Tag: chicago

Chicago blur: 1995 to 2020

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I’m excited to share that my poem “Chicago blur: 1995 to 2020” was published this month in the poetry journal Spillway 29, guest edited by Patricia Smith, who recently won the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize; and Lynne Thompson, Poet Laureate of the City of Los Angeles.

As writers and artists, we are constantly being influenced by those who came before us and those who are working alongside us. In the early days of the pandemic, in April 2020, Creative Distancing, in partnership with the Philbrook Museum of Art, published a series of creative project tutorials on YouTube, offering artistic prompts from a number of creators. One of these featured a poet, author, and educator whose work I love, Quraysh Ali Lansana, talking about a form he created, the blur poem.

If you’ve never encountered the form, you can also read Quraysh Ali Lansana’s blur poems “Tulsa blur: 1921 to 2012” and “basement blur: wisconsin“.

I was inspired to write my own blur poem and worked on it during those early months of the pandemic. I’m delighted for it to be included among so many wonderful poems in Spillway 29. The annual poetry journal is not online but is available for purchase through Small Press Distribution.

Valya holding a copy of the poetry journal Spillway 29.

Reflections

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Sometime last month, as the weather started warming up and the days began to get longer, I realized that I was breathing deeper, feeling hopeful, and closer to “normal” than I had in a long while. It made me aware of just how tense I had been this past year: shoulders tight, jaw tight, brow furrowed. All the time.

Like many of you, I have spent much of the last year tight with fear and anxiety, worrying about how to keep my loved ones safe, how to help the kids get through this, how to create positive memories in the midst of it all, how to practice gratitude, how to try and support those who need help and those who are working to make things better, how to be a friend without the luxury of shared time and space, how to prioritize, self-care, and keep connections.

My friend Nancy Hightower is a college professor and writer living in New York City. She spent much of the last year of quarantine alone in a city that is well-known for bringing people together.

Nancy, like many people, moved to NYC to be with people. What happens when all those New Yorkers, who usually breathe life into the public spaces that are the nervous systems of that vibrant city, are forced to disengage and isolate themselves?

Nancy would mask up and go on walks every day in her neighborhood, and she started taking photographs of what she encountered.

Nancy reflected in a mirror with trash on the streets of NYC.
Nancy reflected, from her Patreon post, “The Shadow Pandemic.”

What Nancy photographed over the last year is the subject of her Patreon (and for those who don’t know what that is, Patreon is a crowdfunding platform that enables supporters/patrons to pay and support artists for their work). She shared a lot of her photos with me over the changing seasons, and they were rich food for my imagination. I think it’s a similar reason that so many people took refuge in Animal Crossing, Instagram, and TikTok. We needed windows into worlds outside our own.

Nancy’s photos capture relics of this moment; they are tiny portals into people’s lives left on doorsteps and balanced on mailboxes, draped over fences and hung from lamp posts. It was as if New Yorkers, forced into their apartments and unable to inhabit their museums, cafes, restaurants, galleries, bars, and parks, started leaking bits of their lives and themselves onto the streets. Here was a cookie jar beside a pair of vintage cowboy boots filled with plastic flowers, there was a lamp and a typewriter and a bag of rice. Sometimes it felt like poetry, other times like an art installation, or a Rorschach test for the state of mind of a city mourning and struggling.

Nancy has started sharing those photos with accompanying essays on her Patreon. The most recent one about how we have been changed by the pandemic struck a chord with me, and I wanted to share it. She’s made it public, so you can follow the link to see all the photos. You can join her Patreon if you’d like to read/see more.

Nancy writes: “This Spring you might find yourself being simultaneously hopeful and exhausted. You might not know who you are anymore–alone, or with other people. I’ve had sporadic dinners with pod friends over the past year, but nothing close to real, sustainable community, no touch longer than quick hug. I wonder what I’ll look like by the time I can be in a group, maskless and yet changed, a time traveler finally trapped by time.”

We have all been changed by the events of the past year, for better and for worse—as a nation, as cities, as neighborhoods, families, and individuals. We won’t be able to see just how far those changes go for a a while, but I think they will go deep.

Pandemic self-portrait post-vaccination.

We are still in a pandemic. The numbers are rising even as more people are getting vaccinated. There is hope, but there is also a need to remain disciplined. I feel like when I look into the mirror, I’m more than a year older. I think about my grandparents and their parents before them, who lived through war and famine and so much death and sacrifice. They were changed by those events too. Some of them shared their stories, and I am grateful.

It’s going to be important to remember, to document this time, to share our stories, to listen to one another when we finally come together, to really see ourselves and our neighbors  as we emerge from this—inevitably changed.

Week 2: Shared

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TGIF. I’m tired. I know many of us are so, so tired, trying to keep it all together with anxious teenagers and attention-seeking toddlers and hurting bodies and frantic brain weasels and stressed partners and nervous students and struggling friends and hurting communities and ailing parents and compromised immune systems and the list goes on and on. 

This week felt like a month, every long day rolling into the next: nudge kids about homework, do the dayjob, laundry, clean, cook, make sure kids are getting enough sleep, dayjob, feed the cats, homework, feed the rats, check in on friends, make time to talk to the kids about their feelings, clean, cook, break-up teenage bickering, check in on family, laundry, dayjob, homework, exercise, watch the news, clean, sleep, check social media, watch a movie, laundry, dayjob, cook, break-up teenage bickering, try to make time to be a good partner, read a blog, read the news, read a story, laundry, check in on friends, clean, dayjob, homework. 

Rinse, repeat.

This pandemic means new routines in our jobs, our parenting, our relationships, our support systems—an evolving “new normal,” and through it all so many thoughts and feelings, so many fears and concerns. Last week felt saturated in fear, this week was a little different. It felt like a reshuffling. Less panic and more…planning?

Fear is what we don’t know. What do we know and what can we do? Are we more grounded? Is this a calm before the bigger storm? Maybe?

I’m trying to keep hold of the positive in these moments, and it’s not easy because of work and hormones and homework and anxiety and cabin-fever and news and numbers and so many emotions.

Tread carefully, make coffee, hug often, love, listen, laugh, be present, be patient, be forgiving, be kind, be generous, be grateful for everyone who is working to keep us safe and healthy.

Rinse, repeat.

There are moments of beauty I am grateful for: conversations catching up with friends and family, time for a family movie, the gift of time with the kids when they are quite literally forced to be in the house with us.

There are joyful moments in the midst of all this, silly laughing moments or quiet happy moments or shared thoughtful moments. 

That’s the word I keep coming back to…shared. This is an something that a large number of us are sharing all around the world, this experience of having our lives turned upside down, of being confined to our homes for the greater good of our communities large and small, of facing illness and uncertainty and inevitable loss. Certainly other communities and countries are dealing with atrocities and continue to face challenges that are compounded by this virus. Still, this pandemic goes beyond borders, beyond our neighborhoods and cities, states and countries—shared.

Related to that is the ability many of us have to connect with one another within this global experience…to share online what we are sharing in life. By no means is it equal or fair or all encompassing. But if we think about the number of people who can connect even in this quarantined time—it’s extraordinary. The ability to see what’s happening in China, to be inspired by neighborhoods in Italy, to learn from scientists in France—shared. 

That word is what I’m holding onto, and all that is contained in that word: shared. Of course we want to avoid sharing the deadly contagion. But we do want to learn from and help one another, by sharing resources and information, experiences and assistance. 

What a strange, surreal time this is. Shared.

I’m going to finish my chamomile tea and go to sleep, having finally jotted down a few of the thoughts thrashing about in my brain.

I hope that you and your loved ones are safe and healthy. xxo