March Compost Heap
books, stories, music, ideas, sounds
What a month. I found myself talking to a friend yesterday about how neither of us really believe in rock bottom. There’s always a bottom below the bottom. I mean that personally and collectively. There’s always a horror beyond what you can imagine. Don’t think you’ve reached the last circle of hell. I also feel that way about chronic illness. There’s always something grosser, weirder, scarier that can happen to your body. I’m in a season of real physical intensity. I hope it passes. I don’t pretend to have any forecast on the departure of this inclement weather. I do know that I am leaning hard on my “crutches” as I hobble through this physical storm. Those crutches are stories and books and ideas that keep me curious and open even when my body feels like rolling up like a pillbug. I’m sharing some of the things that have been a source of both inspiration and, when the pain is intense, a welcome distraction.
Anand Girdharadas is one the clearest voices right now. His series on the Epstein Class is survivor-focused and incredibly insightful.
Another voice I’ve been orienting toward is Kate Manne. This piece on Lindy West’s new memoir is very good and I very much related.
Especially with this observation:
In so many other arenas, women protect other women: we walk our friends home and have them text when they make it safely to their destination. We watch our girlfriends’ drinks like hawks lest they be spiked at a bar. We reassure them over text that they are not wrong for thinking that that guy was kind of creepy. We warn them about known predators and misogynists in our workplaces and social circles.
And then they partner up and, by and large, we go silent. True, most of us would hopefully say something if we had evidence of serious emotional, let alone physical, abuse. But the warning signs aptly dubbed red flags are forbidden conversational territory: the fact that he leaves the dishes to her, or that he seems to be leaning heavily on her financially without compensating via household labor, or that he routinely refuses to talk about hard things, or that he wants her to become a fundamentally different person in the name of personal growth: these are red flags that we don’t avert to because norms of politeness forbid it.
I say we should change the norm. You can even explain to your friends what you are doing. “Recently I’ve been thinking that we’re not meant to question our girlfriends’ husbands, but I worry that’s letting a lot of important stuff go under the radar. Can I be honest? There are things that I see in your relationship that worry me for you. I know this is a hard conversation, and that I could be wrong, but… I’m going to gently put in your path that I am seeing some red flags here. I love you, and I’d want you to do this for me if the situation were reversed.”
I am lucky to have had friends who DID speak up when they saw me in an increasingly coercive relationship. I owe my happiness and life to them stepping in and voicing their concerns loudly. But I don’t see this often. I think Manne is right that we often step back when a friend enters the fortress of a committed relationship. I don’t know if I would have left if I had not had my closest and most intimate female allies reflect that something seemed really wrong. As someone saved from a Bluebeard, I think we need to speak up more when we see our friends slipping into emotionally abusive pairings even when it risk creating conflict.
This adult spin on Tuck Everlasting is one of my favorite recent reads. I gulped it up in a day. Simultaneously very funny and also deeply moving. I admit I cried on the last page. And set in the Catskills by the innkeeper of Spruceton Inn! I can’t wait to see what Scieszka writes next.