Dear Mary,

Last night as I was leaving your room after saying good night, you called out “Wait. How about one more hug and one more kiss?” And, of course, I obliged—it wasn’t so long ago that you never wanted hugs or kisses from me, and I’m happy that you like having me around. Still, when I left for work that morning and asked if I could give you a hug, you just shook your head and went back to your video. This might surprise you right now, but both of these interactions make me happy. It makes me happy that you feel comfortable and confident setting your own boundaries, that you feel control over your own body. It makes me happy that when you do decide to be affectionate, you do it with your whole self. And it makes me happy that I’ve earned some of that affection.

You have a lot of interests and a lot of talents. You love to sing, to dance, to draw, to read, to work with numbers, to learn. You love to do things on your own. More than most people I know, you are your own person. You insist on it. You can be led, but you won’t be pushed. You have a huge spirit, and that means that sometimes you will clash with others. People will try to change this about you, to make you smaller, and even though it means that sometimes I’ll be on the receiving end of your displeasure, I hope you never lose this. I hope you always keep going after what you want, and putting your whole heart into everything you do.

Very soon you’ll be starting kindergarten. Very soon to me, at least—to you that’s still a ways off. And, truth be told, it’s not as close as it feels to me. We still have time, and lots to do. But it’ll happen soon enough, and I know you’ll do great. Because that’s who you are. You are great. I’m so happy to know you, and I love you so much. I hope the day brings you much joy. Happy birthday, Mary!

Dear Jason,

Today you are eleven years old. Something I'm thinking about is how much your birthdays have changed since you were little. In the past when we would ask you what you wanted to do for your birthday, you'd want to have a party or go to an amusement park, things like that. This year, your requests were: Korean barbecue, tacos, and the beach with a few friends. There are a lot of things that remind me that you're growing up, that you're not a little kid anymore. This was one of those things. Mostly, I'm just happy to be able to have the time with you, to have things that we can do together that we all enjoy.

It feels like a milestone birthday this year, to me anyway. Does it feel like that to you? You're headed to middle school next year, and you got your first phone. Sometimes I miss you being little, but I'm always just so happy to get to know who you are now, and who you're becoming. Mostly, I'm just thankful that you're such a big-hearted, kind, funny person who always tries so hard to do what's right. You're a good kid, and you make me a good dad.

Happy birthday, Jason. I hope the day brings you much joy!

Two of my poems were published this week, which is the first time that’s ever happened. Shortly after announcing their release, I found myself wondering how many poems I’d have to publish before I felt comfortable calling myself a poet. The only thing I’m sure of is that the answer is greater than two.

I’ve had the great fortune to talk with a lot of poets over the past few years, whether on my show or via social media, or just the kind of private dialogue that happens between artist and audience. I think there may be something more implied by the title “poet” than merely “a person who has written poems.” Rather, it is a declaration, a statement of intent. There is implied a certain dedication to the form, such that even though a poet may write novels or essays or practice visual art in some way, some significant piece of the poet is steadfast in their devotion to poetry. I’ve been willing to call myself a writer even though my output can only generously called “modest.” And perhaps I still aspire to become a poet, one day. But I don’t feel I’m there yet.

Still, I’m reminded of a long-standing argument I’ve had with Jeffery Saddoris, going back years since he first mentioned it on On Taking Pictures. Jeffery will call himself a painter or a photographer or a writer, but he refuses to call himself an artist or to refer to his work as art. As he puts it, it’s for the audience to decide whether or not what he makes qualifies as art, not for himself. And this is an idea that I’ve always pushed back against, because there’s a difference between “art” and “good,” and putting “art” and “artist” up on a pedestal like that can really only serve to discourage people from making art. It’s an act of elitism to tell someone else that what they make doesn’t deserve to be called “art.” It’s not less true when you tell yourself that, just more self-loathing.

You know where I’m going with this. I know. I’m working on it. Or, at least, I’m thinking about it.

I have to admit, I’ve been in a crap mood most of this week. It makes me feel like an ingrate, but I want to talk about it all the same. Last night I saw a thread from Delilah S. Dawson, talking about the weird dissociation she experiences when she has a new book launch. The part that made me sit upright was when she said this: “I think those of us who've built their career on rejection and failure know that if we put all our hopes in a book, it's going to break our heart. Most books never hit big like we dream, and if we protect ourselves from the possibility of success, it doesn't hurt so much.”

I think there’s a lot to what Dawson is saying. The most common piece of advice I’ve heard for creative types is to develop a thick skin about rejection. And, mostly, we do. We get so much practice coping with rejection. Some of us (me) come to expect rejection, even cherish our rejections as evidence that we made the attempt. Nobody really talks about how to cope with success. It’s assumed that that will be the easy part.

But it’s not. Not for me, anyway, and not only because I’ve trained myself so well to brace for disappointment. Rather, it’s that creative success, however you define it, is fleeting. It’s not that success is a moving target—though it is—it’s that success at any level isn’t really satisfying. You’d think I’d know this already—after all, my show is named for a Martha Graham quotation in which she declares that there is no satisfaction in being an artist.

As I’m writing this letter, my poems were published three days ago. One of them took me three years of writing and revising to get it right. The other took a mere 13 months. Both were rejected multiple times before finally being accepted. I’ve bookmarked every compliment and retweet those poems have gotten in the last three days, so I know how many times it’s happened: fifteen. And now, three days later, people are mostly on to other things. And rightly so—there’s so much great work out there and more coming every day. Fifteen people spent time with my work and were moved enough to say something. That is a gift. It’s more than most of us get. It’s more than what I’m accustomed to getting. I should be grateful, and I am. But part of me wants to know, now what?

I don’t doubt it would be the same no matter what the response had been, whether it was 15 comments or 15,000. I’ve never won an award for my creative work but if I keep at it I might some day, and I expect that I’d still feel this strange hollowness afterwards. It’s not that I think external validation is the reason to make art. I know that success is fleeting, that any satisfaction that can be had must come from the doing of the thing, not from how it’s received. But people expect you to feel something about success, something other than a strange, aimless, floating feeling. And so you come to expect that, too. Not feeling elation over it makes me feel like there’s something wrong with me. I don’t think that’s true—I think this is more common than we might realize. But we don’t talk about this. At least, people don’t talk about it in front of me.

I think the important thing is just to recognize (again) that life isn’t the big moments, it’s all the ones in between. Even when that high does come, it can’t last. Where you reside is in the everyday, the grind, the routine, the ordinary. I’m thinking about that moment when you come home from a fun trip. There’s always something of a letdown, I think, some sense of disappointment that the thing you’d been looking forward to has now passed. But in the best times there’s also a pleasure in coming home, in returning to the familiar. I’m trying to get back to that place.

• • •

Some other news:

• If you're in the San Diego area, I'm going to be participating in the Last Exit reading on Saturday, July 27, along with Kristen Arnett, Sarah Rose Etter, Lilliam Rivera, and Tommy Pico. (It's a hell of a line-up, and one that I'm quite overwhelmed to be included in.) The event is free, starts at 8 PM, and will be at You Belong Here. Come say hi!
• I released a new episode of Keep the Channel Open last week, a conversation with photographer Ashly Stohl. We talked about her photobooks Charth Vader and The Days & Years, about photographing your family, about the perception of motherhood in art and society, and about the difference between New York and Los Angeles.

• • •

I hope you're well. I haven't said it recently, but I'm glad you're here.

I'm thrilled to share that two of my poems are up at Last Exit today, as part of their second issue! This is my first poetry publication, and I'm very grateful to Julia Dixon Evans and the whole team at Last Exit for including my work. And look at the rest of the line-up for the issue! Two of my faves, Chloe N. Clark and Cathy Ulrich, are also in there, plus a whole bunch of writers who are new to me, whose work I'm looking forward to getting to know better.

Check it out if you get a chance!

Some exciting news! I'm going to be reading a couple of my poems at the next Last Exit event, on July 27. The line-up for the evening is pretty freaking amazing, if I do say so myself: Kristen Arnett, Tommy Pico, Sarah Rose Etter, and Lilliam Rivera will all be there. If you're going to be in the San Diego area, come check it out. It's free!

It's funny, so often I find myself going to an artist's or author's website and getting irritated that there are no recent updates about their work, no news about new publications, no links to interviews or press coverage. These are things that I am always looking for when I'm doing research for an upcoming podcast episode or even when I just want to do a deep dive into the archive of an artist I admire. And yet, of course, on my own website the blog languishes for months at a time with nary a whisper of the things I've been up to. Presumably, if you're bothering to look at my website, you'd want to know what I'm doing, yes? So I'm going to try to commit to more regular updates.

Speaking of which, there's a new episode of Keep the Channel Open up today, featuring my conversation with photographer Ashly Stohl! I've long admired Ashly's work and not only because we both make images of our families—she brings a visual aesthetic to the genre that I don't often see, more influenced by street and documentary photography than by portraiture. And humor! So often that's missing from personal work, or just art in general. We talked about her books Charth Vader and The Days & Years, about artistic collaborations, about how to sequence a photo series, and about the difference between New York and LA. I hope you enjoy it!

As you might guess from the title, I’m going to talk about politics in this one. If you want to skip it, there certainly won’t be any hard feelings on my part.

This morning Special Counsel Mueller gave his first and possibly only public statement about his investigation into the President’s obstruction, and to my ear he made as direct a nod to impeachment that he likely can make, noting that he did not clear the President of wrongdoing, that he wasn’t allowed to accuse the President of wrongdoing, and that if the President were to be accused of wrongdoing that “the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system.” Shortly afterwards, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement that paid lip service to the idea of holding the President accountable but very clearly and pointedly highlighted legislation and specifically HR. 1 as Congress’s call to action. Legislation, not impeachment.

Mind you, a bunch of Democratic Presidential candidates are now openly calling for impeachment proceedings to begin. And House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler responded to a reporter’s question about impeachment by saying “With respect to impeachment, all options are on the table and nothing should be ruled out.” But the Democratic House leadership and particularly Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer are still resistant to starting impeachment proceedings. And a lot of centrist Dems, including my Congressman, want to focus on things like healthcare, immigration reform, and infrastructure. The idea being that impeachment is too politically dangerous and would rile up Trump’s base (and, apparently, undecided moderates), while focusing on legislation would show the American people that Democrats will actually solve problems and govern properly.

That’s a very lofty and high-minded approach that, in my opinion, is most likely to result in a second Trump term.

Here’s the thing: legislation and policy are very important and have real, lasting, material consequences for people’s actual lives. But most people don’t know that and don’t care. The only people actually paying attention to legislation are politicians, lobbyists, and people who have already made up their minds about the President one way or the other. (Yes, I pay attention to legislation. Yes, I have already made up my mind.) More to the point, none of the Democrats’ key legislation this year is going to make a damn bit of difference in the election, because none of it is going to actually be enacted.

House Dems have passed 112 bills this year, among them some excellent and necessary bills protecting and expanding our democracy, banning LGBTQ+ discrimination, addressing equal pay for women, and requiring common sense gun violence prevention measures. These are important bills that we desperately need, that stand absolutely no chance of passing the Republican-held Senate. So far, nine Democratic bills have passed the Senate and become law. None of them are the kind of bill that swing elections. To the extent that any national attention has come to House legislation, it’s been because Republicans have attacked it as socialist, messaging repeated extensively by the press which is certainly not going to do anything to help elect a Democratic President. And to the extent that any House bill does make it through the Senate, those bills are absolutely going to be co-opted and claimed by the GOP, who will take all the credit for anything good that comes out of it. That this will be a lie won’t actually matter to most voters, who have no interest in following the day-to-day process of Congress.

Not only will centrist Democrats’ preference for focusing on legislation fail to deliver them any significant goodwill (because, again, voters don’t notice or care about legislation and Republicans will take credit for anything good anyway), but by failing to pursue accountability in the strongest possible way—that is, impeachment—House Democrats are actually sending the message to voters that the President’s lies, obstruction, corruption, and collusion are just not that big a deal. I know, I know, the word “normalize” has been repeated so many times lately that it’s just become part of the cosmic background radiation of our political discourse. But voter attitudes matter, and encouraging people to view the President’s misdeeds as not worth following up on is effectively conceding the matter.

And then what’s left? Having defanged their own biggest criticisms of the President and having been unable to actually make any meaningful difference in voters’ lives, and being faced with low inflation and low unemployment (numbers that are deeply deceptive that are nevertheless going to be successfully used by Republicans to manipulate public opinion), what are Democrats going to fall back on? What’s the story that’s going to make people care?

Because that’s what makes people vote: stories. Not statistics or data or bills. Narrative. Right now we are faced with the most corrupt, vile, dishonest, destructive President in living memory, a villain so cartoonish that you wouldn’t believe him if he were fictional. And yet instead of rising up to fill a heroic role that people can rally around, Democrats are terrified of opposing him too strenuously.

We need impeachment and we need it to start now. Not because it’s going to get him removed from office—impeachment has no more chance of getting through the Senate than any of the House’s other important measures—but because this is the thing people need to see in order to have hope, and, in turn, to show up and vote for something better. And because failing to impeach, failing to even try to impeach, is the surest way to guarantee a second Trump term.

I took my daughter to her skating lesson Saturday morning. The week before she cried and didn’t want to go, terrified that she would fall. Driving over to the rink this time she said “I’m not as scared today.” On the ice, she was tentative at first but quickly became more confident, even hopping and crouching along with her classmates. After, she said “We did something called a scooter glide and that was scary but I did it.” She smiled, and I smiled.

*

Every time I brush my daughter’s hair—which for a while now has been quite long and therefore requires a lot of brushing—I think about the fact that the only reason I know how to do anything with long hair is because in high school my friends and I were metalheads. I think about growing out our hair, the better to headbang with; practicing how to windmill our hair as we thrashed, the catharsis of aggressive music contrasting with the earnestness of that practice; and learning how to start brushing from the bottom so as to avoid snarls, how to brush underneath for thoroughness. Just two boys, talking about the finer points of heavy metal and hair care.

*

Listening to Scene On Radio’s “MEN” series last week, I found myself finally anxious about my son’s transition to middle school. He’s always been such a good and compassionate kid, always trying to take care of others. But listening to this dad talk about his son, who announced on the first day of sixth grade that he intended to join the Gay-Straight Alliance, but who by the beginning of seventh grade was defending the necessity of using homophobic slurs, it was hard to hear. We’ve always tried to model kindness and tolerance to our kids, to talk about peer pressure, to encourage them to trust their own feelings and be themselves. But the world is such a toxic place and masculinity is such a pervasive pressure, and middle school is so hard and so confusing, trying to figure out your self and your body, your friends, your community and your place in it. I just don’t know what people will come into his life and how they’ll influence him.

But maybe what this really is is that I’m worried and scared of him growing beyond me, of leaving me behind. Of not mattering to him anymore. It is both a silly fear and completely understandable one, I think.

*

A few months ago I woke up to see a coyote standing in my back yard, just standing there in the middle of my fenced-in lawn, which was just getting to the point of being noticeably overgrown. It was gone before I could grab my camera or even my phone, and I didn’t see where it went or how it came in.

At one time, before there were fences and lawns and concrete and patio furniture here—though, not before there were people here, just before people lived this way here—this hill looked, I imagine, much like the hillside just across the street, rocky and scrubby chapparal, the same lizards and birds and insects, though perhaps more of them. At one time coyotes stood in this spot and didn’t look out of place or confused, or at least if a person saw one there they wouldn’t have found it confusing our out of place.

What is confusing is that we assume we have made of this place a place without wildness, a place where things can be in or out of place. We tell ourselves a story of control, of power, and feel comforted, and feel safe. But the world is wild, whatever we say about it. We will one day be dead, we are unsafe, and the world will remind us one way, one day. I saw a coyote outside my bedroom window, and it saw me. I’m more careful now, or at least I try to take care.

*

(Brandon, if you’re reading this one, I apologize for the asterisks.)

*

I hope you’re well. I’m feeling a little low today, a little worn out and lonely and frustrated. But it will pass.

I wrote this yesterday. I don’t know if it says quite what I want to say, but here it is.

*

Yesterday, a man opened fire on a synagogue just a few miles from my house. Just a few miles from my house, a white nationalist killed a woman in a house of prayer and wounded three other people. A few miles away from me, in a town where we say “The schools are good,” and “It is a great place to raise a family,” and “It is safe,” a woman died after leaping in front of a bullet to save the life of her rabbi.

Today I left my house and drove a few miles and stood on a corner with a small crowd of people in that safe town. We wore black and held signs and waved at the passing cars who honked and waved in support. Some of us cried and a few people spoke with anger and fear in their voices but mostly we just stood and held our signs and waved, together.

This morning I spent an hour in my bed, crying, and then I got up and went and joined people on a street corner in order to feel like I was doing anything at all. Tonight I will take my family out for noodles and frozen treats, and I’ll watch my children smile, and I’ll wonder about all the things the world will show them that I can do nothing about. My youngest, four, doesn’t know much about the world’s cruelty yet. We keep it from her, mostly, and this is a luxury so many children don’t get. Just a few miles away, a child is in the hospital after being shot by a man whose fear and anger was manipulated into violence.

My son, hearing about this man’s fears, denounced them as unfounded. And yet, I told him, it doesn’t matter what’s real to our feeling of fear. Fear feeds anger, anger leads to violence, even without reason.

This morning I cried for an hour. I mourned, yes, for a woman’s life, lost, and for two men and a girl wounded so senselessly. I mourned, too, for the life we all were promised, that safe place, those good schools, a Saturday morning with no thought but home, family, an easy peace needing no defense, no vigilance. Yes, a life—mine—not of fighting or fear but of breakfast cereal and books and socks to be folded, of growing old, of dancing together in our living room, in a house where nothing bad happens, not really. A life, maybe, that never existed, not really, but I didn’t know it yet.

*

I hope that, wherever you are, you have what you need right now. If you have enough to spare, please consider making a donation to Chabad of Poway, to help their recovery.

I’m skeptical of Pete Buttigieg. He seems like a nice, approachable guy, and the way he talks reminds me of the aspirational way that Obama talked about America. But there’s something about the way he talks about coastal elites and bringing in Trump voters that makes me uneasy, not to mention the way that he talks about “security” as one of the pillars of his campaign.

I’m skeptical of Kamala Harris. She has done a lot of things I like since becoming a Senator, both in terms of legislation and in terms of how she’s handled every confirmation hearing I’ve watched. But as California’s Attorney General she had a “tough on crime” position that makes me unsure exactly how she’d approach criminal justice reform as a President.

I’m skeptical of Bernie Sanders. I’ll be honest, I voted for Sanders in the 2016 primary. And I appreciate how he’s been consistently and unapologetically for progressive policies. But he just keeps saying things that make it clear that he doesn’t understand much about how race, gender, and other marginalizations intersect with class, and at this point I’m not sure if he’ll ever understand.

I’m skeptical of Elizabeth Warren. Warren has by far the most thoroughly developed and well articulated policy agenda of any candidate I’ve ever seen, and although I haven’t read them all, the ones I’ve read I’ve liked. But the way she talked about her “Cherokee DNA” for so long and the fact that it took her so long to listen to Native people about why that was a problem makes me wonder how much she understands those whose marginalizations she doesn’t share.

I’m skeptical of Beto O’Rourke. I found it thrilling that he came so close to unseating Ted Cruz, and some of the speeches he gave during that campaign gave me chills. But since he lost that race, a lot of what he’s said and done has struck me as sort of clueless and self-absorbed and fragile, and I don’t know what kind of a President he’d make.

I’m skeptical of Cory Booker. Booker’s first campaign ad was legitimately wonderful, and I like the way he talks about hope. But his history of supporting charter schools and school choice vouchers gives me pause.

I’m skeptical of Joe Biden. It certainly matters to me that President Obama holds Biden in such high regard, but Biden’s support of Reagan- and Clinton-era criminal justice policies, and his support of pro-Wall Street legislation throughout his career, and the way he just doesn’t get it when it comes to touching people makes me very concerned that a Biden Presidency would be a step backwards.

I’m skeptical of all of them. I’m skeptical of Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand and Jay Inslee and Eric Swalwell and Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang and Marianne Williamson. I’m skeptical of the candidates whose names I can’t even remember. But I’m going to vote for one of them in the primary, and I’m for damn sure going to vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is in the general election. I have already donated to campaigns and I will probably do so again, and next fall I’ll be doing what I can to organize volunteers to get the vote out, and I’ll be out walking precincts myself.

The point here isn’t to slag any candidate or to dissuade anyone from voting. Far from it. But if there is anything we should have learned by now, it is that no politician and no candidate deserves our loyalty or even really our trust. In 2008 I believed in Barack Obama with my whole heart. Over the next eight years he did a lot of things I liked but he also deported 3 million immigrants.

No candidate is going to save us. Every candidate has done and will do things that hurt people. Every elected official needs to be held accountable by their constituents, and that means none of us can take for granted that they’ll do the right thing; we have to check up on them, and keep checking up on them. Candidates, especially presidential candidates, are not the answer. The real work of democracy is only ever done on the ground by everyday citizens, and that will never stop being true.

So, yes, let’s do our research. Let’s pick our candidates and support them and vote. But please, let’s not ever make the mistake again of confusing government for leadership. We are the leaders, you and me and our 350 million friends and family members and neighbors. Government is the tool through which we express our will. It’s important to remember that.