St. Louis and beyond (April Moon Day 15)

My friend Paula recently mused on how stubborn hope may be a value in common among the blogs she reads. It certainly has been a recurring motif in my friendship with Paula, who has quoted Pirkei Avot 2:21 so often over the years that I eventually set it to music for her.



This photo is The Dark Room, a photography gallery + bar in St. Louis, where I was on holiday a year ago. Women's tennis drew me there, and I'd like to go back someday for another ice cream martini at the Fountain and other refreshments. I am fond of two colleagues who have spent significant time there, and a bass in chamber choir with whom I chat about baseball during coffee hours has been cheering on the Cards since before I was born.

Yet it is also a city I associate with sorrow and regret and frustration. One friend has been dealing with family tsuris there. In high school, I failed to remain a friend to a Washington U. student overtaken by mental illness. It is a recurring, unsolved riddle among some of my other friends: loyalty vs. obligation vs. self-preservation.

Lately it has come up in conversations about illness and bereavement. There is my own considerable baggage, loaded with memories of being too self-absorbed or clueless to acknowledge a major procedure or a loss, and the relationships that foundered as a result. There is the challenge of staying sufficiently in touch and in the loop, especially when news now so often travels through Facebook or other channels I do not regularly tune into (if at all). There have been lessons on the other end, such as discovering that "if there's anything I can do" can sometimes be taken at face value, but sometimes actually means "but only if I find it interesting or convenient." (As in, "I'd be keen to look at [x's] things, but I'm not going to haul away the recycling.")

There is the struggle to forgive past selves and former acquaintances for being inconsiderate or selfish or feckless, and there is the ever-piercing awareness that I cannot be all things to all people all the time and will continue to let people down, both deliberately and unwittingly. There will never be universal consensus on what I choose to prioritize, never mind what I choose to discuss aloud, seeing how even the people close to me often disagree with me as well as one another (or are at least tense about) re health vs. career vs. household vs. avocations vs. relationships vs. whose opinions matter. Having values in common doesn't mean we agree on how to live them; having standards doesn't mean we live up to them.

But to borrow Paula's words, "maybe the world will get better if we keep faith," and to paraphrase Rabbi Tarfon, we are not free to abandon it, and to bring this back to St. Louis and the larger world, here is what Ijeoma Oluo had to say about what white people say to her about police brutality:

"I'm so sorry you have to go through this, but I don't know what to do."

"This is outrageous. I hope it gets better."

"I wish I could fix it, but the problem is so big. It's never going to change."

"I'm praying it will get better."

"I hope these racist cops get life in prison."

Well-meaning white friends, I'm going to be completely honest with you. None of this is helpful. Not one word. Your questions, your apologies, your wishes, even your prayers--none of them do anything to help end police brutality or the system of oppression that breeds it. Furthermore, your black friends are busy working through their own grief while trying to stay alive--they don't have space for your feelings and they don't have time to educate you.

This was a punch to the gut when I read it.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I wish...

for courage.

for perspective.

for energy.

for effectiveness.




The italicized words were sent to me as the Day 15 prompt for April Moon.

This entry was originally posted at http://bronze-ribbons.dreamwidth.org/390028.html. I see comments at DW, IJ, and LJ (when notifications are working, anyway), but not on feeds.

St. Louis and beyond (April Moon Day 15)

My friend Paula recently mused on how stubborn hope may be a value in common among the blogs she reads. It certainly has been a recurring motif in my friendship with Paula, who has quoted Pirkei Avot 2:21 so often over the years that I eventually set it to music for her.



This photo is The Dark Room, a photography gallery + bar in St. Louis, where I was on holiday a year ago. Women's tennis drew me there, and I'd like to go back someday for another ice cream martini at the Fountain and other refreshments. I am fond of two colleagues who have spent significant time there, and a bass in chamber choir with whom I chat about baseball during coffee hours has been cheering on the Cards since before I was born.

Yet it is also a city I associate with sorrow and regret and frustration. One friend has been dealing with family tsuris there. In high school, I failed to remain a friend to a Washington U. student overtaken by mental illness. It is a recurring, unsolved riddle among some of my other friends: loyalty vs. obligation vs. self-preservation.

That riddle -- lately it has come up in conversations about illness and bereavement. There is my own considerable baggage, loaded with memories of being too self-absorbed or clueless to acknowledge a major procedure or a loss, and the relationships that foundered as a result. There is the challenge of staying sufficiently in touch and in the loop, especially when news now so often travels through Facebook or other channels I do not regularly tune into (if at all). There have been lessons on the other end, such as discovering that "if there's anything I can do" can sometimes be taken at face value, but sometimes actually means "but only if I find it interesting or convenient." (As in, "I'd be keen to look at [x's] things, but I'm not going to haul away the recycling.")

There is the struggle to forgive past selves and former acquaintances for being inconsiderate or selfish or feckless, and there is the ever-piercing awareness that I cannot be all things to all people all the time and will continue to let people down, both deliberately and unwittingly. There will never be universal consensus on what I choose to prioritize, never mind what I choose to discuss aloud, seeing how even the people close to me often disagree with me as well as one another (or are at least tense about) re health vs. career vs. household vs. avocations vs. relationships vs. whose opinions matter. Having values in common doesn't mean we agree on how to live them; having standards doesn't mean we live up to them.

But to borrow Paula's words, "maybe the world will get better if we keep faith," and to paraphrase Rabbi Tarfon, we are not free to abandon it, and to bring this back to St. Louis and the larger world, here is what Ijeoma Oluo had to say about what white people say to her about police brutality:

"I'm so sorry you have to go through this, but I don't know what to do."

"This is outrageous. I hope it gets better."

"I wish I could fix it, but the problem is so big. It's never going to change."

"I'm praying it will get better."

"I hope these racist cops get life in prison."

Well-meaning white friends, I'm going to be completely honest with you. None of this is helpful. Not one word. Your questions, your apologies, your wishes, even your prayers--none of them do anything to help end police brutality or the system of oppression that breeds it. Furthermore, your black friends are busy working through their own grief while trying to stay alive--they don't have space for your feelings and they don't have time to educate you.

This was a punch to the gut when I read it.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I wish...

for courage.

for perspective.

for energy.

for effectiveness.




The italicized words were sent to me as the Day 15 prompt for April Moon.

ETA: edited to fix a pronoun-referent link

This entry was originally posted at http://bronze-ribbons.dreamwidth.org/390028.html. I see comments at DW, IJ, and LJ (when notifications are working, anyway), but not on feeds.

backing up to get through the door

My life, it does not lack comedy. Not when a dog who has pelted, trotted, leaped, and sauntered through my kitchen door at least 15,000 times still sometimes tries to charge through that door without giving me room to open it. The resulting Marx Brothers routine is the sort of thing that has me laughing and swearing at the same time, as did my having to chase her away from a pepper plant for the umpteenth time this year. (One of today's accomplishments was adding more soil to that plant's container. I'd hazily attributed the exposure of the roots to careless watering, but on reflection, canine rapaciousness is to blame. Said dawg just chowed down on two kale stems, but those I gave to her.)



Two weekends ago, I brought my Jonathan Green coloring book and a box of crayons to a hotel room in Lexington. Some of the gang watched Coachella on the TV; Knight, borrowing some of the crayons, drew a bike for my sweetie, a plaid for a fellow fashionista, and hearts and something else.

A Lexington photographer took a nice shot of the group the next day; I wore the yellow hat the previous Saturday as well. This past weekend was here in Nashville, with Friday and Saturday night dedicated to my husband's high school reunion. The Friday night party was at the Bridge Building; seeing the city from the 6th floor was spectacular, glimpsing the promgoers also in the building was entertaining, the beer good and the conversations lively (an enthusiastic recommendation for H is for Hawk among them).

It was also nice to find out that two very successful men in my circles aren't on Facebook. I wasn't losing sleep over my stance to begin with, but as one of them said, it's nonetheless reassuring to hear of others thriving without it.

I did not get to everything I'd meant to get through today, but I did put two tomato cuttings in water. Even if they do not bear fruit, they look nice and smell wonderful. Sometimes that's all I ask of my belongings. But my shoes will tell you a far different tale, and I am itching to clean up my front door and devise a new window treatment for it. But to tackle that right now would be trying to hurl myself through a hoop while standing too close to it. A wild patience has taken me this far...


A year ago: birthdayage, Christianity, celebrity, commerce, Bardage

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/104896.html.