Ordinary Life, Continued

You’ve perhaps read the really great article by Teju Cole? Why bother, he asks, writing about what’s happening right now? And then he says:

“The same incidents, the same references and the same outrages would inevitably be picked over by other writers; for all our social distancing, we’d all be crowding around the same material. I also knew that anything I wrote could soon be — in fact was almost certain to be — contradicted by new developments. But what worried me most was that certain points of emphasis in my writing would later prove to have been misjudged, and that this would somehow reveal that my heart had been in the wrong place all along.“

Thankfully for those of us reading, he does bother, his heart is in the correct place. He says this: “I’m listening to Beethoven, the early sonatas. In these bruising days, any delicately made thing quickens the heart.”

I needed to hear just that. And I was thinking, who knows what another might need to hear? What delicate thing? Maybe it’s a song or a photo or a few brushstrokes in a painting, a children’s story, that will quicken someone else’s heart. So please keep on, keep trying to express what is going on in your ordinary life, how you’re feeling, or what a piece of art has done to your heart. Just share small moments of beauty, small connections with your heart, because you don’t know what good they’ll do, or who they will move or console.

What’s moving me is the spring breeze in the blossoms in my backyard. This week, sitting in a chair on our deck, Rob and I looked over at the same time to see a big fat green hummingbird peruse a geranium before taking off. I’m glad he also saw it or I would have been questioning the sight. I’ve seen a fair number of hummingbirds but not one quite this large or green.

I took some photos of what I have called my “recurring” bird, because I used to take a photo of it almost every day and back when I used Flicker it was kind of my everyday project, unofficially. If you recognize it from then, we’ve been connected online for some time! Which is really lovely, honestly.

Spring is really just starting where I live, and the birdsong is wild, the frogs are loud, and the traffic sounds from the nearby highway are quieter. I feel as though we’re forgetting how to talk to people, and we’re becoming a bit subdued. I worry a lot about my daughter, alone in her apartment across the country. I know she’s fine, but I love her so I worry. We’re all missing a lot of things and trying not to dwell. It does no good to miss the idea of going to Rome, or missing the dog we haven’t had for years. We have to all just go on trusting in our hearts and pausing for those delicately made things, for those shocks of surprising beauty. Might we use them as stepping stones to get over this river?

There are so many bruising and devastating moments which I know you’ve all read about or watched the video just this week (you know the one I’m talking about I’m sure) and the horrible thing is we know there will be more ugliness ahead. That’s a given. I wish it weren’t. And I can’t look away. I can minimize my exposure but I’m not going to ignore these inhuman acts.

I’m a broken record for beauty. I’m a broken record for the open heart. If we keep these with us, they’ll help steer us. As much as we’re learning about what and who is inhumane, we’re also learning about who is beautiful, who understands what is good and delicate and true.

If we’re going to record what’s happening in our ordinary lives, along with the view from where we sit on the ills of the world, and I think we ought to be, we have to remember, too, to get down the moments of pure joy, the moments of respite, solace, and when things are so beautiful they make us break down and cry.