Does This Make Me Look

Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days after Dennis and I pulled Trixie the truck into my dad’s driveway, the Baron of Bryant Street (our sometime name for him—it fits and who doesn’t love alliteration) and I pulled into a parking lot filled with nurses, doctors, and needles so he could get his first COVID-19 vaccination dose. Twas a happy day, as was the one a year ago. But obviously for much different reasons. Who woulda thunk how our first year here would offer so many, er, adventures. On the overall, I knew that being an election year we were all in for some kind of rattle&shake whether upheaval or uprising. The fact that the latter happened was not unexpected, but insane and tragic nonetheless. Other than that what I envisioned was tutoring sessions, writing at the local coffee house, getting my running legs back, hanging with dad. But, as we all know, (wo)man makes plans, the gods laugh. And hence the bolt we now know as 2020.

As January got to the edge of February and we got settled, the unsettling was happening globally. Seems like a million years ago when the story of a flight landing just down the highway from our new place with Americans leaving Wuhan played on our local public radio sharing space with an impeachment trial. I worked with a student on a paper about how social media was telling the story of this new virus called COVID-19. The professor rejected many of the student’s sources because they weren’t peer reviewed. Of course they weren’t. This was happening in real time. No academic was poring over papers and checking facts. And still, Dennis and I felt so glad to be here eating guacamole, toasting my dad’s martini, and staring at the cozy fire. Going to thrift stores and finding things to decorate the place. Good thing, because by mid-March we’d all come inside. Built our Covid pod with the three of us and hunkered down only carving a trail from our place to his.

There’s a really beautiful area of flowering plants out our front door and it hasn’t been lost on us that one in particular resembles the spiky graphic of the virus we’ve seen on the Newshour every night for the last 307. That something rather lovely reminds of something decidedly deadly is a great reminder that it’s never either/or. As a friend put it not so long ago: “It’s horrible and ….” And, exactly. I think we can all refer to some moments in this last year that brought joy. At first, when I’d think about how I was glad to cancel plans. Be a homebody. Watch The Morning Show, The Crown, Babylon Berlin, Succession and a million other programs literally uninterrupted night after night, I’d feel guilty. To be able to read and read and read before bed because I had some time. When I enjoyed downshifting my day-to-day to just doing what was necessary, I felt weird about being happy around that. Rarely brought it up because I wasn’t sure if it was offensive to find comfort in the insanity. In May, one of my favorite writers Taffy Brodesser-Akner wrote an article called “The Joy of Plans Canceling Themselves” and I heartily agreed. I’ve always enjoyed her saying it like it is, even when, as in this meditation article, I go Nope, that’s not my line. If anything, this year, I’ve seen that there’s no room for the hedging. If anything, a global health pandemic, a U.S. racial epidemic, the exposure of the thin thread that keeps what we call democracy working, and the realization that all of those things are actually connected, made for a year of personal walls coming down.

As my dad and I drove into the parking lot where he’d receive his first Moderna dose, it felt surreal that this was our one-year-here anniversary. After spending the morning like a day-trader online looking to get him that vaccination appointment, then having scored one that had us hopping in the truck to get there in an hour while I felt like we might be chasing a golden unicorn under a double rainbow, once the amazing nurse administered the shot I felt pretty triumphant. My dad decided that living in New York City for three decades–plus might have made me more no-bullshit determined. And, yes, I’ll take that into consideration, but for the most part I think this instinct to do what needs to be done has always been in there, I’ve just been shy about how far I can push it. Will it rub the wrong way? Will people get angry and shut me down? Ya know, those kinds of fears. In the end, maybe because of this complicated year, maybe because I’m older, maybe because I just feel like why the fuck not, some roads roll out in front of me and I take to them. I’ll roll down the proverbial windows, smell the smells, watch the scenery, get stung by a bee that manages to get in and get me. All part of it. I’ve still got the wheel.

Seeing photos and videos of the riot on the Capitol from Wednesday, it was not lost on many that a solid majority of the insurrectionists who broke in and rampaged looked like they were on their way to a demented Comic-Con—although their convention would instead be called Tragic-Con. Or perhaps they’d gotten lost on their way to the set of Vikings, Game of Thrones, or an upcoming superhero remake. Capes, fur pants, horned helmets, painted faces, a man dubbed Q Shaman, arrested now, whose resemblance to the 90’s Brit-funkster singer from Jamiroquai became a much needed laugh-to-keep-from-crying meme. I am not in any way playing down the absolute danger and madness of these humans. What I do find fascinating though is how what we put on our body changes the way we walk into the world. (A great article by Vanessa Friedman here about the transformative power of costumes.) When we drape ourselves, what power are we hoping to gain? What message are we sending out to those who see us? Did the woman I spotted in news clips on the Capitol grounds with the Wonder Woman headgear feel she could magically deflect bullets because of it? Wednesday’s danger-parade of delusion was a sociological pageantry both terrifying and fascinating in its trappings. (The vile t-shirts, I can’t even begin to parse here. Not to mention it would take another many paragraphs to describe my disgust that I know what the seditionists were wearing because they felt untouchable and entitled enough to post endless photos and videos of themselves on social media. Their white privilege paraded in a way no one who attended peaceful protests for BLM would have lived long enough to display.)

I can absolutely attest to my own psychological shift when I put on an outfit. What in my early and into teen years was dressing to fit in broke out in college as a way to find my own self. An individual sense of style. The nineties of my young adulthood was an amazing time of thrift stores—and thank gawd, given the state of my finances. I could carve out my style for under $20 and that aesthetic of quirky has lasted with me into today. Somewhere along the way, I grew into the confidence of it. Without a doubt, what I wear out the door tells the world volumes. A year ago today, Dennis and I were in day three of our move from NYC to Cali. I logged it daily here on this blog site under the banner Jumpsuits Across America. There was a reason those jumpsuits became my transitionary uniform. On one level, jumpsuits hold a utilitarian message. Their history as a work uniform dates back to 1919. Men and women alike rocked the jumpsuit (I’m looking at you Rosie the Riveter) bringing a sense of equality that wasn’t found anywhere else in society. For me, when I was figuring out how to pack to get from one side of the country to the other, I didn’t want to think about mix&match. I also wanted to see the span of this land without telegraphing any geographical markers. No declarative t-shirts or funky-ass culottes (yeah, I’ve got those). My jumpsuit collection managed both weirdly and magically to match up with our location.

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As we’ve all gone inside since March, there’s no doubt the nature of dressing has altered, perhaps forever. There are many other things to think about right now rather than how one’s look is being received and how strong you feel inside of that. The absolute best style statement in the moment is that mask on your face, and nod to the Nancy Pelosi’s of the world who bring color and individuality to that action. I’m not gonna lie, I most definitely take a minute to find the face covering that complements my outfit when I’m taking a trip to the grocery store or dad’s, but I’m also happy that each of them was bought or given (or made, hello, bra) from a place that supports foundations and small artisans–or in the case of the bra, used to support a portion of my upper body. So again, to the idea of whether clothes make the (wo)man or the other way around. To me, if you have a strong sense of self, then you’re less likely to need a costume to get your point across. If you live in a universe where your only way of feeling your own power or getting your message out is by putting on a fur helmet with horns, taking off your shirt, and picking up an American flag with a pointed tip that you wield like a spear, then you may want to take a serious look at your communication skills and/or sense of inner fortitude.

Some individuals below

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(warning: this post is filled with an abundance of hyphenation.)

Hello. So that happened. 2020: The year that felt like setting off somewhere, then realizing one-third of the way through the rum punch you drank at the last party was spiked with a dose of psilocybin and you’re on a road with too many twists, lots of turns, and no streetlights. And your face is melting. And the pink elephant in the middle of the road isn’t moving but you can’t pull over and stop. You just need to get to the other side. (Alternatively, for city dwellers, you’re in every scene from the brilliant After Hours.) Of course, having gotten home and slipped the key in and turned the lock on 2021, it’s not lost on anyone that there will still be much to deal with the morning after. (I’m looking at you Operation What? Speed vaccine rollout. Clown circus convention in DC. Tip your bartender, they’ll be taking the stage all this week and until January 20. After that, a new show will take its place, hopefully with a better sound and messaging system.) And for now, I’m not quite ready to unpack my mental trunk, since I know for a fact there’s a box of belief-in-humanity that got pretty shattered along the way. The faces flying at half-mask (or no mask) telegraphing I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-you-ness, the flags flying at full mast proclaiming I-support-the-assaulter-in-chief or, in my opinion, another way to say I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-you, stunted my I’ll-give-you-the-benefit-of-the-doubt instinct.

Last year did give me a chance to very much crystalize the who’s and what’s I truly care about though. Since I had a lot more time and space (once I’d worked through all the passive-aggressive under-my-breath utterings of “idiot” or managed to silence my inner staged arguments with the half-or-no-maskers I saw around me. Of course, I always won those arguments with brilliant one-liners that like the ghosts in A Christmas Carol managed to bring someone into the light forever. Ah, ego. What a thing you are.) I would say the sense of always just-under-the-surface terror was real for everyone this last year. And when I regularly pushed on that sensation, up would pop a vision of me wearing a cape, a cool belt, a signature jumpsuit, and boots, armed with some sort of laser beam, protecting Dennis, my dad, and myself in whatever way I needed too. Or, concurrently, waving the wand and cutting down to size the person who flat out refused to say that Black lives mattered. Who didn’t play the mental superhero a gazillion or so times in 2020? And how many among us found themselves in a COVID-style nightmare? The one where instead of finding I’d forgotten to wear any clothing from the waist down, I’d forgotten my MASK!!! And so did EVERYONE. And now I would die. (There’s a national survey link tracking dreams here.) Yep. different variations on that theme. Exhausting.

But since no one except the ever-accepting duo of Dennis and my dad were really laying eyes on me, I didn’t need to spend any extra time covering the signs of exhaustion with makeup (what’s that?). Or fancy clothing. Or even clothing that had any structure whatsoever. And this from someone who really adores putting together an outfit. This blog was built with fashion in the title, ferFuxsake. I’m not going to say I strictly wear only clothing with elastic waistbands, although I did get an orange velour tracksuit for Christmas that is so borderline Ali G. that it’s either appalling or awesome, but I will admit that comfort and movement have taken precedent over funky and stand-out as style motivation. And I find that’s not a bad place to be. I’m also happy with a couple of decisions carried over from 2020: That I’ve built up a robust donation rotation for causes I’ve become even more committed to after the awfulness of last year. All who read this will know that Planned Parenthood, The Loveland Foundation, Black Lives Matter, Girls Write Now, Feeding America, Native Land, and Patreon (This Jungian Life) are places I’m supporting monthly. Along with being involved with White People 4 Black Lives weekly.

But fashion, back to that. When I started this blog in June 2019, it was with the sole purpose of focusing on being fashion forward in a planet-conscious way. Back in 2017, I’d read an Ann Patchett article “My Year of No Shopping” and felt inspired. Since then, I’ve been really aware of only supporting labels that can vouch for their eco-awareness (this Good On You site/app is super helpful) and prowling thrift stores, of which there are a surprisingly delightful surplus of in my new neighborhood. And today, this article “It’s Not That Hard to Buy Nothing” caught my eye. I feel a closet-clean-out coming on. And looking forward to it. Lightening up. Not giving away the tracksuit though. And to all of you: may the coming minutes, days, months be filled with moving out the stuff you don’t need—mental, material, or otherwise; finding beauty in the moment—since that’s about all we can count on; and knowing that we are all apparently capable of more strength and love than we may know. I’m keeping my hands on the wheel, my eyes on the road ahead…and maybe no more proverbial rum punch.

Hope you all had a lovely span of days in whatever way you choose to spend these end of year moments. As no doubt we’ve all heard over and over umpteenth times—along with either thinking or saying out loud—it can’t come soon enough. But as I think we’ve all discussed here before, time has stopped really meaning much as days blend, below-the-waist clothing became optional (whether style-wise or just literally), and markers of work and play have altered pretty much permanently. Yes, there’s been the very very bad, the unexpectedly good, and the otherwise strange. And while there’s no actual guarantee that ’21 will be better, just knowing one guy is moving out of the house of White is a bonus for the year ahead.

This holiday Dennis and I had my dad over for the Eve and we went over there for the Day and it was cozy, fun, and filled with food. I learned how to make oyster stew. Actually, the learning curve there was that I learned how to shuck an oyster. A couple of things about that: Apparently I had never paid attention or bothered to know that oysters are alive up until you open that shell. Also, if one does not have an oyster knife, a screwdriver will do. So I did that, then mixed up a lovely little semi-spicy broth, popped those babies in (after thanking them for their service as a sea creature) and we had that for the Eve dinner. My dad had mentioned how when he was a kid and up through a bit of teenagehood, his family had a tradition of oyster stew at the holidays. So we did that and it was luverly.

Got me to thinking about traditions. How they transport and, when they work as planned, bring comfort. For me, getting a book (or as was the case this year, a few) for Christmas has been my tradition. I remember the first one and how it transported me: Little Women. Maybe I was ten or twelve. We lived in Pasadena and I distinctly remember laying on my belly on the floor and disappearing inside the world of Jo, Beth, Meg, Amy, Marmee, and all the rest. I was fully transported, bewitched, and probably unwilling to come to the table for dinner or turn out the lights to go to sleep. It was the first time I remember being so fully taken out of my surroundings and into somewhere else. For sure I was still in the phase where Barbies were on the list, so I’ve no doubt Malibu or Skipper or maybe even Ken occupied my attention for a bit until they just became too real and static and I went back to the March family. What I realized then was the power of a story. And ever since, every year my dad asks me what book I want and I ask the same question back to him. This year the new DeLillo for him and Hamnet for me. (Also received Shuggie Bain, Love, Apeirogon, The Audacity of Hope, The White Boy Shuffle, Never Let Me Go. I’ll happily be escaping well into 2021.) This tradition is so comforting (& this piece in the NYT is a great view in to the act as well) that I recognize how the pleasure part of my brain reacts even when I know it’s coming. I pick up the package. It’s obviously a book under the wrapping paper, yet still the happiness that I’ll get to disappear into the story is acute.

In my teenage years, records (the vinyl kind) would have been my Christmas choice of escapism. Elton John, Led Zeppelin, maybe a little Boston or Kansas. But also a book. Those two worked well in tandem to take me places in my head, in my dreams, in my plans for the future. Maybe I thought I could be Robert Plant’s muse/love of his life. Maybe Nancy Drew introduced me to some ideas of being a female detective. These filled many of my waking hours and were great escapes from the hour-to-hour, day-to-day. Fer gawd’s sake, if we ever needed escapism from all that moment-to-moment right now, what better place to turn than novels for grand, emotional stories and nonfiction for learning about all the things we may not get to explore in real time. And now that we’re all getting a good view into the bookshelves of talking heads, it seems The Power Broker is the one to impress all your friends and neighborly viewers with, as this piece points out. If Dennis were to be interviewed today, he’d have to lay down Joe Namath–style in order for viewers to see his copy on the bottom shelf of his bookcase. I haven’t read it (yet) but when I really want to get well and worked up about Robert Moses and New York City, I know where to turn. I feel I’m already worked up enough about the abusers of power currently wreaking havoc. Robert Caro may need to wait.

So as we sail off into the next, what’s your flavor of escapism? And leaving this challenging time behind, what will help us get to the next? Here’s to being safe, thoughtful, and filled with stories! Cheers

About a week ago, I was in the kitchen and looked out the window to see this guy hanging out at the pool and another wee face peeking from under the fence. I’d seen the grayboy running around on the neighboring roof a few times over the past months, but it was the first time I’d seen the ginger. It’s not a well-kept secret that I’m a cat person and have been known to take their faces in my hands, scrunch them up and kiss their little noses. This is dangerous business, but the cat I had for twenty years through singleton-ness, marriage, divorce, and meeting/falling in love/moving in with Dennis let me do that, and I was never injured in the process, so, ya know, fond memories. Anyhoo. I understand the theory behind comfort animals. (Altho don’t get me started on the taking of emotional support animals like peacocks on a plane. No. Just no.) After spying these furries in my backyard, I brought out a tiny gray stuffed mouse with a jangly thing inside that I happened to have among the Christmas ornaments. And thus appeared the ginger from under the fence. She grabbed the mouse, gave it a good chew, then absconded with it back from where she’d just come…maybe to bury it or furnish her cat house with. Apropos of nothing, I named her Gladys. Ever since, she’s shown up on the regular and once we got past the part where she tried to drag one of my fuzzy slippers off my foot and under the fence, we’ve gotten to the petting and lap sitting stage of our relationship. No face scrunching. I don’t know her that well. (Gray boy has been spotted roaming elsewhere).

Yesterday, after I’d done my final tutoring session, which felt like the whole semester packed into the last two weeks and I remembered what it was like to go to college and have three eight-to-ten page paper due within ten days, I was rocking in the chair out back, Gladys on my lap, and thinking, wow, I can just sit here for awhile. no obligations. It was both weirdly disconcerting and comforting. It got me to thinking about how being too busy to think about the crazy outside the door can be helpful, yet also disconnecting (that goldilocks thing I wrote about last week comes to mind). Having some fur to sink my fingers into was helpful in keeping me seated for a minute. One thought that crept in was that 2020 has had us all rowing on top of a raging river of stressors. Whatever way we’re individually managing to stay afloat (or fall in, climb back aboard—or not) is maybe something we’ll be exploring in more depth once we land back on solid ground in the next year or so. As much as I’ve tried to pay attention and be present when I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart pounding or realize I’ve been holding my breath for a beat too long, I obviously know why. We’re all in it. Just finding ways to roll through.

Dennis and I have taken up running again. Me, slowly. As if I’ve never run before. It’s truly maddening that the body doesn’t remember that you’ve done five marathons. Doesn’t give a toss. Is basically like, wait, what’s this? are we fleeing from something, cuz unless there’s a bear chasing us, I’m not interested. But even though I’m basically running about the same speed as someone walking fast, still, I’m doing it and despite the not-total enjoyment (yet?), the high point is that it does work as a stress reliever. Something to do with endorphins. The other good thing is finding my way back to my old habit of listening to podcasts to distract myself from the fact that I’m running. But there’s something I’d forgotten about the whole listening thing: I have to pay attention to what I let play into my head or I may end up, as I did yesterday, loping along with tears coming off of my face. I know that’s not a great recommendation for the podcast I’m going to link here, but really it’s worth listening to. The story of Ahmaud Arbery (based on an article in Runner’s World). He’s a man who should still be running the roads except he was murdered last February by two men in a pickup truck who decided he didn’t look like someone who should be running through their neighborhood. It’s 16 minutes long (basically the amount of time it takes me to run a mile these days) and is moving, joyful, tragic, and enraging. Also a stark reminder of one area in America that has been broken open and exposed this year. Very much especially this year.

The man being evicted from the Oval Office opened up a vein of national racism that had been flowing through America’s bloodstream since its beginning. This past year brought an amount of racial bloodletting that those who are paying attention and care about healing the right way rather than only bandaging will be tending to for a long time. As Ibram X. Kendi wrote in The Atlantic, “Is This the Beginning of the End of American Racism?” “[Trump] has held up a mirror to American society, and it has reflected back a grotesque image that many people had until now refused to see: an image not just of the racism still coursing through the country, but also of the reflex to deny that reality.” This work is something I finally understand I have to do ongoing. Something I need to remind myself when I’m tempted to be complacent and look away. Keep my eyes wide open, making sure Gladys doesn’t take the fuzzy slippers off my feet and disappear under the fence so I can keep moving forward.

After I finished reading Caitlin Moran’s most recent More Than a Woman (here’s a great shortie by her), a take-away, head-nodding passage I tucked away from the book was about the too-much or too-little syndrome that often exists for us ladies. (Fellas, you might have a comparable situation, but you’ll have to talk amongst yourselves about it.) It’s the sense that you’re being way too much (by living large, laughing, or dancing on a table as I may have been about to do in the photo above) or you’re not enough and failing at a relationship/friendship/job, fill in the blank. The just-right emotional place is frustratingly around some corner that is evasive. And it’s confounding, really. Whether a baked-in from the beginning kind of deal or a marinated over time flavoring, the idea of always looking for a way to strike the balance in life is something I’ve aimed to master since forever. I look back with absolute certainty at the me above and know without doubt that I was cycling through a series of thoughts in that moment. They went a little like this: Damn, it feels good to let loose like this. And all my ladies are here. And whatever band is playing are maybe playing Kiss covers. Hell, yeah. Take my picture. Where’s the bar so I can climb on top and dance.” It was unadulterated fun. But I guarantee you, because I remember, when I saw this picture two weeks later (because back in the before-time, we had to develop film, then wait for whoever took the photo to share it with us. Unimaginable.), I felt a flush of embarrassment. Not because my vest was too damn vinyl, but because I might have had too much damn fun. What did people think? Was I telegraphing the wrong impression? Was I too much? And then, the next time I went out and a cover band kicked into “I Wanna Rock and Roll All Night,” that photo would have flashed into my brain pan and I would have gone to the bar. Not to dance on it, but to drink at it. That would have distracted me from being too much. Not a good look.

And about that too little…this is an area I think us ladies can all agree spans a whole lot of real estate. In the wider world currently, that too little encompasses women who are working from home while educating their kids and also running the household or caring for a parent all simultaneously like a bear juggling on a ball. I bow down to you all because often that’s a combo plate of too much to do, too little you to accomplish it. But in general, the too-little, I’m-not-enough moments spring from an emotional place of just trying to be all you can be while feeling like you’re failing spectacularly. I do feel this as a gendered thang. I can’t recall any moment when I interviewed men in bands who said, “I’m not enough at what I do”–mind you, they may have been thinking it, but they didn’t say it. While I definitely did get quotes from musical ladies that turned on the idea that they didn’t live up to expectations (“My songwriting’s still evolving” “I looked crap in that outfit” “I’m getting better at [the bass/guitar/drums/triangle/whatever]”). Even Courtney L. had a wary not-enough-ness that lived under the surface, although she’d have never said it out loud to me and she compensated by living incredibly out loud so you wouldn’t notice.

This week a distinct intersection between too much/too little made an appearance in my life. Two things happened: I’m winding up the semester with the two students I’m tutoring. One of them has three papers due, all in succession. All of them involving one of these topics: gender, religion, theology. Each of the higher-ed profs outlining what’s needed with twenty-five syllable words when probably a four-syllable jam would do. But that’s not really the issue. The issue became me thinking There’s too much intellectual expectation here. I may not be able to help her. And that corresponded with All I want to do is work on my own writing and I have too little time to do that. And that, my friends, dovetailed into the knowledge that a few of the writers in the fiction course I’m taking have had some interest shown by agents for their finished novels and instead of me celebrating their great good fortune or recognizing that I’m not actually done with mine, so no agent would show interest yet, I was instantly despondent. As if, like one of those grab a ring games or musical chairs, there are only maybe six chances in the whole world to get an agent and I was likely missing mine because A) I’d wasted time and ended up with too little too show or B) I was expecting too much of myself and shouldn’t count on my writing as something to put all my eggs or words or baskets in. Which I guess brought me to my go-to C) I’m not brave enough to take the plunge and just quit everything and dedicate all my time to writing my novel. I know, I know, most would actually call C) delusional in that, no, until there’s someone who says “Please finish your novel because I feel I can sell it,” it’s a fool’s errand to shove off from a perfectly well-paying gig.

Sooooo, right back to the Goldilocks of life. The just right we are all looking to achieve. The balance that asks for a recognition that no, ladies, we’re not too much when we grab all the rings and swing, that we’re not too little when we just can’t give that extra hour because we want to do our own creative thing. So we keep trying all the porridge, the chairs, the beds until there’s the just-right one. In the meantime, please share if you know or have found it (or even if you haven’t). I’ll be over there finishing a chapter.

Every Saturday morning, my go-to read in the NYTimes is “Sunday Routine,” which follows a New Yorker around for the day, logging their this&thats. The column ranges from all sorts of humans: Last week was the singer Patty Smyth, the week before was a coffee shop owner in Brooklyn, Zenat Begum, then there was Michael Tennant, the empathy expert, and on like that. Today, a lovely woman named Keisha Gourdet, a home-health aid, was featured. Her story: up at 4.30 AM, leave her husband and kids, board a million forms of MTA transportation, take care of a man in his home, then board a million forms of MTA transportation again to get to her job at a nursing home, complete her many hour’d shift caring for patients, back on the MTA treadmill and home around 1 AM in the wee hours. Husband and kids already asleep. Much PPE and disinfecting of herself during this day because of these COVID times. And on top of that stress. So. Much. Stress. Yet as I read about her day, I could feel her dedication to the patients she serves and the people she works with. This story, one that recognizes a singular woman, is replicated a million times over across the globe by health-care workers doing the heartbreaking necessary work of our time. Inside of the extreme stresses these folx are facing—with some kind of end in sight, yet often those finish lines feels miles away just when you’re closest—the fact that there is still resistance to the simple mask-distance-hand wash troika is stunning, and makes me have to walk away from writing this because I get so angry.

Reading about Keisha, a big ole piece of perspective came and sat right on my soul. Because, I’m not gonna lie to you, a mere five minutes earlier I was whinging on about how the haircut I was meant to get today had been cancelled due to our stylist quarantining after exposure to COVID. Sometime tomorrow all salons/barbers will shutter again as California enters into a lockdown phase much like we had at the beginning of the pandemic. I figure right about now, most everyone (who’s following science, that is) is assessing their surroundings and maybe thinking some form of “WTF. We’ve been at this a very long time.” And wherever those thoughts lead—frustration, sadness, resignation, anger, even maybe some relief at things stripped down to the bare minimum, and/or a combination of all that—it’s really a situation of virus as object lesson. Here we are. The past has moved on (there it went again), future around some elusive corner. Yes, a vaccine is on the way, but many months of patience required for that to be a reality in most our cases. So here we are now. And to all of those who day in, out, rinse and repeat are being the Keisha’s of the world, the least I can do is recognize my privilege and do what I need to stay healthy and out of their way. Perspective, and all!

This NYTimes tracker is super cool, although obviously subject to change as reality morphs around the vaccine’s availability. But to see where you might stand in the line for the vaccine, click on the link and follow the (very) simple instrux. Here’s where I stand: “Based on your risk profile, we believe you’re in line behind 268.7 million people across the United States. When it comes to California, we think you’re behind 31.0 million others who are at higher risk in your state. And in San Bernardino County, you’re behind 1.9 million others.”

If the line in California was represented by about 100 people, this is where you’d be standing:

Starts here (and I don’t know how they knew I was wearing a red full-body leotard today, but hey…):

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Be safe, find some happy—maybe cookies—and on like that. I appreciate you.

Now that we’re all used to seeing each other’s faces in halves in public and wholes via video screens, there are a few funny things I’ve noticed. Bypassing the crazy just-breathe stress spike that happens when I see the maskless dweebles out and about, when I’m among those who care for each other, the way in which face coverings alter people’s interactions is fask-inatin’. For instance, having spent three-plus decades in a city where averted eyes in public were the norm—if not recommended—activity while walking down the street with one-or-so million of your neighbors, it’s not a new impulse to avoid eye contact. Here in Redlands, when I make my rounds on foot whether strolling for the exercise or doing errand-y things to avoid the driving, if I pass anyone on the sidewalk (&they do have them here), nine-out-of-ten times the person will nod and look away quickly as if guilty, like being outside is somehow wrong. I think this impulse has curbed slightly over the months and now people just stare straight ahead, but there is a sense of what-the-f-ness, I have a piece of cloth covering half my face, don’t-look-at-me vibe. Do we want to be invisible? To be honest, I haven’t been sad to exercise neutral resting face during the times I might have filled up the space with small talk and somewhat fake smiles. I’m learning to be okay with sharing a laundry room in silence. People also talk about smizing. I imagine that the smiling with your eyes situation is a thing and am happy to report that the crinkles around my eyes can come in handy for these moments.

One place where full faces are on display are video calls (Zoom, FaceTime, Google Hang, choose your poison). Really, more than faces are exposed. There are the right-before-the-person-knows-you’re-there expressions, the surrounding tchotchke displays, the books arranged with a special kind of message, and other what-not moments. (If you haven’t seen this hilarious video from pre-pandemic 2017–yes, there was such a time–of a man reporting remotely when his toddler, then baby, then wife break in, it’s so worth it! The sheer girl-power attitude at 21 seconds followed by the mom’s all-out save is epic!) While I haven’t experienced any kind of high drama, probably because I don’t do that many meetings/calls, there is one thing I’ve learned to love the most: the sign-offs. Admittedly, I’m crap at signing off on any sort of call, face or no face. Inevitably, I’ll say a variation of all these things before actually hanging up (and for those who know me, you’ll recognize): “Have fun,” “See you,” “Bye,” “Enjoy,” “Okay, then,” and depending on our relationship “Love you.” This can all go on for an uncomfortable amount of time. I truly admire people who just say “Bye” and disconnect. But I’m not one of those people. Yet, anyway. Face-to-face calls are even more exciting&enjoyable because amongst all those words, there’s also the “where’s the disconnect?” face. It ranges from scrunchy nose-eye activity while searching for the button to super close-up face and finger right before it all goes black. I like it. To almost a person, there is a technique of ending a call that makes me smile.

So that’s fun. You know what else is fun? Giving!!!! Giving is a blast and it is that season now. I’ve come to the time in my life that unless the thing is supporting something worthy, then it’s not worth paying money for. For instance, no, I will not buy any books from Amazon or B&N, big-box like places. Only independent bookstores. And now, because of the pandemic, they have really had to up their online game. You can find out if your favorite local bookstore is doing curb or online service and support them please! Also Better World Books is a national online service that I like. I just saw a story about the mother/daughter team that run Source Booksellers in Detroit and they are amazing!!! Janet Webster Jones and her daughter Alyson Jones Turner are a fierce team. She’s in her 80s and is who I aim to be in the future. Speaking of masks and Detroit (yeah, we were), Diop designs are beautiful, made with West African fabrics that bring the color, which I feel is crucial in the here and now. (They also have some really cool bucket hats.) My friend Judy sent Dennis and I two of the most beautiful masks made in Canada by First Nations folx. They’re hand embroidered and so lovely. Here are a beautiful selection (although maybe not from the same place, so I hope she posts the source in the comments). And speaking of Indigenous people, my friend Windy posted this really amazing Land Acknowledgement tool where you put in your zip code and find out what native peoples lived on the land where you stand. This is an open-source project that I’ve signed up for here to give a monthly amount to so they can keep up their research. And speaking of monthly, my regulars: The Loveland Foundation, Black Lives Matter, and Planned Parenthood have become and remained as vital as ever, ever, ever in this year, and sadly, that won’t change anytime soon. I’ve also added Feeding America to the monthly list, because, again, this year. The magnitude is hard to wrap around, so if you’re a housed and fed-on-the-regular person with a smidge of ability to give, now is the time. All in all, whether I’m making a donation in someone’s name this year or exploring Nicholas Kristof’s Holiday Impact ideas, this is a year like no other where bringing the smiles, whether anyone sees them or not/face masks or no, it feels better to know a difference is being made.

What are some holiday giving moments you’re into? & thanks for being here!

While I’m not going to start the backward-glancing on this bananaPants year just yet—figure I’ll wait until the thing closes out so there may be more forward-looking goodness to reference—I am reflecting on the things to be happy about in this moment.

A) A year ago (thereabouts), Dennis and I came out to spend Thanksgiving with my dad and look at apartments for our move. At one, Carmen showed us around a standard-issue Melrose-Place-y kind of setup: a two-story apartment complex with a pool in the middle. Another had Krystal driving us past tennis courts and pools in a golf cart, altho the grounds were faaancccyyy, the apartments were so-so. Then Desiree ushered us into a single story, bungalow-type apartment with good space out back and in front and some high ceilings. And that’s where we live now. So far from our windows we’ve watched smoke billow from two local fires, hummingbirds hover around the many plants and flowers in front and in back; Dennis built a redwood surround, which held a nice-size blowup pool out back that saved our asses in one-hundred-degree-plus days and also had a good amount of ash fall out of the sky and into it from the closest fire in August. Now the pool is deflated for the season, but the sky is blue and the birds are chirping.

B) Hanging out with my dad is inspirational, informative, and damn fun! I’ve learned a lot about him, both in the things he’s told us as we’ve sat on his porch and had our weekly dinners. Stuff about playing baseball as a kid, skating on ice, smoking a pipe for a minute, going to jazz clubs, and moving from the midwest to SoCal. I may have heard snippets of these stories before, but there’s nothing like getting to ask follow-up questions to bring the moments home. I’m also constantly inspired by his creative drive. Damn-near every day, the man goes into his studio and works on a collage. At the end of the summer, he submitted a few to a bi-annual art show in Loma Linda (just down the road) and as everything is virtual, they’ve just put together an electronic catalog of all the artists’ work and will be printing a book at some point in the future with his work in it. The judge of the show called out two of his pieces (you can watch here. My dad’s are featured from 5:35 to 6) and there is a possible magazine article to come where he’s one of four other artists (out of dozens) featured in Inland Empire Magazine. Like I said, inspiring!

C) We’ve all three been lucky to maintain our Covid bubble in health and, while not wealthy, we’ve been wise enough to have enough pennies to work with—and seriously, where’re we gonna go and spend money anyway? Technology has been a thing to keep my friendships hopping. I’ve gotten very good at adding the number three to my Pacific Time clock for east coast and one hour for my Canada lady. Maybe I’ve gotten better at math? (no.)

So all in all, here we are moving toward the end of this confounding year. I know with a fair amount of certainty that once I have any ability at hindsight, I may realize how each moment held a contraption of crazy that threatened to detonate my equilibrium if I’d thought about it all for too long. Starting with our over-land travel in January from NYC, followed by everyone going inside in March, and all shaded with the daily ass-crappery of the occupant of the white house and his clown-car of destructive jokers. I was also exploring intensely my role in our country’s and my own deep-seated racial bias—finally coming to the reality of how I can work to be honest in bettering my understanding and actions around Black lives in this country after watching George Floyd’s execution last May. And honestly, quite often I had (and still have) this instinct to just lie flat on the floor, arms outstretched to take a break. (This is actually a go-to move I have often entertained in my head, and while I’ve never actually done it, imagine my surprise when sitting in the theater in 2017 watching A Doll’s House, Part 2, Laurie Metcalfe did exactly that. It was a kinship moment.)

As we go into this season, I’m definitely taking a moment to appreciate/accept what’s around me. The good, the bad, the otherwise. Also to spread what I can spare around a little. Not being able to show up in person to donate time, means a virtual give is the way to go. Feeding America is my choice. Also getting some denomination of grocery store gift cards to give out to the unhoused folks that are in Redlands. And to all of you, please have a most wonderful time this week and here’s to finding just the right amount of joy and gravity as we roll toward 2021!

Hello, and welcome to another week of wackiness in the land of alternate realities. I was pretty happy to have moved into this last seven days when I could give the refresh app on my news sites a rest from checking election results like I was a day trader. And while last Saturday morning offered up a very welcome result, it also brought a piece of comedy gold that was so absurd it became the very definition of the old saying “comedy is tragedy plus time.” Whoever it was who actually said that first, very much got it right when it came to Rudy Giuliani and his minions of manic muckfuckers. Behold the stand-up routine, er, press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping last Saturday morning.

Zack Bornstein wrote on Twitter, “I could write jokes for 800 years and I’d never think of something funnier than Trump booking the Four Seasons for his big presser, and it turning out to be the Four Seasons Total Landscaping parking lot between a dildo store and a crematorium.” Oh, and it was also revealed that the first person called to the podium was Daryl Brooks, a political gadfly and convicted sex offender from New Jersey. Plus, the election results were called for Joe Biden while Giuliani was speaking (please watch the 1 minute clip. It’s classic tragedy+comedy). Ok, that is all.

But wait. People, I can’t seem to stop here: There was the brilliant follow-up by Four Seasons Total Landscaping to market and sell t-shirts reading “Make America Rake Again” and “Lawn and Order” (they sell masks with those quips too, so you know they’re on the right side of the COVID debate). Santa and his elves will be very busy delivering those for a 2020 Christmas haul. So, truly, that’s all I have about that right now.

Alright, maybe one more thing: the sense that to watch Giuliani spin so close to the edge of sanity on that clip is to wonder about when a situation does cross a line into comedy and when it just stays sad. Obviously that depends on the person watching. I’m usually someone who is really uncomfortable watching people lose—except for last week when I was beyond gleeful about Trump losing, which has as much to do with his streak of mean as with my relief that we don’t have to live with his damaging, dangerous incompetence for four more years. But when it comes to things like sports, spelling bees, bake-offs, that kind of thing, I get squirmy with sadness for the people not winning. Possibly being an only child means I didn’t really strengthen the whole competitive muscle that gets exercised with siblings. But yet, the actuality that almost half the country pretty much lost and that they do not believe the same things I do on a fairly consistent level is jarring, is it not? This is more than a winner/loser situation. This is an I’m right/you’re wrong ideology that over 70 million humans in the US seem to be hewing toward—and this number counts for whatever side of the divide you stand on.

My friend Windy shared a podcast Why Is This Happening where the host Chris Hayes talks to Vox writer David Roberts about the partisan divide. It’s a really good listen and the analogy that it’s as if the Left and the Right got a divorce and the Left ended up with custody of the facts is truly interesting. Chris actually says it best: “…everyone’s got confirmation bias, … we’re all doing that. But in the divorce, one side got the actual institutions that do a pretty good job of producing knowledge, and the other side didn’t get any of them.” To which David adds, “Yes, and the right created a sort of simulacrum of it that sort of apes the gestures and the tone. If you look at the stuff coming out of right-wing think tanks, it looks and even sort of sounds like actual inquiry, but it’s not the same thing. It’s like you’re acting it out without the spirit of it.” Then—and to me most indicative of now—Chris delivers the zinger: “I think it’s important for people to recognize, … that a professor on my show making some point about their social science research sounds to someone on the other side of this epistemic divide the way that Pat Robertson spouting off sounds to me. It’s just like, ‘Yeah, I’m not buying it. You’re Pat Robertson.'” Which is then summed up: David: “Right, and they’ve been trained now to offer zero deference anymore. The fact that it’s a professor, an ostensible expert who’s ostensibly done research, just carries no weight at all on the right at all anymore. Zero. So the only criteria by which they are judging what that professor is saying is, ‘Is this congenial to my identity? To my priors?’ That’s the only sort of epistemic criteria left, and it’s not even really epistemic.”

Whew, that in a nutshell is a lot of stubborn to hold onto. So what is to come? For the most part, I do love me some comedy, and often do find it’s good to laugh to keep from crying, but I don’t know how much more of that is going to happen before we need to get on with it. As we sail off into the next, I do think that there’s a course corrective into some smoother political waters that will be much more serious. And I don’t take for granted it will be choppy for a good little while. I hope some of the intense hand-wringing (we’ll never get anything done. we all can’t get along. whatever are we going to do?) will be settled as the new administration takes office. Obviously time will tell. I know I’ve learned to be a hulluva lot more alert to getting involved and doing what I can to keep things rolling decently. So away we go. And in the meantime, banana peels.