Edition #49: Dear Future

Plus, the secret world of diary hunters, where feminism went in the '90s, and Gossip Girl goes Brooklyn

A Note From the Editor

Dear Future,

They'll talk about the day with a certain reverence. When you ask, they’ll recount the details of that ordinary Saturday with a laser-like precision, a temporary superpower the mind grants when the stakes are high enough. They will be able to tell you what they had for breakfast that morning — it may have been very little because of the acidic churning in their gut, a tiny gremlin knawing at their insides all week as they waited, refreshed, and waited some more — but they will remember (for me, it was a piece of Ezekiel toast and an egg). They will be able to recount precisely where they were standing when they got the call or the text, when they heard the cheers from outside their open window, when they saw the ticker announcement scrolling across the bottom of their television screen, its placement suddenly inadequate for news this monumental.

The day will live on as a rarity for many, one where the country changed shape, thus altering the shape of the world. One where the good guy wins, where the people cupped power in the palms of their hands, a slippery liquid threatening to escape between the cracks of their fingers, and sipped it. It may not seem like much to you now, but on that day, to us, it was everything. A woman in the White House — a woman of color, a daughter of immigrants — alongside a human, one who didn’t want to take away millions of people’s healthcare in the middle of a global pandemic. One who cared about Americans making a living wage. One who wasn’t going to kick people out, who embraced our differences rather than demonizing them. Sure, he wasn’t perfect and he wasn’t the first choice for many of us, but he was a human, one who possessed empathy and grace, who proved that character matters. And on that day, character was enough.

I want you to know what New York City felt like on that early November afternoon, but first you must understand where we had been. The year was grim for everyone, but especially for us. For months we were confined to our shoebox-sized apartments feeling like mice in cages, craving the heartbeat of the place that we feared might never return. Strangely, the country seemed to revel in our loss of self. People wrote articles and performed virtual stand-up routines about how New York Was Dead Forever. Our loved ones asked us when we were leaving, whether we felt silly for paying such high rent to reside in a city that was a shell of its former self. People who had left years ago snickered behind their computer screens, leaving cruel retorts in the comments section. “See? This is why I left,” they said. “Suckers,” they said. “Anarchists,” they said. New York City, back then, was treated like the popular kid in a movie about high school — others were just a little too pleased to see us knocked down a peg. We took stock of our lives, some of us got away for a few months, others decided to depart for good and that was OK. You have to understand how difficult it was for us, what a sharp turn our lives took during the sickness.

It was this gloomy setting we awoke to on that fateful Saturday. We knew the results were coming but we weren’t sure when, and even so, I don’t think we had prepared for our own reaction. We hadn’t anticipated how we might feel, how the news would draw us out of our 500 square feet and into the streets like a pack of swarming bees, buzzing and maddened. We didn’t even think about what we were doing. Our bodies took care of the motions for us, kicking into autopilot and giving us a reason to walk outside, if only because we knew we must be amongst eachother at a time like this.

You could feel it in the air everywhere that day. I entered a bodega at the corner of McCarren Park in Greenpoint and did a very un-New York thing; I beamed. My mouth was concealed behind a thick cloth mask as was necessary back in those days, but even still I beamed as though I was posing for the first school photo without braces, and the cashier saw the smile in my eyes and he returned it with his own. I didn’t need my phone’s GPS to lead me to the next destination, I simply followed the crowd and found myself in line at the nearest liquor store. I stood in line with the others as we patiently waited for our turn to forage the cooler for chilled bottles of champagne, two at a time as to not disrupt the capacity restrictions. The store owner said he’d been open for only an hour and was already nearly sold out of his entire stock of bubbles. Effervescence was our love language that day, our celebratory elixir, and though I didn’t recognize the brand, I gladly forked over $80 for a fancy bottle because it was what the occasion called for.

I showed up at the park alone with only my champagne in hand, but I was not alone. Nobody was alone that day. We were all there together, a family reunion full of crazy aunts and estranged cousins. Everywhere you looked was a pair of smiling eyes, and for once no one avoided eye contact. Sporadic “whoos” emitted from the crowd with regularity, our excitement dissolving us into a bunch of basic college girls reuniting at a bottomless brunch. There were flags everywhere; Pride flags, Black Lives Matter flags, American Flags — and you might not believe this, but for most of us, that day was the first time in months, in years, where seeing our country’s flag evoked a sense of pride. Those stars and stripes no longer felt like a threat to outsiders, they felt like a promise of who we might become. There was music and dancing, confetti and a live band, children perched on the shoulders of their parents, children who would only even think of America as this beautiful thing they were witnessing. When I saw those children, when I considered what the country might look like in their eyes, I felt my skin melt off of my bones. They will believe because she is, you can. They will change the shape of this place, knowing it doesn’t have to be the way it was, that it has already begun to outgrow its roots. And to that, we cheered and we toasted. We cried, we danced.

I can only hope that by the time you read this, the world has radically transformed in all the ways we felt were possible on that fateful day. I hope your reality is so far from what ours was that you can hardly conceptualize the scene I am laying out for you, but I also hope you will not forget. I hope that even though you may never live to see illness on a massive scale or baseless violence towards Black people or primal, collective despair, that you do not forget it happened. Because it is the forgetting, dear Future, that led us to where I stand today. And if not forgetting, then it was the rest, the sort of rest that is craved after a long battle, the kind we feel entitled to. But we learned an important lesson that year, one that I hope has allowed you to blossom into all of your endless potential: that on that fateful, exuberant Saturday, the work had only just begun.

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Cheers, my dears, and thanks for reading. Today’s essay was inspired by Ssense’s “Letters to the Future” project. I’d love to hear the details about your Saturday when the election results dropped. Do you think it will be a day you remember for the rest of your life? What will you say about it?

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Three Pieces of Content Worth Consuming

1. A Beautiful Answer to the Question, “How Do I Live Like an Artist?” There is so much juicy, moving advice in this Ask Polly that I don't want to do it a disservice by trying to paraphrase it. Being an artist means many things to many people, but Polly encompasses the core of it here: it’s about approaching life with less judgment and more curiosity, about letting the ugly in. A particularly worthy read if you are an artist or if you'd like to emulate one. Friendly reminder: you do not have to be a painter/dancer/actress/musician/poet/writer to be an artist.

   “Whatever makes you a tiny bit different, whatever feels a bit easier for you than for other people, whatever you enjoy a little more — maybe even enjoy so much that it embarrasses you? That’s the stuff you have to take the most seriously, treat with the most care, and protect from a world packed with people who want to tell you those things make you weird or boring or unimportant or a misfit."

2. Where Did the Feminists Go in the ’90s? If you haven't watched Mrs. America on Hulu, I would highly suggest doing so. I wasn't alive during the Women's Liberation Movement in the '70s and admittedly, I knew very little about the true political power women yielded back then. After watching the show I found myself in a piping hot rage. I wondered, what the hell happened? How did women go from having so much political influence back then to now, in 2020, when women’s issues like equal pay and Universal Childcare aren’t even talking points in Washington? How are we still fighting for things like abortion rights (one of the many major flaws of the original movement: not sealing the deal on reproductive rights. Another, not taking an inclusive approach to feminism, leaving Black women and LGBTQ women behind)? This piece explores what happened to feminists during a decade many perceived as the “dark” years, the '90s bleeding into now, and how the quasi disappearance of the feminist movement was actually a period of digital organizing, leading to modern-day movements like #Metoo and the Women’s March.

3. The Secret World of Diary Hunters. Sometimes when writing in my journal, a picture flashes in my mind. I imagine someone pouring over the piles of notebooks chronicling my life with genuine interest, uncovering my innermost thoughts and decoding who I was, being able to pick up on things I should have done before I came to the conclusion myself (“Come on, girl,” I picture them saying, “walk away already!”). This imagined scenario takes place in the far future when I am ostensibly dead, and the reader thinks it so interesting that they decide to make a movie or write a book about my charming, old-timey life. Indulgent? Of course, but it didn’t feel so far off after reading this piece and discovering that there are entire spheres of people who purchase old diaries and become obsessed with strangers whom they will never know.

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Perhaps You Should…
Learn How to Be at Home (with a poem!)

With single-day hospitalizations hitting an all time high yesterday and new lockdown restrictions rolling out across the country, this beautiful short film feels more relevant than ever. A Canadian poet teamed up with a filmmaker to produce this animated poem about the strange period we have lived thorugh and will continue to live thorugh; a period of time that invovles staying home. The illustrations were gorgeous, the words even more so. This moved me deeply and I think it will move you, too.

“With the come down comes the weeping

those downcast eyes and feelings

the truth is you can’t go dancing, not right now

not at any club or party in any town

The heartbreak of this astounds you

it joins old aches way down in you

you can visit them, but please don’t stay there”

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**Bonus Content** (Gossip Girl Goes Brooklyn)

In middle school, I poured over the Gossip Girl books with vigor, and now I’m wondering whether Cecily von Ziegesar’s writing will hold up in her forthcoming novel, “Cobble Hill”. This one trades the glitz and glamour of the Upper East Side for the bright, ritzy Brooklyn neighborhood, swapping the Blair Waldorf’s of the world with a set of slightly more relatable, but equally over the top characters. I, for one, am very much looking forward to reading this one, literary snobbery be damned. Speaking of Gossip Girl, have you seen the new cast of the anticipated HBO reboot?

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A Quote From A Book You Should Read:

“That parochial one-upmanship New Yorkers think their own, special remit, but everyone is possesive of the places they inhabit. You recount the disasters to demonstrate your fidelity. You’ve seen the old girl at her worst.”

-Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

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This newsletter is best served with a side of conversation, so drop your opinions, reflections, and thoughts in the comments below and let’s get to talking.

Or, share the most thought-provoking piece from today’s edition with someone you love, then call them up to discuss, debate, and percolate. As a wise woman once said, “Great minds discuss ideas.”