Stick figure Sisyphus 🍎 🪨 🍅

behind massage parlor window glass

I celebrated my birthday on Saturday (Aries sun, Libra rising, Virgo moon). There’s only one through line in my adult birthday ritual– walking a short distance to pay a dollar a minute for a stranger’s therapeutic touch before getting spit back out into the street, dazed and oily, an hour later.

This year I ventured to Grand Nature in Chinatown. Before you enter the building, there’s a sign on the door that reads “PAIN STOP 2nd FLOOR,” which might mark the entryway to a place where you can find an end to your pain, but I’ve always read it as a warning to newcomers about their pummeling deep tissue massages– next stop, PAIN.

To each his own, and as one Yelp reviewer writes, “Kevin can massage an apple into a tomato. When you've had enough of being massaged like a baby at other places, then come to grand nature and ask for Kevin.” Yes, please. Ready to give up my apple days and begin my life as a tomato:.

To accompany your next walk to your local pain stop, I give you my latest: “Only One,” out in the world at *10am EST* today. The song was partially inspired by the storefronts and small businesses that I pass on my regular neighborhood route. In the summer of 2020, after months of lock down closure, the massage parlor down the street from my apartment quietly announced its reopening via an uncanny hand drawn sign propped in the window sill. I walked past it every day, first remarking at the deal (nearly half the normal price), then taking note of the symbols gingerly sharpied onto neon poster board.

I would stop to face the window, asking myself if the tempting offer was worth the risk, while contemplating the relationship between Sisyphus and sandwich boards. Eventually the sign came down, and 4 years later I have yet to arrive at a conclusion about how to decipher its messaging. Am I Sisyphus, therefor in need of a massage, even if just momentary relief from the pain? Or is the business owner exhibiting their hardship as a desperate plea for business? Have my muscles hardened like stone, yearning to become a tomato once more? Does the masseuse face each hour long massage like another rotation in an endless cycle of incoming clients? Why is the rock so cheap?

And what caused the heart inside of the heart, on the sign inside of the sign, to bleed beyond its edges?

I have so many questions.

🖖 Keep reading 🖖,

xo Cassandra