“So many places to travel at the pace of observation” — Notes and fragments from 2020

A few weeks ago, I finished poet Ocean Vuong’s book “Night Sky with Exit Wounds” and came across the poem “Notebook Fragments” — a compilation of the odd scraps of writing and notes Vuong had taken over time, but never found a home for. 

Reading Vuong’s poem reminded me of the ritual I created for myself last November of taking a full day to go through all the notes on my phone’s Notes App for that year. Last year, it had just been a part of a “winter cleaning” ritual, but I had never thought about compiling, sharing, or even necessarily reflecting on what I discovered, until I read Vuong’s poem.

What I love about this practice is that the notes are always a strange but accurate telling of the story of the year: lots of notes on the subtleties of white supremacy, after the global uprising in June, and working more as an anti-oppression facilitator. A lot of quotes from webinars and podcasts — telling of this pandemic era, where this is the only way sometimes to hear another person’s voice. A lot of questions and musings on queerness. And even in a year of social distance socializing, the majority of notes were still quotes and thoughts from long nights of conversation and philosophizing with friends.

Perhaps my favorite part of this practice is rediscovering songs — songs I had loved briefly and couldn’t Shazam quickly enough to know their names, jotted down a few lyrics to search later but had forgotten about since. This year, it was “Come in waves” by The Pushovers, “Figures” by Jessie Reyez, and “I was an island” by A.W. 

Of course, some notes are logistical and boring: Questions to remember to ask during a job interview. A list of non allergic materials for beds, written the day after I discovered at a doctor’s office that I was in fact allergic to nearly everything. A list of freelance clients who still haven’t payed me.

This year, many also came with a strong and specific sense of pandemic grief: a January list of 2020 travel intentions — none able to manifest. A February list of gatherings I wanted to host in my house — none happened. A lot of angry emails/texts I drafted first before sending — never sent. Many beginning paragraphs to potential essays I never could bring myself to publish. 

Sometimes, while reading some random enigmatic note, I wish I had more context: where was I when I wrote this? Who was I just speaking with? What had just happened to me that made me suddenly stop and write down this deep but abstruse statement about my life on my phone? 

Other times, I would read the cryptic, incomplete thoughts and travel instantly to the revelatory moment I thought them, remembering its impact. And then, remembering, I’m immediately alarmed at how quickly I absorbed that intense moment, jotted down some notes, and then forgot about it, never referring back to it until now. 

Like I similarly noticed in my gratitude practice last year, I am reminded again of my difficulty in truly acknowledging big things, and making them enough. I am reminded how my easier pattern is to wake up the next day chasing another big thing, rather than fully internalizing the moment that just happened. Doing this practice gives me concrete evidence of just how many times this year I felt inspired enough to write things down, felt moved enough to feel compelled to reach for my phone, open the app and document the feel. That evidence feels so necessary during a year that seems so limited in inspiration. Even during a year spent mostly at home, it’s incredible to me how much newness I still — still! — experience every day, even if only from a new song, a new poem, or new idea. 

For years now, in my room, next to my writing desk, I’ve hung a blue postcard with this phrase: 

“So many places to travel at the pace of observation.” 

I bought it just before I moved in Oakland — the first place I tried to “settle” in as an adult. I bought it as a reminder to myself — in those moments I felt stuck at my desk, claustrophobic about my settling and lack of movement — that there is already so much right in front of me. 

It has taken eight months of mostly sheltering-in-place during a pandemic to even get remotely close to believing it. 

These last few months since my last post have been so, so difficult. Every time I sat down to attempt writing another post, I couldn’t piece together one coherent idea of what to say. 

Maybe that’s why this young ritual already feels so powerful: it reminds me again that in eight claustrophobic months, I actually have traveled so much at the pace of observation, that there is so much big in my life, even if only captured in small fragments on my phone.

And as a writer, it challenges my frame of thinking that only once I have appointed a coherent story to what has happened to me, it can be meaningful. Instead, I can believe that my current reality of an incoherent life is still worth inviting others into. As Jordan Kisner wrote in her gorgeous new book of essays Thin Places: 

“Sometimes language can just hold what is.” 

In college, nearly every day I’d pass by the brick English Department building and reflect on the phrase from Gertrude Stein inscribed on its left wall: 

“And then there is using everything.”  

I’ll use Ocean Vuong and my Notes app ritual to deliberately create space in my life to honor and use everything, to allow myself to just hold what is.

Vuong’s compilation ends with this sentence: 

“Here. That’s all I wanted to be. I promise.” 

Inspired by him, below is my own compilation of random notes from the year. 

Notes from my Notes App: 2020***

***All sentences in quotations are quotes I heard from others, often jotted down quickly without attribution, so I kept the sentence as it was originally. If they were said by someone famous, a google search will let you find it. All others were said by friends. All sentences without quotations were sentences written by me.***   

Love letters, often.

“What a beautiful thing. To miss someone who loves you.”

During a pandemic, the most paranoid person wins. 

“The momentum of fear continues, even after we have done what we can to be safe.” Matt Brensilver. 

All my POC friends are struggling right now, and my white friends aren’t. 

—being specific about how you love people.

​There’s both an openness, as well as weight always carried. 

“Imagine being straight. In 2019. The horror.”

“In the first three decades of the 20th century, Tampa alone had six lynchings — the largest number for any Florida County or city at a time when the state had the highest ratio of lynching to minority people in the country.” 

What protest feels like in the body. 

“When you immigrate to America, you don’t get to own only its excellence, you have to own its failures.”

WhatsApp message to family on anti-blackness

This is the normal that we all put up with…

We keep joking about the apocalypse instead of believing that it is happening slowly. Apocalypse, fascism — they’re going to take their time. 

“Hoy los dolores recitan poemas.”

Can’t believe nothing exists for people of color, when so much exists for everybody else. 

“Why do we keep relying on people who don’t want to save us.” 

World is going to end in twelve years

No New White Friends policy —

As strongly as I am committed to finding peace within myself, however I can, during this time, I am also angry that people of color must always magically create peace among chaos.

Poets, having access to God in a special way. 

Poster Bernal Heights: “Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

Spent today educating queer white men about racism, and straight men of color about homophobia. Happy Pride everybody. 

“Maybe they don’t need to be cancelled, but just put on pause….. until they act differently.”

“Preserve the tenderness that is often lost within the terror. “ – Roberto Lovato 

We deserve to work really hard at what we love.

Queer — Ebb and flow energy, not going towards orgasm. 

how can 

how can it be not lonely leisure and selfish

Friend booked an airbnb in Boise to escape the wildfire smoke, and then the air quality GETS BAD THERE TOO. 

“The house is burning, we want to escape, but we always grab something. 

 Instead of writing to escape, write from the place that wants to hold on to something, write from the things you want to protect and love and preserve and carry with you.” 

In Buddhism, we’re always talking about practice. This is the concert. 

You can feel something and not know why. Maybe not knowing why is part of the feeling.

Mourn this thing you had hoped made some sense; feel liberated that you can build hope in something else instead.

Try to be gentle with the part of you that didn’t know. 

Enneagram 8’s on conflict: “Conflict will bring us closer. I want to be hurt.”

The happiness that comes with a backdrop of pain, that arrives in spite of that pain, or because of it. 

It is centering whiteness to buy into their urgency; to “take advantage of this moment” when you know it has been relevant always.

“Kamoinge gikuyu” for a group of people, acting together 

Here is this beautiful place that I was deeply unhappy in. 

Enneagram 4’s: “They are trying to create this depth in life that — when they’re present — they realize is just here, it’s already available to them.” — Abi Robins.

“The wonder of this world, the wonder of this world and there are no words for it, every word spoils it.” 

Meaningless humans making things even when they know they will soon disappear. How many meaningless things were created! And will soon cease to exist.

What about not sharing it? Not bringing them here? Not having others experience it, but still allowing myself to?

Lisa: “Oh but the After of all of this…it’s going to be soooo good.”  

I will exist, even if I am not written down.

What matters most in the end: presence.