I Don’t Know What to Feel
Yesterday Warren and I took a walk to the iris garden. It’s at its peak, and now that we moved it’s walking distance. Warren suggested we go in the morning because otherwise I get caught up in email and painting and Zoom calls, and I don’t have the energy at the end of the day. I brought my good camera with its new telephoto lens and some tiny pads of Yupo and a Sharpie to capture shapes. The weather was balmy with a little breeze; I’d smoked a little pot, and the whole thing felt like a scavenger hunt for cool images. I was smitten with the painted rocks we encountered along the way.
In other words, it was perfect. Except for the nagging guilt. I had not gotten the memo on #blackoutTuesday and had posted a painting on Instagram before realizing that a black rectangle was supposed to be my only contribution to social media yesterday. And just 12 miles away — we can see the New York skyline from our balcony — thousands were fighting for justice. But not me.
Surrounded by the lush green, I felt like the poster child for white privilege.
Could we go back to just hiding inside? Remember how simple life used to be when we just had a pandemic to worry about?
I’ve been following my bliss, discovering a hidden talent, and in the beginning of May we moved to a new place, perched on a hill, with so much more space, and trees and birds, and a huge studio to work on my art. It’s all been like one of those dreams where you’re walking through your house and you keep discovering rooms you never saw before. I was even written up in Montclair Magazine (page 20–21) under the headline “Living in the Moment.”
I’ve been happy with this new life. I’ve loved the transition from writer to painter. My friends have cheered me on.
I’ve felt lucky. But now I realize that luck was really all kinds of privilege. White privilege, baby boomer privilege (collecting social security) and the birth lottery.
That’s it. The birth lottery. I was born with privilege.
Margot’s coming to stay for a few days. She was awakened by firecrackers going off on her street last night, scared by the noise, and having trouble breathing because of the smoke. And she’s haunted by the non-stop sound of helicopters, just as she was haunted by all the ambulance sirens in March and April.
I grew up in a world in which privilege was sought. My dad used to keep a sign on his desk, a joke, but it said: All I ask is a fair advantage. If I had a problem, he’d see if there was someone in his rolodex who could help fix it. Was there somebody in the temple? Was there someone who worked at FDA who could help? Letters of recommendation, all that stuff.
As a boy who’d grown up on top of a store in the coal mining town of Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, the son of immigrants, without any privilege. So all the connections he’d made, the network of friends and acquaintances he’d built, the people he could call on if someone needed some help getting into a college, he created by dint of raising himself into the professional class, becoming a journalist, being smart and friendly.
I remember also, once I entered college, and began to meet people whose privilege went back generations, feeling my two-generations-away-from-shtetl identity as not privileged enough. I envied the WASPS and old money and people whose grandparents and great grandparents had grand floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves.
And then somehow I had too much. And the worlds I cared out — writing and art — sought out people without privilege. People trans and LGBT and brown and black and Latinx. The whole Western canon — the epitome of culture when I was growing up — was now seen as the history and culture of white people and colonists. It all went tipsy turvy and I was white bread, not so much privileged as dull.
I skipped the protest rally in Clifton yesterday because my legs and hips were killing me from the walk to the iris gardens. The gardens are only about a mile and a half away, but some elevations that challenged my joints. I felt guilty, of course. But when I looked at the pictures of the protest and saw that people were packed together, I was glad I hadn’t.
I fear the spikes in Covid that are inevitable from these superspreader events. I am surprised and proud of all the white kids who are making this fight for justice their fight too. And I’m worried about my son going to a rally and getting the virus.
Back in those days when my dad was building his rolodex, when we lived outside of Washington, DC, he took me to all of the marches in Washington, all the protests against the Vietnam war.
I think, if there wasn’t Covid, I’d go now.
Really, I don’t know what to think, moment to moment, day to day — except for the solid truth that our president is dangerous and stupid and that the GOP is full of cowards.
I don’t know what to think and I don’t know what to feel. I’m afraid that my happiness is a badge of dishonor.
But feeling uncomfortable might just be the first step.
