ON THE THINGS WE BUILD WITHOUT KNOWING, THE MEANING WE FIND, AND THE MEANING WE LEAVE BEHIND FOR OTHERS
Thursday, March 21, 2019
Dear Sarah,
This week I’m looking back at last week’s letters and also feeling a tingle as I think about something that’s been a current through our letters — I might not point to each one but I know it’s there throughout — this sense of doing, and when one is actually doing and when one is planning to do.
Last week in your letter you talked about how if you knew, really knew, your death was imminent, that you might somehow prepare a future of experiences of you for your children, “create a mountain of artifacts” for them to use as a proxy for you (impossible!), “little time capsules” to unlock your words. I pose for your consideration that the mountain of artifacts already exists! Perhaps it is not as fully intentional as the mountain you would create in your scenario of knowing and preparing — but still, you are in everything you do and write. You are even in the things you don’t write, the colorful collection of books on your shelf, spines organized in a rainbow. You are, perhaps mundanely but no less truly, documented in your texts and emails, whether or not you would expressly bequeath those to your children as a way of knowing you. (The email challenge multiplied for future generations!) I wonder if you have a box(es) somewhere of the briefs you wrote in law school or the stories and articles you wrote in journalism school. We’ve talked before about the extent to which each of us is a keeper or not, one who keeps, and you have said that you’re able to turn a pretty cool eye on things, but I wonder if and how you keep the things you have written? You keep a calendar, a notebook — these things tell a story, show your hand. Thankfully, of course, you are home safe from China, and your mountain of artifacts continues to grow even as you don’t look straight at its creation.
We’ve discussed, and perhaps I’ve included in a letter before, that sometimes I think it would be a relief simply to leave my business, my writings, my archive, in its mountainous artifact state as it currently exists, and for someone else to sort it out, to go through it all and extract some story or stories, make connections that perhaps I haven’t made yet myself. I like to engage in this process myself — the things I see change over time, and I see things from 20 years ago differently than I saw those things at only a one-year or a five-year remove. But I like the idea that someone else might look through it all, piece it together, see it. In some ways our letters are like this — writing and showing — and often what I think I am writing about catches your eye in a way I cannot have anticipated. If in my imagined scenario someone were going through my archive to make sense of it, and if I weren’t around, the relief of it would be a moot point, as perhaps I’d have no feelings at all, but still, I like to imagine that someone might be interested enough to do it, and I hope I and my archive might be interesting enough for it to be done! Perhaps we are thinking on either side of the same coin, leaving the archive, the mountain, and we differ in how we think of the intentionality of what already exists, and what is yet to be created.
I’m thinking again about R. Buckminster Fuller’s archives, and also thinking about something I read about Andy Warhol’s archives, that he would just throw everything into boxes — art, notes, garbage — and seal them up when they were full. And the thing I read was about how it is incredibly labor-intensive to document and preserve the boxes once they are opened, so there are many unopened boxes in the Warhol archive because it is such a commitment to open one in the first place. (I am certain I read this, but where? I’m still hunting for my source.) Each a veritable Campbell’s Soup can of worms!
You are a woman who leaves her mark wherever she goes, and your many mountains of artifacts trail behind you, a range crisscrossing this country and wrapping the world! From another peak, I salute you!
Your friend,
Eva
March 21, 2019
Dear Eva,
I have returned! It feels like a remarkably long time ago that I last wrote you from the airport on my way to Shanghai. I write now from the comfort of my couch, with my dark, lanky dog by my side, wondering why we are up so early but grateful for the early breakfast. I woke up at 5 AM today from jetlag and decided it was a reasonable time to start the day, given that it is 6 PM in China and my body is confused. I arrived home last night, and it feels so good to be here.
The trip was incredible. The entire journey was only 10 days, but an itinerary packed with presentations by a mix of American expats and Chinese citizens telling you what it is like to live and do business in a country while you physically experience the culture is a very efficient way to learn about a new place. I realize now how little I knew about China. Surely I must have picked things up along the way, but it seems some things don’t fully soak into my brain until my physical body partakes in the experience. To use your metaphor from last week’s letter, the trip revealed to me an entire new maze of rooms teeming with stories, culture, history. These are spaces that I knew were out there in the world, of course, but they never felt real or accessible to me until I zipped through the alleys of Beijing in a tuk-tuk, walked up the uneven stone steps of the Great Wall, ate noodles dripping with sauces that electrified my taste buds in brand new ways. It is exhilarating and dizzying to have this new portal open up for me.
I loved your comment last week about how all of these rich and complex layers of life can sometimes feel like a gravity blanket. It is so true! There is comfort in the heaviness of it all, a reminder that life is filled to the brim with more to learn and consume. Occasionally, there are moments in life where it all feels a bit empty, and it is lovely to be reminded with physical proof that there is new meaning to be found everywhere you look.
You mentioned the idea of me trying out collage. This is a fantastic idea! There is so much I love about collage, including the fact that it feels like a nice metaphor for the way I learn and move around in this world, gathering bits of material from every interaction, every experience, and finding new ways to put them back together. This is very much how I think about our letter-writing. Your words each week peel back and reveal new words in my brain, plant little seeds showing me different ways to visualize an idea or frame a problem. I draw from that material to construct something to throw back at you. Repeat. It seems to me this is the same process that occurs with a good juicy conversation, the push and pull of different ideas producing new insights. It is yet another glorious aspect of life that we can discover so much more within ourselves by experiencing and interacting with other people and surroundings.
There is a time in my life when I would have seen my need for material to draw from and bounce ideas upon as a kind of failure. Couldn’t a true creative or intellectual work confidently from a blank page? Maybe. But a lovely thing about aging is that I can finally accept how my mind works best and just go with it, rather than fussing over the way it might work if I were someone different.
This notion of being content with the self was on my mind quite a bit this past week and a half because another major facet of this trip was the experience of traveling with my classmates, none of whom I know very well. I got to know several people much better, and I had many interesting conversations over the course of the 10 days. But I spent a lot of time alone. While everyone else drank screwdrivers on the morning train from Shanghai to Beijing, I finished my book. While everyone else went out to karaoke and a nightclub, I ordered room service and spent time writing. I joined all of the planned activities (including the optional ones), but I relished my solitude during all of the free time. This meant I couldn’t join in on each morning’s rehashing of the prior night’s shenanigans, so I was a bit of an outsider to the group. Being alone while surrounded by people was a familiar feeling, kind of like slipping back into well-worn shoes. It strangely felt kind of good — a small bit of proof that I am okay being me, even when it means a bit of social isolation. But I’ll confess to being more than a little happy to be back to normal life, talking the ear off my no-podcast husband about everything I learned and experienced on my trip, sharing snuggles and laughs with my little boys, and returning with you to our regular rhythms of texting, talking, and writing in our ever-delightful long-distance friendship. We have so much more to add to our collage.
Yours,
Sarah