my bench. They knew something I didn’t. About leisure, about purpose, about lying down with conviction. I began to think of them as philosophical creatures, unconcerned with legacy, unconvinced by ambition. A hedonistic group. I’ve never met a dog haunted by its own potential.

I watched a motorcycle roll over a speed bump with the caution of a man facing consequences. The riders bounced and laughed and I laughed too, absurdly moved by the silly poetry of suspension and gravity. It felt like I was in on something, though I didn’t know what.

I took cover when the rain began to fall.

I thought about what other people were doing, people I imagine who are better at life, who don’t while away their Sunday afternoon sitting in a park, who don’t spiral into metaphysics on a public bench. Productive people, women with systems, groups, wellness plans. Women who reply to emails and do hot pilates. Women who spend Sunday preparing for Monday. I imagined a woman ironing her shirt for her week ahead. A bossy business babe. It was me. I was ironing. In my mind. Crisp lines. A cotton blouse. I recoiled.

I thought of people who make meaningful art, not toilet-sketches, not loops of thought on a bench. People who knit for the rhythm and not the result. I want to start knitting. I probably won’t though. Is not-knitting also a choice? A philosophy of sorts.

There are so many selves available. I know this because I try out new lives in my head all the time. Sunday selves, mostly. With structure and snacks and sex with someone beautiful. Hair washed. Fridge full. Laundry folded. Ambition. Discipline. A quiet, clean home with the rent paid and soft jazz. They exist in my mind like a department store of women I could be if I bothered.

But I didn’t. Today I sat. I watched. I did nothing, and it felt close to something sacred.