Against Despair
“What I fear most is despair
for the world and us: forever less
of beauty, silence, open air,
gratitude, unbidden happiness,
affection, unegotistical desire.”
— Wendell Berry, from This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems, page 192
— You’ve probably heard by now that Wendell Berry has died at 92. And if there’s anyone who gives us a reason to write poetry, to read poetry, it has been Berry. His poems live in us, his readers. They change us. The example of his long life in poetry has changed us. He has taught us why we must rail against despair.
— If you’ve not read him, a copy of his Collected, and a copy of the Sabbath poems are yours to delve into and delight in. If you think you’re not a reader of poetry, you become one reading these. I’ve mentioned Berry over the years, but not enough. Not proportionate to the hours I’ve read him. Though I also quoted from him on my last now defunct blog, Calm Things (named after my book).
— Devin Kelly has written a lovely tribute.
— Another from Sabbaths, 1998, page 183:
“Whatever happens,
those who have learned
to love one another
have made their way
into the lasting world
and will not leave,
whatever happens.”
— In just these two poems, one about love, and one about the fear for a world containing less beauty and unbidden happiness, there is information to what constitutes a good life. The poems, while expressing a dismay at alternatives, act as a sandbag against the flood of despair, against fear. We feel less alone, reading them. Love is what lasts, don’t let anyone tell you different. Love and beauty, love and creativity.
— As it happens, I watched this on insta where Andrew Garfield talks about Kazuo Ishiguro wanting to prove that the human soul exists. He says that “if a person is able to love and if a person is able to create art” this is proof of the human soul.
— Beauty is resistance, and, a refusal to accept that the world should be anything but beautiful is meaningful. We all deserve happiness. We all deserve beauty. We must insist upon this to our dying breath.
The Recognition
by Wendell Berry
You put on my clothes
and it was as though
we met some other place
and I looked and knew
you. This is what we keep
going through, the lyrical
changes, the strangeness
in which I know again
what I have known before."
— p. 185 from the collected
If we have become a people incapable
of thought, then the brute-thought
of mere power and mere greed
will think for us.
If we have become incapable
of denying ourselves anything,
then all that we have
will be taken from us.
If we have no compassion,
we will suffer alone, we will suffer
alone the destruction of ourselves.
These are merely the laws of this world
as known to Shakespeare, as known to Milton:
When we cease from human thought,
a low and effective cunning
stirs in the most inhuman minds.
— p. 273, Sabbaths, 2005
— When I re-read the line about “lyrical changes” and about learning again what we have learned before, I saw myself. I suppose this happens as one increases in years. To know again, but perhaps to know from a shift in perspective, a slightly deeper place.
— And then yes, human thought. Which we have most of us been holding dear these reckless days. How I love the use of the word “mere” here. Mere greed. How little the greedy understand, feel. How small the greedy are.
— I’ve been thinking about happiness, and the first poem in this post and the phrase, “unbidden happiness” has me thinking. I’ve been also thinking about contingency a lot lately, the idea that “if not this, then that.” And that led me to cracking open The Affect Theory Reader and looking again at Sara Ahmed’s essay, “Happy Objects.” Ahmed acknowledges “the messiness of the experiential, the unfolding of bodies into worlds, the drama of contingency, how we are touched by what we are near.”
— “It is useful to note that the etymology of “happiness” relates precisely to the question of contingency: it is from the Middle English “hap,” suggesting chance.”
— What are theories of happiness beside happiness itself? Does one practice happiness? One practices the piano, we take up a practice of writing.
— Bruce gets it. Trouble is never far behind. But we can hold another in our hearts. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi says that “happiness, in fact is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated and defended privately by each person.” (from TATR).
— What are the conditions of happiness now? Being human means we have the very weird capacity to be both happy and sad simultaneously. Melancholic with intermittent happiness. Wild, right?
— Fun fact: the presence, proximity of your smartphone makes you dumber in cognitive tests. I read this recently on insta, lol, but the sad fact has been around for ages. An article titled Brain Drain, came out in 2017. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that,
“In an era characterized by the pervasiveness of digital technology, the prevalence of mobile phones has become a defining feature of contemporary life. These devices have revolutionized everyday life by offering us the ability to access and consume information, communicate, and perform various tasks, changing attitudes, habits, routines, and behaviors. The investigation of the impact of mobile phones on human cognition and behavior has emerged as a crucial area of research. Alongside their unquestionable usefulness, concerns have been raised about the potential impact of mobile phone use on cognitive processes, with reference to attention.”
— Another fun fact. You don’t need to buy the new iPhone or use cheatwhatever, you need to buy a new book of poetry from your local indy bookseller. Keep that beside your bed. Maybe this will go some way to creating the conditions necessary for happiness.
— I have ticked the box that requests AI cannot crawl this site, a Squarespace site. Will it affect my traffic? I guess I’ve never given traffic much of a thought other than to be amused by the search terms that bring folks here. I have my steady followers — thank you! and then the steady number of people who still go to this post. Around a thousand views a day to this site, most of them to that one post. Which says something about our need for rituals around grief. Every time I think I should delete this site and/or move to substack or Patreon or just jot things down in my notebook instead, I think that for now being here has some small use. That said, thanks for being here and supporting me in any which way you can. This might just mean commenting on my insta, buying a book, or sending me good vibes. Honestly, I think the vibes are what carry me through. xo
