To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
—Jack Gilbert, "A Brief for the Defense"
Love is on the other side of the lake.
It is painful because the dark makes you hear
the water more. I accept all that.
—Linda Gregg, "New York Address"
I have always been a worrier. I’m a hypochondriac. I’ve had panic attacks and am anxious about most things. Even before the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, I engaged in catastrophic thinking: What if I fail all my college classes? What if I die in a car crash? What if my headache is actually cancer?
Then, when Covid-19 hit the United States, it felt like a fear of mine was confirmed: a catastrophic event outside of my control that had life-or-death implications for me, the people I love, and people all over the world.
If you’re an anxious person and someone tries to comfort you, they’ll probably tell you to only worry about the things you can control since you can’t control the rest. Well, my greatest fear is being subjected to circumstances outside of my control — situations I am completely powerless to change.
Since March, I’ve been acclimating to the pace of life under shelter-in-place orders in Ben Lomond, a small town in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The world itself was chaotic, but this corner of it was quite calm; I could walk around my neighborhood and see my neighbors on socially distanced walks with their dogs, kids playing in yards, and something that approximated normalcy despite the palpable uncertainty of the moment.
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But that changed on June 6 when my boyfriend and I heard sirens near our apartment. The sound outside of my apartment became constant, a wall of sirens that had seemingly parked on either side of the road. I checked social media and saw that police were responding to an active shooter who had shot and killed a sheriff’s deputy, Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller.
The shooter was nearby; I just didn’t know how far away. Out of an abundance of caution, I drew my curtains, locked my door, and sat on the floor of my apartment away from windows while I scoured Twitter for any updates on the situation. As with any emergency, the early details are always unverified, but it’s all you have to go on. There were reports of explosives. There were reports of a second shooter. There were reports of more officers injured and the suspect(s) hijacking vehicles. I got a reverse 911 call to evacuate my apartment immediately, but I couldn’t go anywhere due to the sheer number of police cars parked in my driveway and along the road.
Even hours after I saw a video of a suspect being led away in handcuffs by police, the area was on high alert — the rumors about bombs and a second shooter had not been confirmed or denied. It turned out that a neighbor of mine had been the one to tackle the shooter and disarm him multiple times, at which point the police on the scene took over.
As I went to bed that night, around 11 p.m., I heard what I would soon learn were controlled detonations from a bomb squad disposing of explosives that the shooter did, in fact, have. I also learned that the shooter attempted to hijack a car in the parking lot less than 20 yards from my apartment, which meant he was much closer than I had originally thought — with an automatic rifle, bombs, and all.
After it happened, I found myself terrified that my fear had been validated: Strange, deadly circumstances can happen at any moment that I have no control over but have a massive influence on my life. The pandemic and shelter-in-place orders of course added to my anxiety and the feeling that nowhere was safe.
Here’s another example of the kind of spiral, catastrophic thinking I’m good at: If an active shooter is close to my apartment once, that means it can happen again, and if it can happen again, it actually means it could always happen, anywhere, at any time, unlikely as it may seem, and I was foolish to believe it hadn’t always been that way.
In his book In Search of Duende, author Federico García Lorca defines the concept of “duende” as a potent creative force in which an artist experiences a state of great passion and inspiration. Critical to the concept of duende is a heightened awareness of death, which provides an artist with a great understanding of their own mortality, thereby allowing them to create extraordinary works of art.
As an anxious person who writes poetry and frequently thinks they are going to die, unfortunately, I have not found a heightened awareness of death to be helpful in my artistic process. I have long admired the concept of duende and wish I could be someone who writes with manic energy and fervent devotion, but my heightened awareness in fact stops me in my tracks and makes me wonder if anything is worth doing. If I am convinced I am going to die at any given moment, my first impulse is to check Twitter, not write poetry.
After that chaotic afternoon, I sought out mental health resources. I logged on to a video call with a psychiatrist who listened intently to an account of my experience that June day and my overwhelming concern that nowhere is safe, that I could die at any moment, and that there was nothing I could do about either of those things.
She told me to draw out a table with three columns and think of a concern. Then she told me to write out the worst outcome, the best outcome, and somewhere in between.
I appreciated this. But, again, my concern has always been the least likely scenario — that life-shattering event that occurs without concern for probability.
When I told her as much and that I just want to be certain that bad things won’t happen to me and that I can live my life as I planned, safely, she listened respectfully and told me after a thoughtful pause, “I have a feeling you will always want absolute certainty.”
Earlier that week, I had bought a copy of the selected letters of John Keats, in which he writes about his idea of “negative capability” as a way of accessing truth without science or logic. He identifies a great thinker as someone who is “capable of being in uncertainties” and willing to accept ambiguity, mystery, and a lack of conclusive explanations. Keats thought that negative capability allows one to pursue beauty even when it leads to intellectual uncertainty.
When I applied for the Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation in 2019, I wrote in my application: “Keats has already stated his thoughts on negative capability: unfortunately, I am not comfortable with remaining in uncertainty. I have to know — but must face the reality of what I won’t find out. This disappointment is central to many of my poems.” Melodramatic much? Needless to say, I was not selected as one of the recipients that year.
I mention duende and negative capability because I’m fascinated by the way they become different ways of knowing, how they were seen as no less useful than scientific inquiry or logic — in some cases, they may be even more useful. So much of my anxious thinking occurs because I think I’m being logical: if-then statements, assumptions based on prior experiences, my own internal understanding of what I know to be true. But what would it mean if I actually did embrace uncertainty? What if I could maintain an understanding of my mortality that doesn’t cause me to panic and be unable to function but instead lets me live the life I want to without the restrictions my anxiety imposes on me?
I was mulling this over earlier this week when the Santa Cruz area was experiencing unprecedented lightning strikes and a record heat wave, causing widespread blackouts. I saw posts on social media about a fire in Big Basin State Park and felt worried about the potential of it growing in size and threatening my apartment.
The San Lorenzo Valley in the Santa Cruz Mountains has many old-growth redwood trees that are naturally resistant to fire, but the heat wave and extremely dry conditions made me nervous. The 2018 Bear Fire had burned for days just miles away from my apartment, over in the further regions of Boulder Creek, but even that was a worrying time with thick smoke in the air and ash falling outside my door.
I know that I always worry, and that evening, when I told my boyfriend I was concerned the fires would grow and threaten where we live, he told me they weren’t anywhere close and posed little chance of threatening our apartment, both of which were true at the time.
Again, my concern has always been the least likely scenario — that life-shattering event that occurs without concern for probability.
We left around 11:30 p.m. that night once we saw an evacuation warning come in for Brookdale, the small town close to where we live in Ben Lomond. The fire grew from hundreds of acres to thousands of acres to 50,000 acres with more and more evacuation zones declared, and at the time of writing, over 64,000 people had evacuated. This is a disaster on a scale that has not been experienced in the area since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, further complicated by the grim reality of the uncontrolled transmission of Covid-19 and a dearth of available resources due to the sheer amount of simultaneous fires in California.
Perhaps the worst thing for someone who’s always concerned the world is going to end is an event that proves them right.
It has felt like my anxious thinking and worrying has been validated this year in at least three major ways: the Covid-19 pandemic, the shooter, and now a fire that threatens not just where I live but many other homes across different communities.
In a year that is supremely uncertain, of course it is only natural to want an assurance that nothing bad will happen — but once the bad thing has already happened, what then?
I’m discovering the feeling that comes after your worst fears are confirmed. You realize you’re still alive. Is this that necessary prerequisite to duende — an awareness of my own mortality that might allow me to live my life without the absolute certainty I have so desired?
I’m not trying to say, “Wow! Maybe the year I survived a global pandemic, an active shooter, and a raging wildfire is the best year of my life!” But if there was ever a time to examine my own manner of thinking in order to change my life for the better, it’s now.
I was fortunate to grab nearly everything from my apartment that would be impossible to replace. I did leave almost all of my books, my journals of old writing, and many items from my childhood and past, but I made it out safely with a person I love.
Many people in the surrounding area of San Lorenzo Valley were not as lucky to be ahead of the evacuation order and have that time to collect what was important to them, and the number of confirmed structures that have burned may well be in the hundreds before the fire is extinguished.
I’ve lived in Ben Lomond for about three years, but there are people in the area who have spent their whole lives here who may not have a home to return to.
On Wednesday night, as I was sheltering with my boyfriend’s family and checking social media for updates on the fire, I came across a poem that felt supremely relevant to what I was going through, “Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness” by Franny Choi:
Lord, I confess I want the clarity of catastrophe but not the catastrophe.
Like everyone else, I want a storm I can dance in.
I want an excuse to change my life.
Maybe what I’m experiencing is both the catastrophe and the clarity that comes after a catastrophe.
I’ve seen posts on social media that say something to the effect of “It’s not 2020 that’s a bad year; it’s the cumulative result of climate change, capitalism, politics, and more. Things will get worse.”
This is all true. The reason these fires are as bad as they are is the result of climate change, and they’re showing our current inability to address and deal with our changing climate.
Given that things are bad and the certainty they will get worse, I don’t think this should preclude the possibility that things can change for the better.
We need to realize that in order to survive pandemics, climate change, and other crises, what we need is cooperation, not rugged individualism. Jia Tolentino wrote about this topic in her article on the rise of mutual aid funds in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. I believe what we’re entering into is an era where we must depend on each other for our well-being and that such a world is possible to create.
As I write this, I think my apartment is still standing, but I’m not sure. Maybe my book of John Keats’ letters has been turned to ashes, maybe it’s still there on my bedside table, or maybe it’s somewhere in between.
If you would like to help contribute to the relief effort for the CZU Lightning Fires, check out an official fund managed by Community Foundation Santa Cruz.
