En fuego

I was looking at my photos from a year ago. The basically went like this: Mexico City, Provincetown MA, Shanghai, Point Reyes CA, New York, NY, then my students winning the Academy Awards followed by another student having a movie premiere at Graumans Chinese Theater. This isn’t my normal May through August. Last year was really good. Suspiciously good — like, so good it made me think I was going to die soon, so life was giving me one last hurrah before the end. I know that’s not how life usually works — if anything it’s more like a kick in the balls when you’re already down. But that was just me looking for a dark cloud behind what appeared to be a silver lining.

But then there’s this year which, for me has been dull but not personally terrible. I’m super lucky — I love where I live, I still have my job and my health. My relationship is solid and I want for nothing. But it is dull. I’m sleeping a lot. I feel addicted to the news. I’m creatively dull. I have a million projects I could take on and I don’t want to do any of them. I look at the protests and I want to go but I don’t feel safe to do so. Not for any reason other than I’m over 50 and aware of how much risk that means for me. We did go to a candlelight vigil in the neighborhood this weekend. It was good to be out for that. The truth is, I’m aware that no matter what I do, it’s never going to be enough. The reason I’m giving voice to this is maybe others are feeling the same way. I don’t want nor expect to be relieved of my discomfort — my awareness of how I’ve benefitted from privilege. I’m just saying I’m feeling it.

I can’t concentrate. I don’t sleep during the night. I’m up at 4 and that’s it. I drink too much coffee. I refresh my browser. Sometimes I write for an hour or two. Sometimes I clean or work in the garden. Classes are over for the summer so what would normally be peak time for me to work on a new script or research or something else. Now it is just time spent thinking. Thinking about myself as a person, like what I bring to the world, I’d give myself a B-. I’m not terrible, I could do better. I’m sort of average.

I barely graduated from high school and my mom dragged my by my hair to get me into college. Now I teach at the graduate level and have a career as a writer. If it weren’t for my mom I don’t know where I’d be. Not here, that’s for sure.

I’ll get back to my year-by-year memory project soon enough. Also, Trump thought Finland was part of Russia.