Gathering // One
Dwelling in Ambiguity
Last night I went to dinner with a friend in Capitol Hill, Seattle. It was the first time I’ve eaten inside a restaurant since Reykjavik, nearly a year and a half ago. The host wrote my name on a list with a red pen and my friend and I waited forty-five minutes for our seat. We clinked kombuchas, shared vegan cauliflower wings, and I had a vegan chicken sandwich and fries. I wore my Nooworks Mucci dress, a bright standout object that makes people smile, and gushed over all the dogs I saw (I want a dog!).
On my way to my friend’s house, in my car, I felt the intensity of what we’ve collectively navigated. A moment of pain and celebration unfolded within me, living among so many other moments in my particular day. I am going to a restaurant, I thought. I am going out.
I am so grateful to be going out, and yet I cannot celebrate; not while so many others are still suffering, not when so many have been lost, not when so much is still unsteady and unknown. But I can feel a pulsing hope in my heart, that one day we will celebrate. And as I walk through the city I sense a similar hope in others; a longing for connection I’ve never felt before— a willingness to see each other, to acknowledge and love each other. It’s not just me, is it? Do you feel it too?
This week I was on vacation from my nanny job. I was supposed to go to New York, to see friends, but cancelled my trip so I could work on my book. Then I hurt my back so badly that I could barely move, and couldn’t sit, so I couldn’t work on my book. I read Kate Zambreno’s Drifts and watched Phoenix (an incredible film) and Hacks (a poignant and hilarious series), and felt sorry for myself and angry with my body and overwhelmed with the amount of energy this book has required from me. Today, after a conversation with my therapist, I forgave myself for my messy apartment. I went to the doctor and was prescribed muscle relaxers and got my Zoloft refilled. For the first time in my life, I have good health insurance. The privilege is not lost on me (nor is it lost on me that health insurance is a right and shouldn’t be a privilege). I was given a prescription for physical therapy.
This week has felt very internal and contemplative. I’ve taken walks and also spent a lot of time in bed. I haven’t done much yoga, except to support my body through whatever it is going through. I am arriving at the understanding of how much I’ve been doing— working a full-time (sometimes more than full-time) nanny job that requires a ferry commute, working on my book, and finishing up yoga teacher training. Along with that understanding, I acknowledge how hard on myself I’ve been, thinking I need to be more organized, I need to keep everything perfectly arranged. Wondering why my life keeps sliding into a precarious chaos and I continually forget to update my calendar. It’s because I’m doing so much, that’s why.
I am hoping to have this next draft of my book done in two weeks. I am hoping my back heals. I am hoping I will clean my apartment soon. I am conjuring gentleness, something that comes easy when I am engaging with others but not so much with myself. Gentleness.
It is a strange moment we are floating in— floating towards the closure of a pandemic; or not. We’re not sure (or I am not sure). It must be nice to be someone who is sure. It certainly is easier (of that I am sure). Maybe that’s why people cling to their beliefs about masks and vaccinations, their surety that we have solved this problem, or that it never existed in the first place. Because being sure feels better. Being sure is safety. Control.
Living in the ambiguity of the present moment is much more difficult. That may be why I often struggle. Because I press my hand onto the rumbling, forever-shifting ground of the present, when the only sure thing is change itself. What if we were taught to do this from the beginning? To live with the understanding that our knowledge is precarious and faulty, guaranteed to be washed away like a stilted house in a hurricane? I wonder if we would be happier, or more present?
There’s no way to know.
During my week of bed rest I watched the fourth season of The Handmaid’s Tale. The reviews of it aren’t good, but it was one of my favorite seasons, only because of the way it portrays trauma. I’m surprised that this is something reviewers appear to have missed— the understanding that the stagnation of the series itself mimics the stagnation, the stuckness, of life after trauma. The ways that we try to excuse what has been done to us, to create stories we can understand and metabolize when the truth of trauma is that there is no real explanation. Bad things happen, is the explanation. There’s a scene where (spoiler) June goes to a therapy circle for former handmaidens and listens as each of them expresses forgiveness for their abusers. “Why aren’t they more angry,” she asks. Over the course of the next few episodes they tap into that anger, and it is liberating. Anger is not something we should reside inside of, but it’s certainly something we must acknowledge and feel and express, if we’re to be able to move past the trauma.
I hope for all of us, the whole world, post-Covid, that we can express anger at those who deserve it, and that anger can bring us together rather than continue to repel us from one another. Maybe with that anger, we’ll be able to find some form of acceptance.
In other news, I’ve decided to take a year away from social media. In her Substack this week, Haley Nahman wrote about how terrible she’s been feeling about Instagram, and articulated so much of what I’ve been feeling:
“Maybe our biggest mistake was to assume that authenticity online was our biggest problem. I think it’s led us down a path of denial about what these platforms can really do for us, or express about ourselves. At least, it has for me. What I’ve been wondering is: How bad is inauthenticity, really?”
I’ve been contemplating authenticity for a long time. Nauman goes on to list the ways in which she’s inauthentic that serve her, like “feigning confidence at a new job.” For years, on Twitter, I’ve hated the callout that someone isn’t being authentic, and in my mind I’ve developed this opinion: there is no such thing as “inauthenticity.” Or, rather, inauthenticity is as much who we are as authenticity. I mean, just think about the meaning of authentic: “of undisputed origin,” or even from a simple Google search: “being actually and exactly what is claimed” (Merriam Webster).
The problem is, we can’t be actually and exactly what we claim, because we are humans, and boy howdy are we fucked up. Do you know anyone who knows exactly who they are? I certainly don’t— know anyone who knows exactly who they are, or know exactly who I am myself. I’m not sure I’d want to meet someone so stagnant as to know exactly who they were. Boooooring.
The reason I’ve chosen to leave social media is this: I can’t be complex there. I cannot be who I am at all the different moments. I have to choose someone to be. I can be the writer, the recovered bulimic, the recovered addict, the yoga teacher, the forty year-old single nonbinary person— but all of those at once? Not possible. One has to have a brand, right? Or people get confused? And I am confusing on social media.
Never mind that for as long as I can remember being on social media I have experienced the bitterness that all of us experience, both towards myself and others. You know what I’m talking about. The judgmental bitchiness that comes from encountering others who are the same as us; trying to parse themselves down to create a palatable image, and by palatable I mean shallow, because that’s inevitably what it is. Shallow. That’s why we hate it. It’s easy to hate things that have been flattened into caricatures and stereotypes.
I’m not even using shallow in a negative way. Shallow can mean the most fun person, but the problem is that the most fun person on social media also has problems, and if one is pigeonholed as fun on social media, or nice, then the moment they step away from that image they are often attacked or seen as disingenuous, a ‘la Chrissy Teigan (bad example, I know). This is why Kim Kardashian doesn’t post too much about law school. It dulls her gleaming brand, which is mostly about physical appearance and being rich.
I’ve been thinking about books a lot, and reading them. Social media steals books from us. It steals the time we could be using to see each other and talk to each other in real life, and it also steals our attention and attention span, both of which are good for reading books. Since leaving social media (again) nearly two weeks ago, I’ve read three books, each of them a world unto itself. A whole entire world, with a structure, even if there is no plot. Nathan Curtis has this to say about reading:
“I know everyone says there’s a massive amount of information on the internet but actually, if you analyse it, there is very little. It tends to be the same thing repeated over and over again. This is something to do with Google rankings; it’s also something to do with the speed with which journalism must be done. So what you have to do is go and read books. Read really boring, old books. Among the academic rubbish, and the very badly written academic phraseology, there are really good stories.” —find the entire interview here.
The bottom line for me is this: the internet is a useless feedback loop, and what we do there doesn’t change anything. It’s what we do outside the internet that matters. Social media is even more of a useless feedback loop, a ludic loop of the kind Einstein was referencing in that overused quote about stupidity. It’s a brick wall for us to bang our heads against, for us to perform the selves we wish we were or entertain each other, or find “support” that never solves the problem and instead only props us up for a little longer until the next breakdown. It’s like candy. Sweet, yummy, and absolutely devoid of nutritional value.
I’m honestly tired of pretending it’s anything more, or that there’s anything redeeming about it. I don’t believe there is. I think we lie to ourselves and pretend there are redeeming qualities because we like being numb. It’s pleasant, for a while.
What I’ve done this week:
I watched Starstruck on HBOMax and fell in love with Rose Matafeo (and wished she’d been on the telly when I was in my twenties) and very much laughed out loud many times, which isn’t an easy thing for a show to pull outta me nowadays.
I made this playlist for teaching my first in-person yoga class (!!).
I enjoyed this piece about a German arborist and his questionable science which is on full display in his last two books, one of which I read and knitted my brows at.
I’m reading Slash and Burn by Claudia Hernández. It’s incredible. The narrative compresses time and POV beautifully and the long paragraphs require rapt attention to detail by the reader, which I enjoy. Hernández’s prose is sparse and evocative.
I’m rereading Whereas by Layli Long Soldier.
I can’t wait to watch In the Heights. I’m saving it to savor it. Maybe I’ll go to the theater?
I’m thrilled about this album:
So, there it is. Sending you lots of love.
Stacy
💕