If anyone asks me how I’m feeling these days, my reply isn’t always terribly inspiring. Weary. Low-grade anxious. The constancy of gun violence in our country. The air-quality nightmares that have plagued the continent because of the smoke from Canadian wildfires and other climate-change environmental horrors. The spate of Supreme Court decisions sending U.S. policy back in time 75 years. These apocalyptic realities are as disheartening as they are unsurprising. Climate change and gun violence have been imminent disasters of our own making for many decades. We knew when the makeup of the current court was being put into place that our current national trajectory was where those confirmations would lead—of dismantling hard-won protections and socioeconomic progress for not only most of the people I love and care about but most people in the U.S. full stop.

I had dinner last week with a dear friend of mine, who, having not received my usual BRAKING AIDS Ride fundraising email yet, asked me if I was riding again. When I said yes and that I felt woefully unprepared, she asked, with an incredulity that took me by surprise, “how do you keep doing it?”

Two weeks ago marked the 42nd anniversary of Lawrence K. Altman’s 1981 New York Times article, “”Rare Cancer Seen in Homosexuals,” considered by many to be the first mainstream media coverage of what became known as HIV/AIDS.

How do I keep doing it?

My answer, interestingly, comes from a slightly younger, not-yet-50 me in September of last year—having just completed the one-day, 85-100-mile BRAKING AIDS Lite 2022, the COVID edition redux. As many of you know, I had the honor of speaking at opening ceremonies last year; Monica, part of the fab video production team who shoots interviews of riders and crew during the event, has also chased after me many times over the years to try to get me to chat about the ride and why I do it. I am not shy about talking but less comfortable on camera. Much as I love Monica, when I see her coming, I usually keep it short and pithy and pedal away as quickly as possible. After the ride last year, she didn’t take no for an answer. I’m bleary-eyed at best when I get off my bike in NYC, so I had no recollection later of what she asked or how I replied.

Turns out my 49-year-old self had accrued a few pieces of wisdom. If you’re curious to hear and see the 3-minute video—me, flanked by Housing Works CEO Charles King and fellow rider Cheyenne Smith, all describing why we love and return to BRAKING AIDS Ride year after year—check it out here:

I keep doing it—the “it” being showing up, trying to do my part to make the world a little better, a little more just, a little more kind and compassionate—because we already know what happens when we don’t show up. When we don’t keep fighting for the causes and beliefs that matter.

I don’t know where the other roads will eventually go to—the future paths that emerge when we show up as best we can, as we are, whether we feel energized and optimistic or exhausted and aggrieved. What I do know is that when we make our presence and engagement with what Tony Kushner called “The Great Work” as committed and regular a practice as brushing our teeth, going for a walk, or meditating, disaster is no longer a foregone conclusion and positive change becomes a real possibility.

So I keep moving.

Most AIDS and health care service organizations focus on a few core services and refer their clients to other places for other needs. Housing Works take a holistic approach to its clients, providing them with a range of integrated crucial programs—the key services clients need to shift from emergency survival mode to independent living and thriving: housing, job training, health care (including primary care, dental, and mental health, not only HIV-specific services), free legal help, substance use treatment, and more.  

Additionally Housing Works remains unique in its commitment to social justice and advocacy. I worked at Housing Works for 5 years heading up advocacy communications. One of the last initiatives I was involved in  with them was going to DC repeatedly to protest the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh—one of several judges responsible for the human and civil rights time warp/ tailspin in which now we find ourselves. 

Housing Works shows up. They have been showing up since 1990 and I can vouch for how they show up because I have seen it firsthand for years. I trust them to keep moving and showing up where needed and as needed in the years to come.

Please donate as much as you’re able, and together we’ll keep moving and see where that more hopeful highway goes to.

DONATE TO HOUSING WORKS VIA MY FUNDRAISING PAGE!

Keeping Things Whole

by Mark Strand

In a field

I am the absence

of field.

This is

always the case.

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

When I walk

I part the air

and always

the air moves in   

to fill the spaces

where my body’s been.

We all have reasons

for moving.

I move

to keep things whole.

from Selected Poems. Copyright © 1979, 1980 by Mark Strand.