Hi Friends,
I wish I were writing this letter to you under different circumstances.
Right now, I’m lying in bed, alternating between obsessively checking Twitter for news and obsessively checking Instagram for distractions from that news. (I recommend following the #americanbully hashtag on Instagram. I’ve been laid off indefinitely from my bartending job and I am now seriously considering becoming a pit bull lifestyle influencer.) My husband is making scrambled eggs in the kitchen and listening to Rick Ross. We are both scared, and nervous, but we are trying not to be in whatever small ways we can. That’s kind of a huge task, given the circumstances. If I do start to relax, after a few minutes I feel guilty for relaxing, I feel the tidal pull of my cell phone—the urge to see what bad news I may have missed in the previous five minutes. Self-care is an entire industry now, and thinking about doing a calming sheet mask makes me think about late capitalism and wellness as a product . . . another thing to worry about, and another, and another—and then before I know it I’m crying underneath a layer of lavender and witch hazel shaped like a panda bear. What do you do to calm down, even a little, when the world is on fire?
I don’t know the answer for everyone, but when I’m scared, I read, and I talk to my friends.
Reading has always been my preferred method of dissociation. There is no frigate like a book and all of that. But lately the things I’ve read aren’t transporting me far away, but bringing me closer to the people around me. Ben Lerner’s “The Topeka School,” which Marcus Hijkoop reviewed for 12th Street in September, softened a part of my heart towards the young men of my generation who are struggling with what it means to be a father in an unjust world. Myriam Gurba’s MEAN, a darkly funny and haunting memoir, was recommended to me by our poetry editor, Abby. MEAN made me think about Aubrianna McCarter’s poetry: about how language can help us get into and out of dark places—to turn someone else’s inner life around in the light like a prism and see what it refracts. Sometimes, that’s humor—like in Chloe Colvard’s interview with a box of Plan B; sometimes it’s yearning, like in Jo Smith’s Celebrity Boyfriend; sometimes it’s the mixture of fear and hope provoked by having difficult conversations, as in Mira Jacob’s Good Talk. Her conversation with Kitty Lindsay for 12th Street lays out how important those conversations are.
I’m really lucky to have had the privilege of being the Editor-In-Chief of 12th Street this year, and not just because we have put out such thoughtful, genre-pushing work. I’m lucky because in the process of publishing that work, I have been given built-in friends. Friends who show up to 12th Street’s headquarters with homemade birthday cakes for each other; friends who fight for (and sometimes productively with) each other about the stories and sentences and syntax they believe in; friends who read voraciously and care deeply and really, really love Harry Styles. I don’t know if they even know how many times they have helped me this year, how often their presence at our editing table has calmed my nerves and steadied my breathing. When the avalanche of life starts to be too much to bear, a piece of cake goes a really long way, especially when the person who made it for you shares both your love of lyrical, fragmented novels about climate change and the hierarchy of Tom Sandoval’s girlfriends on Vanderpump Rules. The importance of solidarity in trying times can’t be overstated or turned into a cliché. Unions, community aid, and people helping other people on a neighborhood level actually can change the world—and it might be the only thing that can. I am so grateful for and proud of the staff of 12th Street. This writing community is, and has been, the thing that keeps me going when I feel like I can’t. There are the funny, zealous, lion-hearted people behind 12th Street: Abby and Abby, Alina, Aubrey, Chloe, Danielle, Howie, Jo, Kitty, Kylie, Marcus, Riley, Sandra, Sarah, Seth, Sophia, and Zane. Thank you all for doing the work of telling important stories and showing up for each other.
So, what I am saying is: read and talk to your friends. Try to help them, when you can. Try to remember that they love you anyway, when you can’t. It’s all we can do. That, and bake cakes.
Bread and roses,
Rachel Knox
Editor-in-Chief, 2019-2020
12th Street