Source: Jessica Hagy, Thisisindexed.com – Self-Medication for Anxiety.
Category: Grow
The Cost of Living
To strip the wallpaper off the fairy tale of The Family House in which the comfort and happiness of men and children have been the priority is to find behind it an unthanked, unloved, neglected, exhausted woman. It requires skill, time, dedication and empathy to create a home that everyone enjoys and that functions well. Above all else, it is an act of immense generosity to be the architect of everyone else’s well-being.
~ Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography (July 2018)
Book Review of Deborah Levy’s “The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography“ by Lauren Oylerat The New Republic (July 26, 2018) titled: How to Live and Write Alone. An excerpt from the book review: “Aphorisms that would usually be heavy-handed (“If we cannot at least imagine we are free, we are living a life that is wrong for us”) also breeze past; only later do you realize you’ve been self-helped.”
Here’s another from Levy’s book: “It begins with knowing and not knowing, a glass of milk, rain, a reproach, a door slammed shut, a mother’s sharp tongue, a snail, a wish, bitten fingernails, an open window. Sometimes it is easy and sometimes it is unbearable. What was ‘it’? I don’t know.”
Highly Recommended.
Running. With light that falls.
6 a.m. Friday morning.
I’m running. Down the hill, around the corner, and down the sidewalk on Post Road.
I adjust my stride to miss the cracks between the concrete slabs. Grass sprouts up from the cracks, asparagus colored green, bushy clumps – it was a Simone Weil moment: “Only the light that falls continually from the sky gives a tree the energy to push powerful roots into the earth. The tree is actually rooted in the sky.” How? How does this grass push its way through the concrete? The light, roots the grass to the earth, pulls it upward to the sky.
The street is empty but for a big city bus a few hundred feet up the road. Its body is dark, a hulking silhouette, its interior beams, illuminated. It’s odd to see a large bus in our small town, so early, so far from Manhattan. The bus is full, passengers lean their heads against windows, their mornings started in darkness some time earlier followed by…
A long walk to the bus stop.
A long wait for the bus, delayed.
A slow tip of the hand to release coins into the dispenser for the fare.
A long ride on the bus to work, seats worn, cushions flat, flush to metal.
A long walk from the bus stop to work.
And do it all over on the return at the end of the day.
It’s a few feet from our back door to the garage to my car. The gas tank is full. I push the button for ignition, the cool air conditioning envelopes me in the cabin. I adjust my position in the soft leather seat. Always have a seat. Never a long walk. Never a need for coins.
I pass a bus on the street on my drive to work. Passengers look down, with blank-eyed stares.
Yes, Simone. Yes. The light. The sky. The trees. The roots. The earth.
And…The Lottery.
Notes:
- Post inspiration: “I honestly believe that…things can change in an instant, and made it key to my philosophy of life: neither money nor my work define me. I like them, they allow me to do many things I enjoy, but if I did not have them, I know I would be able to find something else to do, I would be able to survive, I could be happy…I never take anything for granted, and I never forget how lucky I have been, and am.” ~ Alan Cumming, Not My Father’s Son: A Memoir
- Photograph: Skogrun
- Related Posts: Commuting Series
Silience (135 sec)
n. the kind of unnoticed excellence that carries on around you every day, unremarkably—the hidden talents of friends and coworkers, the fleeting solos of subway buskers, the slapdash eloquence of anonymous users, the unseen portfolios of aspiring artists—which would be renowned as masterpieces if only they’d been appraised by the cartel of popular taste, who assume that brilliance is a rare and precious quality, accidentally overlooking buried jewels that may not be flawless but are still somehow perfect.
I walked slowly, and listened
After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers.
It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy.
I walked slowly, and listened
to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.
~Mary Oliver, from “Sometimes” in Red Bird: Poems
Notes:
- Inspired by: “The poem’s line of flight. It should be felt by each” by René Char, from ”Formal Share,” Furor & Mystery and Other Writings (via the distance between two doors)
- Poem: Thank you Make Believe Boutique. Photo: Marko Blazevic with Field of Blooming Sunflowers at Sunset (via maybe you need this)