Water and Fire
The difference between having hope and being delusional can feel impossible to discern.
Our new monthly column, In Good Time, by guest writer Hannah Pfister, is meandering and existential–a meditation on the times we're living in–processing Western culture's tie to late-stage capitalism, feminism, and her life as an artist in Los Angeles.
Pfister is an artist originally from Santa Cruz based in Los Angeles. Her first essay, Water and Fire, is a personal journey through apathy. She unpacks New Year's Day rituals, the L.A. fires, her complicated and unfaithful health insurance plan, and what separates hope from delusion.
Every New Year’s Day a friend invites me to jump into the ocean, as a way of inviting in the new year. I wasn’t very excited about it this year. Lately, I’ve had difficulty feeling optimistic about the future. I’m thirty-five, an aging millennial, living in a time that seems increasingly apocalyptic. As I write this, the Palisades and Eaton fires continue to expand in Los Angeles, the city where I live.
The difference between having hope and being delusional can feel impossible to discern.
But as I drove through the fog to the beach on January 1, I decided to really go for it: I envisioned myself diving into a wave, and coming out of the freezing ocean renewed—shedding everything that I no longer needed.
A small group of us gathered and sat around in the sand, as the fog lifted and revealed a blue sky. We lingered longer than usual, enjoying the sun and each other. When it came time to go in, we aimed for a quiet stretch of ocean, out of the way of surfers. I remembered my intention and began to run, feeling the air around me begin to speed up, and the old year disappear. But as I leapt into the water, my left foot struck against a large jagged rock. I kept running; it was too late for me to stop—I’d already gained too much momentum. As premeditated, I dove into the wave, my foot aching in pain.
I carefully limped out of the water, the arch of my foot already cut and swollen. In a few hours, a large part of my sole was dark purple, as if I had a new birthmark. What most concerned me at that point, however, was how to get healthcare.
On December 30, I had received a text message that my primary care doctor was no longer in my network. On January 1, when I called my insurance, no one could determine who my current doctor was. After hours on the phone with medical professionals I was encouraged to go to the ER and that this “should” be covered.
As I’m sure many of you have experienced firsthand, my personal healthcare fiasco is still going on, and will likely continue for several months. I still don’t have a doctor. But after a day spent in the ER, it was determined that nothing was broken.
I can’t help but want to make a metaphor out of this experience, or even worse, a prophecy. But in many ways I feel the same as when I jumped into the ocean, as if I am still underwater: vulnerably and painfully alive, uncertain of the future.
I have been working on a novel for five years, with an unknown span of time until it’s completed. To provide time and security for this endeavor, my husband—also an artist—and I live above a benevolent friend’s garage. We live at the “very low” income bracket determined by Los Angeles County, but because we benefit from the help of loved ones, we get by, though it’s been wearing on us. Life feels difficult, and like every choice is very important, like there isn’t any room for mistakes. I have no way of knowing if my novel, even when finished, will provide us with enough income.
And yet, there lies within me a stalwart optimism, so naive that it’s embarrassing. I’m not sure where it comes from, but there is still a part of me that is like a child and has a strange gratitude for being alive—a ridiculous hope even in the purpose of my writing.
Even now, while I reload the evacuation map for Los Angeles, as I study the smoke that is like fog, everywhere, outside my windows, I feel present. The small patches of sunlight that have made it through the smoke grip onto the leaves of my houseplants, as if to soothe me.
The fire is seven miles away and unlikely to reach us. But unlikely things have been happening lately, so we must be prepared. I did not imagine that I would walk through the empty shelves of grocery stores as many times as I have at this point in my life.
My husband and I pack our bags and take stock of everything that we could lose. Having the time to look it all over makes us feel strangely detached, even though we are the kinds of people who love things, and have taken a great deal of time and effort to procure beautiful art and furniture within our modest budget. We grab a few pieces of art off the walls and put them into a pile.
In the wake of tragedy, things feel less precious. Instead, I think of the connection I have with the people in my life, even the connection I feel with my own body, the earth and the sky. I’m reminded of when I sat around on the beach earlier this month in the warm sun, cold water on my feet. Maybe these are the moments that matter the most in our lives, even if surrounded by catastrophe.
In Carol Bialock’s poem “Breathing Underwater” she writes that one day “the sea came. Without warning. Without welcome, even.” The ocean surrounds her house, “flowing like an open wound.” The narrator contemplates running away, or even dying. But as the sea swallows her known life away, she instead learns to breathe underwater.
Loss, at this point, surrounds us. We have lived through a pandemic, increasing political tensions, natural disasters. It doesn’t feel possible to leave all that we’ve lost behind, or to go forward without it—let my current limp be an example. Most of what we’ve experienced can’t be washed away. If our hope is to be authentic, we won’t be able to ignore what is gone—we will have to carry it with us into the future. Maybe we will learn to breathe differently.
Perhaps this is what separates hope from delusion: a desire amidst despair, not without it.
Hannah Pfister has published poetry in Define, Between Lands, and Darling Magazine. She currently lives in Los Angeles, where she is working on a novel.
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