What Comes Out

I started using Scrivener about a month ago because I had heard good things about it and after using it for a trial period I could see that it did help me keep my writing projects more organized so I didn’t have to jump around to a few different Google Drives to see where I had started that one thing or see if it was on my notes app or if I had scribbled something in one of the hundred different Field Notes notebooks I had going with no rhyme or reason. 

Because I am of a certain age and also a parent I have recently been looking back on my own childhood for ideas of what to do and what most definitely under any circumstances to not do. Fortunately, the distinction between the two does not have any gray area it’s either “sure, this could be fun” or “no, no, no, no, never, not in a million years”. On Instagram I see friends post various memes and screenshots of inspirational quotes about generational stuff stopping with them. At first, I didn’t think much of it but the more I looked back and dug into my own childhood the more I realized that there were in fact things that absolutely need to stop with me. Things I do not want to pass on or inflict on my own Tiny Human. 

It’s a strange feeling looking back at what you once thought was normal only to realize how completely fucked up it was. There are times I still wonder how I ended up as a functional member of society with a healthy relationship and a stable life. Any time I bring up anything from my childhood or past with my mother I get either a non-answer or “I don’t remember” and that sucks because I have to either push further with different questions (sometimes that works) or forget it so I can heal and move on (that has happened more than I like). Sometimes, even for events that I want answers or acknowledgement of all I get is a “sorry honey, I don’t remember that” and I have to accept the fuckuppedness of it all and move on. 

All that to say that sometimes what we have been raised to believe is normal and acceptable is neither. You can choose to stop things with you and not perpetuate them to the next generation, it’s not necessarily easy but it can be done. You are not obligated to forgive and forget just because it’s family. 

Aritfacts Lost and Found

Over a year after leaving New York I still find little artifacts from what now feels like another life completely foreign to the present day. The other night I was loading the dishwasher and grabbed a detergent pod from its package and noticed the price tag said Downtown Natural Market, the local-owned store we went to in Jackson Heights. 

Immediately I thought back to when we discovered it and were so happy that there was a good, non-chain, grocery store that had a good selection of organic food so close to our apartment. We were in there constantly - usually because I wanted to make a dish and needed just one ingredient. We’d go in with Joni and with the best intentions of getting just that one ingredient and an hour and $75 later we were headed home. 

I remember they had the chemical-free and natural products that we wanted - including the dishwasher pods. Fifteen months after we left Queens I used the last one. If I had been thinking I would have kept the price tag to stick in my notebook. A small artifact from a different time. A good time. 

We had a great apartment in a great building and were loving being new parents to the best Tiny Human ever! 

Everything has changed in the last 15 to 18 months. We went from an apartment in a pre-war building in New York to a mid-century 3 bedroom house with a yard just outside Detroit. 

We still have the greatest Tiny Human ever and we still have a dishwasher and I just got more pods. I don’t know when I’ll discover these next artifact from the Before Times but I’m sure there will be another since we still have a few boxes to unpack. 

Author’s note

I posted something written in a similar manner a while ago. This isn’t super polished or edited or workshopped and isn’t meant to be. I usually end up recording these memories in the notes app on my phone as I’m trying to fall asleep so I get the main points down and then fill in the rest. There’s something cathartic about writing about this time in this way. In March and April of 2020 everything was happening so fast we didn’t have time to process what was happening. We only had time to react and implement what would keep us all as safe as possible. We’re all still safe and happy and healthy so we must have done something right. 

Another reason writing these memories has taken me so long to post is that it’s taken this long to process what happened. We look back with the benefit of hindsight and can see how a couple different decisions or choices at any point could have resulted in a vastly different story and not necessarily a happier one. We’re happy and healthy and believe that we’re where we belong.

Pandemic Induced Creative Drought

I can’t write at the moment. 

I can’t read at the moment. 

And I haven’t been able to for close to a year now. 

I have a massive To Be Read pile (that continues to grow, albeit more slowly now) and I have notebooks and scraps of paper with story ideas, started outlines, partially fleshed out outlines, several started stories, novels, screenplays, flash fiction, and novellas with anywhere from 10 to 4,000 words sitting in my Google Drive and the Notes app on my phone. 

I can hear the 1’s and 0’s of the software taunting me but I can’t make it go. Same with reading. I am about a third of the way through a book by an author I really enjoy but even when I have the time to read for a bit after all the chores are done before I go to bed, I got nothin’. 

After weeks and then months of feeling this way it doesn’t seem to be about physical energy as much as mental and emotional energy. At least for me. 

Since the lockdowns began life has felt like Groundhog Day sometimes more than others. We wake up, wrangle our Tiny Human, do basic chores and house and personal upkeep, order groceries online, wash or wipe down and rinse the daily deliveries of stuff we used to just pick up at a store, cook, additional wrangling and entertaining of the Tiny Human, then after dinner, a bath, and the standard bedtime routine, the Tiny Human will sometimes agree to sleep after additional negotiations. Then I work for a few hours before going to bed myself, usually around 2 or 3am and get up at 8am to do it all over again. 

It’s been like that for about 13 months now and it’s exhausting. 

Don’t get me wrong, we are healthy and safe and very fortunate to be in the situation we are and I am not complaining about that at all. 

I know I am not the only one who is fatigued by the last 13 months and I know there are those who have it worse and those who have it better. I am only talking about my situation. 

I’m weary. That’s all. 

As I am sitting here typing this I know it’s probably disjointed and not polished and I have no idea how it will come across or be interpreted and while that would have bothered me before, now I don’t care. 

We’re all tired.

We’re all fatigued. 

We all want to see and hug our loved ones.

We all have it better than some and worse than some. 

We have what and who we have and are making of it what we can. 

Maybe sometime in the not too distant future I will be able to get the words out of my head and onto the page.

$1.00 + tax

February 11, 2021
This is the price tag from a bottle of vinegar - either white or apple cider, can’t remember since I bought both there - that I got at the bodega on 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights. I can’t remember why I got so many vinegars but it was probably for some cleaning project involving baking soda. 

It’s one of the few physical artifacts I have from Jackson Heights because everything was so crazy at the end that I never realized that I had already taken my last trip outside. I miss that bodega guy and his wife and the other guy who worked there and never spoke but was always busy stocking stuff and selling New York Lottery scratch-off tickets. 

It’s funny, I didn’t have the same reaction when we left Avenue C because we were still in New York. 

I miss Jackson Heights. And that apartment. And New York. 

The New York I moved to and loved doesn’t exist anymore and won’t again. 

The New York I lived in existed while I lived there and doesn’t exist the same anymore. 

I believe that’s true of every time someone either moves to or away from The City. 

As soon as you get to New York it changes in some small way and doesn’t exist as it did seconds ago. 

I have a price tag from a bottle of vinegar from a bodega at 37th Avenue and 82nd Street in Jackson Heights, Queens as a permanent timestamp of my time there.

February 13, 2021 - Editors Note:

i wrote the above in one of my Field Notes notebooks that I use for brain dumps and clearing my head. I decided to post it as-is and not edit or clean it up or re-write it because that’s how I felt in the moment writing it and how it came out.

There is still a lot from 2020 that I’m still processing and trying to sort through mentally and emotionally and there are many more stories I want to share and am in the process of writing out.