day 25: it took a pandemic …

… for us to learn to appreciate each other.

Despite all the interesting and dire news circulating today, I’m drawn back to the New York Times magazine’s “Exposed. Afraid. Determined.” feature from last week, because it brings together so many voices we usually ignore and it confers dignity on so many jobs we usually disdain, jobs which have suddenly been vaulted into the news by dint of being classified as “essential”.

True, some of the people are accustomed to being honored: the firefighter mentions how people “want to shake our hands and thank us” and the mail carrier says “My customers are like my friends and family. They buy my kids Christmas presents, or I give them birthday cards.” But what many others say reveals their sense of being disrespected, day after day, by us the uncaring public. And that makes me mad.

In homage to these hard-working people, I reprint some of their words here. We need to read these testimonials and hear what they are telling us. And it needs to be remembered. It should not take a pandemic for us to learn to respect each other as equal citizens, equal people, united as humans by our kinship of intelligence.

“The public sees us as dumb flight attendants, but we are the silent first responders.”

“We are always talking to patients. … That can be a waste of time, but we do it anyway.”

“I’m not going to lie, I’m frightened.”

“As a woman of color, I am used to being second-guessed or having patients ask me, ‘When am I going to see a doctor?’”

“I would be lying to say I’m not worried about exposure to Covid-19. But when I’m in the field, the first thing I’m thinking about is helping our people cope. … That’s the first tenet of social work. We show up. We show up. That’s it.”

“I’ve jokingly told customers that I’ve never been so glad that I decided to not only get into pumping gas but also to come back to the station. I’m glad I did.”

“To say that I’m terrified would be an understatement. I decided to do this interview because I’m hoping that it will literally save someone’s life, that companies will take measures to do everything they can to protect their employees.”

“I don’t think that I’m actively worried, but I feel that I am subconsciously.”

“We are doing this to help relieve stress on the parents, because this is a tough time for everyone.”

***

And here for the record is a photo of the masks produced yesterday, and my own testimonial: “I have never felt more alive.  Or stressed, worried about the collective fate of humanity. So thank you, neighbors, for allowing me to help.”

 

 

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day 17: early morning reminder from Marcus Aurelius

Yesterday was an amazing day–sewing non-stop! The orders for face masks have been pouring in and now I have more than enough work to keep me busy for weeks. I only hope my neighbors will remain patient–six to ten in a day is all I can make, especially since they are made entirely from scratch (no more elastic or bias tape here). I’ve always said “I love sewing”: now will be the true test. Yet what better way to spend my time? So I return to Marcus Aurelius for another jolt of wisdom about work:

“In the morning, when you rise unwillingly, let this thought be present: I am rising to do the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie under the blankets and keep myself warm? But this is more pleasant.

Do you exist then to take your pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? Do you not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their separate parts of the universe?”

— Meditations, Book V, 1.

 

day eight: let us make things happen

“Anything seemed possible, likely, feasible, because I wanted everything to be possible… Because I had no power to make things happen outside of me in the objective world, I made things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak, I endowed it with unlimited potentialities, redeemed it for the sake of my own hungry and cloudy yearning.”  –Richard Wright*

In our current bleak environment, let us make things happen.

Volition, William James tells us, the power to will ourselves to act toward some future purpose, is what makes humans unique among the animals. As he writes, “the deepest question that is ever asked admits of no reply but the dumb turning of the will and tightening of our heart-strings as we say, “Yes, I will even have it so!”** We are arguably the only sentient creatures on earth who make plans that will not come to fruition until some unspecified time in the future, possibly beyond our life span. (This is a gift and a curse, possibly our greatest folly, as philosophers from the East and the West have rightly noted.)

Now, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, it is hard to know what do to. How and where should one will one’s will to act? As a skilled seamstress, should I rush down to the JoAnn’s store and pick up a mask-making kit for medical personnel?  Should I take my car, even if I thereby contribute to the traffic jams already happening, due to the abrupt West Seattle Bridge closure earlier this week? Or should I stay home as Governor Inslee has ordered? I am frozen.  So I stay home. And I look for a transfusion of hope from beloved books. That in itself is an act of will, and it reinforces the promise I made to you last week.

And that is how I landed on today’s quote by a great American writer (and Francophile), Richard Wright, pictured above, from his powerful and heartbreaking book, Black Boy. His words remind us that today’s struggle, for the millions of people who are healthy, remains primarily a mental battle. If we are lucky enough to have housing, food, and good health, yet we are unable to go out or work in the world, how can we continue to feel purpose?  We have to will it into being.

Some years ago, while I was writing a book on literature about the French Revolution, I wondered about the pre-conditions for artistic genius. Would France have seen the great novels of megalomania and disillusion written by Stendhal (b. 1783), Honoré de Balzac (b. 1799) or Victor Hugo (b. 1802) without the Revolution of 1789-93 and the memory of its trauma on their lives? Is there a cause-effect relationship between one’s generation–the time and place where you live, your country’s wars and prosperity– and one’s genius?  I was quite taken by the following quote by Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot, about the conditions necessary for an artistic renaissance:

“Poetry requires something enormous, barbaric, and savage.  …  When shall we see the birth of poets?  It will be after a time of disaster and great misfortune, when the beleaguered people will draw a breath.  Then the imagination, shaken by those terrible spectacles, will depict things unknown to those who have not seen them.”***

Could the present crisis give birth to a renaissance in the 2020s?  Let it be so, and let it begin with us.

P.S. In case you think I’m shirking my civic responsibility by not going down to JoAnns’ in Southcenter to get a mask-sewing kit, please know I have signed up to sew masks (Phase 3) for Sew Loved, in South Bend, IN. (and you can too, by clicking here!)  People with pets in their homes are ineligible for making medically-approved masks for Sew Loved (Phase 1 & 2), alas.

* Richard Wright, Black Boy (American Hunger): A Record of Childhood and Youth, 1^st ed. 1944, (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), pp. 72-73.

** William James, Psychology: The Briefer Course, ed. Gordon Allport (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), 326.

***Denis Diderot, « De la poésie dramatique », 1st ed. 1758 in Œuvres esthétiques, éd. Paul Vernière, Paris, Garnier, 1968, vol. 2, p. 2.  With thanks to Elena Russo for this translation, from her book Styles of Enlightenment, p. 200.

On Marcus Aurelius, Toots and the Maytals, the Manet exhibit, and a new quilt in the making…

 

 

 

Last night at the Toots and the Maytals concert, I had an epiphany inspired by Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. Toots was the living spirit of benevolence. He played all the songs we wanted to hear, and even took off his sunglasses at one point to show us his smiling eyes, thus reaffirming what Marcus Aurelius wrote about 1,900 years ago: “The good and simple and benevolent show all these things in the eyes, and there is no mistaking it.” If you think singing in a reggae band, or attending a reggae concert and dancing along with the crowd, is a silly waste of time, think again. The community spirit ran deep among the music lovers at Benaroya Hall; people of all ages—babies to oldsters, and lots of folks in between—were smiling and bopping along with “Monkey Man” and “Funky Kingston” just like in the old days when Toots was a younger man.

All that groovin’ builds trust in the populace, which for Marcus Aurelius would be a capital virtue, I think. “Have I done something for the general interest? Well then I have had my reward,” he wrote, and: “Unity in a manner exists, as in the stars. Thus the ascent to a higher degree is able to produce a sympathy even in things that are separated.”

In that spirit, I’m sharing some photos of a creation taking place in my studio these days: a baby quilt for a child who lives in Spain. I’m calling the design “European Childhood.”  You’ll see why if you look closely at the squares-in-progress below: Paddington Bear is there from London, the dark blue fabric looks like night in a Spanish city, and another scene shows toddlers at the beach in a retro French style. Also visible are the season’s hottest colors—grey and yellow, as in a famous painting now on display at the Manet exhibit*—to suggest that this little guy is with it!

 

Over the next few days and weeks, I’ll post photos of this quilt as it progresses and thoughts on some books I’m reading. Since I spend most of my time alone in my studio working on projects like this, or silently practicing T’ai chi and Qigong in studios around town, I’m not that connected to people–colleagues and students–the way I used to be. And I realized at that concert that I still have much to offer the world. There probably are not that many bloggers reading Marcus Aurelius these days.  Yet, as the great man wrote, “Such are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.  Dye it then with a continuous series of thoughts such as these…  Revere that which is best in the universe; and this is that which makes use of all things and directs all things.  And in like manner also revere that which is best in yourself.”

Thanks for reading… and for living a good life.

• In the Conservatory (1877-79) by Edouard Manet, features an attractive couple in an ambiguous conversation (note the wedding rings, yet their hands do not touch). The woman’s shimmery grey dress and spread-out pleats seem custom-made to reflect the yellow glints emanating from her gloves, hat, and parasol. Check out the intriguing review of this and other paintings by Manet in today’s New York Times!