THE QUIET SPOT

Artist's Date #34: sunrise at slacker hill

I should be writing to you about my artist’s date but instead I am pinning pieces of green velvet together. O’s costume is already ready: a nice wool fabric lined with blue satin. The collar is especially fancy: the sides curve around the front of the neckline which keeps the hood from pulling down too far in the back. The construction is so satisfying in contrast to the hood for my stretch green velvet dress: which I made late last night while watching the Martha Stewart documentary on Netflix. In a kind of mirror of grandiosity I stitched and stitched while listening to her claim her right to the word “feminist,” only to find that at the end, I hadn’t left enough fabric to wrap around in the front. This hood, also so beautifully lined, with metallic fabric that shimmers like fish scales, does the pitiful slump in the back. Also I’m angry because the Harry Potter emblem I think I ordered from Etsy has not arrived, but that could also be because I didn’t actually order it. I can’t remember, I’ve been preoccupied with rage.

It was just a couple weeks ago when I could not imagine mustering up any energy for celebrating Halloween. It kept on scraping over me, the idea of it: how it would be fun to decorate, to make some silhouettes of black cats arching their back, hair in the air, and tape them backwards on my windows. Instead I hung the makeshift orange curtains on the windows from last year: their sad edges tattered and the panels only almost reaching both sides.

I don’t know how much the election has factored into this depression. I do know that the change in the candidates had swept me up in the swell of hope that seemed to wash across the internet, as if it were a real place we inhabited. But people around me really did seem more hopeful and it was contagious. Now everyone I know is paralyzed, mincing ourselves up with intellectual jargon just when the shit is going to hit the fan. I’m already feeling guilty for how Olive described the difference in feeling between a Trump presidency (horror, fear, grief, anger) and a Harris presidency (relief, comfort, safety and satisfaction). Even with Harris as president there is still so much to be angry about. Perhaps that is why some people aren’t voting for her or voting at all. It feels unsafe to betray our own anger when it’s been protecting us for so long. 

There’s also this lingering biopsy for a breast lump that’s low suspicion. It’s a strange blob that gets more uncomfortable during menstruation and navigating the medical system and its various points of communication and portals is let’s just say not exactly my strength. Yesterday I wrote an email to my point of contact at the UCSF Breast Center who had not looped back with me after my diagnostic mammogram and sonogram. In it I described conflicting feelings of wanting to take care of my health and discomfort with what’s most likely benign but that the current option: a core needle mammogram led biopsy in the next six weeks is something that I might not be able to handle. Emotionally.

Writing the email helped. Getting fabric and sewing it helped. Signing up to volunteer in a classroom of kids who will be wielding glue guns and neons helped. But you know what’s helped a lot more? Random things that came to me without asking.

1. Playdates. Somewhat out of the blue some friends asked if Olive wanted to sleep over and then she did and then when I went to pick her up the two of them wanted to continue their playdate so I brought both kids back to our apartment and they trashed the living room while I cleaned my stove.

2. Another sleepover that enabled me to wake up early and take a short hike. The first weekend I slept in and that’s what I needed and then the second weekend I woke up early and left the house and that’s what I needed. Driving across the golden gate bridge with the sun setting unfortunately behind me, so many of the twists and turns blocking my view of the rising sun and its accompanying colors. At the top of a short hill, the bottom of which felt cold like a cave, the sun blasted across the bay and a science-fictional strip slid in a thin line across the sky. 

3. Absolute quiet except for the birds helped.  I cursed the cars and their swishing sound, audible from where I was hiking and wished I had driven further or walked higher, anything to get to a place where it was still. It was a few feet later in a strange feat of acoustic gymnastics, that all the noise stopped: a quiet cocoon.

4. Unsolicited gratitude: I know it’s a practice but this time it washed over me, along with the light, as if it was gifted to me at that moment for no reason. I’m SO lucky to be here, I thought to myself, both here on the path in the light with the birds, but also here in this moment.

5. Material. The already discounted fabric store in the mission has one month left before it becomes an online business and so it’s selling its inventory, which is every kind of material you’ve ever imagined, at 40% off. The person cutting my fabric turned out to be the owner and we talked about how she used to make clothing for her and her kids that would match. Are you close with them? I asked, always trying to find the magic formula. Oh yes, she said, they are working with me right now! 

Meditating for 10 minutes on a yoga mat in the morning also helped as did sitting in the dark next to a stranger watching people do very bad things on screen. The chicken fingers and fries helped. You people help.