Collect yourself

Sometimes you need to take a breath. A long breath. A month of breaths. When your body is saying “go! go! go!” and you risk forgetting everything you’ve learned over the years about who you are and all the pieces of yourself, what you have to offer and what you need to hold in reserve, where your cracks are, where your patches are, where the edges are that you want to grow into before jumping off into the abyss.

I’m working on an oral history book about the SF queer / dyke / performance art / punk / political scene of the 90s. It was a scene I was sort of part of, sort of adjacent to. I am loving this theme that keeps arising, about welcoming. The fundamental drive for belonging. And how powerful it is for people when they find a scene where they can be themselves, with the freedom and encouragement to explore what that being of their own creative body could move into. And the hurt and damage when people feel a lack of belonging, and like they have to contort themselves to find temporary refuge in a place that is at least a little better than where they were coming from.

I love the way everyone, looking back, will at some point say “we were just kids.” We were in our 20s, we were making mistakes, we grant grace in retrospect. But at the same time the hurt and joy are so visceral, I can feel it coming through the phone.

I think one thing I, and so many people tend to forget, is how much power we have even when we feel powerless or scared. One of the reasons to learn about the brain and nervous system and the threat response system is not to perfect a ever calm and grounded state of being, but to be able to collect yourself when your physiology is telling you one thing. Collect yourself, breathe, and chose a path rather than being driven down it.

I appreciate someone’s advice about becoming more politically active for the times we are living in. “Now is not the time to invent something new,” they said, “get involved in something that already exists.” And I move from a grandiose visioning of the anarchist school I’ve been meaning to start for the past 35 years, and settle into what I’m already doing (a community garden that grows for a community run food bank) and what I can do to expand that (teaching my co-volunteers how to plan a garden for maximum, sustainable production, rather than just doing all the planning myself; connecting with the garden in my newer neighborhood; helping a mutual aid group that prepares food for homeless people connect with a punk tax person). Take a breath. Where can I grow into (deportation defense?) How can I start to gather the skills, relationships and strategies that I need for a sustained entry into another project. I collect myself. Take a breath. A month of breaths. and proceed.