The Staggering Story of Humanity: an interdisciplinary exploration and chronicling of the human condition. Glimpses, whispers and shouts yearning to find meaning.
Set foot into a season of rest
Embody a room once empty
Filled now with creation
Photographs and poetry
Humanity in space and time
Slowly walk
Pause
Look
Think
Reflect
Slowly walk again
With all the searchers for meaning
Moving like light through the trees
Intentional tangible experience
Breathe in the encounter
Let it linger in your imagination after you leave
The sabbath in art
A Lament…
For recent times
When I wrote in dimly lit bars
Words jotted in a moleskin notebook
Succor for my soul
When it was raining and the words come easy
In coffee shops and cafes
Places of mystery and inspiration
Spaces of solace and solitude
When I was lost deep inside myself
Flowing through time
Surrounded by the white noise of humanity
Longing for these times to arrive anew
At peace writing
Alone amongst the crowd
The cost of this pandemic is not in the percentages – either of the survivors or the dead. But, in the actual human lives lost – the family member, the friend, the colleague, the neighbor, the lover, the child. A human life gone because of ignorance and lack of vision.
“There’s a grief that can’t be spoken,
There’s a pain goes on and on.
Empty chairs at empty tables,
Now my friends are dead and gone…”
~ Les Misérables, Empty Chairs at Empty Tables
Wait Without Hope
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.
~ T. S. Eliot, East Coker
“April is upon us, pitiless and young and harsh.”
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
“April is the cruellest month…
I will show you fear in a handful of dust…
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience…”
~ T.S. Eliot, excerpts from The Wasteland
I went to Duluth yesterday to photograph “Stay at Home – Day 8” – last Saturday I photographed emptiness in black and white. This week the sun was out and so were people. I chose to mostly process the photos in color with a few exceptions. It seemed right for the day and my mood. There were more people around and outside than I had expected, and I am not sure what to think about that. People have to get out and feel the sunshine and the wind and move and yet there was an eeriness to humanity moving freely amongst a deadly virus. A few people had face masks on, and some had gloves at Target. Unfortunately, the mask I saw were worn improperly with noses exposed or very loosely fitting. The gloves worn into a store and then back into a vehicle do nothing to protect you. I witnessed two individuals in a car with masks and gloves on and thought of that image of a metaphor for this time of ignorance, lack of preparation and vision. We keep moving without knowing where we are going thinking we are safe. As Jürgen Moltmann writes, “It is in the foreign country that we first come to cherish home. It is only when we have been driven out of paradise that we know what paradise is. Every perception requires detachment and ‘alienation’. That is why all self-knowledge is always a little too late, or a little too soon. In the pressure of events we are blind to what these events are.”
Another aspect to this pandemic is the defining of “essential” workers. I believe some like medical personal, law enforcement, fire and EMS, scientists are essential but the claim that the many of the other industries are essential is more of a comment on the desire to keep capitalism alive and well. Most white-collar workers can work from the relative safety of their homes while that is not the case with the blue-collar work force or low-income workers. It is almost as if a calculation is being made to the percentage of people that can be sacrificed for others to have the life, they expect living in America? As the president said, “The cure can’t be worse than the disease.” As I have written already, I believe there will be a reckoning to come after this when people realize the cost of this pandemic is not in the percentages – either of the survivors or the dead. But, in the actual human lives lost – the family member, the friend, the colleague, the neighbor, the lover, the child. A human life gone because of ignorance and lack of vision.
Here are some images from yesterday in Duluth, MN:
The cost of this pandemic is not in the percentages – either of the survivors or the dead. But, in the actual human lives lost – the family member, the friend, the colleague, the neighbor, the lover, the child. A human life gone because of ignorance and lack of vision.
“This is going to be imprinted on the personality of our nation for a very long time.”
~ Dr. Anthony Fauci
“The martini felt cool and clean… I had never tasted anything so cool and clean. They made me feel civilized. I had had too much red wine, bread, cheese, bad coffee, and grappa. I sat on the high stool before the pleasant mahogany, the brass, and the mirrors and did not think at all.”
~ Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
~ Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
My grandmother Olga survived the 1918 Spanish Flu and lived to be 98 years old. Every time I was sick as a child, she would remind me that she survived the Spanish Flu by eating garlic and drinking Brandy. She would insist on preparing food for me with plenty of garlic to ward of whatever it was that was making me not feel well.
My memories of her and her resilience are entwined with meals, food, drinking, dancing and laughter. Perhaps, it is these things that can sustain us during a season of pandemic, whether we are with friends and family staying home together or more isolated and with other people virtually in some way.
Shared meals bring people together even if mediated by Facetime, Facebook or Zoom. Seeing each other eating food and drinking we are reminded of something shared as humans – solidarity in the human experience around a table. Food unites. An open table for intimates and the stranger – no one is an outsider, there is no other. We create a space for shared experience and a place for stories and belonging. My grandmother modeled these values for me. By her living through the Spanish Flu, The Great Depression and World War II, she embodied sustainability and was able to laugh and dance and celebrate life.
Another story from World War II come from Franklin D. Roosevelt and his implication of a mandatory happy hour at the White House during the war as means to relax and maintain some form of normalcy during a crisis. “One of the primary ways in which FDR dealt with the stress of his responsibilities was to convene each day in his second floor study in the White House a gathering of friends and associates that he called ‘The Children’s Hour’”( FDR – The Children’s Hour).
Jerry Anderson continues, “It was a time FDR set aside to meet informally with his political family and friends. He had begun this tradition during his years as Governor of New York and had institutionalized it during his years in the White House.” Anderson describes the “Children’s Hour” this way:
“…no talk of politics, Depression or war was allowed. Jokes, gossip, and funny stories and anecdotes from the day were the topics of conversation. FDR would tell his own tales while engaging in one of his favorite pastimes, that of mixing drinks for all of his guests. He would sit in his wheelchair next to a table filled with the alcoholic beverages necessary to make any kind of drink for his visitors. Martinis seemed to be the preferred drink. As people would filter into the second-floor study, they would approach the President, say “hello,” and the President would ask them what they would like to drink. The guest made a request and the President made the drink and gave it to him or her. As the “Children’s Hour” went on the atmosphere became loose, loud and full of gaiety. As he mixed drinks for his guests, he would increase their strength if he wanted to create a more relaxed and uninhibited atmosphere.”
We find ourselves in unique and trying times, feeling anxious and living in liminal spaces. I believe we can learn lessons from my grandmother and FDR on how to sustain our humanity by laughter and by finding some levity in the midst of serious times. By sharing a meal and a martini, whether at home, with family or on a screen with friends, we can find solace from isolation and fear.
A secret for you…
This world…
Is a blessing and a curse
You will know both
Beauty and horror
It is okay…
To know both and all that is in-between is to be alive
Grace will dance with you
So, walk…
Walk on…
Hold dear all you love
Embrace the mystery
All you touch will become sacred
Experience all of life you can bear
Inhale it all
Savor the aroma of the sublime
“Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.”
~ Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
Last night I drove to the Minneapolis Airport Herbert Humphry Terminal 2 to pick up Donna (my partner) who was flying home from Ft. Myers, Florida. She had been down there for a week to be with a dying friend on what will undoubtedly have been her last birthday. We had talked about the risks of flying to Florida as cases of Covid – 19 continued to increase across America and the world. Donna is an RN and she spoke with two epidemiologists about traveling and they said with proper precautions she would be fine. There will be more risk for Donna when she returns to work on Wednesday as a nurse in Duluth, MN. Her going to Ft. Myers a gift of time to a dear friend who will probably not be alive in a month.
In these times we now find ourselves living in perhaps gifts of time in whatever way are sacred offerings. As Simone Weil said, “I cannot love without trembling.”
When I arrived at the airport, I parked my car and entered the airport to wait for the arrival of Donna’s plane. I wanted to experience what it would be like inside the terminal. It was eerily quiet and vastly empty. I walked around soaking in the absence of humanity in a space usually occupied with life. I observed and took photos and I thought to myself is this what Covid – 19 (a post-modern plague) is doing to humanity? Creating spaces and suspending time. Or as the Irish poet says in the interview below, “diverting newness.” Not that Covid – 19 is in itself something good, it is in fact horrible. Yet, what we as humanity do in spite of it and in the face of it and because of it which, “…takes our eyes away from the obsession of the moment.” This can define us by embracing the fragility of life with compassion in a time of anxiety and suffering.
“Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.”
~ John 8:6-8 NRSV
I thought of this image of Jesus writing in the sand because of an interview I heard years ago. This portion of an interview is taken from the Paris Review, Fall of 1997 No. 144. It is called “Seamus Heaney, The Art of Poetry No. 75” where Heaney is interviewed by Henri Cole. The complete interview is here: (http://www.theparisreview.org/…/the-art-of-poetry-no-75-sea…)
INTERVIEWER
“Don’t you argue in an essay—using the example of Jesus writing in the sand—that poetry has the power to suspend violence? You suggest that it wasn’t important what Jesus wrote in the sand, but it was the unexpected gesture of his turning away from the stoning of a prostitute and writing in the sand that stops the stoning or suspends it.”
HEANEY
“Yes. Debate doesn’t really change things. It gets you bogged in deeper. If you can address or reopen the subject with something new, something from a different angle, then there is some hope. In Northern Ireland, for example, a new metaphor for the way we are positioned, a new language would create new possibility. I’m convinced of that. So, when I invoke Jesus writing in the sand, it’s as an example of this kind of diverting newness. He does something that takes the eyes away from the obsession of the moment. It’s a bit like a magical dance.”
So, the metaphor of plague “…a bit like a magical dance…” or put another way an opening to something new. What can we hold onto and sustain together? What injustices can we avert by our own writing in the sand? Are there diversions we can create by gifts of time to bear witness to a shared renewal in humanity? To not allow, “…the terror of the unforeseen…” to paralysis us.
“…the unfolding of the unforeseen was everything. Turned wrong way round, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as ‘History,’ harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.”
~ Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
The Face of Humanity