White Claw bummer

Late stage capitalism and the meaning of life.

Ways to hang:

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Photo by Jukan Tateisi on Unsplash

Three weeks ago I spent a weekend in Nevada City, long, lazy days at the Yuba River soaking up enough Vitamin D to sustain me through the foggy murk of June and July in San Francisco and into August when we can finally leave the house without bundling up and steeling ourselves agains the wind and cold. When you go to the river you swim and rest and read and dream and you stay quiet; you press your spine into warm spans of rock, you let the sheer size of ancient boulders humble you and your small minded concepts of time; you make temporary friends with generous locals and other wonder-eyed city folk; you drink water and reapply sunscreen and eat fruit so ready the juices drip down your forearms faster than you can eat it; you turn off your phone.

I go to the river at least once each summer. It is a holy pilgrimage, and I know this is true because the moment my body is submerged, I become clear as the water. My knowing is incisive, honest, unabashed and tuned-up. My skin darkens to the color it is meant to be, and I feel healthy and robust. I am full of forgiveness. I remember that slowness is to be relished, not rushed.

Pals everywhere. This was Day 1, pre-party.

There are people who do not understand the ways of the river and I know this is true because they bring the party to the river. They set up canopy tents and they play music so loud you can’t hear the sound of the river and they neglect their dogs’ hot paws and yeah, they drink.

Everyone at the river was drinking White Claw. It wasn’t specific to gender, or age, or class, or race. Everyone everyone. Sucking down can after can. I sat on my rock, I swam around, an anthropologist. Perhaps the hard seltzer explosion stands out to me so strongly because it’s a trend that’s emerged in the years since I quit drinking. Perhaps I wouldn’t have noticed had I not spent the last year at home and this was my first venturing out into America’s increasingly vaccinated reality.

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There are things I’ve been thinking about.

I’ve been trying to understand why quarantine was easy and it’s the emerging that has me all mixed up.

I thought that what we all lived through - are living through - would make a difference.

It’s the business as usual vibe that is freaking me out.

We are bypassing - we have bypassed - the work.

The work is one of ritual and reckoning around our current shared reality, and all that we have been through - the grief, the terror, the trauma. Without the work, we will perpetuate pain.

We will remain at the mercy of billionaires in pissing contests with each other. We will watch with our jaws on the floor at this race to colonize other planets at the same time we continue to degrade the one we are on.

Without the work, we will push down, numb out from, and ignore the pain, which will make itself known in harmful ways. We will make choices that go against our best interests. We will elect people into powerful positions who make choices that go against our best interests.

Without the work, we will ignore our interdependence. We will stay cut off from reality, which makes it easier to degrade and distrust one another.

I am still working this out in my brain, in my soul.

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I do not blame anyone for their White Claw proclivities. I get it. Mine is a humble evangelism. I’ll be the first to admit I have my own ways of bypassing, checking out, disappearing.

But I’m thinking about ritual, and reckoning, and what that might look like in my own little life. What would I say? Maybe I wouldn’t say anything. Maybe I would growl, keen, wail. Maybe I would cut up all my favorite poems into tiny pieces, slather them with butter on crackers, mmm, delicious. Maybe I would push my body to it’s limits, let the sweat absolve the shame, once and for all. Maybe I would submerge myself in river water, float, sink, swim, wash the salt from my face. Maybe I would plant something in the ground, tend to its becoming.

In all these imaginings, you are there with me. We are wiping each other’s faces clean, feeding each other’s children. We are easy with each other’s light and dark. We share wisdom, prescriptions, resources. We hang secrets on the line, let them dry out. We are out there together, under the sun, at ease in our skin, expansive in our breath. We are laughing, we are apologizing, celebration alongside forgiveness, joy alongside repair. This isn’t a do-over, this is deep care, this is the cool blue of healing, this is what it looks like, this is how we fight. This is why I stay in the fight.

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SELF MADE is a newsletter for 🌺late bloomers🌺 with a focus on recovery, creativity and community. It's written by me, Dani, a writer, coach, and recovery advocate in San Francisco, CA. 

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