Still stuck in the panini press
The sun is once again out and I can feel my forehead turning shinny and hot like a sausage in one of those lamp-heated 7/11 cases. I feel far from glamorous yet I know I’m still fucking delicious. [Somehow, and by the grace of God]. Please don’t mind the minor details of how I’ve been made or where I’ve been up until this point. I can’t say that tasting good is the same thing as feeling good. I am handled with care, and then admired, and then considered, and then finally, eventually, savored. There is also some violence and exhaustion in being safely digested.
I have nourishment and violence (and the ways these two intersect) on my mind a lot these days. These are thoughts I had put on hold for a year since the pandemic started, and now I find myself needing to revisit them from a different lens.
Ad nauseam
I’m uncomfortable with naming the current moment we’re living through as the “final chapter” of the pandemic. Grief and collective trauma can’t always sit together quietly on an episodic timeline. While we may have all been sitting here for a year, I think of all the countries that are just now experiencing their darkest days. The victory lap feels far away depending on how many time zones and histories you inhabit as a body, a household, or the last-name carried through a family line. I always knew that the act of phasing away from a hard moment is neither grand nor definitive. Transformation is slow. It lags and feels out of focus, or it sounds muffled for a while before we can hear a greeting of sorts : A reverb of an indoor space filled with laughter, an individual uttering of “I have missed you” or “What took you so long?”, or simply, “I am so glad to still be here with you”.
I feel heavy for the three thousand daily deaths in Brazil during this month alone and the projected years it will take to fully vaccinate the population of poorer countries like Kenya. There are new names to hold and new faces to memorize all while encountering new forms of violence and extraction through our news feeds. Routine mass shootings go on in the United States like they always have, and while the victims change from demographic to geography, white supremacy continues to be the primary catalyst for all forms of destruction and erasure. Yes, transformation is slow, but only when it is activated at the hands of people who don’t believe in the joint liberation for all.
Some days I’d much rather redirect the 8+ hours I give to the digital light on screens elsewhere. I’d prefer to use that time to look up at the sky, a really big boulder, or the tiny veins on my wrist that can never seem to hold an injection without spitting a needle back out a few seconds later. Just like you, I want a final chapter so bad, but some of us are slower readers, and there are others who have yet to even have the last chapter translated. Some people might not even get the final chapter at all (“What now?”). Just like you, I want to close the book and never open it again, and even if I write a scathing review, I still also want someone to pick it up by the spine with kindness. Maybe they will take an interest in (re)reading and learn new ways to shape the future with intention and care.
Despite this, I see some joy in small things. I wake up in the morning and the sun is already up by 7 am. My phone alarm goes off, and the screen flashes with my step brother’s updates on my nephew who is soon to turn one. The daylight hours grow longer and so does the baby’s endurance to crawl and lift himself up to stand on the edge of a couch, or to babble sounds and smile. These are cycles and chapters that hand themselves off in fragments for us to continue. Nothing is ever final but simply onward moving. Next.
Calf Stretch
I walked from Astoria to Flushing Meadows Park on Saturday, taking detours here and there to get Colombian baked goods, sit at Corona Plaza, and say hello to the Unisphere at sunset. Walking across a borough under the warm weather reminds me a lot of being a teenager in New York. The most accessible forms of outdoor leisure were always found in alternating acts of wandering and posting up with no clear agenda, in the company of a friend or a loved one, cheap food and beverage in hand. This felt especially the case for underage and low income residents in a city rapidly transforming into a playground for wealthier transplants. That was about ten years ago, but putting my body through that experience once again felt like entering a time capsule. My shins are still a bit sore from the 16,000 steps we took, but I feel content.
Watching
Framing Britney Spears (2021) - I was starting middle school when Britney Spears had her highly publicized career downfall at the hands of the media. Somewhere in my preteen brain, I surely learned ways to judge myself and other women by simply witnessing the language attached to the highly premeditated presentations of Britney’s physical and emotional state at the time. The fine line between idolatry and demonization for female celebrities is very thin. Within that fragile cusp, there are widespread ramifications for how we hold these women to dangerously gendered standards of excellence. (trailer)
The Sound of Metal (2020) - A story of how unexpected medical trauma can either isolate or connect people. This film shed an interesting light on the intersections of deafness and substance addiction. It also highlights How, When, and Why someone might deny the label of being disabled. There is a stressed importance throughout the film in finding balance through stillness within our own minds—which feels like sound advice to take at any moment in life. (trailer)
Listening
Last summer, this baile funk remix of Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion’s WAP. by Pedro Sampaio went viral. The remix moved on to be featured in WAP’s most recent rendition at this year’s Grammy Awards show. Brazilian ingenuity in the digital age wins once again.
Two other tracks:
Doing
Tired of sounding professional and put together during email correspondence? Checkout this list of good sign-offs
In light of this month’s massacre in Atlanta and the rise in anti-Asian violence across the U.S., consider registering for a virtual bystander intervention training organized by Hollaback. There’s obviously so much more to be done, but a training like this feels like a strong bridge between actions that exist in digital and physical spaces.
This is a “soft opening” edition of Lazy River. Stay tuned for more as water park season approaches with the warmer months ahead 🌞
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