It’s Wednesday September 9, 2020, and the sun didn’t come out in San Francisco. Actually, it didn’t come out in the Bay Area at all. Cars are driving around with their headlights on and I have all the same lights on that I have on at night. My neighbors lights are also on. I went outside and it’s cold, a weird, eerie, creepy cold that I don’t think I’ve felt before. It’s chilly not because it’s actually cold like a normal cold day, it’s cold like it should be a hot day except the sun is being blocked by a massive cloud of smoke so thick that the light can’t get through and the day is not warming up.
It’s my mom’s birthday. She’s in Santiago de Chile and I waited to get a hold of myself before calling her cause I didn’t wanna freak her out about the end times feeling particularly dramatic in SF today. Chile is barely dragging itself out of a Covid induced hole that has been battering the country for months. There is a critical referendum in October. Also – strikes, economic downturn, the whole thing.
My bestie lives in Herzliya, 8 miles outside of Tel Aviv. I video call her so I can show her the shitshow outside my window, but I also know that Israel is going through a deep moment of intensification of their own shitshow. Israel has never been an easy place, but for those of you who follow world news, you know that right now Netanyahu is acting out. My bestie, her partner and their teenage daughters have been going to protest in Jerusalem every Friday for weeks. So I don’t keep my friend on the phone for long cause I at least try to condense my whining/ freak out sessions to the bare minimum.
And the bare minimum is this: it is important to acknowledge the pain, to feel the fear, to worry about worrisome things, like the loss of NATURAL LIGHT to ecological collapse. But we can’t afford to dwell in those places. So what do we do instead? Well, I got up a bit before 8 am and have been working this morning. I have been reading the news, and sending messages to loved ones all over the globe telling them about what’s up here. Because there is something transformative in the act of sharing, and it makes it easier to have support from others. I sat at the altar, as always. Pulled a tarot card, so beautiful and filled with joy that it felt “wrong”. But in my experience the tarot is never wrong.
It’s true that my life right now is beautiful and filled with joy. I get to celebrate my mother’s birthday, at a distance, but celebrate nonetheless. I have so many friends in the Bay that I could literally spend the rest of the day calling them all. Actually, I may just do that. My phone has been filled with texts and calls from folks that are feeling confused, sad, terrified, angry… The best thing we can do right now is be together. We don’t know exactly how we’re gonna get through this, but we know we won’t do it alone. We will need each other, and not having all the answers right away has ALWAYS been the state of things for humans. It’s just that right now it’s slapping us on the face harder than it has since we can remember. Taking the next step together will then reveal the following one. And the following one. We will most definitely make it through. Se hace camino al andar. Don’t forget that.
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