On tending the garden, hurling through the sky, and experiencing the now
March 10, 2019
Dear Eva,
I am writing you from a Delta Sky Club at the Detroit Airport during my connection en route to Shanghai. I only recently got a glimpse into these hidden little worlds for fancy people within larger worlds for harried common folk like me. How strange that these luxurious, abundant scenes operate in parallel while the rest of us vie for a seat to eat a Snickers and drink an $8 bottle of water while we wait for a flight. Today I’ve tagged along to this alternate world with classmates so I can enjoy some free food and comfy seating while I write you. I decided to write this week’s letter early in part for logistical reasons because I am not sure how much connectivity I will have in China, but also because I like the idea of having the next two letters be bookends for my trip. Pre-China Sarah, post-Sarah China. How different will my view look?
I woke up this morning to news of the Ethiopian plane crash. I’ll admit that it shook me a little. No matter how much I fly, there is always a little lingering anxiety about the prospect of hurling through the sky. Overall, though, I have to say I’m pretty proud of the uneventfulness of my departure this time around — both for me and for my wee family. Yesterday, out of the blue, Simon who is almost 3 years old asked nonchalantly, “Mommy, are you going to China before or after my nap?” Then he went on with his day.
It makes me happy to think about my kids being unphased by the thought of their mom being on the other side of the world for 10 days. They will grow up thinking that global travel is a given, that the discomfort that comes with being taken away from your daily life is worth it, that temporarily missing your loved ones so that you can have new experiences is just part of life. I get a little thrill from that because it is so antithetical to how I understood things as a child. It always felt to me like my yearning for new experiences — from sleepaway camps as a kid to choosing to take a job in Manhattan as an adult — constituted a kind of betrayal of the people I love most. So I scratched at it over time, trying small experiments of independence to see how it felt, to see if I could endure, if the relationships could survive physical distance. Of course they did, and gradually over time, I started to realize that relationships did not have to function as inhibitors. It took me a long time, and I want my boys to avoid that angst if they can. There are plenty of other things to rightly be angsty about and feeling guilty for choosing adventure and enrichment is not one of them!
As I prepared this last week for the trip, I thought about how interesting it is how we define the types of preparations for worst-case scenarios that are considered responsible vs. paranoid. Since my trip is school-sponsored, we were given a 7-page document listing things to do before the trip, precautions to take, things to bring just in case, emergency plans to have in place. Of course, no one tells you that you might want to write a letter to your children on the off-chance your plane plunges into the ocean or you are hit by a car in Beijing. That’s the sort of measure we tend to think crosses the line. It is interesting though. I wonder how much of our dismissal is rooted in an unwillingness to acknowledge our own mortality? Any time I leave home, I might not come back, and flying to China makes it at least slightly more likely that this might be the time. Thinking about that possibility makes me think about all I would want to do in preparation if I could somehow know it was coming. Create a mountain of artifacts for my children to use throughout their lives as a proxy for their mom, little time capsules that unlock my words at future dates. (Sidenote: Maybe these letters would somehow help serve that role?) This is a dark path for the brain, but it feels to me like a practical one. All of life is an unscientific blend of experiencing the now while planning for the future. Shouldn’t we all do some planning about the one thing in life that we know will happen to us all? Or is there something about preparing for the off-chance of an untimely death that pushes us too far into an imaginative pessimism that detracts from the present? I don’t know the answers, only the questions.
With that, I’ll close this wandering letter and prepare for my journey. I will miss our conversations and correspondence while I am away, and I look forward to picking up where we left off when I return!
Yours,
Sarah
Thursday, March 14, 2019
Dear Sarah,
You’ve noted before how much our letters are one thread in our communication process — we talk regularly, we spark ideas together, and we write these letters. They become a place where we can work and think a bit in private, flesh out some ideas, and send them to each other as a “unit” of sorts, to see what lands and sticks, and otherwise to add a layer to the passage of time and thought. This week (and beyond!) you’re away and we haven’t talked! So this letter feels like it’s more closely in conversation with your letter from last week, which is always part of the mix. I’ve missed talking with you this week!
If you were to take a core sample of our letters over this near-half-year, I think perhaps the density of our words has increased across the months — layering more substantially as we simultaneously dig deeper in our minds, in each others’ minds, into the words we use to express what needs expressing. Last week you wrote about wanting a concrete moment to stop and look back on our letters, to review them all at once. I’m looking forward to looking back — and I also feel like our letters’ meaning (and the opportunity to reflect on them) is there for me each week. Writing and reading our letters has been like digging and turning the soil of my mind, readying my brain to grow new thoughts. I’m not a plant person, per se; I forget to water things, assume they are taking care of themselves — but I see our letters as similar to a process of gardening: harvesting ideas every week, pruning back some weeds, watching the transformation of a seed or bulb into something leafy, green, maybe floral or fruity or prickly. And every week we turn the soil a bit so that new thoughts can grow and take shape. So, for me, there is no waiting! And yet, I share the sense with you that I will be excited to look back at the accumulated total thing we will have created when a year has passed. It’s different to look along the way than it is to look at the whole thing.
Also looking back at your letter from last week, I endorse working in a new medium! I’ve been taking a risograph printing class at MCAD (the Minneapolis College of Art and Design) that has just wrapped up. Risograph is a visually tactile way of printing, somewhere between screenprinting and photocopying. The class has meant I’ve been thinking in my design brain lately — thinking about patterns, juxtapositions, colors, what I want to surround myself with visually. Learning to draw sounds delightful. Have you ever tried collage? It has a low barrier to entry, in my view — it feels good to cut up found images, ideas, pieces from all over, and stick things together in places they weren’t originally intended but that tell a new kind of story. You described wanting to create an image of a person enveloped by words that weigh into her life — such a vivid picture — and I’m also thinking about gravity blankets, the way that weight can be calming, perhaps at the same time as it is heavy, a pressure in a more intense way. You were thinking about life-layers and the pressure of making sense of them all — I think I take some comfort knowing all the layers are there to be explored, and growing at the same time. It is somehow proof that one should never be bored. If you told me to explore a castle in which every room was filled to the brim with objects and details and stories, and then if you told me new rooms were constantly being built and filled, I would feel overwhelmed — though I like to I think I’d also feel excited to dig in. Better, I think, than if you were introduced to a cavernous empty house in which every nook and cranny was known and unchanging. Maybe there is something here I want to mull on further, about the urge to create and fill empty spaces, versus acknowledging that nothing is empty. New versus old? A mix of the two? I’ll get back to you.
You and I are different, and similar — what a thrill! Different things comfort us or make us uneasy. Perhaps there are many ways in which our comforts and uneasy-nesses are complementary. If you are uneasy when I am not (and vice versa) I can share my feelings, perhaps my coping strategies. I have an appreciation for Bill’s refusal to listen to podcasts! The push-pull of two people who can become so close but still remain separate and different — this is a wonder of being human. Being separate, and thinking about another’s likes and dislikes when they differ from my own — it’s a source of curiosity. I used to think that everyone thought about things the same way I did. If I had an idea I assumed others had the same idea racing through their heads. The surprise and delight of realizing that others have different ideas and ways of thinking about things — it is the infinite castle again. It means only I have certain ideas, or draw certain things together in certain ways, just as every other person does. I see and am drawn to different things, objects, ideas in different combinations than you would be, or Bill, or M. or anyone. The whys of it all, Why do you think that, what do you think makes you see things in that way?, and the constant realization that we are all deep and different, is a thrill to me. There must be some necessary samenesses to keep us connected — the pulls — and the pushes between us are where things get interesting. Here’s to mining our core samples and excavating along the way!
I miss you! Looking forward to talking soon.
Your friend,
Eva