essays

Australian journalist Jess Hill writes in The Guardian about the converging crises of 2020, about lack of control, and about power and patriarchy. Great writing, great points, and an absolutely perfect final paragraph.

“It” won’t ever be over, because “it” is not just one thing. It is not the catastrophic fires of last summer (or the ones yet to come), it is not climate change, it is not racism and police brutality, it is not the ongoing epidemic of domestic abuse and sexual assault, it is not Trump or Brexit or Bolsonaro, and it is not the coronavirus – though all are emblematic of the mess we’re in. None of them are it – they are all branches from the same diseased tree, and the real problem is in the roots.

The roots are old – dating back around 12,000 years – but what grew out of them is not an inevitable feature of human evolution; in fact, it’s actually threatening our survival as a species. “It” is, in short, the shift we made from societies built on the principle of balance to what we have now: a dominant culture obsessed with “power-over” and control.

[…]

The original Greek word for apocalypse – apokalypsis – does not mean “end times”. It means “to unveil”. This is the apocalypse we are living through: a process of unveiling and revealing. Patriarchy is not inevitable. It is not sustainable. If we are to survive and thrive as a species, we must first reveal it, and then undo it: in our systems, and in ourselves.

I hadn’t read any Helen Macdonald before I came across this essay in the Times Magazine about swifts. The writing is astonishingly good–a mix of science, research, memoir, and meditation. It all hangs together so well it was hard to pull out a quote, kind of like just humming the tune of a Bach fugue and leaving out all the rest of it, but this is from near the end:

…surely some of us are required, by dint of flourishing life and the well-being of us all, to look clearly at the things that are so easily obscured by the everyday. To take time to see the things we need to set our courses toward or against; the things we need to think about to know what we should do next. To trust in careful observation and expertise, in its sharing for the common good. When I read the news and grieve, my mind has more than once turned to vesper flights, to the strength and purpose that can arise from the collaboration of numberless frail and multitudinous souls.

It’s not that long, so give it a read: The Mysterious Life of Birds Who Never Come Down (I think the Times editor got their hands on the title for the web; I believe this is actually the first essay in her next book Vesper Flights and is titled as such in the book.)

Anne Helen Petersen is back with a longer piece about spending less during the last couple months of lockdown. She unpacks a lot in it–the economic boom of the 50s that still imforms today’s thinking, the amount of debt Americans have, how “supporting the economy” got to sound noble. Check it out: I Don’t Feel Like Buying Stuff Anymore

For your reading today, here’s an essay about resisting the great marketing push that will accompany the “return to normal” and making sure we remember what we realized during what the writer calls “The Great Pause”:

This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud. We get to Marie Kondo the shit out of it all. We care deeply about one another. That is clear. That can be seen in every supportive Facebook post, in every meal dropped off for a neighbor, in every Zoom birthday party. We are a good people. And as a good people, we want to define—on our own terms—what this country looks like in five, 10, 50 years. This is our chance to do that, the biggest one we have ever gotten. And the best one we’ll ever get.

How’s everyone doing? I slept with the emergency go-bag and a flashlight next to the bed last night, but so far <knocks wood> no more earthquakes. Back to worrying about plague instead of natural disasters!

I’m assuming that, like me, everyone needs distractions and reassurance. Something that distracted and reassured me on Monday was Robin Sloan’s March newsletter. It’s rambling, it’s full of links, it has C.S. Lewis quotes about hard times, and tells us how to keep going when nothing seems to matter:

We’re entering a stretch during which no subject, no task, other than this pandemic and its prevention will seem to “matter,” and I am here to insist, as you contemplate the next level of the video game you were building, the next stitch in the fanny pack you were designing, the next edition of the newsletter you just started:

It matters.

[…]

Every calamity fractures the world, opens new seams: many economic, some political, still others aesthetic.

In 1816, the gloomy “Year Without a Summer,” Mary Shelley stayed indoors at a lakeside hotel; not quarantine, but maybe quarantine-adjacent. There, bored and haunted, she conceived the story that would grow into her novel Frankenstein, the foundation stone of the genre we now call science fiction.

It’s moderately annoying when people invoke work like that, because it feels like the implication is, if you’re not writing Frankenstein what are you even DOING? That’s not what I mean. It’s just that the big, bright examples help us see it clearly: toil in the shadow of calamity will have its day.

Toil in the shadow of calamity WILL have its day.

A crack in everything; that’s how the art gets in.

This essay by an Australian novelist in her 70s (via Robin Sloan’s newsletter) is fire and goals, starting with the title: The insults of age: A one-woman assault on condescension.

I’ll let you read how she got fed up enough to get to this point but god I love her for this:

Habits of a lifetime peeled away. The world bristled with opportunities for a woman in her 70s to take a stand. I shouted on planes. I fought for my place in queues. I talked to myself out loud in public. I walked along the street singing a little song under my breath: “Back off. How dare you? Make my day.”

(See also: An Axe for the Frozen Sea for rage in your 40s)

I’ve been sitting on a link to an article by Ann Helen Petersen (sign up for her newsletter–it’s one of the best) for a while now, and why not start with an essay for the year? It’s about the Mr. Rogers movie from November, which I guess I need to see, and how adults get so good at not feeling feelings (surprise!).

We swallow existential questions, and the despair or wonder that blooms from them, and work. Fear of losing a job, fear of losing a parent, fear of being a bad parent—instead of sitting with those feelings, again, we work. Because work means money, and money brings a modicum of stability, and relief, however temporary, from that same fear. Work doesn’t actually give us peace or solve our problems. But for a lot of us, it’s what we’re good at and what we know, which is far more comforting than staring at the abyss of what we don’t.

She later quotes the movie:

“To die is human,” Rogers tells Lloyd’s family as they studiously avoid talking about his father’s imminent death. “Anything human is mentionable, and anything mentionable is manageable.”

That…might be one of the smartest things I’ve ever read. Something to remember going forward.

The Atlantic—with a lovely new brand refresh–has an essay by Tom Junod about his friendship with Fred Rogers. He talks about his essay inspiring the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and what Mr. Rogers would make of society today. It’s just..nice; thoughtful and sad and but still hopeful.

This was my favorite memory he shared about Fred: