Emerson on the human condition

Feeling blah and still aching from the shoulder where I crashed down, quite incorrectly, during a speedy Aikido roll on Monday, I was surprised and encouraged by these lines discovered during my morning reading, and so I share them for you.

“Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisoned in mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events.”

“God enters by a private door into every individual.”

“Our spontaneous action is always the best.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Intellect” in The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Modern Library edition, p. 293-94.

Hang in there. You are not alone.

And some pretty pictures to remind us of what lovely things we can hold and create and appreciate, with our hands and simply by walking outside in nature, despite being shipwrecked in morality!

Featured is Alice in Wonderland Quilt No. 4, photographed yesterday at Green Lake in Seattle, WA.

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day 63, we’re back, slowly but happily

Hi again,

It worked. A day of rest has restored both Honey Girl and me to our usual selves, maybe not so bouncy as we used to be, but we are both happy to be here.  (Those squeaky toys don’t squeak themselves!)

Sometimes slowing down, or even stopping entirely, is what we need to keep going.  Doesn’t make sense? Just look around—there are many models of movement other than the fast lane / 1,000 Mbps bandwidth / hyperlinked way of living we prioritize nowadays…. Or at least we used to do, in pre-COVID-19 times…

Take sloths, for example. As Lucy Cooke points out in Life in the Sloth Lane, “Sloths don’t hop from tree to tree in a blaze of glory—they gently test the next branch to see if it’s sound before they proceed.” Cooke thinks sloths have much to teach us, writing: “We humans—busy pedal apes who are determined to move faster than nature intended—sometimes need a little help remembering how to slow down and appreciate what we have, rather than racing after what we desire.”*

Not a fan of sloths?  What about tugboats?  I stood and watched this tugboat in Elliott Bay for a few minutes this morning and was amazed at how fast it was moving, though it appeared to be standing still.  Seems like there’s a lesson there… if we took the time to think it.

Fyi: yesterday’s face mask production (once the migraine pain lifted, it was such a pleasure to get back to work!) 

* Lucy Cooke, Life in the Sloth Lane, (New York: Workman Publishing, 2018), p. 69, p. 1.

day 62: the inevitable Slump

Hello dear readers,

Sorry for the late post, but things are not going so well today. We’re limping along—Honey Girl with a sore paw and me with a migraine—and hoping to feel better later on.  There are few things so sad as a limping pet ☹

Sometimes that’s all we can do, isn’t it, just limp along.  Sometimes it happens, it’s inevitable: you hit a Slump. As Dr. Seuss wrote, “And when you’re in a Slump, / you’re not in for much fun. / Unslumping yourself / is not easily done.”*

Oh well. Maybe admitting the Slump is the first step toward leaving it?  Here’s hoping so (and hoping her limp is a just passing phase… )

Til tomorrow…

Fyi: yesterday’s face mask production:

*Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!  (New York: Random House, 1990).

day 60, listening to the sea, not the usual

Today’s morning walk took me back down the mountain to the sea. More precisely, from the tip of West Seattle to the point where Puget Sound enters Elliott Bay, at Duwamish Head. Walking along Alki Beach, I realized I had forgotten how much I love that place and how wonderful it smells, sounds, and feels. (If you wonder why we don’t go there every day, check out this view of the hill from down below, on the way back up.)

While walking by the water, I was swept up in a deep feeling of peace, the waves’ calm rhythm reminding me of some long ago lullaby. We can’t spend all our time gazing at the sea, but we can listen to it more than we do.  For now, I’m listening to this ad-free ocean soundtrack, instead of the usual stuff. Or maybe I’ll turn it off too and listen to “nothing.” (Which is never really nothing; there is always birdsong, car noises, people talking now and then, far-off trains and sirens.)

Let’s give our ears a break, and our minds a rest. All that bad stuff will still be there when we tune back in.

See you on the other side of tonight,

 

Fyi: yesterday’s face mask production:

 

day 20: on buoyancy and a good omen, maybe?

Hello!  This morning began slowly. I felt utter despair while perusing the testimonials in the New York Times Magazine from Sunday, “Exposed. Afraid. Determined,”  where ordinary working people–“essential” people like cleaners, delivery people, pharmacists and E.R. doctors– explain how the crisis has impacted their daily lives. It is a heart-breaking revelation of our broken system, which should be required reading for all elected officials. Anyway, after feeling hopeless and shedding too many tears, I went out.

 

The day is cool and windy, and the walk down our steep hills to Alki Beach was bracing. Little by little, however, my spirit rebounded. For some reason, it just happened. Like these seagulls, we humans have the capacity to bounce back endlessly, even with the weight of gravity pushing us down and without that nice salty water to hold us up.

Buoyant [Etymology: Old French bouyant or Spanish boyante, light-sailing, pres. part. of boyar, float, from boya BUOY noun + ant]*

1. Able to float; tending to float or rise; floating; lightly elastic; resilient; able to recover, light-hearted.
2. Able to keep things up or afloat.

As my spirits rose, my eyes rose too, and saw things I’d never noticed before, like the cool street art hanging from a wire at the corner of Harbor Ave SW and California Ave SW.  Would love to know who created that: so cute and colorful!

It’s fitting that the final image of today’s walk captured an accidentally funny or possibly prescient icon seen here:

This juxtaposition of images could be a good omen! It could mean that the coronavirus (the creature hanging from the wire) which has been devouring our population (the pedestrian with his head in the creature’s mouth) is on the way down (the arrow pointing down) here in Seattle (the ferry boat and Space Needle).  It’s a floating totem, twisting in the wind, telling us what we want to hear…

Finally, here for the record is a pic of the face masks produced yesterday. Got to get back to work now; more people are waiting. (I am loving this work actually, so thanks, customers and neighbors, for letting me be of service!!)

May all our spirits be buoyant!

*The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 5^th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), vol. 1, p. 308.

 

 

day 14: face mask mania begins

After another invigorating solitary walk this morning, I’ve been deeply focused on mastering the art of sewing cotton face masks.  The time flew by!  Pictured are my first four adult size, and one petite. I’m making them out of nice cotton, so they will last many washings. After all, they may become a semi-permanent part of our wardrobes in the days ahead…

Having a concrete way to help out during this crisis makes all the difference.  I’m offering them on a complimentary basis to medical personnel, and $5.00 each for other folks. Cash on delivery: pick them up at my home studio in West Seattle (with sufficient social distancing, of course). Thanks again to Farhad Manjoo and the New York Times for publishing the pattern and directions–that is a page I will treasure forever.

Wishing you a day of purpose–it’s the best route to happiness!

day ten: this is anomie

Anomie
This is what anomie feels like.
For years I’ve stumbled upon that word, especially in French anomie. People who are fascinated by decadent moments in history—and their painters and poets–people who relish accounts of wars and moments of political revolution are bound to know what I mean. Yet if you, like me never really understood that word , well now we can. This day is a perfect moment to seize the meaning of anomie. It is how we feel.
Anomie, noun.*
[French from Greek anomia, from anomos lawless: cf: ANOMY [disregard of (esp. divine) law]).
Lack of the usual social standards in a group or person.

The French definition provides a crucial precision: “Absence d’organisation ou de loi, disparition des valeurs communes à un groupe.”**  [Absence of organization or law, disappearance of values common to a group.]  The word disappearance captures why we all feel so weird; we’re still in thrall to values that no longer hold true and we’re not sure what the new ones are, or if they will endure.

Lack of the usual social standards is putting it mildly!
Even among standard-makers, the standards range wildly. From “Shelter-in-Place,” “Stay home, stay healthy,” or “Self-Quarantine,” to building “Herd Immunity” and using state sovereignty to stay open, as in Mississippi (“We ain’t China!”), our political leaders are evidently confused.
The new genre of empty isn’t helping. See the New York Times special section, “The Great Empty,” showing extraordinarily evocative images of empty streets in the world’s major cities: haunting, poetic, tragic.

But c’mon, NYT, couldn’t you have done better with Seattle???! (seen above, with regret)

For the literal-minded, anomie is a recipe for disaster. For the imaginative too. The one doesn’t know whose orders to follow, while the other creates all kinds of disastrous scenarios to fill the void.
Since I exhibit both traits, I’ve decided to try a little experiment. Since the Seattle government edict says only, “Stay home, stay healthy,” and I don’t know what that second word means anymore because I’m going stir-crazy after staying indoors for the past three days, I will follow the directions of the Paris government instead. They say, “From now on, anyone leaving their house for physical exercise is required to write down the time they left. … physical exercise must be limited to an area of one or two kilometres from home. ‘1km or 2km max.. You’re not supposed to distance yourself from your house,’ the ministry tweeted.”

OK! We have rules! Anomie can be beaten.
The Rules:
1. Before going on a walk, write down the time.
2. Walk two kilometers and then turn around and walk home.
Armed with the rules, I am now going out for a 2k (1.2 mi) walk from my house. I’ll check in again when I get back, to see if it changed my sour, bored, semi-depressed feelings into something better…

 

* The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 5^th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), vol. 1, 85.

** Le Nouveau Petit Robert. Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française, ed. Josette Rey-Debove et Alain Rey (Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert, 1993), p. 88.

day four, and our patience is wearing thin

Hi,

Ok, so now it’s day four of this blog series and day six of my family’s decision to “Shelter in Place.” Can hardly wait to make it one whole week: that’s pretty much all I’ve got on my calendar for tomorrow. LOL.

This cartoon by Clay Jones, from The Week pretty much sums up family relations across the country.  (Unless you’ve got kids at home. We’ve got a Millennial in the house too, and he’s been known to reply to our wise comments with an eye-roll and mumbled, “OK Boomer.”  The nerve!)

To make this state of anxiety more palatable, here’s a fine quote reminding us of how long it takes for humans to find enlightenment, or that is, freedom from ignorance:

“I continue to think that this task requires work on our limits, that is, a patient labor giving form to our impatience for liberty.”*

A patient labor may make patience less laborious.  It’s worth a try.

Sigh,

see you tomorrow.

 

*Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” in Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–84, trans. Catherine Porter, ed. Paul Rabinow,  (New York: The New Press, 1997), 319.

day three: remember your “heroic truth” (and snarl against hoarders)

Ok, we’ve read all the horrors of the coronavirus pandemic; our minds are thoroughly alerted and alarmed to the perils out there in the world and Shelter-in-Place remains the rule. (When my husband left to the local Safeway, I said, “Be careful!” as if he were going to be wandering the streets of some faraway ghetto or jungle.)  Life feels different. Harder and more uncertain. Like a war is beginning, or something is changing forever.

Today we need some encouragement (and to send out a collective snarl against evil-doers). First, let’s take the the high road. From the Meditations of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121-180), Stoic philosopher:

“If you apply yourself to the task before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you might be bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with your present activities according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which you utter, you will live happily. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.”

“Hasten then to your appointed end and, throwing away idle hopes, come to your own aid, if you care at all for yourself, while it is in your power.”

–Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Book III, 12, 14.

In other words: be kind to yourself, but exercise self-discipline. Speak carefully and stay busy. Create now. No one can stop you from living according to your own rules.

Finally, there are some seriously annoying people out there doing seriously obnoxious things in this moment of public health crisis, from that jerk in Tennessee to the Senator in North Carolina. The law will punish evil-doers, one hopes. In the meantime, all of us have by now experienced toilet paper shortages caused by fearful fellow citizens.  Argh!  So a big THANK YOU to Seattle Times cartoonist David Horsey, whose work nails the ugliness of hoarding.

Be strong, stay busy, and see you tomorrow!

 

day two: time for a talking goldfish, and more viral humor!

First, here’s the viral humor (we need it), brought to us from a friend in cyberspace.  (Thanks, Tom!)

Second, a good message from one of the books I love, as promised yesterday, to help us cope with this weird health crisis. The story below tells of an encounter between a typical bureaucrat and a magical, yet very anxious goldfish.

“One day, when I was walking along a road, I suddenly heard someone calling me. I looked around, but saw nobody. When I looked down, it turned out to be a carp calling me from a dried rut. I went over to it, and asked, ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ The carp, gasping, replied, ‘I am a minister of the God of the East Sea. I was swept here by a rainstorm, and now I cannot get back. I will soon die, unless you bring me a pail of water and put me in it.’ I said, ‘Of course, I can do that. But you must wait until I persuade the sovereigns of the states of Wu and Yue to allow me to use water from the Xijang River.’ Hearing this, the carp said, ‘Distant water cannot quench present thirst. You’ll find me in the dried fish market tomorrow!'”*

This cryptic fable was written some 2,200 years ago, by a writer unknown by most of us  (Zhuang Zi, c. 369 B.C. — 286 B.C.) who is very famous in China as a chief representative of the Taoist School.

You gotta love a talking goldfish, of course! How even cooler is it that this goldfish is shrewd and critical. For our purposes, the fable provides moral urgency and a sober punchline. “Distant water cannot quench present thirst.” Take it to mean anything you need: if you’re angry about the government’s actions, it works for you. If you’re in despair over getting access to a mask or test, it works for you.

However, it could be a more uplifting lesson too. If you, like me, are staying home to “shelter in place” and allow the coronavirus time to sweep through your region without adding to the casualties, give yourself credit. You are, in effect, giving water to present thirst. You’re feeding the quotient of healthy people so that we can resist the invisible enemy.

Thank you for helping, in any way you can!  And hang in there; we’re in it for the long duration, I think.  I’ll be back tomorrow with another good thought (and more humor, I hope).

*Zhang Fuxin, The Story of Zhuang Zi, trans. Zhang Tingquan (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2003), pp. 183-184.