My life was like falling off a log comfortably located somewhere light years above the earth
- Nell Zink, The Wallcreeper
This morning we woke up early to make the journey south, down the motorway to the seaside suburb where our friends and their nearly two year-old daughter live. Ryan and I held her when she was a newborn and now she walks up to us with a pile of books and a firm request to read them each out loud, no stopping except to tell us ruefully about the one page that she once tore in haste. She touches the tear softly and says, I broke it. Whether inchoate guilt or simple concern for the book’s injury, I am so moved by her memory and her care for the being of the object. It is part of the family of things.
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In January I slept in five different beds. And this evening I am at my month’s fifth table. In last month’s newsletter I said that I didn’t mind that so little writing had happened on account of all the writing-on-the-air that had happened in the company of others. This month I mind. Because when I say writing I mean the act of making things more intelligible, more liveable for myself, and more conducive to intimacy and flourishing with others. I am now worn out by the absence of a routine. My executive functioning is suffering and I am losing concrete recall when it comes to those air-written conversations and stolen private thoughts. I write messages and emails in my sleep that never make it out in the waking hours. One scrawled mid-month journal entry reads, I am brimming with ideas. Here at month’s end I have no idea what those ideas might have been. They must have brimmed over and washed out to sea.
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Late morning today saw high tide at the beach overlooking the volcano, and a swim date with the other toddler that we have witnessed come to earth and make strides during these past two years of living back in New Zealand. She wore her charity-shopped blue and orange wetsuit and played passenger on her dad’s cork-screwing shoulders. Her laughter on the air was like the shocking pleasure of a bitten wedge of lemon. My eyes watered with the sour sensation of her pure joy. Her diamond laughter cut harder sparkles than the sun on the sea. I took high-contrast pictures in my mind only. I haven’t picked up my camera in months, but that doesn’t matter at all, because here I am on the last day of January, making things more intelligible in one of the other ways that I know how.
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We have to learn to make our inner lives intelligible to ourselves. We have to nurture our inner lives and hear about the inner lives of others, and be ever-open to being moved but ever-closed to being bought. We have to let ourselves feel anger at being dehumanised — rightful anger at being placed into an inferior position, rightful anger at having our human longings (for dignity, for respect, for being truly valued as human beings) stripped away from us by capitalism and casual cruelty. All this above any shameful smothering of our righteous anger which leads to us putting our bitter little stocks in a Strong Man or assigning a Lesser Other to feel power over.
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Horror abounds but, inexplicably, a new sinew of anger snapped in me when I heard that leaders — including Christopher Luxon, the Prime Minister of New Zealand — have decided to suspend United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees funding. A new way to collectively punish an imperilled population! A new way to enable and expedite destruction! ‘Innovation’ is alive and well when it comes to green-lighting human suffering! Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has urged nations to reinstate funding in order to avoid a harsh collective punishment of the Gazan People, but as of today the harshness remains (and, moreover, the harshness itself remains the point).
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My sister left too soon this month. But we had long enough together for her diamond company to make me realise that we can all be okay, that we can all be seen and heard and have raucous fun and think differently and all be human. I felt a hard ecstasy in her presence that had nothing to do with being right or good. We can feel each other’s sour lemon joy and feel shocked and alive. Normal suffering is human and ultimately liveable. Unintelligible suffering is not liveable. This month’s end calls, once again, forever and always, for an end to unintelligible suffering and domination.
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Listening-on-repeat to: "City of Dreams" by Talking Heads (“the white man came and killed them/but they haven't really gone”), after watching Dream Scenario, directed by Kristoffer Borgli
Looking forward to: The Zone of Interest, directed by Jonathan Glazer (“It’s about wanting the best for your children … following the rules and working hard … feeling that you deserve the best in life … entwined with the unspeakable” says Time)
Still thinking about: Minor Detail, written by Adania Shibli and translated by Elisabeth Jaquette (“solitude is so forgiving of trespassed borders; it was only thanks to my time spent alone, sitting at my table in the mornings, ‘working’ on something, that I was able to make my discovery”)
Still thinking about: Doppelganger, by Naomi Klein (“we live in a society that encourages and rewards the uncaring parts of ourselves, while making it hard to care for others outside our immediate family (and often within it) in any sustained way … Personally, and to no one's surprise, I think the jury is in on capitalism: it lights up our most uncaring, competitive parts and is failing us on every front”)
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See you next month! And, in the meantime, do tell me about anything that you are still thinking about, or something that you are looking forward to. Nothing is too big or too small.
Here’s to taking what scraps of intelligibility we can get,
H x
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I brimmed over and was washed out to sea reading this...in a good way.
I'm looking forward to the new IDLES record in Feb. Oi punk at it's finest.
love this