How to Joy

Photo by @dtait_photography

If you’re like me, you feel like you’re swimming in an emotional soup, being lifted on crests of golden broth, then borne down again, snagged on some indistinct leafy green. It’s confusing and strange, and it has me on the verge of tears most days. Yesterday my family (me, my husband Dwaine, our two grown sons, and our older son’s partner) were out on the water, taking turns playing with Dwaine’s new toy: a wing foil setup. We walked down from our home and set off from the boathouse at the bottom of our road. Those of us not foiling (or rather boarding—we’re still learning how to get up on the foil) could walk along the harbour and watch, calling out to the rider little encouragements and corrections. The sun was warm on our faces, though the season has turned to autumn and the temperatures are dropping. The light on the water was alive and glittering, and I noticed that the hills rising above the harbour, which is nestled between the mainland and peninsula, give the sky the shape of a giant god’s eye.

Standing there in my wetsuit on the path next to the water, dripping wet but warm from my efforts, I couldn’t help but feel humbled and grateful. It’s hard to believe we made it here sometimes—all of us. Where life feels kind of normal, and we are relatively free to move and enjoy our environs. The feeling I had yesterday can only be described as utter contentment. But there is also a very intense winding of my inner coils. A spring-like dis-ease that is nearly imperceptible except that it manifests itself in my body. The simultaneity of these conflicting sensations may be the most disconcerting part.

I have of late returned to an old habit of tension where I bite on the sides of my tongue. It’s kind of disgusting really and totally neurotic. It’s obsessive and subconscious, and even as I notice I’m doing it and attempt to relax my jaw and take a deep breath, it begins again. I cast about, looking for the source of this anxiety, but it’s buried so deeply that I can’t at first discern it. On the surface of my own life, there is calm. Peacefulness even. A happy recognition that at least in this moment, all is well. So what is causing me to feel like I might actually implode?

On Sunday I had a Zoom meet-up with three of my dearest friends in the world. We are spread across the globe in New Zealand, Vermont, Scotland, and Hawaii. These women, I have decided, must be a part of my soul family, because the way we support each other is like that—epic and total in each of our lives. We span over 30 years in age, and ethnically, we nearly cover the gamut. Our shared experience of working in a little school in the Swiss Alps many years ago links us; there we began a meditation circle…the four of us met every Tuesday evening for an hour, sometimes two. It was a delicious time of learning and growing into our spiritual selves, and we have nurtured those selves and each other for these many years since. Again after that Zoom meeting, I felt awash in gratitude and unafraid about what comes next, even though there are many unknowns. So why can’t I just be in that? Exist in the space where it feels like love wraps around me and where the decisions I have made buoy me up, along with my whānau?

Dwaine says I should cut out the social media. It is there that I am apprised daily of each new case where an unarmed African American man/woman/child is shot and killed by a police officer in the U.S. It is there where the reality-check I used to share with my U.S. History students is playing out with alarming accuracy. I used to teach in a wealthy prep school in the High Rockies, a little pocket of American privilege where whiteness is the norm and teachers are appreciated but treated like beloved house servants more than anything else. There I would teach about how America has never been “great” if you were a woman or a minority, and certainly not if you were poor. And I would teach about the bubbling morass of racial tension that is brewing beyond the lovely vistas of the “American dream” narrative. I remember saying, before Trump was elected, that I couldn’t imagine what it might be that could tip the scales, but that I believed civil war was not out of the question. The students looked at me like I was crazy. Wild brown lady teaching liberal craziness to the wrong crowd. And then it began…

Of course it didn’t begin with Trump. It was always there. What I mean is the unraveling. That’s what began. The unraveling of the tight corset that was containing America’s nasty rolls of elitist, classist, racist, xenophobic sentiment. That it was predictable is of no comfort. My mom and dad live there. My brother and his beautiful family. Dwaine’s family and so many of our friends. The metaphor for us emigrating can’t be jumping a sinking ship, because I can’t have that ship sinking and quite frankly, neither can the rest of the world. For all its contradictions, the U.S. is a kind of rock upon which we depend. Economically. Politically. Even socially. The world can handle a hiccup. One ridiculous president in a long line of contradictory and questionable but at least sensible-sounding ones. But America unraveling? Its seams coming undone and letting spill its unruly corpus of lies and corruption and, quite frankly, hate? We don’t know what to do with that.

I don’t know what to do with that. It’s not like I thought it would truly right itself…not in my lifetime. I mean, I left after all. And how can I even consider just shutting it out? Turning a blind eye? What do I owe my self? And what do I owe the world? I always come back to the fact that I am, in every legitimate sense of the word, serving my community. The one in which I live now and which has embraced me with kindness. Here in New Zealand, I give myself every day to youth who have been abandoned by almost everyone; I teach them, though they don’t and can’t begin to see the value of what I am offering them. They are not shy about expressing this either. But you all know about this.

My resolve is to just keep doing the best that I can because it is all I have and therefore enough. I haven’t abandoned that belief. But it doesn’t always convince the emotional body. I can feel even in my physical body that not all of my layers are talking to each other. While I can assess and make sense of things on an intellectual level, there are still my emotional self, my physical body, to convince. And I write this one anticipating the closure, a crescendo that might be reached as has happened in so many of my blog posts. They just arrive, and I feel a sense of relief as, I know, my readers do. Yes, it is all worthwhile. There is meaning here, even if I have to create it myself. We’re going to be okay.

As I sift through it all, there is, first and foremost, the leaving. The simple fact that I have left America for good. Not that I’ll never go back there, but I will never live there again. And for that I must turn to James Baldwin, whose discourse often offers up the answers to my questions. Here is what he says on the subject: “I think that it is a spiritual disaster to pretend that one doesn’t love one’s country. You may disapprove of it, you may be forced to leave it, you may live your whole life as a battle, yet I don’t think you can escape it… If you try to pretend you don’t see the immediate reality that formed you I think you’ll go blind.”

Yes, that’s a truth that calms the swishing a bit; I throw an arm up over the top of a floating crust of bread and consider. I have chosen to live apart from my roots. That is a very straightforward fact. I’m able to draw in a stuttering breath. Even to say it has a calming effect. I do love America. It is where my roots are. Leaving doesn’t negate that, nor does it mean I won’t continue to struggle with the ways America disappoints me. Okay. Okay. I can be here, where my heart and my children have chosen to be, and I can love the place and people that grew me. These are not mutually exclusive sentiments.

I can keep writing and I can keep living. There is guilt, yes. But there was also guilt when I was living in California. Or Colorado or Vermont. And that guilt was even more absurd, because it grew out of something that was completely arbitrary: the fact that I was not and never would be a black man or woman. Straight up. I typically never feared the cops. I didn’t anticipate, upon being pulled over, being abused or even murdered. That’s not to say it couldn’t happen. But whether or not my sense of safety was reflective of the reality, it did exist. And I functioned according to it. And yes, that is privilege. I suppose it is impossible to escape the guilt completely.

E.M. Forster once said, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” I quote him often because the question is so resonant, and I will sometimes add, “Indeed, and how do I know what I feel until I see what I say?” Admittedly, I am hoping for an answer as I type. I know what my feeling looks like: my face screwed up as I bite on the side of my tongue (very unattractive), tears, deer-in-headlights stillness. What I don’t know is how to define it. I suspect it has to do with the leaving. And with the uncertainty of my older son’s situation (loving a California girl who is currently on a 6-month visa to New Zealand). The way Covid seems to have forever altered the global landscape and our pathways along it. How as each problem is confronted a new one arises. People who refuse to take the vaccine (how can I be sure they’re wrong?), difficulties and delays in rolling out vaccinations, heightened racial tensions and greater socio-economic disparities. Yeah, as I type these things, my heart in my chest contracts. There it is again. I can’t deny it.

And I also can’t watch any more body-cam footage of people dying. There’s got to be a middle ground between hiding your head in the sand and over-exposing yourself to content that does nothing but send your heart skittering off its pace. Sit down and write, Kim. Sending your words and your truth into the world can be done from anywhere. And keep teaching those whom love has abandoned. Those kids need you. This is the injunction I breathe into my own living. But it can be tailored to just about anyone’s life. Keep making beautiful cakes that light up people’s special occasions and make them smile. Keep taking soil samples for study in the lab, so that we can better understand the impact of our practices on the earth and its water. Keep designing buildings for people to live in and in which they may conduct their businesses. Keep selling your vegetables at the farmers market, so that the people of your town can be nourished by the food you grow. Keep doing stand-up, so that the people will see the humour in what breaks them. So that we can all laugh and stay alive through the hurting.

What I’ve found is that one of the most important things to guard in this life is joy. It will not remove the grief. Of course it won’t. But there is always someone grieving while another is celebrating. There is always someone thanking god for a small miracle, while another is lamenting a loss. Thank goodness. That is what life is like. Like in Bruegel’s painting of The Fall of Icarus, which has already been written about more beautifully than I will ever write anything, by W.H. Auden himself (in his poem “Musee Des Beaux Arts”). Auden said, “About suffering they were never wrong, / The old Masters: how well they understood / Its human position: how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.” In Bruegel’s painting, a scene is presented—a farmer plodding along, plowing his field behind a horse; a tall ship on the sea, sails full of air; a village shimmering in the distance. And there, almost ‘out of frame”: a pair of white legs disappearing into the ocean, the last glimpse of Icarus, having tumbled from the sky with his homemade wings aflame.

I can’t live all of the stories at once. And I certainly can’t suffer for them all. That would be the end of me (and my tongue). I am not a lawmaker, but I can push for change in my writing. Perhaps the lawmakers will heed the call of the artists and historians to shift policy. I can also contribute to the collective joy that must exist in the world if we are all to stay afloat on this chaotic bisque. If my actions are contributing to the general joy and not detracting from it, then I’m going to call it good. That is my best, and I give it willingly. What is your best? It’s not a challenge. I’m certainly in no position to challenge anyone. It’s an invitation…to realise what you can do (instead of fighting, fleeing, or freezing, as is our wont in situations this frightening). In the meantime, I’m leaving social media for a bit. I will still post the links to my blogposts, because I know that’s where most of my readers come from. But no more scrolling. My heart is too heavy. My inner springs wound up too tight.

May we find the ways to create and spread joy. May we know joy in our own lives. And may we protect the joy of others with our love, our conviction, and most of all, our actions.

Wing foiling. This isn’t one of us (haha), but here it is in case you were wondering. : )

Losing Sleep

photo: @dtait_photography

I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately…not gonna lie. And feeling ill at ease. Not out of the ordinary, all things considered, I suppose, but there are times when I am better at shaking it off. I feel nervous about what’s happening in the U.S., even though I am miles and miles away. I feel anxious that my son is there, not to mention all of my extended family and much of my husband’s. While the political landscape seems to be imploding (it might be more accurate to say the Republican party is imploding, but we all know it will affect the entire country and its democracy)—while all this is happening, I am watching the news of hospital after hospital filling up with patients who have Covid (and losing staff because they, too, are falling ill). I am also watching people continue to deny the validity of the virus itself. It often takes rock bottom for those people who resist changing to take note of the destructive nature of their habits/beliefs, but how many people have to die before the people who are resisting these realities hit their rock bottom and change their tune?

I recently had a friend (a DEAR friend, by the way, one I respect and adore and in whose kindness I would rest my soul) send me a quote from a fitness expert/public figure. Here’s what it said: “The infection to survival rate for COVID is 99.96%. That means the public have been tricked into giving their freedom, liberties, and rights away for a 0.04% chance that they won’t die.” So I’m going to ignore the grammar here and assume what he’s saying is that people are being asked to wear masks and cease gathering indoors with people not in their immediate bubbles and essentially stop engaging in activities that would perpetuate and accelerate the spread of the virus on the 0.04% chance that such behaviour should kill them. First of all, I’m no statistician, but I can tell you that when it’s you, it’s 100% every time. “Statistics, shmatistics,” a very wise friend once said to me. It doesn’t matter if the odds of dying from a disease are 0.04% or 99%, if it’s your mother or father or, God forbid, your child, it’s 100% for you, and that’s that. Also, no one is being asked to do anything forever. And no one is being asked to “give up their freedom.” They are being asked to behave responsibly…to protect those people (the elderly, the immunocompromised, etc.) for whom the chances of dying from this disease are far greater than 0.04%. They are being asked to think like a community. Like a tribe. I know that most people of European descent are so far removed from their roots that they have no memory (epigenetic or otherwise) of being part of a tribe, but maybe it’s time for all of us to re-learn. To remember, as it were, how to care about others as much as we do about ourselves. To be the people.

What we have with this quote is someone who thinks he lives in a vacuum. You don’t. We don’t. What we have here is a voice of privilege. If you are privileged (and many of us are), it’s not your fault. You are lucky. Blessed. But we have a responsibility to think about the underprivileged among us. Like those who live in a 700 square foot house with 9 family members (for my metric system readers, that’s about 65 square metres for 10 people). Yes, I have a former student, let’s call her Leticia, doing this in Watsonville, and her situation is typical in her neighbourhood. Of those 10 family members, four are “essential workers.” One cares for the elderly in a home—God forbid they should contract the virus. One is out bagging groceries and two are picking fruit so that we can continue to have our organic berries (delivered to our homes by another essential worker, because we can afford the delivery fees and appropriate tip) in our breakfast as the pandemic rages beyond our doors.

When someone in Leticia’s household gets ill, there is no isolating. They will be on top of each other, as they always are, and if Abuela (Grandmother) gets sick, there may or may not be room at the hospital for her to receive care (because so many people are ‘exercising their rights’ in California—to gather, to ditch the mask, to disregard public health guidelines—and have fallen ill with Covid-19). Not to mention the fact that no one in the house has health insurance. Who will pay if one of them does need care? And will they be first served if they are in line among countless others with varying abilities to pay, with a range of skin colours, with and without “papers” to be in the country at all? While the privileged exercise their ‘right’ to resist wearing a mask, Leticia’s family is left vulnerable and naked. They have lost one uncle so far. They brace themselves for the next wave of Covid in the wake of all those who wouldn’t be ‘controlled’ so much as to miss a single holiday with loved ones, all the while openly and shamelessly risking the lives of people like Leticia and her loved ones.

I can’t say that the voice of privilege, though it is sometimes mine, is one I can listen to right now…or perhaps ever again. Once you have seen your privilege, you can’t unsee it. But if you haven’t yet seen it, now, when so much is on the line, might be a good time. When hospitals threaten to overflow with patients so that even those with issues unrelated to Covid won’t be treated—that’s a good time. And the disparity between poverty and wealth is the bottom line. Yes, of course race is a factor—our broken systems have perpetuated an incredibly inequitable “playing field,” that is no secret. And it is for this reason that the lines of poverty and wealth are so frequently and clearly drawn along the lines of race in our communities. And yes, the poor are suffering disproportionately from shut-downs, too. Restaurant staff and retail workers—they’re out of jobs, too, and many of them don’t have a savings to fall back on. They are starting to go hungry. Until those with greater positions of privilege start thinking about someone other than themselves, about something greater than their own convenience and “rights,” this won’t change.

So yes, I’m losing sleep. I watch the news and see that people who can’t stand the thought of losing the support of the 70+ million constituents who actually cast their vote to keep Trump are STILL pretending that Trump was robbed in the election that so clearly ended his term in office. They know that no change can come of their actions, but they want to come out the other side with the support of that rabble. I get it, and yet the unrest, the actual violence, that is being fomented by its continuation is a cost I can’t get my head around willingly accruing. And I’m not there. Maybe that is actually worse. Maybe if I was there it would be like the frog in the pot of boiling water thing—I wouldn’t feel the heat as it rises. But here in New Zealand, the virus continues to be under control not just because of level-headed, compassionate leadership but also because of a citizenry that is capable of thinking about their community. Because of people who don’t see participating in protecting the vulnerable as a violation of their rights. Why does this not speak to more Americans? I know we’re an island country, so the U.S. probably couldn’t achieve the total eradication of community cases of Covid the way New Zealand has, but they could be SO, SO much closer.

And when I think about the bigger picture, I am physically sickened. It’s a purge really. And it’s already well underway. 350,000+ people that were just not valued enough to protect. If you bristle at this, if it makes you angry because you lost a loved one, you SHOULD bristle at it. We know too much now. We know better. To say that Covid is a hoax, a non-threat, a 0.04% chance of dying (such a woefully misleading and limited statistic) in the face of even one of those lost people is profoundly disrespectful. To say it to the family of even one person who lost his/her fight with this disease—it’s cruel. I don’t know what’s happening in the U.S., but it scares me. I resolve not to watch American news, not to keep such close tabs on American politics and public health—but I can’t help it. I love my family and friends there. I want to see my parents and my brother again…in their homes. I want my son and his partner to make it out of there unscathed. And I want them all to be safe in the interim.

I’ve stopped using Melatonin to help me sleep. One shouldn’t cultivate such a dependence (it’s the same reason I quit caffeine). Now I’m on to tonics of chamomile and Californian poppy. I keep breathing, and I keep living. I keep in touch with family and friends, and I keep writing. My blog followers probably think I have a split personality—one minute a hopeful, uplifting message, the next a despondent, woeful rant. But that’s how it is right now. We’re all over the place. We’re allowed to be. I can only embrace all the feels, pleasant and painful. That’s what being human is like, especially during a crisis. These parts of me, they’re not the ALL of me. They’re my parts. And they all matter. Here’s hoping and praying that the tribe of America can embrace all its parts. That people can step outside of themselves for enough of a moment to see those less fortunate than themselves. Here’s hoping and praying that we can take care of each other by making some changes in our lives, even changes that constitute restriction. It’s only for now. It’s for the people.