A Love Letter To The Year of Perfect Vision
Why I Have to be Grateful for 2020, for CRY
Dear 2020,
You’re getting a real bad wrap. I don’t think it’s fair. There’s a lot of shit that’s wrong with what’s been happening in the world, but just time itself, you, you’re not the issue. You’re only among them; though a bit numb, I can still forgive.
I strongly believe that you wanted to be challenging. You wanted to make everyone see in the year of perfect vision. I’m okay with it.
You get to go down as the beacon of polarity, the aggravator of extremes. You emboldened everyone. You are the bringer of disease and involuntary isolation. You are the revelation toward new eras. You are the necessary context for celebrating all of us children who learned how to socialize on the internet before we could speak conversationally, at length, in person. You are the normalization of the human cyborg. You are the test for quantum existence, as I have been both here, in my room, and all over the world (in my room) all year on Zoom. And you know what? I love it. I love you. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’m on the spectrum of many conditions that marginalize me socially. I’ve accepted it, 2020, and I love my colorful life nonetheless. I’m a most-likely autistic, nonbinary, Black and Pinxy polymath and hermit. Interacting with human beings was already difficult before all of this, 2020, so I’ll have you know that my transition into lockdowns was pretty damn smooth. For the first 5 months, I actually very much enjoyed it. I read an article that made me feel that I perhaps may be a psychopath for this. I know I am not, and that this topic really deserves some nuance, but I considered it.
2020, you fucked with my personal time-space continuum, and I love you for it.
I started you off hosting a transgender speakeasy at a 1920’s themed blow out with my closest friends at Penfield Mansion, one of Sinatra’s old pads. It was a moment for you. For me, it was surreal. I am still astounded by every bit of effort that went into this event. My favorite memory was when D.L. Shultz got a few cisgender, straight men to experience gay sex by word, with our mixed audience at large seated in various thrones, or laying neatly on the master bed, eating it all up.
Nonetheless, I returned home during the witching hours of January 1st sick, dying of alcohol poisoning.
I decided that day I would no longer drink to get drunk. 2020, thank you for that.
I also decided that work in the sciences, the way I was expected to do it by my alma mater, had not been serving me. I temporarily removed myself from my lab positions and associations and got my first “real” job in February. I commuted everyday for two hours to a headquarters where I stocked up with door-hangers and pamphlets. I knocked on hundreds of doors to campaign for Yes on R, which saw a glorious victory. In March, I got hired by another renowned canvassing organization, only to find that I would not be returning to work. I was both terrified and relieved.
This pushed me to start skateboarding professionally, bringing me on set of major auditions, ads, music videos, and fashion campaigns before I could even really ollie (I can do that now). I learned that, with skateboarding, all you gotta do to become a professional is have fun. I am still flabbergasted by this.
No, 2020, I didn’t pay a lot of my rent. I couldn’t. And even when I could, there were people who needed funds and my labor first. But it’s okay, these folks didn’t pay either.
I am also grateful for what you have done to my relationship to place. It has changed for the better, and has sharpened my fight. Blessed be the lands upon which I have been living on, lands cultivated and stewarded still by Tongva, Chumash, and Paiute people, as well as my ancestors in the African diaspora.
All year I have watched the birds build more sound homes and eat more flora and fauna from new gardens that have emerged. The grass became greener on the other side of March. I was reminded that food grows on trees, and we have the capability to grow our own food. Especially as the price of food rises, fear of food scarcity burdens us, and decreasing the threat of food insecurity becomes paramount.
I spun out a few times, 2020, but it’s not your fault. I forgive you. I must say that being in nature with nothing helped center me through a lot.
2020, you centered the deadliest of savages.
I am grateful for my roots, the deeper they become. I am grateful for what I have learned from my ancestors that keeps me alive today.
2020, for me, was the year of celebrating the core of what the U.S. constitution calls my merciless savagery. I got to learn about my native ancestries in community with peoples of various backgrounds on Chumash land, learning of our various relationships to the natural world in our backyard. On that land, I learned under the first tree that Thích Nhất Hạnh taught under in the 1970’s. I connected with my Black and Native grandmother, the one I’m named after, through prayer for the very first time. 2020, you made me surrender. (You know, hot girl shit.)
I had the privilege to be able to live on stewarded land when I need to leave the city in 2020. Thank you. I could not have gone through 4th of July in the city with my light and sound hypersensitivity, as people popped off firework after firework, many more than we had every experienced, in residential areas. Some say the cops left out boxes of fireworks and bricks during the Long Beach George Floyd Rebellion to work up violent protestors angle, distracting local organizers from getting work done. (Here’s a song about what happened right at the end of my block by Anderson .Paak).
All that is to say, I got to live in the mountains of Chumash land (Ojai, California) a few times for a week at a time while attending a fellowship with colleagues who are nothing short of family to me now. The Ojai Foundation FIRE Fellowship was my only in-person networking opportunity I planned for that did not get cancelled after March.
We tended to fire, and discussed, however distant, the transformation that it brings. In my time there, I became deeply settled in the idea that land that routinely burns itself cannot be made civilized. The idea of civilization is, and always will be, rooted in white supremacist capitalism. 2020, you made that damn clear. (As a Californian, I do believe I am now comprised of 30% ash. Everything burned, almost everyday.)
In 2020, land back means fight back. Some lands were returned. There’s plenty more to go.
Thanks to you, 2020, the mundane and everyday have become more magical.
Fighting to survive sucks. Survival mode really fucking sucks. But, there is so much beauty in the everyday. I cannot deny that.
I fell in love with new ways of being in love. Creative ways of being together opened the possibility of worlds to come.
Learning about autonomy, especially as a polyamorous person, in combination with the pandemic, made time with loved ones incredibly precious.
It’s the little things, like sucking on the bloody teeth of pomegranates and peeling locally grown oranges, that kept me going.
I even made nearly 200 meals from scratch, 2020. I’ve cooked before, but this time around, I was making stuff I knew I could buy from across the street, and enjoying the labor. I spent two hours on 16 pieces of falafel and gained a new appreciation for the art. I didn’t know how beautiful leaning into the practice of slow food could be.
2020, you helped me see how fake my surroundings are.
Every time I returned to LA county from the country, it looked completely different.
2020, let me tell you this. On the radio, a commercial sounded off:
“… The people who work at McDonald’s don’t just work here, they live here! …”
I saw a half-burnt down McDonalds in LA, its big yellow-n-red M facade melted into its wire-y infrastructure, appearing tarred and exposed. In those moments, I remembered the plot of Sorry to Bother You and questioned whether or not the people at large are finally fed up with corporate world domination.
Society, for the most part, is an idea. It’s supported by very few key stakeholders who make too much fucking money. In 2020, I lost interest in articulating this eloquently. It’s been done enough.
I will say, 2020, that the cities are based on the movement and livelihood of commerce, not the wellness of human beings. 2020, you taught us that natural world doesn’t give two shits about our wellness, or any of the conveniences we try to forge for our entitled and hyper-consumptive citizens. Mother Earth fought back hard this year. I fuck with it.
Even before the lockdowns, I kept getting this feeling like city was walking through me, never I walking through it. I mean, I was born and raised here. It’s been too much. It’s the reason why you’ll rarely catch me on foot. You know, I go out to skate every now and then, not everyday like back in the day.
The pedestrian ways that create access to restaurants, big brand stores, and other attractions are empty now. Months ago, they were being raided to filth. A lot of people had something to say about that, more so than the matters at hand, and by the time the election came around, a lot people lost track of the momentum.
Though, from June to September, some people started going in even harder, organizing to get water, food, and KN95’s to houseless folk everyday, especially during the heatwaves and fire season.
Instagram became less about pictures of what folks were eating (#pornfood became banned on Instagram in 2020), and more about where to find the shared community fridges.
1,000 houseless folks died among 93,000 vacant homes in LA. I can only hope that this is waking the people the fuck up.
My artist friends organized to paint the boards surrounding the perimeters of protected businesses, bright with messages of progression and demands for justice. These days, when I’m skating, I’m surrounded by radical art, not so much people, and I feel as though I am witnessing what the city could be.
Even though people are becoming increasingly more plugged in, 2020, I think a lot are ready to start over.
2020, you gave me more time to turn hobbies into career moves.
I had been taking a break from many academic contexts 2018–2019. I did not stop writing, but I very purposely found myself exploring the talents I had left by the wayside while moving into the field of psychology as a professional, including improving my skateboarding by surrounding myself with talented skaters until the lockdowns. Though my career in the sciences started in 2016, I had become very disillusioned. You gave me a reason to go back into the sciences a more well-rounded person, ready to talk and do about injustice.
You got me to launch a business. Thank you for helping me see my worth, and focus on the value I bring.
You also gave me the opportunity to work with youth. Nothing in the world gives me as much hope as this.
2020, you helped me relearn what it means to be human.
How does it feel for you, having pushed me to the edge of my existence? I, a qualified professional trained to teach breath work, Googled “how to breathe?” in a panic.
I love you for that experience, too.
***
2020, you made Los Angeles dream chasers reconsider everything.
We needed that.
We need to be kinder to each other.
We are all we have.
***
Human to human, though — that is if you’re not some sort of AI robot reading this article, since that is not out of the question anymore — we needed to do a better job of taking care of each other. If it wasn’t for mutual aid, I would not have made it through two major injuries this year. If it wasn’t for human kindness; grocery drop-offs, donations, and deep listening ears, 2020 would have been very difficult to survive. There are people who are fighting everyday to be alive. Tend to this. Get involved. Humanity needs it.
