An antidote to that sickening sensation
Good novels and multicolor eyeliner
It’s only been two weeks but my feeling about the current administration is akin to when you are struck by one of those horrendous viruses where you’re vomiting at the same time as you urgently need to use the toilet. I can not keep up with it all, and it is all bad.
In my last post, I pissed and moaned about a bunch of less-than-fantastic reading experiences, so this week I’m back to a full-throated rave.
Humans—bad, but also so good
I recently read a dark but terrific novel called Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris, about a woman’s experience in Sarajevo when the war breaks out. The story is set in one of the most barbaric explosions of violence in recent history, but it’s about how in the midst of it, most people are compassionate and kind to one another. Maybe it’s in light of current events, and maybe I’m being melodramatic, but when I read it, I was overcome with how in the face of brutality a simple act of kindness can be a defiant and powerful act.
It tells the story of Zora, an artist in Sarajevo, whose husband takes her elderly mother to the safety of their married daughter’s place in London while she stays behind to keep an eye on their homes and teach her students. They figure it will be a week or two, then things will calm down and he’ll return. As we know, things did not calm down for years, and Zora is quickly living in a bombed-out hellscape, cut off from everything and everyone, and banding together with neighbors to survive.
Before the siege, Sarajevo was a bastion of peaceful co-habitation. Christians, Muslims, Orthodox Christians and Jews lived together for so many years and it all fell apart seemingly overnight. (Could this happen here?) Morris doesn’t get into that sort of geopolitical discussion, though. Her book is about individuals trying to survive. Zora picks through the rubble with her neighbor’s 8-year-old daughter, and they use the wreckage to make little artistic creations. It’s human nature to be barbaric, but it’s also human nature to make art.
I sometimes feel guilty about how much I love to read about people living through catastrophe, like I’m trying to make my own life seem better in comparison. And even though I’m an avid consumer of all sorts of art, music, writing, and performance, I tend to roll my eyes when people say things about how art sustains us and how it’s vital when we are in the midst of hardship. I tend to snarkily think, “Hmm, food, safety, and shelter kind of sustains us more than paintings.” I mean, I love paintings, but, you know… This novel nails that message in a way most don’t. And I think stories like this are going to be my vaccine against the sickening feeling of this current administration. (Until RFK Jr outlaws all vaccines, that is.)
In other news, I’m still reading Anna Karenina and probably will be until Spring. As you’ve probably heard, it’s very good.
A rallying cry/makeup tip
Mira Jacob recently posted a beautiful sentiment on her instagram and I’m going to share it here:
“I keep hearing people I love saying they are going to check out, keep their heads down and just get through it. And I get that. I really do…. But remember that if you keep your heads down, you will miss each other. You will not see how many of us are in this together, or the myriad of creative and astonishing ways we will keep pushing forward. You will not, to paraphrase brilliant Alok Menon, realize that we love ourselves more than they could ever hate us.”
In this same marvelous IG post she also mentions chrome eyeliner and because I’m me, I sort of fixated on the chrome eyeliner. Fixated to the point that I drove 20 minutes to Ulta, found the eyeliner (thankfully on the cheapo side of the store), and I’ve been wearing it almost every day, even days I don’t leave the house. It’s my petite act of resistance.