field notes; week of july 9, 2018
sorry we’re a day late this week, folks.
one hundred and fifty-two.
i have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and i am not who i was, though some principle of being abides, from which i struggle not to stray. when i look behind, as i am compelled to look before i can gather strength to proceed on my journey, i see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings. oh, i have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered! how shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? in a rising wind the manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face. yet i turn, i turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever i need to go, and every stone on the road precious to me. in my darkest night, when the moon was covered and i roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: “live in the layers, not on the litter.” though i lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written. i am not done with my changes.”
-- stanley kunitz, the layers, 1978
discovered this poem at the tail end of shirley manson’s recent essay on her struggles with self-harm, also very much worth a read.
one hundred and fifty-three.
always falling into a hole, then saying “ok, this is not your grave, get out of this hole,” getting out of the hole which is not the grave, falling into a hole again, saying “ok, this is also not your grave, get out of this hole,” getting out of that hole, falling into another one; sometimes falling into a hole within a hole, or many holes within holes, getting out of them one after the other, then falling again, saying “this is not your grave, get out of the hole”; sometimes being pushed, saying “you can not push me into this hole, it is not my grave,” and getting out defiantly, then falling into a hole again without any pushing; sometimes falling into a set of hole whose structures are predictable, ideological, and long dug, often falling into this set of structural and impersonal holes; sometimes falling into holes with other people, with other people, saying “this is not our mass grave, get out of this hole,” all together getting out of the hole together, hands and legs and arms and human ladders of each other to get out of the hole that is not the mass grave but that will only be gotten out of together; sometimes the willful-falling into a hole which is not the grave because it is easier than not falling into a hole really, but then once in it, realizing it is not the grave, getting out of the hole eventually; sometimes falling into a hole and languishing there for days, weeks, months, years, because while not the grave very difficult, still, to climb out of and you know after this hole there’s just another and another; sometimes surveying the landscape of holes and wishing for a high quality final hole; sometimes too ardently contemplating the final hole while trying to avoid the provisional ones; sometimes dutifully falling and getting out, with perfect fortitude, saying “look at the skill and spirit with which i rise from that which resembles the grave but isn’t!”
-- anne boyer, that which resembles the grave but isn’t, 2013
do you think i could convince a tattoo artist to print this entire passage on my body?
one hundred and fifty-four.
we live in cruel times, times where sometimes it seems the only way to cope is to make ourselves numb. the jimmy awards are a sanctuary from that. the jimmy awards celebrate a group of young people with the courage to greet an increasingly uncertain -- sometimes apocalyptic-seeming -- future with arms outstretched. and i choose to celebrate that celebration. it is impossible to feel numb or apathetic for those few hours at the minskoff - certainly for the 80 teens performing, but also for the adults in the audience. the jimmys honor earnestness and effort in a society that continually extols the idea of “giving no fucks.” not giving a fuck is boring. these young people give every fuck. they give fucks like they’ve still got a closetful of fucks at home packed up to drop off at goodwill. you cannot try to look nonchalant while tap-dancing in a beast costume. there is no way to be “cool” at the jimmys. and thank god (or sondheim, or audra, or whatever deity to whom you may subscribe) for that. “cool,” quite frankly, sucks. this night is not “cool.” it is extraordinary.
-- natalie walker, 7 days with the most talented theatre teens in the country, 2018
i have now read natalie walker’s tick-tock on the national high school musical theatre awards multiple times in full, and i have cried every time. it’s not a sad read — au contraire, hysterical throughout — but it is deeply moving, and it did get me hooked on all the medleys from ceremonies past.
one hundred and fifty-five.
anxiety of being with another person and feeling responsible for their wellbeing… anxiety of being alone and having to manage the neediest, most hard-to-please person of all.
-- liana finck, 2018
once again, jenny slate’s instagram is a font of insight. or a font of gnomic little snapshots of the human condition, at least.
one hundred and fifty-six.
a scoffer who is rebuked will only hate you; the wise, when rebuked, will love you.
-- proverbs 9:8, new revised standard with apocrypha
having to rebuke someone you love is an extraordinarily difficult thing. i am not great at it. i have created countless of my own hells through my pathological aversion to confrontation. so this week, as i contemplated rebuking someone i love, i came across this verse in an otherwise irreligious book, and i was comforted.
one hundred and fifty-seven.
when all we want from life is to keep things on an even keel, then smooth sailing, safety, and security become our main goals. however, a permanent 98.6 may not release our unique creativity and passions, the lively portals into love. it is when the highly disturbing, unusually exciting, and frighteningly fierce become the landscape of our world that something altogether new is most likely to emerge from deep within us. saying yes to the unsettling is a password to creative innovation in any art. our art in this book is love and an unconditional yes to whatever life brings is the password to it. when we are in a quandary, when what we have relied on is crumbling all around us, when we are floundering and losing our bearings, awkward and unsure, we are definitely on the threshold of the heroic journey. then our struggle is not to restore ourselves and everything to its original stable condition. it is to pause long enough to flow with the tide. we are then most apt to find surprising alternatives. in crisis, stress, in helplessness, and depression, an inner power may emerge. it does not arise from hope; it grants hope. it does not show us where safety and security can be found; it is a safety and security of the heart in the midst of chaos and dismay. indeed, chogyam trungpa rinpoche says, “chaos should be regarded as extremely good news.”
-- david richo, how to be an adult in love, 2013
i am an extremely well-adjusted and emotionally competent human being, which is why i purchased a book called “how to be an adult in love” for $12.57 with my indigo employee discount instead of just, like, downloading tinder again.
one hundred and fifty-eight.
a door had been opened and could not be shut and then it was shut. i turned my back and felt the vacuum of my leaving. i live in big spaces, so i’m left alone in big spaces. thinking in the language of the enemy. we were spies and the confidants of spies, pockets and telephones, gathering evidence without leaving any. spies feel like they know something important. it is a feeling. opulent. grand. we invented a fence in the middle of the snow so we could meet at the fence and whisper. clemency at the fence. these small repeated revelations stabilize something. faith in snow, bravery in snow. a daily maintenance. is this your sadness? asks the trashman. no, that is a fishbone and that is a soup can and that over there is no longer recognizable. paint ghosts over everything, the sadness of everything. we made ourselves cold. we made ourselves snow. we smuggled ourselves into ourselves. haunted by each others’ knowledge. to hide somewhere is not surrender, it is trickery. all day the snow falls down, all night the snow. i try to guess your trajectory and end up telling my own story. we left footprints in the slush of ourselves, getting out of there.
-- richard siken, landscape with black coats in snow, 2015
i’m always afraid to post richard siken poems because it feels a little too much like exposing myself, like someone could read the line, “i live in big spaces, so i’m left alone in big spaces” and instantaneously discern all of my most personal secrets in minute specificity. i don’t know! maybe you can. btw, the bit about trying to guess another person’s trajectory and accidentally telling your own story is borrowed directly from an earlier bit of siken, my favourite piece of his, which you can read here.
one hundred and fifty-nine.
love is patient, love is kind. it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. it does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. it always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. love never fails.
-- 1 corithians 13:4-8
this verse is the real how to be an adult in love. i’m not religious, but this still strikes me as a very reasonable rubric for the way love ought to be, and it’s useful to refer back to when you fear you’re losing the plot.
one hundred and sixty.
confidence is just entitlement. entitlement has gotten a bad rap because it’s used almost exclusively for the useless children of the rich, reality tv stars, and conrad hilton jr., who gets kicked off an airplane for smoking pot in the lavatory and calling people peasants or whatever. but entitlement in and of itself isn’t so bad. entitlement is simply the belief that you deserve something. which is great. the hard part is, you’d better make sure you deserve it.
-- mindy kaling, why not me?, 2015
this’ll sound silly, but i can’t think of many more pieces of writing which have shaped my worldview more than mindy kaling’s clear-eyed, unsnobby definition of confidence. the essay in full is a great manifesto to keep in your back pocket.
one hundred and sixty-one.
the day my ribcage became monkey-bars for a girl hanging on my every word, they said, “you are not allowed to love her.” tried to take me by the throat to teach me i was not a boy. i had to un-learn their prison-speak, refuse to make wishes on the star on the sheriff’s chest. i started wishing on the stars in the sky instead. i said to the sun, “tell me about the big bang.” the sun said, “it hurts to become.”
-- andrew gibson, i sing the body electric especially when my power’s out, 2013
how strange it is to be anything at all!
one hundred and sixty-two.
“if you love rachel as much as you say you do, then you need to be that blue jay for her.”
“okay, so what would the blue jay do?” nick asked.
“he would never give up trying. he would take an impossible situation and make everything possible.”
-- kevin kwan, crazy rich asians, 2013
this book is a devastating critique of late capitalism and an incredibly nuanced and empathetic look at the preservation and deterioration of interpersonal relationships, rolled in sugar and dipped in batter and deep-fried and slathered in frosting and sprinkles, and i fffffffffffucking loved it. already in line for the movie.