Vulnerability Emergency Fund
I'm on an airplane, and as much as I hate plane travel--especially through LAX, where you have to walk 25 miles between terminals--I also love it, and the thing I love is the detachment from earth, from time, from place. The loss of time, the white noise of flight, can bring me close to my thoughts in a way I can't achieve on earth. (Not always. Sometimes I succumb to the GoGo and wind up texting all my friends, "hey I'm texting from the plane!" or the "white noise of flight" is drowned out by babies, or adults with no self-awareness.)
Time on a plane gives me a chance to assess myself. What habits and routines have I fallen into, back in the world of time, that aren't working for me? To fly is to stop the momentum of those things, and I almost always come up with some sort of new life plan while on a good, quiet flight.
Now, for example, I'm thinking about how what I'll call the Trump Flu (some sort of bronchial illness I contracted--coincidentally?--right around the inauguration) derailed my commitment to back off of twitter this year, more than I did in 2016. When your primary nourishment is cough syrup and Sudafed, and instead of sleeping you listen to Public Radio Remix all night, it can be hard to concentrate on writing your novel. Between naps and podcasts, twitter provides the perfect solution for the sick person's attention span with its short bursts of anxiety, humor, anger, grief, and self-righteousness. (All mixed in with publishing twitter, which at times can feel like enthusiasm-under-duress for one's own accomplishments. "I know I'm supposed to be excited about this, so here's an exclamation point!")
Sometimes after a lengthy twitter sesh I can get a skin-crawling feeling of vulnerability. Not so much for the content of anything I might post or repost, but the sense that my compulsion has an audience. Like I'm eating from a giant bag of Ruffles in front of a few thousand people and everyone watching knows I can't stop. ("Poor Sara. She talks so much about leaving twitter and just look at her. Sad.") And, sometimes for the content. You know you've said too much when you feel like you've just turned your pockets inside out for others and now there's nothing left for you...except for some reason you're still digging between couch cushions for loose change to offer anyone who is still hanging around.
On the plane, hovering somehow just above the cloud line (I mean, I know how a plane works, but I don't like to think about the physics of it), I think about how vulnerability, like attention, is a finite resource. At a certain point if you're peeling back layers of skin, your body is going to say PLEASE STOP, SKIN IS THERE FOR A REASON. I need my layers and my vulnerability for the other writing I do, the writing that's meant--speaking optimistically--to last for more than a day.
My Trump Flu is almost gone except for lingering eustachian tube weirdness that involves me chewing gum, hard, opening my mouth wide, and when desperate, trying "self-inflation" (yes that is the medical term) being careful not to explode my head or eyeballs. But, I'm well enough to work, and am newly aware of needing to build a reserve of vulnerability, a kind of emergency fund Dave Ramsay never told you about.
In book news: I am now less than six weeks away from the publication of Gem & Dixie, my first book in four years. I am nervous and excited and all the other feelings. Tour info now up, maybe I will see you on the road.
And May I Recommend
For film criticism, mostly by women, that is not too long or self-important (hmmm wonder if this has to do with the mostly by women part): Bright Wall/Dark Room. Worth a subscription if you're a movie lover. Bonus factor: Brianna Ashby's illustrations.
For an in-depth podcast that will make the spiritual exile feel not so alone, and also get you through a really long gym visit or a night of coughing, The Liturgists
For great essays that feel newly relevant in Our Troubled Times, revisit Joan Didion's classic The White Album
For making sure you go into the Oscars on Sunday prepared to root for something other than the just okay La La Land (I'm sorry! That's how I feel!), Moonlight is now available to buy on iTunes for just a hair more than the price of a movie ticket, and Arrival is streaming on various platforms.