Day 182: It's OK to Rest Your Voice

September 22, 2020
Day 182
 
We are in the Days of Awe. This is the ten-day period between Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and what is considered to be the holiest day in the Jewish year. It's a time of heightened introspection, accountability, and reconciliation.

Our rabbi has graciously offered me, in my role as "poet laureate" for our synagogue, what he is calling a "big safety net" for my participation. In other words, I have provided him with a good deal of older writing to sift through, and if I am unable to write any new pieces that fit well with the themes and tone of these holidays, not to worry. I'm grateful for this.

What I am finding is that every morning on my run, I'm mulling, musing, drafting bits and pieces in my head – then coming home and... nothing (yet!). As I wait and listen, I have been reading others' interpretations of some of the central prayers of these holidays. This one, Truth, Reconciliation and Repair: A Prayer for the Elimination of the Sins of Racism, by Yavilah McCoy, spoke deeply to me.
 
Writing is not coming easily these days, if at all. Historically, I would meet this fact with alarm. Panic, even. But I’ve learned over the years that the writing ebbs and flows; some periods are prolific and others are quiet.

There is an underground river, a water source, an invisible aqueduct, flowing somewhere. Sometimes, I can reach my hands in and scoop up that cold, cold water to my mouth to drink deeply. Right now, I can’t seem to locate it. I sit and listen for a hint of movement, and hear only the old fridge and Chalupa shifting around in her bed, her breath deepening until she is asleep, snoring in her inimitable bulldog way.
 
Over falafel tonight, I told Aviva that I was having trouble writing. I look out from my quarantined life towards the world, trying to survey the landscape, trying to gauge the pulse, and it is erratic – now weakening, now pounding, now strong. I want so badly to believe we are steadily moving towards a victory in November, but in my heart I carry doubts and fears that are more like terrors, terrors that, like the flowing spring of creativity, I cannot fully access lest they level me completely. That is not an option.
 
“Maybe I just need to rest my voice,” I mused out loud, quickly adding that maybe I could write about resting my voice.

To this, my wise daughter replied, “Or maybe you could just rest your voice.”
 
She is not wrong.
 
I have written so much for so long. I coach people in moving through feeling wordless and have seen, time and again, the discoveries and surprises that come when folks let go of their stories of stuckness and show up to the blank page anyway. I have even written about this kind of moment, when I myself feel at a loss for words and the panic of “how am I supposed to expect people to trust me and work with me on writing if I am not writing?”
 
This question does not bother me all that much anymore. One thing my people know about me is that I am a human, and I do not pretend to be otherwise (nor do I trust folks who do). You also know that I am honest with you. So this is me, in this moment, being honest.

I see the train wreck going down in D.C. as the Republicans ram through a new Supreme Court nominee. I see the days ticking down to November 3. I see everyone I know, frantically, methodically, or some combination thereof, rolling up your sleeves: Mailing letters and postcards, serving as poll workers, and so many other forms of trying to ensure a massive voter turnout and that all of our votes are counted. I see us holding our breath as we await a grand jury to announce its decision about indicting the three LMPD officers who killed Breonna Taylor, with the city of Louisville in a preemptive state of emergency. I see that our whole country is in a protracted state of emergency, one that began in 1619 and will not resolve until we are able to truly confront the deep traumas at the heart of the founding and growth of America as we know it.
 
See? This is part of why I have trouble writing. As of tonight, the death toll from Covid has surpassed 200,000 people in the U.S. The figure that stabbed me in the heart tonight, as I was listening to the news on the car radio, was that 11 people died from Covid just today, here in Massachusetts. Eleven people. Think of 11 people you love. Eleven families mourning. Eleven doctors who did everything they could and announced the time of death and will go home tonight, or tomorrow, to shower, maybe to sleep.
 
We live amidst so much death and destruction that it is no wonder we numb out, no wonder we feel we can’t even start writing. It’s just too damn much. I read a piece yesterday – I wish I’d saved it, because now I can’t find it again. It was a Twitter thread by a woman who has done disaster relief work all around the world. She said this was her “first pandemic,” but that every single disaster she has lived through has followed an identical pattern and timeline, including what she called a “wall” at the six-month mark.
 
I think this month, we hit that wall.
 
I do not know anyone who hasn’t experienced an intensification of this whole thing in the past few weeks. It seems to be the month when many of us have encountered our last straw, that thing that just pushed us over the threshold of what we felt we could accommodate and manage. Maybe it has been partly because of schools starting back up, surges in cases in many states as well as in many countries, a polarization so ugly none of us can fucking believe it, what feels like a holy war around things like mask-wearing in many parts of the country, air quality making it unsafe to even take your dog out to pee, forced hysterectomies performed on migrant women… you do not need me to go on.
 
We are all trying to function like normal people amidst increasingly insane conditions.
 
Add to this each of our actual individual, personal lives – relationships, parenting children of all ages, marriages, work or lack thereof, taking out the trash and what is for dinner, Zoom fatigue, seemingly endless decisions about what is safe and what calculated risks to take, and it is actually a wonder we’re doing as well as we are.
 
I pause here. It is time to pause. Aviva just came into the kitchen to get some ice water. She raised one of her fabulous eyebrows – man, does she do a great eyebrow raise. “You writing?” she asked. I said yes, a bit sheepishly. So much for resting my voice, though maybe it’d be better.
 
And that is the rub right there. That question I think many of us grapple with: What good is it for me to write about all of this, if I am not offering a solution or concrete action that will help move us forward?

I find myself reflecting on the benefit of writing even if the writing is not prescriptive or practical in any way.

And then I remember something important: Writing is one of the ways we have of accompanying each other.

This is always true, but at a time when our isolation from so many of the usual relationship and community supports are strained if not gone altogether, in order for us to get past this “wall” moment, we have to stay open to what can connect us.
 
Yes, we were made for these times, on the one hand, in that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” sense. And at the same time, I would say that we were not made for this. Tyranny, totalitarian tactics, gaslighting, and the violent corrosion of human rights on a massive scale take a toll on every body – and I mean that in the most literal sense – in ways seen and unseen. We are all oversaturated. (I would argue that even those who deny the existence of Covid, racial injustice, and climate change are traumatized, but that feels like the beginning of a different thought and I am wrapping up here.)
 
If you are out of words, if you are just cooked, see if you can go to bed early or just do less for a few days. Regroup. Notice if you are scrolling and glazing over and step away from the screen. (I really notice the impact of that now, after having taken a month away from most social media.) And if you are wondering what the point is of showing back up, remember that using your voice is not mutually exclusive with protecting it.

Rest your voice when you need to. Be honest about where you’re at and what you need. It is one of the ways we can retain and care for our humanity.

They will not take our humanity.