For Friends Who Say They Miss Me On Facebook

What we’re watching and listening to at our house:

THE LIVE KITTEN CAM

This is a live video feed of a mama cat and five kittens (now three days old) at a rescue in British Columbia. We’ve been running this on the TV when we’re not using it for anything else. We have learned from this that it is possible to be unable to tear yourself away from a screen on which five kittens are doing nothing but sleep.

Me, texting our housemate C yesterday: “We have a live feed of 2-day-old kittens on the TV.”

10 seconds later, their dog Winnie comes thundering up the stairs, closely followed by C, who pauses in the kitchen doorway and says, “This is relevant to my interests,” before plopping down on the couch.

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS, THE LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME: TRACK 2

I had never heard of The Mountain Goats until my friend Chandra put one of their songs on a mixtape for me a few months ago, but I liked that one song enough that I've been listening to their other stuff as well. The Life of the World to Come is a 2009 album of songs based on Bible verses. I’m being pretty well blown away by it, though it’s taking me a long time to get to know the album because I keep getting caught up in listening to the same song on repeat for awhile before I can move on. Right now the song that has me driving home the long way to hear it one more time is "Psalm 40:2." (Link goes to song, not Bible verse.)

When I was teaching creative writing, one of the biggest challenges was Christian students turning in reams of cliches and dead language. It’s not only because I’m a Quaker that I don’t think it’s worth writing a poem if it’s just a weak re-tread of imagery from the NIV. This is true of much Christian music as well, I find: it’s not bad, it’s just not at all fresh. I think that’s why I like a song like Old Crow Medicine Show’s “Firewater,” off their last album, which does something really interesting with the imagery of communion.

So one thing I’m liking about The Life of the World to Come is that John Darnielle is so good at doing interesting things with the biblical language and contemporary settings. "Psalm 40:2” starts:

Pulled off the highway in Missouri,

Lo our hearts were heavy laden.

This song makes me want to drive to Julie’s house, bang wildly on her door, wave the CD in her bewildered face and yell, “OH MY GOD JULIE YOU HAVE TO HEAR THIS SONG!” like we are enthusiastic teenagers. Because Darnielle could hardly have written a better Dean Winchester theme song if he’d tried. Again I link to the song because it is best listened to. But here are the lyrics. They’re good lyrics, but perhaps only Julie will think, “Wow, yeah, Su is so right about this song!” and join me in fantasizing about creating a fanvid set to it. 

Pulled off the highway in Missouri, Lo our hearts were heavy laden.

Made for the chapel with some spray paint for all the things we’d held in secret.

Lord, lift up these lifeless bones.

Light cascading through the windows, all the rainbow’s heavy tones.

He has fixed his sign in the sky;

He has raised me from the pit and set me high.

Left that place in ruin, drunk on the Spirit and high on fumes,

Checked into a Red Roof Inn, stayed up for several hours

and then slept like infants in the burning fuselage of my days.

Let my mouth be ever fresh with praise.

He has fixed his sign in the sky;

He has raised me from the pit and set me high.

Each morning new; each day shot through

with all the sharp small shards of shrapnel that seem to burst out of me and you.

Head down toward Kansas, we will get there when we get there, don’t you worry.

Feel bad about the things we do along the way, but not really that bad.

We inhaled the frozen air.

Lord, send me a mechanic if I’m not beyond repair.

He has fixed his sign in the sky;

He has raised me from the pit and he will set me high.

In an interview I read while googling for lyrics confirmation (though bless John Darnielle for his clean enunciation), the interviewer says, “I couldn’t tell if it was a song about a crime spree or just a really seedy road trip,” and Darnielle says, “Well, you know, I don’t want to say it’s this or that, but both of those are in the right neighborhood,” and I thought, “Ha, he doesn’t want to admit he’s been watching Supernatural.” Only the Red Roof inn doesn’t fit, because Sam and Dean would never stay at a chain motel. Back me up here, Jules.

It’s actually a good interview, worth reading. Darnielle says, “If you’re into music, you’re into religion, some way or another,” and he says, “What is it like to feel as though you’re covered in God’s grace, even when you’re doing things like desecrating a chapel?” and he says, “One way you can get really close to God is to sin as hard as you can.”

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS, THE LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME: TRACK 11

The other song I have really spent a lot of time with is “Isaiah 45:23.” It has been a real comfort to me. This past year, since my pain has gotten so much worse, I have been profoundly discouraged. I haven’t been suicidal, but I have sometimes felt burdened by life. Unable to reconcile myself to my diminishments. Afraid that it would get to be too much for David, and there would be no one to care for me at the times when I can’t care for myself. The only time in my life I have ever regretted having children is at these moments when I resent the way they tie me to life for the duration of their childhoods; when, more accurately, I live in fear of failing them. I’ve never actively considered suicide, and I’ve never been self-destructive the way I’ve seen friends who are toying with the idea be, but I have now and again felt that I would not much regret a fast-growing cancer or an unfortunate patch of ice on a dark highway.

This song should not be comforting, and it probably wouldn’t have been if I’d heard it for the first time a few months ago. I think it could only be a comfort now that I am feeling a bit better, emotionally at least: I have a capacity to be comforted, now, which I think I did not have over the winter.

Anyway. The song is about old age, but it speaks to me as a person with chronic pain. As is always true with music, the song is more than just its lyrics, so if you’re interested I recommend listening to it. But the first verse and chorus go like this:

If my prayer be not humble, make it so.

If these last hours the spirit waits in check, help me let it go.

And should my suffering double, let me never love you less.

Let every knee be bent; let every tongue confess.

And I won’t get better, but some day I’ll be free.

Cause I am not this body that imprisons me.

I’ve never been one for the “at least we’ll be free in death” model of religious comfort, but right now, accompanied by a very mellow acoustic guitar, it works for me.

THE VIEW OUT THE WINDOW

While I was writing this, a male cardinal was hunting out the best tidbits on the ground under the feeder and feeding them to his mate. It made me very happy. It seemed like a thing that was worth being alive for. A few months ago I’d have scoffed at the idea; I’d have called it paltry, and the worst kind of false comfort, to suggest that five minutes of watching birds woo could be enough validate the whole enterprise of living. But sometimes it is. I am glad to be alive to see those cardinals.

THE JOHN ADAMS MINISERIES

Yesterday, someone posted this question at AskMetafilter: “How did you come to terms with your chronic pain?” I was drawn to the thread, of course, but for the most part I found it too painful to read; right now, I have very much not come to terms with my pain. But in what I did read, a couple of people talked about trying not to fight it too hard; one person said, "I kind of have workaholic tendencies. Being too sick to work led to me making my peace with playing video games and watching movies and doing the things I could do, even if they weren't the things I felt I should be doing or wanted to be doing.” Another said, "Give yourself a certain point of experiencing pain and then say, 'fuck it. I'm binge watching X' and do whatever makes you feel comfortable.”

I’ve been enjoying having time off from school, and having few other commitments, though I sometimes fret that I’m wasting my days. I feel that I'm not fighting hard enough against my pain. I should be doing more with the Older Two, I think, who have been so neglected; I have taken to thinking of myself as an unschooler again, if only to paste a not-very-convincing bandaid over my failures as a homeschooler. And yet, at the same time, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to be catching up on movies and TV shows; it’s a form of exploration I haven’t had much time for in years. And it’s exploration that can be done from the couch, and paused when the need to nap comes over me suddenly and irresistibly, as it tends to do. Word Boy watches with me, much of the time; we've gotten even closer, this past year, than we were before. The Lego Savant watches on his own, usually, often late at night when being a teenager keeps him awake long after the rest of us are sleeping, but we watch many of the same things, and we talk about them. The relationships, at least, are OK; the family, at least, is fine. What else matters?

This epic stretch of downtime has let me finally get around to watching the John Adams miniseries. This is relevant to my interests! I was a political science major, once upon a time, and in my Third Grad School Foray, colonial American lit was one of my things.

The first two episodes, dealing with the time before the Revolution, and leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, had me absolutely enthralled. I thought the first episode did a marvelous job of evoking colonial Boston as an occupied city, and during the second episode I was on the edge of my seat to see if they would sign the Declaration. I told David, "It's amazing how suspenseful this is, given that I already know how it ends."

Once the war starts, though, the series slows down. I found the third episode, set during Adams' time as an envoy to the French, deadly dull. It takes some doing to make the decadent and dissolute lives of pre-revolution French aristocrats boring, but I was grateful for the fast forward button. The show never fully recovered for me; I liked the remaining four episodes well enough, but never loved them again the way I had the first two. Adams himself becomes intolerable; Abigail Adams did a good job of calling him on his shit, but if I could have jumped in, I'd have told him to stop spending so much time fretting about how he'd be seen by posterity, and more time doing—I know not what. Anything but fretting about his historical legacy, I suppose.

I found myself getting very worked up when he signed the Alien and Sedition Acts. I was talking to the screen. I know he signed the damn things, and yet I did not want him to do it. It has always been astonishing to me how quickly and completely the very men who accomplished the Revolution and wrote the Constitution betrayed it. The Constitution was ratified in 1787; Congress passed, and Adams signed, the Alien and Sedition Acts one year later. The Acts made it more difficult to become a citizen; empowered the President to deport or imprison people on suspicion that they were dangerous; and restricted speech critical of the federal government. Those portions still in effect empowered the government to inter Japanese-Americans during World War II.

I had forgotten how deeply betrayed I always felt by the Alien and Sedition Acts. I still do, even though I have lived long enough to know that no body or organization lives up to its ideals. Nor does any person live entirely up to theirs, I suppose.

I'm kind of worked up about it, though. I may have to get a bumper sticker that says, "Down with the Alien & Sedition Acts! Down with President Adams! Jefferson 1800!"

Google tells me that my bumper sticker should more rightly say, "Republicans! Turn out to save your country! Down with the Tories! Down with the British Faction!"

I'd have been a Republican in 1800, I hope. The alternative is unthinkable.

I have just remembered I would not have been allowed to vote in 1800. This is something of a damper on the spirits.

The other day, I wrote to some friends about my deep love of Soviet propaganda posters like this one:

It says, "PRINT-WEAPONS OF THE PROLETARIAT."

I found my love of Soviet propaganda a bit disturbing, like I am a bit too sympatico with people who collect Nazi memorabilia. But watching John Adams reminded me that I actually love political propaganda of all kinds, even if it's unsavory and supports ideas I find abhorrent. The opening credits of John Adams are over a montage of political cartoons and flags of the era, and I really enjoyed watching it. Every episode, I'd watch this one go by, and I'd think, "That would make a nice tattoo."

I was not the first to think of it. I also wasn't wrong. This is a nice tattoo.

In my days as a political science major, I collected posters and campaign buttons. I had an "I Like Ike" button that switched to showing his face at certain angles, and I had a "Nixon/Lodge" button. I had a G. Mennen "Soapy" Williams green polka dot bowtie. I was partial to buttons from losing campaigns; I had one for some guy named Fitzgerald who ran for governor of Michigan sometime before 1984 and at least one Adlai Stevenson pin.

I wore at least one of these every day.

During the 1984 election, I went to a campus Young Republicans meeting for the sole purpose of getting campaign materials, and for years afterward hung the "Reagan/Bush: Bringing American Back" poster I scored in every room I lived in.

And young people today think they invented irony.

Thank you, internet. Here's my poster:

It only occurs to me now, quite belatedly, to wonder how many times this poster kept me from getting laid.

Also on my walls during these years:

I'd had that Sesame Street poster since I was a little kid. Sesame Street was so new when I was little that when my mom took me to register for kindergarten, the principal of the school hadn't heard of it.

I had this poster up as well, and wore the matching button unironically. I was proud and happy that in my first election I got to vote for the first female major-party candidate for VP.

And I was not kidding around when I wore my Shirley Chisolm campaign button:

Looking for that image, I was reminded that Chisolm's slogan was "Unbossed and Unbought." Right on!

A few years later, I was not at all ironic in my love for this poster:

It meant the world to me that I was at that march. I think it was my Woodstock, my 1963 March on Washington. By the next big march, in 1993, the gay community had been discovered as a market. I remember coming up out of the Metro and being amazed by all the branded materials around: beer companies handing out protest signs with their logos on them, coupons and ads with glossy good-looking gay male couples on them. I had very mixed feelings about this. It may have been partly my youth and naivete, but in 1987 it felt like a community march, and by 1993 we were collaborating with the mainstream. I think I am the right age to feel very acutely what has been lost along with all the gains of the past few decades.

David has just messaged to invite me and the kids to lunch. Therefore this is not exactly what you'd call proof-read. But so be it.