Standing in line to exercise our right. The wide swath humanity not grasping, yet basking in our privilege. At the time I asked silently, too concerned about rocking some unseen political boat. The risk of launching us into the further gaping great divide. “but, do they know what’s at stake?”
Later now, the answer? yes. But we could never have fathomed this.
When rocketing down the BART tunnel in San Francisco, you realize it sounds like it’s screaming. A wide, gaping, open mouthed howl as it roars down the bumpy and uneven tracks. Every time I sit on the greasy plastic seats, I try not to think of this ear piercing whir as the actual, audible manifestation of the city crying for help Yet. Yet, somehow, that’s exactly where my mind goes. Descending into the underground station makes you think that this must be what Dante was envisioning when he designed the circles of Hell. Yes, definitely. Musthavebeen. The entrance is always cluttered with the homeless, derelict, forgotten folks of the shining city. They litter the ground around your feet like pieces of discarded trash. Avoiding eye contact and their bruised and scabbed bodies and reading their tragically scrawled signs, my only contact is their outstretched hand reaching for the occasional banana or protein bar that I kipe from the free cafe at work. I give willingly and with a shudder. My petty secret and sad offering.
This war zone of San Francisco, the several blocks stretched languidly with decay across the center of the 7×7, shocks even the most seasoned San Franciscan. Like an open wound on the face of Miss America, you almost wish the stretch had stayed burned to the ground after the fire ripped through it all those years ago, rather than collecting the pinpricks of start-up billionaires and decomposing homeless humans every few blocks. I marvel at how we’ve let them down. These people that we allow to live on our streets. We somehow brush them under the collective rug and forgive ourselves this indiscretion in a city powered by Tesla batteries and $4,600 one bedroom apartments.
Yet.
Yet, the appeal of the bay, and it’s flossy fog and charming, winking vistas pulls you in and allows you to forget. The twilight sleep of wealth and natural beauty stupefies the day’s earlier memory of those humans perched at the mouth of hell. Those people we step over to descend onto an underground train that screeches and lunges and screams us off and away.
I refuse to get stuck in the double Dutch game of life, constantly waiting for my turn to jump in, but worried to get caught in the ropes.
As in 1917, so today. Women, tired of the misogynistic rhetoric and status quo, coming together to raise our voice as a deserving half of humanity, demanding equality, not just for ourselves, but for every one. We vote for those who couldn’t before, and for those who wont today. We are #StrongerTogether. Let’s make sure we honor the hard-won right and remind the world that our strength is in unity, not divisiveness. #ImWithHer #HillYes #MadamePresident #Vote
As I step out into the cold morning air, I could swear it was the middle of the night. That cold dampness and feeling of wearing a sleep helmet – head heavy and sound muffled from being woken prematurely is unmistakable.
Despite living in an upscale neighborhood the streetlights are weak and occasionally flickering. They must also feel sleepy and helmety at this time in the morning. We can count that in common. There’s some comfort I take though in waking up and moving about the city at this hour. Knowing the other people you see out and on the roads are also clutching their portable mugs of steaming black liquid to their tired chests braving the day the same as me. The house cleaners, the moms working two jobs. The dads driving long distances to a place where they don’t want to be, so their kids can live in a place they should be. Maybe it’s a student or a musician or a caretaker, off to see to some cause or another. Either way, I not so humbly count myself among their early morning clan, yet feeling still unworthy of their camaraderie.
This morning I am alone on the damp pavement, save for a women in a heavy down jacket walking in front of me. My eyes warm to the darkness begrudgingly as my consciousness settles on her voice. The realization that she is singing breaks into my sleepaddled consciousness like the bursts of orange light struggling to make their way into the morning ahead of us. We make a funny pair, she fifteen paces in front of me and singing some song I don’t know, and me waking fifteen paces behind, daring not to speed my pace for fear of startlingly her into silence. For once, no 41 route rattles past and no early day labourer roars up in his Hemi. It is just she and I kicking the broken asphalt pieces in our tiny morning parade.
My reverie is broken and her voice quieted as she reaches the crosswalk, heading away from me and into her day. I’m forced to turn, sad to see her go but graciously greeted by the expanse of the Bay stretching out in front of me, decorated now in fresh morning light and the waning sparkle of the marina’s evening bulbs.
Drake is the Selena Gomez of hip hop.
Why don’t people talk about that more?
Getting his start from an angsty Canadian teen soap-opera, Drake has seemingly overcome this relatively hilarious early beginning to become a well respected, lust worthy, accolade collecting hip hop artist. This just blows my mind.
I find myself thinking about this quite often. How we all are occasionally presented with these amazing opportunities to transform. To morph into something else entirely. Maybe it’s not quite going from cheesy teen soap actor to chart topping rap artist dating fellow music pop idols, but we do get something. We’re presented with glimmers of chance to change our fate. Sometimes you can’t recognize them when they’re there, and that’s often the saddest part. Our hindsight is 20/20, and looking back you can clearly see the road not taken. The other path is ever present, though likely covered over with leaves and debris, growing increasingly more wild and wooded, but showing a lingering glimpse into an alternate life entirely.
We can’t look at these with regret though. Often the path we did decide on, for one reason or another, really is exactly where we’re meant to be.
Plus, sometimes you have to accept that you’re just not Drake.
With that in mind, I’ll just leave this here:
It’s funny how you can spend a day or two in an airport, and suddenly you start to question your mortality. Humanity. Seeing a massive metal bird take flight into a blazing sky, floating away on the breeze, continues to capture our collective awe. Staring down at the tiny pinpricks of light from a flying mechanic beast is otherworldly. It somehow removes you from yourself. Or maybe it’s that it very much places you in your body.
You are Here.
To imagine each light as a soul still does not bring the vast, ever expanding span of the world into focus. It always makes you wonder how much living and dying is going on below, and how your living fits into that quilt of the collective experience of life here on our planet, Earth. Yet, despite all this grounding from 30,000 feet, your mind and weak grasp on existence remains as blurred and swirly as the mess of lights tangled beneath your double paned window.
Horizontal rain slaps the pavement, bringing the grease to the surface and my coat closer to my chin. A old thought passes through my mind. If I could just pull my collar higher, over my head, up past my piled hair, sinking into nonexistence, duck away from the world, into the cozy womb of cashmere; that maybe no one will notice. Melting into the asphalt, spirited away. Happily gone.
It’s funny how the desire to jettison oneself dissolves with happiness. How the pounding rain takes on an entirely different slant as it slams into the ground below. High from my vantage point I am no where and everywhere. I want every moment to last exactly its designated length. To stretch and yawn and mean into my life the fullness that it was destined to. I am caught up in such contentment that each moment is exponentially more precious and shimmying and shining. There is brilliance in every struggle and each sip of golden sunshine and hot, milky coffee means that the world is at peace and I have arrived. I am in my life, and outside of myself. Watching from the window across the street, I see my gorgeous humanity sprawled on the couch, sleep in the corners of my eyes and a brightness of scrubbed young personhood jumping and vibrating off of each of my imperfect pores.
I am within and without, and all is exactly as it was ever meant to be.
I sit at dinner. Hating myself. As my friends chat, emulating some sort of overwatched (at least by me) Sex In The City reincarnation around a heaving platter of Ethiopian food, I shovel bite after bite into my mouth, cursing my stupid hands for betraying me. We talked about this, you assholes, no more shoveling, no more bites. stop. moving. Instead of concentrating on what she is saying about her most recent Hinge hookup across the table from me, my eyes distractedly scan their plates, eyeing how empty mine is in comparison. I want to sit here and hate myself for never being able to lose the 10lbs that will change my life. So, I scrape the dregs of the soggy injera from the bottom of the platter, spices in my nails, while my pant button tugs out of its loop, giving up on me like I’ve given up on myself. Why the fuck can’t I stop when I’m so goddamn full. It’s like seeing their full plates and thin bodies encourages my hands to propel more food into my mouth. Damnit.
For years my email inbox has been a graveyard of intentionally marked unread messages, new products touted to guide my path to weight loss and happiness. Must remember to read that later. The crumpled pages of printed-at-work Bikini Body guides litter my purse and bags, the bones of hope left behind. I toggle between dating apps and diets, one more disappointing than the next. I wonder what it would be like to stick with one, or give up totally. Love Yourself! Be Yourself! You are ENOUGH! jesus. Enough is enough. I wonder if the fact that I drink too much is the root of it all.
So, this month I quit. This month I swear off it all. I add an asterisk to Thanksgiving, but who knows, maybe in 24 days I won’t want it. The asterisks are what get you anyway. There’s always room for one, always space for another drink before home.
Detox is a dumb concept, I think, but it’s older than prostitution. We cleanse our bodies as a way to cleanse ourselves. It must work, it’s in the bible or something. So, maybe here’s one 30 day detox that I’ll stick to. My first 30 days of tumbling into 27. Something that I can be proud of. No more stumbling around, groping for the light. Maybe I’ll find it at the end of the proverbial tunnel, instead at the bottom of an $11 wine bottle.
For some reason, I chose this place to end my life. It’s one of those small, seaside towns with a bottom lit American flag waving around in the wind. It has cracking white stairs that lead towards cold, wet, sand beaches and fog that rolls in. It’s kind of what I always imagined Hyannis Port to be like in the time right before winter. One of those all-American type places that have a successful local chip company or something that people are proud of. Maybe I chose here because it’s like Hyannis Port. I suppose that I always harbored a Kennedy fantasy. Not really that I would marry one, God knows THAT doesn’t work out, but, I guess more that I was born one. That I had great navy and white clothes, and summered on the Cape, and things were crisp, and windblown with a little mascara looked good on me. That things were easy, and I was bred to be smart and classy and together. Somehow, despite these fantasies and all the Brooks Brothers in the world, I just wasn’t. Aren’t? Am not? I guess I can still say am. I am still here.
My rough-around-the-edgesness was always what made me popular though. That’s how I’m getting along so well here. People have a penchant for women who swear. They’re attracted to them. Especially if she swears in pearls, or with a checked summer dress on by the grill and some sort of apron that reads “If Mama Ain’t Happy…”. They fucking love it. The grit was always what made me so popular with Greg’s friends, men who’s wives did not like me. No matter what I did, no matter how many god damn book clubs I joined or tables with raffle tickets I stood behind, they never liked me, really. And I always hated them. Those stupid tennis skirts and Lilly Pulitzer dresses.
The man who I rented the cabin from was practically giddy in meeting me. I could just tell that if he wasn’t married, he would have asked me out. Instead, he handed me keys to the little place and wished me a nice trip. The cabin is nice, it’s the perfect place to spend some last days. It’s quintessential. I needed some more quintessential in my life. I was tired of always being the one who had to construct the quintessential. I’m happy to have it prefabricated for me this time. I, of course, dressed the part for this trip. Suitcases full of light cashmeres, and quilted navy vests and expensive leather boots with white pants tucked in. I wanted to be as Kennedy as possible, and the locals are eating it up. I met some woman who runs the bakery. She’s older than me, I think, or maybe she just looks it. She wants me to meet up with her and her husband some night this week. I think she has a man to set me up with. Some friend who has a home here. That sounds nice, “has a home here.” Greg and I “had homes,” but perhaps his utter unsexiness and disinterest in me made it less attractive than it sounds when a stranger wants to set me up with a man with “homes.”
I know I shouldn’t be getting set up anyway, I’m just passing through, but part of me is curious. I wonder if my life will disappear in the same way if I alter the last scene. Just tweak it a little. Will I still fade and be forgotten just like all the other poor, dead assholes throughout history? If I change the minutes before the ending, will the finale still be the same?
…TBC…
She The Change 