Story

for the last week or so, when i’m not in the living room pacing aimlessly, or in the kitchen eating up all the almond butter, i’ve been working. what i’ve been working on is an online exhibition in response to the stress and anxiety that has been permeating throughout this moment. while working on this online exhibition in response to stress and anxiety, it has been a struggle not to feel stressed and anxious.

we were planning to release the exhibition next week, but yesterday i made the call to push it. considering the mission of the exhibition to inspire calm, it just didn’t seem to make sense to stick with the original deadline at the expense of putting pressure on a bunch of people throughout the weekend for a haphazard launch.

but since then, there has been a stone sitting in my stomach as my imagination carries me through all the possible consequences of not working on a deadline of ASAP. in this fictitious journey, the project is released to the sound of crickets, and critics, who balk at the fact that this came seven days later than it should have. the pressing need for artful healing has passed, and all the work of the past couple of weeks is exiled to irrelevance.

this, of course, is all a story in my head. they postponed the olympics, they cancelled the venice biennale, and nobody is going to care that a website launched later than the premiere date which was never even announced in the first place. nobody but me.

all last year, while in the throes of burnout, i had to learn the hard lesson that there is really nobody to blame for the amount of pressure i’m facing, aside from myself. without recognizing that, i’m ignoring the privilege i have for not being at the mercy of a strict and non-negotiable circumstance – a privilege that the people healing others in health clinics, delivering groceries and packages, and under supervision from stubborn bosses don’t have.

when i ignore this privilege, and allow myself to be consumed by the luxurious existential pressures of meaning, impact, originality, i’m relinquishing the power to live well and be healthy, which is all that we should really be asking of ourselves right now.

when i forego patience, flexibility, and fluidity, i’m depriving myself of the nourishing pace and environment that called me to be an artist in the first place.

if there is any opportunity that i’m in danger of missing during this period, it’s not based on any product deadline or notion of contributing to a conversation. the opportunity that i could very possibly miss is to pay attention to why my ideas that come out of inspiration and passion can so often become harbingers of nervousness and pressure. the transformation is happening inside of me. it’s an ailment that only i can come up with a cure for.

it’s been almost two weeks since the world around me came to a screeching halt. demands from my job have been minimal, social obligations wiped off the plate, to-do lists down to a trickle. so why has it still been so hard for me to take things slow?

at least every other morning, i break my meditation to peek at my watch, as if time really matters right now, as if i have somewhere else to be. i still eat my meals like a rabid duck, hardly taking the time to chew. it’s been 8 years since i’ve identified as a new yorker, but i still walk at the pace of one – even when it’s for my trips around the block to get some air.

it ends up that two weeks isn’t long enough a runway to land a lifetime of moving at jet speed. the uncertainty of this slowdown period feels like a jack-in-the-box, like in any given moment there will be a global announcement that we’re going back to business as usual.

i have it in my mind that i need to get myself to a healthy pace before time is up. i’m even in a rush to slow down.

i continue to hear about what all of this means for capitalism. people “admit” to still buying things. but the flow of money is only the carrot at the end of a very long stick, the gumball that drops out of a machine that’s constantly grinding. for me, capitalism’s symptoms show up not so much in a desire to earn or spend money, but in my unrelenting need to do something, be somewhere, make something of myself – and quick. it’s like life in a drive-thru.

while writing all this, i’ve already gobbled a huge bowl of cereal and glugged down two cups of coffee. but i’m determined to truly, consciously move at a slower and more sustainable speed, starting now. or maybe later.

lately i’ve been catching myself whenever i feel the inclination to blame humans. which is often, especially the more time i spend reading the news or lurking on social media.

when the mood isn’t of fear and anxiety, it seems to fall into the realm of anger and frustration. these feelings aren’t unjustified – there are plenty of government officials peddling bad messaging and policies, plenty of people going about their lives as if nobody else matters. this has been a problem far before this outbreak.

but how is it helpful, for me to utter humans are stupid or humans are the problem, even if it’s out of a justifiable frustration? it ends up putting me in a worse, more cynical mood – and if i’m talking to someone, it either entices them to nod their head in agreement, or feel shitty because, well, i just said something terrible about our entire species.

this outbreak has made clear to me that all of us, regardless of our various statuses in the world, are victims of a system that we all participate in whether we like it or not. when we see someone enjoying and benefiting from this system, it’s tempting to either zoom all the way into them as if these individuals are the sole purveyors of the world’s woes, or to zoom all the way out and say that all humans are fucked.

how i’ve coped with these impulses is not to choose a side about whether or not humans are stupid, or whether or not humans are the problem – these diagnoses only lead to dead ends. i’m trying my best not to spend energy engaging in that debate at all. whether or not we’re stupid – it’s within us to be smart about this. whether or not we’re the problem, it’s within us to be the solution.

everyday i acknowledge how lucky i am that i’m no longer in the nomadic state that i was in for most of 2019. last may, lovely and i shipped our stuff from dc to la, and then spent the following eight months living out of our suitcases as we zigzagged four continents.

this is the part where i say it’s not as romantic as it sounds, but tbh – it was. even when i describe the hardships, it comes off like excerpts from an odyssey:

one late night in new orleans, i returned to my shotgun house to be greeted by hundreds of winged termites swarming the kitchen lamp. with only the thought i can’t deal with this shit rn i went to bed, only to wake up in the morning to find that they’d vanished without a trace.

in estonia, lovely was bitten by a mysterious insect that caused her arm to swell so intensely that it took doctors in three countries to figure out a remedy – she was prescribed meds in vienna, and she healed in paris – all while delivering speeches on global nuclear security.

in auckland, just days before the art show that my team had be preparing for two years, the convention center down the street burst into flames – with our event spared only because it was by the water opposite of the wind and smoke. while we prayed for the safety of those affected, nobody could look past the irony that this convention center had been the crown jewel of the same development company that was actively displacing māori who had been living in a nearby settlement for generations.

in manila, we braved the uncertainties of an actively-erupting volcano. when we arrived, our family there laughed at us for bringing a box of n95 masks that we had picked up from home depot (this was in early january when goods of that sort lined the shelves higher than one could reach). in the days before we left, we watched the early reports of a virus making itself known, and we returned to california right before borders throughout the world began closing.

these days, as soon as i feel the brush of boredom, restlessness, FOMO, i recall the dual sensations of exhilaration and exhaustion that spelled my past year. i am grateful for the fact that, though those nomadic months were filled with nearly-missed flights, moments of feeling stranded, nerve-wrecking ailments, lack of sleep, and frustrating miscommunications – in the end i made it back home. disheveled, drained, but in one piece.

traveling the world is a dream made real over a decade ago, but also a privilege that i’ve only recently begun learning to hold myself accountable for. aside from the damage i’ve done to my body through long-haul flights and the whiplash of jetlag, i also think about the piles of carbon that my flight patterns have released into the sky, the garbage i’ve left behind like plastic bread crumbs, the wealth gaps i’ve contributed to just by default of being an american abroad.

today, i’m feeling particularly grateful for the friends i’ve made along the way, the magical moments i’ve paid witness to, the memories engraved in my mind. i also think it’s time to fundamentally shift the role of travel in my life. i don’t know what that yet means, and it’s painful to recall all the places i’ve loved but may never return to. but this world has given me so much, has shown me so much beauty. i’m recognizing that, beyond all the important projects and engagements that have taken me everywhere, the biggest impact i can make on the world is to stop swarming – and when the time comes, to vanish without a trace.

quarantine can feel like life as a caged parrot. news binges followed by check-in calls that regurgitate news binges. no wonder when asked “how are you doing?” the response often seems tethered to the weight of the world.

this notion of i’ll feel better when the entire human race feels better – is that empathy? or simply longing for the comfort of everything falling back into place?

this rupture in existence has called me to revisit the notion of unconditional love – a concept that i admit i haven’t dwelled on since vacation bible study. maybe it’s unfair for me to say this, but my upbringing in art and activism didn’t really make much space for unconditional love. despite the deep care that goes into the work, to be of those communities seem to require an action or ideal, a condition – to be in a struggle together, to be tuned into a creative vibration, to be of a chosen family.

the common enemy of a virus has been an incredible force for global empathy and togetherness, but the conditions of this bond have already begun to splinter. at least a couple times a day i shake my head at the people outside who hoard all the medical supplies, then i roll my eyes at those gallivanting and touching everything like this is a hall pass into the world. i’ve participated in the anger at political figures getting things wrong, and then exerted frustration at the people in my world who seem to have a vested interest in transmitting every triggering headline i’ve been trying to ignore or endure.

to love this world, others, and myself unconditionally means letting go of envisioning a life of vibrancy, thriving, and rejuvenation on the condition that the world returns to its comfortably, predictably distorted visage of normalcy. it means being open to today or tomorrow holding the possibility of being the best day ever, as did any other day when disease and isolation was only a reality for the distant and abstract and anonymous.

days like this need love too. days like this deserve to be savored, celebrated, and when reflected upon at sunset, called “good.”

it’s not like i sit down each day knowing what to write. this not knowing is something i wake up with, that sits on my hands and has resulted in me not creatively writing at all for most of the past many years. i remember when i went to open mics every week. the amount of energy that went into three minutes on stage was its own kind of meditation, a crafting.

i don’t have that motivation anymore. there was a point where the notion of sharing something deeply personal to a room full of strangers was a comfort. when i got my job seven years ago, i opened up many new streams of creativity, but one of the ones i let run dry was my writing. in very little time, the energy that went into poems was reallocated into memos. short stories became grant applications. love letters became emails. cyphers became staff meetings.

there have been spurts in which i’ve been able to strike a balance, though they’re usually during major interruptions – government shutdowns, extended holidays, and now this widespread quarantine. with each of these events, i reach a creative euphoria and i tell myself i will keep up my new habits, only to see them wash away again once the usual returns.

what is it that compels me to break away from the liberty i feel when i write, and retreat back to the mundane bureaucracies that suck me dry? to keep my job, of course, i say. but the truth is, carving your own path is hard. following a template is easy, especially as i age with the world and luxury looks like a day on autopilot.

writing every morning for the past nine days has been hard. i’m still getting past the guilt of no longer being that prolific slam poet who couldn’t buy notebooks fast enough to keep up with my pace of filling them. as my 36th year approaches a close, i’m reminded of the first time i performed at age 18, and how exhilarating it felt to begin a journey of truly getting to know myself. well, i’ve officially been on this road for half my life – a life that might still have a long way to go.

the past few weeks, the past few years, have been about recognizing that things not going back to what they once were is actually a good thing. making something “great again” is a myth. how fortunate we are to not live an existence in syndication.

this is the time for us to speak softly to ourselves. to tame the pontifications that swell in the backs of our throats, that figure us as forever treading. float, child.

let the current moment be not a flood, but a bath. let isolation not be a severance from the universe, but a reunion of self.

i know, usually we only sit like this when we’ve come down with something. sit with how it feels to take time off not to heal just yourself, but the collective whole. remember that it’s not ever only about you, that in the human condition, none of us are patient zero.

envision a system of care where surgery isn’t the only place for an open heart.

today’s writing is a freewrite done during a meditation session led by yumi sakugawa. highly recommended!

i’m oscillating, yall. lately my plug on the internet has been putting me on two trains of thought. one is about how this is such a wonderful time to get to all the things that you’ve always been meaning to but hadn’t had the time or energy to, and the other is about how you actually don’t have to do anything at all because it’s the perfect time to rethink our relationship with capitalism (as if rethinking my relationship with capitalism isn’t actually a really huge fucking thing to be doing as an alternative to doing something).

my issue with how this binary has been framed is that both sides assume that the question is about motivation – that it’s what’s driving people to come out so quickly with art, programs, and community responses, and if you’re not one of those people then it must be primarily due to anxiety, overwhelm, or in opposition of being constructive.

it’s very true that a lot of what is being produced is powered by the momentum of capitalistic productivity’s pace, and that a lot of why some people have not acted or responded publicly is due to mental and emotional conditions. but not always. i’ve been feeling both and none, at different times.

i’ve been working on something on the smithsonian side that i hope will be helpful………that said, i’ve trashed my original idea of getting it out by THIS WEEK. in the original schema, the project was overdue as soon as i came up with the concept. i fall victim to that a lot. it’s a twitch i have from my upbringing in college activism, where everything needed to be an immediate reaction in order to be most effective. revolution on a sizzling plate.

i think that kind of nimble work is always important and i’m glad there are people doing it, but that’s not who i am anymore. over the past week i’ve been figuring out how to reintroduce work into my life in a way that doesn’t disturb my writing and meditation routines, my increased frequency of connections with my family, and my sleep. it has meant a lot of sitting around being bored while bracing myself for all the things that i genuinely want to do, just not right now. it’s an active not right now, not procrastination, which is a passive one.

i’m realizing that what motivates me right now is a combination of an excellent idea and a healthy pace which allows me to come around to it each time when my heart and mind is open. typically, that doesn’t equate to eight hours of anything in a single day, and often doesn’t mean it should be tended to daily. it’s a lesson that i’ve been learning from all my new house plants, some of which either whither or drown if i try to divvy up my attention to them equally.

slowtivation = resting assured that what i’m working on is going to be best when given the time to ripen

yesterday lovely and i took a drive up the pacific coast highway to malibu. no specific destination in mind, just a moment to look up and not find ceiling. i had almost forgotten about joyrides.

we all know what they are, but how often do we do them? i’ve only lived in places where the mere mention of living there triggers whomever i’m talking with to groan from the belly, ughhhhh the traffic tho. the bay, nyc, beijing, dc, and now la. in traffic towns, cars are spaces of chore, necessary evils that people don’t think to get inside just to be inside them.

but having been without a car for the past seven years, i’ve bewildered my fellow angelinos by eagerly choosing the back roads everywhere i go. i glide under canopies of palm trees, past homes i’ll never entertain the notion of affording, bodegas and dispensaries, fresh murals of kobe and nipsey, people taking long walks and carrying heavy things (usually wearing bubble jackets no matter how hot it is outside). these routes clock in at an average of 10 minutes longer per commute, but offer much more interesting scenery than the highways that are splayed out, impossibly tangled like curdling spaghetti.

but still, not a joyride. joyrides aren’t about getting anywhere, because once there’s a point b it immediately becomes a commute. with a joyride, you’ve already reached your destination once the keys are in the ignition. i was introduced to joyrides by anida and masa in phnom penh, where the march sky carries a sun dripping with heat so thick that people nap as soon as they wake up in the morning. when the sunset coaxes the temperature down and invites a breeze, people with cabin fever from their over/under air conditioned rooms suddenly fill the streets with skooters on a mission for aimlessness. near the royal palace, lovers squeezed into a single bike seat will do donuts for ten or twenty minutes. i once saw a family of five, siblings stacked on top of each other like tupperware containers, i once saw a guy sitting backseat, gripping himself in place with his flip-flopped feet while he slurped a bowl of noodle soup. joy.

i’ve been raised with too much immigrant frugality and woke guilt to take joyrides often. what a waste of gas, how terrible for the environment. with so many vehicles already infesting the roads, who am i, in these times, to blow a quarter tank just for the fuck of it? these are the kinds of concerns that greet me at the door when i return, when i’m left to my own thoughts, until the next time i get into my car just to roll the windows down.

if yesterday was about waking up with a vivid resolve to pursue all the things that i want to do but have been putting off, today is about liberating myself from all the things that i’ve been putting off because i’m actually never going to do them. like, let’s stop kidding ourselves. i’m never going to learn turkish.

this isn’t turkey’s fault, and it’s not mine. but given that i’ve also set myself up to learn ASL, spanish, french, arabic, mandarin, and austrian german, yet still can’t even speak canto as fluently as i did when i was 5, it’s safe to say i’ll never effectively haggle for saffron in istanbul.

over the years, i’ve accumulated so many aspirations, most of them motivated by a mental snapshot of a future-me who is a polyglot aquaponics carpenter who moonlights as a DJ yet still rises with the sun. this future-me also keeps in touch with everybody i’ve ever had a vaguely interesting conversation with, in between disappearing into month-long silent retreats.

so today i’m focusing on moving things from my bucket list to my fuckit list, as in “i know i told myself i’d learn how to surf, but fuckit.” or “i know i intended to rekindle my bond with my best friend from third grade, but fuckit.” for each thing i add to my fuckit list, there is a voice (that sounds like someone else but who is actually me) saying “so you’re NOT going to read every single toni morrison novel? i thought you were cultured!” but this voice comes from a guilt that appears every time i chill for even a moment, that nags me for not using that time to finally learn C++ or capoeira. my wild curiosity has led me to some of my most cherished skills, rewarding experiences, and deepest friendships, but it also keeps me restless with countless goals that i never ran through a filter, but that now appear as failures because i never reached them.

today i am admitting that i’m surrounded by goals with no intention attached to them. adriel: you’re never going to join a dragon boat team or learn how to forage and then dry roast your own seaweed. it’s fine.