But They Do
They fuck you up, your mum and dad, the poem goes. There are those for whom that feels immediately, distinctly true; for the rest of us, Larkin wrote the next line: “They may not mean to, but they do.” (For those who aren’t familiar with the poem, it’s called This Be The Verse, and you can read it here.)
I’ve been thinking about my upbringing lately, about my childhood and the things I learned then without realizing it. Consciously, I’ve always thought that I had a good, healthy childhood, a happy one that left me free from any immediate trauma or mental scarring. That’s likely true, but the older I get, the more I realize that it’s the not-so-immediate trauma and mental scarring that’s the problem; the stuff that got inside your head and shaped your view of the world and yourself without anyone — including you — even noticing.
Take, for example, my family’s general inability to openly express affection. I knew I was loved, it was never in doubt, but it was never really directly stated, and as a result, I had (and still have, to an extent) problems saying it clearly myself. I can’t remember for sure, but I think the first time I told my parents I loved them outside of being a little kid was when I was leaving to move to the US; I was in my mid-twenties. That feels too late, to me, now.
Or, for that matter, there’s the idea that you deal with any problem yourself, hiding it away as you solve it so that it’s not a burden. Objectively, I know that’s ridiculous and would argue against it for anyone else, but for me it feels, still, like the best option. Asking for help? Why, that might make others think less of me, and that would be a disaster…!
The irony being, of course, that both of these things cause trouble when they’re inside your head, insidiously pretending to be true, even as both whisper that believing them means you’re being less trouble, keeping your head down. I think of these now as lessons taught to me by my parents, unwittingly and unknowingly on all our parts, and am reminded of the next part of the Larkin poem: “They fill you with the faults they had/And add some extra, just for you.”
July 15, 2020
July 14, 2020
Good Morning Good Morning Good Morning Good
We’re at the point in the year where we can sleep with the windows open without fear of waking up the next morning feeling as if we’ve frozen solid; indeed, without warning, we ended up at the point where not having windows open makes the air feel thicker and, just maybe, it’s time to think about sleeping on top of the sheets, too. (It is the end of June, of course; okay, maybe there was some warning.)
The reason I mention this isn’t to update on how I’m sleeping or my temperature regulation activities; it’s because, as the weather improves and the windows open, I’m rediscovering the joys of listening to the morning anew.
I’ve previously written about how quiet the house is first thing in the morning, but the rest of the world doesn’t follow suit, wonderfully. There is bird song, as countless different birds chirp and warble to each other in high-pitched Morse Code that seems as pretty but unintelligible to me as it does incessant; lists to it, the invention of music feels inevitable — it wasn’t even as if humans had anything to invent, given how melodic, repetitive and rhythmic the birds have been singing all along. We just ripped them off and gave it a different name.
But it’s not just nature out there. There’s the sound of cars in the distance, that slowly increasing, then decreasing hum of the engines and the crunch of the road underneath the tires. I lie there, listening and unintentionally trying to work out where each car is, relative to me. That one’s on Belmont, but this new one has to be on Cesar Chavez…? and so on. I don’t really mean to do it, it doesn’t matter, but I can’t stop myself, nonetheless.
And then there are the occasional footsteps, even in these quarantine times — although, of course, the quarantine is losing its strength as time goes on. I listen to people walk past, jog past every now and then, hear snatches of music or conversation as they do. It’s a gentle reminder that this isn’t a bubble or a life raft, but that I’m part of something larger, a world out there, filled with life, ready for me to wake fully and join in.
July 13, 2020
July 10, 2020
All I Ever See Is Them And You
The joy of the THR newsletter graphics is their speed, the way in which they go from “here’s the headline” to completion in a matter of minutes. In many ways, it’s like subconscious design, which allows for both happy accidents and unexpected moments of, if not inspiration, then at least discovery that I find myself fond of afterwards. Here’s the latest batch, with perhaps the happiest accident yet.
Easily my favorite moment of miscommunication, the following graphic had to be reworked two different times after my editor initially mixed up Alexander Skarsgard and Peter Sarsgaard, and then, upon realizing his error, didn’t communicate it with me until the last minute so I had to change the image to make sure we weren’t showing the wrong actor. We’re all very professional, I promise.
July 9, 2020
One Down, One to Go
When July started, I saw enough people talk about us being midway through 2020 that I ended up researching it; surely that couldn’t be right, could it? February is so short that we must be a week off or so, surely, before we catch up again? Surely we can’t actually be halfway through the year?
Much of that disbelief came from, simply, the feeling that we couldn’t be half done with the year just yet. (More cynically and dramatically, that the year wasn’t half finished with us yet, perhaps, but, it’s been that kind of a year.) 2020 has been existentially difficult, a year that’s assailed us in ways that I’m not sure I could have really seen coming in any way beyond jokingly imagining worst case scenarios that could never, really, come true; a year that looked at my End Of 2019 wish that, coming off a year that saw my divorce and attempts to rebuild my finances in the wake of that, maybe the next 12 months would be just a little bit easier and laughed maniacally. Oh, if only I knew what was in store. If only.
Time has flattened, or folded, since quarantine went into effect. March was seventy years long, but April seemed to go by in a blink. Even just writing that feels like a surreal thing, though, a reminder that we’ve been in quarantine for longer this year than not — everything shut down mid-March, and since then we’ve had fully April, May and June living almost entirely inside our homes while our jobs go away and, judging by the infection rates in the US, nothing actually really gets better. Is this just the way things are going to be, now? Surely not, and yet…
(A brief aside; something rumored for the President’s July 4 speech and thankfully missing was an announcement that, basically, we’d all just have to learn to accept this as the new ongoing reality going forward. Even the idea of saying that felt so callous, so cruel to me.)
So I looked into it, like I said, and it turns out that July 2 is the actual midway point of the year — the 183rd day, with 182 behind it and 182 ahead. Still earlier than I thought, but still; we’re firmly in the second half of 2020 now. May it be kinder than the first.