a conscious apocalypse

"developing a robustness rather than a fragility"

American friends, we are one week away from the election. And as of last night, we officially have a new Supreme Court Justice.

I had to name and acknowledge this before I dove in today. I know we’re all holding so much.

A few weeks ago during one of the first legit hot days of San Francisco’s always-late-but-worth-the-wait summer, I was restless. I cut out of work early and zipped down to the Mission to treat myself to some fresh flowers at Bi-Rite (they have the best flowers) and a Greek frozen yogurt with olive oil and sea salt at Souvla. These are the magic days, where we get to wear all the clothes that don’t make sense any other time of year and everyone’s shoulders are bare and shimmering and our faces are flushed and our foreheads are slick with sheen and the line at Mitchell’s is two blocks long, and everyone is out until it’s dark and the mood is generally kind and celebratory. It’s our annual remembering of just how good it can be here, and it arrives—always—just in time, at the exact moment that spending a summer socked in with relentless fog has us all worried that we won’t feel proper sunshine for another year. It’s a time of joy and ease and slowness and it’s my favorite time of year in San Francisco.

This was in September, six months into our new life in Pandemia. As I wandered around, I was shocked by how we are adjusting. We are learning how to be together in a new way. We are learning how to pandemic.

Restaurants have shifted their seating outdoors. Retail businesses have strict rules and for entering and safety standards once you’re inside. Damn near everyone is wearing a mask (San Francisco is special in this regard, too). Folks make eye contact as we skirt around each other on the sidewalk (if you’re lucky, you get a wink or a head-nod, too). Little kids careen about with masks on (this one tugs at the heartstrings, I won’t lie), no biggie. Mariachis (que viven!) play outside of Puerto Allegre, and you would think the sad sounds of the saxophonist blowing tunes for coins in front of Arinell’s might compete with the joyful buzz across the street, but somehow, the mashup of sound is perfect. We don’t hug each other or shake hands, so instead we press palms together and bow or bump elbows or offer air hugs, mimicking arms wrapping around each other, remembering how it feels to pull each other close, to breathe in the napes of each other’s necks, and, if only for a moment, we remember all we took for granted.

We are adapting.

We can’t help it; we are adapting, for we belong to each other. We are finding ways to be together. We can no longer pretend that we can do this (this being, uh, life) on our own. “Community” is no longer this abstract, out-there concept: we are hanging out on front stoops with our neighbors. We are creating pods with each other’s kids. We are checking in on each other. We are voting early. We are tipping generously whenever we can. We are practicing care for each other.

(I also learned this week that San Francisco has twelve million square feet of vacant commercial space. Twelve million. For you locals, this is apparently the equivalent of 8.7 empty Salesforce Towers. I am imagining a city that adapts our concept of community out to our most vulnerable; I am imagining converting all this emptiness into spaces full of fresh starts and new beginnings for the members of our community without places to live).

I got to listen to a lecture this week by adrienne maree brown, whose work humbles me, lays me down in the earth, activates me beyond what I could have dreamed possible. She reminded us that the way to survive “is to develop a robustness in ourselves, rather than a fragility.” I don’t need to point out all the trouble we are in. And it’s only just beginning. How will we become strong? How will we ask for help? How will we recognize when are cup is full enough that we can let it pour over into our community?

The 24-hour news cycle does not engender a robustness. Neither does giving away our time by scrolling through social media. What develops robustness is a reclamation of attention. What develops robustness is getting quiet and still enough to see what steps we can actually take, out in reality, and how we might “partner, rather than push, in a way that moves ourselves, our families and our community forward.” What develops a robustness is moving toward our imagination as the way we create a new world. Everything we see, all that we experience, began inside someone’s imagination.

I keep hearing people say things like “I don’t know what I’m going to do” if a certain someone is “elected” again. The sense I’m getting is that there is something that makes us unable to look beyond. As if life will stop if this result comes true (and let’s face it, it very well might). But there will be a beyond. The children will still need raising. The ill will still need tending. The poor will still need protecting. Bodies will still find each other. There will still be joy, and pleasure, and friendship. We will still find ways to be together, to deepen the way we care for each other.

There will still be a whole system that needs dismantling. This, the most robust undertaking of all.

I woke up this morning in the stillness of the deep dark. I sat. I waited for some words. In the quiet, I let my heart break, again. The degree of tenderness I sense between us expands inside me in direct proportion to the trouble that brews all around. It is a terrifically challenging paradox to hold, this time we are living through, full of equal parts destruction and potential. I am holding fast to imagination. I am scraping out all the inner tendencies that would keep me grasping for the old ways. I am willing to release everything.

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Slow Motion Sober is a newsletter and community for creative types who are sober or curious about sobriety, and all the life-y intersections along the way. It's written by me, Dani, a writer and sobriety advocate in San Francisco, CA. 

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