I keep thinking about photography and place and belonging and the ways those connect and diverge— the way we take photos the same scenes over and over over the course of a life in a family album— growth marks on door frames of rented apartments. How this makes us feel like we belong but landlords but also would we really want to have the moral burden of ownership? Is that even possible?? So here’s a view of these thoughts in my grubby bed as I recover from a surgery that removed a chunk of my arm to eradicate cancer brought on pretty directly by climate change. I’m missing Eula Biss’s “Having and Being Had” which is exactly relavent (my sister is reading it off my shelf while she’s here helping me recover). Doris Lessing’s title “Walking in the Shade” for her autobiography of reverse “immigration”—-colonizer of South Africa returning to England—-largely in principle and  in protest against apartheid. The rates of skin cancer in northern white people who are the primary colonizers of warmer climates—- bringers of capitalism which literally fuels climate change which directly increases skin cancers… these are still fragments of thought. 

“Autobiography of Red” by Anne Carson

“Tinisima” by Elena Poniatowska 

“Belonging” by bell hooks

“Hold Still” by Sally Mann

“Q’s Legacy” by Helene Hanff

“Working it Out” edited by Sara Ruddick and Pamela Daniels

“Lost Children Archive” by Valeria Luiselli

“On Photography” by Susan Sontag 

“River” by Esther Kinsky

“Grove” by Esther Kinsky

“Living by the Word” by Alice Walker

“Walking in the Shade” by Doris Lessing

“Having and Being Had” by Eula Biss

“The Yellow House” by Sarah Broom

“A House of my Own” by Sandra Ciserno 

I know there are lots more I should be referencing.

 A Summer without Sun

nights on the fire escape with glass of wine

sit under trees at Seward, move with the shade

the western deck of the public pool

movies in the parks after sunset

after dinner walks

Sit on bench in shade of the FDR

read on couch during heat of day

afternoons in the gem room at the Natural History Museum

 

To do: return toilet seat

            print bookmarks

            refill adhd meds

            drop off paperwork at school

 "Think about the familiar small routines of your own day and how they'd be affected by an invasion. Are you or your family sitting by the window? Mightn't it shatter in an explosion? Are you seriously going to drop your child off at school with missiles falling? You were going to have coffee with a friend, but it says on Facebook there's a gun battle near the place you were supposed to meet up."

-from the London Review of Books, James Meek's Dispatches from Kyiv on 24/2/22

I will be dropping my kid off at school...

"...then put the kids to bed. The kids took a long time to fall asleep, so we read to them for more than an hour. We are reading 'Comet in Moominland,' which has suited the last few weeks well. There is stuff like. 'Let's go dancing--the comet isn't coming until Sunday, so we have plenty of time to dance.'"

-from the New Yorker, Masha Gessen's interview with Lena Samoilenko in Kyiv

I read that to my kid too. 

 

1. painted doodles of solidarity while bambi paints away an afternoon 2. strawberry ice cream and a coffee because we can and nothing makes you want to give the world (or ice cream) to your kid like seeing videos of the train platforms in Kyiv right now 3. refreshing news 4. playing super heroes instead of listening to the news on the kitchen radio cause you don't want to scare your kid.

 I tend to come back to this record when historical events happen--I think of that poem by Ukrainian poet Ilya Kaminsky, "We Lived Happily During the War" that everyone is sharing right now. It's a similar impulse. The "what were you doing when ____ happened" impulse. The attempt to fit unthinkable things into your own life. So: the Thursday in late February that Putin invaded Ukraine on, my kid and I had a battle over going out in the cold-- and then another over scooter versus stroller. I won the first, she one the second. We ate cookies in a nearly empty Washington Square, under leaden skies, till our fingers were too cold to hold them. Then we threw the crumbs to the pigeons and ducked into Caffe Reggio's street seating to warm up. They have heaters in there. bambi dictated a story to me about giant flower families. I wouldn't say it was the most ordinary of days. I was acutely aware of the significance--showing up in the dull dread deep in my gut--like March 2020 and June 2020. But it was also quite a nice day. 

Everyone's faces looked wide and blank on the subway-- you could hear the sounds of air raid sirens and Ukrainian voices coming from various phones across the platform. Everyone acknowledging the need to not look away by playing videos with sound on for anyone around to hear. 

But winter carries on. And now it's the weekend. We had some wine. Steaks were on sale. So we ate that while refreshing the news.