Tag: Sigrid Nunez

Walking on Sunday Morning. Wally’s (and Dad’s) Great Adventures. (77)

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hello friends. Wally here. i rustle in bed finding a comfy spot, and say what, i found dad lying next to me, what’s this all about?  surround sound music fills the room, a tune called Sunday by HNNY. so nice. sleeping in with dad on this quiet morning, rare, this is. well, not exactly sleeping in, dad is tapping on his keyboard. what you writing about dad? he mumbled something about an anne frank and her wanting to write, but more than that, to bring out all the things that lie buried deep in her heart. So I peak over, and he writes.

1,174 consecutive (almost) days, this morning’s daybreak walk to Cove Island Park. Like in Row.  Almost, the defining word this morning. I couldn’t find my way out. The streak, 1000 days, is long past, but the pull, the obligation, the call of duty, lurks. What is it that keeps me here?  (Sigrid Nunez, The Friend: A Novel) “When you’re lying in bed full of night thoughts,” she thinks…having a huge warm body pressed along the length of your spine is an amazing comfort.”  So Cove Island waits for another day, and I lay here, with Wally’s hot little body pressed against the mid point of my spine, with his soft little inhale and exhale keeping time, my time slows, it slows way down, and the edge of Worry melts away, and a little peace enters, a little Wally-peace that is.

dad, I don’t know who this anne frank is, but I like her very much.  happy sunday everyone. Wally.

 

Hmmmmm….

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Neither season after season of extreme weather events nor the risk of extinction for a million animal species around the world could push environmental destruction to the top of our country’s list of concerns. And how sad, he said, to see so many among the most creative and best-educated classes, those from whom we might have hoped for inventive solutions, instead embracing personal therapies and pseudo-religious practices that promoted detachment, a focus on the moment, acceptance of one’s surroundings as they were, equanimity in the face of worldly cares. (This world is but a shadow, it is a carcass, it is nothing, this world is not real, do not mistake this hallucination for the real world.) Self-care, relieving one’s own everyday anxieties, avoiding stress: these had become some of our society’s highest goals, he said—higher, apparently, than the salvation of society itself. The mindfulness rage was just another distraction, he said. Of course we should be stressed, he said. We should be utterly consumed with dread. Mindful meditation might help a person face drowning with equanimity, but it would do absolutely nothing to right the Titanic, he said. It wasn’t individual efforts to achieve inner peace, it wasn’t a compassionate attitude toward others that might have led to timely preventative action, but rather a collective, fanatical, over-the-top obsession with impending doom.

—Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through: A Novel (Riverhead Books, September 8, 2020)

Photo: Patty Maher, Light & Dark

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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It was over, he said. It was too late, we had dithered too long. Our society had already become too fragmented and dysfunctional for us to fix, in time, the calamitous mistakes we had made. And, in any case, people’s attention remained elusive. Neither season after season of extreme weather events nor the risk of extinction for a million animal species around the world could push environmental destruction to the top of our country’s list of concerns. And how sad, he said, to see so many among the most creative and best-educated classes, those from whom we might have hoped for inventive solutions, instead embracing personal therapies and pseudo-religious practices that promoted detachment, a focus on the moment, acceptance of one’s surroundings as they were, equanimity in the face of worldly cares. (This world is but a shadow, it is a carcass, it is nothing, this world is not real, do not mistake this hallucination for the real world.) Self-care, relieving one’s own everyday anxieties, avoiding stress: these had become some of our society’s highest goals, he said—higher, apparently, than the salvation of society itself. The mindfulness rage was just another distraction, he said. Of course we should be stressed, he said. We should be utterly consumed with dread. Mindful meditation might help a person face drowning with equanimity, but it would do absolutely nothing to right the Titanic, he said. It wasn’t individual efforts to achieve inner peace, it wasn’t a compassionate attitude toward others that might have led to timely preventative action, but rather a collective, fanatical, over-the-top obsession with impending doom. It was useless, the man said, to deny that suffering of immense magnitude lay ahead, or that there’d be any escaping it. How, then, should we live?

— Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through: A Novel (Riverhead Books, September 8, 2020)

Notes: