Consumption

On fighting for my existence.

Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash...

In the 19th century, people with the dreaded tuberculosis were said to have consumption, marked by coughing, fever, and inexorable weight loss, as if the body is being consumed.

Is it any accident we now speak of a different kind of consumption — media consumption, social media in particular — in similar terms? Like everyone else, my attention is getting feeble, fractured. My mind darts here and there. I read Substack Notes for two hours without blinking an eye. I attempt to read a book and pick up my phone three times in ten minutes. I lean on Google Maps for dear life, rarely letting myself get lost. I check reviews before trying new cafes or restaurants. “Reviews” that are often unhelpful indeed now that everyone apparently knows how to game the system. It’s abundantly clear I need to rely on my own radar again.

My own radar. My own sense of self, needs, preferences, intuitions, observations, feelings. My own experience.

And each other. Maybe we can finally turn to one another again. Not just anyone of course. We need to pick people who care about such things. Not everyone is good at recommending a restaurant. For many people, food is sustenance and little else. In fact, the fancier, more foreign, or more interesting it is, the less these folks are interested.

But our food-loving friends? They are a gold mine, of course. I’m thinking of course of my friend L. whose recommendations literally never fail. How does she know? She hears, intuits, and knows the food community well, as she is a revered member herself of that community. Her recommendations will beat a supposed five Google stars any day.

Back to consumption. I am consuming non-stop, letting all kinds of digital excesses in. Many of them are “good,” meaning, smart, helpful, interesting, important. They are offerings from artists, fledgling writers, young and/or avant garde filmmakers. I’m thinking now of my rabbit hole-evenings, especially since before K. arrived, where I watched revered, sensitive, “important” films on Mubi night after night. It was good… I mean, it felt meaningful, but I’ve been struggling with anxiety and depression, and guess what? Staying in night after night, after being home most of every day looking for work does not a very good boy (or girl in this case) make.

In fact, by the time T. arrived, I was in a real pit. I had a bona fide anxiety attack in my kitchen last week, just after adding Item No. 50 to my To-Do List. I nearly blacked out. That same week, I had an smaller anxiety attack of some sort in bed and struggled to manage my breathing.

I talked to my son last night. He’s so good, of course. He steadies me incredibly. I’m so proud of him. He’s doing the work. He’s encouraging me (and has been for years) to do the work as well.

And you know what? Let’s give credit where credit is due. I’m doing the work too. Not perfectly, not in the most organized fashion, and not with the greatest commitment always, but I am doing it. I’m seeing a therapist, and after believing my therapist (whom I like) had abandoned me, he reappeared yesterday. I immediately forgave him, relieved I don’t have to go back to the new therapist Kaiser served up who said three times during our very first, 50-minute meeting, “I’m over-sharing.”

That really happened. My dear friend S., who is a therapist, was aghast. Really? she asked. She’s so even-keel, I could hear in her voice a note of uncharacteristic flabbergasted-ness, if that’s a word. (It is now.)

Here’s the thing about consumption. I sat down to write you on Substack today. I have 90 minutes to do it. And I will publish what comes out no matter what, warts and all. Because I’ve learned if I don’t, I won’t. I have just as many draft posts as I have published posts, on both Medium and Substack, drafts I never return to, and it’s a sorry pile indeed. So, no more screwing around. I’m just writing, and putting it out there. Raw. Real. Hopefully sometimes helpful.

The truth is, I can’t worry about that too much right now.

The truth is, I need to help myself.

The truth is, I’m a little worried about myself, and others are too.

But, guess what? I’m getting it together. I got real low last week, and it scared me. I’m not doing that anymore.

I was trying to say earlier, that watching movies (even great ones) every night may not be good for me, only because it’s isolating. I’m too isolated as it is. Here I am, in Madrid, my dream. I moved to Spain! La di dah!

I did. I did move to Spain. Four months ago.

And all I’ve been able to think about for the last several weeks is how to un-do it.

But, wait, where were we? Ah, yes. Consumption. My point is, I sat down in this cafe (“Lizandro”) down the street from my flat to write to you, my dear readers, and guess what? I bet you can guess what (nearly) happened.

I reflexively went for my phone. I reflexively went to check the usual… email, notifications, maybe even the dreaded NYT, which I check ad nauseum, making myself, yes, nauseous (and mortified) every time I peek at what “my” government is doing now.

And when I do this, begin consuming instead of creating, all bets are off. I can easily fill 45 minutes, an hour, two, with mindless scrolling.

So, yes, T. came. He’s a member of the tango community in San Francisco, and we types tend to stick together. I was glad he asked if he could stay with me during his time in Madrid. I easily said yes — months ago.

But as the date of his arrival approached, I grew trepidatious. I was too depressed to host someone, I thought. I was too down. I lacked the energy or interest to show anyone around. I was embarrassed. I didn’t even have a second coffee cup. And didn’t want to buy one.

Don’t get me started on how daring to be depressed while I’m supposedly living the dream only adds to the ill feeling.

I warned T. I said, Don’t expect me to show you around or anything. I’m struggling. I’m not even sure if I’m staying here.

That was true. I even booked a ticket home for April 1st, canceling it within 24 hours when I realized my lease contains a “particularly aggressive” clause according to ChatGPT that would allow my landlady to take my entire triple-deposit (supposedly “normal” for us foreigners). (Of course, ChatGPT did not spot this when I first fed it the contract before signing, asking if there were any red flags.)

T. said, It’s okay. I don’t need showing around. I said, Okay. Come.

He arrived. And you know what? Just having another human near me, nearby, helped immeasurably. It wasn’t immediate. It took a while. I was in a bad mood at the first tango milonga he planned for us. He danced with me a several times, and he’s a very fine dancer who’s been studying tango for more than 20 years. Then, I got a couple of dances from some Spanish fellows. When we got home several hours later, I knew it had been a move in the right direction.

We did it again the following night, and I felt even better afterwards.

We traipsed around the city on Saturday and Sunday. I was still low-energy, and even fought sudden tears near the Metro station on Easter, thinking about my daughter, missing her, feeling sorry for myself. T. didn’t notice, and life rolled along, as life does. The thing is, with each passing hour, over a period of about four days, I was further restored… to myself.

T. did that. And he didn’t have to be perfect to do it. We didn’t have to have heart-to-heart conversations. We didn’t need to click. We didn’t need to do anything. Just having another human to walk around and share a meal with now and again was restorative.

He restored me.

Or me allowing myself to be near another human restored me. It got me off the constant phone-scrolling, off the screens. Out of my head.

This was the opposite of consumption.

When T. arrived, I was busy consuming all manner of digital and social media, jumping from tab to tab, making ridiculous lists of things to do, freezing repeatedly in terror, with no idea what to do next, and generally freaking out.

I was being consumed from the inside out.

T.’s arrival allowed the outlines of my body to plump out a bit again. I was brought back into my body. I was restored.

Similarly, this morning, I sat on the couch and started a new library book. And just the act of reading steadied me. It’s Christine Rosen’s The Extinction of Experience. Guess what it’s about? You got it. It’s related to what’s happening to us as we cede our direct experience of the world to some kind of facsimile through the compelling portals we all carry around in our pockets.

The book begins with a quote: “Technology… the knack of so arranging the world so that we need not experience it.” —Max Frisch, Homo Faber (1957)

That caught my attention.

The next sentence that seared me was, “Behind the power we wield with our technologies is a timidity and aversion to risk.”

The author goes on to describe how we are being literally and figuratively dis-embodied by our phones and our choices vis a vis the digital world. What she means is that we are tending to “reject…the inconveniences and small hazards of face-to-face communication, the laborious but necessary practice of doing things with our hands, and the non-quantifiable experience of unmediated pleasure.”

Consumption. I sat down in this cafe called Lizandro, with it’s black-and-white-tiled floor and cheery, green-painted door. Music I don’t particularly like, of the house-genre ilk, plays behind the bar. A boy wearing a rugby shirt of orange-and-white stripes (whom I’m sure would not call himself a boy; he’s clearly a man, but you get my drift) sits beside me, intent on his own laptop.

A couple of young women at the round table before me gaze at a phone screen together. But they also lean back and laugh, gesture with their hands, and giggle. One of them wears a black silk scarf strewn with multi-colored polka dots in a kerchief-style on her head. The sun has come out, and the buckeye trees along the street hold their lantern-like pinnacles of pink and white blooms proudly aloft.

My son said again last night, in not so many words, Mom, fight. Fight for yourself. That was the sub-text. He’s said it all before. Try things, try anything. Are you going to bet on yourself?

Bet on myself.

What would that look like? Feel like?

I think it’s the opposite of consumption. I think it’s stepping out, connecting, standing up, straightening my back. I think it’s continuing to attend fitboxing. It’s meeting my neighbor tonight for a drink on a terrace I didn’t even know we had (?) on the top floor of my building. It’s going to tango. It’s walking around. It’s meeting more people, trying more things, and being much braver.

And it’s doing the work. Committing, following through, getting organized, and taking risks.

What choice do we have?

We have to continue to fight the good fight, whether we have the tools or not.

And even the smallest thing, like another human nearby, can pull us up.