Daily Dispatches: Day 29
April 10, 2020
Day 29
Good morning. I dreamed that I went to my office to meet with a client, and it was being used by the landlord as a beauty parlor. Three women were getting their hair done -- sinks and everything -- for a wedding. I was furious and powerless and had to figure out where to meet my clients instead.
A few nights ago, I dreamed that the office was covered in a thin layer of dust.
I haven't stepped foot in it for a month today.
I think I miss it. I miss the pink chairs and the light and walking to town in the mornings, sometimes stopping for a coffee or picking up falafel for lunch. I miss hearing footsteps on the stairs and that moment of greeting someone at the door.
The truth is, I could go to my office. It has what for all intensive purposes is a separate entrance, so chances are high no one else has even used that door. But the force field of staying home is strong, and working here at the kitchen table as I did for the first four years of my business, being in close physical proximity to my wife and kids (even though lord knows maybe it would give us all a little space), and reorienting my daily rhythm once again, feels right and necessary.
I have applied for two government loans, one of which would cover my rent for 12 months. I have no idea if I will get it or need it, but I also have no idea that I won't. When it comes to futuristic thinking, my field has edged either much, much closer or become longer-term -- I'm talking either tomorrow, next week, or several generations from now. The in-between is to hard to grasp, impossible to picture, simply unknown.
I tried to write yesterday to no avail. It felt good to focus completely on home, Pearl's birthday, talking to Aviva about where we could buy half-and-half and offering her a mission, an outing, something, anything to get in her car and go somewhere. I edited a client's piece and took it upon myself as a personal challenge to whittle it down from 1,150 to just under 1,000 words, the word limit for a particular journal she is eyeing. I made little flourless bundt cakes and delighted in trying something new. I crashed hard in the afternoon and slept for an hour, my body trying to account for the lost sleep at night when dreams interrupt rest.
My friend Susa Facetimed me in the late afternoon. We've been friends since we were 11 or 12. At one point, she said I felt more like family in some ways, and I nodded, knowing that she is a sister in the deepest sense of the word, a forever kind of relationship that has withstood decades of distance and closeness and change and witness. It was comforting to see her face, her soft sweater (some friends always have the best sweaters), hear her voice, and marvel at the fact that we are living through history.
We are always living through history. What's past is present, what's present was once -- a minute ago, even -- the future. Will there be a future? We are living proof. The question is who will survive to build it?
I’ve been exchanging emails with our downstairs neighbor about local farm stands offering curbside pick-up. She is in her 60s and defended her Ph.D. last summer. She’s teaching four university classes online – dance, no less (how does one do this??). She is a single parent to her elementary-school-age granddaughter, and she texted me last week to say she’s expecting a second, younger grandchild to come live with them for a few weeks. She also cares from a distance for her very elderly mother who lives in New York City and refuses to move.
I know she is tired, bone-tired. I want so much to reach out a hand, offer to have the girl come upstairs for a spell, something. And I cannot. So we tell each other where the fresh produce is and have occasional long chats in the driveway. Over time, in this way, we have grown a certain kind of closeness.
Someone I love dearly manages a large Goodwill store in a large Southwestern city. She is exhausted, scared, and angry. Not only hasn’t her store closed, but she was given no notice recently for calling multiple store employees to lay them off over the phone. These are people without a safety net, single parents, the working poor our country loves to call “essential” but treats as disposable.
And meanwhile, this young woman showed up in her Instagram stories begging people to hold off on their quarantine-induced spring cleaning, because she is the one who has to sort through the donations, the clothing, the items that could very well be coated in virus. I am beside myself, but she does not have an alternative. (And p.s. the current president & CEO of Goodwill received over $700K in compensation as of 2015.)
For Americans without a safety net, without savings, without employers who are able to send folks home and keep the paychecks coming – and I’m not saying that scenario is easy but at least it’s likely to be safer – this pandemic means something very, very different than for those of us who can let the office collect dust for now.
For children in unsafe home situations, this is a literal nightmare. For those experiencing domestic violence, alcoholism, and severe mental health issues, this is a literal nightmare. For those who have no choice but to go to work, this is a literal nightmare.
As numbers of cases and deaths emerge, it is undeniable that the pandemic is disproportionately devastating communities of color across the country, from cities with hospital deserts to native reservations lacking electricity and running water.
In her newsletter this week, Desiree Adaway writes:
“Capitalism and classism have done their thing by making sure the rich and most powerful have first access to Covid-19 testing and through the hoarding of resources or the privilege of self-quarantine. Hundreds of thousands of workers have jobs that demand they continue to work while others have no other choice. // Let’s be clear that self-isolating is a form of privilege for many of us doing it.”
As always with conversations about privilege, the purpose is not to shame. It is to build awareness, to develop analysis, and ultimately to bring our understanding of disastrous disparities in suffering to action. What will our future look like?
It will look like more of the same if we do not continue to envision and create something different. I started to write “demand,” but that makes it sound like it’s someone else’s job and we can just sit here asking other people to do better. But no. We are the ones who must do better.
That might seem like a big ask at the moment. Let me be clear – I am not asking anyone to deny their own struggles. I do not know a single person who isn’t in some way struggling with this in ways big and small, mundane and existential. The rhythms of our lives, the connections, projects, and ways of being that tether us to life have been ripped away.
Everything that was here already is evident in stark relief. If you struggled with anxiety before the pandemic, now you’re really steeped in it. If you were living paycheck to paycheck before the pandemic, now your economic reality is even more treacherous. If you were burning the candle at both ends before the pandemic, now you wonder how you will keep going.
You – we – will keep going by massively adjusting your understanding of “enough.” Yesterday, Staci Jordan Shelton posed a question. “When I step into my audacity, _____ is going to change for the better.” I sat with it for a bit, and filled in the blank with “my expectations of myself and others.” A fierce and newfound compassion rising.
To keep going during this time means to adjust my expectations of what is an acceptable dinner. It means getting ok with saying “no” to so many Zoom gatherings, all beautiful offerings, and simply accepting the fact that I do not have the energetic and emotional capacity to extend myself very far beyond my immediate responsibilities.
It means expanding and perhaps softening my expectations of those in my circles – knowing that we are all experiencing waves of intense emotions, pockets or caverns of loss. It means recognizing where my expectations haven’t yet caught up with reality. It means living in reality.
As always, I don’t know if what I’ve written here makes sense or coheres. Like the playlist Aviva shared with me at my request this week (lofi hiphop music – beats to relax/study to), it’s a meandering, wandering kind of tune, a showing up, a dropping in, a surveying of interior and exterior landscapes.
I feel like I should say that in some ways, my own emotions may be under lock and key at the moment. It’s a way of functioning and focusing on what’s right in front of me, because the truth is I read the news and it’s more than I can fully even absorb.
Whatever you need to do to survive right now is your only job. Survive is a big word. It includes tending to your physical body best you can. It means tending to your mental health and emotional life as best you can. It means “as best you can” is our way of life now.
Mani and I read last night something about Trump and an executive order and mining minerals from the moon. My friend Sasha Sagan had shared it on Facebook, with a note that it was not from The Onion, but rather in Newsweek. My mind flashed on the villain from Despicable Me who tried to steal the moon.
Would that this were a Pixar movie and we could all leave the theater now in protest, ask for our money back, write bad reviews.
But it’s real. It’s our world, our precious world. Whatever you can do or not do today to bring a modicum of ease to the day, do or don’t do that. Remember that you might be alone, but you’re not alone. I’m alone with you. You’re alone with me.
We can and must continue to take care of ourselves and each other in the ways we can right now, and look to a future where the villains are toppled and the wrongs are righted, one by one by one.
If you appreciate these posts and are able and inclined to contribute any amount, your support helps me to keep doing. My deepest gratitude.