isolation

everyone told me that los angeles is no place for my love of biking, but luckily for me venice is an anomaly. it is rich with secluded streets, and lately, my loops around the coast have been daily doses of sanity. over the past couple of weeks i’ve charted a route with minimal risk of getting doored or coughed at. even still, i’ve been going out with a thick cloth facemask, the same one that shielded me from the thick exhaust all january while zipping through manila traffic on a skooter.

during this time in quarantine, sitting at home all day with my thoughts isn’t new to me – but going extended periods smelling my own breath is a whole other level of intimacy i’m not used to. it’s not that my breath is particularly rancid (i hope??) but a cognitive dissonance to looking out at the ocean, take a deep breath, and smelling almond butter.

having bad breath but not knowing i have bad breath was a deeply existential concern of mine i was younger and gave a fuck. in high school, i carried a tin of altoids in my pocket at all times (this was the anchor blue era when my jeans were baggy enough to fit mints, a wallet with no money but full of photos, a keychain with no keys but full of sanrio swag, and a nokia 5110). for my 8th grade prom, i was so self-conscious that i drank an entire bottle of concentrated peppermint drops and gave myself an ulcer and had to sit the entire dance out. my stomach still gurgles every time i hear xscape’s “understanding.”

as of late, the scent of my breath has been low in my list of bodily concerns, filed beneath things like my aching back, my aching knees, my aching neck, and my forehead which apparently is winning in a game of risk against my hair. but this renewed relationship with my breath….i dunno. i dunno.

it’s not really my breath that’s the problem, it’s that i really really really love fresh air, which my breath is not. being out in the world with a literal filter, and that filter smelling like me, makes it feel like i’m the problem. when i’m coasting down a part of my route that weaves through brush, if there’s nobody in sight i sometimes pull my mask down for just a moment to steal a breath of outside air. the aromas of the ocean, the plants, even hints of smog, are suddenly ambrosial.

it makes me think about how i get in my own way of enjoying all the sensual pleasures of the world. all the beautiful sights around me while i opt to stare at my phone instead, all the joy i have access to while i choose to resort to petty concerns. maybe i’m not being fair to myself, or being too deep about it, or both. we’re all just out here trying to survive, waiting for the day we can breathe the air that’s not just our own.

i learned i was non-essential years ago. it was early 2014, and the government shut down because people couldn’t agree whether or not to make healthcare a human right. i had just begun my job half a year earlier, a job where orientations, handbooks, and the opening remarks of every program begins by elaborating on how our work at the smithsonian is absolutely crucial to society. until it isn’t.

today, as all non-essential entities are shut down, the smithsonian museums are closed but taco bell is open. i’m not appalled, just intrigued. i don’t think there’s anything particularly deep about the fact that in a moment like this if you were to ask the average person if they’d rather see abraham lincoln’s death mask or eat a chalupa, the answer would be that death masks don’t taste good with fire sauce.

i selfishly want my friends and family members who are still going to work everyday to just stay home, even if other people can’t. lovely’s entire family works in the healthcare ecosystem, and some nights the worry for them is so thick that all we can do is sigh heavily enough to sink us into slumber. the anxiety over other peoples’ disregard for my loved ones makes it feel like everyday is just the first day of the next two weeks. but we are also incredibly proud of them. they are the faces that first come to mind when i hear of how cities across the globe open their windows wide at sunset so that the streets can erupt in applause. they are essential.

the people working at the drive thru don’t get that same treatment. they are relegated to accepting commands through eroded intercoms, by customers who have become hangry while sitting in a queue that their craving for fries didn’t bargain for. the line of automobiles snaking out of the in-n-out on venice blvd is so enduring that it has become its own landmark. those tending the destination don’t get city-wide applause. they get crumpled dollar bills folded longways and passed like relay batons, and credit cards that are immediately sanitized when handed back. they transfer oil-stained paper bags to people who receive them with simultaneous anticipation for feeding their hunger, and repulsion that they have to eat something that someone else had to touch in order to make.

they too are essential, but in a fucked up way. they, like the grocery cashiers, delivery people, and others who don’t have the luxury i have of spending their days contemplating productivity – they exist in a twilight zone where they are essential in theory, but expendable in practice. none of us wants to admit to projecting such a horrid sentiment onto another, not in words. just in how we hold our breaths while receiving packages, how we keep our stares down while making transactions, like eye contact is a contagion. and how we’re glad that those other people aren’t our own loved ones. until they are.

on the days that i brave the outdoors to stock up on eggs and bananas, i do try to offer words of appreciation to the individuals at checkout, but i’m still guilty of acting like i’m walking amongst lepers. this period has made me keenly aware of all the things i do in the privacy of public space, the things i’m not proud of, how i act like everyone else is expendable. when i get flabbergasted by the people who are still approaching this outbreak with the spirit of “if i get it i get it,” without regard for all those who would be forced to carry them from if to then – i have to check myself.

i am enraged by their utter self-centeredness, until i think about all the messes i’ve made that i left for someone else to clean up, all the elevator doors i let close on people because i was in a hurry, all the restaurant workers who had to stay half an hour later because my dinner conversation was so important, all the traffic buttons and toilet flushers i’ve pushed with my shoe because who knows where everyone else’s fingers have been, all the ways i act like my own shit don’t stink.

i really miss being around other people. even the ones i’ll never know. i miss the time when we didn’t have to go out acting like everyone else is a scourge, and i regret the fact that we acted that way regardless. what a forlorn time the world is in right now. what a time to recognize that everyone is absolutely essential.

according to the gospel of wikipedia, national poetry month was born when someone took note of black history month and women’s history month and was like:

you know who else
has been massively
disenfranchised by
history and sorely
needs to be
recognized by
everyone including
the highest levels of
government for
30 whole-
ass
days?
obviously….
poets!

at some point, someone else was like:

you know what
would be a perfect tradition
to galvanize
the poets whose
work is constantly
undervalued
underpaid
trivialized and
misunderstood?
obviously…
challenge them to write a poem
everyday
for free!

every april, i’m like:

fuck! if i’m going to continue calling myself a poet maybe i should participate in national poetry month but fuck it’s only day three and i’m already sick of poems just like i was last year when i fell off by day five plus it’s not like the poems i’ve written so far are even that good anyway maybe if i just inject line breaks into my regular writing nobody will notice but let’s be real half my friends are poets and they’re all going to judge me so i should just sit back and watch everyone else compete in this very pretentious marathon ok it’s not fair to call it pretentious just because i’m salty i can’t keep up i mean some people really get something out of it and there are probably also countless people who don’t write poems but love reading them every month maybe it’s what makes them feel like it’s spring maybe 2020 is actually the perfect year to do it since everyone’s staying inside anyway and it’s a great opportunity to pursue a routine i’ve been feeling guilty for over a decade for not maintaining but didn’t i just read like twelve thinkpieces about why if i pressure myself to be productive during the time of coronavirus i’m actually just being a capitalistic pig so maybe i should just watch more tiger king instead but damn do you really want to look back on your life and think about all those times you could’ve written poems but instead watched tiger king i feel like an anecdote like that would make a terrible chapter in a memoir but an excellent segment on this american life damn maybe it’s time for me to start a podcast it can be about writer’s block and how different people deal with it i dunno maybe i should just check my email

this one goes out to
all the writing that
could’ve become
poems but
instead ended
up as
tweets
.

may you find eternal peace
in
the bowls of jack dorsey’s
omnipresent
repository
in
your loneliest moments
may you get
liked by a rando
eggshell
may you get
screenshotted and then
posted on ig
without
attribution
!

bruh
remember that one time
i tweeted you
and then someone
i know
retweeted you
and then someone
they know
retweeted you
?
i know
#thatshitcray

bruh
remember that one time
i tweeted you
and then nobody
liked
or retweeted you
and so
i felt shitty all day
and kinda lost
all
my
confidence
?
i forgive you
#blessed

bruh
remember that one time
i tweeted you
and then someone
i kind of know
felt a way about
it
and told me
i’m part of the problem
and then they got
all
their
homies
to come at me
too
?
yah me neither
#selectivememory

i know
it seems you could’ve been
more that
you lived too
fast
and died too
young that
in
a world where
the best grapes are aged
into
bordeaux
you shriveled
on
the vine
.

but bruh
in
all seriousness
imagine
how sucky
the world would be
without
raisins
…

oh, don’t even think for a moment
to
not let all this
change you.

the internet will have you thinking
that
you’re fine the way you are.
you are not.

none of us are.

maybe it’s a generational thang.
how to know you’re “digital born” is
if
you ever looked at a meme and thought:
this gives me liiiiiiiiiiife!
it does not.

if
when i say that pixels arranged on a jpg
are not vitamins nor minerals
you respond with:
[eye roll emoji].

if
when i ask whether system updates are
a pastime reserved for robots
you say:
oh, don’t even…
technology is all we have rn.

maybe you’re right.
without the internet, how would i even express
that
i miss you IRL.

yesterday i took a day off from writing so that i could join the rest of the world and binge tiger king. it would be a lie to say that i intended for this to happen. i woke up like any other morning, with the intention to begin my day with writing. but bit by bit, motion by motion, i watched myself allow other tasks to cut in line. before i knew it, i was deep in my old habits of scouring washington post articles and writing emails that are way too wordy (i’ve learned over the years that long-winded emails are my creative voice’s squeal to be let out).

what’s encouraging is that, throughout the day, i never stopped thinking about writing. i actually spent much more time thinking about it than i do when i just get it out of the way in the morning. it’s a long cry from just a few weeks ago, when opening up my thoughts to a page felt awkward, when the guilt of not writing like i used to was just a numbness that i went to bed with each night.

yesterday’s sensation was a sharpness, like a joint that needed to be snapped back in place. but it wasn’t a guilt. writing again today, i’m feeling grateful for renewed habits, for the liberation that comes with knowing that the core of my being is being regularly replenished. it made guilty pleasures like tiger king feel all the more sanctified.

i remember being more isolated than this, 10 years ago. 2010 was my first east coast transition from winter to spring, the time i understood how the emergence of sun from snow and gray could feel like gridlock in the sky. in a pre-uber era, in a pre-gentrified brooklyn neighborhood, in my pre-lovely lifetime, there wasn’t really anywhere to go in the world – aside from a key foods that i’d slip into once every two weeks to get some spotted bananas and shriveled yams. walk any further and i risked falling flat on my face on the unsalted streets. this was a time before “foot traffic” was a notion on lincoln and classon, before the non-gmo pet bakeries, before high maintenance knew to romanticize living in the rinds of the big apple.

i remember being more isolated than this, 7 years ago. in 2013, lovely and i moved to beijing amidst the smoggiest winter on record. in a skyrise in the middle of the cbd, it was like living in a house in the sky, if we just imagined the haze outside a bit whiter and less filled with particles that could coat your lungs. it was here that my nostrils became accustomed to masks, where i learned to smile with my eyes.

i remember being more isolated than this, 5 years ago. it was two years into life in d.c., just enough time to feel like a cog in the bureaucracy, before i had cultivated a community, and happy hours as a surrogate were running dry. if not for the artists, i don’t think i would love the district like i now do, i don’t think i would’ve untangled myself from all the red tape.

so in 2020 it appears that i have a habit of moving to places just to stay in. here in LA, i crash-landed into the unbelievably lucky circumstance of living a three-minute walk from the beach. for the first time in a decade, i’ve gone through winter without feeling the biting cold, and for the past couple of weeks my notion of isolation at least came with sun and sand and salt. but as of friday, construction tape stretches from pole to pole, as if to designate the entire horizon as a crime scene. those who dare step out for a stroll mean-mug one another, as if each of us are the only ones with a legit reason to stretch our legs.

this is not the last time any of us will feel alone. it need not take virus, climate, or politics to feel alienated within a vast world. but over time, loneliness has become a familiar, welcome companion. i can’t bear imagining a life where i’m never greeted by it again.

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.