“Memory is a tough place. You were there. If this is not the truth, it is also not a lie.”—Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
How tired are you right now? How is your heart? I’m so tired, bone-tired, heartbroken; from the murder of Duante Wright to the smear campaign against BLM cofounder Patrisse Cullors (for buying a house!!), I am having a hard time being present. In this moment. In this body. In this country.
Though I try to be present, our present is overwhelming. Sometimes when I feel this way, I think about times I’ve experienced joy. If the full enjoyment of the spring breeze and the sun on my skin isn’t happening, when I’m too hurt to really feel it, sometimes I savor memories of when I felt boundless joy, effervescent energy. Times when my body and mind were tired but my spirit was energized.
One fond memory I’m taking comfort in right now? Destroying shit.
Yep, destroying shit. In the not-too-distant past, I fell in love with demo. Quickly and by surprise.
When I moved into my home, a 1920s bungalow, nearly three years ago, my wife had already done a lot of the heavy lifting when it came to home renovations. What had once been, to put it mildly, a dump, is now an adorable, cozy home, restored to its previous charm. She’d peeled back layers of once-trendy ‘70s additions to reveal the beauty hidden beneath. She’d taken down wooden paneling, excavated dirty old carpet to find the original hardwoods. But there was still work to do.
I’d never taken part in home renovations before, not really. In a previous relationship I’d lived in a fixer-upper, but I hadn’t been that invested in bringing forth the possibilities; though I lived there, the home wasn’t mine.
Building a life with someone sometimes means taking things apart. Making space for something new to form.
Though my wife is skilled and had unearthed the long-forgotten beauty of our home, there were projects to do when I arrived. Having never been a part of home renovations before, I was willing to tackle projects with her—everything with her is fun—but I was also wary of the process. How much help could I be? I was happy to be her assistant, to hold her tape measure or the level. I didn’t know anything about it, but I was open to learning about it all. I hadn’t anticipated that I would fall in love with the part most people overlook when it comes to renovating: DEMOLITION.
I’m fine painting a wall, carrying my wife’s tape measure, holding a cabinet in place while she drills it to the wall, but man is that part boring to me. It is! I consider myself a detail-oriented person, but for some reason, the painstakingly detailed work of building something material, putting things together, makes me impatient and frustrated. I love building with words, but when it comes to wood and nails, I’d rather not.
Maybe it’s the math, the no-room-for-error aspect, who knows. There were fun parts: learning to lay tile, cutting tile, witnessing the hard work materialize into something beautiful. But before the tile, there was the beauty of something surprising: destroying things.
When it came time to tackle the kitchen remodel, we knew it wouldn’t be easy. Everything had to be cleared away before we could begin, and though we had an idea of what would be in store, my wife especially, with her extensive previous experience, we had no idea.
Once everything had been taken out of the kitchen—the table and chairs, the accumulated detritus on the counters, the stove and the fridge shoved out of the way—the work began. The cabinets were taken down, the old countertop and sink were removed. What was left was hideous old linoleum on the floor, the bland kind you see in public restrooms the world over. We started peeling it back, only to find something else below: more linoleum.
Not only was there linoleum on top of linoleum, but the second layer had been nailed AND stapled into a layer of particle board (!!), which had been placed over what we hoped would be the original hardwoods. The only way to find out was to get digging.
What should have been a fairly simple removal became an archaeological dig of sorts. The long-handled scraper (I don’t know the technical name for this, sorry!) that should’ve made quick work was no match for the staple-nail combo, and we found it was damaging the floor—yes, there were hardwoods!—underneath. There would be no cutting corners.
Armed with a crowbar, a hammer, and pliers, I strapped on some knee pads and got to work. I fell into a kind of meditative state. The linoleum peeling away to reveal more linoleum was almost funny—why had whoever laid the new flooring been compelled to not only nail but staple in the previous layer? To PARTICLE BOARD (MDF is the technical term, my wife told me)? What was the purpose?
Nail by nail, staple by staple, crumbling bit of MDF by crumbling bit, the old floor from 1920 came into view. She didn’t look great, but there she was. I could see it, measure our progress by looking up if I wanted to, but I homed in on what was right in front of me. Section by section, the work was being done.
The floor removal wasn’t as exciting as when I got to hammer through the old cabinets and rip them out from the wall, when I got to toss old remnants of wood out into the yard in a heap to later take to the dump, but it was its own kind of thrill. When my wife said it was time to take a break, I told her I’d join her in a minute. I didn’t want to give up the momentum, the tedious but rewarding work of hammering a crowbar under a nailhead, jimmying it up, tossing the nail into a bucket. The visceral thrill when a stubborn patch of linoleum and wood was finally excavated in a clean strip! When you could see the old floor underneath! I loved it.
What did I love so much? I hadn’t been the kind of kid who enjoys getting messy, who breaks things with abandon or takes things apart to see how they work. There was so much containment in being a girl. I loved books from the get-go, and preferred spending time reading. I’d read outside, in the car, even while walking. I don’t regret this, but something was lost as I made my way through the world, something I didn’t know I’d missed until I picked up a hammer to break an old cabinet apart.
With every old nail or board I ripped out, with every piece I smashed, I felt like I was reclaiming something, releasing something, making something. By destroying, I was creating. I was clearing the way for something new, I was unearthing history, I was making history! I felt powerful and alive. Joy. Was I letting out years of repressed aggression and resentment, built-up anger? Was it that I got to commit a kind of violence without harming anyone? I’m not entirely sure, but by shattering and smashing, yanking, and scraping, I was renewed.
There was something so satisfying about taking everything apart so we could build something new in its place.
In these days since Duante Wright’s murder, I am yearning for something to destroy, to break apart, paving the way for something better and stronger to be created. I am hungering for the release and joy I felt smashing old structures and tossing their scraps out into the yard, scraping up old linoleum nail by nail, staple by staple. What can we destroy right now? And what can we build in its place, something better and stronger, something wholly new?
This week’s finds:
Action: Donate to the Duante Wright Sr. Fund. Defund the police. And to my Sonoma County friends: Call for the immediate resignation of Windsor Mayor, Dominic Foppoli. If you haven’t heard about Foppoli’s habitual sexual predation and why he needs to be removed from his position of power, you can read about it here.
Follow: Phoebe Robinson, author of You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain and co-host of the 2 Dope Queens podcast with Jessica Williams. In case you didn’t already know, Robinson is also now the founder of Tiny Reparations Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Hilarious, insightful, generous; Dope Queen Pheebs is changing the publishing game. Her recent callout of Simon & Schuster is so necessary; she is using her platform to lift us up and to demand that the publishing industry (and the world) do better.
Listen: “Monsoon” by Amber Mark. “It feels like monsoon every day.” It sure does. This song satisfies both of the urges I’m feeling right now: to cry and to dance. A celebration of her mother’s life, an expression of grief over her death, “Monsoon” is a gift. The video is so beautiful, too. Mark writes and produces all of her music herself, weaving “her deep knowledge of international styles into a stunning musical tapestry which reveals new intricacies on every listen” (from her Spotify bio). We’re lucky to listen.
Move: Another Well + Good yoga video for the win! Try BK Yoga club’s 30 Minute Yoga Flow to Spark Creativity and get ready to feel calm and energized. You’ll laugh, you’ll sweat; instructors Alicia Ferguson and Paris Alexandra, the co-founders of BK Yoga Club (a body-positive yoga studio), are a great team. You know I’m following them on the gram now!
Watch: Behind Her Eyes on Netflix. This show was SO CRAZY. A British limited series full of intrigue, we gobbled this up and, as the Brits say, were gobsmacked by the ending. Gobsmacked! Based on the book by Sarah Pinborough, the show stars the gorgeous and uber-talented Simona Brown, who is undoubtedly going to blow up due to her multifaceted performance. I won’t go into it further because I don’t want to give anything away, but get ready for a WILD ride.
Read: Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine. I come back to this book again and again. I first read it in college and it broke shit open for me, big time. Rankine employs poetry to interrogate, elucidate, accuse, invite; I have never encountered another book like Rankine’s. If you haven’t read this yet, get it on your TBR list stat!
“So groundbreaking is Rankine’s work that it’s almost impossible to describe; suffice it to say that this is a poem that reads like an essay (or the other way around) - a piece of writing that invents a new form for itself, incorporating pictures, slogans, social commentary and the most piercing and affecting revelations to evoke the intersection of inner and outer life.” —Los Angeles Times
Take good care, friends. Take a bath, get outside if you can, have a dance party in the living room. See you next week.