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Month: June 2020

Annual Hiatus Times!

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Everybody is like, “Annual?” But this is my official, planned, not due to any sort of terrible circumstance or mental or physical health issue hiatus. I’m taking two weeks off this time around because this is usually a busy and overwhelming time for me trying to get everything around for my trip and spend time with my kids before I leave, etc. This year, even more so because *gestures to 2020 calendar*. So, to make sure I’m not burned out before I head up there and as a result, HOPEFULLY FINISH MY FREAKING BOOK. I’m gonna sit on my couch, take allergy meds, and wait out the crushing anxiety of knowing I have to leave my house in four days.

Stay safe, stay awesome, be excellent to each other, and I’ll be back after the 28th.

What the hell is that about?!

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Read the title of this post again, but do it the way Nathan Lane says it in The Producers during “Betrayed.”

If you haven’t seen Nathan Lane in The Producers you definitely should. He’s amazing.

Also, one time I saw him getting into his car and I yelled, “Yay, you’re awesome!” and he for real did not want to be recognized and just before he closed the door he said to his driver, “Let’s go, let’s go,” and I was like, yes. This is a moment I will treasure forever.

And I do to this very day.

Anyway, I had the absolute most fucked up dream I’ve ever had in my life. This is where I put the CW: Suicide but it’s like, more about the weirdness of the dream, I guess? Just heads up.

I know how much everyone wants to listen to other people describing their dreams for no apparent reason, so let’s dive on in.

The dream took place in a lot of different locations in what I consider the “Jenny’s Dreams Cinematic Universe.” There are common places in my dreams that I visit more than once and I’m familiar with all of them. A haunted house. A maze of country dirt roads. A blend of New York and Grand Rapids that has the Mackinac Bridge in it for some reason. My old high school. A mall. There’s even a baseball stadium and an amusement park, a lake, both sets of grandparents’ houses, my childhood house, a cemetery, it’s just this elaborate dream world and my dreams sometimes take place in it. But ever since we’ve been quarantined, I haven’t been able to leave these dream locations. And I’ve been bizarrely half-lucid in almost all of them.

It’s getting pretty fucking boring.

So boring that my dream self has become suicidally depressed.

I spent last night’s dream visiting these various dream locations and telling the people I met there that I wanted to kill myself. Or I’d make a grim little joke about killing myself. And nobody cared. And it didn’t bother me that they didn’t care until I woke up and went, “What the hell is that about?!”

First of all, there’s no need for concern. My dream is not going to come true. I know there are a lot of situations where that phrase applies in the history of my life but trust me, this time it’s not prophecy. Because I woke up like, damn. Dream me has it fucking rough. She is in bad shape.

Meanwhile, real me is killing it. I edited an entire manuscript in a day. I can watch the news without falling entirely apart. I’ve taken breaks to watch TV shows, not just playing them in the background while I try to concentrate on something else. Seriously, what is happening to dream me?

Another aspect of the dream last night concerned my annual writing retreat. I know I explain it every year but over-explaining is something of a talent of mine so just ride it out if you already know what I’m talking about. Every year, a group we refer to as the “Ladies of the Lake” converge in Gay, Michigan, to stay in a cabin with little-to-no cell signal, no wifi, no phone, and most importantly, no people. We spend the time writing and enjoying each other’s company and despite the insistence of Mr. Jen, “lesbian shit” has yet to occur but hope springs eternal. Because our governor eased regulations, we will be making the trip this year after all, with some changes like quarantining ourselves before and after travel, not going to any restaurants or stores in the U.P., bringing masks and hand sanitizer for when we have to stop for gas or potty, all that end-of-the-world, fleeing-civilization jazz. Usually, I can get some pretty serious writing done up there. The past two years? Ehhhhh not so much. But there have been times I’ve written 10k to 20k words per day up there.

Okay, the time I did 20k I got a tension headache and I had to go to the hospital.

Plus, there are only going to be three of us this time, rather than six, so even less distraction, unless it turns out that five other people are needed to supervise me. In which case, we never make this mistake again.

Anyway, I dreamed that we were on the retreat, which is now ten days away. And I’m freaking out because suddenly I realize that it is Thursday of our Saturday-to-Saturday retreat and I haven’t written a single word.

I woke up sweating. Chills racing all over my body.

We have reached the point in 2020 where I’m having suicidal stress dreams about things I look forward to and enjoy doing.

I went to the shower. I doubled over. I shouted at the top of my lungs:

“OH MY GOD NEXT MONTH I’M GONNA BE FORTY!”

What I guess this post is saying is, my birthday panic comes earlier every year. Death stands behind me. Owls are starting to seem suspicious to me. I don’t know how to use my TV. Immortality beckons.

That’s it. There’s not really any wrap up here but a couple people told me I should post whatever I want and I did and now you’re all suffering for it. But I’m seriously considering consulting a therapist in my dreams.

What is there to say?

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There are different types of silence at a moment like this. The conspicuous silence of people who care more about being marketable than being “political”. The forced silence of those who want to do the right thing but are frozen with the fear of what could happen to them in their homes and their communities. And then there’s the stunned kind of silence, the silence of the helpless, of people who don’t know what to say or do because the thought of a solution to the problem only just occurred to them.

I’ve spent the last two weeks doing more circulating of Black voices than that of my own. I’m white. I don’t know shit and it’s very difficult to run to Twitter and talk about writing or Chinese television or funny things my kid has said when my country stands on the precipice of a revolution none of us are emotionally prepared for. Weeks of fear and isolation in a near-nationwide quarantine has sapped us of our energy and mental health but the moment is now. We’re watching scenes from major cities that look more like what the United States warns us about in other countries. Insurrections happen over there. Where? It doesn’t matter. Just not here. Certainly, the President of the United States would never have to cower in fear from his own people, in a bunker constructed for a worst-case scenario. And if that happens, what should we do, as proud, free Americans? Vote, of course!

Vote! Vote in a system controlled by the very people who benefit most from it! Vote, because if you’re lucky, yours will be one that counts. Probably not, but you’ll never know until you try! The system has been stacked unfairly against Black voters in an effort to protect white supremacy. Of course, people are fighting back. Why wouldn’t they? No ordinary citizen truly has a say in what happens to them, to their lives, to their property, to their liberty. A whim and a phone call pitted the United States military against the citizens who allegedly control this democracy. A whim and a pen stroke could return the country to slavery and internment. All while the people we were encouraged to vote for sit back, wring their hands, and pretend they never had a hand in crafting the laws and policies that have broadened every gap, political, economic, and racial between Black people and white people.

There’s another kind of silence: the one where you know that your rage and your heartbreak are not central to an issue. Where you’re quiet because you know your voice isn’t necessarily helpful. The one where you fret that you’re not doing enough, out of fear of doing too much and causing harm. The fear of burdening an already suffering people with well-intentioned nonsense. A fear that comes from the desire to do good but also a desire to look good. I don’t want to succumb to that. I don’t think anyone wants to do that.

Rather than try to express my own feelings on the recent slayings and the brazen, homicidal lawlessness of police everywhere now that they’ve been set off their leashes, I’m going to keep RTing Black voices and smarter people than me over on Twitter, where I have more of a reach. And I’m going to give you, the rest of Trout Nation, the choice of how the blog moves forward from here. It feels very much like the days after 9/11; when are we allowed to do normal things again, without diminishing the hell we’re in? How much distraction is okay before it lulls us back into a state of submission? Do you want to see updates here or would you feel wrong about it? Would it serve as a temporary respite from the new or would it hurt or seem as though I’m pushing the importance of this time to the backburner? How do I go forward here without making it seem like I’m trying to nudge everything back to “normal”? I would feel guilty wondering about these questions but they’re near-universal among creatives of all races right now. Aside from white supremacists and privileged white anarchists, nobody wants to steal focus from the war being waged against justice in the streets nightly. Nobody in America knows how to live with the open acknowledgment that we are a broken nation and have been since July 4, 1776. Even for the people who’ve known this, having it in the air all around, the topic of every conversation in a year when an entire country burned, a pandemic swept the globe, and our president was impeached is a surreal experience. And the year isn’t even half over.

I’m stuck in the “please control your white rage, Jenny, this is not about you and your seemingly racially-inherent, socially conditioned inability to see any solution beyond violence” type of silence. I’m angry. My desire to express that anger doesn’t help. It’s just not constructive for white people to be angry because we’re the ones who did this. And I don’t know how to fix it. What I do know is that Black Lives Matter, Black people matter, Blackness matters. The system must be taken apart and reassembled from the ground up. And the work should ultimately be the responsibility of the white people who caused the problem. But again, I’m one of those white people and let me tell you: we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing because we’re still routinely surprised by the police brutality that we willfully ignore.

Denial is a dangerous, dangerous weapon.

This is all exceptionally disjointed and grim. I’m aware. Consider yourselves lucky; I’m not as in love with stream of consciousness writing as I was in high school. But while I have exactly zero answers and nothing to add that hasn’t already been said better by someone with more life experience than mine, I want everyone here to know that Trout Nation isn’t a place for fascists. It isn’t a place for violence. And it’s a place where Black Lives Matter is not a political statement. It’s a statement of fact.