Verônika Shülman
Editor: Colleen Hamilton-Lecky
Illustration: Esmé Shapiro

There is something to be examined and held gently about this time. To be clear, I have neither the credentials nor a calling to meditate on the virus, directly. I do, however, imagine myself an appropriate messenger on the ideology of inconvenience, because of the way I grew up.

Throughout childhood, my closest family friends lived in Laurel Canyon, up a long and winding road called Ridpath. The Shapiros would host lavish dinner parties; some had themes, like “Ghosts & Gods.” Teenagers, adults, and infants ran amuck together, with plastic leaves and green paint adorning our faces and bodies as we munched on expensive, creamy cheeses and charred jerk chicken. Sometimes, my mom and I would spend the entire weekend at their house and get back into the city Sunday evening or Monday morning, just in time for school. 

The other children of the other grown-ups and I would wander the hills of the backwoods of the property, wading through a wabi-sabi flock of giant paper-mache swan lanterns constructed by Judy, the matriarch of the family. The birds watched over us, as we frolicked and pushed each other into the pool, sometimes with our clothes on. That was never a big deal. The objects I treasured weren’t things I would have carried around so casually that they would have been on my body while engaging in outdoorsy activities. Nor would such objects have been so delicate as to, when meeting the face of chlorine- and beetle-infused water, self-destruct. That is to say, we treasured things like lockets and action figures. That is to say, in our tiny, enormous world, cell phones were not a thing.

And yet, the specter of Y2k was looming.

The next morning, we woke up, and things seemed normal. Now that I look back, I realize that things often seem normal, when in fact, they are not. Perhaps the dawn of 2000 was in fact the end of the world we so feared. It was the end of the world we knew intimately, the world we wore well.

The internet did not exist. We relied on lived experience. So my mom and I, fond of the same activities and slightly bored of each other’s company would trek up Laurel Canyon Blvd. with nectarines in a basket, brass platform sandals adorning our pedicured feet, belting along to A Chorus Line at the top of our lungs in our weathered Volvo station wagon, windows down. 

Whenever we arrived at the house, I distinctly remember my mom finding it inconvenient. Another guest was already parked in the driveway. Now, we had to turn the car around in a 16-point turn, all the while getting scratched by rogue Eucalyptus trees, and then squeeze into a spot on a very steep hill. And if there was rain, forget it. Mudslides were so severe that the locals would often whisper fears of their beloved abodes falling down the mountain. I found it interesting that Paul, the Shapiros’ patriarch, would want to live there. After all, he was a Hollywood director. Surely, being so prolific and well-connected, it would have been easier for them to live just down the hill, in West Hollywood, perhaps. Closer to us! 

But then again, I reasoned (and I do believe that 10 year-old girls are society’s most precious ponderers), the daughters, Hanna and Esme, went to Wonderland Elementary, a wild, alternative school that they loved. And Judy had her sculpture studio up here. Plus the smells of the trees, the calm breezes. The echo-y strolls, the unbeatable views, the nonchalant general store with its groovy, romantic restaurant beneath. The stories of Joni Mitchell feeling her muses and strumming her guitar. Oh. 

It dawned on me. I got it. The joy and mysticism of the canyon. The mythology, the timelessness, the pacelessness, the dreaminess. And then, in a second subtle moment, realization transformed into resolution. Not only did I get it, I had to (as Emeril Lagasse would say at the time) kick it up a notch. I vowed to myself that I, too, would live in a place like this one day. A quiet cove impossible to access and brilliant, once you arrived. I would be a paper-bag Rapunzel, the haphazard urban planning of Los Angeles my unknowing yet unselfconscious moat. I exhaled. My blurry, somewhat lonesome only child life had come into clearer vision.

Now I’m 31, and I’ve done it. I live in Highland Park, on the edge of Mount Washington. My street is quiet, breezy, and lined with trees so excited to be alive that they crack the sidewalk. The house across the street is surrounded by a very moat-like stone wall. It pleases me. And here’s the thing. My street is only wide enough for one car. I watch and listen as pedestrians and vehicles navigate sharing this space, not wide for all of us and yet, wide enough for all of us. Occasionally, I help.

When two cars approach each other on my one-car-wide street, people slow down. I sometimes see a moment of exasperation, followed up by a sense of, Hey, go ahead. And then, they see the beauty surrounding them, a sense of, While I’m waiting, I’ll look at this pretty mountain. Damn, what a beautiful day. Sometimes, people talk to each other, bond over the misery, and become friendly, once acknowledging this common bond of mysterious and ridiculous inconvenience. Is this a one way street? This is crazy. There is not enough room for two cars on this street! 

Lyfts will pick me up and say, Is this an alley? That’s where I draw the line. “I consider it more of a canyon,” I say, triumphantly, knowing full well I sound like a girl in a children’s book, scheming with her teddy bears on how to turn a trampoline into a treehouse.

This consideration of time and space is all the louder and more center-of-mind now, during the pandemic, because we are at home. More than ever. And it’s got me thinking that canyon people might be more ready to slow down than the rest of us. Canyon folk are accustomed to the poetics of inconvenience. They embrace it. They reclaim it. In this mindset, inconvenience becomes not a nuisance, but a privilege. A perfect vintage t-shirt with just the right amount of holes. A rock & roll riff that screeches to whisper to you that it’s real. What can we reclaim from the habitus of intentional inconvenience? What follows is my best stab at interpreting her cry. 

We’ve all seen the street signs, “Slow, Children at Play.” This pandemic is slowing down not just some of us, but all of us. It is an equalizer, erasing some of the fervor of these lines of nationhood, what cultural theorist Benedict Anderson would call our “imagined communities.” We are being forced to stop and look inward, to consider both health and humanity, beyond stigma and statehood. What will we find? If we squint, this introspection resembles the revolution we have been waiting for. It has hues and accents of the teachings of yoga, of hip-hop, of fairy tales. It is like a shadowy spirit, sitting at the foot of our beds, bringing us soul mirrors and asking what we are made of. 

Staying home gives us time to clean the corners of our houses, and our minds. To finally bring fucking re-usable bags to the grocery store. To paint the garage. To exfoliate. To meditate. To call your estranged aunt. To try Hunter Schaefer Euphoria make-up. To creative-direct your future Rolling Stone shoot.

We’ve all heard the aphorism, “Slow and steady wins the race.” My dad has a good one, too (he houses a lot of aphorisms in his wild, Basquiat-esque mind). It is, “Better to lose a second of your life, than your life in a second.” It was something he first taught me when I was learning to drive. (By the way, I am giggling to myself at all the driving metaphors here. Car culture really has made it into the Angeleno psyche.) 

My dad’s reasoning centered around waiting a few seconds before you go after a light turns green, as some drivers act maniacally and you don’t want to crash, when you could have just waited a moment. 

He taught me to count to myself. “1. 2. 3.” This touches on something deeper, a resistance against impulse, which will lead the rest of this piece. You see, I have struggled with anxiety as long as I can remember. My kindergarten teacher told my mama at our Open House, “Be careful. Your daughter is a great student, but she is really hard on herself.” It is so easy to slip under the duvet of self-doubt. In this world, we think everyone is sort of out to get us, or maybe just that we are just instinctively unlikeable. These are the lies that anxiety lives on. This is anxiety’s currency. 

Out of impulse, I have given so much time, energy, and money, over the years, to fear. If I had let my soul count to three and find herself, perhaps I would have kept more of my divine chi for myself. But I have acted out of desperation, with friends, lovers, collaborators, and let my anxiety talk over me. Luckily, I am learning. 

When I think about all of the gorgeous young people we have lost to government violence (Kalief Browder, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin), I think about the cops and prison guards out of racism and blind fear, turning day job into murder in mere seconds. Xenophobia is fear’s ugliest child. We turn against each other. We forget how to speak to each other, how to see each other. We become the Tower of Babel. We let perception be reality, and we dehumanize each other. Remember Hitler’s re-brand of Jews as insects. Dehumanization is a painkiller, a coping mechanism to justify violence. Can’t we do better? Can’t we fight for a more holistic balm for economic anxiety than hate? 

A few years ago at a literacy summit, I heard John King speak, the Secretary of Education under President Obama. He stood up there in his charcoal suit and said, plainly, that if we really listen to our instincts and our souls, we can feel the suffering of those on the margins of society, even if we don’t know them. In the quieter moments, we can sense their presence. They are like distant cousins. 

And it’s true. Another aphorism from Guy Shulman: “Don’t listen to the voices that yell. Listen to the voices that whisper.” In the throws of Corona mayhem, I can’t help but wonder whether Mother Nature is trying to tell us something now. She is telling us we have gotten too good at numbing the voices of the marginalized and numbing our quiet voices inside, The voices that could have saved those boys. 

Eric Garner couldn’t breathe. Today, hundreds of thousands of people can’t breathe. Mother Nature can’t breathe. We have turned against each other, and turned against the planet. And now, She is asking us a question. She is offering us an olive branch.

She is saying, You know the difference between a peach-flavored slushie at a 7/11 and a real, sumptuous, delicious peach dripping down your chest, yes? Both are delicious. But only one is real, fresh; only one exists beyond culture and time.

Backyards.
Artworks.
Bodies of water.
Bodies of friends.
Snacktime.
Naps.

vs.

Technology.
Television.
Instagram.
Prison.
FaceTime.
Early meetings.
Midnight deadlines.

Our inner children have been starving. Now is the time we release them back into society, to transcend culture, time, category, machine, to become childhood friends again. Let us use this quarantine to reclaim our inner children. To take power over our bodies, minds, and lives. To play witch doctor with our temporality. To be kind & rewind.

We have grown immune to technology addictions and to beautiful boys being killed for selling cigarettes. Is it safe to say that is not normal?

So, what will you do, I beseech you, with what Mary Oliver calls your one wild & precious life?

I want mine to look like this.

Awaken.
Write.
Drink a cafecito.
Sit in the sun.
Walk & dance.
Join the revolution. Fight.
And do not stop until we can see the light.

This is a death and a re-birth. This is a massive, timeless renaissance. This is an adolescence. We are the kids in class who have been unruly. We are slackers; we have not been paying attention. But we are not beyond hope. We can be wrangled yet, and set on the right path. This is a chrysalis, a chance to change how we live. Like the spirits and energies of the earth intended.

We cannot re-enter the world after this pandemic the same way we went in. We must move slowly. We must let others pass by. Let people cut in. Flow like the wind. Be like the leaf. Imagine the rewards we will reap. Richness no stockholder has ever, ever known.

“I exist as I am, that is enough.”
Walt Whitman

Perhaps the universe has created this one-way street, so that we will come together & craft a more wholesome, holistic, holy home. Let’s exist. Let’s celebrate. Let’s redecorate our souls. Beyond convenience, beyond capitalism, there is another world waiting. More primordial. Beyond bias. Beyond gender. A world where everyone feels free. I feel that Mother Nature is saying, Drop everything. And come with me.

This moment in time is a dark alley, yes. But it is also a shadowy, brilliant canyon. Rich with Eucalyptus trees. And restaurants that will soon re-open. Do you want to be the guy yelling at the waiter? Or do you want to be the scruffy little kid with dirt in his fingers, drawing on the table?

We are all earth’s children. If we are so lucky to be healthy and safe, then please, let us acknowledge and honor this moment in time.  Let us embrace inconvenience and learn from it the subtle, strange magic of the world.

“Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers...
How did it go?
How did it go?”

Shel Silverstein