ON CAPITALIST HOOEY, PASSING THE BATON, AND ENJOYING A SUFFERING BASTARD
Tuesday April 27 and Friday April 30 2021
Dear Sarah,
I’m starting my letter to you early this week — I’m feeling a turning of the tides. Yesterday I said to M that I was feeling more relaxed than I had been, more relaxed than usual. (Now, as the week ends, I can’t say I’m feeling relaxed, per se, but I’m hoping the weekend will help set me right again! Even just reminding myself that I felt this way earlier in the week is bringing a bit of renewal to this Friday evening.)
A few moments of note:
Today I pulled a shirt out of the closet that I hadn’t worn in many months, possibly years; lately I’ve been comfortably wearing a few articles of clothing again and again. Suddenly I felt inclined toward something different!
You and I launched a new project with our friend J, and J herself is turning over some new leaves.
This week M and I bought plane tickets using a credit from the canceled Tucson trip of March 2020, which fell in that infamous week when everything really shut down; we’re planning to go to Connecticut this summer. Then I used the rest of the credit (such credit!) to buy a ticket to San Francisco for mid-October. I daydreamed ever so briefly about an international trip, but I still can’t tell if or when an international trip will seem like a good idea again.
We ordered a new washing machine, and as of Friday morning, it’s all set up and ready to go! Somewhat boring, but also thrilling when you’ve been using a washing machine that dates from the ‘90s!
A colleague emailed to say they’ve hired for a role where I’ve been helping to bridge the gap, and that they’ll need my work a bit less but still for certain projects; at the same time, I connected with a new client for whom I’ll be doing some work this week and perhaps thereafter in May and June. A passing of the baton, in some ways. And I’m on the cusp of finishing a project that has been absorbing much of my spring. Work continues on its braided path, a few strands held to the side while others move to front and center.
The Hennepin County Public Library is, at long last, reactivating their due dates, and thus the Eva Rogers branch of the library — encompassing 38 books in my possession! — must be returned over the next few weeks. The oldest book from the library still in my hands was checked out in January of 2020. I would say oops except that I’ve intentionally held onto these books while returning others along the way… and now it’s nearly 18 months later! Oops?
Last but certainly not least, I’m getting my vaccine on Friday. (Getting ready to leave for my appointment momentarily!) And now I’ve turned to the final look over my letter this Friday evening a bit sooner than intended, because I suddenly worried I felt the first possible flush of nausea. I think I’m imagining it — I’ve been working too much over the past couple of days, and eating in dribs and drabs instead of round meals — but still, it’s a good time to make sure my letter makes it safe and sound into your inbox!
All in all this week, I can feel the horizon shifting or opening up, making space for me. I am going to try to resist filling it in with the regular chaff of the day-to-day, and to hold onto that time and energy for projects I’ve been steeping in my mind or in conversation with you.
The tulips are showing their buds and a few of them have been nibbled away or have been lost to the shifting weather patterns of this strange spring, but the rest are ready to bloom, or blooming.
This week I learned about a project called the Bureau of Linguistical Reality; I was drawn there by words about the artist Ranu Mukherjee and her co-creation of the concept of shadowtime. Shadowtime strikes me a bit like the spirit of Speck Syndrome — juxtaposing the ways in which we exist in a fully detailed and personally meaningful fashion, while also existing as a fleck in a time span that has preceded us by billions of years and will likely continue on for billions more.
In the midst of it all I also missed a virtual event I meant to go to on Monday, then missed another virtual event on Tuesday because I had it on my calendar for Wednesday. On Thursday, gently righting my topsy-turvy ship by actually making it to an event on the right day, I went to Part Two of the participatory performance event I attended recently — the guided phone call with a stranger, created by 600 Highwaymen — and this time I had a face-to-face (masked) encounter with a stranger in a room. We sat at a plywood table with a plexiglass barrier between us, and a set of cards also between us, guiding our interactions. Over the course of an hour, we asked questions of each other, showed our hands, and envisioned ourselves meeting in scenarios beyond our masked moments in the black-box theater. At the end, we didn’t leave together; in my predetermined role, established by my seat relative to the guiding cards that pointed to one or the other of us and spurred our actions, I was the one who left the room first, continuing out into the world and leaving my less-a-stranger-partner behind. Even though she stayed seated likely for minutes after I had left, as I made my way to my car and drove away, I kept thinking she must be right behind me, following in her car, the interaction continuing. Instead, I was surrounded by cars full of other people, imagining masked interactions with each of them.
I had many thoughts on your letter of last week that I have yet to adequately attend to! Among such points, I will note here that Deanna Dikeman’s photo series of her parents undid me; while I readied our letters to post, I unraveled for a bit in tears, then bundled myself back together to complete the act. Somehow I couldn’t believe I had missed that story — even though there are endless things I miss every day — and still it felt like the right time to be seeing it when you shared it last week. Thank you!
Tonight M is intent on enjoying a Suffering Bastard, about which a family friend told him, and which I keep recalling to myself as a Smug Bastard… which is no reflection on either M or our family friend. If I’m not beset by nausea I might join him in some sips! I hope you have the happiest of weekends (College!), and I look forward to reading your words this eve! Until soon!
Your friend,
Eva
April 30, 2021
Dear Eva,
It is nearly 10 PM on Friday, and I am just now sitting down to start my letter. When I imagined this late evening writing sesh earlier this week, it sounded luxurious. Bill is away for the weekend, so this post-kid-bedtime time is wide open time today. What I did not factor in, however, was how spent I might be after a 30 mile bike ride in the bright sunshine and an evening wrangling kids on my own. I tried getting the juices flowing just now by listening to some ancient 90s music I haven’t heard in decades, but it just made me feel weird. (Not exactly sure what my logic was there—maybe middle school nostalgia will energize me? Yeah, no.) I turned it off and am now sitting in silence. I will not be able to wait for inspiration in this powering-down body of mine. They are calling out “last call” at the dark and smoky bar that is my current brain space. I will do my best with these remaining minutes!
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The format of this letter belies the halting way in which the words are coming out, or rather being written and then deleted. I have also done a fair amount of staring at the screen while contemplating what would happen if I just went to bed, or whether I might take a quick power nap, or lamenting the fact that I didn’t write this letter in the morning on my DAY OFF, argh! My head feels physically heavy, like I cannot hold it upright without effort, and thinking feels slow and arduous. Over the course of the week,I wrote down notes of several topics I wanted to reply to from your letter last week, and a few additional items I heard or consumed or thought and planned to weave in here. But I refuse to waste my prior notes on this clunky version of my brain.
Our dog Marlowe keeps jumping up from his prone position every time he hears a sound outside. It startles me every time, but I am quite certain it is because he is waiting for Bill to come home. Dogs are funny creatures! I remember that Bill’s stepdad used to tell us that their German Shepard knew whether it was a workday or weekend by the shoes that he put on in the morning. At the time, before we had a dog of our own, we thought it was a bunch of hooey. Two dogs of our own later, I absolutely believe it. The way dogs observe our habits and expressions and voices is remarkable—sometimes I wonder if Marlowe knows some bits of us better than we do! Needless to say, his favorite family member is out of town and no one cleared this with him. He seems to be on edge.
As I mentioned when we spoke, I am trying (again) a new experiment of getting up around dawn for one hour of writing time before the house wakes up. I have decided this is really the only way to make sure it happens. The work days are too busy and distracting, the early evenings filled with kid time, and the late evenings too low-energy (tonight being a case in point!). The Beth Pickens book I sent to you, Make Your Art No Matter What, was the catalyst for this new habit. That book, which I am almost all the way through, has been the perfect framing of all of the creative conundrums I have, the book I have been waiting for my whole life. Unlike others in the genre, she makes no assumptions about what role work plays in your creative life and even goes so far to suggest that maybe it’s better to decouple your art from your paid job. (I find this infinitely more accessible and resonant than the strand of this genre that pushes you toward meaningful paid work, as if the one way to fulfillment in life is matching personal passion to moneymaking. This feels like a pipe dream, and a bit of capitalist hooey if you ask me.) Pickens also confidently answers the question we have grappled with many times in these letters—what does it mean to be an artist? She says you are an artist if you need a creative outlet to feel whole, nothing more. I guess I am an artist after all. And even though I know that I feel better in all the ways when I find/make the time to write, I so easily let myself go months on end without it. (Exception: these letters, and our project with J. Having the external accountability of other humans and a deadline keeps me honest, but on the personal stuff without structure, I have a really hard time holding to the commitment.)
It is now four minutes to 11 PM, and I have managed to write a few hundred words that appear to string together into reasonable sentences. Success! Week 135 shall not be the week we (I) break our streak of Friday postings.
Since you had your second shot today, you were the one we thought faced a physical deadline. Did you fade out this evening like I did? I hope you are either enjoying your evening or fast asleep, or both, because sleep is darn enjoyable if you ask me. In fact, it is calling me now, so sweet dreams, my friend!
Here’s to a more alert letter next week! Happy weekend!
Yours,
Sarah