What We Feel and What We Do About It

Sunny isn't angry but caught in rapid motion she looks a little crazed, doesn't she?

 

Anger:

Things were not going well for me on Monday and Tuesday, from a business point of view, and I don’t mean the expected post-holiday “cooling” (which is more like a solid freeze), but the fact that books I ordered from my national distributor in early December, with a back order in place, so I would be sure to have them by the book’s January 9 release date, had not even been shipped by January 9. They should have been shipped the previous Friday to get to me in time. On Monday I called customer service and spoke with a very pleasant young man about the situation, but he was too low on the hierarchy (bottom rung) and too far offshore (the Philippines) to be able to do anything for me. It’s Wednesday now, the book was released to the public yesterday, and my two orders are still not on their way to me.

 

In retrospect, I see that I should have ordered directly from the publisher. Hindsight. It never occurred to me that an order from my usual source of new books would not be honored in a timely fashion.

 

The online behemoth is sold out, on the first day of sales! They got their books! Are mine now being shipped to them? I am seriously and impotently pissed off.

 

…Sit with the anger. How does it feel? I feel disrespected. Invisible. Treated as valueless. Totally without power.

 

Yesterday I posted a question on Facebook in second person: “What would you lose if you gave up your anger?” One friend’s answer, which another echoed, was: “Stress, headaches, and more.” Okay, I’ll buy that. But when I put the question in first-person form, “What would I lose if I gave up my anger?” the question took on a different tone, because who would want to hang onto stress and headaches? No, I must be hanging onto something else, something important to me. 

 

Angry that my book order was not filled in time to have books by the on-sale date, what am I getting out of anger? What’s in it for me? If I can’t have the books, I’ll have instead -- .

 

Oh, yeah: Self-righteousness! If I’m powerless, I’m a victim. If I have been wronged, someone else is to blame. And I can feel, oh-so-right!

 

But.…  Does that feel good? Does it make me happy? Does it get me anything I really want – not only the books but visibility and respect?

 

(Do you recognize rhetorical questions when you encounter them?)

 

It isn’t even third prize. 

 

In this instance, there is no specific person to single out for blame -- which didn’t stop me from becoming very pissed off -- but what if, hypothetically, an individual could be identified? Let’s imagine some snotty Higher Up looking down at tiny little me (how likely is that? Ha!) and saying, “Don’t fill that order! Let her wait. Who cares about a little one-person bookshop in Northport, Michigan?” If that unlikely scenario were true, would blaming that HU get me my books any sooner? Make me feel respected and happy?

 

The truth is that I have no power here in this situation (I’ve done all I can do with phone calls and e-mails) and that life, as my father told me so often when I was growing up, is often not fair. And, honestly, this is one book release. If I don’t get first printings when my order finally arrives (assuming it does!), there’s nothing I can do about it, and although I’ll be disappointed (I’m already disappointed not to have the books on time), it won’t be the end of the world. It won’t even be the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. My husband died. That was the worst thing that’s happened in my life – and I’m still alive, still engaged enough with life to get all upset about a late book order! What foolishness! Cool it!

 

Altruism:

 

What I was thinking about most recently related to the brain stuff (see here, where I wrote about my top nonfiction picks for 2023) is the question of altruism. Psychologists and philosophers and others argue back and forth on this. Some claim that if apparently other-regarding acts benefit the giver (and studies show that they do: here is a whole list), then they are egoistic rather than altruistic. Freud saw altruism as neurotic, and Nietzsche saw it as antithetical to full human flourishing, while others point out that altruism, even extreme self-sacrifice, is not limited to the human species but can be seen exemplified in other animals, that we naturally care for each other, not only for ourselves, and that we would never survive otherwise.

 

(Does this remind anyone else of the nature vs. nurture question?)

 

I was thinking of the Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve dinners I took to our old friend. Why did I perform those apparently Good Samaritan acts? If it made me feel good, was it for his sake or really for myself?

 

Then dawn suddenly broke! What a completely left-brain question!!! The whole either/or, can’t-be-both manner of carving up the world is totally left brain! The need to have everything clearly categorized, right or wrong, yes or no. “Bullocks!” as Buck Mulligan said so often to Steven Dedalus. That isn’t life. That is a poor, thin imitation, not worth the bother of an algorithm creator. Life is much messier. It is both/and, paradox and ambiguity and mystery and enchantment. No one is an isolated, self-sufficient individual. And without the theoretical assumption of radical individualism, the question of whether or not altruism exists would never arise.

 

No more lights, but a magic wand remains.

 

Memories:

 

When I wrote about Christmas Eve, I said our old friend had been having a good day. He recognized me, remembered my name, etc. When he walked me to my car after the dinner we shared, he looked around at his yard and 40 acres and said, “We’re so lucky!” “Yes, we are,” I agreed.

 

Nine days later, on January 2, our friend was in the ER in Traverse City, and it’s pretty clear he won’t ever be able to return to his long-time home. Everyone saw it coming. We had just hoped it was going to be further down the road.

 

I’ll admit here to a selfish satisfaction -- in having what may well be my last memory of that old friend being a good time. We shared mutual memories, the sun was shining, he knew who I was and remembered my husband. He felt fortunate and expressed that feeling. “We’re so lucky,” he said in a heartfelt tone. Yes, we were. I hope his change in circumstances won’t be too hard on him.

 

Another friend of mine, who lost his beloved life partner some years ago, finds meaning in living as her “chief rememberer.” I feel some of that, too, although many remember the Artist. I remember not only him, my beloved, though, but many friends of years and decades past. The old Bluebird, the old Happy Hour. Winters when Sugar Loaf pulled in families of skiiers in the winter, and the Bird and HH did great weekend business. Jim and Linda, Fred and Molly, Les and Marina, Cy, Lisle, Marsha, Betsy, Hooper, Benny – oh, the names! I remember them all, even when the names elude me!

 

Today I am remembering many happy times shared. The snow is coming down hard tonight, but we had harder snows in the old days. Deeper snows. Longer, colder winters. You’ve heard it all before. Oldtimers’ recollections….

 

I don’t care. I’m glad I was there. I wouldn’t trade those times for quids.

Closing thought:

 

Somewhere recently (and to be quite honest, it was probably someone’s Facebook post) I read that we shouldn’t put beautiful things aside and save them for a “special occasion,” because every day we’re alive is a special occasion. So, sister Deborah, I took that Zabar’s babka out of the freezer, though I wasn’t having company, and let me tell you, it is delicious! Thank you! Another day of life! Another special occasion! 

“No, how are you, really?”

Recently I wrote, in two consecutive posts, about feeling “crabby” one morning -- the same day, written about twice, because the hours had divided themselves into a morning of outdoor adventure and afternoon of indoor reading. Now, in light of a book I devoured in two days of intense reading, I want to revisit that day briefly before getting into the book. 

Saying I’d been “crabby” when I first got up wasn’t a falsehood, but the word was not as accurate as another I could have used. Initially the word that came to mind that morning, without my having to search for it at all, was abandoned. I felt abandoned. 

But when I wrote about the day, I didn’t want to name my feeling so bluntly-- didn’t want to sound pathetic or self-pitying and discourage people from reading any further – the risk I’m taking today. After all, abandonment was, and is, hardly an objective fact of my life: I have family, friends, neighbors, dog; I see people and receive phone calls and text and e-mails and even postcards and letters in my physical mailbox down the road. To feel abandoned, then, was not a logical, rational thought. The feeling, however, was real and deep. Abandoned. Bereft. Because absence is a constant presence in my life now and can demand to be recognized when I least expect it.

Days before, I had started a very different post, a brutally honest one, thinking it the beginning of a draft for next month. “The Cruelest Month,” I titled those paragraphs, writing that the cruelest month wasn’t April for me, as the poet would have it, but March: Since my husband died last year in March (nine days after his February birthday), last year’s “cascade” of medical issues, beginning in January and ending in death, now repeats itself as a cascade of unavoidable memories, with the anniversary of the end looming ever closer.

Thus the feeling of being abandoned -- although I need to explain further that feeling abandoned does not necessarily correlate to being alone. Sometimes I am perfectly happy alone (as when reading that paper by Georges Poulet), while other times (not always!) with other people I can feel like a sad little island, abandoned in a sea of grief. Because widowhood is not all one color. Every day is not grey and rainy and dismal. 

And speaking of weather, I have always found my moods affected by weather (and used to tell the Artist, “I’m a very shallow person” for that very reason), but grief can make warm sunshine seem pointless, whereas a rainy day can give the perfect excuse to curl up alone, contentedly, and read a book. People, weather – sometimes they encourage certain feelings, and other times the feelings are completely at odds with what’s going on in the “outside” world – that is, outside one’s own head, heart, and skin.

In her new book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, Susan Cain (author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking) explores the tendency of some of us to what Aristotle called ‘melancholy,’ those feelings of 

…longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. The bittersweet is also about the recognition that light and dark, birth and death –bitter and sweet – are forever paired.

From sadness, creativity, seeking unconditional human love or divine love, and the American gospel of positive thinking to grief and loss, “getting over it,” immortality, and intergenerational pain, this book goes broad and deep. There is the story, perhaps apocryphal (and maybe you’ve read it before, as I have), of Franz Kafka giving, to a little girl heartbroken after losing her favorite doll, a new doll with a letter he wrote as if the old doll had written it: “My travels have changed me.” For everyone who has ever lived, change and loss are inevitable, and when they come, life will never again be what it was. 

(Typing that last sentence, the one just above, I first typed “For anyone who has ever loved….” Has anyone ever lived without loving? Such a life would not keep one safe from change and loss. It would not be much of a life at all.)

It's too early in the year to know if Bittersweet will be the most important book I’ll read in 2023, but I know it is one I will be recommending to others and will re-read again and again myself. It is much, much more personal than Cain’s earlier work, and the pieces of memoir, which come along unexpectedly in various chapters, enrich the author’s themes. 

A couple of pages very meaningful to me personally had to do with writing when we are sad. She cites the work of Texas social psychologist James Pennebaker, who stumbled on something when he was suffering from depression and began writing down “the contents of his heart,” as Cain puts it. 

…And he noticed that the more he wrote, the better he felt. He opened up to his wife again [he had been drinking; they had been fighting], and to his work. His depression lifted.

The psychologist went on to make the phenomenon he experienced the basis for decades of study. He asked groups of people to write about their personal troubles, directing others to write about mundane facts in their lives.

Pennebaker found that the people who wrote about their troubles were markedly calmer and happier than those who described their sneakers. Even months later, they were physically healthier, with lower blood pressure and fewer doctor’s visits. They had better relationships and more success at work. 

Those who did the exercise of “expressive writing,” Cain reports from Pennebaker’s work, were not wallowing in their troubles but deriving insight from confronting and facing their pain.

P.S. 2/16/2023: Oprah picked this book! It's her 99th Book Club pick!

A couple weeks ago, before I’d even seen this book, I sat down to write a long letter. (I write letters, as well as blog posts, but letters I write by hand, on paper, with pen.) I began writing in a rather “pitiful” state of mind, going on and on about my reasons for feeling blue, somewhat as I admitted in my post the other day to feeling “crabby” but with a lot more honesty. By the last page of my letter, though, as I noted before the closing line, I had written myself into a cheerful frame of mind! I’ve noticed before, more than once when drafting blog posts, that I often sit down feeling sad and then somehow write myself into gratitude.

Writing isn’t a silver bullet or a magic potion and doesn’t always banish the blues. And they do come back. But that’s life: sometimes it’s an emotional rainy day, and then the sun shines again, and predicting how we’ll feel on any given future day is never foolproof. But if, as another friend says of me, I am a graphomaniac, I guess that’s one more thing to be thankful for in my life, because now and again writing gets me out of some dark places and back into the light.

We Are All on a Rollercoaster

This  has nothing to do with my subject, but she always calms me down.

How are you feeling? Where are you, emotionally? Contented? Restless? Anxious? Got cabin fever, or are you grateful for unstructured time -- or both in turns? Angry at fate and fearful of what’s coming? Counting your blessings? Downright depressed? Maybe confused about what you’re feeling?

A friend said she woke up a couple days ago and felt calm, and that worried her: Had she lost her mind? Had her brain ceased to function? Where was her usual, reasonable, familiar pandemic anxiety?

And it came to me, reading her messages, that we are all on a rollercoaster, every single one of us, but we are all at different points in the looping path on any given day or even at any given moment, so while no emotion any of us feels is inappropriate, we can sometimes be impatient with each other’s expressions. But the feelings themselves are perfectly (can I use this word?) normal. Given the times. All of them.

Gratitude feels good. Anger doesn’t. Sometimes we can shift gears to get from a bad feeling to a good one, and other times we just have to ride out a sickening stretch until we get to a smoother, easier section. Despair at night, joy in the morning – or the other way around, depending on your temperament. Fear, even terror. A blue funk. The sunshiny flash of unexpected happiness, the glow of contentment, or the sweet respite of calm – unless the calm brings worries of its own, as it did for my friend. 

“I’m just tired of it.”

“I want it to be over.” 

Me, too. I’d love to return to that old expectant (false but happy) sense of security I had in early winter 2019 when looking ahead to summer 2020, lining up Thursday Evening Author guests for bookstore soirées in the Artist’s gallery! Those days of planning now seem like some kind of long-ago lost innocence.

My philosophy of life in a nutshell, which is about all of anyone’s philosophy that most people want to hear, is simple: Everything is a double-edged sword. Or, as Joni Mitchell so memorably expressed in her song “Both Sides Now,” there is an upside and downside to everything. In her lyrics, the singer looks back to her past positive impressions, compares them with present cynicism, and concludes that she doesn’t “really know” clouds, love, or life “at all.” But listen to the song. What she can’t help believing in are her “illusions,” that is, the joy and magic that she isn’t feeling in the present moment. 

Can we believe in something when we’re not feeling it, or do our feelings overpower us and create our beliefs? More specifically, can we continue to believe in hope when we're feeling hopeless?

-----

I started writing these thoughts and had to set them aside for a couple of days. Was I depressed or just irritable and blue? 

Depression is a family curse, so I am familiar with it, but in my experience true depression is like interior weather (not situational or caused by something in the outside world), and there’s a horrible physical component to it. I describe it as being encased in a suit of dread. Imagine it as a rigid suit of armor that you’re locked inside. So, no, I wasn’t there, thank heaven! But neither was I enveloped by contentment or anything positive. I went for a walk and dragged myself along, hardly enjoying my surroundings or a pleasantly cool desert morning.

Quite frankly, while I have a lot of happy moments or even hours, positive moods can seem pretty fragile these days. Easily dispelled. Personal contentment can evaporate in an instant with a single blast of bad news, of which there is no shortage. Which brings me back to my rollercoaster theme and its limitations. 

When you go to an amusement park and ride a rollercoaster – when one rides, I should say, because I have never been on a rollercoaster in my life – my understanding is that (1) you know approximately how long the ride will be, (2) that you'll be safe, and (3) that the car will eventually stop and you’ll be able to get out right where you started. Well, right now, these days, on the coronavirus rollercoaster, we have none of these assurances. All we have is uncertainty.

Is it any wonder our emotions are all over the map? It's easy to say we should "live in the moment" and admit our powerlessness, not so easy to maintain that attitude throughout each passing day. 

I try to make most of my posts here upbeat, to brighten readers' days, and I'm certainly not trying to bring anyone down today with reminders of what you already know, that these are damn difficult times. I just thought it might help, if you're feeling blue, to know that you're not alone in that, either. It's okay to feel bad. We all have our private storm clouds.

But if you're not feeling great this morning, I hope you will feel better this afternoon or tomorrow. As for me, I think I've got my "second wind" and can pick up my feet and go on until the next storm hits -- wherever the hell it is we're going!

Into the unknown!

Which Side Are You On?

When I went to work in my fields [following his marriage], I worked with more alacrity and sprightliness. I felt that I did not work for myself alone, and this encouraged me much. My wife would often come with her knitting in her hand, and sit under the shady tree, praising the straightness of my furrows and the docility of my horses. This swelled my heart and made every thing light and pleasant, and I regretted that I had not married before. I felt myself happy in my new situation, and where is that station which can confer a more substantial system of felicity than that of an American farmer…? 

-  J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer

Crevecoeur, an Anglicized Frenchman (born Michel-Guillaume-Jean de Crevecoeur -- and I apologize for not having the proper accent mark available to me on the program I'm using), initially began his New World life in Canada, fighting under General Montcalm until the defeat of the French on the Plains of Abraham. Then, resigning his commission, he traveled through New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. In New York he was naturalized as a British subject and also adopted into the Oneida tribe as an honorary member. He married Mehitabel Tippett in 1769 and spent the following seven years happily farming and raising a family at home, Pine Hill, cultivating friends among his Hudson Valley neighbors, and traveling. 

But his very name — “broken heart” — perhaps presaged what was to come in the author’s life. Count seven years ahead from 1769. Crevecoeur felt himself thoroughly “American,” but to him that meant being a loyal subject of the English king. 

Susan Manning, who edited and wrote the very scholarly introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Letters from an American Farmer, calls the work “a book about identity — specifically American identity — struggling into being.” 

The book that took shape in the years before and during the American Revolution embodies the personal crisis induced by momentous political events. It is at once the fullest literary expression of America’s coming into being … and a moving exploration of the meaning of ‘revolution’ in the personality of any previously established self. 

- Susan Manning

It is easy for us to see the march of history exclusively in broad strokes: migrations, social change, important primary source documents (e.g., in this case, the Declaration of Independence), battles, treaties, etc. What gives Letters from an American Farmer its importance is not only that it was written at all and widely published but that it is a record of one man’s emotions, passions, and responses to the larger events which engulfed his life. We occasionally ask ourselves what we would have done in such-and-such a place in such-and-such a time period. More often we judge the actions of individuals in the past, forgetting to imagine ourselves in their shoes. But there is no possibility of forgetting the man and his family as we read Crevecoeur’s Letters, an epistolary-literary account of real people caught up in world-changing events beyond their control. 

So the Letters constitute a much-neglected American classic, but reading it now, during the COVID-19 crisis, when not only the United States of America but the entire world is struggling and looking for ways to maintain a semblance of normal life and find a way forward while also doing everything possible to avoid contagion in the present and “flatten the curve” (the rising curve of numbers of people infected with the virus), a year that is also an important election year in the U.S., I find added resonance in Crevecoeur’s cries of anguish.

Throughout the early Letters, the author idealizes the American experience and work ethic, particularly that of English and Scottish colonists. (Irish, not so much.) Farmers work hard and bring forth the land’s bounty, while fisherman on Nantucket and Cape Code brave the ocean to harvest subsistence and, for some, even wealth. He is full of admiration for the modest Quaker way of life but paints a picture of religious tolerance, with families of diverse faiths living side by side without acrimony. He admires also the Native Americans, calling their manners “respectable,” in sharp contrast to some of the rude European pioneers along the frontier, who live in “sloth and inactivity.” Those “back-settlers,” he remarks reprovingly, are much more in need of conversion than the Indians. But in general, he presents life along the Eastern Seaboard, on its farms and in its towns and villages, as a veritable pastoral idyll, a dream come true for the poor who fled the nobility-crushed and heavily-taxed Old World, where they had no hope of advancement.

From pastoral idyll, however, Crevecoeur descends into nightmare when he travels in the South and learns firsthand the horrors of slavery. In Charleston and in the countryside, the stories he hears and one particularly gruesome sight he sees stand in such sharp contrast with the threadbare arguments presented to him in defense of the “peculiar institution” that his very belief in God’s beneficence is shaken to the core, and he cries out from his heart —

Is there then no superintending power who conducts the moral operations of the world as well as the physical? The same sublime hand, which guides the planets round the sun with so much exactness, which preserves the arrangement of the whole with such exalted wisdom and paternal care, and prevents the vast system from falling into confusion, doth it mankind to all the errors, the follies, and the miseries, which their most frantic rage, and their most dangerous vices and passions can produce? 

As he looked about him and saw “crimes of the most heinous nature, committed from one end of the world to the other,” he could not help doubting in the existence of wise deity guiding history and ensuring progress. 

Loudly though his every feeling cried out against the evils of slavery, however, Crevecoeur himself was in no immediate personal danger as he traveled through the colonies. He was a white man, after all, an educated man, with apparently sufficient income to leave his farm in other capable hands for long periods while he traveled. A visit farther south, to self-taught botanist John Bertram in Florida, soothed for a while the agitated feelings aroused by his painful encounters in South Carolina. 

But Time is marching on, inexorably, and both Crevecoeur’s scholarly social visits and his peaceful life at home will soon be violently interrupted. The Revolution is at hand! What hope is there now for a loyal subject of the king? 

Now danger has become personal and immediate — as it was already for the slaves on those Southern plantations — and the writer now fears for the lives of his wife and children, as well as himself. Though he declares himself ready to sacrifice his own life for that of his family, staying home on the farm and helplessly waiting “the end of this catastrophe” becomes more and more unbearable. And once again the feelings that agitate his soul find expression in larger questions about the human condition.

It is for the sake of the great leaders, on both sides, that so much blood must be spilt; that of the people is counted as nothing. Great events are not achieved for us, though it is by us that they are principally accomplished; by the arms, the sweat, the lives, of the people.

Resenting historical convulsions that disrupt and even destroy ordinary, peaceful lives, at the same time he knows that he must decide. 

What must I do? … Shall I discard all my antient [sic] principles, shall I renounce that name, that nation, which I once held so respectable? … Must I be called a parricide, a traitor, a villain; lose the esteem of all those whom I love to preserve my own; be shunned like a rattle-snake, or be pointed at like a bear? 

As much as he loves England, he also sees “the powerful attraction” of the call to revolution, and he cannot help blaming the king for pursuing a course that will guarantee the shedding of so much innocent blood. He is a man caught in the middle. 

I cannot count the multitude of orphans this war has made, nor ascertain the immensity of blood we have lost. Some have asked whether it was a crime to resist, to repel, some parts of this evil. Others have asserted, that a resistance so general makes pardon unattainable and repentance useless…. What one party calls meritorious, the other denominates flagitious [criminal]. … What can an insignificant man do in the midst of these jarring contradictions…?

It is, after all, not only coronavirus that hovers outside our doors these days. There is also the unsettling and continuing political discord and paranoia, amazingly and alarming not set aside in the midst of a life-threatening pandemic. If anything, it is exacerbated. And what one side calls necessary, another calls criminal, while millions of ordinary Americans, who want only to work and live in peace within their families and communities, are caught in the crossfire. 

What will Crevecoeur do as the clamor of strife comes nearer? Will he be a “traitor” to the king or a “traitor” to the revolution? Of course, his future then is now long past, so what was his ultimate fate and that of his family? 

Don’t look for spoilers here. If we are going to learn anything from history, it is important that we hear not only competing interpretations but also individual voices of real human beings, as they lived through and experienced those distant times. We are not that different from those colonists — or those slaves — in eighteenth-century America. As did they, we work and love and hope, feel joy and fear, and the questions we ask of ourselves and of the universe have been asked by every generation that came before us.

How Long Will It Last?

How long will what last? The pandemic, the staying at home, the anxiety, fear, worry, anger? The arrival of sudden, piercing stabs of fear in the middle of a sleepless night? 

Household food supplies???

Long before the stay-at-home order came to Arizona (where we remain until confident of a safe return to northern Michigan), even before the nationwide toilet paper panic and frenzy, wise and forward-thinking authorities recommended that every household have a minimum of two weeks of food and necessities on hand, in case quarantine became necessary. So I shopped then and found everything we needed and felt we were well supplied. I even bought a two-pack of giant-size containers of antiseptic wipes, wondering if we could ever possibly need that many. Was I overreacting? Flour, yeast, canned tomatoes, pasta, canned milk, onions, soap, yada-yada-yada — all the things you’d need if you couldn’t get out of the house for two weeks. 

But hand sanitizer? I never buy that stuff, just soap. So when I returned to the store for hand sanitizer a week or two later, while other shoppers were panicking over shelves stripped bare of toilet paper and paper towels [actually, no one looked panicked at the Safeway in Willcox: that was literary hyperbole], I was stunned at the sight of an empty aisle where hand sanitizer and other such products used to be. On my next and I hope last trip, there was still none to be had. We are told to keep in the car and use it constantly, but the Artist and I are using those antiseptic wipes I thought I might not need. Not the kind made for hands, but the harsher cleaners intended for household use. Now even those are nowhere to be found for sale! How long will what we have left last?

I chickened out of going to the grocery store again last Friday, as planned, and made a new plan for Tuesday, when the dairy and egg supply would be restocked. And yes, on Tuesday the store had eggs, and I bought another container of yogurt so I’ll have starter to get back to making my own with raw milk from the feed store, but once again there was no hand sanitizer, no antiseptic wipes, and no yeast. I almost wept. I'd been so nervous about going at all, and then these empty, gaping shelves! I think of certain friends in Northport who have for years found it amusing to refer to our grocery store there, especially in winter when the summer people with their big bucks are not in residence, as "Moscow Market." Ha! Eat your words, guys! We always had everything we needed, didn't we?

Catching wild yeast from their air, on the other hand, is something I think I can manage, so before we run out of yeast, I will finally attempt to make sourdough starter. Old dog, new trick. I have read up on it and feel confident. 

But aren't these strange times when a trip to the grocery store or laundromat feels dangerous? How long will these feelings last?

We went to a different laundromat this week, a less frequented washateria with cheaper washers than our usual but busier, more crowded place (hence our avoidance) — sadly, also with dryers that have an insatiable appetite for quarters. But never mind! All I wanted to do was wash the clothes and get back to the cabin and hang them on our new clothesline. Finding almost all the machines in use when we arrived — very unusual! — and four people inside, we made ourselves comfortable in the car with books and cold water and snacks, in a quiet, shady spot, with a nice breeze filtering through the new leaves of a velvet ash tree, waiting for the coast to clear, as it eventually did. So it all worked out.

Still, we were relieved to be home again, even though a single clothesline and limited supply of clothespins meant that I spent the remainder of the day hanging up as many items at once as possible and whenever a few were dry, pulling those dry items off the line to make way for more. It really did take all afternoon, too, despite sun and a stiff breeze, and the last towels were still on the line when meatballs for dinner went into 
the oven.

Funny how one's perceptions change with changed circumstances. Familiar sights evoke new thoughts. These days when I’m out walking and see dried cow dung, I think, fuel. When we’re driving, wild rhubarb along the roadside says to me, food. Prickly pear still poses a question: how does one harvest and prepare that to eat? So far, however, we have not retreated that far back into the past.

I’m not exactly living the life of my grandmother’s, she who had to pump water to heat on the stove to do her laundry outdoors in washtubs. (One of those washtubs was my first “swimming pool” when I was a toddler.) She also milked her own cow and slaughtered her own chickens, and my grandfather had an enormous vegetable garden, huge raspberry patch, and their entire backyard was given over to growing fruit.

My mother on her parents' country "farmette"

My parents' first home in South Dakota

My mother, with indoor plumbing, had a wringer washer in the basement and lines both in the backyard (for summer) and in the basement (for winter). When my sisters and I were young, we had three apple trees, one pear tree, and a raspberry patch (that last, thanks to our grandfather who brought the canes from Ohio for us). My mother baked her own bread, put up homemade jam, and made her own perfect piecrust from scratch, so these days I’m kind of living my mother’s life — without the little children, but it’s still amazing how cooking and baking and cleaning have expanded to fill the days, now that we are staying at home.

And I ask myself, how long will these new habits last? As long as the pandemic or longer? When these times are “over,” and we can return to something resembling “normal life,” will we continue to bake our own bread and hang our laundry out in the sun?

Well, I routinely hang laundry on the line back in Michigan, though I do not bake bread in the busy months when I'm running a business fulltime and doing my share of keeping grass mowed around our old farmhouse and barns. Anyway, truthfully, I wonder more about other changes in our lives these days, too, the way we are considering and treating one another, not only within our households but in our communities and across the country and beyond. 

How long will we continue communicating with loved ones on our present, new, more frequent basis and, in addition, find time to reconnect with friends forgotten or neglected for years? How long will we keep up the habit of thanking family members, friends, and strangers for each kindness, large and small? How long will we remember to give thanks, each and every day, for each and every day we’re alive?

Adventures Close to Home: Physical and Spiritual Hills and Valleys

Humans keep safe distance; Sarah eagerly leads the way

Saturday morning’s walk with my neighbor and our dogs would have been better had I not opened a bottle of wine the night before. It was wine I’d been saving for company, and then Friday night I thought, well, that isn’t going to happen! And I yielded to temptation, with the result that I woke up only 15 minutes before Therese and her dogs (“Puppies are restless,” she texted) were ready to hit the trail. As we set out on the dirt road that leads to the old mine in the mountains (we never go that far), Therese noted, “You don’t seem to have your usual zip.” No, I did not. It was a short walk yesterday morning. Lesson learned.

We don’t go as far as the mine, much higher in the mountains, but we do regularly visit some of the “ruins” of old mining structures. The walls in the image here, I thought, had quite a presence in the early morning light. But Therese teases me for lugging a camera along on these walks and directs remarks at Sarah, such as, “Hold still, Sarah. Your mom wants another picture of you!” It’s true. I do photograph my dog a lot. Although she is probably carrying a few extra pounds these days in dust alone, she is always beautiful in my eyes.

My friend is mocking me!

Beautiful girl!

We humans keep a safe distance not only from one another (life in the time of coronavirus) but also from at least one select spot along the way, and we encourage our dogs to stay away from this one, too. Javelinas live in that cave! We do not need any close-up encounters with javelinas! 

Plant life is safer. Cactus spines can be avoided by keeping a safe distance (and we are all about safe distance these days, aren’t we?), while other vegetation can be safely touched and examined. Look! Netleaf hackberry is putting out new spring leaves! What a cheery sight! And here a primrose, there a primrose — nice!

Later:

From the valley of a hangover to a peak of joy in the natural world, the walk with dogs was only one part of my day, the beginning, but it’s the only part for which I have visual images to share with you. Incidents after that, good and bad, were either not camera-friendly or not camera-worthy. I could have photographed the popovers that failed to “pop,” but why advertise such an abysmal failure?

One very bright spot of the day was e-mail from the friend who owns the building where the Artist and I have our studio/gallery (his) and bookstore (mine) back in Northport, dear Clare proposing a financial accommodation that lifted a big load of worry off our minds. We had been discussing the situation and wondering how much we could ask of her — and then she initiated a solution with terms more generous than we had considered requesting. Relief!

And you might think that would set me up for the rest of the day, but a couple of Facebook exchanges managed to plunge me into another dark valley. By this morning I finally came to a decision and posted the following on my status: 

There was a piece on NPR yesterday about Internet outrage. People post stories about happenings that outrage them, and then other people chime in with their outrage, and everyone’s outrage builds, and everyone feels as if they’ve done something, but they have done nothing. The postings do not reach the people whose actions outrage them — and if they did, they certainly wouldn’t change any minds with ringing contempt and death wishes! 

I understand the outrage some of my friends express. It comes from fear. I’m afraid, too. And I don’t mind criticizing government officials: after all, they are in positions of responsibility, and being criticized, even criticized harshly, comes with those positions. But I cannot join a chorus of disdain and contempt and hatred for ordinary Americans, whatever they are saying and doing, however misguided I find their views, however dangerous I find their actions. I certainly cannot wish death upon them! And reading posts filled with contempt and hatred and death wishes contributes nothing but agitation to my already troubled mind. 

There were bright spots in my day yesterday, but a cloud hung over all, brought on solely by a couple of Facebook exchanges. So I am going to be looking less, reading less, and joining in certain comment threads not at all, for the sake of my own mental health. Yes, everyone is “entitled” to their feelings and their free expression of those feelings. I am, likewise, “entitled” to express my disapproval of their expressions. Freedom of speech is a two-way street. But I’m not changing any minds, either. I’m not convincing anyone to refrain from rants. 

So right now I need to withdraw, even to pull away from certain of my friends. These times are hard enough for all of us. We all have our worries and fears already. And I do not find expressions of hatred helping me or anyone else, so if you want to engage in them, fine, but I’m turning you off. It’s what I need to do right now. And you won’t even miss me, I guarantee it. 

That, at least, was my draft. [I have now broken it into paragraphs, here and on Fb, at a friend's request.] Pasting it into Facebook meant losing the italics — and you know I am addicted to italics! (Note to self: try to wean yourself away from italics. Good, strong writing does not need italics! Or underlining....) By posting that paragraph in blue above to Facebook this morning, I was able to climb back up to higher mental health ground, though my spiritual feet still slip from time to time — on the loose gravel, as it were — due to not having heard from an old friend since she last e-mailed a week ago to tell me her husband was hospitalized for coronavirus. 

Ups and downs, joy and fear, gladness and anger. Deep breaths, deep breaths. I know you know what I mean. It is our world today.

Thank heaven for our old girl!