Archives for category: Hope

Uncertainty, and hope

March 29, 2020 //
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I took this photo in the room where I currently spend most of my days. Hopper’s Automat hangs on the wall facing me, while behind is a window with bars. I sit equidistant between both. I love Hopper’s art, something about the melancholic aloneness. His work has always spoken to me, now more than ever. I watched a documentary on his life on youtube—a commentator stated that in Hopper’s paintings, time is elongated, stretched, contemplative, a sense of time slowing down.

In the current lockdown situation, I have been considering time and its meaning right now. The days pass quickly, which surprises me, but at the same time there is a slowness to my life. I seem to do things, particularly reading, at a different pace. And I like that—it feels as if I am more attentive, somehow, that life is more consciously deliberate. I was reading a piece in the New York Times by Olivia Laing. She reflects on time and its current meaning:

“Most of us are perennially short of time, and now we’re left hanging in it”

For me, it’s not a bad place to be hanging. But the sense of uncertainty does challenge. I am not in the country where I normally live. I do not know when I will see my daughter next. I do not know when I will next touch someone. Will someone I know and love contract the virus, and suffer? When will this end? Will it ever end?

There are so many unknowns. Before all this began, I thought that I had reached a place where I was relatively ok with the not-knowingness of life. But the pandemic challenges this, and me, on so many levels. The future is indeed unknown—it always was, really, and we mostly collude with the illusion that we can to some extent predict, and even control our futures.

My daughter finds solace in the shared experience that we are all going through (albeit to hugely varying degrees of suffering). I agree, the corporate nature of the pandemic—no one can escape its impact—is reassuring.

And then there is also hope. It’s too soon for me to think about the end of this, when and how we will emerge from our physically isolated worlds. And what that world might look like. But in the meantime, I am optimistic. Mainly about humanity and the acts of compassion that I observe daily. And the new connectedness that I am experiencing with friends old and new across the globe. People are what matter, they give life its greatest value, meaning, and joy.

And on the note of hope, from Derek Mahon:

Everything Is Going To Be All Right

How should I not be glad to contemplate

the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window

and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?

There will be dying, there will be dying,

but there is no need to go into that.

The lines flow from the hand unbidden

and the hidden source is the watchful heart.

The sun rises in spite of everything

and the far cities are beautiful and bright.

I lie here in a riot of sunlight

watching the day break and the clouds flying.

Everything is going to be all right.

 

CQ

 

 

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Categories Aloneness, Hope, Loneliness, Poetry, Time

Today is the one year anniversary…

May 2, 2019 //

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…of my arrival in NYC.

Someone at work today asked me what I have learnt over the past year. And so, what follows is a reflection on this question.

  1. Change. It suits me and I seem to have adapted pretty quickly. A good thing, I guess, although I do wonder whether my ease at readjusting at least partly results from closing the door too firmly on the past.
  2. Resilience. I have more of it than I had thought. Getting through many moments of existential loneliness has shown me this. And reassured me that I can do it.
  3. Aloneness. Life is really about finding my own meaning for myself. No matter who or what I am surrounded by, ultimately it is just me, and me.
  4. Mothering. I am not sure how I would have felt about this if I still lived in London and on the same continent as my daughter. As she heads towards being 21, I hugely miss the acuteness of my role in her life, while at the same time reveling in the joy of seeing her growing up and away, and happy in a world of her own making. I wish that there weren’t so many miles between us. And no experience in my life will ever match the wondrous time we continue to spend together.
  5. Joy. Moments that often surprise me, happening when least expected and triggered by the simplest of things – nature, people, music, art.
  6. Music. Joining an ensemble here with my cello has given me so much. Being able to “make” music with others is one of the best of things. I also now have a piano, and the very many hours I spend playing music and listening to it always rekindles a vitalness within.
  7. People. Last and not least. From casual and random interactions to the kindness of friends – new and old – I have come to truly appreciate the joy of a peopled life, something I did not value enough before.

And so, here I am. On to year two, with a little trepidation, but mostly excited and hopeful.

 

CQ

 

 

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Categories Hope, Kindness, Loneliness, Stories

On not watching the Super Bowl

February 10, 2019 //
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This event happened last weekend, apparently a pretty huge annual one here in the US. I was pretty unaware of it until that night, when the guy who helped me in a store told me how sad he was to be working and not watching the game.

As it happened, the weekend also marked nine months since my arrival in NYC, May 2018. Overall, I now feel pretty settled. Returning to the city following a Christmas/New Year break in London, I realized how much NYC, and my apartment, feel like home. Also, over the past few weeks I have noticed that most experiences in my adopted city no longer feel like I am encountering them for the first time (which is a little sad in a way – I do want to hang onto the excitement of the newness).

My non-engagement with the Super Bowl led me to wonder, however, the extent to which I have truly integrated. Have I merely exchanged one big multicultural city (London) for another? And also, what happens to one’s sense of identity when you move from nation to nation, neither of which is actually your homeland of origin? I was surprised to learn a few weeks ago that everyone I encounter here assumes that I am English. I guess that living for more than a couple of decades in London muted my Irish lilt, but still… Being here in the US, I feel more Irish than I ever have, and gratefully so.

Things I have (particularly) noticed over the past transplanted months:

Language and spelling – gray vs grey / arugula vs rocket / squash vs courgette / sleeper sofa vs sofa bed, the plethora of commas (something I have embraced enthusiastically, being a passionate advocate of same)… The list is exponential.

Directness – it is not just the language that can be different here, but also the way it is delivered. People generally say exactly what they mean, which was disarming initially but I have come to appreciate the directness. It makes you feel that whatever the agenda is, it is transparent to all.

Friendliness – I like that people randomly talk to you, on the street, on the subway. When you start off knowing almost no-one, the acknowledgement of your presence from strangers matters.

Excitement – someone said to me that living in NYC is like being permanently electrified. There is so much to discover, to interest, to energise, to excite. If you are up for it, and I generally am, the options are endless. Take, for example, last week, when I went to a loft apartment in Long Island City for a classical concert. The organisation Groupmuse hosts intimate concerts in people’s homes. The price is a small donation for the musicians, alongside BYOB, and for that you get to hear pretty amazing music and also to meet new people. The concert on this occasion was a cellist performance. Wondrous, and only around 14 of us present. I plan to host a concert in my apartment, too. I love the idea of people coming to my space and sharing such experiences.

I perceive life in technicolor here. I also believe that what I perceive is not how I want it to be, but for the first time, seeing life as it really is.

Living in NYC has also moved my passion for literature and reading to another level. New York Public Library is amazing. And free. I have an endless request list there. Plus, there are numerous, and often free, book events throughout the city. Of late I have seen Colm Toibin, Paul Muldoon, Brian Dillon, Jorie Graham, Tessa Hadley, Dani Shapiro, Elizabeth Gilbert, Maria Popova…

Being surrounded by so much has inspired me in other ways, too. I play the cello in an amateur ensemble. With a friend, we planning to host literary salons on all things pretentious! I am writing, a little, and aiming to do much more. Despite the busyness of life here, I feel as if my brain is almost paradoxically lighter, and open to more.

There are downsides, of course. The UK where my daughter is at school so often feels too far away. NYC is super expensive, though I am learning how to exist here more economically., and there is much culturally that is free.

Although this is gradually and surely improving, there have been moments of huge existential loneliness – stripped bare of that which had previously supported me, moving alone to New York exposed a vulnerable me that inevitably questioned the meaning of my life on more than one occasion. But those experiences have also helped me to understand myself better. Being so exposed, so stripped bare, has encouraged me to critically question my self – my thoughts, behavior, actions – in a (hopefully) constructive way.

I love this a quote from the Baal Shem Tov that I came across in the introduction to Dani Shapiro’s book, Hourglass:

“Let me fall if I must fall. The one I will become will catch me.”

Someone asked me this week where I am heading, what my life plan is. I had no definite or concrete answer. And I am glad of that. I have largely stopped trying to plan my life, and also, I have become mostly okay living with a “not-knowing.”

From Denise Levertov’s Variations On a Theme by Rilke:

“….The day’s blow

rang out, metallic or it was I, a bell awakened,

and what I heard was my whole self

saying and singing what it knew: I can.”

 

Which is what I have gradually come to experience over these past months – a self-belief, and the sense that I, too, can.

 

CQ

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Categories Aloneness, Hope, Literature, Loneliness, Poetry, Solitude, Stories

Two by two…

January 2, 2019 //
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“People are supposed to be married, supposed to go through this world two by two.”

from Clock Dance, Anne Tyler

I spent New Year’s Eve at a dinner party. I had a truly super time – lovely people, wonderful food, great fun. Eleven sat at the table – five couples, with me as the uneven eleventh. A not unusual situation. I have been divorced a long time, and more single than coupled ever since. The uneven number thing did strike me, though. Coupledom is the norm. Singledom creates an unevenness, an asymmetry that can be uncomfortable for many, and even threatening for some.

Most people I know (particularly in London, less so in New York) are married. Having once been married, and now residing in the alternate de-married world, I often consider my status/non-status. Rachel Cusk, in her novel Outline, says much that is interesting on the topic, including:

“You build a whole structure on a period of intensity that’s never repeated.”

“You don’t renounce it because too much of your life stands on that ground.”

Her words remind me of Philip Larkin’s, from his poem Marriages:

“To put one brick upon another,

Add a third, and then a fourth,

Leaves no time to wonder whether

What you do has any worth.

 

But to sit with bricks around you

While the winds of heaven bawl

Weighing what you should or can do

Leaves no doubt of it at all.”

Cusk also considers the illusory impossibility of marriage:

“When I think back to the time before, and especially to the years of my marriage, it seems to me as though my wife and I looked at the world through a long lens of preconception, by which we held ourselves at some unbreachable distance from what was around us, a distance that constituted a kind of safety from what was around us, a distance that constituted a kind of safety but also created a space for illusion.”

from Outline, Rachel Cusk

Elsewhere, Larkin is more playful in his ruminations:

“My wife and I – we’re pals. Marriage is fun.

Yes: two can love as stupidly as one.”

Marriage, Philip Larkin

Where does all of this leave me on the topic? I am not sure. For the most part, I am perfectly okay with my uneven number contribution to social gatherings. I hold no envy for married friends and strangers. Marriage is a complicated business, and one that I do not currently subscribe to.

Of course, coupledom and marriage are not synonymous. I absolutely believe in the possibility (and impossibility) of love, short-term or other:

“Il n’y a de vrai au monde que de déraisonner d’amour”

[The only truth is love beyond reason]

Alfred du Musset

This belief brings me to Shikibu’s words:

“My pillow

has become

a dusty thing–

for whom

should I brush it off?”

Izumi Shikibu

For whom, indeed? It will be interesting to see whether this time next year my contentment remains at being the uneven 11th, or whether I will choose to present myself within the evenness of a coupled 12.

 

CQ

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Categories Hope, Love

Reflections

December 29, 2018 //
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I took this picture at dusk while walking by the canal. It made me think about reflections – both the physical and the contemplative kind. The twilight time of year is particularly conducive to the latter as we pause, consider and reconsider the year that ends, and move on in a (hopefully) more surefooted way to the commencing one.

Although I am not generally into New Year Resolutions, I do appreciate this pause, the freedom to reflect back on past months. David Sedaris believes that we tend to remember sadness, not happiness, happiness being harder to put into words. There is a truth in that. However, I remember many moments of exquisite joy in recent times, mostly derived from the simplest of things – the beauty of water, the sense of sun’s warmth on my face, the smiles and kindnesses of others, the awareness of earth beneath my feet…

I have learnt more about myself this past year than ever before, which has both surprised and at times shocked me. In his wonderful novel, Early Work, Andrew Martin states that “the provisional life is easily unmade.” I like this, it inspires hope. As does Anne Lamott in Almost Everything–Notes on Hope:

“We can change. People say we can’t, but we do when the stakes or the pain is high enough. And when we do, life can change. It offers more of itself when we agree to give up our busyness.”

One thing I have learnt over the past year is that being open to change makes the experience of living so much more fulfilling.

“Living is no laughing matter:

you must live with great seriousness

like a squirrel, for example–

I mean without looking for something

beyond and above living.

I mean living must be your whole occupation.”

from On Living, Nazim Hikmet

Life is indeed a serious business, the realisation of which grows year on year with age. Living it in a lighthearted way, however, need not contradict this realisation.

Beckett’s refrain “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” is particularly apt as the old year fades. For me, as the new year approaches, Larkin’s (uncharacteristically) optimistic words resonate:

“New eyes each year

Find old books here,

And new books, too,

Old eyes renew;

So youth and age

Like ink and page

In this house join,

Minting new coin.”

from Femmes Damnées, Philip Larkin

 

CQ

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Categories Hope, Literature, Poetry