We are living, my friends, through a time surreal with horror, when the base side of human nature is not only disclosed but encouraged and lauded. A time when citizens respond to inevitable change not with interest but with terror, revulsion, and violence. May this time pass quickly and vanish. May we think back on the Trump era, shaking our heads, wondering how it happened. May the dystopian literature that’s bursting out not be proven true. In the meantime, I cling to newspaper columnists and sharp-tongued comedians to keep my sanity.
In the meantime, all I can do is tend my garden, not just the plants, but the neighbourhood – this morning, the English conversation group in Regents Park. There was a surreal moment when I saw me and my friend Linda surrounded by brown-skinned women, Jesmin, Razia, Nurun, and the others, wearing yards and yards of beautiful material, huge swaths of multi-coloured cloth enveloping their bodies and heads. Some new women came today, younger ones who did not wear the veil, which made me glad. But still, even those who do wear it, when they flip up that black cloth, I see beautiful lively faces anxious to learn English, full of laughter. It’s a joy.
And then they flip the veil back down and go back to their lives, their many children, and Linda and I go to the Y for Carole’s class where we met, running around puffing and panting and wearing very little. Not something our new Bengali friends have ever experienced.
And then I come home to my empty quiet house and think about the rest of the day, which somehow goes by, much of it sitting here with my fingers tapping – editing pieces for students, for the next So True, writing to friends, this blog, about next year’s conference, preparing talks, reading online and on paper, trying to keep my head above the water of my responsibilities. My own work, buried for now. Cooking cleaning volunteering – when it’s so difficult to get to work with only that, however did I do any writing when I had young children? The honest answer: I didn’t, not very much.
And the New Yorker, another task, that gorgeous magazine arriving once a week in my mailbox. Impossible to keep up. But flipping through today’s, I could not help but see this small mention of one of my greatest loves – yes, a mention in the coolest of the cool in NYC.
into its last week in the tristate area. The tour was advertised with
billboards featuring a simple image of his signature Höfner bass, devoid of his
likeness – a cryptic campaign few other rock stars could pull off. McCartney
has somehow grown from his association with a band that was “bigger than Jesus”
to something even larger: a living, breathing time capsule from possibly the
richest, most fawned over period in popular music. He’s also become cooler with
age, and his infrequent collaborations with artists generations his junior
(including his sitting in as a drummer on an upcoming Foo Fighters record) only
further stoke his legend.
The writer is wrong in one thing – Macca has not at all “become cooler with age,” he is just the same; it’s just that cool people have finally recognized how extraordinary he is. Go Macca. Could you please save the world, while you’re at it?
