Things I want to say that you may not like

2020 feels like some horrific competition between covid-19, systemic racism, and capitalism to see which can cause the most death and destruction. Many are unemployed, many are working overtime in hazardous conditions, many are sick or have been killed. Whatever is happening for you right now, I am here for you. I can only speak to my own experiences and feelings, and I don't know what it's like to live your life, so please don't take anything I write here as a judgment against you. We all have different circumstances and bodies. Some of us have more resources and privileges than others, so while we may share similar feelings of panic or uncertainty or anger or sadness, our individual experiences amidst a global crisis can be vastly different. From the murder hornets to the pointless, pantsless Zoom meetings, these are bizarre times. Do what you have to do to survive. I mean, don't go all murdery, and for fuck's sake do not inject or ingest any disinfectants, but otherwise do your thing. If you're baking like you're a contestant on the Great British Bakeoff, good for you. If you're eating cereal by the boxful, good for you. Life feels especially hard right now. Everyone struggles in some ways, but for some, the weight of their struggles is crushing, having been further compounded by structural inequalities. I think most people are just doing the best they can in a scary and stressful world. But those of us who are able must show up and help eliminate the unfair burdens of others. As a nation, we fail people in so many ways. We fail to provide everyone with food, housing, healthcare, education, equal rights. We have to do better. We have to take care of each other. That is the whole fucking point of being alive. 

I've spent a lot of time thinking about the kind of person I want to be in the world and it's this: radically empathetic and radically egalitarian. I want to fight injustice in the world and the ways in which I've unknowingly perpetuated and unfairly benefited from it. I know I have a long way to go and I will never actually arrive there, but I am trying to take steps in that direction every day. I'm going to make mistakes and stumble along the way. I'm an imperfect person. It's a long and involved process to recognize privilege and let go of problematic beliefs. But it's important and worthwhile work. At 38, I'm not the same person I was at 18 or 28. I hope I won't be the same person at 58 or 88 or however long I'm lucky enough to live. My own lived experience is such a small sliver of reality. And I want to know the full spectrum of what it means to be an earthling. That's impossible of course. I can never really know what it's like to live your life. But I want to know as much as I can about how others experience the world. That means listening without judgment. That means changing my mind when confronted with new information. It also means trying to do less harm. Unfortunately, I have done and will do harm in the world with my words and thoughts and actions. It's an unavoidable part of life. Even if I have the best intentions, I can still cause harm sometimes. And let's be honest, I don't always have the best intentions at all times. I mean, I want to. But I'm human and I've done and said things I'm not proud of. There are so many ways that my white/cishet/thin/able-bodied/economic privilege has obstructed my worldview, so many things I didn't know because I was able to grow up not having to know/live them. So please call me out when I fuck up. I want to spend my life learning and changing so I can know better and do better. 

So if you're here for the George videos and vacation photos, I hope you also stay for the antiracism and feminism and LGBTQ+ rights and socialism and veganism. If you're here for the joy, I hope you also stay for the sorrow. I'm not saying you have to believe all the same things I do. That's probably not ever going to happen. But let's have those conversations. Because we can't be true friends if we only share the surface level parts of ourselves. I am here for all of it. For all of you. Bring me your hopes and fears, failures and triumphs, grief and happiness. Let's talk about everything there is. None of us can do this alone. So let's do life together. We are all flawed. But we are remarkably resilient and have an amazing capacity for change. Let's change the fucking world from the inside out. 

If you're still reading this, thanks for being here. If you don't like swears or uncomfortable conversations, I'm sorry, I am not the robot for you. 

Lyric of the moment: "I don't want to get bitter. I want us to get better. I want us to be kinder. To ourselves and to each other..." ~Lilac "Porridge Radio"

Of restfulness and water

I was swimming in the gym pool. It was the closest I have ever come to actual swimming. Which, don't get me wrong, is still pretty far from what you would consider swimming. I'm no Michael Phelps or manatee, gliding through the water with grace and majesty and oneness with the sea. Approximately freestyle is how I think of it, though I'm sure serious swimmers would not consider it as such. But I was in flow in the water and it felt effortless. Time passed without my noticing it. I finally understood the appeal of swimming laps. I usually find swimming back and forth so boring, like I'm not going anywhere and there aren't even any dolphins here so what is the point? It was 5am, which is my favorite time to do everything because it's everyone else's favorite time to still be sleeping. So I get to have a whole lane (sometimes the whole pool) all to myself. There was one other person in the pool, a woman swimming back and forth seemingly forever. She was there when I started and still there when I left. She looked like she belonged there and I most definitely did not. But so what? I wasn't there to belong or accomplish or impress.

I was there because I wasn't running. I'm not running. I haven't been running. I am mostly ok with it. I don't know which of those things is more surprising. I miss it of course. I miss the feeling of running. I miss the way conversation easily flows when running, from the deeply personal to the absurdly funny to the state of everyone's bodily functions. But running hurts at the moment so I'm not doing it. It feels like tendinitis. The kind of thing my body will heal on its own with rest and time. I'm going to physical therapy and acupuncture and massage and doing my feldenkrais and going to the gym (which is not my favorite place but it is warm so I guess it's tolerable). But mostly I'm just resting and avoiding the movements that cause pain. In the past I would have felt the need to do something, anything, everything to make it better as soon as possible. I would have felt the agony and frustration of not being able to do what I want to do. I still feel those things a bit. I feel depressed a lot, but that's mostly at the state of the world - the dying planet and the terrible things humans do to others. I don't feel depressed about my body. At times a bit frustrated, yes. But mostly I feel grateful for all my body does and is. And if it needs a break right now, that's what I'm going to give it. So I'm not running. It's probably temporary. Even if it isn't, even if I never ran again, that would be sad of course, but it wouldn't be utterly devastating. There are other losses that are far worse. I have an easy life compared to many. I am lucky in so many ways. Sometimes if you want to continue running, you have to stop running for a time. For however long it takes to heal. That's just how it goes. I wouldn't have chosen it and I'm not thrilled about it, but I accept it.

I was swimming because I wasn't running, or at least that's how it had started. I bought a swim cap. Royal blue, my favorite color. I started going to the pool, which is warm and usually deserted at 5am. I've never had swimming lessons but I've always liked being in the water. Treading water, floating on my back, the ease and gravity-defying power of it. I never thought about swimming as a sport or an exercise, it was just like this thing I did on vacation, or to avoid drowning. But lately it has become something more. Somehow swimming has become something I do for me, for joy. I don't care how I look or what anyone else thinks of me when I swim. It's just me and the sea (err, heated indoor pool). It doesn't matter how long I stay or how far I go. Speed and time are irrelevant here, because it's not about performance. It's about play. There is no achievement or accomplishment, only experimentation and enjoyment. I just show up and mess around in the water, letting my arms and legs and core and breath move in sync. A few months ago, I had this thought - that came from the well of weird thoughts deep within, the source of all my very best ideas - and it was like what if we did one of those flip things? Later someone told me this is called a flip turn. I had no idea how to do it, other than some vague memory of seeing Olympic swimmers on TV many years ago. But somehow I did a flip underwater. And then I kept doing them until I could swim, flip, swim, flip, over and over until I felt like stopping. I'm sure my technique isn't the "right" way to do it, but that doesn't matter. I'm not doing it for anyone else, I'm doing it for me. Because I want to. Because it's silly and fun and I take comfort in the underwater solitude, the three planes of motion, the respite from the expectations and judgments of the world above.

I had tendinitis in my ankle about 8 years ago and I felt so desolate at the time. Now here I am, same problem, different tendon. But I feel ok about it because I'm a different Jen. I'm not flipping out about it (Though maybe the literal flipping is an antidote to flipping out. Who knows. In any case, spiraling through the water is way more fun than spiraling into a black hole of sad thoughts). It hasn't been all sunshine and smooth sailing of course. I've had some low moments. It sucks to be injured. Though I hesitate to call it that. I'm not at 100%, obviously. There are things I want to do that I can't do right now. But I don't really feel "injured" or "damaged." I mean, my body is still doing all these other lovely and magical things. Like swimming and Jacob's Laddering and healing my tendons. It's doing new things all the time that I never even dreamed it could do. I'm starting to think that the reason I love running isn't about running at all. It's about my body and the way it moves through the world. It's about tuning out all the noise about what a body should be or do or look like and enjoying the experience of actually living in one. It's about appreciating what my body can do in this moment and listening to what it needs. It's about connecting to myself. And to the truth. That all bodies are unique and amazing.

I watched Captain Marvel on a transatlantic flight last year. I don't know if it was the elevation or the travel fatigue or the fact of being an adolescent in the 1990's, but I cried during that scene set to No Doubt's I'm Just A Girl. I'm no Brie Larson and I have no fighting skills, but when she said "I've been fighting with one hand tied behind my back. What happens when I'm finally set free?" I understood the sentiment. (Too bad the rest of the movie was disappointing in the way that all superhero movies are disappointing to me. They're all fight scenes and flashy effects, and no one seems to understand that force and physical strength aren't what make someone super. But I digress). Maybe it's cheesy to say, but I feel like the past few years have been about unlearning the things that were holding me back and figuring out how to be set free. And then a whole lot of, oh well what the fuck do I do now? How do I exist in the world as the person I am becoming? I'm not sure where I belong now. Some of the things I used to do no longer feel right for me. I am embracing rest and there aren't many spaces that encourage that mindset. I know now that my worth is inherent (as is everyone's), not tied to productivity or appearance or usefulness. But capitalist thinking, and this culturally created hierarchy that treats some bodies better than other bodies, are seemingly everywhere and it's hard to escape that (except for literally being underwater). Running was a way to connect with my fullest, freest self. Now I'm learning how to harness that inner potential outside of running. Sometimes it feels like I have to temporarily disconnect from the world in order to be more connected to myself. I am still trying to figure it all out.

One day I will no longer run. I will no longer swim or eat or breathe. I will no longer exist. At least not in the same physical form. I don't know what I'll be after that. I feel like it's either ghost or reincarnation or a memory in someone else's heart. I guess I'll find out when I get there. In the meantime, I'm going to keep exploring how to be alive in this weird, wonderful body that I am lucky enough to inhabit. From the outside, maybe I'm just a girl in a royal blue swim cap. But on the inside I'm infinitely more. Please bear with me while I figure out how to be an infinite being in a finite body. Bonus points if you are an actual bear. Because bears get it. They hibernate all winter, resting and preparing for spring, when they will emerge again in all their bear-y awesomeness. No promises on that front. I doubt I'm going to do anything super cool in spring or anything. But I might emerge back into the world a bit more rested, rejuvenated and, in all likelihood, even more ridiculous than ever.

Lyric of the moment: "I wanna leave something good behind, when you remember me. This is for the ones that always got our backs. To better days ahead, never looking back. And the songs we sing to get by. All the ones we love below and above, the rebels and the saints..." ~Strung Out "Rebels & Saints"