Final KQED Perspective

It seems to me that recently, my favorite speculative fiction books are becoming reality.

Speculative fiction is a genre that includes elements from science fiction, fantasy and dystopia, characterized by imagining worlds not so far from the truth.

Driving down to LA this past fall, I saw smoke in the distance from the Malibu fires. I couldn’t see much of the fire, but I smelled the coarse burning scent and my eyes felt rough from the ash. In my car I suddenly felt the presence, the memory, of a speculative fiction novel I had read. In the novel, the valley is plagued with fires set by arsonists addicted to a drug called “pyro”, a symptom of a larger failing of society. The characters flee their homes by foot up the 405, all seven lanes filled with bodies moving north.

This story entered my imagination to such a degree that I confused it with reality. For a moment in my car I thought I really remembered a time, not so long ago, when the 405 was filled with fire refugees on foot. This confusion made me realize just how close to the truth speculative fiction can be. In California today, fire refugees are very real. They may not have fled up the 405 by foot, but they were camped in the living rooms of my friends.

This isn’t the only speculative fiction novel I have confused with reality. Recently, my partner returned from visiting a friend on a tech-company campus. He told me how his visitor badge was his golden ticket, giving him access to three dinners, a haircut, and even car maintenance, all on campus! My imagination drifted to another novel where the elite live in armed, walled corporate compounds, and the commoners outside in the “pleeblands” disintegrate into crime and poverty. “Did you visit your friend’s on-campus apartment-pod?” I wanted to ask. But again, there I was confusing fiction with reality. Or was I? Today, tech-companies are ever increasing worker benefits and reaching their tentacles into real estate and housing.

These stories remind me not to normalize what I see. We need storytellers to shock us into seeing what is already before our eyes. Sometimes it takes speculative fiction to see reality more clearly.

Open water

KQED Perspective

Swimming in the open water


Throughout the winter in the extended Bay Area, I elect to jump into the cold ocean water in my onepiece for a morning swim. It’s the most fantastic feeling of my day. It’s an ultimate extension of a "cold water on your face morning wake up", a challenge and communion with the unpredictable ocean. On cold mornings I enjoy the small thrill of knowing that I’m going to do the exact opposite of what my body wants - take off my warm jacket and jump in. Often when I return home from a swim and my partner asks how it was I declare “It was best swim yet”. And it feels true.

I didn’t always love the cold water. When I started swimming in the SF bay on a whim, I wore a wetsuit for the first year. It was only when I was peer pressured by the looks of older members in my swim club, that I finally lost it.

On rare occasions the sport feels like a boasting match - how cold was it and how long did you stay in? But mostly, it is immersive, solitary, repetitive, meditative. Splashing through the ocean is being a part of something much larger than myself.

I think sometimes that the only people who understand my obsession are the other swimmers. One of my friends commented that when he first met our local group he thought to himself immediately “yep, these are my people”. I agree. I once considered never moving out of San Francisco so I wouldn’t have to leave my open water swim club (I stayed a member at large). We range in age from teens to the late 60s (I think, I don’t even know!) though nobody seems to notice when we are in the water together. Most of them I hardly recognize in their street clothes.

I’m not the fastest, nor the most consistent, I've never done a truly long distance, nor have I know my friends the longest. I don’t even swim in a pool to train, I feel so restless and bored. I just want to be in the open water, and it turns out that is the only criteria to be a member of our motley club.

Here is to loving something so crazy, and finding other people who are crazy in the same way you are.

Sci-fi

Another KQED Perspective...

It seems to me that recently, my favorite science fiction books are starting to come true . Or that they have always been true, but I’m just now realizing it.

When driving down to LA this summer, I saw smoke and flames blazing in the distance from the Malibu fires. I thought of a novel I had read, where the whole valley is ablaze and refugees flee their homes by foot up the 405, all six lanes filled with bodies moving North.

When walking down a dusty dirt road inland, the winds picked up a my friend and I covered our eyes as a small dust storm blew through. It reminded me of another novel, where environmental degradation leads to agriculture drying up and dust storms rule.

When collecting trash on the beach in Santa Cruz after a big storm, I find such a random assortment of human life washed up from the storm: chairs, an empty can of sardines, deflated balloons. I thought of a book in which one of the last remaining men on earth lives off of what he can scrounge from what washes up on the beach.

Sometimes I confuse reality with the stories I read. In LA, for a moment I thought I could remember a time when the 405 really was filled with refugees fleeing by foot, just like in the book. Watching the dust storm across the dry landscape, I thought for moment that I was seeing abandoned fields, just like in the book. Collecting trash on the beach, I thought for a moment that I saw someone scrounging not for trash, but for food, just like in the book.

These stories sneak their way into my reality. And in doing so, they remind me of how close to reality they really are. Because while the scenes that I imagine are made up...they are quite close to the truth. In California today, fire refugees, agriculture failure, desperately hungry people are very much real. These stories remind me not to normalize what I see. We need storytellers, dreamers of both good dreams and nightmares, to shock us into seeing what is already before our eyes.

Sometimes it takes science fiction stories to see reality more clearly.

Memory

This is my KQED Perspective draft. Edits please! There will be others. --

Late in their long lives, both of my grandmas started to wander away. Or at least they tried. My maternal grandma would repeatedly try to go out the backdoor of the common room of her nursing home, towards the path that ran along the river, setting off the blaring building alarm. My paternal grandma would get on her motorized wheelchair scooter and speed down the sidewalk along the main highway. I was too young to really know my grandpa before he died, but my mom tells me he would walk into town, sit at a bar, and forget how to get home. All my grandparents have died now. During their wandering years, all three had a variation of dementia. When they had dementia, grandparents couldn’t remember where they wanted to go, couldn’t remember to take their pills, then their friends names, then the faces of their family members - me.

Who exactly are we when we don’t remember anymore? What are we without our memories? Our memories. My grandparent’s memories seemed to leave them progressively. But my memories of them didn’t disappear. I’d like to remember my grandparents not just for their individual capacity for memory but for all the memories of relationships that defined them during their lives. Those aren’t forgotten. To the contrary, they’re quite clear and they go on forever in a living chain. They’re alive in my cousins red hair, my love of pockets, taste for red-hots candies, and my impulse to grow parsley.

As my grandparents got older, their lives became more isolated. Yet if I think beyond their individuality and to their relationality, they seem to grow. Though independence is heavily valued in the world I live in, I want to speak for our relationality. At the end, my grandparents couldn’t take care of themselves. Just like a time in my life when as an infant I couldn’t take care of myself. We are far more relational than we like to think. I am a daughter to a mother, a partner to a partner, a younger sister to an older sister. When my grandma got dementia I didn’t become less a granddaughter. So she was no less of a grandmother.

Dia de los muertos

At a taco stand in a park in Oaxaca at night, Kelly and I met a British guy and his Mexican friend - by function of speaking English. We asked how long he's been in Oaxaca and he said since Dia de los Muertos. In the moment I couldn't remember the date of the holiday, not even the month, which made it hard to grasp his answer to our question. But I just nodded knowingly, because it seems that Dia de los Muertos was a day that one should know. I imagine that the city burst into color, food, light, like in the movie Coco. A day to look forward to each year, not to forget the date. Maybe if I knew the date of dia de los muertos, if I knew when to put up my ofrenda the ritual would make death more manageable. Something we can do in this increasingly precarious world.

Montreal

A Bientot I say, and Halie laughs, humored by the handful of French words I know and how separate they are from what I mean to say. I arrived in Montreal early on a weekday, taken by how a North American city could still be so francophone. High-waisted jeans are in and everything is under construction. The Honda Fit is called the Fit, not the Jazz. What a great city for cycling - there are protected bike lanes, affordable rental bikes stationed every few blocks, and beautiful converted paths like the old tow path along the Lachine Canal. Much of architecture seems like it's prepared for winter, but people go outside when the sun shines. Every bar has a parklet. St. Ambroise IPA is tasty and St. Viateur bagels are legit. The Portuguese food and vegan sushi is delicious. There's an independent sports store, Logos, that basks in Expos glory. Avenue St. Laurent has it all. The idea of Habitat 67 is so cool, in practice maybe less so, but all the more worth seeing to compare design with experience.

Family separation is the ultimate expression of state power

Time passes, and finally today California is set to abolish the cash bail system. Can you imagine if your freedom - the very ability to move where you want, read what you wish, eat what you can afford - were curtailed simply because you didn't have a lump sum of cash to go home? Posting bail can't be all that different than buying freedom from slavery; it's simply an archaic reincarnation in modern times. Holding those otherwise eligible for bail in jail is a decision not based on morals or what's right, but on the holding power of money, stacked in favor of those who have it against those who don't. California finally recognizes there is a better way and I hope others follow.