Holding Space
Did you ever see “The Cure?” It was the nineties drama in which Brad Renfro plays a lonely teen who befriends Joseph Mazzello, whose character has AIDS, and they go searching for…you guessed it. There’s a scene where Mazzello wakes up in a cold sweat. He describes these waking nightmares to Renfro, comparing them to being adrift far out in space, in total darkness, completely alone. How he’ll fear he’s “never coming back.” To comfort him, Renfro gives him his basketball sneaker to hold as a reminder that he’s still here on earth. And that he’s not alone. I won’t ruin the ending but the sneaker, it makes a hell of a callback.
The uncertainty of it this, of when it will end, if it will end, the condition we will be in by then, is somewhat akin to vertigo. The belly bottoms out. You’re free falling blindfolded. About six months into our darling shutdown, I moved from one one-bedroom apartment to another. Millions of hollow seconds have been filled by juggling unnecessary décor projects, contributing to the annual bonus of the neighborhood home improvement store CEO. He’s sunning aboard his new pontoon right now. I built a few large-scale frames for maps and tapestries. When you’re not allowed to paint for over a decade because landlords, every square inch of beige, eggshell, cream, and cigarette ash white taunts you. I made my dining area into a diner, complete with a booth and napkin dispenser. The light from the neon signs stretches to the opposite wall as the low buzz reverbs across the vinyl floor. Two birds, one electricity bill.
I gained two hundred square feet inside. Innumerable businesses outside. Eleven thousand of us scrunched into Downtown Denver, if only to keep warm in winter. I often envisage being lost at sea, adrift on salted waters, dying of thirst. Is it irony or a paradox or should I go back to school? I’ve been working from home since the first pundit whispered, “Where’s Wuhan?” There’d be a week now and again when I’d realize afterward that my only in-person conversation was with a cashier, who most understandably wanted nothing less than to have to open their mouth, mask or no mask. I named my houseplants. Greta Thunberg is the tidy little lemongrass, Al Gore the robust croton. Well, was. So ultimately, I’m in a bigger place so that I may feel smaller. It’s more flattering to the figure.
Having been raised Catholic, naturally I’ve considered myself a member of the agnostic clique all my adult life. We’re a humble bunch. When the straits are just dire enough, however, I will find myself knelt in a pew, huffing incense and aged wood. Father Whoever, giving the homily at a mid-plague mass, grumbled something about starvation of the flesh. How man cannot live by bread alone. Don’t tell the yeast manufacturers! There seems to be two opposing theories. The first holds that one can genuinely and sustainably improve their outlook on life by simply changing their environment. The second maintains that if you’re skilled in the art of being happy “within” yourself, then your physical coordinates do not matter. (And inversely, if you’ve always been a sepulchral sad sack, then yeah, nope, it still won’t matter.) I have always prescribed to the former. I moved myself across the country five years ago, to the city a mile up in the air. Perhaps I’ll die on this fourteen-thousand-foot hill. Or perhaps someone can spare a shoe.
