“I am seized by two contradictory feelings: there is so much beauty in the world it is incredible that we are ever miserable for a moment; there is so much shit in the world that it is incredible we are ever happy for a moment.” Geoff Dyer
I found that quote buried in a Zadie Smith essay. I just finished Feel Free and am still in love with her. Reading Smith is like hanging out with a friend who is much smarter than you but kind, generous, hip, and accessible. Even when her mind flies higher than mine, even when I don’t agree (or understand), she lets me in and lifts me up. Her subjects are whiplash worthy - in this collection alone, she writes of art, philosophy, history, television, film, politics, race, etc. Joni Mitchell, Old masters, Rothko, Jay-Z, and Brexit. She mines her childhood and her motherhood, her writing and her reading with an eye for the delicious, resonant details. I will follow her anywhere.
My office window is filled with cherry blossoms, but the shit is getting me down.
There is a riot of beauty, everywhere. Spring is exploding here in New York, the sky is Renaissance blue and the landscape is a painter’s palette. My daughter just got a great job, my aging lockdown father is taking walks, and the fridge is full of wine.
“This one is like the ocean,” the wine lady said, “like sand running through your fingers.” I bought it.
But ohmygod the shit. The world — is it just me? The news rages and makes little sense, the machinations of the petty and the evil are endless and exhausting. Plague and war, masks and vaccines, fascists and autocrats, Depp and Heard. Hearings and depositions, subpoenas and contempt. Marjorie Three Names can’t remember and billionaires are bored. The shrill panic about midterms and everyone in disarray. So many guns. All the time with the guns. It’s all stupid and terrifying. Shameful.
I keep looking for answers. The blossoms, the wine like the ocean. The doctor who says that I’m a little allergic to the cat. Zadie Smith, who leads me to Dyer, who tells me that things are both beautiful and shit, all at the same time. Which I already knew. I already knew that the roses grow in shit, and have thorns, and yes everything sparkles and sucks all at once. I just want to know what we do with that. If anything.
Maybe there are no answers. Maybe it’s all just beautiful shit, get up in the morning, try again. I’m not entirely okay, but also perfectly fine. All at the same time. The mind reels, the body complains, and I seek answers.
How is everyone doing? It’s not just me, right?
Anyway, happy Friday! Hope you’re getting stuff done! I’m not but the cherry blossoms are pretty and maybe the wine will taste like a day at the sea. I will change nothing with the cat, she’s perfect.
“The art of mid-life is surely always cloudier than the art of youth, as life itself gets cloudier.” Zadie Smith