How to turn
The months leading up to the election felt bad and the weeks after have felt differently bad — you're probably in it, too, in this time of knowing that some version of the American experiment is irredeemable and something new is required. At work on the day after, I wound up in a Kofi Awonoor rabbithole, reading his posthumously published poem "Across a New Dawn."
As an ongoing comfort-read project I've also been making my way through the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett and it was apt to read Death in this poem as the Death of the Discworld, who appears atop his white horse Binky with his scythe that ends mortal lives at their appointed time:
And death, when he comes
to the door with his own
inimitable calling card
shall find a homestead
resurrected with laughter and dance
and the festival of the meat
of the young lamb and the red porridge
of the new corn
The Death of the Discworld is concerned with allowing humans to do human things, to hold their beliefs. Near the end of Hogfather, he's explaining the supernatural forces that seek to extinguish humanity to his reluctantly heroic human granddaughter Susan, in an exchange that also summarizes the humanist project of reading and writing fantasy. (And poetry: why not? they’re both about play, about belief, about acts of language that make a world wider and greater things permissable.)
Death speaks in small caps:
YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET— Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, otherwise what’s the point…”
“MY POINT EXACTLY.”
It's reassuring to me in a country captivated by lies and scapegoating to remember that loftier ideals are also collectively created, and shifted through human means. I am writing this on the solstice: days are getting longer from here. We have time to come together in the service of that more ideal order.
To get out of my head and into my body during the autumn weeks, I raced most of the Chicago Cyclocross Cup. If there's one cross skill in which I'm pretty confident, it's how to take a corner: you turn not by looking at what's in your way but by moving your head and body towards where you want to go. Your bike follows your hips and your head. Turn where you want to go, not where you're afraid of falling, and stay upright. More and more this also feels like sound advice for being a person: turn towards the "homestead /resurrected with laughter and dance" and not towards despair. Let what ends end in its own time and let justice and mercy be held in kind.
A couple final plugs in this scatterbrained email:
If you want to read some poetry book recommendations, several of my colleagues wrote up good thoughts, and I wrote two sentences about why I appreciated Death Styles by Joyelle McSweeney. They let me do a weird Beckett riff and a little gripe about capitalism within said sentences. I gotta be me! (anti-capitalism, pro-absurdity.)
If you want a zine in which I interviewed my little brother and one of my/our creative writing professors about the North Carolina state toast, beautifully designed by the talented Chris Gleason with my commentary on an annotated foldout of the toast itself, it's available at Quimby's and Uncharted in Chicago! Non-Chicago folks can get it by giving what you can to Hurricane Helene relief and putting your address on this form. I'll stick it in the mail worldwide starting next week.
Thank you for living. Thank you for reading. Let me know what's brought you joy or comfort or persistence, if you’d like.