anatman

In March and April, I’d dream that we had come to the lake, and in my dreams I’d look at the blue sky, blue mountains, and blue water and weep with gratitude that the crisis had passed and we could be part of the world again.

The crisis has not passed, but here we are anyway.

Two weeks ago, I sat down to write after weeks, probably months, of mostly not writing. To face the blank page was to face the void within myself, a seeming barrenness. The words spiritual poverty came to mind. I had never understood this term, so I looked it up; it refers, I learned, not so much to an absence of spirit as to an absence of self, so that you can be filled with something greater than yourself.

I have said in the past that my soul resides here in this lake, in these mountains, in the chirping of the crickets and whirring of cicadas. This is where I come to be filled again.

* * *

I haven’t read as much this week as I have in past vacations: only 3.5 books. Not pictured is the e-galley of The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante, which I’ll be writing about in the coming days. I’ve only just started The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin, a celebration of New York City whose first page brought tears to my eyes. My joke (which someday I’ll write about) is that I married the city; having survived (so far) three apocalypses there this century, I don’t know where else I could call my home.

I’ve written

For the Ploughshares blog these past few months I’ve written about the murmuring of books and the abyss in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, the ethics of delight in The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, and the ethics of hope in Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit.

I’ve listened and read

Did the CIA write the Scorpions’ power ballad “Wind of Change”? Patrick Radden Keefe investigates, and some of his findings complicate Rebecca Solnit’s view of change, that it “happens first in the imagination—not on its own, but through the efforts of many different people.” The people Solnit has in mind are artists and grassroots activists—not, of course, the CIA.

Fuck the bread, says Sabrina Orah Mark.

Maris Kreizman asks where her ambition went.

Jamelle Bouie meditates on John Lewis and democracy as an ethic.

I signed an open letter on remaking the National Book Critics Circle and books criticism.