Faces!

Who knew so many people were paying such close attention to CDC guidelines? It was just this morning that the vaccinated were given a mask pass, and the park is blooming with smiling faces. I walked among them with my own, breathing the lilacs, brushing the fresh green on the old trees. 

This week was about discoveries. I lose my balance because of my head!  It's all in my head--the weight of it, that is. Trying a neck brace, I recovered function and bravery. Studying why I don't fall at home, I noticed that my whole body participates in shifting weight. I knew that! I did, really I did, but what was once automatic now must be rediscovered in the context of this frailty, this fear that makes me freeze. When I allow my hips and ribs and breath to move, when I feel my whole foot with its minuscule shifts, when I trust and enjoy all these changes, then I am dancing with the body that exists right now, not the one in my memory.

This week was about anger--loving anger, bitter anger, and defeated anger. I want to be alone. I want to be surrounded by my beloved beings. I want to be independent. I want to be who I was. I am not grateful. In fact, I decided to retire that term: gratitude. I've heard too much of it. It's a weird twist on the Just World view, a way of bowing down to a stingy god. Can't I just say that I appreciate stuff?

Today as I was walking I heard a brilliant philosopher on Ezra Klein, Agnes Callard. Why had I never heard of her? If I were a philosopher, that's who I'd want to be, not because I agree with her on it all but because of her ravaging process, remarkable for its honest inquiry, for its intuition deeply informed by classic knowledge and current context. Among her upending ideas: imagining a just world is philanthropic, possibly because imagining the alternative is bearable only for an instant; we have to train ourselves out of altruism; jealousy is wanting to have the partner who emerges in the company of the other, biography isn't history (which is confusing because where does the story start?) but voyeurism. I probably got half of that wrong, will listen again, with pleasure. Usually I start the next podcast immediately but after Dr. Callard my brain was colliding with so many understandings I just had to pause and let the cacophony collapse. 

sssshhhhhh

May 14, 2021