Farewell, April

So, friends, here we are again, at the end of another month. The active panic has downshifted, replaced in part by a persistent, unpleasant uncertainty. Where are we going? We don't know. Turns out we never knew, but realizing how little is under our control is, to say the least, disarming.

I'm struck by how much content is flying around--how many times people I know and people I don't send or post something with the sentiment this helped me, maybe it'll help you. I hope we keep doing that for each other, long after this is over, whatever "this" is. 

Lately I've found solace in Zoom Zumba with strangers, Fiona Apple's new album Fetch the Boltcutters, and writing letters to people I've fallen out of touch with. Now seems as good a time as any to say hello.

Many people seemed to have cross a threshold this month. Some have moved more toward acceptance, an embracing of a slightly distorted version of normalcy. For others, there's been a sense of resignation, paralysis even. And if you're like me, there's been many other feelings, and an almost unstoppable journey fluctuating through many different brain states in a short amount of time.

I thought this newsletter would contain course offerings, but I am not there yet. I got a little Zoom burnt in the last week, and need some time to recenter after current classes before I unleash new ones. Until that happens, I'll be working with the ArtsCenter, posting students' pandemic writing on their blog. If you have any reflections that you'd like to share (even if you're not currently enrolled in a class), please send them along. They can be published with or without your name. The focus is putting together a collage, a statement about how we're feeling, how we're living right now. I'm sure you have thoughts. I would love to hear them.

I'll be back in a week or two, with some structured spaces for you to write and create stories in. Till then, take good care, of yourselves, of one another.

Best,
J.

If you've been here awhile, you've heard me talk about how brilliant Rebecca Solnit is. Her recent Guardian piece on hope is not to be missed. "I have found over and over that the proximity of death in shared calamity makes many people more urgently alive, less attached to the small things in life and more committed to the big ones, often including civil society or the common good."

Ready for more Solnit? Read A Paradise Built in Hell, which is about precisely what we are living through now: how humans react to disaster by creating their own community and utopias amid chaos. Local bookshops are still shipping books, and this is one worth buying and worth reading right now.