Vigil in the Negev Desert, 1995

Last night was loud.

Everybody was overjoyed to say goodbye to the old year, but now there's this hollow, exhausted silence. It's still dark outside. Maybe everybody's asleep, or maybe we're all awake and looking into the darkness, wondering what's going to happen next.

Rose IV, ink and watercolor on paper. 12 x 12 inches.

I spent a night alone in the desert when I was fifteen years old.

Technically, I was with a group of other kids, plus a few adults, but I had dragged off my sleeping bag to camp by myself in the warm sand, far enough away that I couldn't hear or see anybody else. The sky, like desert skies at night everywhere I guess, was beautiful—crystal clear and finely dusted with the most distant stars. I didn't go to sleep at all that night, or even get into my sleeping bag. The Negev desert in July was a hundred- and twenty-five-degrees Fahrenheit in the daytime, and it never really cooled down. I was on an Israel "birthright tour" with my synagogue's confirmation class, and the reason I went off on my own that night was that I didn't have any friends.

I had always been sort of a weird kid, but I had friends in elementary school like most people. Between middle school bullying and being a lesbian closet case, hanging onto childhood for dear life so I didn't have to pretend to be attracted to boys, I didn't fit in with any group of adolescents I would ever meet. I went into the seven-week program with a reckless hope that I'd make enough friends to get by without being a total pariah. By good luck, I found a good-natured Russian girl who had her own group of Russian-speaking friends. They could hardly have been pleased with my presence. I spoke no Russian, and I certainly hadn't joined their group out of affinity—I was just lonely. Everyone's hard on kids for being cruel, but there aren't a lot of kind ways to rid yourself of unwelcome company that has not yet learned how to take a hint. After a week or so, one of the Russian girls simply cut me out one day, when we were all hiking across the Negev.

I spent most of the next day crying. The girl who had cut me out lost her temper, hissing at me to stop crying because I was making her look bad to the whole class. I don't blame her for cutting me out—I knew I deserved that—but it was unjust to hound me just for being miserable. I would gladly have stopped if I could have helped it, but despite every effort I have made to get a thicker skin, shame still moves me to helpless tears even at forty-one years old.

It was a long and bleak seven weeks. I spent a lot of time using any excuse I could to be away from the rest of the kids, re-reading the few books I had brought again and again because I had nothing else to do.

Clock VI, ink and watercolor on paper. 21 x 21 inches.

Kicking along the bottom of the social hierarchy of adolescence (and, let's be honest, young adulthood too) means you're too proud to solicit friendship, and you're too insecure to make do without it. Social life becomes a desert wasteland of desperation and boredom. You can either make the mistake of blaming the world, or make the mistake of blaming yourself. Denial soothes pride with fantasy stories and self-deprecation only puffs it up with the illusion of self-sufficiency. But humility preserves self-respect because it's the only believable path. The world is never blameless, but neither are we.

Anyway, that's what I discovered in the middle of the night when I was totally alone, at the bottom of the desert: blind faith that things could get better. I had no good reason to think things would materially improve, but watching the dark hours of the early morning pass by made it feel like anything was possible. That night was when I learned to love the irrational optimism that is as much a part of human nature as the irrational pessimism we all know as depression. I love the way hope can bubble up in the middle of the dry desert, in pitch dark, from the very slime and muck of despair.

I don't need to tell anybody that 2020 has been a strange and terrible year. My family and I have remained safe and well, and I've had the most commissions and exhibitions this year I’ve ever had (I currently have paintings at Avenue 12 Gallery and New Museum Los Gatos). For the people most impacted by the devastating human, economic, and environmental impacts of the pandemic, political strife, and ongoing discrimination and persecution, hope may feel all but nonexistent. If that’s you, that's okay.—and if it’s not, we really have to throw our weight into our work.

In the meantime, let's wait here in the dark together and see what comes next.