on hiding

revolution is the opposite of convenience

It’s summer again, despite the pandemic. Under normal circumstances for us San Franciscans, this means wind and fog, and cold, and huddling around space heaters, and gazing wistfully eastward at the line where the fog stops and California summer begins, and layering up like we’re preparing for the Iditarod and not just a quick dog walk around the neighborhood.

This season, however, has thus far been mostly fog-free. In the morning the sun pours in through a crack in my curtains, filters through the fluff of plum tree leaves and dapples itself across my bed, casting a kaleidoscope of light across the wall. It’s my favorite thing about this house—all the light—and the sweetest alarm clock, ever. I know the pandemic has nothing to do with the nice weather. Under normal circumstances, I probably wouldn’t be paying as close attention, but we San Franciscans are trained to suit up and get the hell outside and be out in the world whenever there is even the slightest indication that the sun might hold, and staying at home during these long summer days that actually feel like summer makes all the excessive sunlight feel like a personal affront (seriously though, Karl—where are you?).

San Franciscans are built for shelter-in-place. The fog makes it easy to hide, stay put. It’s a city-wide shroud, a built-in excuse to stay home, break plans. It’s the perfect accompaniment to binge reading, binge watching, binge eating, to drinking too much coffee way too late in the day, to not feeling bad about skipping out on the gym. It’s cozy and soft and muted, a fillet-er of FOMO, maybe the only time we permit ourselves to just sit and be, without feeling bad for doing nothing.

But it’s sunny, so I have to do something. I’ve been running (I’m a runner now), over on the backside of McLaren Park, the quieter, wilder side where you can see down into Visitacion Valley, the airplane-hangar-esque hulk of Cow Palace cuddled right in the center, the bay shimmering to the east, the wind rippling through the dried-out, overgrown grass in patterns I study to see if I might glimpse everything I know is lurking. At the beginning of all this I kept forgetting a mask when I left the house, would have to use the falling apart N95 holdover from last year’s fire season I keep in my car, but like most of us (I hope most of us) I’ve adapted and now it’s second nature to sling a mask over my face, do the dance of slipping it on and off, on and off when I pass my neighbors on the trails. The bright sun calls us out of our houses. But another way of hiding has emerged. Though our eyes are as visible as ever, we behave like we’re invisible behind the masks, we pass each other in the park without so much as an acknowledging head-nod. Hello! I want to shout. We are neighbors! I am wearing this for you!

Eye contact feels like solidarity when you’re wearing a mask and spending long days alone where the only other creature you speak to walks on four legs and can’t talk back. We don’t know, yet, the long term effects of being weary and suspicious of each other, of so much time at home, of training ourselves out of all those impulses that make us human. I try to transmit my longing through my eyes, I want to wink or raise an eyebrow at the absurdity of this not-going-away-maybe-ever strange new reality, and when I don’t get a chance to do that, when there’s that awkward 6-feet skirt around and zero acknowledgement of each other, it’s like the virus wins. I know that nobody owes me a smize or head nod or <gasp> a hello. I know we’re all on this roller coaster together and some days are harder than others. But I am desperate for faces, and all those little interhuman pleasantries that make city life—human life—so magical, and more than that, I worry that if we don’t stay close to these subtle moments of shared humanity that we’ll forget that thing that might actually see us through this mess: That we are beholden, that we belong to each other.

Hiding, or hiding’s opposite—revelation—is another theme of Pandemia. All of the things swept under all of the rugs will no longer be ignored, and all of the cracks in all of the of the systems have been undeniably laid bare. We are witnessing this happening on a macro, nationwide level, as well as a micro, in-our-own-homes level.

Covid-19 is revealing all the ways racism is still very much alive here in the “liberal bastion” of the West Coast. This is another way (White) San Franciscans hide. We say we want to be anti-racist. But inherent in the work of anti-racism is a willingness, and a commitment, to being inconvenienced. And I see less evidence of that than ever. Here in San Francisco, the buck of belonging stops right where our need for convenience starts.

I wear my mask and I feel invisible, and I think about all the people in my city who have never had to wear a mask to be treated as such. Our city is still utterly segregated. The folks being effected by COVID-19 are the same folks who are essential to the basic functioning of the city, but who are also the people most White/monied San Franciscans never actually interact with, unless it’s for a burrito delivery (and now maybe not even that since everything is “contactless"). White San Franciscans like to pat themselves on the backs for their liberalness as long as it doesn’t really ask anything of them. They like their “I Voted” stickers and public parks and dedicated bike lanes, their makeshift monuments painted with “Black Lives Matter,” their signs broadcasting political allegiances and protest slogans posted in front windows. They’re the first to call you out if you forget to wear your mask. But for a city with the 3rd-most billionaires of any city in the world, to say the response I’ve seen from some of the most resourced people in the world is insufficient is the kindest understatement I can muster.

Just like the absence of fog pushes us out into the sun, just like when you wear a mask, I can still see your eyes, this pandemic and all it’s churning up is forcing all the dark places out of hiding. There is risk to exposure (and I’m not just talking about the virus). If we want to be who we say we are, if we want to be liberal, and antiracist, if we want equity for all, if we want to heal, we have to actually be inconvenienced. Because revolution is the opposite of convenience, and it’s coming for us whether we’re willing to make eye contact with reality or not.

---

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 Cirignano, a writer and sobriety advocate in San Francisco, CA. 

SMS is reader-funded. The small percentage of readers who pay make the entire publication possible. 

You can also support me for free by pressing the little heart button on these posts, sharing this newsletter with others and letting me know how this newsletter helps you. Thank you.