Hagar Writes

Tag: friendship

  • DAY 5 ENCINITAS > TUCSON

    We left California today. About three hours into our drive, we crossed into Arizona. Borders are arbitrary, especially in this part of the world, where Indigenous peoples made their homes in vast landscapes, often migrating with the seasons and their sources of food. Nevertheless, we crossed into a state whose Latin motto, Ditat Deus (God Enriches) bulldozes over the fact that almost three hundred thousand Native American peoples live here, speaking more than a dozen Indigenous languages. We made a pit stop in Dateland, where we bought a date shake and a bag of honey dates to give as a gift to our friends in Tucson, pointedly ignoring the bedazzled Trump hats and obnoxious bumper stickers.

    It was helpful to listen to Krista Tippett’s interview with Ocean Vuong and to be reminded that our the words we use have the power to shape the world for better or for worse. The future is in your mouth is how he said it. As soon as we got back in the car, I replaced the FUCK YOU in my head with Wow, look at all the magical saguaros and the purple flowers whizzing by. Look at all this unexpected beauty.

    I know that I have the ability to frame this unknown future I’m driving toward. I want to choose the words I use carefully. I want to talk about hope and adventure and opportunity rather than focusing on words like loneliness and fucking-freezing. I don’t want to gloss over everything that’s hard about this moment or broken in this world. But I do believe it’s important to speak hope and wonder into existence.

    Anyway, another day, another visit with a beloved friend. After staying near San Diego for one night with Jessica—the first friend I made in New York, where we were both interns at Ms. Magazine—we are spending tonight with Tali, who left the Bay Area about eight months before us and is now living in a GORGEOUS home in Tucson. We walked the dog, chased the sunset, ate a delicious dinner out with her daughter, talked about life, the good and bad. After bedtime, we’ll talk some more.

    Saguaros, Tali explained as we stood at the Gates Pass viewpoint looking out at the darkening Sonoran Desert, expand and contract depending on how much water is in the soil. How amazing.

    Life contracts, then it expands. Over and over and over.

    There is so much to learn, so much to see, so much to be curious about. There is so much I’ll never know. Oh to be mysterious and humble. Oh, to be like a saguaro.

  • MASS. MIGRATION

    MASS. MIGRATION

    Day 2 SLO > PASADENA

    The first day of our road trip, somewhere around Morro Bay, we started listening to a podcast where Yo-Yo Ma waxes poetic about music and nature. Was it a good podcast? Honestly, I don’t know. I was too tired to take much in, but I did discover that I really like Yo-Yo’s voice and that he seems like a mensch. The thing I remember best is when he tells his co-host that he doesn’t like it when people identify him as Yo-Yo Ma, the Cellist. “I consider myself a human first,” he said. “And then a musician.” He went on to say that he believes one of the things that could help the world right now is for more of us to remember that our primary community is the community of humans.

    I’ve been talking a lot about “my community” these past few weeks. When I’ve talked about the move and the things I will miss most, the people is top of the list, right above the glorious produce, weather, and nature.

    It’s true. I will miss all the moments of togetherness, planned and spontaneous. Running into people I adore everywhere. Invitations to dinners and hikes and movies and sleepovers and gatherings of all sorts. And yet…widen the lens and I remember: my community is everywhere.

    I am writing this in the sweet little guest house of Ellie and Jamie, our babysitters-turned-friends, a beloved duo whose wedding Owen and I got to officiate. We haven’t seen them in far too long, but it doesn’t matter. We talk about life and family and work and the world, and my heart melts watching their kids swinging on a banana-colored hammock and rehearsing a show about a robber and a cop who wears too much lipstick and stomping around the backyard in little boots that are on the wrong feet. Ellie and Jamie are a part of Diego and Pele’s story and I hope that I can be the same for their children.

    One of the things I’m proudest of is that our boys have inherited our capacity for surrounding ourselves with good people and making chosen family wherever they are. Right now, Diego is in Amsterdam 5,558 miles away, where he’s in daily contact with by friends he met while living in Bosnia. Three days ago, he was hanging out with an amazing human he’s known since elementary school, and we were hanging out with the amazing human’s parents who have become dear friends. At the United World College, 734 miles away from where we are right now, Pele has cultivated a web of relationships that wraps all the way around the world—and his Berkeley posse continues to run deep.

    Now I will miss my Bay Area family like I miss my Israeli family and my New York family, like I miss my friends in Rome and Malmo. I will also remind myself that my community is expanding rather than contracting.

    Right now, in Minneapolis—a city I have never visited but hope to one day soon—people are showing us the awesome power of community, braving freezing temperatures to protect and care for their neighbors, for people they might have once considered strangers. I hear the echo of Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major and I allow what aches to ache. I am not really Israeli, not really Canadian. I was a New Yorker and then I was a Californian, and maybe some day I will feel a strong connection to North Adams. I am part of the community of humans.