pessimism, or realism

There's no reason to think the world could be any better than it is right now. But somehow there is always the sense that things might have gone differently. I can't understand it. I can feel myself withdrawing, looking for a way to live outside of it.

After a week of wind and fog, the sky cleared this afternoon. The sun might change my mood.

loners and vanity

Anthony Hopkins, Guardian interview:

“When I was at the National all those years ago, I knew I had something in me,” he says, “but I didn’t have the discipline. I had a Welsh temperament and didn’t have that ‘fitting in’ mechanism. Derek Jacobi, who is wonderful, had it, but I didn’t. I would fight, I would rebel. I thought, ‘Well, I don’t belong here.’ And for almost 50 years afterwards, I felt that edge of, ‘I don’t belong anywhere, I’m a loner.’ I don’t have any friends who are actors at all. But in The Dresser, when Ian [McKellen] responded, it was wonderful. We got on so well and I suddenly felt at home, as though that lack of belonging was all in my imagination, all in my vanity.”

ALSO:

"You know, I meet young people, and they want to act and they want to be famous, and I tell them, when you get to the top of the tree, there’s nothing up there. Most of this is nonsense, most of this is a lie. Accept life as it is. Just be grateful to be alive.”

against (afro-)pessimism

Darryl Pinckney in NYRB:

Afro-pessimism and its treatment of withdrawal as transcendence is no less pleasing to white supremacy than Booker T. Washington’s strategic retreat into self-help. Afro-pessimism threatens no one, and white audiences confuse having been chastised with learning. Unfortunately, black people who dismiss the idea of progress as a fantasy are incorrect in thinking they are the same as most white people who perhaps believe still that they will be fine no matter who wins our elections. Afro-pessimism is not found in the black church. One of the most eloquent rebuttals to Afro-pessimism came from the white teenage anti-gun lobbyists who opened up their story in the March for Our Lives demonstrations to include all youth trapped in violent cultures.

windy weekend, with wedding

N left for the airport this morning and I felt lonely. Momentarily. Then I got caught up in the royal wedding -- watched some video, read some "analysis," got teary eyed. I grow increasingly sentimental with age. Even though I know there's a big dose of delusion underpinning any relationship, I hope those two crazy kids spend a lifetime feeling good about doing good works -- symbolically, at least -- together.

I am getting myself ready to go to the farmers market, or rather, getting my phone ready (I forgot that the battery was very low). I can hardly ever leave the house without it these days. I also have to return a book to the library because somebody put a hold on it. I only just got through the first section, which takes you to the end of the Civil War. I'll have to put my own hold on it so I can get to the part where the Africans build their own community during reconstruction. But that last bit is haunting:

Elbert Head, who had been enslaved in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama, had mixed feelings: "I felt great joy that we were free, but it made me feel sad to think that there was a whole nation of us set free and none with homes." 

And then these freed people mostly just got on with it as best they could, in a vastly inequitable and hostile society.