I am marmalade
okay, maybe honey
Hey there, toast-lovers of the world,
The way I’m feeling is colloquially called “spreading yourself too thin.”
I was thinking about that, and wondering if it is true that we have a finite amount of self to give to others. Do you think so? How big is your self? Is it the size it will be when you’re an adult when you’re born, like an eyeball? Can it grow? Or does it just thin out as you use it up, like eggs in a woman?
(Eyeballs grow, by the way. It’s a myth they’re fully grown when you’re born.)
Perhaps love / energy / gratitude an infinite resource? Or maybe we generate it…but from what? I definitely feel drained after expending a lot of energy on a single emotion—but weirdly, if I do spend an extraordinary amount of one emotion, let’s say anger, then the remedy for this is to expend another great amount of some other kind of energy - let’s say sorrow or love or joy.
Isn’t that strange? Perhaps we are giving of ourselves all the time. Perhaps we are just here to generate emotional energy - and the longest lived of us are those stoics who take things easy and rarely “burn” very hot about anything.
What is it that goes away from us when we give energy? I mean, we call it “energy” but is it measurable? Hang on a second while I look that up.
Huh. Okay. So the closest thing to science I found in the three seconds I searched the internet was this woo-woo magazine reporting on the work of some random doctorate guy (I love it when they say “former Stanford professor” — which always makes me think they were fired) who claims that emotions create vibrations that occur in particular kinetic ranges (I find this silly because every emotion has its own extreme spectrum — so to think that shame vibrates at a different frequency than desire is ridiculous - they obvious overlap or people wouldn’t have all the bizarre kinks they do.) I can imagine that emotions cause some kind of kinetic vibration though. Sure, why not. It makes as much sense as anything else, and to be sure, it does feel like something is leeched from us when we send out emotions…though to be honest, I think that love and desire form a feedback loop if reciprocated, and gratitude seems to replenish, and anger and envy seem to really drain, while sorrow just puddles some kind of dark viscous awfulness deep in the chest cavity that takes forever to evaporate.
Well that was cheerful.
Actually I had a really lovely week (I hope you did too)- Spring arrived in NYC and tulips are blooming all over downtown, so it’s a pleasure to go out (as long as you’re not plagued by allergies - so sorry to those of you who are suffering right now!) —
I had a series of beautiful nights out with friends. Went to Ruffian - a Michelin restaurant - and had drinks at Cosme (be prepared for high prices!) and to a great dive bar in the East Village whose name I can’t recall because, well, dive bar. And in the midst of all this I saw a restored 20th anniversary screening of Pride and Prejudice, and met the artist (Alida Wilkinson) at the Pen & Brush gallery opening of her new show (she created this fantastic photograph of her own painting in the woods that I bought during pandemic when I felt that the best thing I could do was to help artists). And I also went to a wedding!
Weddings have always been a source of extreme bliss for me. This one was no different - the bride and groom are meant for each other and seem to understand that marriage is work. Wonderful hard-as-hell work with a fantastic payoff. I love this couple and I wish them well. Even so: there were two gut-punch moments. One was when the priest said “what God has joined let no one put asunder.” This has always been my favorite line in any wedding but since my own marriage got put asunder, it has a very different ring. And speaking of rings (haha) the other moment was when the shout “all the single ladies go line up to catch the bouquet” rang out. I was frozen in place in my dark solo corner as four happy women in formal dresses flew forward to try to catch the pretty flowers.
This wedding was at Trinity Church and it was just lovely: intimate, formal, warm and sincere. A celebration of the collective hope that is the beginning of any endeavor worth attempting.
Writing News
I wrote a poem about shame.
I worked on grants but got caught up in numbers
I printed out all the excerpts and stories I need to read and edit before going to Croatia.
That’s it. That’s the writing news this week.
Random Final Thought:
I really like the word “asunder.”
How much of the sensation of "being spread too thin", do you think, is just caused by not choosing the things we do? That is an alternate cause beyond overload. That sense of not having time to think that being asked to do too much brings about is worse when you are not choosing what you are doing. I think this is because the choice itself is a space for thought and an important thing to retain.
It also strikes me that battling "being spread too thin" is partly what Pen Parentis is about. Let's give parent writers the resources so that they are not spread too thin, and the coping and management skills so that they feel that way less when there is a limit to what relief can be brought about.
One of the things I admire about you is the ability to participate even when you have no reason to think you might be good at something. At your book party, you called on people to sing, and I, of course, mouthed the words and looked at everyone else for cues, while you let go. On one level, it is nice to know this courage is not a given with you, but I urge you to run forward for those fallen flowers at weddings.
A blog touching on "what not to do" on this point, incidentally, was your 2/16 one about the interactive art show Luna Luna. Everyone there did what I described myself as doing. Didn't actually have fun, but faked having fun.