Category: Everywhereist

I hear a lot of people saying – as we approach the year anniversary of this pandemic and lockdown, a year of not knowing what it means to hug those close to us or see people we love, or do any of those previously forgettable but now utterly unimaginable everyday things like sitting at a crowded bar or sharing a dessert with everyone at the table – that they are hitting the wall.

I think I hit mine. (I say “think” because I realize that it may not have been it – that something worse might still be coming.) It happened a few months ago, knocking the wind from my lungs. I wanted rage at something, at the world and the circumstances that had shaped it into what it was, but it was like those dreams where you try to scream and nothing comes out. It just stays inside of

TW: This post makes brief, passing mention to accounts of rape and assault in some of the books I read.

I decided to spend 2020 reading only women authors. It shouldn’t have been a revolutionary act, but somehow, by the end, it started to feel like one. There’s a clear gender bias in publishing (male authors are published more often than women, have their books submitted for more awards, and are highlighted in publications more frequently). When much of the world is already written by men – not just books, but history itself – it felt like this was some small way in which I could try to tip the scales.

It wasn’t a strict rule, nothing set in stone, and I even made the occasional exception (including my friend Mike’s fantastic graphic novel, Flamer, which he published last summer). My goal for the year wasn’t a limitation or a

It’s February.

This was the month that Seattle started to shut down, a year ago. It’s the last month that I ate inside a restaurant. We were scheduled to go to Italy that March, just as Covid was starting to take hold there. Those few weeks before we were set to leave were fraught – were we cancelling out of paranoia? Would we look back and think, “Well, that was silly. It all turned out to be nothing?”

It didn’t, of course. We cancelled Italy along with a half dozen other trips I no longer remember now.

In some ways, I suppose it’s not that unusual – staying at home for a year. But I hadn’t done it in well over a decade. It’s part of how Rand and I engineered our lives: no kids, no pets, only a few neglected houseplants that I’m probably overwatering as of late, because,

It is December 31st, the last day of 2020 a year that has been supersaturated with so much shit and grief that it’s almost bordered comedy. I have been to a Zoom wedding and a Zoom baby shower and a Zoom funeral, experiencing the spectrum of human existence in halting pixilation. I try to remember what it feels like to hug my mother, as she sits eight feet away from me in the frigid cold of my backyard, shouting that I should have a merry Christmas. (I did not, but it wasn’t for want of trying.)

I wonder what the universe will try to squeeze in at the end of this miserable year, if a massive fault line will be discovered right under my home, or a portal to hell found in my toilet. I am glued to my phone, to endless headlines of awful, and I read them aloud

(Above – every holiday with my family ends with people dancing in the kitchen. I don’t know why. This was a few years ago. Yes, there is box wine. And yes, my mother, at left, is a knock-out.)

It’s Christmas Eve, and I am at home. I can’t remember the last time this has been true. It’s been more than a decade, and probably closer to two. I’m usually down in California at this time of year, listening to the seasonal screams of my family while opening incomprehensible gifts from my mother. But nothing this year has been normal, and the holidays are no exception.

Recently, a dear friend told me that he was going to visit his family for the holidays. He’d been isolating, but they hadn’t been nearly as careful. They were planning an indoor dinner, and he was going to attend. There was an aging relative

Ah, Thanksgiving! A holiday we celebrate by playing a game with our families that I like to call “And that’s how you’ve decided to live your life then?” Like Pictionary, you just keep at it until someone cries.

Or – hear me out – you could just stay home for the holidays, closing the curtains and doing your best impression of tranquilized zoo animal. because the CDC has actually said that you do not need to see your family this holiday season! You don’t need to host anyone. Are you hearing this? A governmental organization dedicated to making sure people don’t die is telling you to sit on your ass and have a Nic Cage marathon instead of listening to your family members recall that one time you peed your pants in the grocery store at the ripe old age of 9. THIS IS A GIFT, PEOPLE.

Call your family

Dear GOP,

Look, here’s the thing: I’ve got a lot going on right now.

I mean, not technically. Technically, I walk around the house nursing a stash of Halloween candy while occasionally changing from “day pajamas” to “night pajamas” (the sartorial differences are subtle but significant). Today I cried while watching a tiktok video, a medium which I only vaguely grasp. I’m like Miss Havisham if she were dumped on a weekday when she thought she maybe had the flu and decided to just stay in bed.

What I mean is, I have a lot going on, emotionally.

It’s just been a really long hoax pandemic, you know? With a lot of people getting hoax-sick and hoax-dying, including the loved ones of my friends. And this hoax lockdown has led to what my therapist refers to as “very real depression” (but honestly, probably a hoax). And then my husband’s grandmother died

Grief is weird when the world is normal. Everyone just goes about with their day, walking around, and sometimes the sun even has to audacity to shine, and when you are grieving, all of it feels like an insult. I told Rand once that I wished that human beings had chyrons – those little scrolling bars that run underneath your photo like you see on the news – and you could let people know what was going on in your life. It could be subtle things, like, “Please don’t flip me off in traffic, I just got laid off” or “I’m in the middle of a divorce, please don’t judge me for crying on the subway.” Easy, helpful messages like that.

But now the world isn’t normal, and I don’t know if that helps with grief or not.

Rand’s grandmother died two weeks ago. I think it was two weeks

Six months into an interminable lockdown, I find myself missing the long dead. The throughline feels like a logical one – it’s a pandemic. Of course I’m thinking about death.

Death and the post office.

That took me slightly by surprise, even in a year where nothing has been what I’d imagined. I didn’t think we’d be arguing whether or not we, as a country, should be able to send and receive mail. Then again, I didn’t think we’d be debating on whether germ theory is real or not, either.

A few people have told me that those of us defending the United States Postal Service don’t care about the institution, but I have always regarded it with a level of fondness that one does not normally attribute to governmental institutions. It’s like finding yourself waxing poetic about the passport office or the IRS. They shouldn’t elicit an emotion other

Last week, my kitchen sink collapsed. It fell from the bolts that held it, as though in protest, as though it, too, had had enough of the endless dishes and cooking. I managed to catch the edge of it, sharp even through my yellow latex gloves, and held it up with my fingers and the edges of my knees while I screamed for my husband, who did not hear me. I eventually managed to wedge a stool underneath and emailed our handyman, asking if he was comfortable working during this time. I explained to him that Rand and I had been social distancing for three months.

“I’ll be by tomorrow,” he said. I made sure I was out of the house when he said he’d arrive, but he’d texted me to say that he was delayed. I went home, and made myself a bowl of cereal, ready to dart out