Entry 8: Revelations

I’ve known him since the 1980s, when the teenaged me hung out with men, mainly, who were all at least five years older. (They say it was a different time, the 1980s But was it, really?) I have fond memories of him as a steady, nonthreatening presence, the elder of my already elderly manfriends, older than the rest by a few years. He was safe. Innocuous.

In recent times we’ve followed each other on the social network, a thumbs up here, a heart there, the annual happy birthday post. Last week he sent me a DM. I won’t get into specifics except to say that it described somewhat obsessive thoughts about an aspect of my appearance with a bonus deep dive into a decades-old memory regarding this aspect. This was uncomfortable enough for present day me, but even more disturbing thinking about the 17-year-old version who was occasionally alone with this person.

The social network is a weird place. Through it I have learned of exes who believe in chemtrails but not climate change, have observed pointless exchanges between MAGA Republicans and Independent Thinkers (the most sophisticated MAGA argument generally being “You’re stupid!”). I’ve seen therapists celebrating the demonization of trans folks and watched friends of friends spreading lies they believe in. Disinformation travels quickly here. Interactions are not deep, and oversharing is one click away.

After reading his…confession(?)…I was initially more concerned about his feelings than mine. Surely he would worry about how I would take this vulnerable exposure of his internal world. Of course, I didn’t ask for this (over)exposure. I can do nothing about the obsessed-over aspect of myself and have no control over how others perceive it. Why were his feelings my problem?  Still, I am adult who can try to understand the motivations of others. Who knows what influenced his message, which felt out of character. Health issues? Cognitive deficits? A reaction to a medication? I didn’t want to react impulsively myself. Eventually I wrote back with something anodyne and have not responded to follow up messages.

Human beings have obsessive thoughts. We imagine scenarios, borrow the images of others to create wished for interactions. I’m not sure where I stand on this ethically, this use of others, but it is very human. Many of us keep our fantasies to ourselves. Perhaps the fantasies die over time. Some of us eventually share these scenarios with the once-fetishized object when we feel safe, hopefully when the object has become a real subject, a full human. Other times, we share it all without thought. The reasons we share and the power we hold when we do make a difference. This guy is powerless. Relatively harmless. But it still feels icky.

Entry 7: The comfort of eventual oblivion

On Saturday, my husband and I went to the ocean, walked a stretch along the Pacific that was recently closed off permanently to cars, and allowed ourselves to be buffeted by the salt air and the constant crunch of water against sand. Runners passed in knots of two and threes, sometimes pushing strollers with wide-eyed babies hammocked above the wheels. Cyclists wove through the scene. Children not yet ready for bicycles scooted on balance bikes as their parents observed with varying levels of enthusiasm. There was the usual San Francisco hodgepodge of dogs (goldens, goldendoodles, labradoodles, cockapoos, poodles, whippets, Boston terriers, Bedlington terriers, black labs, yellow labs, French bulldogs, chihuahuas, Australian cattledogs, Australian shepherds, German shepherds, and, of course, mutts). It felt good to be amongst people doing people things while the ocean, which will outlast us all, thank G-d, churned and boiled, and ravens and seagulls surfed the wind.

(In my recent reading of Pat Barker’s Women of Troy trilogy, I was reminded of the British word “shingle” to describe oceanside beach. It brings up an image of asphalt shingles in shades of grey, black, and green, ripped, torn, melted, dissolving along an untidy shoreline, the waves eating at the edges, a woman bundled up against the wind as she navigates the shoreline. Must look up shingle when I am done.)

The weather had an end-of-the-storm feel–and as I write, water is coming down sideways outside and the wind is banging on our metal chimney, something similar to what the Bay Area experienced before our Saturday walk.

There is no message here except a desire to escape in the small things when everything feels so oversized.

An old friend, one of my oldest, sends me bits and pieces of joy, music performances, photos of the places he passes in his Philadelphia neighborhood, balanced, composed shots of his balanced, composed living space. Small, good things, that I take in. I try to reciprocate, but everything I see is so large-scale, so existential, so inhuman. These things provide comfort, too, in the way that imagining the earth devoid of us, recovering from the scourge, sometimes helps me sleep at night. But it isn’t enough to get me through the week.

I present this small moment, a body wrung out by exercise, a greyhound taking up three quarters of the couch, a galgo curled up in a dog bed near the bay window, his ears alert as he sleeps. The wind has picked up again. I am considering dinner. A shower. My socks. The burn of carbonated water when I take a gulp. The rain will return, the oceans will rise, the vines will encroach. All of this will pass.

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For more on shingle beaches (which are made of pebbles, not sand), check out this Scottish website.

Entry 6: Get away

To the beauty and weirdness of Carmel (more beauty than weirdness here).

Entry 5: No amount of deep breathing can improve this situation

Help! I am entangled in a doom loop Bluesky, The Guardian, AP News hell that I don’t seem to be able to escape. I want to turn off the worry sometimes, stop the flow of information, to turn to art, to be out of my thoughts and at least briefly unaware of the sorry state of our nation, currently run by a group of cowardly, pathetic people who bring destruction and shame upon the U.S.

I canceled my Washington Post subscription, have left the rest of the Bezos universe mostly behind, am disentangling from Meta to a slightly less successful extent. I am supporting independent journalism (shoutout to Marisa Kabas, the journalist behind The Handbasket, to Chris Geidner, behind Law Dork, as well as to Issac Saul’s Tangle News). I give money. I boycott. I anticipate protesting. I dream of tagging Cybertrucks with swastikas, something to remind the purchasers of who and what they are supporting (alas, I lack to chutzpah to take this one on and mainly “tag” the tin can trucks and tinder Teslas with strong looks of disgust).

And then there is my job, where I listen, take in pain, help folks make sense of senselessness, provide hope, hopefully make space for self-love despite all the messages of unworthiness that so many of us absorb from day one.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Deep. Breaths.

Entry 4: A return to the way it used to be

I feel like I’m looking at her through a steamed-up windshield, my breath hot in the car, raindrops colluding into rivulets on the glass. There she is, a fuzzy outline, obscured movements, gestures like caricatures of human movement. The car idles. It chugs. If I unlock the door, I am afraid she will turn to vapor, will dissipate as she reaches for the lever.

Perhaps this initial image is a turnaround. It is me on the outside as the car glides past in the rain, arc of gutter water against my legs. Is that you, Jenna? I cannot hear. She is something familiar but no longer reachable. My eyes strain to make sense of what I see through the glass.

I was a little girl once, frizzy halo of knotted blonde hair, spitfire youth, fighting against her as I joined with her. We overlapped for years, were one and the same, with roles reversed. Mother, child, artist, pragmatist. None of it makes sense anymore. We are changed. I am changed. What does it mean to let in the full human being when I am a ghost?