18 THENEWYORKER, SEPTEMBER 16, 2019
excused himself to use the bathroom.
On his return, he said, “I form my
own way of meditating. People think
I’m using the bathroom all the time. But
sometimes I go in there to get my space,
to just center myself.”
And just now?
“I honestly just had to use it,” he said.
“I’ve been drinking all this water, man.”
At Reset, football-size crystals
glowed in recessed showcases, and a
bookshelf was organized by subject:
Rocks, Relationships, The Path Back.
In May, Common published a mem-
oir, his second, called “Let Love Have
the Last Word,” which touches on child-
hood molestation, therapy, and Mari-
anne Williamson. He said, “Man, if we
could get more people in politics to ap-
proach things like she does, the human
race would be better.”
“I love your memoir,” Tran told him.
It was on the shelf next to Michael Pol-
lan’s “How to Change Your Mind,” and
a few shelves away from “ The Human
Aura.” “Lots of young men could use it.”
“Honestly, I was just writing it to tell
my story, but also to give people the
chance to open up to themselves,” Com-
mon said. “When I first became vege-
tarian, people at home were upset. That
was almost offending them. My mother
now is eating pretty close to vegetarian.
She’s started journalling.”
“No way!” Tran said.
“I’ve had couples come up to me and
the wife will say, ‘Tell him what you’re
doing.’ And the husband will be, like,
1
TIDEANDTIME
IN SEARCHOFLOSTBOATS
E
arly on a recent Saturday, Cherry
Provost, usually a late riser, drove
from her home, in Glen Ridge, New Jer-
sey, to Remsenburg, on Long Island. She
had come to watch the Dudley Trophy
race. The race is the end-of-summer com-
petition for Small Sloops, a type of sail-
boat built mostly by a single Center
Moriches boatmaker from 1908 to 1932.Only about a hundred and fifty were ever
made, and each got a number. The fam-
ilies of the local gentry bought them for
their children: they were perfect for sail-
ing at low tide in the shallow bays. In the
forties, Cherry’s family had owned one.
By the time they sold their summer house
in the area, in 1986, the boat had long
since changed hands. The Southampton
Press had recently told the story of a fam-
ily who had found theirs—No. 96—after
searching for sixty-three years. That gave
Cherry the idea of looking for hers.
At around eleven o’clock, she arrived
at Remsenburg’s main street. “That’s
where Ted Gosnell lived, on Basket Neck
Lane,” she recalled, pointing. The Gos-
nell family had owned No. 11. “And that
was a restaurant called Leisure Hour
Dining Experience.” She used to bike ev-
erywhere, she said, on an Iver Johnson:
“There were no cars. It was wonderful.”
She admitted to an unusually sharp mem-
ory. “I’m part of a study at Wake Forest,”
she said. “I go into what’s called movie
mode. I can still see the scratches on the
glass.” Something else occurred to her
now, about Ted Gosnell: one summer
he’d got a terrible case of poison ivy on
his hands and been unable to sail.
Just on time, she pulled up at the
Westhampton Yacht Squadron—a big-
ger building than she remembered—and
walked out onto the long dock. It was a
sunny day, with the wind from the north.
Some sailors were testing the ropes on
their SSs, picturesque wooden boats with
jibs reminiscent of the craft Max escapes
on in “Where the Wild Things Are.”
The dock brought back a flood of
new memories. “I stood here in 1954 and
watched the houses fall in the water
during the hurricane,” Cherry said, add-
ing, “I brought binoculars.” This re-
minded her of Mrs. Speir (No. 68), who
surfed her house down Moriches Bay
in the storied hurricane of 1938. “She
clung to the roof. It made her quite fa-
mous.” Many of Cherry’s memories have
a Lemony Snicket quality.
Her family had bought their sum-
mer house in 1932, in Remsenburg.
Eight years later, on the nearly empty
ocean dunes across the bay, they built a
“cabaña.” (The middle “a” is pronounced
Thurston Howell-broad.) The beams
came from torpedoed shipping that had
floated ashore. Seven-year-old Cherry
hammered, and she shingled. “ChalkCommon
‘Yo, hey, man, I read the book, I’m start-
ing therapy next week.’”
Tran swung open a heavy door to the
meditation chamber. Common had turned
down the offer of a sound bath. (“You
leave in a real floaty state,” he said; he’d
heard that it could impair verbalization.)
The room was bright white, with benches
and blue mats arranged around an eight-
hundred-pound smoky-quartz crystal
from Madagascar. “Darker crystals ab-
sorb negative energy,” Tran said.
Common lay on a mat, arms across
his chest. “Deep breath,” Tran instructed.
“When you breathe in, you’re breath-
ing in energy and love, and when you
breathe out you fill the world with more
love.” Chimes tinkled. Tran went easy
on the aural effects—less sound bath
than sound spritz.
Time passed. Colors were envisioned.
A mantra was whispered: “May you be
happy. May you be peaceful. May you
be loved.” Then Tran counted up to five,
and Common found the path back to
the room.
“I can feel the energy radiating off of
you,” Tran said. “Like, whoa.”
“Thank you,” Common said. “That
was necessary.”
Tran asked, “What was your color?”
“My color was blue.”
“Blue is the throat chakra,” she said.
“It’s expressing yourself, having a voice.”
Hugs were dispensed. Then every-
one descended to the street and went
back out into a world that was—with
its Amazon fires, its Caribbean storms,
and its near-constant mass shootings—
neither happy nor peaceful nor loved.
—Zach Helfand