Testify this

Day 9 musings.

This morning I found myself at odds with Andy, not because of different belief systems but different ways of holding onto those beliefs in times of external crisis. I had woken up at 3am tossing and turning because of the new administration. I wanted to vent a little in the morning, to share my outrage about the upcoming day’s events, this time RFK’s hearing in Congress. He, understandably, wanted nothing of it. What’s not an actual grift is political theater, he exclaimed, meant to suck up all our energy and attention, and I refuse to engage. They must have a plan, and I would rather wait and see how it pans out.

THat’s where our philosophies parted ways. Later I cooled down and realized what he meant, but at the time I thought: I don’t believe there is any kind of right-mind plan unfolding: I think it’s chaos for the sake of, a smash-and-grab approach to power and money from all the places politics and business collide. I watch the news updates with rapt attention because these people will have control over many aspects of my life for the next 4 years. And yet, there is almost nothing I can do about it. And here we arrive at his point. Why engage in the moment to moment drama?

I took myself into town this afternoon, hitting a few thrift shops to zone out and look for tshirts I could give to my nephew for him to screenprint. I want a few different versions of YOUALWAYSHAVEOPTIONS.COM, the campaign some abortion friends and I launched on election day last year. My 13-year old nephew recently started his own screenprinting business by pooling his savings to buy legitimate printing gear, including something called a speed dryer, and by designing a custom surf skate brand and logo himself. When it comes to starting businesses, SF teens are not fucking around.

Thrift is my gift, and I found a few perfect tees, a few athleisure layers for the cold mornings working from home, and a ridiculous sparkly fringe shirt for some other time. My brain de-frags while I paw through racks of secondhand items, and the real gems leap out off the rack as if moved by the holy ghost into my hands. Thrifting is therapeutic and easy, unlike many aspects of life right now.

From there I headed toward my third ever pole class, stopping at whole foods for a snack so I wouldn’t be hungry while gyrating on the pole like a clumsy baby giraffe. At the hot bar a Black man in what looked like a Black Panther beret made contact, first with a hello and then by asking how my year was going. I said something like oh, chaotic and he responded “mine is GREAT” with a confident and knowing closed-lipped smile. He mentioned kids and grandkids and holidays and that was great but now he was on the other side and everything was truly wonderful. I was still in my stew of national catastrophe and I couldn’t help but wonder if there was something about him being a Black man living in America that led him to chuckle at this moment in time, a moment where suddenly the government seems to be against almost everybody not just Black people, everybody feels persecuted threatened and under attack, and maybe he thinks to himself: this is nothing new, it’s just the way the world works. Now you feel it too. Or, maybe he really was just having a great start to his year.

He went on to compliment my bleached platinum hair, and while physical praise from an older man can’t help but make me feel hit on, I didn’t mind it. Turned out he was promoting his art show that would happen at some point in the year, and I was supposed to watch the local paper for the announcement to show up. Old systems, old chances that I’d find it. But he did tell me me his name and from the vitamin aisle I dictated it into my phone, sure that my swiss-cheese brain would never retain it. At least I know enough these days to capture the detail in my device before it slips out between pondering magnesium vs magnesium glyinate and touching my hair thinking about how long I can go before re-upping the bleach job and by then his name would have skittered away across the smooth linoleum floor, gone forever. I did need that compliment about my hair just then. I’ve spent weeks at home in work-pajamas and garden slippers, and it helped me feel a little bit more in my skin to have someone to see me as a woman, not just a body-less zoom zombie.

As I got in the car I saw that a helicopter had collided with a plane in Washington D.C. An incident with one in a million chances and yet, it happened just now. It seemed emblematic of our current reality: communications breakdowns, private and public interests, relying on technology almost smarter than us but not quite, and it ended in devastating breakdown and destruction. Even our nation’s capital can’t keep the airwaves straight anymore, and people almost certainly died as a result.

I ended the day with an outdoor shower, looking up to see Orion’s belt peeking around the roofline. Don’t forget, I told myself, we’re spinning on a rock in a vast and unknowable universe. The Congressional hearings, the ICE raids, the revoked passports - it all matters so much, and yet staring up at the stars through billows of steam it’s hard to say what matters at all.