The Observable Universe | Weeknotes 1/6
The craft of talk, recycled textile baskets, soup joumou, Irish paganism, barbell lifting, mystic nunnery gardens and the case for European animism.
Comrades—
B’s Grandaddy could talk. He had a real gift for making people (and by this term I do include squirrels and every dog he ever met) comfortable. B’s Dad inherited this skill: he puts it that way because it's something that can be learned and practiced. Dad had it harder—he was the sort of guy meatheads wanted to pick on, thinking he was an easy target. He was tougher than he looked, but most of all he was disarming – because he had learned to talk with anybody about anything, and quickly get them to open up to whatever mattered most. It's a verbal rope-a-dope that may have started out as self-protection, but became something much deeper in his vocation as a minister. People need to talk and be heard, and what can't be said is often desperate to come out.
When J was a young journalism student in Boston, Michael Rezendes – one of the lead journalists on the exposé of the Roman Catholic church’s cover-up of clergy sex abuse – came to speak to her class. He, too, had the art of talking to anybody about anything. What stayed with J, all these years later, was his answer when asked, “How did you get the abuse survivors to talk to you?” After all, most of them were Boston Catholic working class men, not famously talkers in the first place, and not inclined to open up easily about the worst thing that ever happened to them.
Rezendes considered the question for a moment, and then said: “Because I used to be a taxi driver.”
Because he used to be a taxi driver, he could talk to them about their neighborhoods. Ask where they’re from, and recognize their street, and ask if so-and-so still owns the pub, and if anyone ever bought up so-and-so building. And he said that sometimes he would make small talk – not small at all, really – about Boston neighborhoods for three, four, five meetings with his interviewees without ever asking them a question about their abuse. At some point, they would be comfortable enough – would trust enough – to share the information that Rezendes needed to know. J remembers him saying “I never would have won a Pulitzer if I hadn’t been a taxi driver.”
Coming into this new year, we've been reflecting on these things: that the craft of talk is worth learning, and that the most unexpected (and sometimes difficult) events of our lives can bloom, later, into meaning.
Jessie & Brian.
Earth
I've been starting my year off right with one course on how to make recycled textile baskets and one on setting M.A.G.I.C. goals. -J
New Year's Day is also Haitian Independence Day. This year, it was my job in my family to make the soup joumou (also griot and banan peze, by popular request), traditionally eaten on that day dating back to the revolution. -J
I'm taking the New Year as a time to get back to the gym, in part because I have always liked training and being with people when I do so, but also because I don't have a barbell rack. And it's fantastic. But also, J helped me get back in the right vibe with these articles from Casey Johnston. -B
Fun fact- Monty Don's Adriatic Gardens episode 1 offers a tour of a Venetian Carmelite nunnery garden that depicts St. Teresa of Avila's seven levels of mysticism. (Related: next session of Jessie and Marissa's female ecstatic saints journeying group is St. Dwynwen on Friday, Jan 27th at 12 PST / 3 EST / 8 GMT. Contact one of us for more info!) -J
Sea
I'm currently reading Irish Paganism by Morgan Daimler, and this quote jumped out at me: "What this means in practical terms is that of truly understand a culture you must understand the language of that culture," which... I agree with but take a broad definition of. The art, dance, and food of a culture can also give you windows into the ways of thinking that create it. All of them are important to get your hands on. However, I am also taking this more literally and am learning Scottish Gaelic: feel free to join me on Duolingo. -B
A lovely little cover of The Humours of Whiskey -B
If you've finished Andor and are looking for more anti-imperial resistance, I've been moved by Rebellion, a drama set in the Easter Rising of 1916 and its aftermath. It doesn't flinch from complexity but also never swerves from supporting the difficult task of becoming free. -B
Sky
Rune Rasmussen laying out the case for European animist traditions being essential to dismantling whiteness. -B
This week's poem comes from my dear friend Hannah Larrabee and is published over at Flypaper Lit. You can find more of Hannah's work at www.hannahlarrabee.com.
The Observable Universe
by Hannah Larrabee
We’ve all heard the question why is the sky blue? but why is it dark at night?
is something else entirely. It becomes a story beneath the science, like
infrared of Botticelli’s “Man of Sorrows” revealing a sketch of Madonna
and child. What did he decide? Was it prayer rearranged into another
prayer? We are left with what is observable, what we are meant to see.
The universe itself is illuminated just right; what we see is light having
traveled this far and that’s it. So much light still on its way. We’ll never
see it all, no human being, but maybe a tarsier with big soft eyes or some
distant relative gripping a tree, the night sky getting brighter. I’d hate it.
Leave me inside the sensuous dark or at least be bold enough to bring me
a brighter lover to obscure the sky: Andromeda, or maybe Saturn and its
rings taking a closer seat, the scale model of desire collapsing. 12 degrees
tonight and a ladybug clings to the kitchen light. The stars are clear as hell
in this crisp air. When I ask what is observable? what I mean is what is still
making its way to me? I’ve been told we create the kinds of relationships
we want, and of course that’s true but it doesn’t consider the distance
required to travel. It matters sometimes to be far away. I am standing
watching the ladybug wondering which prayer was closer to Botticelli--
the one he hid from us, that seems right.
As Casey says, that's good enough!
For me the hardest part of going to the gym is actually getting myself up to go to the gym. Once I’m there I notice I’m golden. I also learned I have to go first thing in the morning bc I can’t keep the afternoon routine w dad and work responsibilities. End up giving myself kudos for the act of going more so than what I’m actually doing in there.