where we're at, 4 months in. (i, for one, feel lost and exhausted. and you?) (Patreon)
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hi everyone.
i'm going to tell you how i am, then ask you a question. (spoiler: the question is going to be about how you are, so get ready). and i have reposted the same poll i put up almost exactly four months ago. i think it'll be really interesting to see what happens.
greetings from havelock north, aoteroa new zealand.
i've had a very tough fucking week, i'm not going to lie.
the combination of personal stuff, the constant fucking uncertainty in my life, not knowing where i'll be living, not knowing where ash will be going to school, if at all, watching my friends back home go through hell and grief and feeling so faraway and powerless to help, and the slide back to level 2 because of COVID cases in this country have all left me in an emotional state i haven't been visited with back in april when neil left. i've been having trouble sleeping, my thoughts are a little too scattered...it's all starting to grind down on my nerves. i'm tired all the time.
upside, and here we go:
i know i am not alone in this feeling.
a few days ago, i finally actually went back into my calendar to see what date i left new york for the UK/european leg of the "there will be no intermission"...it was august 20, 2019.
it struck me:
i now haven't seen my house or my friends from home in a whole year.
a whole year since i've seen any of the clothes i own since i packed one suitcase for tour. a year since i've cooked a meal in my own kitchen. a year since i've looked out the bedroom window at the vegetable garden. a year since i've hugged the children that mean the most to me...the little ones who are now populating my screen every day, as ash populates back at them, and the whole exercise feels dystopian, as these kids watch each other grow up through a two-dimensional 4-inch window. (upside here: ash has also started sending his small friends back home ACTUAL SONGS, though, which i record using voice memo...and some of them are really fucking funny, and about BUTTS).
a whole year since i went to an american grocery store.
a whole year since i drove on the left side of a car or on the right side of the road.
a whole year since i held the people who comprise my community in my actual arms, being able to look into their eyes, toast to them with a real glass, hold their pulsating human hands.
a whole year since i drove my own car.
a whole year since i played my own piano.
a whole year since i looked at my own bookcase.
a whole year since i got to drink a tea from my tea collection.
a whole year since i've drank coffee out of one of caroline's mugs.
a whole year since ash and i threw pebbles in the pond.
a whole year since i opened the wooden bathroom cabinet to get a new thing of dental floss.
a whole year since i wore my own bathrobe.
i should buy a fucking bathrobe.
and, truth be told, i'm starting a bookcase, by accident, even though there's nowhere to put the books.
i have enough books to call it a bookcase on the floor. i'm calling it an imaginary bookcase. because i can.
a whole year since ash slept in his own bed, played with the old dollhouse, saw our next-door neighbors dog puck, played on his favorite red couch, helped me gather kindling outside for the fire, went on the swing we built him in the backyard....
.............
besides xanthea and kya and her family, who have been my lifeline here, i haven't been in the company of anyone who actually knows me deeply in a really, really long time. many moons.
i'm used to this at a certain level: i mean, i tour. i'm used to going away from my community and finding a new one, and i'm used to switching communities fast. but i've never been this far from my actual country for this long.
and what is happening in my country makes me wonder if i'm homesick for an idea of the past more than for an actual thing. in this sense, it echoes a lot of friendships and relationships i've had to grieve over the yearsm either because person died, or went crazy and vanished, or whatever. you miss the person, but you more...miss the past.
a whole year of no being home.
it's starting to hurt in a new way.
and this should tell you something about how strongly i feel regarding staying here in new zealand. i'm that homesick, but it's still smarter to stay here. the cost/benefit is excruciating.
but still ... real.
......
i wonder, in some ways, if i have it easier than some of you who have been locked up in your actual homes, having to experience your lives and homes from the inside-out, or perhaps better put, the outside-in.
maybe i'm lucky: i'll never have memories of being locked down or feeling trapped in in my own house, of pacing around those grounds listening to pain pouring our of the phone. my memories of this house (and the last one) in hawke's bay will be riddled with those memories: i've spent most of my waking moments away from the computer in this house either playing with ash, reading to ash, cooking, or pacing the grounds, on the phone to somewhere else, crying myself, or listening to someone in pain try to work it out.
............
i see many relationships falling apart: partners, parents and children, siblings, housemates, friends.
the wear and tear...that's what i don't think any of us understand quite yet.
the wear and tear of what this is doing.
i know a lot of you are, must be, feeling the same kind of wear and tear on your bodies, hearts, and souls.
so now.
you may remember, if you were around then.....on april 16th, 2020, i posted a piece of writing called "the unclickable heart".
it was anthony's birthday.
he'd have been 70.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/35801741
many of you, (almost 2,000 of you). responded a poll and post i put up about lockdown levels and how you were doing.
i then wrote a piece in response, and it took so long to read all the comments and write the piece, i "thinged" it, with encouragement from the crowd.
about two days after posting that essay, with no preparation and no idea it was coming, my life went into a massive tailspin from which it hasn't yet recovered, and i became a single mother in full lockdown.
it's all still very raw.
but healing. slowly, one step forward, one step back.
maybe this will help.
connecting always takes me forward.
..............
i don't know what, if anything, will come out of this exercise, or how many days/weeks it'll take me to read through all these comments, but you never know....i may be about to cancel my upcoming tour. (i'll find out tomorrow).
and i also want to know, genuinely.
how are you, four months on?
what's changed?
what's stayed the same?
has anything fallen apart? healed?
has anything surprised you?
tell me the truth.
and this time, all of you, more than ever.....please don't be afraid to read others' comments and feel free to respond in turn if something resonates, or you want to offer up a hug, or a link, or whatever. people will appreciate it. we're all friends here.
i love you a lot.
still.
it's getting windy and cold here. i'm scarfing up.
also, a warning: people often complain about patreon eating their hard-written, long, poetic posts.
if you know you're going to write something long, you might consider writing it in another program (like gmail, or notes) and then pasting it here when you're done, in case patreon eats the comment or the page glitches.
xx
afp
p.s. for kicks, here's the old poll results: