8. May Digest/Digress
“I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you — Nobody — too?”
- Emily Dickinson
Welcome back to Think Club, the monthly newsletter for thinkers and over-thinkers everywhere! I have to admit to hating the sound of my own jaunty voice in this intro, but I need it. I need the jauntiness to launch me into motion, or else nothing will happen. That’s how it often feels, anyway. It is the end of the month of May in the year 2020 and I write this letter to you from London, where we are still under some form of lockdown. Today the country’s Directors of Public Health have released a statement on their concern that “the Government is misjudging this balancing act [between return to school/work and risking an infection resurgence] and lifting too many restrictions, too quickly”. We are scared. We all have such divergent pandemic experiences that it would feel wrong to prattle away about my own version of it. I have felt everything from pure envy over others’ comfort to pure guilt over my own. This month I have had dreams of trees - lemon, fig, apricot, quince, pomegranate, apple - and dreams of myself as some kind of tender to these trees. But I am best when I forget my longings and become a non-person. Nobody.
All personal ambitions - the desire to be Somebody - look dirty next to suffering. This apprehension of dirtiness perhaps explains my continued struggle with reading this month. The Somebody-ness tied up in striving to Be Published and Write Bestsellers seems so quaint and myopic. It’s as though I can hear the striving behind the realism or surrealism or minimalism or maximalism of whatever given work I am trying to read. I know that striving is a sign of life; a pulse point. A beautiful thing. This pulse point can, of course, be used against the striver. I saw one blurb recently that lauded the author as “one of our truly vital living writers” - a secretly snide tautology of a non-compliment if ever I saw one. It made me laugh, at least. But the aggressive aliveness and vitality of creative work feels like an insult to the deathwork all around. The work behind the excruciating deaths from Covid-19: government negligence and hypocrisy; the disposal of essential workers under the handy banner of heroism. The work of white supremacist shootings and lynchings of Black people; police brutalising rightful and righteous protestors of those shootings and lynchings. Dead or sick or heartsick feel like the only states available right now.
It was twee but I was glad that The Daily podcast tried to honour the individual lives in the amorphous mass of a number lost to Covid-19 in the USA, if only for a few soundbites at a time. They are clumsy but I am glad for all the internet strangers saying his name and trying to eulogise George Floyd one tweet at a time, describing his big, smiling life: a father, a son, his own damn self. It was inadequate but I am glad that the Heated newsletter delved into the issue of the outdoors being inhospitable to Black people in the wake of the Central Park Karen that made a weapon of her white power against Black birder Christian Cooper. Twee or clumsy or inadequate feel like the only tones available right now.
It feels a lifetime ago but do you remember the Alison Roman scandal earlier in May? It wasn’t about the NYT food columnist’s ‘Columbus cuisine’ (white-washed dishes like curry rebranded as stew), but her offhand and hypocritical comments about the nature of WOC Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo’s monetisation strategies (if you’re going to bag people for having product lines maybe don’t also shill your own line of vintage-inspired spoons?). It is always a flash of temporary catharsis to see a white woman taken to task for her prejudice (paired with plain meanness, in this case). Such a moment of backlash or cancellation is a relief, of sorts. Catharsis feels good (see - racism does have consequences! We aren’t just getting away with it anymore! Maybe there is a scrap of justice in this world!). But it’s all too neat and ritualistic: we can exteriorise then exorcise the discomfort of knowing that our existence has been made possible on the back of others’ suffering. Cancellation tells us how not to do things, how not to say things. But what to do?
The ‘problem’, for privileged people, is that we don’t often admit that we have a lot to lose. Someone might learn to say the right things but doesn’t learn to work with the likes of, hey, actually, my family is able to own a home because my great-great-grandfather purchased a wrongfully-divided plot of collectively-held Indigenous land at a criminally low ‘price’ and has since built our wealth of the inherited capital gain. Hey, actually, maybe we shouldn’t hold on to that which is not rightfully ours. There is a nothing-to-lose-ness about the riots across the states, exacerbated by the unequal distribution of pandemic-related losses. Jobs have already been lost - jobs that were already precarious, thanks to capitalism’s built-in programme for a hungry group that will have no choice but to accept daylight robbery low wages for work that creates ever-skimmable value for shareholders and CEOs. Loved ones have already been lost, thanks to a deadly combination of increased viral exposure, an already racist healthcare system, and the effects of weathering and trauma on bodies. The pandemic already offered a political and existential crisis. Right now, as USA cities and their Black citizens cry and heave and organise under militarised police violence, there is also a fresh wave of newly-awakened white people keen to join as conscious as allies or accomplices.
I’ve felt equal parts aversion and appreciation to see the countless re-shares of consciousness-raising posts from my peers on Instagram. The critic in me sees a desperate response to a PR crisis: brand white is well and truly tainted, let’s post our way out of our reputational mess. The tender teacher in me sees the faltering first steps of trying: I don’t want to be silent. Whether PR or genuine attempt, we need to do more. I watched Hannah Gadsby’s special new special Douglas the other night and in it she said something that we might do well to remember: “confidence makes you stupid”. That’s why we can’t make a seven-step ‘How to be Anti-Racist’ post. It doesn’t work like that. ‘How to’ immediately implies a confidence that really doesn’t belong to us. Twee or clumsy or inadequate, remember? Not sure, not confident, just a faltering and growing familiarity with what we can afford to ‘lose’ in this nightmarish order that we still uphold in our waking world. Make a list.
What can we afford to (or what can we not afford to not) drop, for the good of each other and the earth? Untaxed wealth? Wealth, full stop? Armed police? Police, full stop? Multiple properties? Private property, full stop? Let yourself soak in the questions of your list for a good, long while. The degree to which we each squirm will depend upon the degree to which we are each invested in the upkeep of the institutions on the list. Remember back in the early weeks of the pandemic, when everything felt permeable and we all felt more able to be vulnerable? Along with the grief and rupture of the crisis was an unexpected porousness (and therefore a paradoxical invincibility); keeping up appearances no longer felt necessary. I want to guard against the fade of that feeling. I am not sure how, but I will keep trying and faltering and trying. The movement doesn’t need my trying though. It is already generations underway, a huge mass of planetary rage (itself a form of love). All it might take to join is something as small and as big as letting go.
Links, in brief:
Because this newsletter is an archive, of sorts, I have to include this blow-by-blow account of the New Zealand National Party’s ‘shermozzle’ of a day of gaffes. A news story that feels like it is lifted from The Office or The Thick of It, complete with shaky hand-held cam. See my thread for some follow-up on “Paora Heke” Goldsmith.
“We are woven into the land, and wider ecosystems, more than we realise […] spending just two hours in a forest can significantly lower levels of cytokines – an inflammation biomarker – in the blood” - Lucy Jones, in The Guardian.
Helen Rosner’s interview with James Wey in The New Yorker: “Right now I’m in a park and people are smiling and taking walks, they have their dogs. This is next door to the reality of folks who don’t have work, who can’t apply for unemployment, who need to to put themselves in positions that are dangerous and unhealthy so they can survive,” he said. “That difference is the shit I want to address in my work. Not because I’m Superman, but because if I don’t, I’m going to be affected.”
Emily Bootle, in The New Statesman, on how coronavirus triggered a surge in mental illness: “people living with mental illness are likely to see an increase in symptoms just at the time they are less able to access these service”
And, finally, a recipe. I hate writing recipes because I hate the idea of positioning myself as an expert on food (see Alison Roman scandal section). I also hate instructions and could never follow a recipe myself if presented with one. I learned to cook by observing Joanie (my grandmother) and sometimes adding my own needlessly finicky steps. I’m just a person keeping myself and people I love alive by cooking food. But this one has been keeping me alive very well in the last week, and, since I’ve been struggling to read my usual digest of books, I thought I would bring something more literal to subject line of this letter. Something nourishing to digest, if you like:
Han’s Oats:
the night before you want to eat (sorry, that’s right, the night before) measure out about 50g or 1/4 cup of pinhead (steel-cut) oats per person
toast oats (either dry or in a tablespoon of coconut oil or butter) at the bottom of a pot on a low-medium heat for at least five minutes
once super toasty turn off the heat and add one cup and a splash of water per serving (my ideal ratio is one part oats to 4.5 parts water - you may prefer more or less)
add one spoon of yoghurt or a good squeeze of lemon juice to the pot, stir it in, then place the lid on the pot and leave at room temp overnight
good morning! oat o’clock! remove lid from pot, turn on medium heat, then stir every now and then as oats come up to temperature
once bubbling, stir in a good pinch of salt and another spoon of coconut oil before turning down to low and placing the lid on the pot
leave the fatty, salty oats to gently sauter away for around ten minutes before giving a final stir to catch any pot-sticking bits, then pour into bowl
bonus step: while the extremely hot oats are settling into their bowl, take this time to wash your pot. food always tastes better when I know I have no sticky mess waiting for me
with clean pot and clean conscience your oats will now be at the perfect temperature to either eat as is or dress up. my fave toppings: yoghurt and thawed-from-frozen berries (bonus tip: take out a portion the night before, at the toasting step).
A big bag costs me £1.20 from the corner shop. The only thing it’s not cheap on is time. But they refrigerate well if you make in bulk. I never make in bulk because I love repetitive rituals and the night-before oat-soak is a small something I live for in lockdown. I like tucking them in to bed just before I do the same for myself. Like the oats, an underwater dreamless sleep awaits for their preparer.
That’s where I am going now, to that hopefully dreamless sleep. Wishing you stamina for sitting with the squirmy questions and strength for the heavy-lifting, bodies on the line.
x Hannah
If you couldn’t tell already, I really love newsletters. Feel free to send me yours, or forward one you appreciate. You can hit reply to this email or share in the comments on the post version for everyone to see. I am really, really lucky to have you as a reader.