the zen of new jersey

work in process/32.

Last weekend, I went to my high school reunion. There are more glamorous places to grow up than suburban New Jersey, but few that are so normal and real, and, in such a basic way, good.

New Jersey gets a bad rap for being a polluted, industrial snarl of highways and factories, but except for the nefarious wasteland near Newark airport, it’s surprisingly pretty, practically bucolic. The New Jersey I grew up in was—and still is—a leafy place of sidewalks and horse fields, Revolutionary War sites, pizza parlors, and mom-and-pop shops. I wasn’t born in New Jersey, but I grew up there. I’m from there. I learned what a real bagel and a real mall is in New Jersey and rode my bike all around my neighborhoods in New Jersey. I learned to drive like I was from New Jersey because I was.

Most important, I learned to be myself in New Jersey.

This is because, more than anywhere else I’ve ever lived, New Jersey is completely, unapologetically itself. It’s not trying to be different, or cooler, like Connecticut or California or Colorado. It doesn’t care that it’s known as the armpit of America; real Jersey people know it’s not. People from Jersey are friendly, maybe not always exactly sweet, but neighborly and nice in an un-showy way. Go into a deli on a Sunday morning and you’ll see a few old guys in their 60s with their chairs pulled up around a plain wooden table, drinking coffee and reading the paper, like it’s what they do every day. It probably is.

Our 35th reunion was held at the Northstar Athletic Club, which sounds fancy but in reality looks like Elks Club or a VFW. The bar was in the basement, smashed up against the back wall, with a bucket of Jello shots in giant plastic syringes beneath a TV playing the Mets game. A Saint Francis figurine presided over the baked ziti and meatball buffet, and there was a black payphone attached to one wall. I watched at least three classmates pick up the receiver and scream Oh my god it works! when they got a dial tone. The reunion committee had decorated with maroon and gold balloons, and DJ Mike spun a nonstop 80s playlist in the corner, next to a vintage projector screen playing grainy music videos of Madonna, Duran Duran, and ACDC.

I was staying with one of my closest friends, who still lives in town in a house that’s still the defacto hang-out for anyone passing through. The night I got there, 20 or 30 friends stayed up talking in her kitchen til almost 3 am. She’d set out platters of  sloppy Joe’s—not the meatball kind, but the Jersey kind: three layers of toothpicked white bread slathered in Russian dressing; the deli meat, we joked, was purely for decoration.

I’d been expecting superficial small talk, but it seemed we’d finally reached the point in life where none of us could be bothered with BS. We’d made the big choices and were living them out. Some were empty nesters; almost everyone had lost a parent, or were caring for a parent; and most were looking back on careers or ahead to new chapters. Others were confessing old remorse, excavating long-buried memories. I thought back to my three years at Madison High: Did I have regrets? There was the cute boy I wish I’d kissed, who later died much too young. I would have liked to learn to play field hockey. Other than that, not really. High school was still simple back then. We studied, did sports, talked on the phone, drank too much on our French class trip to Montreal (sorry, Mom); called our mothers collect from school when we needed a ride (thanks, Mom).

Late night at the reunion party, I looked around the basement. The glaring fluorescent lights were unforgiving, and I maybe only recognized 30 or 40 percent of the people in the room, but still we looked good. No, better. We looked like ourselves. We were ourselves; all these years later, somehow the essence of who we’d been as teenagers in New Jersey remained

Being yourself is a central teaching in Zen. It is the direct expression of our original nature, our true spirit and determination. This is called naturalness. When we practice with naturalness, we’re better able to meet ourselves as we are and the world as it is. “The true purpose is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes,” the late Japanese Zen master Shunryu Suzuki wrote in Zen Mind, Beginner Mind.

It is also a secret of flow.

I thought of the deli where I sat at the formica counter and ate a hard roll every day on my way to school; the men in the deli, keeping up with their daily routine; the ordinary, unchanged halls of my high school I’d walked that morning; the senior’s smoking courtyard, straight out of a John Hughes movie; the metal clanking sound my locker still made when I shut it. Flow isn’t flashy. It’s natural. Often, it’s very plain

It was all so unexciting, and beautiful.

We stayed up talking after the reunion, and all the next day. Time lost all meaning, so that hours passed like minutes, and friends drifted in and out, and still we kept talking. Time felt very full. We had so much to say, so much to catch up on, but there was no rush. Now was now. This is it, one of our friends said. This was why we’d come. Who knew the next time we’d all be back together in this same place. Hopefully soon, but also maybe never. When I looked at the clock, I was shocked to see that it was already late afternoon. We hadn’t even left the house.

Reunions are more than just looking back on our younger selves. They are touchpoints for how we live now, coming back to each other and ourselves at regular intervals, layering memories upon memories, brief flashings in the phenomenal world.

Soon it would be time to go home, but of course I was already there. I guess that’s what home teaches us, to be our true selves, wherever home is. In that way, I guess, New Jersey really is nothing special or, in other words, pretty much perfect.

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This winter, come back to yourself at Desert Flow Camp, Feb 12-16 in far West Texas, just outside of Big Bend National Park. Four nights, five days. Dark skies, uncrowded trails, desert inspo, friends + oh so much flow. This one is selling fast, so click the registration link below to see if Flow Camp is right for you. The ruggedly beautiful West Texas landscape is a perfect backdrop for exploring our unbounded imaginations, and if you like your creature comforts close to nature, you’ll love the stylish and souful Willow House. We’ll be writing on love, loss, desire in all its forms, and the stories we keep hidden and those we long to tell. COED!

Come for Desert Flow Camp + stay a few extra days in the artsy outpost Marfa. So hope you’ll join us!

Wishing you a sweet week full of flashings!

~Katie