Life Wish #8: Tidings of Comfort and Joy
Hello, my dear friends <3
Well here we are, at long last. We in the US have made it through almost 1400 days of an incompetent, hateful, and embarrassing administration, and very soon we’ll know how many more we can expect. I’m feeling scared and hopeful and worried and excited and mad and tired and not super sharp, to be honest. It’s a lot to deal with, and between sending and receiving thousands of texts and calls the last few weeks, a bitch is spent.
At the same time I feel like, ok, I’ve been playing my role in these very large historical events and, at this point, that’s about all I can do — the big picture is out of my hands. But in the little picture, what I can and absolutely must do for myself is stay hopeful and pay close attention to reality as it unfolds and adjust as necessary.
Cause however this goes over the next few weeks, we will still be here, looking after each other and cracking bad jokes and planting seeds and trying to survive a pandemic and do our jobs and conduct all the other business of our lives. And I will still be here, writing to you about how important you are, and deserving of tenderness and fellowship and care, because I truly believe it, and I need to remember it, too.
So what’s on the agenda this week? TIDINGS OF COMFORT AND JOY. If you’re a registered voter in the US, you’ve probably been hassled about your voting plan 10x a day for the last month, but what about your election night plan? Hopefully you’ve laid in some nice snacks and have some ideas for how to spend this evening in a way that will scratch your itch to know what’s happening without doing yourself any permanent harm.
Maybe you want to only check the news once an hour, or maybe not before, say, 8 or 9 pm? I know myself, and I’m definitely going to be mainlining all the news at once -- TV news on one screen, Twitter and 538 and the Pennsylvania Election Results dashboard on another and maybe even a livestream of the Crooked Media slack chat on a third. And that’s okay — I am who I am and I HAVE TO KNOW IMMEDIATELY.
Also, if I’m honest, I enjoy the speedy feeling of gulping the firehose of information. I do not wish to do it every day, but if I can’t huff straight news on what’s bound to be one of the newsiest days of my life, then when can I? I will try to pay attention to how I’m feeling — if I start to feel ill or gross or exhausted, it’s time to stop — and I’ll plan to get to bed at a decent hour. I’ve got homemade Chex mix and ice cream sandwiches and a weighted blanket, so I should be fine!
How about you? If you don’t want to spend it like me, I suggest you make a plan to do something else — watch a movie, take a walk, have a fire outside with friends (which I did on Saturday and it restored my soul!!) — something to reconnect you to COMFORT AND JOY which are things that you get to experience at least sometimes in your life, no matter who is running the government.
Here’s my plan for getting some comfort and joy — I’m headed out first thing in the morning to do some volunteering at the polls. Then I’m gonna go swimming. Then I’m gonna get a bubble tea and come home and maybe do a little phone banking before the polls close, or maybe I’ll take a nap, we’ll see. Then Chex mix and news and, with any luck, some emerging sense of how we’re doing and what the next few days might look like. If Texas goes blue, I’ll go to bed thrilled. Otherwise, I’ll go to bed exactly as uncertain as I’ve been for the last 4 years, and that’s fine.
Nothing is ever certain anyway — we just feel like it is, when things go on in a certain way for a while. But, as I will always remind you until we are all old and gray, change is inevitable, and, having evolved on a constantly-changing planet, we humans have a formidable built-in genius when it comes to adapting to new conditions.
Even better, we have a unique ability to partner with change and influence it, to shape it and mold it and push it and pull it, and my dearest hope as I finish up this newsletter and get off the computer for the rest of the night is this:
That we as the people of the United States decide to shape change in a different way than we have been. That we decide to face the future together as a species, to keep trying to widen the circle of what we care about to include everyone and life itself. I hope we decide to keep going.
But regardless of what my country decides, I know what side I’m on. Team Living Organisms!
All my love and crossed fingers and toes and EVERYDAMNTHING
Madgey
PS: What we really need this week are LINKS of DISTRACTION and INSPIRATION. I got you.
This cool site lets you look out someone else’s window somewhere in the world. Mesmerizing
Last week AOC was on the cover of Vanity Fair and got a lot of heat for wearing fancy clothes and talking shit about tax-evading motherfuckers lol — the whole interview is solid gold
God Bless Lizzo: She won October with her cute little voting videos and her Halloween costumes — here she is as The Fly, and that WAP
Beyoncé in British Vogue talking about 2020 being the room she embraced her own joy, COME ON
Not everyone is a Liz Gilbert person but if you are, you will like this video (also on instagram)
This video of chef David Leibowitz’s haul from a Paris food market is like video Xanax
The Dolly Parton fan documentary on Netflix is so sweet and I learned a lot about her
Like everyone else, I fell hard for the visionary art of Hilma af Klint when the Guggenheim featured her a few years ago. This podcast featuring the curator of the Guggenheim show was a great listen
I just this week learned about StruggleCare.com and their book How to Keep House While Drowning: 31 Days of Compassionate Help and it’s so good that I am definitely gonna write more about it later. Highly recommended if, like everyone else, you’re struggling with some basic tasks of life right now
Finally, here is the gentlest video of a Japanese lady and her cats working in the garden — the whole channel is perfect
OK. This is me, Julia Roberts, giving you, Kit DeLuca, a hug on this momentous day. Deep breath. See you on the other side.
