Unleashed and Flying

Writing Despite Everything

How can one seek long-needed rest and relaxation while heinous acts are being committed by the powers that be? It’s a paradox that does not sit well with me. I have lots ways of rationalizing this contradiction, but my brain and heart are aching. Like bitter pills, I make sure to witness what I can from a distance via posts of those closer to the source, whether it’s the growing evidence of unadulterated fascism or footage of the brutal abuse and killing of innocents; I write trying to process what seems unfathomable.

No Rapture, digital painting, 2003

Here is my apologia to impatient readers: I have had several incomplete essays stacked up for too long (two of them are almost cooked) but my writing schedule became increasingly disordered in the past month and I had to pause everything. In the midst of everything, the opportunity to leave town on an airplane (for the first time in 5 years) presented itself in an unexpected way. So here I am in a New Jersey basement, up way too early for this west coast body, writing what I can in this moment to ease my own impatience with my unfinished pieces. My inner clock will just have to adjust to a different time zone as I find my writer’s rhythm in the East Coast’s London Writer’s Hour.

As I was driven by my friend’s son-in-law, Vinnie, from Newark Airport to my friend’s apartment in Maywood, I was strangely soothed by the familiarity of signage. The nostalgia I felt was very unexpected: how many times over the years was I welcomed here by parents or friends, and successfully stewarded through the chaos of Jersey highways to a variety of comforts. Vinnie’s very contemporary car featured a big GPS screen in the dashboard. As I watched the screen smoothly untangle routes through complicated traffic, our animated conversation, rich with an accent of my childhood, delighted my ears.

Having sentimental feelings about New Jersey was definitely not something I had ever imagined about a place that I truly detested when I grew up there. My school years were not all bad, because I got mostly positive attention from teachers, but my memories of the years I lived in a conservative, white, Christian town are colored by a sense of tremendous alienation. We had just moved from a factory town in Maine where I had experienced intense anti-Semitism as a four-year old to another place where I felt like an outsider. I was darker than most of the other kids, and we didn’t go to church or temple. I couldn’t assimilate. Thankfully, by high school, the counter culture of the 60s had sprouted, and I found a few allies, non-conformists & questioners, who helped me feel less alone. I spent more time in the City and found many others who did not fit in where they grew up, folks who made art, who protested the war, and who were releasing their attachment to consumer culture. I was able to drop New Jersey like an ill-fitting polyester pants suit.

New Jersey has changed in some ways since I was a kid: while the names of the shopping malls have been regurgitated and rearranged and the loud and frantic plastic signage has been refurbished, the presence of ravenous capitalism on steroids is loud and clear, evident in the “pleasure palace” we passed on the highway, The American Dream .

When I took a long walk to the local shopping hub yesterday, I could see that the spectrum of color, religion, language, etc. is much wider and more intermixed than it was 50 years ago, and that gave me a sense of possibility. I am not here long enough to see what else is emerging from the cracks in the asphalt, but I know that possibilities exist everywhere, even where the polarizations of class, politics, and values seem dauntingly fixed.

The view from my cousin’s apartment in Hackensack 2/21/2024

When I awoke on the first morning of this East Coast visit, I could hear the gentle footsteps of my dear friend, Thalia, and her caregiver. I shared some stories about Thalia in an earlier post - we’ve now known each other for 45 years! Thalia is almost 91 years-old now, and recently became a widow after a 30+ year second marriage (hence, this unexpected journey). The last time we had seen each other in person was in 2018, when she helped me pack up my mom’s apartment after my mom’s death at age 100, so this is a very happy reunion. We are now both wild and wooly widows.

In Thalia’s NJ kitchen, 2/21/2024

Due to Thalia’s isolation and my own grieving time, we have been talking on the phone often, especially during Pandemic times. In 2016, she had moved with her husband from the San Diego area to live in an apartment in his daughter-in-law’s house in Maywood, New Jersey. Their long distance move, leaving a loving community and well-tended garden in southern California to unpack 3000 miles away, coincided with our much less dramatic move from Seattle to Tacoma. Both of us were navigating the challenge of creating new nests, but for Thalia, this process was more onerous. Thankfully her late husband has children (10 of them) from his first marriage who have been offering her support in this new chapter of her life.

Thalia and I are about to set off on an adventure to Miami Beach to have our own versions of fun, hanging out with our friend, Danny. We hope to taste and savor his many deep connections with the vibrant arts community there, and learn what socially engaged art means in that multi-cultural stew. It has been a long time since I was able to mix with other artists without worrying about my responsibilities as caregiver, so I am immensely grateful.

This fortuitous ability to travel was made possible by some complicated coordination of my son’s care. I had been solely responsible for him since his dad’s death. To support him while experiencing the roller coaster of his mental health struggles, I put together a team of healers that included online therapy, in-person mentoring, 12-step meetings, and more, but it was not enough to prevent his frequent periods of suicidal ideation. After recent repeated trips to the hospital to prevent self-harm, we both recognized that I was not offering sufficient support to keep him safe.

Thankfully, I learned about a therapeutic residence in Tacoma from a friend in our meditation group whose daughter is currently living there. My son qualified for Medicaid and received a referral from his case manager after his last visit to the hospital. He was very eager to move in so he could start a new chapter and be around a peer group.

Even though mental health care in the US is mostly broken, he is hopefully finding some functional support people in the midst of what he describes as a dysfunctional place. This program offers group therapy, one-on-one therapy, arts therapy, life skills building, sobriety support, and help with getting jobs and back to school. It also provides three meals per day and does medication management. Although it sounds good on paper, the reality of what he’s experiencing may be quite different. I am trusting in the universe that his journey will not crash and burn, and that he will find more grounding to reboot his life in my absence.

I’m grateful for the friends back in Tacoma who have made this beginning of my unleashing more possible. In this newly solo version of this life, I remain curious and eager to share and learn what I can. I want to gather the collective energy of healing and transforming what we are sitting in, while repairing the PTSD of the last few years. More soon…