finding a voice. [ west of the moon, 18 march 2017 ]
My freshman year in college, I was good friends with one of the guys who lived upstairs in my dorm. A lot of the appeal in hanging out with him was that he was cynical and sarcastic about everything. I suppose it was a mean-spirited sense of humor, but I was eighteen and drowning in uncertainty about my place in the world, and I felt like his attitude delineated a very clear us-and-them circle; I was on the inside, for some reason, and his constant dry skepticism was always directed to the outside.
(Related tangent: I wouldn't be that age again for anything. I felt like I'd completely lost my sense of self. I'd been very invested in the idea of college as a fresh start, a clean slate, but the problem with a clean slate is that you need to know what you want to draw. I was in my mid-twenties before I regained a feeling of knowing who I was.)
One afternoon that winter, right after the first significant snowfall of the season, he knocked on my door. He was going out to take some pictures, did I want to come? He had this big cool-looking camera -- y'all, this was pre-digital photography, it's genuinely hard to remember what that was like. Did I even own a camera? I mean, I must have, I have an actual photo album from freshman year, but I can't remember the camera or the film. Anyway.
We went out walking, in the snow and ice, to take pictures. While we were walking, he explained that it was hard to find good pictures, especially at a time like this, when everything was so pretty. Anyone can just point a camera at an iced-over branch and get a pretty picture; finding something unusual or interesting was harder.
Looking back, I can see what he was getting at, and I can also see that he was probably doing some version of the same self-finding that I was; maybe he was trying to get a handle on what "art" meant. (Related memory: junior year of college, Sus storming in to lunch straight from a literature seminar and slamming a box of cereal on the table. "Is this art? The picture on the box, is that art? What if I photocopy it? Is that photocopy art? If I photocopy it and then color in the photocopy? When is it art? When does it stop being art?") At the time, the conversation made me feel small and boring, like my instincts were off. Cambridge in the depths of a winter snow, before normal life made everything slushy and grey, was beautiful. The iced-over branches glittered in the sun, the parked cars like sleeping bears tucked under their soft blankets of snow. Why did that beauty matter less just because everyone could recognize it?
Twenty-odd years later, I'm having trouble even writing this paragraph because Declan is trying to show me something on his tablet; he's drawn a rocketship made out of other rocketships, which is in fact pretty cool. I bought us a huge Crayola set a few weeks ago, one hundred and twenty crayons, and we've been drawing together sometimes. It's fun, and it's also a great exercise in being in the moment and letting go of trying to be perfect. I'm a crap artist. He doesn't know that and doesn't care. I drew a big tree and he drew a monkey and we were both pretty happy.
What I mean is, twenty-odd years later, my friend from college is a staff writer at a major national publication. He gets paid to produce dry sarcastic commentary, mostly on popular science topics. I'm a high school teacher. I get paid to try and make teenagers think deep thoughts about nineteenth-century imperialism.
What I mean is, I had two really big accomplishments in the last week, one personal and one professional. I successfully explained health insurance and the Affordable Care Act to a classroom full of fifteen-year-olds (they were so discombobulated from a double snow day and an epic bio test that I ditched the scheduled lesson and took questions on current events), and I shepherded Declan through the process of making a shoebox diorama of ocean life.
What I mean is, when I go to the park with my kid, I often end up taking a picture of the trees. There's something about the way the branches arc against the sky that hits me in a really visceral way, every time, and yeah, I've got fifteen or twenty nearly-identical trees-and-sky pictures in my phone, and I'm okay with that. There's not actually any shame in being ordinary.
This Week in Everything Else
Ugh, you guys, I'm back at work, and while it's very good to be back at work (no, for real, it is--I love my job) it's also very tiring. This is how it's been for the last month or two, in that I think I'm basically fine and then I overexert a little and suddenly I'm reminded, oh right, still recovering from heart surgery.
Heart surgery! This actually happened to me! It starts to feel surreal, like someone else's memories, except that I've still got this big scar on my chest. Also my blood pressure is still messed up and I get unpredictably light-headed. Also I missed three full months of school and I'm still off-kilter in my curriculum basically every day.
I have been reading... huh. I don't even know what I've been reading. We're going on vacation (more on that later) and I've been saving up a lot of books for the trip. I did read Commonwealth by Ann Patchett last week and it was lovely.
This Week in Brooklyn Style
I got new glasses! I spent a little more than I should have because I felt some ethical imperative to shop local, so rather than going the Zenni or Warby Parker route, I went to a new glasses shop in my neighborhood. It's a very small operation, one eye doctor and her assistant, both of them very adorable and earnest millennials. (The assistant wore plaid shirts with vests and bowties; the whole shop is furnished in reclaimed wood and artfully curated frames displays.) After five years with thin wire-frame glasses, these new ones are thick chunky frames, slightly cats-eye, dark purple. When I look at myself in the mirror with these new glasses, I feel more like myself than I have in a while.
This Week in Brooklyn Parenting
True story: we went to a fifth birthday party in an abandoned luncheonette that's being used as a gallery and events space by an artists' collective. The adults shared a bottle of prosecco, the kids spent a lot of time jamming themselves into an old wooden phone booth, clown-car style.
This Week in Internet
Kal Penn talks about racist roles he was asked to audition for. Celebrating A Day Without Women at Jezebel. The same, but at The Root. I've been collecting open tabs at Smitten Kitchen: Punjabi-style black lentils, Pasta with Garlicky Broccoli Rabe, Peanut Butter Swirled Brownies. Memories of happier times: Pete Souza's 2016 White House photo collection. TrumpPets are the White Hoteps. Moon Duchin is using geometry to fight gerrymandering. Jessa Crispin on feminism and personal integrity. When Serena Williams asks for an apology, Serena Williams gets an apology. Commentary on the show that became my medical-leave obsession: Person of Interest was too smart for prime time. "The Great Shame of Our Profession" (hint: contingent faculty.) Laurie Penny applies Peter Pan to the Milo problem.
I think that's it for now--with luck, more later.
--Susan