Sustain the Gaze
Let me begin by saying this is a proper Covid post, which is to say, yes, I have Covid at this very moment. So whatever incoherence follows, we shall lay all blame on my present rubbish state of health. (That said it could be so much worst and I’m so grateful to have been vaccinated x3). I hear the words “inevitable” and “relief” used by people who have recently got Covid, and how it feels good to “get it over with” (tho we all know there’s every chance you can get the next variant). And I wish it didn’t feel inevitable but it really did. So. Let me tell you what I’m up to in my quarantine.
Well, being on social media a bit too much, for one. But because I have a pretty well-curated feed and jump in and jump out method, it’s possible to find some delight there, too. For example, a friend posted a poem by Caitlin Seida on Facebook, which I then posted to Twitter, and it was interesting seeing how popular it has been. I mean, it speaks to me so clearly right now, but obviously is also hitting a chord for others too. In other words, we’re not alone. You probably know the Dickinson poem it references but in case not, or if you want a refresher, you can click here for: “hope is the thing with feathers.”
Hope Is Not a Bird, Emily, It’s a Sewer Rat
by Caitlin Seida
Hope is not the thing with feathers
That comes home to roost
When you need it most.
Hope is an ugly thing
With teeth and claws and
Patchy fur that’s seen some shit.
It’s what thrives in the discards
And survives in the ugliest parts of our world,
Able to find a way to go on
When nothing else can even find a way in.
It’s the gritty, nasty little carrier of such
diseases as
optimism, persistence,
Perseverance and joy,
Transmissible as it drags its tail across
your path
and
bites you in the ass.
Hope is not some delicate, beautiful bird,
Emily.
It’s a lowly little sewer rat
That snorts pesticides like they were
Lines of coke and still
Shows up on time to work the next day
Looking no worse for wear.
There’s a real beauty in a poem that hits the mood so perfectly, and that is so visceral in its description. It’s raw, but it’s gripping and right up until that last line — because that’s what we’ve been doing for two years now. Putting clothes over our rat bodies and showing up at work in disguise. (Well, that’s what I’ve been doing anyway). Sometimes the disguise will slip a little, sometimes not. Just showing up is some version of hope, I’ve discovered.
I’ve been watching Netflix stuff. I’ve been napping. But I’ve also been reading and dog-earing and underlining A LOT because I’m not sure how much I’m retaining in my Covid-fog (which is very real!). So let me take you for a meander through my marginalia.
A Wild Love for the World is a collection of essays in tribute to Joanna Macy. In one essay, the writer had been advised by JM to “sustain the gaze” as a way of getting through the early Trump years, as a way of facing “hopelessness and despair.” In the afterword, Macy herself reminds us of the poem by Bertolt Brecht:
In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.
And we really need to remember to keep singing. You don’t have to make it pretty; you can sing about sewer rats. What is real is more beautiful anyway.
I’ve talked about A Healing Space by Matt Licata recently here. I continue to find it helpful in all sorts of ways. I’m usually more of a Pema Chodron person for getting my head on straight, but the language of alchemy and general realness in this book has won me over. It’s not something you can digest in one sitting and I imagine I’ll keep coming back to it. This week I’m thinking about a couple of things he says. He talks about “old ways of self-care that might be ripe for an update.” He says that “It is possible to discover — slowly, and over time — new, creative, compassion-infused strategies to meet difficult experience when it comes.” The trick, he says, is not to oversimplify things. Slow down. To acquaint ourselves with the overflowing contents of our leaky alchemical vessel, so that “we do not inadvertently project it onto others and into the world in a way that generates more struggle, confusion, violence, and pain.” So that hit home a wee bit. And I guess I can think of my Covid isolation as a lucky bit of luck for this next bit. He asks us to consider abandoning the idea of “letting go” of difficult emotions, and be “invited to step off the battlefield and turn back toward them, curious about why these visitors have come, what messages they might have for us…” I’m not usually wild about war metaphors, but the idea of stepping off the battlefield feels very good right now.
The next book I’ve recently read is Susan Cain’s Bittersweet. For longtime readers, you might remember me mentioning her book Quiet, in a holiday post in 2017. I’m telling you this book hit me. I knew I’d like it – bittersweet is my jam. But Susan Cain legitimately got into my head. She reminds us of “the linguistic origins of the word yearning: The place you suffer is the place you care. You hurt because you care. Therefore, the best response to pain is to dive deeper into your caring. Which is exactly the opposite of what most of us want to do.” And like, I agree with that but I’m still back at the “stepping off the battlefield” part from the previous book. (This is why I like reading multiple books at the same time haha). The thing is that I have cared VERY deeply about some things and recent events have turned me quite cold which I find worrisome. But that’s just real TV.
Cain talks about honouring sadness, especially our own, and remembering that “no matter how distasteful we might find someone’s opinions, no matter how radiant, or fierce, someone may appear, they have suffered, or they will.” She says that the first step in doing this is to “cultivate humility.” She says that studies show that “attitudes of superiority prevent us from reacting to others’ sadness — and even to our own.” This is actually one of the most important things that I have learned from my day job. For one thing, no one cares that I have a Masters degree, that I’ve written 10 books, etc. They don’t care. Nor should they. If I don’t set that aside, if I feel that I’m better than anyone, I can’t greet them properly, I can’t communicate properly.
There’s a very interesting chapter on work. She quotes Jason Kanov of CompassionLab, who is a professor of management, who says, “There’s an unspectacular mundane suffering that pervades the workplace. But we don’t feel allowed to acknowledge that we suffer. We endure way more than we should, and can, because we downplay what it’s actually doing to us.” I remember at the beginning of the pandemic how we talked about how the future of work would be changed by this era, by what was to come. That it could be an opportunity to re-set and re-imagine. Cain’s book would definitely be a useful tool in this endeavour.
The Path to Kindness is another anthology by James Crews, who also put together How to Love the World to which I referenced in this post on reading poetry and on always carrying something beautiful in your mind. There’s a line from Danusha Laméris in the intro where she says, “kindness is not sugar, but salt. A dash of it gives the whole dish flavour.” Kindness is connection, and connection is something I think most of us are craving right now. It’s a good book to have on your shelf. I sort of forget who I used to be two years ago, someone who I would have described as a kind person. And this book helps me remember that. It’s also helpful to remember that kindness isn’t sweet or saccharine. It’s salty.
I won’t say much more about it but instead, I’ll share the poem that starts off the collection which has been widely shared in other places including The New York Times:
Small Kindnesses
By Danusha Laméris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”
The last book in my stack is by Teju Cole: Golden Apple of the Sun. I really admire his book Blind Spot, which I’ve written about before. His latest has been well-reviewed in various places including: in Musée magazine, and Art Agenda. (Worth clicking through to see the photographs). You know I’m always up to read a book about still lifes and this is a good one. The photographs are that lovely balance between studied and unstudied. They feel natural even if they had been quite arranged. There’s just some good breathing in the photographs. A kind of very deliberate calm which is reassuring. They remind me a bit of some photos you see in recent cookbooks, but also not quite, because they’re not trying to sell you on anything other than the shapes and forms, on the experience of enlivening dailiness. If I were to use the word poetic to describe them, it would be the poetry of Derek Walcott, maybe. Precise, in control, but not without humour, not without flourish.
Thanks for reading and may you stay well! I can’t say I recommend this Covid business one bit.
