WE CANNOT AFFORD TO FLAKE ANYMORE

We have to show up for each other. There is no other way out of this.

Another week. Another shitshow. This week's newsletter is about how we survive. Also I have just uploaded a bunch of 'seconds' poems that are on the site for $10 each if you are into that sort of thing. The mistake are tiny. Unlike the government's.

This week has felt like the world is tilting so far you think it may fall off its axis. The center is not holding and may have already given way. The fault lines we once thought were quirks in the landscape of our society, have split open beneath our feet.

Every day the news comes in angry waves; cresting, breaking, retreating, and then the next one hits. Your fingers curl around a ceramic mug that has gone cold, wondering what exactly you are supposed to do with another day like this, another day where the air is toxic with grief and uncertainty.

You don't particularly want to reach out. This is the truth. You think, instead, of burrowing. There is a particular seduction to solitude in times of crisis, an attractive logic to pulling the covers over your head, scrolling and waiting for history to correct itself. To disengage is easier in almost every way.

But then there is the text message, the familiar name glowing on the screen. Want to grab a drink? And you remember, almost reluctantly, that other people exist. That your sadness is not singular.

So you go. Not because you particularly feel like it but because some part of you knows that you should. You meet at the bar where the music is too loud, where the bartender has memorized your usual. Or maybe you go to someone’s apartment, sit on a secondhand sofa that sinks in the middle, pass around a bottle of something strong, something that burns going down but makes you feel, at least temporarily, human again.

The conversations do not begin with depth or tragedy. They rarely do. There is a rhythm to these things, a ritual. You complain about the traffic, about your boss, ask about loved ones. You talk about the movie you just watched, the book you are halfway through but not quite committed to finishing. The words maybe surface-level, but that is beside the point. The point is the presence. The point is the shared air, the way your shoulders relax in increments, the way laughter acts as a surprise and a relief.

Someone says something true. Something small, maybe, something about how exhausting it is to exist in this moment. And you all empty your lungs of breath in shared knowing and solidarity.

This week my partner and I met up with four friends, something we planned a few weeks back, and during the course of dinner and drinks we shared about the real fears and impacts of this week America's rapid descent to fascism. The mandates on trans folk that affect our daughter, the revisiting of Obergefell v. Hodges that affects our friend's marriage, the raft of deportations and adjustments that affect my family's status in America. These are the manifestations of some of our worst fears.

We asked each other about what was giving us hope. The answers varied from the practical, the political and the spiritual. They contained things both big and small. Vulnerable people unashamed to reveal themselves as much.

The great temptation when the world gets particularly turbulent, which is to say, when the ambient dread level spikes past its usual hum and becomes a kind of all-consuming white noise that makes it harder to move through daily life in a way that feels remotely normal, is to start canceling plans. Not necessarily on purpose, not in a malicious or overtly avoidant way, but in this passive, creeping way that starts with postponing something—too much going on right now, sorry sorry let’s reschedule—and then, after a few cycles of this, just kind of fades into an unspoken agreement that no one is actually going to follow up.

It was bad before COVID. Now it is chronic. This is, obviously, a massive problem, and this is why…