Hey there! How goes it. What's been up the last 2,088 days since I posted here?
In all honesty, I never thought I would post here again. I just looked at my list of 15 followers and 2 of them are dead. I have almost no presence on social media; my social CAPITAL is decidedly lower case at best. So this missive may go exactly nowhere and that is as it should be.
I was inspired by a text, a visit and an awards show to come back to this space. A text on January 21 of this year from my friend Karla commemorating that it had been 7 years since the Women's March of 2017. My housemate and I flew from Chicago to meet up with Karla in New York City for that first march and it was truly memorable.
It took us hours to move in any direction. The streets were so packed with humans, it was unreal. I generally hate crowds, but there was a sense of calm and an unspoken feeling of order. When we finally turned the corner to look down 5th avenue, I was in awe of the sprawl of humanity. There were people on every inch of space for as far as the eye could see, more than 400,000 in total.
I saw only cooperation that day, an unfathomably large group moving ever so slowly but with purpose. I saw an older woman in a wheelchair say she had had enough and instantly several men lifted her in the wheelchair and carried her out of the crowd, parting the crush of bodies like a biblical Cecil B DeMille directed miracle shot in VistaVision. It was simultaneously surreal and unreal and yet tangible as fuck. It was a moment in time that stood out to me as a "perhaps all is not lost here and maybe more people than not are generally kind and want to be there for others and it might all possibly be sort of OK?" feeling that was a genuine spark in the darkness of that post election malaise.
As the day wound down, we found ourselves back in Karla's neighborhood in Washington Heights. We grabbed beers at her local Irish bar and found our perfect momento for the occasion, an abandoned sign reading simply FUCK THIS SHIT. Indeed.
In the 2,574 days since then, in no particular order, I have lost many friends to death and purposeful estrangement, I have been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, I have moved, I have changed my phone number, I have been to hundreds of medical appointments, I have consumed thousands of pills. I have been on many lovely vacations and other Instagrammable outings yet I have given up on life approximately a million times. Since moving, I have spent many many many days of the last two years in my king sized bed watching my giant television and thinking and feeling precisely nothing. An overall sense of numbness that is a cosmic flytrap that takes in all my emotional energy and all my thinky feelies and zaps them to dust.
Ooooh real talk! Who needs a drink?
Karla recently came to visit our new house in Chicago and naturally we caught up on all the things. Work is a mess. The world is a mess. We're headed into another election year with zero shock and awe over the absurdities committed on the daily. Just disbelief and laughs provided to us by late night television poking holes at it all.
I told her I had done nothing creatively in years and could not imagine where it would belong if I were to cobble something together. It seems odd to post on Instagram...I doubt Mary Oliver would want her musings on her one wild and precious life to be sandwiched between ads for "mature fashion" and "how to treat stuck poop". Seemed pointless to scream prose poetry about suicidal ideation into the image crafting abyss. Definitely no "likes" for revealing that brand of personal funk.
I told her about my latest Parkinson's problem, an uptick in dystonia in my feet. Prevalent in people with early onset PD, my toes can curl up into a foot fist, my ankles become rigid and painful and my left foot inverts to the point of being unusable for walking. This mostly flairs up due to overuse or in stressful situations. I recently had Botox shots in my feet and legs to counteract this potential threat of being immobilized. The shots have shown signs of success, not sure if it's the poison in the muscles or the confidence I've placed in the poison taking over my brain, the organ that the medical community and I are always crafting plans to hack.
Karla headed to Miami for work and I spent an evening with my chosen family of friends watching the Grammys. Early in the show was a performance of Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs doing a duet of her 1988 hit "Fast Car". The energy from the instantly recognizable opening guitar riff was palpable, followed by a smile on Tracy's face that could light up a marquee. Luke's complete adoration of her to the point of lip syncing along while she sang her parts was stunning. I didn't realize until this performance that he hadn't changed the lyric "worked in the market as a checkout girl" to something more manly. He was simply bathing in the warmth of his memory of hearing the song on cassette in his father's Ford F150 pick up truck and the magnificence of standing next to the hero who wrote "his favorite song before he even knew what a favorite song was".
Taylor Swift, who currently has the power to break sound records, boost local economies, tilt the energy of the Super Bowl as well as holding possible political endorsements that have Fox News scrambling to make her the world's Yoko Ono, was shown regally clad in a white evening gown and black elbow gloves. She was the only one standing at her table during their performance, belting out every word like it was her only job. Powerful stuff.
No doubt there are a ton of think pieces dedicated to the fact that Luke Combs winning the Country Music Association's song of the year for his cover of "Fast Car" marks the first time a black songwriter has won that award and they would all be correct at least in pointing out this ridiculously overdue injustice. A five minute duet is not going to move the needle on race relations. But it's the first time I recalled that feeling, like the one in at that march in NYC in 2017, that there was a possibility to see the same direction, to believe that more people than not are generally kind and want to be kind to others, that eventually things might move closer to being OK? Seeing an older queer black woman and a younger white dude who could easily be pictured next to the word "REDNECK" in the pejorative dictionary singing a song about coping with a life riddled with a lack of opportunity and have every word sound completely genuine from both points of view and feel their collaborative joy radiating out of the television and not feel manipulated that they were trying to sell me something was a wake up call to me. That all the infotainment "news" designed to divide us has played a part in making me numb and that is a shame. I am officially on the hunt for more evidence of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Looking out for others. Small acts of kindness. Reckless generosity. Pointless positivity. Not shiny smiles in the promotion of your personal brand, but actual fucking empathy as a sociopolitical statement.
I get that smashing the "LIKE" button is easier than smashing the patriarchy and I'm not going prosytheltize in this space. I really do not enjoy when the self appointed experts of the internet talk to me in the voice of God and tell me what to do. Whatever FUCK THIS SHIT means to you, have at it. I just know that Karla said our visit inspired her to go to Buenos Aires for a few days after her Miami work was over, because FUCK THIS SHIT, you only live once and maybe there should be Malbec and a big steak? And yesterday the idea of posting in this space again after 2,088 days seemed pretty terrifying. Especially admitting that I'd spent more days than I'd care to admit feeling sorry for myself. Yesterday my feet buckled in despite the Botox but I took it as a good sign. Like the stress of revealing stuff that's hard to talk about was actually healthy and my body was telling me to proceed. Because FUCK THIS SHIT. I wandered downtown Chicago a bit limpy and tearful and despite looking like I was out on a day pass from a long term care facility I must admit it was the most alive and connected I've felt in a long time.
If I've sent this to you and you're not one of my 15 followers that's managed not to die, it means you are important to me and I want you to know that. Peace out for now.
