On the long arc of change, seeking the incredible quiet, and looking for more ways to say no
April 11, 2024 and April 12, 2024
Dear Eva,
Tomorrow is your birthday! Eva Day! I’m so happy that I get to be a part of it, both in these letters and in getting to chat with you on what I hope will be a lovely long walk. (Speaking of which, I often marvel at how the terrain on a couple of loops through my neighborhood completely reminds me of you and our phone walks. It seems counterintuitive that a landscape that is so familiar and close to home evokes thoughts of someone - you! - who has only been to this fair city a handful of times. Sometimes, as I stroll through certain spots along the path, I can even recall particular conversations we had as I passed a certain house or tree. The mind is mysterious!)
I have been reflecting on your revised metaphors from last week’s letter. The shedding of coats, scraping the bottom of the barrel. (Another sidenote: I just started reading the January 2020 letter that was the source of the coat-shedding metaphor and this quote about knocked me off my feet, “I have no idea what 2020 holds, but I know the first two days of it have been quite lovely.”) Back to the metaphors. I am fascinated by your recognition that there is a depletion of energy that happens for you when things are changing in some significant way. Does the difference in how you feel during this round of changes relate to feeling like you have more agency and options? As in, things are changing, and you can let them change, and even find your own ways of changing them? Whatever it is and however it feels to you as you experience it, I’m so happy for you about all of the ways you have gifted yourself a new way of being in the world. The bubble wrap statue of your former self was such a stunning visual. I wanted to stand up and cheer as I read it. Thank goodness for those blessed cracks! Let her rip, I say! Having spent much of my life feeling a similar desire to seem put-together and composed at all times, I find that instinct quite dull these days. Better that we all fall apart, Ross Gay style.
Lately I have found myself feeling unusual levels of angst after hearing certain types of news stories. Typing that sentence, I realize it sounds like a very Captain Obvious (and Captain Cliche) thing to say. But I am talking about something that, for me, is different than run-of-the-mill disillusionment with all the ways the world is crumbling. There is a certain kind of story that triggers it. The kind of story (and there are many flavors) that relates to some way in which technology has exponentially intensified so much of the dark sides of humanity. One night this week it was a chapter in Growing Up in Public about the ways kids now are forced to learn and absorb a set of highly complex social rules about what is and isn’t “allowed” to be shared online and to whom and how. Another was the mere headline that “Teen Girls Confront an Epidemic of Deepfake Nudes in Schools.” I didn’t have to even read a word of the article to be gutted by it. I am utterly convinced that humans were not meant to have this much information about other humans, or to be so easily connected to so much of the world’s population. All of the friction we no longer have that made communication (both one-to-one and one-to-many) so much slicker is turning out to have been a critical piece to what made things work in society as well as they did. I start to really want to curl into a ball on the floor when I think about the ways AI is and will only exacerbate this. It may be time for me to revisit Jenny Odell’s work and think anew about ways to resist this way of living. At this point I am feeling inclined to really test the boundaries of how much one can withdraw from society while remaining fully engaged in the world.
Another way of saying this is, I am looking for more ways to say No. This has me thinking about a podcast interview I heard this morning where the psychiatrist said “No always comes with costs.” What a simple but profound little truth! It has echoes of You are free to do whatever you want. You need only face the consequences, but it is more specific. Acknowledging that even our most important and life-giving No’s will have costs associated helps lessen the blow when we feel those consequences. That same psychiatrist went on to talk about how sometimes we have to work toward No, maybe even setting a goal to be closer to No in a few months' time. This really strikes me as a beautiful way of thinking about the long arc of change that we are both on. It may take time for each of us to throw away the empty barrels we are scraping, but we are gradually moving closer to it.
This morning I went for a swim again (perhaps a new Friday morning ritual), and I noticed that the cold shock on my skin took a full lap and a half to wear off. Paying attention to the lingering discomfort made it more palatable. It was steadying to know that my body would eventually acclimate even when the unsettling part lasted longer than usual. Might this be instructive when it comes to enduring the costs of our biggest No’s? Keep swimming!
Happy birthday, my dear friend! I can’t wait to hear your voice in just 90 minutes!
Yours,
Sarah
Friday April 12 2024
Dear Sarah,
Today is my birthday! I know you know this! Stating it for the letter-record! I wonder if I had any Friday birthdays during our initial letter run? Did you? One of us must have?
I am having a lovely relaxed day — I talked to my mother, and went for a nice run, and talked with YOU, and ate chocolate, and took a nice shower — and now I am writing to you! I am thinking about dusting off the listicle format for today’s letter just for fun!
1. Within the last six months or so, I was eating a Trader Joe’s version of some health food crackers I kind of like (important that I do not even love these crackers) (real brand = Mary’s Gone Crackers, a name I like even less than the crackers) and I chipped one of my lower front teeth. These crackers are a stiff, incredibly crunchy amalgam of toasted quinoa and other grains, i.e. their key ingredient is pebbles. Then the other day I was eating the NAME BRAND Mary’s crackers and guess what — I chipped the same tooth some more! My bottom teeth are already a little ragged, but still, I did not desire to keep chipping my tooth! This doesn’t mean I’ve yet thrown away the bag of offending crackers! I hate to discard edible food even if we’re talking about 3-dollar crackers versus a potential dental work job that will cost AT LEAST 3 dollars… if not a bit more than that. No more pebble snacks for this 42-year-old lady!
2. Earlier this week I went to my favorite pizza place in the Mission (Arizmendi) where I like to get a slice of pizza when I am in town. Typically I might go there a few times a week. The people who work there had come to recognize me due to my pizza slice commitment. I hadn’t been there in a few months — I think the last time I would have gotten a slice would have been in November? — but when I ordered this week the person working the cash register picked up like no time at all had passed, and only said Remind me of your name again? with smile of recognition for me. I love to eat pizza and to be recognized for my love!
3. I have been feeling easeful in a new kind of way lately. I think I am letting fall away some measure of the people-pleasing qualities that have previously been fundamental to my being. I am trying to please myself these days! I am doing what is right for me — and this doesn’t mean being unkind or rude to anyone else — I’m crossing that line out because it is the old people-pleaser in me talking! Some people might very well think I am being unkind or rude to them in the process of trying to please myself! — only approaching my activities from a lens of, Is this meaningful to me and my goals? Is this a use of time that flows in to support how I am centering myself and my goals? It feels good!
4. I have been thinking about the idea of centering self — centering myself — and centering my creative work and creative process in my life. I have been thinking about nurturing the relationship that I have with myself before I get into any other relationships. I’ve also been thinking about how we use the phrase self-centered as an epitome of a certain kind of person, one who we think is BAD. And maybe there are different ways of being self-centered. I stayed in Oakland last week and I went for runs around Lake Merritt, and there is a place in the sidewalk around the lake where the concrete is inlaid with a phrase applied in metal, SERVICE ABOVE SELF. Somehow this doesn’t seem quite right (no matter how hard that sidewalk was trying to convince me). I think perhaps it is impossible to show up in a full generosity of spirit without also being centered in oneself. I’m still figuring out exactly what it means for me, but I don’t think that we have to push the self aside in order to be a participant in our communities and the larger world.
5. I am going to find a sweet thing to eat tonight and I haven’t yet decided what it will be! Might be a slice of cake — and I have cookies and gummy bears and chocolate and beer right here where I am staying…
6. One thing that I loved about where I recently stayed in LA is that it was incredibly quiet. The walls and windows seemed to be exceptionally well-insulated. I got some of the best nights of sleep I’ve had all year while staying there — sleeping right through the night for a number of nights in a row! This is atypical for me these days! Back in SF where I’m staying right now there is more ambient sound and I am thinking I’ll try sleeping with earplugs tonight. I find it uncomfortable to sleep with earplugs but maybe it will be worth it. I shall report back!
7. I feel very different today, and more generally “now,” than I felt on my birthday last year! I think I feel more grounded in myself and how I am approaching my life, even if I am still living as a nomad at the moment. I apply my feet to the ground every day, running or walking, and I keep thinking hard about bringing my time back around to the actions and activities that are most meaningful to me. And the simple passage of time changes me and my view on certain things. Certain feelings mellow with age, and continuing to live through and beyond the hard or complex things that have happened over time and in the past year show me that I can keep on living! Perhaps I am relaxing into being alive. I am forming my own flow and then I am going with it!
8. I loved to hear about your bee-bopping in your letter last week and in our conversation today, from poetry to a refreshed career path exploration — and something suddenly clicked into place for me around the musical term bebop — does it mean a kind of movement from flower to flower, pattern to pattern, note to note, a gathering of pollen from one flower, dropping it in another, dancing among all the flowers? — maybe not according to the formal etymology, but I think it works!
9. I LOVED to read about the University of Iowa women’s basketball team and their run to the Final Four! What a thrilling time — particularly with basketball in your blood! I am sorry that Iowa did not win it all but it would appear that they got as close as humanly possible! If I’m reading things correctly it also looks like Iowa went to the championship game last year but did not win. Painful, even as they are demonstrating their excellence year after year! I am thinking about the idea you mentioned about the psychology of sports fandom and “the rarity of witnessing humans earnestly trying their hardest at something, and the way in which that level of vulnerability naturally captivates” — and I am thinking about how I could never fully get into sports, for a variety of reasons, one of them being that I think I was not willing to go all in! (Let’s set aside for the moment any question of the presence or absence of a natural physical sporting talent in me!) I ran track in junior high and I do remember trying to run my fastest — but even then there was some part of me that feared tripping and falling, blowing it all in front of anyone else — some part of me held back from going all out. You have to be willing to go all out + all in to approach the possibility of transcendence! It is a delight to see people doing their sport all-out and to the best of their ability. And as far as the season closing — the nice thing is that basketball will be back around again before you know it! Soon… but not TOO soon. I feel a resonance with your wondering if the arts and sports are tied to similar yearnings within us — (I think) we all have a desire to be good at something, to feel a passion for something, to be a part of a community, to be seen and recognized for the things we love.
10. With that — I am going to make my way toward my slice of pizza and onward into my birthday evening!
Much love to you and happy weekend full of festivities!
Until soon, yours!
Eva
P.S. / 11. Today I said to myself, Go to the city where your hair looks good — and I stand by that advice!