Lunch with the Goddess

On the hang and knowing what you want, but not how to get it

This week I had lunch with the Goddess. May we all be so lucky and have such a week. It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t, as I read in a recent newsletter by

Rosie Spinks

, friendship as admin. It wasn’t an arranged lunch. I didn’t have to schedule it weeks in advance. It didn’t feel like another item on my to-do list. My husband and I decided to go to our local pub and the Goddess was at the bar, finishing up early drinks with some folks (the Goddess has early drinks because she is the Goddess). She stayed to have lunch with us. May we all be so blessed.

If you live in Madison, you probably know what I’m talking about when I say I had lunch with the Goddess. For those of you who don’t live in Madison, first, sorry. Second, the Goddess is our matriarch. The mother you wish you had. Maybe the grandmother. She is one of the great beating hearts at the center of our community. As I was sitting at the bar with the Goddess, someone walked by and said hello to her.

“I don’t know who that is,” the Goddess said.

“Everyone knows you,” I said.

“They do,” the Goddess agreed.

“And everyone loves you.”

The Goddess made a face, but it doesn’t matter. It’s true. She’s the Goddess. How could you not love her? And not just because she introduces me to people as the best writer in Madison, though how could you not love that?

This is not THE Goddess, but a goddess. You get the idea. Photo by Sonika Agarwal on Unsplash

We had lunch with the Goddess along with  a delicious beet, spinach, artichoke dip that was the special for that day. Yes, also one and a half beers. We talked about what we think happens after we die and how, all in all, the idea of death seems fairly restful. We talked about how we met our spouses. We looked at pictures of the waitress’s baby. Lunch with the Goddess was exactly what I needed at the moment. It is so often exactly what I need.

That same week at a faculty book group, we talked about Ross Gay’s book, Inciting Joy. We talked about a lot of things, including the beauty and terror of the hang. You know the hang? You might also call it hanging out. You might call it shooting the shit. The sociologist Georg Simmel called it sociability. It’s hard to describe the hang. You know it when you’re in it. Time stops in the hang. Your to-do list disappears. There is no purpose to the hang. The hang is not productive, because the hang exists outside capitalism. In the hang we are so much more than workers or units. In the hang, we are human. The hang is the hang is the hang.

Our lunch with the Goddess was the hang. Spontaneous. Unplanned. Delightful.

In the book group, some of us confessed how terrifying the concept of the hang is. Yes, in theory, we’d like to do that. In reality? In this over-busy, over-scheduled world we live in? The very idea of the hang might make us break out in a cold sweat. The hang is doing nothing, but, very importantly, doing nothing with other people. It is akin to laziness, which is the worst sin you can commit in our capitalist world.

At the same book group, someone told a story about a young person who, every Friday, schedules their self-care. This self-care consists of hours spent alone, looking at TikTok. This is how they relax.

I want to say here that I, too, find myself sometimes coming home from work or even between classes, mindlessly scrolling through social media. Not TikTok, because it is too loud for my older sensibilities. I scroll through Instagram. Or Substack Notes. I tell myself it’s no big deal. It’s a way to turn my brain off for a little while. No harm done.

What I’m saying is, I get the attraction of hours spent looking at social media by yourself. Often when I come home from work, which is a fairly intense form of interaction and definitely not the hang, I don’t really even want to talk to my husband, and he’s my favorite person in the whole world. I am exhausted. And now, in that exhaustion, I have to see people again? Talk to people? It all feels like too much.

I also realized, somewhere in my 30s, that community was an absolute necessity to my mental and emotional health. It was not optional. It was not a bonus. It was not an add-on. Community, I realized, was like air and water and food and shelter. I would wither and die without it. Period. End of story.

Also, nothing in my culture leant itself to the creation of community. I would have to do that work myself. And it would be work. But it was work that was necessary to my survival. So I rolled up my sleeves and I got to work. I do the work of leaving my house, even when I really don’t feel like it. I do the work of becoming a regular at places. I do the work of having friends over. I do the work of parties and dinners and meet-ups. Sometimes I feel like a fucking voice in the wilderness, crying over and over in the saddest and most pathetic of voices, “Do you want to hang. Will you hang with me? Please, please, pleas?” I feel so alone and, yes, sometimes a little crazy, in my drive to bring people together around me. Still, I do it.

But sometimes, the hang comes so much easier. The groundwork has already been laid. I don’t know how I met the Goddess. It feels like she has always existed in my life. She is, after all, a Goddess. Eternal. But at some point, I must have left my house and encountered her. I know the Goddess. I know the bartender. The waitress. The barista at the coffee shop. The librarians. Sometimes, the work pays off.

I know what I want in my life. I want more of the hang. I want more spontaneous lunches with the Goddess. And with that person in town I sort of know but might want to know better. I want more friends and more hang. I want to feel gently held in a warm, safe web of community. I want my life to be full of that.

I’m not always sure how to get it. It’s an uphill battle. It’s a fight, I think, for our very survival as a species. I feel lucky to live in a place where I have a local bar. I feel lucky to live in a place where I can walk outside my house and find some of the hang so much easier than many other people can. I feel lucky to have more time and space in my life for the hang. I wish we were working towards building communities and spaces that made this easier for everyone.

I’m lucky to live in a town with its very own Goddess. May we all be so fortunate.