isolation

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.

one of the terms i’ve been hearing a lot lately is new normal. it describes how things may never be like what it once was, or that at least the status quo has been disrupted. it is often delivered in an apocalyptic tone, as if it automatically applies only to a darkening of days – a blockage of only the good and the entrance of only the bad.

there’s no denying that we are living in trying times, that the net outcome of a global pandemic is loss. but ruminating on things at home has also ushered in new norms that i hope, when all of this is over, i take with me back into the world.

to keep my spirits up, i’ve found it helpful to list these: writing everyday / texting and calling family more often / reconnecting with distant friends / more consistent sleeping patterns / creating less garbage / consuming food more healthfully and with less waste / a decreasing sense of work-related burnout

these (re)new(ed) norms are habits that i’ve aspired for or lost along the way, and they’ve helped me look forward to each day under shelter as an opportunity as opposed to a sentence. i’m recognizing that being “grounded” can either have a positive or negative connotation, even if the motions of the dual meaning are similar. i’m also recognizing that they are modes of coping that have emerged without much effort on my part, and maybe they’ve always been elements integral to my life that i just hadn’t prioritized enough to cultivate. when these truly become normal, i’m excited to start inviting more truly new norms proactively. what is all the low-hanging fruit that i’ve never even looked up to notice are within reach?

and then once things in the world finally go “back to normal,” will it be a complete triumph? will i go back to tending to my inbox instead of tending to my family? will i eat more junk and junk more of what i eat? will go about life as if resources and energy are less precious?

and what about us? will we fill the streets with cars and the skies with planes all the same? will we stop caring for the elderly and under-heralded? will we be less resilient about maintaining social connections and settle for relationships of convenience? will we be less mindful about every step and every breath? will we treat our health as if it’s only our own? the jaded parts of me say that we will. the fact that we have so much more to learn from this experience might be the only silver lining to the fact that we are only in the beginning.

i woke up this morning with the same kind of overwhelm that has come to plague my mondays, except exponentially heavier. this overwhelm is a symptom of my workaholic nature – the fact that i actually took a real weekend off (rain and a global pandemic will do that to you) meant that i feel like i’ve been utterly useless for 48 whole hours.

online, i see people in my network motivating to produce online concerts, exhibitions, meditation sessions, and screenings. it’s been at once incredibly inspiring but has also induced guilt on my end – guilt that i call myself a community organizer but in the past few days have spent more time pruning my new house plants and repairing my vacuum cleaner than i have thinking about how to contribute to the many things my village needs right now. during these times, i try to remind myself that tending to oneself is not a cousin of laziness. that maybe i would’ve been able to pivot more quickly had i not spent the past few years burning myself out. and even if i hadn’t, that it’s still okay to have a late start, or take time to process before acting, or to even take the bench now and then.

i continue to feel hypersensitive to the various ways that people are reacting to this outbreak. i shrivel when i ask how a friend is doing and they respond with projections on death tolls. there is so much anxiety that comes with having an open spigot of information paired with a recognition that the best way to respond is not to take to the streets, but to stay in – not to band together but to practice social distancing – not to resist an enemy but to honor forces of nature beyond us.

today i’m learning that it’s not my burden to smooth out every crease in an unfolding universe.

an element that is common in all declarations of emergency is a directive for everyone to remain calm. it is as self-defeating as a lifeguard shouting at someone being carried away by the current to stop drowning. when we enter a state of emergency, an authoritative figure will spell out all the things that have gone wrong, are going wrong, and that may go wrong, then offer a meager statement that there are distant, anonymous experts working on it, and finally some patronizing instructions to stay calm, don’t panic.

but when do we ever practice calm, together? calm has been marketed in our culture as a solo affair, a personal act of mindfulness that is achieved simply by closing one’s eyes and focusing on one’s own breath. but how dare you ask me to close my eyes after showing me something i can’t unsee? how dare you tell me to focus on my breath after telling me that my exhale might be a biological hazard? in moments like this, once we sift past the immediate and visceral question of mere survival, we arrive at underlying threats that we’ve already been exposed to – isolation, uncertainty, anxiety.

how do we practice collective calm when there is no emergency at hand? what would it look like to have something that’s the opposite of a fire drill, a preparation to drop whatever we’re doing to fall into a communal state of relaxation?

over the past couple of days, i’ve been trying to tune out as much of the panic, anger, snark, doomsday statements, and pontifications about what all this means in the face of late-capitalism, in order to keep a steady hand. i can’t even yet say that i’m doing this for a collective good, because right now it’s just for my own piece of mind. but in time, once everyone’s voices have gone coarse from instructions about social distancing and how long to wash your hands, i hope we are still able to see this as an opportunity to see what it means for a critical mass of the human population to chill the fuck out.