I love this quote from a letter David Foster Wallace wrote to Mary Karr. More about the relationships of their generation of writers in this New York Magazine article. I think that quote sums up the gift of having great people in your life.
The title is from Plainsong, a really lovely novel I read recently about how we’re shaped and anchored by the places we’ve been. I’m thinking of it as I ride the train from New York to Boston, two places that make up the bulk of my childhood. Looking out the window, I am feeling nostalgia all over for the architecture, the landscape, the sense that something is changing because you can literally see the season turning over in front of you. It’s a strange thing to yearn for what was and still recall how ready you were to leave it behind once.
I’ll close this year out with a lovely poem my good friend sent to me today. If you like it, pay it forward. Don’t forget to be kind to yourself and others. See you in 2011!
- Lily
P.S. This poem reminds of another I love.
Kindness
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
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.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
I find myself thinking, “that would be a good problem to have” a lot these days when thinking about work and product releases. They usually revolve around having massive scale and usage, and things generally playing out quite nicely. And then I move forward to the more immediate problems at hand. It’s a fun exercise in focus. Once I reach that statement in my thought process, I know it’s time to file the issue away for a later date.
When I think about how I approach the rest of my life though, I find myself trying to hedge more and put preventative measures in place. I’d like to get to the point where I’m not constructing to avoid pain and can instead find a way for fear to simply be the complement to all the good problems I’d like to have. And then I move forward.
I know the title should be a no-brainer, but as someone who lives and works in San Francisco, I have to admit that I sometimes forget what SF is really like relative to the rest of the world. Here’s my attempt to visualize the disconnect:
You know that feeling when you’ve been on vacation a few days, and then it kicks in that you’re in a vacation state of mind? That’s how I felt during a conversation at dinner in Manhattan when somebody was talking about Google Buzz. I think it went something like this:
Him: “What’s this Buzz stuff? I can’t seem to make it go away…tell me the secret.”
Me: “Um, well it’s sort of like Twitter, but more private. It’s cool…”
Him: “Huh? I don’t want that in my email. Also, why is Google telling me to make phone calls from Gmail? Why the f*ck would I want to make calls from my email?”
In that moment, I remembered that most people don’t care about whether Google is going to kill Skype or how Facebook Places compares to Foursquare. In fact, most people have never heard of either, and they continue on in their daily lives quite happily.
A few days later, at my friend’s wedding, I met a lot of interesting people, none of whom were in technology. I found myself trying to explain software-as-a-service at one point, and then realized that I had no interest in talking about technology at all, and wow did it feel refreshing! Instead, we talked about education and affordable housing and shared personal stories, and some people even talked about how much they didn’t like their jobs. Somehow I feel that doesn’t happen all that much in San Francisco. We either have the best jobs in the world, or we’re never actually not working when we’re excitedly talking about the next feature or product we’re building.
I love technology and I love San Francisco, but it felt really good to be reminded that there’s a whole lot more out there too.
As I move more of my photos, music, and communications into the cloud, I notice my personal definition of ownership undergoing a transformation. I am the type of person who both loves and fears nostalgia. I back up all my photos and music to another hard drive, along with Dropbox, and I am a packrat-like collector of letters and postcards, any object that recalls memories for me. Owning and storing these things has always been a high priority.
A few months ago, I started using rdio, a social music service that streams from the cloud. To say that it’s completely altered my listening behavior would not be an understatement. I have listened to more full albums and discovered more new artists in the last 3 months than the rest of my lifetime. There is a transience in what I listen to. I would estimate that 20% of what I hear in a given day I will probably never choose to play again. But, with that comes the discovery of new songs that I will play hundreds of times later.
There is an opening up in that experience, a sense that what comes is just as likely to go, but that there will be something new and rewarding to follow it. I struggle with whether that is a positive or negative transformation when I examine what it means from a larger view on life. Is the concept of ownership an illusion anyway? It suggests that objects are binary, relationships of possession are binary, perhaps even relationships themselves are binary.
What we possess can always be lost or stolen, whether it be physically, virtually, or psychologically. If we give it up freely, knowingly even, can we transform the idea of possession to be a transient relationship? This idea of transformation appeals to me for reasons which I am still trying to understand and explain. Does it have to be sad to only have things for a moment? We grow up in a culture that seems to answer emphatically with a yes. Marriage is supposed to last forever, renters aspire to be homeowners, photos are the first objects you take if your house is on fire.
I think a lot about how our views on the future affect the outcome. I believe in self-fulfilling prophecies, in the sense that if you have a negative outlook on how a situation will turn out, it is more likely to meet your negative expectations. What if something ending wasn’t considered negative though? What if no longer having what you possessed wasn’t a loss, but instead a giving up, or perhaps a giving over to something or somebody else?
I find it ironic that in purchasing something, you are applying a particular value and subsequently devaluing it because its status changes immediately from new to used. It’s as if, by choosing to own something, I am accepting that I want the option to take it for granted. To relate it back to music, I have some days where I want to listen to the same song over and over. It’s not something I consciously understand at first, I just keep hitting back to hear it again. Sometimes, once I realize I only want to hear that single track, I put it on repeat. But, in hindsight, that is the exact moment I stop hearing the song. It is the moment that the desire transitions from active to passive. Hours will pass, and the song is now just the background again, because I’m not determinedly choosing to hear it anymore.
I guess what I’m struggling with is how to live peacefully with the tension between taking things for granted and not taking anything for granted. I’m inclined to believe it has to do with focus and truly understanding yourself so it’s clear what is personally important, and then trying to stay present and act accordingly. But as we hurtle toward everything being more real-time, more context-aware, less yours and more ours, I can’t help feeling like we are at the start of a turning point in our collective way of life. What will it mean to own something 15, 50, and 100 years from now? Will we value each other more or less, or has the world always moved this quickly and yet we essentially stay the same?
Elizabeth Bishop is amazing. One more by her before I force myself to move on.
The Armadillo
by Elizabeth Bishop
For Robert Lowell
This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,
rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.
Once up against the sky it’s hard
to tell them from the stars—
planets, that is—the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,
or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it’s still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,
receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.
Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down. We saw the pair
of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.
The ancient owls’ nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,
and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!—a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.
Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!
I haven’t been able to stop listening to the song, Ion Square, by Bloc Party. I love the lyrics, and I think they make a lovely poem. The fun fact is that Ion Square is inspired by another poem, e.e. cumming’s i carry your heart with me. Both poems below.
Ion Square
Ion square, perspex swings
I breathe out, you breathe in
Permanent midnight
Our love, our love
How we’ve come to depend
On each other to the end
The space between us has disappeared
You finish my, you finish my words for me
I remember how it began
So many great days in a row
Barefoot on Bishopsgate
Trying to find Blake’s grave
If we could stay like this in a silver foil
Trapped in amber for a life
Permanent midnight
Our love, our love
I carry your heart here with me
I carry it in my heart
I carry your heart with me
I carry it in my heart
Who said unbroken happiness
Is a bore, is a bore?
Who said it, my love? I don’t mind it
Anymore, anymore
And I reach out a hand over your side of the bed
Pull that blanket over your shoulders exposed to the night
And the hunger of those early years will never return
But I don’t mind, I don’t mind
‘Cause I love my mind when I’m fucking you
Slowed down to a crawl
Years of crime and the bread line
Have not at all dimmed your shine
So let’s stay in, let the sofa be our car
Let’s stay in, let the TV be our stars
I found my dancing shoes but they don’t fit
All the bright lights do is bore me
They bore me
I carry your heart here with me
I carry it in my heart
I carry your heart with me
I carry it in my heart
***************************************************
These lines in particular strike me as devastating:
And I reach out a hand over your side of the bed
Pull that blanket over your shoulders exposed to the night
And the hunger of those early years will never return
But I don’t mind, I don’t mind
‘Cause I love my mind when I’m fucking you
Slowed down to a crawl
***************************************************
i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
Writing was a big part of my life in high school and college. Since then, I’ve seen my writing drop off to near nothing and my reading selections become less diverse. I want to change that. I stopped by the Green Apple bookstore in the Richmond this weekend, and it reminded me how much I love books. I love that you have to open them, that they have different textures and fonts and covers, that the turn of a page makes me feel both nostalgic and anticipatory at once.
One of the books I picked up was Words in Air, the complete collection of letters exchanged between poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. After having read just a few letters so far, I already wish that technology and letter writing could have continued to exist and grow side by side. The act of receiving and sending a letter is so different than that of an email. While emails provide instant gratification, letters are pleasurable for the exact opposite reason. They require more time to write, process and receive, and somehow that “work” results in something that feels more whole and thought out.
As a first step toward trying to make literature a greater part of my life again, I’m going to share poems I love here at least once a week. I’m also going to start writing letters to myself on futureme.org (+3 months) and send them to a separate posterous blog. I’m not sure whether I will make it public and/or anonymous, but it seems important to do a better job of documenting my days, and I imagine it will be a good exercise in getting to know myself better.
In honor of what I’m reading right now, please enjoy this poem by Elizabeth Bishop!
One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
