Thoughts on mercy, humanity, vulnerability, and beauty
Laughter gives you courage. With belly shakes,
and chest reverberating with mirth,
you are storing up momentum
to face the too-quiet moments of uncertainty,
when dread comes knocking in the 3am dark,
and heavy eyelids refuse to block out fear.
Laughter patterns patches of skin,
spreads itself through muscle, tendon, and bone,
until you are warm, despite the weather.
I suppose your hands make sense after midnight
when we are too weary to sleep
and our mouths roll on about everything
we stopped thinking about three hours ago.
Hours drift by until even the night
is tired of itself and gives up.
Then, our hands clasp when
you are still awake enough to pretend
not to notice
but too tired to let go.
Then, I think I’ve made a wish,
the kind where your hand is always in mine,
or maybe your heart.
I’ve had too much to drink
and forget if there is a difference
between hands and hearts.
I’ve been asked to read ee cummings’ [i carry your heart with me (i carry it in] at three different weddings. I managed (much to my embarrassment today) to wheedle my way out of two of them by presenting alternatives. One was a poem I had written myself for my brother and new sister-in-law, and the other was my favorite of cummings’ poems.
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
I do not object to this poem, although, it might be too commonly read at weddings for my taste. Cummings has an unparalleled way with words that has not escaped my notice in any of his poems. However, I had, until recently, always found this to be somewhat, well, idolatrous. You’ll notice the following lines, “i fear/no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want/no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)” This sentiment has often made me feel a though too much power is given to the subject of the poem, power and reverence, reverence that should be reserved for God.
This might still be the case. But my romantic heart still has many things to learn, and recently I understood what cummings meant when he wrote this. I finally took his meaning when he talks about never being without his love’s heart. His words capture perfectly the swell in my chest as I go about my day in the knowledge of being loved by another. Distance is not distance and time is not time, because your love is always nearer than any dimensions. When cummings speaks of fate, it is not because the subject of his poem determines his fate; it is because his fate is inseparable from hers. They have become so entwined, that where he begins and she ends has become imperceptible. So he can rightly say that “this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart.” Love is just such a wonder, and it is by no mistake or idolatry that cummings perceives the cosmic aspects in the way his heart beats.
When I was in sixth grade, I met a woman who would change my life. She was powerful. Her words and actions were weighty and significant. I did not hesitate to both cower in awe of her and to throw myself into her magnificent, unparalleled hugs.
It was not only that she was large and soft, or that she would sing while she hugged me, her voice resonating in her chest, reverberating off of mine. Her hugs had been carefully crafted through suffering and sorrow turned to joy. She carried heaven in her embrace. It did not take long before I would miss her hugs. The longer it had been since I had last seen her, the more I looked forward to the next one. It was hug therapy.
There were a lot of things I didn’t know when I knew Mae. I didn’t know stereotypes about angry black women or large black women. I didn’t know that food could be racist. I didn’t know that the black body that I sought out for comfort and healing lived a life of problematization. I didn’t know that the reason she could sing the way she did—from a place deeper than lungs—or hug with arms more than matter was because both had been tempered by a world bent on making her less human.
Still, she had infectious laughter. Still, she indiscriminately became a mother to anyone who needed one. Still, she danced. Still, she sang.
She transcended.
Perhaps, I have painted her as too much of a myth. It is possible that time and distance have caricatured her in my memory. I did dream once that I was jumping on a trampoline with her and Abraham Lincoln.
Mae is not and never has been perfect (she has her own story to tell), but I am wholly convinced that on more than one occasion, she has embodied love. It is for this reason, as a recipient and witness of Mae’s unbounded ability to love and give, that I consider the events of Ferguson, Missouri (and other similar events) the way I do. The media provides no shortage of images of thugs and potential criminals. But I think of Mae. I imagine if Michael Brown’s mother were Mae, someone I know and love and trust. Then I know that indictment or no indictment, hearings at the UN, audiences with the president, and press conferences are insignificant next her loss, next to what has torn inside her.
I am grieving that justice for Michael Brown is only a hashtag, not something being acted out by the justice system.
I wish that mine could be the arms that hold the grief and fear and rage, encircling them in love and hope.
I wish that hugs could undo the damage that bullets and pepper spray and tear gas do.
I wish that I were not sitting safely behind a computer screen, but standing face to face with you. I’d look you in the eyes and echo the president’s words last night: your experiences are real, and your emotions are valid. You are not making this up.
I am indebted to Mae. She saw my pale skin, and she didn’t pretend I wasn’t white. Instead, she wrapped my white body in her black arms and held me. No amount of fear mongering can change that.
I had had a miserable day, sleep deprived and anxiety ridden. I had broken down in the kind of ugly crying you hope no one ever sees you do when, after fighting to be brave all morning, I realized I had just missed a meeting (despite the 15-minute reminder that had popped up on my screen an hour before). I sobbed and sputtered, closing my office door and grabbing the Kleenex. It wasn’t the meeting that was so hugely important; it was the final straw on what had been a miserable few days. After some strained, deep breathes, that made me sound like I had nearly been suffocated, I was able to pull up a rendition of “Great is Thy Faithfulness” on my computer. I slowly regained my composure as I shakily sang along, my voice cracking every other word and tears welling up again. By the end of the song, I had stopped crying, though my heart still pounded in my ears.
By the end of my work day, I was feeling braver, as if the crying had actually done me some good. Heading out of the office, I prayed the prayer I had been glued to for the last 18 hours: Lord, thank You for being bigger than my fears. Thank You for being bigger than my pain, and for turning my fear into hope in You.
When I got home, I was almost glowing. I noticed an e-mail from an army recruiter. Reading the message, I laughed; I would be a terrible soldier. I have an arrhythmic heartbeat and foot problems that make running an enormous effort and a pain. Not to mention, my sense of style would be grossly offended by wearing a uniform—that uniform.
Nonetheless, my mind is as susceptible to suggestion as anyone’s. When one of my best friends called to catch up, I had to ask him if he’d ever considered joining the army. He had and we launched into a scheme to join the army together, go through boot camp and eventually become spies. We would both be great spies. I would be the charismatic one at state dinners in a slinky dress and a tiny concealed weapon; he would be the one in the shadows, doing all the back alley dealings and sitting on rooftops in black turtlenecks. Before I knew it, I was on the floor in my bedroom, rolling from laughter. The idea was absurd, yes (although, maybe not so much for him, an athlete with medical training), but I actually found it appealing. After all, my interest in combining textiles and technology would be well funded in a military setting, and my hopes for making smart clothing commercially viable could become a reality through such efforts.
“I’m going to army,” said my friend. I laughed again at his irregular use of the noun.
“I could go Kara Thrace it up,” I said, as though heavy drinking and a deeply suppressed, embattled relationship with my crazy mother was possible.
“We can get our heads shaved together!”
“Women don’t have to shave their heads!”
“Well, we’ll do an obligatory selfie,” he rejoined, with sheer mirth in his voice.
I finally insisted that I needed to get ready for bed, but we talked for another ten minutes, and I hung up the phone overcome with belly laughter still. As I settled into bed, filled with a sense of joy I hadn’t experienced in months, I looked over at my icons, remembering my plea the night before as tears streamed down my face, when I had reached a hand out to Christ in some kind of desperation, touching the cold, hard surface of his figure painted on wood, asking that salvation come quickly. I needed a miracle. Now, peering at the unchanging face on my wall, I knew my prayers had been sweetly and gleefully answered.
Finding yourself in some distant world
someday, in a place you’ve never been,
where the skyline and people seem alien,
despite being so archetypically familiar,
you cannot help but notice
the perfectly spaced trees and benches,
along a rounded, gravel path,
the black lab lunging at the ducks,
being fed by perfectly cute children,
who are somehow frozen in their moment of elation.
There you are, in a world so new,
the light hitting everything just so.
For a moment you think this must be
one of your imagined adventures,
a dream seeming too real.
After all, koala bears can’t say, I love you,
and you never face your fears so calmly,
and you never create new universes
just by speaking the words that come tumbling
from the recesses of somewhere more than matter.
That is but legend, metaphor, myth.
But then you look up at that face,
more familiar than ever in this new space,
and at the moment of this big bang,
you wonder with your fiercest hope
whether some of the resulting planets
will someday be able to support life.
I recommend reading Part One first.
In high school, I refused to date. This might have been just as well, because I don’t know if I could have had I tried—I was just really weird in the there-aren’t-a-bunch-of-other-weirdos-just-like-me kind of way. For inspiration in my commitment to singleness, I relied heavily on Beatrice from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, fully equipped with witticisms and snarky quips. However, as is the case with Beatrice, this was all posturing and had little to do with how I actually felt. I liked boys just fine and definitely wanted to get married some day.
However, there is a kind of power in being flippant and biting. You insert yourself into the human hierarchy this way. Those less equipped at wit must take their place lower than you and remain quiet onlookers to your verbal sparring, during art class when the teacher leaves the room for more than twenty minutes at a time. Anyone who ventures into this foray had best be well prepared, lest she be forced to creep back into sedges and tend her wounds.
Unlike other people who just have a mental list of desirable qualities, I actually wrote mine down and would refer to it if there was a boy who struck my fancy. And contrary to Beatrice’s catch 22, my impossibly long list of essential qualities that a man must possess in order to be worthy of me was made in complete sincerity. Most of the things that made the list were in the interests category: Shakespeare, fashion, poetry, language, dancing. Then there were other things regarding values and the number of children he’d prefer. This list took up pages.
Of course, in the process of growing up and discovering how to be human along with experiencing disappointed expectations, I realized that ideally, it boils down to something pretty simple:
Find someone kind.
“…but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace. Rich she shall be, that’s certain; wise, or I’ll none; virtuous, or I’ll never cheapen her; fair, or I’ll ever look on her; mild, or come not near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good discourse, an excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what color it please God.”-Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
I often ask myself, why did Shakespeare stop there? Those are but a few of the requirements for any qualified suitor. There is so much more that is absolutely essential to tempt me.
Essential Qualities that a Man Must Possess in Order to be Worthy of Me
He should also have an insatiable appreciation for the arts, like underwater basket weaving and car wash bumper sticker art.
He has to have read The Story of Ferdinand and the entire Curious George canon, every version of The Three Little Pigs, and hate Harold and the Purple Crayon, until he’s read through to the end. He has to love Green Eggs and Ham, until he’s read it through to the end (I mean gross, Sam I am).
He must shop exclusively at Kohl’s and only wear one pair of shoes, except under extreme duress, like when he needs to prove a point or has been captured by dragons who breathed fire on the other pair he had.
He needs to have space monkeys and an Elvis suit for his black Pomeranian/Chihuahua mix. He needs to be a cat person (he only adopted the dog because it looks kind of like a cat and because it belonged to his best friend who tragically died in a freak gasoline fight accident).
When he says he likes long walks on the beach, he had better mean the entire coast of Chile. Or he could just hate beaches and have a really poor sense of direction.
He needs a completely disproportionate hobby, preferably one that takes up the entire guest bedroom and occasionally occupies his dining table, and maybe part of his roof, or a hobby that is a boat.
He has to sniffle with just one nostril at a time.
He must obsessive-compulsively say every word that an acronym stands for three times each, in alphabetical order, uncollated.
He has to be a wizard, or if he’s not he should be descended from one. He should also be descended from some kind of large predatory mammal like a lion or tiger or a cougar or a cheetah or a leopard or a wolf or a griffin or a lynx (this is not even an exhaustive list).
He has to be a master weaver and cottage cheese maker.
He has to know the answer to ALL the riddles.
He has to smell like naked trees shrouded by fog.
He has to pine for the simpler days of his youth, now 197 years ago, when adulthood is just too complicated and hard, even though it’s really just post hoc nostalgia and his childhood was terrible at the time. They didn’t even have summer back then.
He has to pretend to hate most dairy products because of being self conscious about the way they make him smell.
He has to be a chameleon.
He has to own an iguana that just swallowed an entire salamander and is now eyeing his Pomeranian/Chihuahua mix.
He has to think dry elbows are sexy—not the most sexy, just enough.
He has to know how to complete the following sentences:
Since today is our last day on Earth, I hope________________.
Cardboard boxes are best used for__________________.
The main thing cellphones and syphilis have in common is___________________.
Yes. Such a man would win any woman in the world, and I don’t think perfection is too much to ask.
Dear Emma,
When I was little, I wanted to be a famous fashion designer and design dresses for stars to wear to the Academy Awards and other classy events. I poured over People Magazine’s tribute to Oscar history and bought heavy bridal magazines (they had the best photo to dollar ratio and the fewest articles about how to lose five pounds or twenty ways to please your partner).
I drew. I painted. I imagined.
I became aware of your existence at a very young age. Much Ado About Nothing is one of the first films I remember watching. By the time I was in second grade, I had grown so attached to it that, for a class assignment, I listed it as my favorite movie. Perhaps it is somewhat scandalous that a seven-year-old would choose a movie that contains so much nudity in the first ten minutes. In which case, it may have been for the best that that my teacher had no idea what I was referring to.
As a child, I would get up and dance around the room, mimicking Kenneth Branagh’s movement as he celebrated in the fountain. I could quote every single line, reveling especially in Sigh No More, you sitting in a tree, and the delightful way the words came spilling from your mouth, as if every syllable was savoured as ambrosia.
At such a young age, I had not fully conceptualized that you and Beatrice were in fact different people. This realization began around the same time that I watched Sense and Sensibility, which became another favorite, rivaling even the six part BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. How I wanted to be Eleanor. How I wanted to be Beatrice. Then, there were other films, and in each one you made your character the most interesting person in the world with all the depth, breadth, and humor that real people have. You became this beacon of excellence in acting and film-making (two areas near and dear to my heart). You became my model of womanhood.
I can’t say that I know anything about your personal life, and I think we can agree that this is probably for the best. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you splashed across the cover of a tabloid, so maybe when you’re not working, you’re just really boring. Or maybe England is a little better about privacy. No matter; your work is wonderful.
Inevitably, on the first day of classes throughout high school, there would be a “getting to know you” portion, despite the fact that many of us had known each other since kindergarten. A favorite question during these things is this: if you could spend a day with any famous person who would it be and why? Typically, my classmates said things like Brittany Spears or someone from NSYNC or some sports star. I said Emma Thompson. Most sixteen-year-olds will give you strange looks when you say things like this. Now, I can say, “Professor Trelawney,” and people still think I’m weird, but they actually know who I’m talking about.
I didn’t want to meet you as a mere fan, though. Fangirls are so uncool. They just want autographs and handshakes and pictures together. They sound like they don’t know what they are talking about, and I’ve always found celebrity culture a little bit voyeuristic.
I imagined I would meet you once I had become a famous fashion designer. You would hear about me or see some of my designs somewhere, and you would have your assistant call my assistant. She’d say, “Ms. Thompson wants a dress designed by Ms. Burkitt. Is she free for lunch on such and such a date?” (obviously, I’d be living in London). Then we would talk about how to create a dress for a red carpet event or some gala that would show off your best features, and, at some point, during the very professional conversation, where we slowly discovered we were kindred spirits, I would casually but earnestly comment on loving your work and how the joie de vivre you so clearly have has etched itself onto my soul, making you a true inspiration. You would be oh so gracious, and our lunch would go long, and we’d both be late for our next appointments because we just couldn’t stop talking about the nature of beauty and art and story. Then, we would be bosom friends, and I would invite you to all my dinner parties.
You see, I am actually the worst kind of fangirl, the kind that isn’t satisfied with a handshake or an autograph because she recognizes that humans are so much more than a signature, a two-second smile that could be plastered on just for a good show (classy lady that you are, you wouldn’t let on if you were having a terrible day). And you who tell such incredible stories, either in writing or in acting them out, you have to be so human—crying the way you did in Love Actually, making us all want to listen to Joni Mitchell whenever we feel life is too heavy, and reminding us the way grief is actually expressed in private moments—not vapid, clinging to celebrity status, but embracing and embodying whole-hearted living. And what you do, story-telling, is so simultaneously the most vulnerable of things in the world and tremendously disproportionate. Your audience gets to see what—for all they know—is your heart and soul laid bare, while you know nothing of them. They are the anonymous many, while you are so particular to them.
I no longer have aspirations of fame, although I will still make you a dress anytime you want one. I am ever so much better at sewing than I was when I first imagined all of this. It would appear that, at the age of 25, it’s time to move on from my childhood fantasies. It’s time to keep preparing for grad school, working as an administrative assistant in the meantime. But I’ll keep watching your movies, in a parallel fashion to the way I still sleep with my stuffed elephant under my arm. And when I notice you’ve done something fabulous, like take your shoes off to present a Golden Globe, I’ll smile and think to myself, I bet meeting her would be amazing. I won’t tell anyone, but hope will still linger somewhere at the edge of my consciousness, where my childhood refuses to be completely snuffed out.
All the best,
Claire Burkitt
(Your biggest fan)
An Indomitable Grace 