← back // zpět ←
2024-04 | Everything modulates everything
For a while back there I was pretty firmly team TS Elliot as regards April, but things keep happening!
• EGU was fascinating. Giving an 8-minute talk on years of fairly involved work is getting easier every time. A highlight was the medal lecture by Stefan Rahmstorf, given to a packed-to-the-gills auditorium, based on {this} paper that summarizes 30 years of work by many people on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. A major takeaway was that a collapse is possible, though not currently probable, but by the time any early warning sign will be unequivocal, it will be too late. Decarbonization now, much, much easier said than done.
• I watched {Ky} play a really beautiful set on a Tuesday in Hackney. Perfect, musically, interpersonally. Listen! Avoid Magic! Be Aware!
• After years of waffling, I bought a {synth} , lol. Stay tuned (or, you know, not).
• I watched my grandmother (86) eat her first avocado. She bought it for herself -- why now, I have no idea, but this sort of thing is somewhat on brand for her. She said it tasted rather dull {mdlý} but that maybe with some spices it could make a good spread.
• Sam Kriss on {not having a phone for a bit.} Among the better essays of this sort that I’ve read. (I sometimes spend too much time on my phone, but I newly use Opal to limit useless faff, which is nice.)
• Křest desky Severního Nástupiště v nové libeňské synagoze. Čistá nádhera, sounáležitost, Radegast desítka. {Když si skládáš svět ze svých možností, když se stáváš možností.}
• I have a folder of essays to occasionally revisit for purposes of reminders, or bracing, or something. This month I reread {this one} by Clare Coffey:
» I think it’s possible that for many, considering the shape of your life and then living it with vigor is so difficult because it cannot be externally validated. Unlike education and work, it offers no socially obvious meritocratic path. The moments where, like sourdough, it proves, are largely invisible — in cooking, in walking, corresponding with a friend, in chatting with a neighbor or registering to give blood. They cannot be tallied up and put on a resume. They are never “finished.” The progress you make is spiraling rather than linear; circling steadily, slowly, around your weak points, taking two steps forward and one step back, building habits so slowly that only in retrospect can you see your life become different than it was. And there is no one who can tell you that you did it right. But this is not the condition of life under capitalism, this is life itself. And it is a sad irony that though the fear of life may be produced by class imperatives within capitalism, the impulse to restrict it to a problem of capitalism is itself part of the same fearful rejection of the task of living.
There is good news. None of us are children anymore. You can and should organize for better working conditions, but you can also turn off your email notifications. You can choose to prioritize the good life over a promotion or pleasing your boss. You can live with the loss of status and resources that this probably will entail. You can leave your job and take on the risks of finding work that does not corrode your self-respect. You can bring new life into the world knowing they will face intolerable danger and suffering, and take a type of comfort in the fact that on an individual level, this has always been the case. You can raise children in a too-small space and with too much debt.
Or you can not. You can devote yourself single-mindedly to a career and enjoy the struggle to the top. You can decide that to ride the ebb and swell of New York’s changing moods is worth whatever price you pay. You can pledge your life to your craft or the cause of Monarch butterflies. You can turn down invitations to weddings and let friendships lapse, you can go to bars every night and smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. But whatever you do, don’t kid yourself that you’re doing it because you have no choices.
If you think seriously about the good life and pursue it, you will probably fail in ways large and small. But an imperfect struggle to live well and love a world badly in need of repair is better than staying still because things are terrible, because you might look like a loser in the meritocratic game, because it’s easier.
This is your life. You do not have time to wait for the revolution to begin living it. You will always be able to find someone to give you permission not to live it. But no one is coming along to live it for you.«