I woke up this morning with the Santa Barbara sun in my eyes; the voices of this place’s night birds still strong in my ear.
And the creeping feeling that I do not belong.
Is it just fear? Or is my body telling me what I need to know — that the ocean is throwing me back and saying this is not the day?
So hard to know. Impossible.
Fear, I know not what to do with you.
It’s been a hard lesson that had to be learned through sleeplessness and anxious mornings when my mind ran through the numbers and woke up to the terror that promises I’d made to my children and wife might not be kept.
I would look forward and instead of seeing a version of myself acting in a future that looked a lot like today — only doing things I thought would be more fun — I’d be in a nowhere space., staring into a gray wall without texture or substance, yet solid and there.
It’s is why we took the gift cards we’d been carelessly saving for tomorrow and used them today.
It’s why we bought toilet paper we didn’t need yet.
But it’s all futile. There’s nothing there.
It makes you think you’re on a cliff, looking into nothing.
Even that, though, strangely suggests something that isn’t there, flavored by the boiling pall of anxiety.
If you really think about it, you’ll see there is nothing yet. There is no “and so it is written” until after the fact.
Rather, you sit on a crossroads of time and space like the tip of a ball point pen on a clean sheet of paper, not knowing what will come next. A line? A picture? A word? A scribble of a shadow of a thought?
It is possible you might know, but once you realize that knowing is based on some idea of what has been that’s being projected forward, you might be lucky and see that you have the power to drag and push the inky instrument forward in any direction.
You can make anything.
It’s an amazing moment to know that power is there, that you are not trapped by your own story.
You are not the future you have imagined, but could be any future you can imagine.
It’s a good time to remember the good.
The neighbor who asked you over for cake.
The kid who said thank you when you helped them figure out the length of one side of the triangle.
The co-worker who cried in the one-on-one when you said they had done good work on the crazy project that had left them sleepless.
The therapist who gave you an extra ten minutes that one time you couldn’t get it back together right on the 50 minute mark.
The stranger in traffic who said — through hand signals — No, you go.
The young woman in the grocery store who handed a five dollar bill to the old man in front of her with the words, “Sir, you dropped this.”
The teacher who stayed late to help a student conjugate the verbs properly.
The executive who popped into the all-hands to say, I see you, I hear you, I care about what’s happening.
The dog that jumps up on you when you come home to lick your face and say, YES! YOU’RE HOME!
The fireman who asks, rhetorically, “Is anyone hurt?”
The cop who gets out of the car to help you change a tire.
The arm you saw a skateboard kid offer to a shuffling old woman trying to make her way across Market Street.
The words chalked on the sidewalk by a neighborhood kid: Hi world!
The landlord who renegotiated the rent when you lost your job.
The girl who asked, “You want the window seat?” on the airplane when she sensed the fear of flying.
The grandma who squeals like a dolphin and swims through the ring to the delight of her grandkids at the YMCA pool.
Yep, it’s a good time to remember the good.
Right now, the writing feels pointless.
I know that it (the writing) is for me alone, but I am wanting to share it and I’m depressed about its value.
Meaningless. Vain. Unhelpful.
The sand is pouring away from an hourglass that is broken and there is nothing to catch it.
When things are crummy, I look back on all the therapy and buddhism and reading and couple’s counseling and AA as the reason for the crumminess.
The joke is that all of it will make you feel better — ie, you’ll feel everything better.
The joke is not wrong.
But being more aware of what I am feeing makes it a little easier to ask a few things.
Is this true?
What is really happening?
What am I doing to make this a thing?
What are the things I can do to change this? And what are the things I can’t change?
Before, these were hidden. Pushed down. Ignored. They simmered together to grow into a steaming rage looking for a weak moment to come out into the open. (Sudden knives, I’ve called them before.)
Now, after all the work — and a pause — I can honestly say, that the smaller the doses of anger, irritation, and unease the less likely those eruptions will come forth with fire. the less likely they will be wounding.
I can’t expect them to be gone, but the breaks are less material than before. Less damaging.
That is a good thing, this blunting or venting of forces that can have sudden power.
On the flip side of this coin is the world that such activities have opened up to me: the garden door they’ve flung open to my life. The curiosity the 50 minute hours and slow steady step work has awakened within.
Who is this person that is me? I ask, no longer ashamed that I do not know the answer. Or as worried that there may be no answer. (Strangely, I am even comforted by that possibility.)
It has all made the world an oddly larger one with a bigger sky. So I can ask, “What will happen next?” — not out of fear, but in absolute and astounding wonder.
Just before all this happened, H and I were going to start over. We’d hired movers, rented a place, got the kids ready, called the schools.
Then a sweater caught an unseen nail on the door. Damage from a broken water main had to be repaired. Ground had to be dried. Dry wall replaced.
And we had to start over. So we hired movers, rented a place, got the kids ready, called the schools. Again.
Then a bomb fell out of the blue sky. Panic and fear swept the globe. We had to break the lease. We had to call off the real estate agent. We had to stop altogether and order groceries from afar and hope we didn’t run out of toilet paper.
This morning the governors are talking about spring. The president is pretending he’s got power he was unwilling to wield only a week ago. Markets are looking at normal indicators of health.
But I’m not sure I’m ready to start over on starting over.
Maybe I’ll just sit for a while.
Privilege doesn’t second guess.
Privilege thinks some things are essential and some things aren’t.
Privilege assumes everyone has the resources to keep the lights on and the fridge full for 30, 40, 60 days without a paycheck.
Privilege says everyone has to sacrifice without having to sacrifice anything serious itself.
Privilege speaks without thinking; believes everyone is privileged; thinks all think the same.
Privilege is more insidious than the virus it tells us how to face.
The funny thing about money in the bank is that no matter how much you have, you wish you had more.
Even though I had less once than I do now, it’s not as much as I had yesterday, so I’m thinking, FUCK!
Sirens are going off. A whirling red light is spinning in panic: You’re losing! You’re losing!
HURRY HURRY HURRY! DO SOMETHING!
And the man within kicks at my present self and says, You stupid motherfucker! I told you to move it into bonds!
I politely remind him that his 20/20 vision only works when you’re looking backwards and that yesterday’s perfection for today is futile for any day.
He still calls me stupid and points to the financial statements: Do something!
And I do, but not what he thinks. I meet people on zoom who remind me there is more to lose and that loss comes for you anyway and that I am lucky. They remind me of where I came from. Their stories help me see the riches I have that can’t be counted in a ledger.
Moms and sisters and mother-in-laws and brothers and friends and a beautiful woman who smiles at me even as the wreckage falls around us. And two kids who gleefully and mischievously burp the alphabet at the dinner table.
I meet people who have come from darker places than I and who remind me of the barren moment I once was in and from which all has sprung.
That’s when I realize I was wrong to think that money in the bank is a mountain I am building: It is a well that I too easily fall into.
We’ve got people singing. We’ve got dogs jumping. We’ve got John Krasinski giving us the good news.
We’ve got improv shows in squares. We’ve got puppet shows and finger puppet shows.
We’ve got lego movies made on the floor next to the window.
We’ve got mask makers and surprise costume zoom parties.
We’ve got blog writers awakening to what the can do and online salons putting out the music.
We’ve got sidewalk scribblers.
We’ve got bakers and cookers and makers.
We’ve got snap filters of toilet paper crowns and mustaches that defy gravity and Celine Dion concerts that never end in the background.
We got people finding their inner sleeping artist who are awakening to let the art out and making us all smile in our Hollywood Square lives (Popcorn Buddha, I see in the lower right square).
Yeah, we got artists and I love you artists.
You found a way to close the social distance without moving a foot.
Kisses!
Two weeks ago, the dreams were all about what I should’ve and shouldn’t’ve done.
The job I should’ve kept.
The money I shouldn’t have spent.
The house I should’ve insured differently.
The loan I shouldn’t have taken out.
The stocks I should’ve made into bonds.
The words I shouldn’t have said.
The toilet paper I should’ve bought.
Of course, I intellectually knew these were all fantasies, that I am powerless over the storm that is tossing the boat of my life off course. But still they were were, powered by the deeper fantasy that I am responsible for everything that happens to me.
But the brain and heart and the mind are not always sync’d. What one knows, the other ignores, and the other, well, it tries to just stay upright on the balance beam but sometimes it favors one or the other. Or is eclipsed by them both, overwhelmed by their screams to point out danger.
It’s better now. The boil of anxiety is beginning to subside. The morning waters are beginning to return to a placid smoothness so that I can see the sky in the surface again.
I feel I am walking more upright, with my head up. Cautious, maybe, but still, moving. Uncertain of the future, but looking around, seeing there are things to do that make a difference. And can be enjoyed.
How did this happen?
Talking with my wife.
Playing catch with the kids.
Meditation and zoom meetings with other people like me. Listening to their stories.
Paying attention to my oldest when he asks about girls.
Not worrying about whether people are wearing pants or not in the house after 9 am.
Throwing the ball for the dog.
Reminding myself that we are all breathing fine.
And spring is coming.
People say I have a general tendency to contemplate the negative. Catastrophe thinking.
“You’re homeless three times a day in your head,” they say.
The truth is more like this: I act as if the world is a positive place for me. I move through it as if the fruit will always be ripe and the trees will always bring me their dappling shade and the rain will always call forth the flowers.
The emphasis on this catastrophe frame of mind is overdone by the therapist and fellowship and, most of all, myself.
I know because eventhough the world tilts hard to throw me off these days, I get up, make strawberries and banana bread for my children and sit down to write.
I know because eventhough it all feels like it is melting, I move forward because it is the only way.
Used to be the mornings were the best. The voices were quiet and I could walk with my shoulders back and my mind free. I could feel every soft step on the cool floorboards of the house.
These days are different. Whispers of doubt creep into my ear like worms, replaying decisions made long ago, irreversible and undoable.
I’ve never been sideswiped by a car.
I’ve never been hit by a train I didn’t see coming.
I’ve never felt the heat of a volcano’s sudden rage spewing over the world.
Sure, there’ve been earthquakes. But the pictures stayed on the walls.
And yeah, I was in New York on that Tuesday, but I was among the throngs that walked calmly past working stoplights and got on subways that still ran.
While those left hooks might’ve been big, the whole world didn’t move from its axis.
But now I have things. And people to look after.
Specifically, two boys who are making an animated movie with Legos in the next room while I write this out.
I love those kids more than I understand. Or even understood.
It’s hard to feel the future I held for them in my mind; the future that had gone unquestioned until last week; the future I never doubted I’d provide (it was just a question of how) could be dissolving like sand in our fingers.
In the shadow of headlines about a world in free fall, I realize how tied I was (and am) to these ideas. The things.
I know you’re supposed to make a decision and move on without looking back.
I’ve done it before. Like that Thursday after 9/11 when, going through a turnstile at Cooper Union, I thought, the hell with it. What I’m leaving behind isn’t ever going to lead to the right place: This risk is worth it.
Now is different.
Everyone is asking what’s next at the same time. Not just in NY, but everywhere on the planet.
Disbelief in the disintegration of the world that we all felt was as solid as a wood cabinet in a kitchen has me blinking.
So instead of asking with wonder “I wonder what will happen next?” I ask with a billion other dreading voices the same question.
Because a train has come. A car has crossed the curb.
And no one was looking.
Even though it’s natural, the talking heads have made nature the enemy.
It’s an unseen hand reaching out to us through the air. Once its fingers find their way to your neck, it will choke your breathing until you gasp and grasp for air.
So we look at each other wearily from distances of 6 feet and eat our Big Macs with blue latex gloves.
My future is dashed. Over. From here it is a pale wall of ash I can’t see past.
I’m not young enough to fool myself into thinking there is more time.
I know the end is there. Ahead. (My joints remind me with twinges of pain every time i sit in one place too long.)
My 12 year-old at bedtime has more wisdom about it than me.
“Dad,” he says as he waves his hands at the furniture in the room. “It’s not this stuff that matters.”
He puts his fingers on my chest. “It’s this.”
Still, I worry my worries and worry some more.
I’ve been up and down the steps. Regrets should be shadow that I shed in the noon sun.
They lurk anyway and gather power in my restless sleep.
I’ll never make it, they whisper. You’ve ruined everything.
I’m fearful when I should be fearless. Turning back when I should be leaping forward.
There is no tomorrow. The judgement of others is invisible and invented. Uncontrollable in any case.
The panic in the eyes of every stranger makes a strange forest of thorns where uneasy dreams murmur and squeak all night long from the corners of my mind.
I care too much about what’s been. What could’ve been.
I have to jump.
I have to.
This time I won’t turn back from the open hatch in the plane where we lean into the wind and look down at the boiling earth below with wide eyes.
1, 2, 3….
Where is the parachute? There is no parachute.
I stand in front of the car in the lot and think, It’s all my fault. I forced my family to move to a place where we will be strangers. The weather will be good and the air beautiful, but my boys and sweet wife will know no-one.
In just seconds, my mind says we’ll be homeless.
Then I think, go away old self. You know nothing except what you know. Get out of here. My children know better. My wife is too good.
Fuck you, morning craziness. Fuck you.
The extra day this year did me no good.
I wasted it by working on work.
That’s the name of the book: Ordinary.
The trouble with a conversation that you know is the last conversation is that you know it’s the last one.
So you prepare for it like you’re gonna say everything you meant to say and ask everything you want to have an answer for.
It leaves no room for the conversation to take its own course, which it will anyway.
You end up looking back and wishing you’d stuck to your guns.
Which means that going forward, you move with a sense of knowledge you didn’t get and feeling unsettled about what you have.
Better to just have a conversation.
It’s no secret I want to be special.
Stand out from the crowd. Be bowed to on a reputation that proceeds me.
I want to be the A-#1 motherfucker. Feared and loved and revered and honored.
I want to matter to everyone and see the evidence that I matter in everyone’s eyes.
I want everyone’s lives to stop when I show up at the restaurant to get the take out.
I want to be heard and listened to; felt and understood; wanted and desired.
I want to be kissed when I come in the door.
I want to be cared for by an eternal flame of love that never lets me go.
I want to win at Blackjack often enough to make me feel I know what I am doing AND that the universe makes my number come up as if it was a giant slot machine tuned to me.
I want it all to go my way.
I want to be a God who is a man and a man who is God.
Yup, I want all that, all the time.
Because I’m grasping and grabbing and clinging and wrapping my hands around everything and anything that I can just to prove I’m more than a firefly blinking in a field on a warm midwestern night before flying across the dirt road and having it all end on the windshield of a pass truck.
Because I don’t want to believe I’m just one of an infinite number of miracles on a rock-sphere in a minor star system on the edge of a galaxy in a universe where everything is rushing away from everything.
I hate hipsters.
I hate the sanskrit tattoos. I hate the talk about meditation. I hate the lambchops and pork pie hats. I hate the toothpicks and stand-offish stances.
I hate the attitude that says I know what you don’t.
I hate your Kambucha breaks and AA wisdom with all of 6 months under your belt.
I hate your love of vynl even though you’ve never been in a real record store.
I hate your tech jobs and RSUs and long stares.
I hate your latte machines and snack demands.
I hate the way you ask to be promoted before you’ve even done a thing.
I hate your lazy way into town on motorized skoots that weave in and out of the crowd.
I hate your lectures on awareness and your radical acceptance and silent retreats to redwood resorts.
I hate your vegetarianism and your philanthropic mission statements that are just a way to brainwash you to stay at the office late.
I hate your mindful bullshit.
I fucking hate you, hipster.
Just so you know.
