The Everything in Everything
The biggest puzzle of all right now - what on earth to do about it all?
F and I ran away for the weekend to the mountains. We shrugged off the urban restriction of our grey street and all the things that are hard and stressful right now. It felt like leaving clothes at the edge of the water. We plunged right into our time together, clowning like teenagers. I didn’t feel guilty. We needed it. I needed it.
Two days and then we had to come home again. As soon as we got through the door, I went to check on something — an image I’d carried all the way to the mountains and back again. There is a very small, white downy feather caught in a spider’s web just outside our bedroom window, right where the red brick wall meets the peeling paint of the windowsill. It had been there for over a fortnight when we left and it was still there, waiting, when we got back.
It hangs there like a snowflake. When the sun rises, if the wind decides to spend its day in our neighbourhood, the white feather twists golden in its tether, bucking and wriggling, as impatient as a child, but the web holds it firm. On rainy days it lies still, sheltered and sullen, no life or magic visible in it at all. I had thought about that feather often while we were away. I don’t know why it felt important. I don’t know what it means. I just knew I had to write about it when I got home.
Whenever I look at the feather moving, I get quite emotional. I don’t know why that is either. This morning, it was arching in the wind again. It has a little soft-brown edge. I keep waiting for it to leave. One morning, I know it will be gone and I’ll have to face the meaning of that too.
When we were away I watched white currents cascade and bubble their way over old River Greta’s round, grey stones. Trickles of water forced their way right out of the cool hard slate of the gorge we walked through. Ferns grew out rock. Moss covered everything with an animal pelt that made it feel like it was breathing. These things made me emotional too. The sound of it. The rush and the drip. My own breath, in and out. I wrote one scurried note in my notebook that just said, “how desperately I want to be filled with life so I may better express it.” A raindrop smudged the ink as I wrote it.
I have been trying to remember that I am a writer and to remind myself what a writer is and does. The trouble is, I’m not sure I know anymore. I end up asking the bucking feather and the eager river and the silent moss, “What am I for? Do you know?” but they give me no answer other than to tell me to write this down too, and I do — I do it— but I feel very useless. “Is this enough?” I want to ask when I’ve done it. Life must get so tired of my questions.
Things hurt. There is just no end of things hurting right now. Before we went away,
died and I felt such grief and confusion I could barely stand up. I could see that they had done their work, beautifully and perfectly, and that they were ready to become part of the great green poem itself now, but I was still angry that our poets die too young. I was — am — angry that they — we — die at all. I felt a wild, panicked urgency over the fragility of time. I am going to die too, one day. I am running out of time to help heal and comfort this world and I don’t know how. I don’t know what I’m doing. Meanwhile, the horrifyingly cruel genocide of Palestine continues; war brutalises the people of Sudan; and I find that, in this sick body, I can do very little other than say NO with every fibre of my spirit and resist the tempting, numbing drug that is to pretend as if these things aren’t happening at all. And write, of course: I can do that.I do not believe it is my job to flood the world with more words that make people despair because it is despair that stops us being useful when it matters most, in all those sudden, urgent moments that arise in front of us with silent invitations that can so easily be missed. But I do not believe either that it is my job to create cotton-wool cocoons of words and worlds that people can simply sink into and fall asleep. We need refuges from horrors, but a refuge without truth and clear-seeing isn’t a refuge, it’s an opium house. We do not need more things that make us more coddled, more intolerant of reality, but we also do not need more things that make us so overwhelmed and over-capacity that we can only shut down, only withdraw into the hard shell of ourselves.
Focusing only on what hurts breaks our fragile brains and spirits and steers us into habits of mind and body that help no-one, especially not ourselves. Focusing only on what feels good can only turn vicious in who or what it leaves out. On this tightrope, in this narrow place where everything is everything, the creative, thoughtful, loving people of our world try to walk and tell the truth.
I am glad to be one of them but, oh, what a stumbling path it is. So many are doing it better than me. Andrea did. I am humbled by them and committed to learn from them. It feels like the biggest puzzle at the heart of humanity right now. How can I feel ok when life is so hard? How can I feel ok while acknowledging that the world is not ok? And how can I help, really? Not perform help, but truly help? What do people actually need vs. what I, righteously, think they do?
Whenever I go away from home, I end up returning with something I didn’t expect; something that takes a while to unpack and understand. This time it was something about the feather and the water and the beast-like mountains — things that move, things that don’t appear to — and something about learning how to have a good time, a great time, while still holding all the things that are painful gently in my pockets. And the message of the river, the rain and the rock: write it down, write it down, write it down.
I’ll keep doing that then, and I’ll work from there.
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Your writing, with its honesty, compassion, deep observation, gentleness AND truthfulness, as well as beauty, is exactly what the world needs. More words like yours. More persuasion towards the reasonable, the thoughtful, the soulful. What you write is invaluable, a medicine for our times. Keep doing it. Keep sharing it.
I was also very moved by Andrea Gibson’s death (more so than I expected). It is interesting to hear your thoughts about them and their work because I see both of you as people from whom I can learn to live in a kinder, wiser way. I also really appreciate your honesty about not having the answers to the questions you talk about in this post. It can be so difficult to navigate that balancing act between staying informed and connected and not being completely overwhelmed. I’ve been trying to be more deliberate in how I engage with things over the past year or so, but it’s still challenging. Your point that we need to focus on where our help is actually needed rather than what we think would be helpful is also really thought-provoking, so thank you for that.