Hello you gorgeous, courageous humans,
I officially declare this the “If Not Thursday Then Saturday”, newsletter.
With much affection,
Rachel
1.Boot (and Birkin) Blindness
During my first winter in NYC my main struggle was with the footwear. One morning, as the snow melted, I made my way to work in ballet flats. I gingerly stepped across icy rivulets that ran between slippery cobblestones. I managed to stay upright but my stockings were soaked and clung to my feet like stinging jellyfish. I cursed the winter and vowed to purchase a pair of dress boots that weekend.
However, purchasing boots was intimidating. The only pair of boots I owned were hiking boots and I half expected the attendants at shoe stores to exclaim “you can’t pull off posh boots!” and refuse to let me try them on. I stumbled around Soho until I saw a single pair of black knee highs at the front of a thrift store. They fit me perfectly, had only a slight heel, and had a zipper that ran down the back. I wore them nonstop for three winters.
After I purchased that first pair of knee-highs a curious thing happened. My boot-blindness began to lift. I started to notice ankle boots, lace-up boots, brown riding boots, even metallic boots. Boots—which had once seemed as unattainable and uninteresting to me as Birkin Bags (no offense Cardi B)—seemed to be everywhere. I wanted them all.
In Soho wearing my first pair of dress boots.
2.Sorrowful Art That Returns Us to Each Other
I share the above story because since writing about sadness last week—a topic that had previously seemed blurry and out of reach to me—I’ve stumbled across many tender works on sadness, as though my eyes have somehow been opened to them anew. The three below have moved me deeply and I feel wiser just having spent some time with them.
1.Kindness, by Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
I had lost this poem until this week. When I was in Barbados (after having just stepped down from a decade of leading Young New Yorkers) I memorized Kindness on my morning walks. I even recited it to the bats one evening as they skimmed across the surface of the swimming pool, taking fleeting sips of chlorinated water. Sometimes as I read the lines,
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
I start to weep. I am so moved by how our sadness connects us to the whole and in this way returns us to each other.
Treat yourself and listen to Naomi Shihab Nye herself read her poem here. Or read the whole beautiful thing and weep a little.
2.Bittersweet, by Susan Cain
Cain holds a tender affection for everything that causes our hearts to ache. She unravels the deeply felt contradictions of our existence, the beauty and brutality, the joys and grief stricken losses.
The part of Cain’s book I find the most illuminating is when she delves into longing. While longing is platted with a grief for our absent desires, Cain uncovers its utility:
Longing is momentum in disguise: It’s active, not passive; touched with the creative, the tender, and the divine.
Like many of us who have dusted ourselves off after the disruption of the pandemic years, I find myself in a moment of ambiguous longing. I have a sense that there is something meaningful out there for me, but it is hidden from view. I have found Cain’s sentiments on longing encouraging because the ache I feel—the ache many of us feel—for all that is missing, and all that is hidden, is the energy source to being moved to create it.
Bittersweetness is the hidden source of our moon shots, masterpieces, and love stories. It’s because of longing that we play moonlight sonatas and build rockets to Mars. It’s because of longing that Romeo loved Juliet, that Shakespeare wrote their story, that we still perform it centuries later.
3.Be Careful, by Cardi B
Be careful with me, do you know what you doin'?
Whose feelings that you're hurtin' and bruisin'?
In this artwork Cardi B lays out her anger towards her husband and fellow artist Offset precisely:
And karma for you is gon' be who you end up with
You make me sick
Yet under the fury of her verses lies the tender hurt expressed in the chorus that she eventually turns in on herself,
You even got me trippin', you got me lookin' in the mirror different
Thinkin' I'm flawed because you inconsistent
along with a deep longing for what she needs.
Care for me, care for me
Always said that you'd be there for me, there for me
Boy, you better treat me carefully, carefully, look
While Cardi B as a public figure and entrepreneur is “givin' big Birkin”, with her work Be Careful she is also givin’ Thich Nich Khan love mantra:
Darling, I am suffering and I need your help.
Even though Offset is the source of her suffering in Be Careful she turns to him for solace. I mean, have you ever givin’ that level of emotional courage? I know I haven’t. Bow down here.
Cardi B’s windswept emotional range.
3.Conclusion
As I contemplate these artworks I can’t help but feel that the divisiveness of our times is partly fueled by our cascading emotional cowardice. Not only are we afraid to feel sadness, suffering, and sorrow, we are terrified of feeling it in others. Especially the sadness in people on the other side of the divide whose actions seem so repulsive they repel us from any desire to understand.
If we did feel their suffering we would need to reach across the expanse of our differences and ask: how have I hurt you? Perhaps then would we be able to sit down in each other’s sorrow so as to be able to stand up in each other’s kindness.
I love how your post reminds me of global populism and the importance of having diversity in community. I know. It’s a big leap but I do think we’re all a bit vulnerable to seeking social identity.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-search-for-social-identity-leads-to-us-versus-them/