There’s a nautical term called MEAN LOW WATER which I explain up in the SECRET ROOM later. But do I need to explain it? It feels like what we’re swimming in every day now.
Everything is miserable. The massacres abroad, the ICE kidnappings at home, and the general shrugging off of these crimes by editors and politicians who think the real story is interest rates.
And on top of it, now there’s the gutting of NPR/PBS, plus the non-constitutional surrender of congressional power to the executive that gutting represents, PLUS the cancellation of Colbert just days after he mocked Paramount for kneeling before Zod…
It’s very bad! I wish I had words to help mitigate your fear/rage/despair, or channel it into action. But I’m still looking for those words myself. But every day is new. It took me a lifetime to really learn how long a second is.
(That sounds profound, but what I mean is I used to think 60 seconds was a short time until I spent it flailing asthmatically on a treadmill, trying to live forever.)
The whirling storm of pain and feces they are throwing at us is designed to make us feel powerless. Like it’s all moving too fast for us to do anything.
But a lot can happen in a second, a minute, an hour, a week, a year. We can only keep taking those steps forward, supporting institutions and campaigns we believe in with our dollars and/or time, looking out for one another, taking care of ourselves, pacing fury and action with rest and needed distraction.*
On our refrigerator here in Maine is a letter EB White wrote to a reader named Mr. Nadeau in 1973, a time when I guess things looked “bad.”
The whole thing is below. But I am glad especially to remember the final line every time I go to get some cheese to shove in my mouth.
“Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock.”
So I hope you can take some solace, and maybe even some pleasure, in keeping the clock wound and moving forward.
*And as per my asterisked note above: pleasure is important. Because don’t forget that they love it when we’re sad. So having a good time is not only restorative, it’s still an act of moral protest.
For that reason go see SUPERMAN. It’s so much fun, and such a bracing embrace of goodness as a strength instead of a weakness.
Yeah, it’s goofy. But the most unbelievable part is that when tech billionaire Lex Luthor pitches the US government on his scheme to round up immigrants and undesirables in his private exta-legal prison, the US government actually says, “hmmm, I dunno about that” instead of immediately saying YES! SOUNDS AMAZING! HERE’S ALL THE MONEY WE USED TO GIVE TO SESAME STREET.
That’s a total fantasy right now, but it’s fun to think about. And good to be reminded that cruelty is not actually cool or even inevitable, and we don’t have to accept it.
Speaking of sailors and bad weather, the LAST TIME WE SPOKE, a reader named Robin reminded me of a promise I made last fall: that if I was still reading MOBY DICK by this summer, I would read you a chapter while bobbing around in a boat in Maine.
Well, I (finally) keep that promise up there in the SECRET ROOM, even though the weather was bluffing QUITE hard this morning in the harbor, and I had to hide in the bottom of the boat to avoid the wind.
Someone said to me last night: “Why don’t you just read the chapter and add sound effects later.” It made me sad to have to explain: Because I am not a liar. Lying is what we need less of.
If you want to hear what the “charts say,” you may now ascend the stairs to receive the secret message, which is CHAPTER 41 of Moby Dick, which chapter is called… MOBY DICK!
It’s the TITLE TRACK, and it’s all about what a bad ass sperm whale Moby Dick is, and of course I read it all in a very terrible Maine accent.
