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furthernotes · 5 years ago

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On Spaces and Lines (Or the Things That Connect and Separate)

In her essay A Hero is A Disaster: Stereotypes Versus Strength in Numbers, Rebecca Solnit talks of our preoccupation with lone victors that often leads us to make light of the potency of collective action. She writes of her friend, legal expert and author Dahlia Lithwick, who was laying groundwork for a book on women lawyers who have argued and won civil rights cases against the Trump administration in the past two years. Her goal was to diffuse the spotlight from famed individuals—such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, about whom many advised her to write instead—and onto lesser known lawyers. Elsewhere in the book, in City of Women, Solnit writes of the names which we give to our built environment: The rivers, roads, statues and colleges named after prominent, often white men; generals and captains whose shadows drape over their armies. One essay over, in Monumental Change and the Power of Names, she writes of the demolition and renaming of such monuments; changes that have shifted narratives and righted histories. She declares: “Statues and names are not in themselves human rights or equal access or a substitute for them. But they are crucial parts of the built environment, ones that tell us who matters and who will be remembered.”

I live in a quaint old neighbourhood in Singapore known as the Cambridge Estate. The vicinity is made up of roads named after idyllic English counties: Kent, Dorset, Durham, Norfolk, Northumberland; all a few minutes of walk away from the Farrer Park subzone—named after Roland John Farrer, who presided over the Singapore Municipal Commission, a body tasked to oversee local urban affairs and development under the British colonial rule. My block, an old building owned by the Housing Development Board, along with the streets that surround it, have seen some construction and renovation work in the past months. As Singapore went into lockdown at the start of April (which they prefer to call Circuit Breaker, God knows why, I’d say it’s some kind of a performative attempt at benevolence), most of the work have ceased. The roadwork at the intersection of Dorset and Kent, however, continued up until a week back. I eyed the workers, many of them migrants, from behind my mask as I crossed the street. They toiled away under the blistering sun, and I was reminded that elsewhere, on the outskirts of the city, the outbreak has reached the foreign workers’ dormitories; making prisons out of their rooms.

***

“Singapore Seemed to Have Coronavirus Under Control, Until Cases Doubled,” read a headline on the New York Times. When the city was first hit by the pandemic, its efficiency in controlling the spread was lauded as a model response. Now, its cases total to over 8,000, the highest number reported number in Southeast Asia. The number of infections climbed rapidly as the virus reached numerous foreign workers’ dormitories across the state—housing about 300,000 people—which are notoriously overcrowded and ill-equipped. The pandemic has gone on long enough, I think, for all of us to recognise that its effects have carved our social divides deeper than ever before. “The outbreak doesn’t discriminate, but its effects do,” is a sentiment that has been widely spread across social media and news outlets, inviting incisive criticisms on an array of issues, from capitalist policies to eco-activism and celebrity culture. A dominant theme, however, runs through their veins: the far-reaching power of privilege; and how it pervades even the smallest units of our lives. As “social distancing” and “stay home” were made law, it became clear that space is a luxury few share—at least, fewer than we thought. Instructions such as “stay home” and its varieties, writes Jason DeParle for the New York Times, assumes the existence of a safe, stable and controlled environment. DeParle notes that inmates, detained immigrants, homeless families and, I would add, victims of domestic abuse, are some of the discrete groups facing a dilemma amidst such instructions. He asserts: “What they share may be little beyond poverty and one of its overlooked costs: the perils of proximity.”

Close quarter is the very calamity confronting Singapore’s foreign workers community during this outbreak. Contagion hit a record high on 20 April, with over 1,426 confirmed cases, a vast majority of which coming from numerous dormitories across the state. Since early last week, active testing has been carried out since in the dormitories—which might explain the figures—but the City had been glaringly unprepared, which made for a peculiar sight. Immediately, I found myself questioning its renowned vigilance and extraordinary prescience; qualities that I often contrast with my hometown of Jakarta and its outrageously lethargic response to the pandemic. But the dorms had always been “ticking time-bombs”, Sophie Chew writes on Rice Media, and the City had turned a deaf ear to forewarnings from activists and NGOs that went back as far as February. The dorms are overcrowded, she reports: a single dorm can house over 10,000, and up to 20 people are pushed into a space the size of a four-room flat. A resident of S11 Dormitory located in Punggol, one of the first to be gazetted as an isolation site, says he shares the same shower facilities as about 150 others. The dorms are unlivable, Chew says; detailing that they are “notoriously filthy”, and some workers told The Straits Times that toilets were not regularly disinfected. This condition makes the concept of safe distancing “laughable”, writes the NGO Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) on their website. To Chew, it is clear that Singapore’s “celebrated, ‘gold standard’ response had a citizenship blind spot.”

The blatant ignorance to the livelihood of the migrant populace is inexcusable, but it is hardly a shock for anyone from the outside looking in. The racial divide is patent; and—in the case of foreign workers—the tension is heightened by a system that enables the production of precarity and abets exploitation (Chuanfei Chin from the National University of Singapore wrote a concise paper detailing the network complicit in producing the social vulnerabilities experienced by temporary foreign workers, which you can read here). Yet, when news outlets started reporting on the crisis, they had been either clinical or deeply prejudiced, and the comment section only compounds the horror. These have not only mapped public opinion, but also reiterated the value that is given to the lives of foreign workers, and delineate further their standing in the Singapore society. The lines on this map are both psychological and structural: Yong Han Poh, writing for the Southeast Asia Globe, reminds us that their dormitories are built in isolated areas far from the public view. They are, quite literally, segregated from the wider population. The kind of treatment we afford them, the lines we draw, brings to my mind a passage from Solnit’s essay Crossing Over, where she talks of territories and migration: “The idea of illegal immigrants arises from the idea of the nation as a body whose purity is defiled by foreign bodies, and of its borders as something that can and should be sealed.” The concept, when taken in a literal manner, is eerily familiar: Almost immediately after the outbreak reached the dormitories, Facebook comments became unbearable, with an alarming number of people pointing fingers at the foreign workers’ habits and personal hygiene; insinuating that the contagion rates has more to do with their insanitary culture than the ill-equipped and overcrowded dorms (of course, they would not be the first to be at the receiving end of such narrative, which has shifted throughout history to serve the interests of those in power. Pan Jie at Rice Media offers a succinct chronicle of this.) Solnit calls this the “fantasy of safety”, where “self and the other are distinct and the other can be successfully repelled.” We are seeing, right now, that fantasy wielded by those with power; one they enforce out of suspicion and out of fear of losing security and authority. But all who have been subjugated, too, understand and yearn for this fantasy: To be liberated from the constant invasion of freedom and autonomy.

Image courtesy of Sumita Thiagarajan via Facebook. Taken on Keppel Island.

It is critical to examine, Rebecca Solnit writes, who is meant by “we” in any given place. One way to do this is by looking at the lines drawn by the semantics of names and categories. The term “migrant” has come under scrutiny in recent years: What separates the group—defined as “a person who moves from one place to another, especially in order to find work or better living conditions”—from expats, for instance, could be only a matter of nationality and skin colour. As Indonesian author Intan Paramaditha states in her essay on LitHub: “We can read the map, but the map has read us first.” Further in her essay, she continues to say that these categories determines how one experiences mobility, whether one would “encounter bridges or barriers, hospitality or displacement.” Making the distinction even more severe are neoliberal policies that have turned lives into pawns and commodities and made decent livelihood a due owed and never paid (while “errant employers” is often cited as the reason for foreign workers’ exploitation and abuse, research have shown that the legal framework protecting them, while comprehensive, is flawed). This points to the central criticism against the term “worker”, which, as Yong writes in her essay, reduces them to factors of production and labour units. Recently, online platform Dear.sg, which describes themselves as a “media conglomerate steeped in culture and grounded in locality”, befouled this already murky waters: With an article titled We Need Foreign Workers More Than They Need Us—a headline that might deceive one into thinking it’s an innocent op-ed designed to galvanise empathy by tugging at one’s guilty conscience—they concluded that migrant workers are valuable because they are essential to our material needs. “Construction sites might have to be abandoned for a while and projects will take a longer time to be completed,” it says in one passage. It then implores its readers to “think of your Build-To-Order flats…the new airport terminal, street repairs and maintenance…”, and reminds them that now, “we have to wait even longer.” What is meant by “we” had never been so grossly exclusionary. The article has narrowed migrant workers into tools of prosperity, and never once suggested that they be a beneficiary (they have received a number of backlash on Instagram, and as of yesterday they are still actively deleting comments). At the end, under a heading that says Modern Slavery Or Not (sans question mark), they ask if we should start ringing the alarm on exploitation of cheap labour. Does all this leads to the so-called modern slavery, it asks, grammatical error intact. “Maybe,” it answers, aloof. “Forced contracts and bonds, who knows.”

Evidently, this pandemic is not “the great equaliser”. If anything, it has magnified privilege and heightened insecurities. Solnit offers us hope in what she calls “public love”: collective action; a sense of meaning and purpose that belongs to a community. She refers to the 1960 earthquake of San Francisco, and outlines a shared sentiment of loss among the people, that is “if I lose my home, I’m cast out among those who remain comfortable, but if we all lose our homes in the earthquake, we’re in this together.” Perhaps the nature of this pandemic bears little resemblance to a natural disaster, but we experience collective loss all the same: Much of our freedom and flexibility—to work, travel, or to socialise—have been suspended for the foreseeable future. But they are losses felt more profoundly by vulnerable groups, and let it not be forgotten that they were cast out before any disaster—the precarity of their livelihood a disaster in its own right—and they bear distress many of us are precluded from. These inequalities have been laid bare in the weeks following the outbreak in dormitories, and there had been no shortage of care from the ground: Comedian and YouTuber Preeti Nair ran a fundraising campaign to aid two NGOs, TWC2 and HealthServe, in meeting the urgent needs of migrant workers that have been put under quarantine. As of 21 April, they have raised over S$316,000—more than triple their original goal of S$100,000. There are spreadsheets detailing efforts of different organisations and how we can contribute (Yong included one at the end of her essay, and a local community library, Wares, published a Mutual Aid and Community Solidarity spreadsheet). Many Singaporeans who are able and secure have donated their Solidarity Payment to non-profit organisations working with vulnerable groups. Corporations, too, have started partnering NGOs to raise funds and distribute masks at affected dormitories. It’s not just in Singapore: Worldwide, the pandemic has fostered record numbers of philanthropic donations and vast networks of mutual aid—a new map, if you will, with unmarked territories and nameless seas. There is a growing recognition of mutual dependence, a survey by the New York Times shows, and while there is no guarantee that the shift in moral perspectives will last beyond the crisis, there is hope in knowing that we are re-examining—if not redrafting—the map that we were given.

Yet I still find evidence of a divide: I have heard more and more that we need not need to worry; most of the cases are from the dorms, I hear, there are less in the community, I hear, directly from the official WhatsApp updates, and I recognise once more the gulf that has yet to be bridged. Between the lines, I find the seeds of amnesia, which—Solnit writes in her essay Long Distance—holds us “vulnerable to experiencing the present as inevitable, unchangeable, or just inexplicable.” She talks then of the term “shifting baselines”, coined by marine biologist Daniel Pauly, and stresses the importance of a baseline; a stable point from which we can measure systemic transformation before it was dramatically altered. This pandemic, one can hope, will alter how dormitories are managed and equipped for the better. Beyond this pandemic, Manpower Minister Josephine Teo said in a statement in early April, “there’s no question” that standards in foreign worker dormitories should be raised, and appealed for increased cooperation from employers. Meanwhile, measures taken to manage this crisis—particularly with the issue of overcrowding and hygiene—have been widely criticised; prompting authorities to move residents of the dormitories to vacant Housing Board flats, military camps and floating hotels to reduce crowding. The Prime Minister further addressed these measures in a live address to the nation yesterday—in which he also announced the 4-week extension of the Circuit Breaker—promising stricter safe distancing measures, increased on-site medical resources, closer monitoring of older workers, and distribution of pre-dawn and break fast meals for Muslim workers who will start fasting on Friday. “The clusters in the dorms have remained largely contained,” he says, and pledges their best effort to keep it that way. When this crisis is over, I tell myself, we must not forget the baseline of their predicament, or be too quick to acquit those in power from any wrongdoing—if only to preserve a benchmark of assessment. Without a recollection of the past, Solnit warns us, change becomes imperceptible, and we might slip to “…mistake today’s peculiarities for eternal verities.” Nevertheless, the Prime Minister sounded assured. He even wore a blue shirt—that must have meant something. I, for one, am hopeful, as I always try to be. There’s still much reason to be.

***

I stopped at the traffic light at the intersection of Dorset and Kent. I glanced at the street sign, green as they’ll ever be. Solnit writes: “Pity the land that thinks it needs a hero, or doesn’t know it has lots and what they look like.” Indeed, we do not know it. I wondered then if the crisp white paint will ever spell a different name. For all the transformations construction workers have made to our built environment, will there ever be a monument in their name, like the kind we have bestowed our tycoons and presidents and—oh God, I groaned as I realised this—counties of former occupants? In a few weeks’ time, this intersection will be vacant once more; the deafening drill and temporary fences suddenly vanishing from sight. Their mark will go undetectable and nameless; swallowed whole by the scorching sun and the picturesque imagination of the Dorset and Kent of another continent. The light turned green. As I crossed the street, I remember Solnit saying that the truest lines on this map are only those between land and water. “The other lines on the map are arbitrary,” she says, they have changed many times and will change again. One can hope.

Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters, Rebecca Solnit, 2019.

POSTSCRIPT

As I am finishing this essay, I wonder how big of a role I play in this equation, and if I tip the scale further towards inequality. I realise how small we all are; how powerless we might all be without the aid of top-down political action. I am not under the delusion that individual responsibility counts a great deal in this narrative (David Wallace-Wells calls accusations of personal responsibility a “weaponised red herring”), but I also refuse to trivialise the weight of our own actions (the great Gloria Steinem reminds us that “a movement is only people moving”). This being so, you will find below some spreadsheets and relevant, verified fundraising campaigns where you can extend your care. Every dollar counts, and every hand have the power to soothe.

Fundraising Campaigns

Preetipls x UTOPIA for Migrant Workers NGOs

Support migrant workers through Covid-19 and beyond, a campaign by Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME)

Vulnerable Women’s Fund by AWARE

Donate Your Solidarity Payment. Funds will be channelled to Boys’ Town, Hagar Singapore, Singapore Red Cross, AWARE and HOME

Entrepreneur First supports The Food Bank - Feed the City #Covid-19. Funds will be channelled to the Food Bank. You can also donate food to Food Bank Boxes available island-wide.

Spreadsheets

Mutual Aid and Community Solidarity – Coordination by Wares Infoshop Library

COVID-19 | Needs in the migrant community as included in Yong Han Poh’s essay

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furthernotes · 5 years ago

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On Anger

We are at the tail end of #WomensHistoryMonth. I feel rather guilty talking about something else other than the pandemic. But above all else, I feel anxious and vulnerable, and I am constantly worried about what is coming. Reading and writing have always put my mind at ease. I hope this would give you a much-needed distraction as well, if only for a minute or two. x

These past weeks, I have been reading the words of the women before me. These are women I worship, really, though before this I know only of their name and what they stand for. Each time I turn a cover, I expect passion and wisdom beyond my reach. Be assured that I received nothing less. But inside these pages I discovered a common tune; a fire smouldering in each paperback. It felt all too familiar. I have seen it behind my mother’s eyes; in the tightened knuckles and hurried paces of my sisters: Anger.

The kind of progress the West have seen often delude me into thinking we have little cause left for anger (or that we’ve no justifiable reasons to be angry anymore). I recognise this very delusion as I study the words of Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own as she paints a fictitious author, Mary Carmichael, who

“...had certain advantages which women of far greater gift lacked even half a century ago. Men were no longer to her the opposing faction; she need not waste her time railing against them; she need not climb on to the roof and ruin her peace of mind longing for travel, experience and a knowledge of the world and character that were denied her. Fear and hatred were almost gone, or traces of them showed only in a slight exaggeration of the joy of freedom…”

Today, almost 100 years since its publication, Woolf’s portrait of such a woman remains quixotic at best. Anger persists. Change is slow to come, though we have conquered mountains that Woolf and her contemporaries could only dream of.

“This is just how things are,” is a sentiment I have heard one too many times. Resignation is a pandemic that has silenced our anger and bound our fists for generations without fail. Our convictions mocked, our insistence scorned and our rights denied, we and our sisters before us have all wondered if this is all there is; if this is as far as we could go. Resignation is alluring. I learn this in the words of Alice Walker: In every blow Celie suffers; in each slur and disrespect; in every jug of water she must fetch - resignation offers itself as an oasis in the dry heat of a desert. And dear Celie all but strides towards the water. But let me let you in on a secret: She understands that it is only a mirage. She must stop, if only to observe, but we are promised - in every word she writes to Nettie, every kiss from Shug and every stitch on her divine pants - that she will not stay.

“I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts,” Audre Lorde writes in her groundbreaking essay. I feel her words echo.

“When we turn from anger we turn from insight, saying we will accept only the designs already known, deadly and safely familiar.”

While Woolf envisions an end to anger, an age where it will no longer be necessary, Lorde understands there is no end to this dark tunnel: “For anger between peers birth change, not destruction, and the discomfort and sense of loss it often causes is not fatal, but a sign of growth.” I must add, however, that destruction is integral to growth.

I started my reflection on anger with a long-held belief that anger need not manifest in destruction. War, terrorism, trafficking and hate crime; Endless, frightening accounts of violence and sexual assault - all vivid reminders of hypermasculinity normalised and superimposed on anger; Brazen displays of violence that obfuscate the ends to justify the means and vice versa. Like Lorde, I have immense faith that anger can and should only manifest in reform. But I realise now that reform, too, requires destruction: The destruction of heteronormative ideals and exclusionary language is imperative to achieve inclusion; just as the destruction of traditional gender roles, racist stereotypes and sexist media are imperative to equality. The list goes on, but let us understand that there is destruction that imagines emancipation and justice in place of domination and superiority.

And so our anger must not see an end. Though I must say that the idea that there is an end to this dark tunnel - that somewhere a green pasture and blue skies await us; that there exists a sanctuary where our anger is obsolete - is enticing. Comforting, even. Yet this tunnel branches as I walk its path.

“Sometimes we have to wait for our friends to be born,” the great Gloria Steinem told Emma Watson in the summer of 2018. Steinem has seen the many faces of anger: through the Playboy club in her bunny costume; on the battlefield in arms with the first congresswomen; and on the payroll of sexist editors and on the road with Flo Kennedy. She has walked thousands of miles in this tunnel, and she has grown fond of the contours of its darkness. She has seen the many faces of anger, across time and space and generations. Each time, it renews her own.

I carry a torch in this darkness to see the many faces of my sisters: the dark beneath our eyes and the lines of our frowns and the pull of our cheeks at every triumph. I can see your anger as clearly as I see my own. With every step in this darkness my sight broadens, and I become mindful that there is much I have yet to see. Far in the dark I feel the faces I’ve yet to meet, stories I’ve yet to hear and anger simmering and waiting to be discovered; anger I will hear many times over. Steinem writes: “This seems to be where we are, after the first full decade of the second wave of Feminism: raised hopes, a hunger for change, and years of hard work are running head-on into a frustrating realisation that each battle must be fought over and over again.” Her words echo.

When asked if she will be passing her torch, Steinem is adamant to keep it: “I’m using it to light the torches of others…together, we create so much light.”

This fire can burn us or ignite us, there is no guarantee. But the flame is eternal. And there are bastions that must be burned.

A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf, 1929. Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf, 1938. The Color Purple, Alice Walker, 1982. Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde, 1984. Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (Third Edition), Gloria Steinem, 2019. Originally published in 1983.

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furthernotes · 5 years ago

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On Hope

What an uncertain time we are facing. A global pandemic has taken over life as we know it. Thousands have lost loved ones, jobs and opportunities, and we all have had our activities halted and upended. Hostages of an unknown enemy, cities are proceeding with extreme caution, running on bare necessities. For the foreseeable future, we will hear nothing but news of the pandemic, and see little more than the walls of our own home. we are hyper-aware, suddenly, of our frailty and the freedoms we have taken for granted. This distance has permit us to see with unmatched clarity: Medical workers, pharmacists, grocers and delivery employees keep our cities alive; Guiding us with burning urgency to practice social responsibility in consumption, sanitation and gatherings. Yet the future remains dim. We fear scarcity, mismanagement and riot. Widespread, unbridled fear has driven some to commit hate and misinformation. We have been seeking, anxiously, for trust and reliability in our neighbours, cities and governments. All of us, it seems, fear uncertainty.

“To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.”

Such are the wise words of Rebecca Solnit. From Italians singing from their balcony and good Samaritans buying food for delivery workers - we have witnessed little sparks of joy across the globe; friends and strangers determined to see each other through this time. We latch onto intervals of hope no matter how short or mundane. “Hope calls for action,” Solnit writes, “action is impossible without hope.” If you are stuck indoors, call your loved ones - if they are ill, they need hope more than ever. Ask how you can help those who have had their hourly-paying job cut in half - your support is invaluable. Should you have masks to spare, donate them to your local hospital. Most importantly, listen to those on the front lines of this pandemic. Their advice is as good as law, But its power rests on our observance and diligence.

Here I offer one last piece of wisdom from Solnit:

“Inside the word ‘emergency’ is ‘emerge’ ... The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters.”

We shall emerge from this fearful time. Remember that our most meaningful action could be as simple as staying home and washing our hands - small deeds to create pockets of possibilities. Remember that kindness counts, and that it is the time for responsibility and sacrifices.

Around the world, we are overcome with distress, and all seems dark and unsure. But hope is the light in the dark. It is up to us to keep it aflame. To all of you near and far, take care and stay safe.

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furthernotes · 5 years ago

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On Unlearning

Since the beginning of my adolescence, I have been seeking for truth, contradictions and new questions on femininity and womanhood. I sought for the mother of our pain, the father of our fears, the teenaged sister of our rebellion, the infant of our courage, and the soil upon which the home of our anger is built. Through the voices of many great women and feminists I have discovered my own, and thus was carved the tombstone for my silence. A few weeks back, a friend of mine said: “There’s no need to be so ruthless about it anymore. Women have choices.” I began to explain how layered, conditional and limited our choices are. But I’d wondered then: How many of us truly believe that we have won this battle? The more I read, the more I realise how much of our lives are still regulated by and measured against patriarchal ideals. My expectations of how things should be have been moulded largely by Western discourse, and though it has given me immense hope it has also created a great dissonance within me. I’m dissatisfied by how things are on our side of the universe, frustrated at the lack of progress and inconsolable over how little I am compared to the giant in the clouds named Patriarchy. At the same time, I’m becoming more conscious of the paradoxes that arise with each step we take. I’m confronting the contradictions between what I’ve read and what I’ve experienced, though often I feel I might never reconcile the disparity. But I am not powerless. None of us are. Between two countries, I‘ve listened to women at the intersections of race, religion and sexual orientation: Their trials in navigating the concept of femininity in their community; in assessing their relationships and emotional labor; and their crusade towards their own vision. They have been sources of a great many truths, and a great many new questions. I am unlearning two decades of misogyny; gazing inward to acknowledge my privileges and defeat my silences. I am seeking in my friends and sisters a way to build a bridge across the many junctures of injustice. For It is through your eyes that I have begun to see clearly. I see a blinding light. With you beside me, I‘ll never doubt my sight.

Happy #InternationalWomensDay! Liberté Egalité Sororité t-shirt from women-owned Black and Beech. Ethically produced (WRAP certified) using 100% organic cotton, screen printed using water-based inks locally in the UK. They also donate to pro-choice charities.

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furthernotes · 5 years ago

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On the Weight of Our Actions

Kicking off #WomensHistoryMonth with Weather by Jenny Offill, longlisted for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. “Young person worry: What if nothing I do matters? Old person worry: What if everything I do does?” I often find myself caught between these two questions which, in my head, are equally horrifying. What does it say about me? I am as young as millenials get, and it terrifies me to no end that in the grand scheme of things, nothing I do matters. That I will always be too small for this vast world, and that I would never write, do or say anything that would guarantee the preservation of my soul - vain as that sounds. It mortifies me that I could vanish and be reduced into an irretrievable memory, or worse: I would be remembered only as the placid, sharp-tongued bitch (not that I’m not fond of that characterisation). But the thought of never having touched or moved a soul! The thought that I might never alter, turn or burn - in the best sense of the word - someone’s worldview, or dreams, or lived reality. It’s a strange fear, I suppose. One that feeds an equally odd aspiration. “My #1 fear is the acceleration of days. No such thing supposedly, but I swear I can feel it,” Offill writes. Does this accelerate aging too? I asked myself, shuddering at the thought. How much time do I have left to find out if the things I do matter? Or, perhaps the more accurate question is: How little time? How grand a gesture must my actions be for them to be consequential? Whose standards of importance do they follow? Mine or yours? Or were the lines never ours to draw? “The core delusion is that I am here and you are there.” Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way. Maybe I should be asking: How little is too little? Can the small things become as essential as I petulantly insist they be? I won’t lie - I ask these questions while devising an answer that would leave me with a modicum of optimism. I want all I do to matter. Maybe it’s self-preservation. Or maybe it’s to preserve my own delusion that I have any control over the universe. That I am not too small.

I sometimes imagine my fears and concerns as a pack of biscuits. My mother would always tell me to put them in a jar before I eat them so that they stay crisp. The rectangular biscuits never fit quite right in those round jars; awkwardly crammed together and leaving odd gaps that no whole biscuit could fill. “There are bigger jars in the back,” my mother would say, irked by my absurd struggle. No. I’d pause, keep the excess inside the packet, bound it with a rubber band and store it in the fridge. My mother would click her tongue; indignant. No. A bigger jar would leave too much empty space. This jar should fit. it’s just not the right shape. I long for my mind to shapeshift, to bend and break to accommodate the seeds it has sown. Too much, never enough. Throughout this book, Lizzie sails across these two states. She nurtures - often at her own expense - her marriage; her son; her brother, who is battling an addiction; and the many people who sent letters to her mentor Sylvia, in over their head on climate change and the impending doomsday. We listen to Lizzie’s musings, the irresistible thoughts of a person who is attempting to save as many as she can. Offill’s clipped sentences and sardonic revelations beg us to fill in the blanks: She presents us with silences that make a bond; the bricks that make a fortress; the weather that make a climate. Sometimes I would empty that packet of biscuits, cramming them into the round jar. I’d watch them break; crumbs and pieces settling onto the bottom of the jar. I’d watch, knowing full well they would go untouched. All we do matter. Except, of course, for those times when they don’t. But we make do. We weather. May You Be Among the Survivors.

Weather, Jenny Offill, 2020.

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furthernotes · 5 years ago

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On Trauma (The Stories of Our Ancestors)

“History has failed us, but no matter.”

That was the opening line of Pachinko. Succinct, glorious, unsettling; characteristics that linger until the very end of this tale. Pachinko is a family saga. Spanning across generations, it brings forward the largely untold (and unwritten) story of Korean immigrants living in Japan. Pachinko follows the Baek family through tragedies, poverty, displacement and abuse; with the Japanese occupation of Korea and World War II chronicled in the background. There is no possible way that I can summarise this tale and do it justice. I shall not try. But consider this a persuasion most earnest: Min Jin Lee is a gamble worth taking.

Some weeks back, I came across an article on the New York Times titled Can We Really Inherit Trauma? (I’ll answer that very quickly. Scientists are still disputing this claim - quite bitterly, I understand - and it is too premature for a definite answer). Epigenetics, this study is called. “The idea,” writes Benedict Carey in the article, “is that trauma can leave a chemical mark on a person’s genes, which then is passed down to subsequent generations.” Epigenetics gained traction over a decade ago, when L.H. Lumey, an epidemiologist at Columbia University and his colleagues followed the lives of children born from mothers who were exposed to the long famine in the Netherlands during WWII (The Dutch Hunger Winter, it is called). As adults, these children are heavier than average, and in middle age experienced higher rates of obesity, diabetes and schizophrenia. In the end, this cohort died at a higher rate than people born before or afterward. I shan’t try going into the scientific bits, but the finding, as written by Carl Zimmer for the New York Times is this: “The Dutch Hunger Winter silenced certain genes in unborn children - and that they’ve stayed quiet ever since.” I’d wondered then if this was more of a behavioural reaction to post-war globalisation - liberalisation of the food markets, the birth of fast food - than it was famine-related genetic modification. Nonetheless, it offers a beguiling thought: Trauma silences - and awakens - different parts of us.

I think then of the Baek family, how trauma powered their personal and collective silences, building forts of untold histories, and commanding the course of their lives; at times overpowering their own convictions. Histories and trauma, especially those of our families’, wield a special power: Across generations, accounts become stories, growing further with each delivery, yet the sense of attachment it carries remains intact. Generational and ancestral bonds make for an inimitable component that forges our identities, like an old song that reminds you of a moment in time: the scent of adolescence, the taste of childhood; it binds us, and for them to remain unshared, unheard, is for us to remain incomplete. But much of our family traumas are left unsaid, for better or worse, like ashes placed inside an urn on the mantelpiece to fuse into deafening silence, only to be glanced at to remind you of an absence, and the song once in its place. John Berger, writing about history in his book Confabulations, says: “Any sense of History, linking past and future, has been marginalised, if not eliminated. And so, people are suffering a sense of Historic loneliness...There is each day’s life, yet what surrounds it is a void. A void in which millions of us are today alone. And such solitude can transform Death into a companion.” The Baeks know this all too well. In the sidelines of history, Death - in its literal and figurative forms - became their most loyal confidant. My family, and perhaps yours, know this too. And if there is any merit to Epigenetics, our stories and those of our ancestors’, unshared or not, are embedded in us. May this be a reminder to seek stories you’ve not yet received. Leave no tales unheard, no souls unbared. For in those tales you may find consolation, or - if you are quick enough to seek it before it is vacated - resolution. “In the sharing of the song,” Berger writes, “the absence is also shared and so becomes less acute, less solitary, less silent. And this...is collectively experienced as something triumphant.”

Pachinko, Min Jin Lee, 2017. Confabulations, John Berger, 2016.

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On Growing Up

Isidore Mazal is normal. He’s normal, which means he sticks out like a sore thumb amongst his five grade-skipping, doctorate-pursuing siblings. In this crowded house, Isidore must be the one that keeps them together through grief and uncertainties. Though he grows disheartened when he realises he will never become his siblings, he is comforted by that same thought. He learns as they make mistakes, and sticks his chin up as they slip to him elaborate words and pompous arguments. “As for taking care of me and the father,...I can’t imagine your brothers and sisters stepping up to help. No offense to them but...they’re not really good at caring for anyone. Not too sensitive. The opposite of you, really.” I grew up the youngest in my family. There is a certain kind of comfort in it I’ve willed myself to find. I think then of the odd chance that I was born sibling-free. What a strange vision that would be! But there’s a comfort in that, too, my friend says. Jo grew up an only child, and she loves the personal space. “I know siblings grow up with hair pulling and violent scratching. I never had that, and honestly, I don’t mind it one bit.” I can attest to this. My sister and I bit each other quite frequently. “I know people think we’re self-centred, but it’s not like that. I’m close to my cousins, and I have my childhood friends, who I’m not sure I’d survive without.” Have you ever hoped for a sibling, then? A big sister, Jo said, and I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m naturally a follower. I want someone I can look up to, someone to show me the ropes. In work, in finding a job, I wish I have some sort of guidance. Maybe in love, too...someone to validate my choices.”

I mentioned then Bordas’ quote. It’s a matter my sister and I have discussed, caretaking. You must know what I’m about to ask. “Yes,” she sighed, “I’m starting to feel the pressure. To be employed soon, to start thinking about taking care of my parents. I have no one to share this burden with.” Much to my dismay, I didn’t possess any words comforting enough to ease her mind. Anything else? I asked. About being an only child, I mean. “Yeah. Visiting theme parks is super awkward.”

How to Behave in A Crowd, Camille Bordas, 2017.

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furthernotes · 5 years ago

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On Validation

Connell and Marianne spend their lives searching for a love they had been refused while growing up. Marianne, in particular, seeks a singular kind of validation: She admits, at one point:

“He tells her she’s beautiful. She has never heard that before, though she has sometimes privately suspected it of herself, but it feels different to hear it from another person.”

Too often I hear that we must love ourselves before we love another, yet Marianne was able to express some manifestation of love despite her inhibitions. It is a great privilege, I think, to seek inner love and receive it painlessly. It’s hard for me to believe that one can exercise love without ever being shown it. It cannot be learned in a vacuum. After all, we all yearn for reciprocity. We all doubt and question our worth, and it is only survival instinct to seek external validation. But at what point are we finally convinced of our worth, and will we ever be the final judge? At times like these, I think about how I was raised: My father spent countless nights reading us bedtime stories, and my mother never failed to send us to school with toast and a glass of milk. My sister readily shared her insecurities to ease my own; and my dearest friends, having seen me most obnoxious, still shone a light through the cracks. I’ve been unbelievably lucky. And yet, unkind words and thoughtless acts still break my spirit, silently piercing the resolve I’ve painstakingly built over the years. I’ve always found this rather stupid. But I stop to remind myself that my mind is the cruelest of any juror, and we do ourselves a great injustice by never seeing ourselves from the eyes of those that love us. I remember then that I have been fully equipped for the act of love. I have been shown kindness and respect, and to reciprocate is an elementary deed. It’s an unending cycle, I think. New insecurities emerge, doubts accumulate, anxieties grow torturous. It is human to seek validation elsewhere, to ask to be shown love and kindness as one would ask to be taught a new language.

“For a human being, nothing comes naturally,” the ever-rational Philip Pullman once wrote, “we have to learn everything we do.”

Normal People, Sally Rooney, 2018.

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furthernotes · 5 years ago

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On the Quest for Knowledge

Tara Westover is on a quest towards enlightenment. She grew up in a rural Mormon survivalist household, and she spent her days preparing for the apocalypse and helping her father in the junkyard. Tara never set foot in a classroom. She had no medical records, and was only registered for a birth certificate when she was 9 years old. See, Tara’s father was suspicious of the government, hospitals and doctors. In the Westover household, the Bible reigned supreme, and not a single soul dared to object to the wishes of the family patriarch. But Tara Westover is on a quest towards enlightenment: she taught herself algebra, then trigonometry. She took the entrance exam to university, and failed. She took it again, and she was granted admission. What followed was a long period of unlearning - and, in good time, an awakening. A life under her father’s suspicions of the world outside their own has made Tara gravely reluctant to accept help (or kindness in general, really. Quite the display of guts when one is alone and close to penniless in a brave new world). A life of doctrine so severe on her sex has nurtured in her an insecurity that permits her to take no praise and indulge no hope. But it takes only one to put their faith in you: “First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are,” her professor Dr. Kerry said, pushing her to go for an exchange to Cambridge University. She would later go on to become a Gates scholar at Cambridge, and earned a doctorate in intellectual history. Tara Westover is educated. She’ll make you see the gifts of a lecture hall and question the authority of formal discourse. She’ll compel you to treasure what you know, and - even more than that - what you’ve yet to learn. Tara Westover is on a quest towards enlightenment, and she will stop at nothing to take you with her.

Further Notes

“Dad came in for a drink of water. He smiled when he saw me. “Who knew we’d have to send you to Cambridge to get you in the kitchens where you belong?” Well, fuck. Pardon my language, but it’s really quite rare that an insult fails to amuse me. What lies at the heart of that mortifying slight would’ve defined Tara’s life had she not wondered what waits beyond Buck’s Peak. As she recalls a story of Apache warriors told by her grandmother, she writes: “They died as warriors, their wives as slaves...long before the warrior’s leap it was decided how the woman would live and how they would die.” In the years that follow, this story would prove prophetic, and she would try in vain to rescue her sisters from the fate that claws at them. Though she herself would not hear of Feminism as anything other than a reprimand until she reached Cambridge, she recognised the disgust that matured within her alongside her body and her desire to know more than what she’d been given. She was taught many, many things: A woman can’t be a prophet; her brother, who abused her growing up, called her a whore for wearing lipgloss; and, of course, that the woman’s place is in the home. As I read on, I remember what de Beauvoir wrote in The Second Sex: that women are served constraints on a silver platter, and in men’s company she will be assured it is harmless protection. But that yearning; that light inside that is utterly convinced it can break your reins and point you to the shadowed path that is forbidden only to those of your sort - it makes no exception. That ache, once acknowledged, can never be put aside as mere malcontent - I don’t think. It’s something akin to insurgency. I held my breath as Tara affirms my sentiments:

“I knew my yearning was unnatural. This knowledge, like so much of my self knowledge, had come to me in the voice of people I knew, people I loved. All through the years that voice had been with me, whispering, wondering, worrying. That I was not right.” It’s probably true. She’s not right. Neither am I. The world will hear of it. And the sound will pierce as loud as the strike of a goddamn silver platter.

Educated, Tara Westover, 2018.

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