In Times Like These
Someone asks, "Where are the poets?" and part of me just wants to hide. Perhaps this is why I hate calling myself a writer. Though, also, this is probably why I am a writer as well. That terrifying call to witness, to reckon, to reach out beyond myself. I always feel unworthy of it, and yet I find myself constantly at the blank page.
Listen, I don't know what to say now. What combination of humor, rage, wisdom, wit will comfort you, me? Is comfort even something we have a right to, as some of us continue to live and thrive in a country that still keeps asylum-seeking families in detention centers at the southern border and keeps in power leaders that continually lie to our faces and manifests cruelty and corruption as the only reliable governing principles?
When you say this is going to be a defining moment for my children's generation, what do you mean? This time sheltering in the comforts of our home, but without the analgesic of old routines? Or the conflagrations at the fault lines of all our inequalities? I'm more interested and anxious over the moments that will proceed from this and what they will reveal about the actual value of human life when it's up against profits, concentrated power, and the weight of this nation's contrived innocence.
For months before this pandemic, I had been fighting a feeling of dread. An almost daily out-of-body experience as I walked down the subway steps with my three-year-old and imagined tripping and falling with him. Every pause at the corner was a potential car jumping a curb and plowing through us while we waited for the light. Every excursion beyond our apartment was the elevator free-falling as soon as he has pressed his beloved buttons. Sometimes I'd lose sight of my 8-year-old in the playground. He wouldn't be in his usual spots, and my panic would rise like a familiar song I was desperate to remember. I know this existential dread is common to many parents. It is simply a foul consequence of giving birth to your children's mortality. Mostly I ignore it because what else could I do?
But I want to be bitter about it. Like I want to be bitter about living through times like these. Having been told my whole life that I was lucky to have survived and escaped the ravages of the Khmer Rouge and implicitly that I needed to earn back my good fortune as an American citizen, I'd like to say I am wholly unsatisfied with this outcome. Is this the world I must vouchsafe to my children? These multiple, inscrutable worlds layered together? This is a world where our ties and responsibilities to each other are invisible and people can blithely engage in a moral sleight-of-hand to value the stock market over people and sort all of us into categories of worth and un-worth. This same world demands to know where the artists are, where the leaders are, where is the justice, and what is impeding its progress. It coexists with a world that never lifts a finger. One that makes room for hate crimes and common ground with racists, misogynists, and fascists. One that fears the unknown. One that rests on the labor and oppression of someone else. And also, one that makes space for art, abundance, and love. One where the sun rises every morning. One where the robins are returning, the trees are budding, and people are dying. And also and also and also. . .
People die all the time. I, and my children, and everyone I know will die too, and I want to be bitter about it. Bitter and inelegant and unwise and uncomforting. I want to transmit that bitterness like the smell of freshly cut grass that seeps in through the car window. Because maybe life has been too sweet, or maybe these moments are unaccountable to anything, and maybe I don't owe anyone a damn thing.
Listen, I don't know what to say now. What combination of humor, rage, wisdom, wit will comfort you, me? Is comfort even something we have a right to, as some of us continue to live and thrive in a country that still keeps asylum-seeking families in detention centers at the southern border and keeps in power leaders that continually lie to our faces and manifests cruelty and corruption as the only reliable governing principles?
When you say this is going to be a defining moment for my children's generation, what do you mean? This time sheltering in the comforts of our home, but without the analgesic of old routines? Or the conflagrations at the fault lines of all our inequalities? I'm more interested and anxious over the moments that will proceed from this and what they will reveal about the actual value of human life when it's up against profits, concentrated power, and the weight of this nation's contrived innocence.
For months before this pandemic, I had been fighting a feeling of dread. An almost daily out-of-body experience as I walked down the subway steps with my three-year-old and imagined tripping and falling with him. Every pause at the corner was a potential car jumping a curb and plowing through us while we waited for the light. Every excursion beyond our apartment was the elevator free-falling as soon as he has pressed his beloved buttons. Sometimes I'd lose sight of my 8-year-old in the playground. He wouldn't be in his usual spots, and my panic would rise like a familiar song I was desperate to remember. I know this existential dread is common to many parents. It is simply a foul consequence of giving birth to your children's mortality. Mostly I ignore it because what else could I do?
But I want to be bitter about it. Like I want to be bitter about living through times like these. Having been told my whole life that I was lucky to have survived and escaped the ravages of the Khmer Rouge and implicitly that I needed to earn back my good fortune as an American citizen, I'd like to say I am wholly unsatisfied with this outcome. Is this the world I must vouchsafe to my children? These multiple, inscrutable worlds layered together? This is a world where our ties and responsibilities to each other are invisible and people can blithely engage in a moral sleight-of-hand to value the stock market over people and sort all of us into categories of worth and un-worth. This same world demands to know where the artists are, where the leaders are, where is the justice, and what is impeding its progress. It coexists with a world that never lifts a finger. One that makes room for hate crimes and common ground with racists, misogynists, and fascists. One that fears the unknown. One that rests on the labor and oppression of someone else. And also, one that makes space for art, abundance, and love. One where the sun rises every morning. One where the robins are returning, the trees are budding, and people are dying. And also and also and also. . .
People die all the time. I, and my children, and everyone I know will die too, and I want to be bitter about it. Bitter and inelegant and unwise and uncomforting. I want to transmit that bitterness like the smell of freshly cut grass that seeps in through the car window. Because maybe life has been too sweet, or maybe these moments are unaccountable to anything, and maybe I don't owe anyone a damn thing.
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