Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
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Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
From Cocaine To Central Park: A Poet’s Healing Journey with Aaron Poochigian
A poet’s recovery story rarely starts with a bus up Third Avenue and a rule about not writing while high. Ours does. We sit down with classicist and translator Aaron Poochigian to trace a line from an 18-year-old’s epiphany reading Virgil, through the isolation of lockdown and a cocaine addiction, to a disciplined practice of forest bathing in Central Park that rekindled creativity, routine, and joy.
Aaron makes a compelling case that poetry shouldn’t be confined to classrooms. He opens up his new book, Four Walks in Central Park, a didactic poem that doubles as a tour and a toolkit for attention. We delve into how Shinrin-yoku became a viable meditation for a restless mind, why setting simple rules—such as no drugs in the park and no drugs when writing about the park—helped curb cravings, and how a daily morning ritual helped rebuild sleep, mood, and purpose. Along the way, we wander from the hushed Hallett Nature Sanctuary to the weekend roller-disco at Wollman Rink, exploring contrast as a form of healing.
The park’s layered history surfaces too: Seneca Village, the artifice behind Olmsted and Vaux’s design, and the way curated nature can intensify perception. Aaron reads “The Invitation,” a poem that urges readers to play hooky, step into texture and light, and rediscover delight as an antidote to burnout. We finish at the carousel, where adult play meets literature—think Catcher in the Rye—and hope becomes practical again. If you’ve ever felt disconnected from your senses or your community, this conversation offers a clear path back through nature, routine, and storytelling.
Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a gentle nudge outdoors, and leave a review to help others find the show. Then tell us: what place in your city restores you most?
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Well, hello, and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and we have a very special guest today. His name is Aaron Pukigian, and he is, I hope I said that right. Um, but uh this guy is a poet, uh classic scholar, a translator. He lives and writes in New York City, and his many translations include Stung with Love, um, which is a translation of Sappho and Marcus Aurelia's meditations. Um, his works appeared in in Financial Times, New York Review of Books, and he's got a new book out called Four Walks in Central Park: A Poetic Guide to the Park. And this guy's got quite a story, um, an ex-cocaine addict, and he found healing in Central Park. And so, uh, Aaron, welcome to the show. I'm really uh anxious to hear about your story. Thank you for having me, Joe. Well, I hope I didn't butcher your name too bad. I I'm I'm recovering from chemo not too long ago, and my brain's still a little scrambled, but we're uh we're gaining on it. We're doing well.
SPEAKER_00:I'm hard. I'm I'm sorry to hear about the chemo, but you seem to be recovering from it strongly. You're very vital and vivacious today.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I appreciate that. I love the alliteration. I love working with writers. Anyways, Aaron, um, you know, let's I always like to jump into, you know, these bios are great, but they always are, you know, most people are much richer than their bio, and and or a bio might get so big that we're only going to be talking about some element. Uh, I always like to start our conversations off with kind of, you know, what brought you here and your story of um, you know, your life's journey that took you to uh becoming a poet, first of all, and then um finding Central Park and all of this. Why don't you uh give us a little walk down memory lane and and tell us about how you came here?
SPEAKER_00:I had a revelation when I was 18. Um, I think about it as a religious experience. I was sitting out in front of the ivy-covered building um at my undergraduate institution, and I was reading um a section on the classical world, the Greeks and the Romans, and there were the beginning lines of a poem by Virgil, the Aeneid. And it I didn't know Latin at the time, but I sounded it out. Uh, Armoirum Quecano Troia qui primus aboris. It all sounds that great. And like I swear, the sky became brighter and the grass became greener, and I realized that I was supposed to be a poet and I was supposed to learn ancient Greek and Latin um so that I could learn, yes, all the sort of possibilities um that poetry has to offer. And so I've known that I was going to be a poet or that I should be a poet since I was 18, and I've stuck to that. Um, I've never really had a period when I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. And so I went on and studied ancient Greek and Latin and eventually earned a PhD in classics. Um, but it was um yes, I have been a scholar and published articles, but the focus has always been on poetry. Um, and then began the more difficult years in my life when I would have one-year academic positions teaching at a university, knowing I was gonna leave. Um, I became very lonely. Um eventually I settled in uh New York City and established myself here and have, you know, had some friends here. Um, but there was always a sort of loneliness. And then slowly during COVID, uh, when I was isolated in my apartment during lockdown, um, I needed something. I looked, well, I didn't need something, I looked for something um that would what? Give me something to look forward to. And I confess um that I became addicted to cocaine that way. I took it originally um just as a sort of um performance-enhancing drug and to give me something to do during lockdown, but I it was like catnip to it to me. I I yeah, I succumbed to it um thoroughly. Within a month, I was addicted to it. And that yeah, then commenced the most unhealthy period of my life. Um, I'm lucky that I didn't have a heart attack.
SPEAKER_01:Um, that's surely a young man's drug. And uh, you know, uh when once you get over 30 or so, that's not really um maybe conducive to health as much.
SPEAKER_00:No, a wise, yeah, a wise friend told me that yeah, you shouldn't do that drug, certainly past the age of 50, but I think even earlier because this the yeah, the possibility of a heart attack is so high.
SPEAKER_01:I'd like to take a step back quickly, just just to kind of step into your shoes for a minute. Um, you know, the the focus of of the classics and poetry and and all of these things in this modern world today. Um, how is that? You know, I mean I have I didn't ever go to college, so I'm I'm you know one of these crazy entrepreneur guys that just finds his way through life and and starts things and figures things out. But um, I've always loved poetry and I've written a little bit of poetry in my life, but it's it's it's a powerful expression of thoughts and emotions, and um and yet you don't in the mainstream world, uh aside from you know, maybe rap music or something, you're like, well, where does poetry show itself? You know, there's still poetry books written and and published, but you know, in in in today's world of instant gratification and social media and and all of these things, it's not, you know, the the focus on on the arts is certainly not what it was at one point. How have you found that um, you know, with your teaching and and even just the reception of all of these amazing concepts and works, you know? I feel like these works are fading away sometimes because people aren't seeing them and reading them and recognizing them, but I don't know that to be true or not.
SPEAKER_00:Um yes, thank you. I mean, you you asked the question about contemporary poetry and where it's at and where it's going. Um, I think of poetry right now as being like an endangered species that's kept in a wilderness, it's kept in a wilderness preserve. And that wilderness preserve is academia. And so there are English majors who study it, and then there are MFA programs that encourage the writing of it, um, but it's mostly uh confined to academia. And so my big crusade is to try to push poetry outside of academia and to get it in front of interested readers. I dream of America having a national poetry again, and national poets non-specialists are familiar with and whose work non-specialists know. And so that's one of the um reasons behind my book, Four Walks in Central Park. I wanted to show that poetry can do more than write intense little lyrics and can do more than be um esoteric and limited to people in academia. Um and so it's a kind of outreach. I see the book as a kind of outreach to meld poetry and the tour guide. Um and yes, thus to reach out to um the people who visit Central Park, for example, or people curious about Central Park, and to give them the experience of being in the park if they're not using it as a tour guide. Yeah, that the book serves as a surrogate for being in Central Park itself.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, and and and then I'll leave my interjections for this. I really want to hear your story, but it this just connected me. Like I'm a guy that was really uh I I I love the you know classic rock and folk songs from the 60s, probably through the 90s. And they used to do these things called concept albums, you know, a lot of the rock and roll bands that I really liked. And they would tell a story through the through through a whole album and through songs, and and it was all poetry, you know, and and it might be a science fiction concept or a romance or whatever the story was, but it was it was I kind of took your book as like a concept album where you know you you told a story through these series of poems that could easily have been set to music. So, and and today, you know, you've got these just rough and raw, you know, short haikus almost, you know, that are just almost, you know, they just drive a point home and and there's like no nothing to think about, you know. You're you're not painting a picture, you're not creating an emotion, you're just like throwing a drumbeat out there. So I'll let you go back to your to your thought about you, you're you're you're in this addiction, and you realize that you know this is an issue. You know, you're you're you're in the middle of COVID, everybody's stuck in their houses, apartments, they're saying, Don't go outside, don't do this, don't do that, everything's don't. But then they also kind of said, Well, it's okay to be way out in nature by yourself. And that was sort of like one of the few things that you know, some people were like, Well, okay, I can go where people aren't.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um, first, I love your analogy with the concept album. I love concept albums as well, like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall, or David Bowie and um The Spiders from Mars. Um, I yeah, I love the idea. I love that analogy of a book-length poem um with a concept album. But yes, to get back um to my story, I realized um eventually, I realized um, well, when I was doing far too much cocaine, I realized that I would have to quit. And I was figuring out slowly ways that I could work toward recovery. Um, one of them I discovered um that I tried all different kinds of meditation, but my mind was too hyperactive. Yeah. Um to be good at it. Um, and so I encountered something called Shinrin Yoku in Japanese, which means forest bathing. It's not just walking in the woods, but it's intent walking through the woods intentionally taking in um sensation uh by uh after sensation and sort of itemizing them and appreciating them singly in your mind. Um, I saw that as a kind of meditation that I could do. I also realized I would need to quit doing cocaine. Mostly it was creative, it was creative sterility that did it to me. I was isolated in my apartment. I mean, all I saw was the four walls of my apartment and then whatever was at the corner deli. Um, and so I needed to be able to learn again how to appreciate being alive, the sensations of being alive. And so, since I live um in Manhattan in the East Village, there isn't much wilderness um anywhere near me. There isn't any wilderness anywhere near me. Manhattan's not on Central Park as a substitute um for wilderness where one is supposed to do Shinrin Yoku. Um, and I saw the Central Park as a kind of um concentrated nature, um, where you have um many, many different species, um, that yeah, more species than you'd normally find in a wilderness, more species of birds than you normal normally find in a wilderness, and also a greater variation of types of landscapes, whether they be rocky or there be water features or there are lawns. And so I started um with the yeah, I required myself to go to Central Park, it's about 15 minutes from my apartment daily for at least two hours, and to try to do Shinrin Yoko. Walking, bicycling, driving, walking and sitting. Um, the the the tour itself is yes, strolling, and strolling is a metaphor for taking it easy.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, to get to Central Park is what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I take the bus, take the bus up um Third Avenue. Um, and then yes, in the park, I'd walk or I'd sit, I'd lean up against a tree trunk, and then I had a book, um, a great book, which actually maps every single tree in Central Park. Wow, um, and I um, yes, I was an aspiring naturalist, an aspiring botanist, and I slowly became more familiar with the trees and their personalities, you know, beech trees with their smooth bark, the sort of um yeah, player piano bark of a birch tree, um, and the various times at which, yeah, they would um be green and then start turning in the fall to yellow or red. Um good. And so I, yeah, slowly became a better naturalist um by spending that time in the park. And so I was very serious about the meditation of it and at first wouldn't stop to jot down notes. Um, but eventually the poet in me won out and I would allow myself to stop and jot impressions. Um, I eventually realized when I had enough of these impressions in verse, that the yes, that I was on to a book length project. Um, and I realized also that I could set the book up um in such a way that it would, as the park was good for me and helping me with my recovery and helping me learn how to appreciate the world again, so I could provide that solace ideally to readers as well, um, by encouraging them through capturing the essence of various attractions in the park. I could entice them back into an appreciation for the world, if that's what a reader was needing. Um, and so that sort of gave me the structure for the book, where there is a docent or tour guide who is the know-it-all, um, who tells, yeah, gives all the details about the park. And then there is the addressee, the you, who is the reader, um and has become isolated and cut off um from anything outside of his work life. Um, and so yes, that gave me the structure, and it I realized what I was doing, something that's common, common in classical poet, in Greek and Latin poetry, but isn't common today. It's called didactic poetry, poetry that teaches something. And so the park, the book teaches um details about the park, the history of the park, and even true crime stories about the park, as it also encourages the reader um to appreciate um sensory details coming in from the par just anywhere in one's life.
SPEAKER_01:No, that's amazing, and um I received a copy of the book and and have been able to read through some of it, but enough to where I I see what you did, and I've never been to Central Park, and I feel like I've at least experienced it enough that says I think when I do go one day, I will have a different appreciation for it than if I just walked in cold. And so even for me, I live in California, you know, I've only been to New York a couple of times, and you know, for specific purpose. So um I I know the next time I do go to New York, I'm gonna make sure I find my way to Central Park and uh spend a minute walking through the park. Maybe I'll even bring your book with me. Um I I think that um it's a very interesting and special way of presenting a narrative like that. Um when you started to put your thoughts down, you know, it's a it's it's the park's kind of like an arboretum and a museum, and it's got a lot of elements to it that are much more than a park. You know, you think of a park and it's like a playground and some trees and a lot of grass, but this is much more than that. Like you said, there's all these different features and water and buildings and and stories and and um history to this thing that that make it you know more than just like a you know children's playground park or a sports park or something like that. Was there something that um when you first started writing these impressions that was really speaking to you as far as you know the impact of this park?
SPEAKER_00:At first I was most drawn to the dense forest areas. Um in particular, the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, the North Woods, and the Ramble. Um, in that I felt most outside of the grid of the city when I was in those dense forest areas. Um but I eventually, when I realized I was working on a book-length project, I realized that I would want to have contrast if it was all the same tone. Um, then the tours would become monotonous. Um and so excuse me, um I wanted to get the contrast in. And so, for example, the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, which feels like monasteries I've been to in the past, um, is contrasted with the nearby Woolman Rink, um, where there's roller skating. And in particular, I'm particularly fond, uh, they do it on weekends, it's called discoases, and it's like a 70s disco party in the park. Um, and so you move then from the um solemn religious um nature of yeah, the of the the densely forested areas, one moment. Yeah, yeah, no, no worries. The densely forested wooded areas to the contrast of this party space. Right. So it's like going from a sacred space, yeah, a sacred space to a profane space. Um, and um yeah, so I built in contrasts like that, and then I also built in um the um the contemporary surface impressions one takes in the here and now with history of the park, um, including true crime. And so, for example, um, there is um a city that used to a suburb called Seneca Village that was located in the northwest of the park. And um when the yeah, the park was originally planned and designed in the 1850s, um there were inhabitants in the park and they had to be bought out with um eminent domain. Um, and so it's interesting to think that there were real houses, real homes in the park, and they then, yeah, were removed in order to make way for this artificial landscape. And I tried also to make that a part of the poem that we think about when a lot of people talk about the park as if it's nature, but it's highly artificial. A lot of rock had to be dynamited out, and the landscapes are planned. And so I tried to emphasize in the book it's nature as a man-made thing, an artificial thing. And and so it's a kind of yeah, artificial wonderland that imitates nature, but gives nature in a sort of greater concentration, if you will.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and nature kind of fills in gaps, you know, when as soon as man stops building, nature starts building. And so, you know, as as as the work of man begins to decay or or or even is left alone for a while, nature finds its way through the cracks in the concrete, and you know, one one little thing will pop up, and the next thing you know, you've got a little ecosystem. I would since oh hello? Yeah, yeah, no, I'm here.
SPEAKER_00:Sorry, I I left a pause there. Oh, got it. Um, and so um I'm excited to be talking on um, yes, for a health bond uh health podcast. Um in that um my experience with forest bathing in the park and the various yeah, restrictions on drug use I imposed as I was working on the park. Um, the park I I credit it with my recovery from the addiction, um, in that I made it, I specified that when I was in the park, I couldn't be high. And then also when I started working on the bur book, I made it a specification restriction for myself that I couldn't be high when I was writing about the park. And eventually the project became so exciting to me and took up so much of my time that my drug use was severely curtailed. And eventually I just stopped entirely.
SPEAKER_01:Well, beautiful, what a way to quit. You know, it wasn't like uh you didn't have to turn it into a uh a lesson of willpower. You you created an environment where you were doing what you wanted, and you just wanted that less.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, it was so healthy for me. Also, um, in terms of health, um, doctors talk about having a regular schedule um as a major component of that. And so when I was using, I had no schedule whatsoever. I would work for 16, 20 hours straight, crash for a few hours, and then start all over again. Um, but with my visits to the park, I had a regular schedule. I'd leave at 8 a.m. every day to go do my time in the park. Um, and so it helped me coaxed me back into a healthier schedule and just a healthier lifestyle in general. And then I started getting exercise again. And eventually um I started spending time running in the park as well. And so it really has been the sort of fountain of recovery for me, Central Park.
SPEAKER_01:That's beautiful. You know, we have a nonprofit called Gardens of Hope, and we we offer what we call therapeutic horticulture, and our our garden's only a couple acres, but it's the same idea, really, is that nature makes everything that you do to be healthy work better. And even just being in it by itself, doing nothing will give you healing. But if you come for a purpose, it will enhance that purpose. And and it sounds like the park is a perfect example of that. Um is there like how many times over how over what period of time um did you go to the park? Like you started in in what year and and when was the last time you were there? I I should say.
SPEAKER_00:Oh um, I started going there about four and a half, five years ago. And I would go there daily. Um, and um, yeah, for for a few hours. And then sometimes I would stay longer. Um, if if the meditation was really grooving in me, if I yeah, I really got into the zone. Um and now I go, I still go three, four, five times a week, but it's gone the park has gone from being an a new friend to me to being an old friend. Originally it was a new friend full of surprises, and I was discovering all of its different moods and possibilities. Now it's an old friend, and that I, you know, I've seen the leaves change color um over a number of years now. But I do think the park is like bottomless, is infinite, that there's still more for me to learn, and I still need to get better at identifying birds, for example.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. No, I tell people I walk around my property every single day, and every single day I see something new. And I've been here for 30 years, and nature's just got that ability to reveal some little surprise every day, whether it's an animal I haven't seen, or a plant that pops up, or a mushroom, or you know, the stream did a little something different, or whatever. There's always something where you're like, oh wow, I never saw that before.
SPEAKER_00:I'm jealous that you have a property to survey. Um, I live in a very tiny apartment in the East Village, but I was excited to hear about your nonprofit. Um, in that here and there, peppered throughout the very densely populated East Village with its small apartments, there are community gardens. Um and you um pay a bit of money each year and you get a plot of land and you can grow flowers on it and vegetables on it. And the community gardens are usually open to the public um several days a week. And so anyone can go in there and enjoy them. And yes, we New Yorkers, um, yes, nature. I mean, I won't say it's more precious, but yeah, perhaps I will say it's it's especially precious to us and that we're in this concrete grid. Um and there's and New Yorkers are famously busy and under a great deal of pressure. Um, and so yes, I wanted, yes, um, my value that comes from scarcity, yeah. Yes, to scarcity, yes, thank yeah, exactly. Um, and so I wanted, yes, to convey the importance of Central Park to New Yorkers in particular, um, who don't have uh large properties to survey or nearby wildernesses to go to, but they do have um that park.
SPEAKER_01:So with the park in in particular, you know, you're looking at a stretch of almost five years or maybe over five years. Um when you initially were coming and getting to know the park, were there phases that you went through where there were favorite places? Did they shift? And then today that you've experienced the park so many times, do you have some favorite places and are they the same places?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, they are. My favorite, I'd love to talk about my favorite favorite attractions in the park. Um one of them is the carousel, um, in the southern end of the park, right in the middle. Um, it's been around. There have been different iterations of the carousel since 1871. There have been four iterations or avatars of the carousel. And I see it, I mean, I've I've written it as an adult, and I encourage um in the course of the book, um, adult play. That is adults having fun without any inhibit the any of their adult inhibitions. Um, and it's um it comes from a Freudian concept I'm big on called regression in service of the ego. Regression means going backward into childhood, and then in service of the ego means that it's um it benefits your surface personality, your day-to-day personality. And so um I encourage um the presumably adult readers of the book to give way to um adult play, and the carousel, yeah, embodies that um as it evolves, it sort of spins out, yeah. Right. Um, it's also the the carousel is famous in literature. Um, there are poets in the 19th century like William McGonagall, who write about the earliest version, um, which wasn't in a building, and in fact, it was before electricity, and it was drawn, it was pulled around in a circle, the carousel, by a blind mule in an underground chamber that would answer to the tap of the operator's foot. Eventually, um eventually the power for it was electrified. It burned down in 1924, but it's famous. Um, it appears in the climax of the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Sollinger. Holden Caulfield is there with his sister, and she's riding on the carousel, and he's watching like an adult, signifying his acceptance of an adult role. Um, and he starts, it's the first movement out of his great drunken depression. Um, he sees her there. Reaching for a brass ring. They call it the gold ring in the carousel. And it becomes a symbol of, it's a symbol of hope. And it helps him then takes the take the first step out of his depression. And so since I was using the park as a recovery for myself from drug addiction and a related serious depression, that scene has always been especially powerful to me.
SPEAKER_01:I love it. I love it. Well, we're running a little shy on time. Unfortunately, as you know, listeners don't have the attention span more than a gnat or two. And so if we go too long, no matter how interesting something is, people tend to fade away. However, um, I want to make this offer to you that I make to most of my guests, that especially the interesting ones. Um, if you'd ever like to come back and continue this conversation, I would love to do that. Um before we get off, though, I I have two points. Do you have a poem that you'd like to share with us here? Um, yes. How much time do we have? I could read. We can go another five, maybe ten minutes. Good five minutes.
SPEAKER_00:I'll read um the invitation to the reader um to come with me and take a tour into the park. Um it'll take about a minute and a half. Perfect. The invitation. We struggle, but there's always Central Park offering water that upholds and bark to lean on. People need its long lake-flecked recovery, its roots and shoots and birds. Writers, you know, they leave their worlds of words. But Frederick Olmstead, landscape architect, and his ingenious right hand Calvert Vox left us a good-sized earth as their bequest. The public rectangle runs fifty blocks from north to south, a half mile east to west. I know that headshake. Like you're asking why, why sacrifice Manhattan real estate? America deserved its own Versailles, one not grown only for a potentate. We needed both groomed lanes where a tycoon with coattails could parade his horse and buggy, and lawns where clerks and maids could meet and talk outside their tenements and off the clock. We needed more than bathhouse or saloon. So blueprints, pumps and shovels turned dank, muggy acreage to a new world paradise that grants asylum where the concrete ends, and yet you've never been there. We've been friends since make-believe back home in yards of yore. I know you too well. Time for some advice. Because you haven't left your office much for years and don't try new things anymore. Play hooky. Yes, fake sick, and we'll explore that curious retreat. The sheep and gice and willow trees will get us back in touch with texture. Holidays outside the box are what keep people from the loony bin. I've got it all planned out. Four days, four walks, redressing stress, gloom, burnout, and deflation. Four days of trails and tails and recreation. Four days at large. We'll quest beyond time clocks and worldly wages for the Cheshire Grin. What do you say? You'll do it. Yay, you're in.
SPEAKER_01:I love it. That was quite an invitation. And um it paints quite a picture. And like I said, I might have read through, I don't know, a dozen of your poems, and uh your you paint you paint good pictures with words and in my in my rough-hewn language. But um I appreciate it. I have a a thought that you would like to leave our listeners with that kind of encapsulates this conversation.
SPEAKER_00:I would like to say, since this is a health podcast, um that I want to encourage people to reach out and talk to other people. I was in a great state of isolation um before I began this project and before I started recovering. And I was arrogant about my uh misery. I felt it was what made me special, what defined me and singled me out and made me special. And so my ears were closed off um to what other people had to say about their troubles. And I thought my my troubles were unique to me. And I want to encourage anyone who feels that way, who is closed off in that way, yes, to reach out and listen to others talk about their troubles and to find others um who have similar conditions and sympathize with them.
SPEAKER_01:I love that. That's a beautiful message, and it it resonates to the message of this podcast, which is about building community focused on health and healthy living. So that's uh it fits right in with what we're what I'm here to do and what this the purpose of all this is. And of course, let's get back to your book. How uh let's share any contact information you have and how people can find the book, um, or or any other uh contact that you'd like to share with us.
SPEAKER_00:Got it. Yeah, the book is widely available through all the um vendors of books. And so, for example, you can certainly buy it on Amazon, you can buy it off the shelf in Barnes and Noble, um, or from any of your favorite uh any any favorite bookseller of yours. Um, my name is Aaron Puchigian, and I am the only one in the world. So if you search my name, the book, the book will definitely pop up, um, along with other work by me. Um, and so it's as simple as that. Just typing my name into Google will give you access to the book and and and yes, all the rest of my work.
SPEAKER_01:Beautiful. And again, the book is Four Walks in Central Park, a poetic guide to the park. Well, Aaron, it's been an absolute pleasure. Um, I appreciate you uh coming on to the show. And again, I I welcome you to come back and and share more of your story with us. I really um, you know, I think that these conversations to me are a lot of times the guests will come on and they'll have their pitch points, and sometimes there isn't really much more to talk about. But what I always like to do is meet a new friend and uh uh begin a conversation that has a place to continue. So I feel like we're in that spot. Certainly welcome you to come back.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you very much. I just want to say in the middle of my distraction was my cat started jumping on a on a paper bag.
SPEAKER_01:I see him sitting uh on a shelf behind you right now.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, oh got it, yes. No, there she is. Yeah, there she is. And so I apologize for the background noise. I had to go and push my it's all good. Okay, got it, got it. Thank you very much, Joe. I would love to come back.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, wonderful. Well, we can schedule that anytime. This has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumba, and I want to thank our listeners for making the show possible. And we will see you next time.
