Here is the Needle Playing the Record
And guns on the ceiling and grief and the week.
I didn’t watch the debate, for my own mental health, though some have described it as “nightmarish.” And the Supreme Court Decisions that overturned the “Chevron Doctrine” that deferred to federal agencies in decisions about what they know best. Because of course our Supreme Court knows best. It’s supreme! FFS.
If politics is making you spiral, I’m sorry. It’s been dragging me into pits of doom, and so I also wanted to share these hopeful things: 1. Focus for Democracy, which is doing real organizing aimed at November; 2. The Americans' of Conscience Checklist, which often shares good and bad things happening as well as what to do about the bad things (very nuts and bolts, and I like that). These are just some of my mainstays in this moment. But I have no guidance about the larger politico-existential morass.
I just finished reading Sloan Crosley’s Grief is for People. Holy crap it’s so good—Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking plus early 2000s publishing plus an epic friendship and loss and yet also funny? And yet living right at the line between alive and dead. Where we all are.
I spent the middle of June in Illinois with my parents, going to my niece Sarah’s graduation party and beginning to help my parents sort through some of their stuff (and going to a weird German restaurant with an overwhelming amount of German kitsch and GUNS HANGING FROM THE CEILING). In a random strip mall in Frankfort, Illinois.
I was nervous about how the beginning of sorting would go, but it was actually FUN. I know that isn’t what you think when you think, “Give away! Recycle! Trash!” but it was an amazing beginning to a life review, and we found very cool random things, like a German poster for a 1960s accordion concert that my son will be hanging in his school apartment because it’s so delightfully retro. And a 1982 tour poster for The Who sponsored by Schlitz. And massive massive stacks of love letters between my parents. And photos, so many many photos.
I tried to be present with my parents, instead of my normal vibe of multi-task! Work! Try to do too much at once! My mom said it was nice to have me actually there. There’s some grief for you: how often I have been present/not-present because of the overwhelming crush of work. I could have had better work-life boundaries but also so many of our jobs are set up to shatter those boundaries. Plus the money panic I’ve lived in at various times, which always nudges me with a fury toward my to-do list.
I have to admit I have taken a break from the news over the past nine months. I just didn’t have the capacity with all of the stuff happening at home. Also, it felt weird, because my husband was the main person I would discuss news issues with, and he was nowhere near current events.
And right now he’s back, and/or doing so much better—as in I am, right now, not sitting here writing with an edgy sense of “how will today be?” He’s going back to teaching in the fall. I hesitate to even write this, because so much of my internal programming is tuned toward this fear-based shrinking feeling of “Don’t tempt fate. Don’t say things are going well because that will make them turn bad.”
It’s so weird that I practice a kind of constructive powerlessness (as in NOT that I’m powerless but that it’s important to discern WHAT I have power over and what I do not, in order to get the ego right-sized). And yet that fearful thinking grants so much power to myself. It tells me that I can personally shift the universe toward disaster with my simple act of being happy and from even admitting that things are okay. This is a problem, as it nudges me toward doom as a safe place. My set point is a fear of happiness, a distrust of a flash of calm.
I think of all the ancestors for whom that was reasonable. The German who lost everything in the financial crash—and when I say “everything,” I mean they didn’t have much to lose, as my grandmother was working in a paper factory and an actual mine as a teenager to help support her family after her father died, but my grandfather owned land and was more well-off. And then they lost everything. I think of my mom’s family, who were coal miners and labor organizers, for whom losing everything and starting over were second nature. For some reason, recently, I’ve been thinking of my great-grandfather—a miner named Heinrich who was said to be so strong, he could bounce knives on his biceps, who ate raw onions, and who frequently sat and read the bible, even as he was devoted to a Socialist movement that felt religion was a drug. Heinrich, in my imagination, was a fire, as was his wife. Their children went through the Nazi era, the war, and it sort of broke and killed everyone.
And we know that for anyone who lived through genocide as its actual target, or who is living through genocide right now as we watch them die on Instagram, the idea of happiness is… well, that’s complicated too. I just watched a video of a boy on Instagram who made a tiny windmill to power his family’s home.
I just saw on Sinéad Gleeson’s Instagram this beautiful print of an image by Michael Eaton being sold as a fundraiser for Medical Aid for Palestinians through the Instagram account @starrrecordsbelfast.
Sinéad Gleeson is one of the contributors to the Sinéad O’Connor anthology that Martha Bayne and I are editing this summer. The essays are SO good. So very good.
I don’t think God/Buddha/Spirit of Love wants us to be happy—or to be sad. That spirit, though, definitely wants us to be here. Here is where the good stuff is. Here is the eye of the needle. Here is the needle playing the record.
In a recent post, “Try To Reduce Stress, Okay?” I shared my remarks to the NIH 19th Annual Pain Symposium. You can see videos of the whole symposium here:
NIH Links: here’s the link to the full NIH panel:Videocast Day 1| May 30, 2024 https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=54765
Videocast Day 2| May 31, 2024 https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=54785
I loved reading this and nodded my head with knowing throughout. Miss you and thank you for this.
Thanks Sonya! I know all this must be especially hard for you and your family, opa and all that. Oh my God. Can’t imagine. I live in that “how be will today be” place, tho I’m trying to chill! Being here… thanks!