#18 / One, But Not the Same
Hey everyone,
Let’s just get the anticlimactic part out of the way: all of our baby caterpillars are gone.
I’ve seen wasps buzzing around our milkweed all week, and they’re known to eat monarch caterpillars. As for the two black swallowtails, I’m not sure. Same with the black swallowtail chrysalis, which appears to have opened and emptied, but is still mostly intact. These are also prone to infestation, and in retrospect, ours never looked the healthiest.
I don’t know if this is it—there are still plenty of butterflies around—but if it is, we had a good run.
Writing
My first poem is now published! Normally I don’t think you’re supposed to reprint material once it has been published. But since the physical book is sold out, it’s not fully available online, and I’m not making any money from this, I feel okay sharing it here.
For All These Things And More, I Forgive You
You will snooze your alarm too many times,
and that’s okay.You will get out of bed in the morning
looking forward to only one thing —
getting into bed in the evening.
And that’s okay.You won’t take a shower, you won’t eat breakfast,
you won’t drink water, you won’t leave the house,
and that’s okay.You will go through the motions,
struggling to do even that.
And that’s okay.You will forget to have fun,
you will forget to laugh,
you will take shallow breaths,
the air will feel thin and tight,
and that’s okay.You will take yourself and your work too seriously.
And that’s okay.You will be thankful for nothing,
you will fail to notice the awe that surrounds you,
and that’s okay.You will overcomplicate things,
and overcommit yourself,
and fart around on your phone
instead of writing.
And that’s okay.You will hear the inner voice that tells you you ain’t shit,
and you will listen,
and that’s okay.You will stop writing,
because you are afraid it will be terrible,
because it can never be as good in the world as it feels in your head,
and the voice will know.
And that’s okay.You will read or hear or watch someone else’s work and you will feel despair,
because you can’t write or play or perform as well as they can,
and that’s okay.You will attempt to copy someone else’s method or mission
or values or path or soul,
and it will not work for you.
And that’s okay.You will measure yourself by someone else’s definition of success,
and that’s okay.You will feel like you’re trying to catch up to other people,
you will understand that you never can,
and this will make you want to give up.
And that’s okay.You will abdicate responsibility for anything and everything,
and that’s okay.You will second-guess yourself, the true parts of yourself —
your greatest gifts and deepest needs, your purest calling —
you will forsake them all.
And that’s okay.You will lie to yourself,
and that’s okay.You will forget that all of these things are okay.
And that’s okay.
You will become angry at yourself for forgetting that all of these things are okay,
and that’s okay.You will think that you have solved the problem of being angry at yourself,
that it will never happen again,
but you will be wrong.
And that’s okay.And to all my past selves,
who have done all these things and more:I forgive you.
And if I could have written this poem years ago,
to myself today,
I would have.
Reading
Layshia Clarendon — "Kelly Loeffler Is the Anti-Movement"
A WNBA player’s powerful response to a team owner who is happy to profit from the labor of Black players while mischaracterizing and slandering the Black Lives Matter movement and opposing it as a politician.
Tammy Duckworth — "Tucker Carlson Doesn’t Know What Patriotism Is"
Continuing the theme. My U.S. Senator (!) dismantles accusations from Carlson (and Trump) that she is unpatriotic and “hates America,” even though a) she earned a Purple Heart fighting in Iraq, and b) two of her ancestors fought in the Continental Army—you know, the one that fought against the British, before there even was an America. "These titanium legs don't buckle."
John McWhorter — “The Dictionary Definition of Racism Has to Change”
My favorite popular linguist (okay, the only popular linguist I know of, but I love his stuff) on the evolution of the word racism and how dictionaries reflect languages, rather than define them.
Kevin Seifert — "DeSean Jackson's anti-Semitic posts are a critical teaching moment -- for everyone"
The video inserts with Max Kellerman's and Julian Edelman's responses are worth watching, too. Sometimes "sports stories" have a way of getting to the heart of a thorny issue, like the fraught relationship between Black people and Jewish people. And don't forget that there are people who are both.
Mood
Let’s continue the U2 theme from last week. On my baseball message board (long story), we’ve been having a discussion about “underrated famous bands”—bands that everyone knows but still somehow don’t get the credit they deserve. One person suggested U2, arguing that even though they were once the biggest band in the world and so many of their songs are still ubiquitous, they’ve become something of a joke, and most of their output in the last two decades is unfairly maligned.
I actually haven’t even listened to their stuff from this millennium, outside of the singles. Nor have I really dug into their earliest stuff, which is crazy because they were a big part of the early 80s post-punk sounds that is my favorite era in music.
So now I’m listening to all their albums in order, which is a multi-week project. My rankings so far:
- Achtung Baby (1991)
- The Joshua Tree (1987)
- Boy (1980)
- War (1983)
- October (1981)
- Under a Blood Red Sky (1983)
- The Unforgettable Fire (1984)
- Zooropa (1993)
- Rattle and Hum (1988)
It was really tough to rank Achtung Baby ahead of The Joshua Tree, which many people consider one of the best albums ever, but I fell in love with the story about how the band realized they were getting too self-indulgent and nostalgic and needed to re-invent themselves. U2 couldn’t agree at first what this would mean musically, and their recording sessions, in a famous Berlin studio that was also a former SS ballroom, became enveloped in tension and acrimony. Until one day, improvising on a riff, they found themselves writing a new song together, which turned into this:
U2 — “One”
We're one, but we're not the same
We get to carry each other
Carry each other
https://open.spotify.com/track/3vmGLMqc4JWO9ibyJRs8Zo?si=T8_RL3fwQiKejRyRZVztMQ
And a bonus version of Michael Stipe and Mike Mills from R.E.M. playing “One” at Bill Clinton’s inauguration ball! (With Spanish subtitles, for kicks.)
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Thanks for reading. Please take care, and write back if you can!
Love,
Aaron