From a series of collages I made to accompany Ilya Kaminsky’s We Lived Happily During the War (2022)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
F has been teething for two months now, her mouth a continuous gush of saliva and spit-up, her gums red and blistered from pressure. She gnaws on her tiny fists, on cold washcloths, on gummy teethers—anything that promises a bit of relief. Her skin is flushed with stress, but when I pick her up, she smiles. I put my cheek next to hers and she laughs, tears still streaming down her face. She holds onto her joy.
I tell her that I know it hurts. I explain the intricacy of tooth eruption—the fact that they’re all there, hiding inside her skull, just waiting for their moment to shine—though I know she doesn’t understand. I myself don’t, really. What is there to understand about pain? All I know of pain is that we continue to live through it. We tolerate it, we build resilience or numb ourselves against it. Over time, we discover that there are many things that frighten us more than pain.
I watch F wriggle in discomfort. She sleeps fitfully, crying on and off for hours. All the crying makes her vomit and all the vomit makes her hungry again. I change her wet clothes, her wet sleepsack, her wet sheets. She is quiet, solemn. Her tired eyes follow me around the room and she smiles. It’s a small smile, but it’s there, glinting in the dark. I see her searching, trying to find her way back to joy.
The room is cold; it’s November now. F shivers and wails through her smile. I imagine she is confused. We have allotted too much pain to this tiny person—someone this small and this good—who tries, in the very worst of circumstances, to feel joy. I look at her eyes: wet, glassy. The lids are swollen from little sleep and too much salt. I wrap her back up. I dry her eyes, her face, her mouth. She smiles. She tries to sleep.
It’s been a tough day. Many hours later, when the moon comes up for air, I think about joy and how it lives inside us. I think about how, despite great pain and discomfort, F holds onto what she knows is hers. To what belongs to her. I think about how hard she tries to live inside joy and how I want to do more of the same.
T pulls out his phone and shows me a video he took an hour ago. In it, F lays on her stomach, her face tear-stained. The front of her outfit is soaked. Her hair is matted. When T calls her name, she looks up at him and her face beams with the light of a thousand moons. He calls her again and she laughs. She laughs and laughs; she holds onto her joy. She laughs and laughs in the face of her pain.
I watch the video to the very end, and then I press play again.
TUESDAY
My favorite poem about November and the painting I made inspired by it. This essay on Bill Watterson (found via Laura Olin’s newsletter, a favorite). Israel in 600 words or less. This poem about war, which is also a poem about money. And lastly: What is a whisper?
WEDNESDAY
I was delighted to speak with journalist and author Amy L. Bernstein, for her newsletter Doubt Monster, on creativity and happiness. An excerpt is below:
We often talk about “finding” courage, as though it were loose change under a couch cushion. But what does it take, really, to “find” courage. What steps or actions can we take to help us do what we must, when every part of us wants to look the other way?
Courage is not about summoning bravery or staring fear in the face. I think it’s more about maintaining perspective—remembering that discomfort and happiness are both temporary. Instead, work toward building character, identifying what kind of person you want to be. I want to be someone who doesn’t buckle under pressure, to be somebody who is generous, thoughtful, or empathetic, or looks for the good in others even when they’re not presenting that goodness to me or for me. Those kinds of umbrellas help you make courageous choices and to live with courage, even when it’s difficult—especially when there’s no immediate reward other than the satisfaction that you’re becoming more of the person you want to be.
THURSDAY
“Writing, literature, language, the body—these things are a matrix, a sacred labyrinthine geometry that helps us reach our own center and return back out to the world and eventually become through death a part of the larger universe. You have to be optimistic to write against your own death. But that does not mean that you don’t also write from a place of rage or tender yearning or icy callousness or to stop yourself from weeping or all of the above at once which is, I think, most often the case with writers who have paid a high price in igniting the engine of their own voice. This mode of optimism has the capacity to transcend the page and enter the reader’s consciousness; once there, it can cultivate in us an unwavering defense of the innate dignity of all types of personhood, knowledge that that dignity exists independently of any external value judgement. This is literature’s optimism. It is expansive. It has many dwelling places.”
—From Whose Time Are We Speaking In? by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
FRIDAY
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
—Don’t Hesitate by Mary Oliver
xx,
M
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