Author: Jeanne Obbard

Types of Magic: Interior / Exterior

Jeanne ObbardLeave a comment

I realize I am always seeking images of spaces that feel secret, hidden, that invite you inside them, that are human sized or even child sized. I think this is the space of poems and the space of fairy tales.

What do such spaces do? They feel enclosing, safe, even if they are in some way strange. They echo an interior world even if they are exterior spaces. Shadows are necessary to such spaces. Rain really helps to create such spaces inside the larger landscape.

I imagine how happy the first small bands of humans were to discover caves in the limestone of a mountain; and farther back, how our earlier mammal ancestors were tree dwellers. We want to be sheltered and also have a space for mystery, or a space to peer out from. The atavistic body does not forget. What feels like safety, and also like hidden knowledge? The imagination digs deep into those dreamed memories. 

Jenkins Arboretum (the last year the paulownia bloomed)

Chanticleer Garden

Chanticleer Garden

Chanticleer Garden

Jenkins Arboretum

Likewise: Whenever I make a trip to the Phila Museum of Art, I am drawn back to the medieval* section.

For me these paintings harbor a very specific emotion in their depiction of space. I love the interiors –  how everything is foreshortened, and flattened, and the space feels – for lack of a better word – cozy. It feels human sized. It feels big enough to house the idea and nothing but the idea. You’re going to kill me for assigning “cottagecore vibe” to important works of European art… but, the same things that attract me to the cottagecore décor aesthetic also attract me to these paintings. It is a kind of closeness, of built or imagined space which actively holds the inhabitants.

Then, beyond those interior spaces, there’s always a landscape – presumably, the landscape of medieval Italy or the Netherlands – but it’s completely magical, hold the realism. Because of the medieval approach to perspective, the exteriors – the landscapes – have the same sense of nearness and enclosure as the rooms. Even though there’s a misty distance with mountains, oceans, all of it is somehow flattened in the same way that the interior is flattened, so that you see all of the world at once. You see what you know or believe is there, rather than what you can visually assess is there.

These paintings have a foreground, and a background, but no middle distance. Everything is collapsed in a way that feels almost childlike: there is no vast space that cannot be enfolded in towards the viewer. And it has the same effect that the interiors have on me, mystery yet accessibility, relatability.

(I am making quite an assertion here, about perspective and space broadly, and art historians might have a fit. Maybe it’s more correct to say that the middle ground is simply being foreshortened, rather than lost entirely. Either way, the impression of closeness of the distant landscape is what strikes me.)

This is one of my favorite examples at the PMA; there’s so much realism to the sitter’s face and hands, and then the space he’s in makes almost no sense, despite the perfect straightness of the room’s lines. Beyond the two windows, the views of the landscape are both unconnected and entirely imaginary; a mountain here, a castle there. Rather like that Andrew Wyeth painting, what you see beyond the frame is a composite.

Portrait of Ludovico Portinari, ca. 1469

Andrew Wyeth, Night Sleeper, 1979

This anonymous Annuciation (Netherlandish, 1440-1470) has both the truncated interior space and the expansive landscape beyond. Look how the ceiling is right over their (seated) heads! Yet I don’t feel cramped by it; I feel there’s something very safe here. It might help that even though the Angel Gabriel is male**, as a kid I read almost all angels in these paintings as “female” and thus in my eternal child’s calculus (very difficult to extract from your adult brain), this is a painting of two women exchanging important secrets.

**I know, yes, technically Biblical angels were asexual in some weird theosophical fashion.

The Annunciation, 1450-1470

Another great example in Crivelli’s Annunciation (1486): there are interior rooms (spaces? cubbyholes?), where the walls have been helpfully removed so the viewer can peer inwards, almost as if in a child’s dollhouse. Then you have this courtyard on the left, which is – presumably – outdoors (the artist decided it had to be, in order for the Holy Spirit to descend from heaven!) yet is framed as if it’s a room. And the space is not just restricted from foreground to background; it also has that typical side-to-side collapsing (necessitated by the size of the altarpiece?), so that all characters can fit into the tableau.

Carlo Crivelli, The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius, 1486

(Also I feel like I’m looking at Remedios Varo’s major inspiration here? And maybe that’s why I love her work too… the spaces are very similar; they are not about realism, but rather about a felt reality.)

Remedios Varo, The Creation of the Birds, 1958

Two more landscape details from PMA:

And finally here are two images I’ve saved in my Pinterest board under “cottagecore.” (I told you we’d come back to this.)

Credit: [dunno]

What’s going on with this aesthetic? It’s definitely about green spaces, but not wildernesses, no; it’s about cultivation of a particularly human-mediated space – a meadow, a trellis with roses growing up it. Cottagecore is certainly a reaction – analog as a reaction to the constant sensory offense of digital; person-sized spaces as a reaction to our imposed identity as numberless “consumers.” But I also think there is intrisic affirmation in the cottagecore ethos – we exist in the natural world and are of it, we cultivate it and negotiate with it but are not masters of it. And now I also see how these particular images, which I saved years ago, are explicitly spaces for creation –  one for writing, and one for painting.

This kind of space – these interiors and interior-exteriors – have always, always appealed to me, as I can see now, across various art historical eras, and into my own created landscapes. When I manage to re-invent it – or re-discover it – in a photo, I feel I am getting a glimpse into something magical, and then I try to figure out how to transfer that feeling into writing. This space always calls me back. It invites; it is the opposite of “sublime.” It is sized for a person, though it opens out on some kind of infinite.

[*Late Middle Ages? Early Renaissance? The dates are confusing but you’ll know the change in style I’m talking about; after this period, interiors and exteriors did not look like this.]

Another favorite “interior-exterior” photo, Meadow at Ashbridge Preserve

Some notes

Jeanne Obbard1 Comment

Wear cheap colorful jewelry and wear it quite seriously. Wear expensive jewelry and wear it lightly. If you have diamonds, put them on for every event, such as: washing dishes, reading the news, napping.

Never wear high heels when expected to.

Never wear high heels at all. Wear comfortable shoes. Consider that every event in life calls for your feet to feel good. Your feet are how you connect to the earth; they carry you on all your adventures. Honor your feet by making sure they are supported.

Use every beautiful thing you own as if beauty was an infinitely renewable resource. Save nothing for “later.”

Never go anywhere with any expectation. Treat all outings like you are just going “exploring.”

Meander.

Don’t be afraid of a lot of sleep. Sleep resets the brain and delivers you into a slightly new, strange reality. It’s useful for artists to be altered some of the time.

Enthusiasm is one of the most plentiful and valuable natural resources. There should be at least one topic you are irredeemably obsessed with, but preferably more than ten.

Corollary: Don’t fuck with people who repeatedly crush your enthusiasm.

Be a little bit undependable. Even “dreamy.” Otherwise people may think you are staid. It’s good to keep them guessing.

Speak to children as if they have an entire inner life you will never know the richness of.

Whatever your most dramatic feature is, play it up to the nth degree, no matter whether it’s considered a “good” feature or not.

Do not underestimate the power of small treasures such as the things children collect. Pebbles, seashells, plastic animals. Hide your treasures in a special box. Keep other adults away from them.

Cut your hair short at least once. I once cut my hair short out of inspiration from a photo of Ines de la Fressange. I do not look like Ines de la Fressange. It was not a good look. However, growing it out and getting to see my hair at every possible length was worth it, and also I could put my desire to look like Ines de la Fressange to bed.

Do not under any circumstances vote Republican.

Remember that all labor has dignity, and is meaningful and valuable to the world. (Except if you are laboring to give yourself unwarranted power, or to hurt other people. Don’t do that.)

It’s really helpful for your lifelong happiness to have more than one thing that you’re super invested in. It helps if they are wildly divergent. This way whenever you are failing at one thing you can think to yourself, who cares? I’m still great at [other thing].

Make your life a single minded pursuit of beauty. Do not make your life a single minded pursuit of good grades.

You may often find yourself short on time; but in your heart, resist being in a rush.

Be grateful for something every day. It doesn’t matter what it is, just that you actually feel humble gratitude in your heart for it. If you can’t actually feel the sense of gratitude, act as if you do. People are extremely suggestible and in this manner you can stealthily change your own mind.

As soon as you start losing hope for the world, it’s time to avoid your news feed. Listen to funny podcasts instead.

Write letters. Even if your recipients never reply – and understand that not everyone can bring themselves to – they will keep your letters for 20 years and feel great fondness for them.

Occasionally, but not obsequiously, tell a stranger you appreciate their personal style.

Appreciate your body and support it like it was your best, dearest friend.

If you cry frequently, over random things, accept this about yourself.

Pay attention to old people and don’t automatically erase them from your mind’s eye. Someday you will be old too, hopefully.

Whenever you are tempted to be smug, go ahead and be smug, but only in your own head. But then try to think of something generous as well. Hold both ideas in equal measure.

Learn the names of the flowers, trees, insects, and birds that live in your part of the world. They are your neighbors and your relatives. I’ve learned the names of hundreds of flowers and then promptly forgotten again but this doesn’t deter me. I just keep starting over again.

Have a favorite flower.

Consider that it is your remit to fall in love with all things, eventually.

When you have thoughts you would put on social media, consider just writing them down for yourself instead.

Weekly inspiration

Jeanne Obbard
Hello, please hand over your soul, thanks

Julia Cameron writes a lot about Artist Dates. If you’re not familiar with Cameron’s books, she proposes two major practices for artistic recovery. The first is “Morning Pages,” where you write 3 stream-of-consciousness longhand pages every morning and then put them aside without re-reading. The second tool is what she calls the “Artist Date” – which basically means you take yourself out of the house to do something you enjoy. (Cameron later added “Take a weekly walk” as the third tool.) The idea is that Morning Pages let all your ideas and anxieties out, and the Artist Date is meant to let inspiration in, and you need both.

I will just admit right now that I don’t do morning pages. I tend to write in my paper journal at night. During the day I put my random thinky-thoughts in my phone’s notes app, from whence they eventually make their way to a 60-page-and-counting “drafts” document on my laptop. Sometimes in desperation I’ll add things in my work laptop’s OneNote, which is probably inadvisable but then again it’s kind of amusing to go looking for one’s notes on the Portuguese health authority approvals and find stray lines from poems about the sky. On weekend mornings I can easily lose 2 hours to writing in my current notebook. But Cameron’s assertion that 3 pages of longhand writing only takes 30 minutes is, in my case, laughable.

Anyway back to Artist Dates. It surprises me to realize that I’ve been a lot more consistent about doing Artist Dates than Morning Pages.  Every time I go to my favorite botanical garden is basically an Artist Date, and I do that at least once a week. I was trying to describe to my therapist what exactly I do there and I said you know, a lot of it is sitting and just kind of existing in space. (And I guess all the flower pictures I post on Instagram are really just the side effect of an Artist Date.)

Like a lot of self-help language, “Artist Date” sounds a bit cheesy. Must I date my inner artist, really? Can’t that bitch, like, toughen up and run on willpower alone? But Cameron was definitely onto something here, namely “be nice to yourself” and “follow your bliss.” Creative people need more space than you might think for the creativity to emerge from under the daily nonsense of work emails, housecleaning, submissions managers that all require different passwords, Netflix queues, laundry, and the inescapable fact that a lot of the country seems to be more enamored of a Nazi Germany analogue than of a Weimar Germany analogue. (Yes I watched Babylon Berlin and yes it fucked me up, thanks for asking.)

What I’ve found is that an Artist Date doesn’t necessarily have to mean getting out of the house. You can fill up the inspirational well via (re-)discovering music, or online archives of the occult, or re-reading a book you forgot you loved. Sometimes you just stumble on things that are inspiring while, say, faffing about on the internet.

So in no particular order, here is the weird shit that inspired me this week:

  1. Shakespears Sister’s video for “Stay.” Circa 1992. It’s the early days of music videos where there’s, like, a painfully clumsy storyline being acted out? But whatever – it’s the aesthetics I love here. I’m pretty sure this video is a gateway drug to dyeing your hair black. The extreme smoky eye on both Marcella Detroit and Siobhan Fahey. Detroit’s haircut and perfect profile. Fahey being an absolute over-the-top weirdo in black sequins, rolling her eyes and, I like to imagine, generally putting the fear of god(dess) into a whole generation of glam/goth boys. Shakespears Sister: where the demons are angelic and the angels are demonic.

2. Similarly sparkly and dire, this necklace and charms from Waxing Poetic. Pyrite is the best – it twinkles but it also keeps its secrets. I will manage not to dye my hair black but this is a good subsitute.

3. This low-fi photo of a rainbow my mom took with her little non-smart-phone. I love how blurry and emotive this picture is and find that I often prefer images like this, that are more felt than precise. This obsession with weird qualities of light/out of focus pictures was already in full swing when I got my first Polaroid camera, but now there are apps you can use to mess with your perfect smart-phone photos (see TinType, Phonto, etc).

4. This NPR interview with Sleater-Kinney where they talk about social media:

<<< Corin, you mentioned the word “despair” as something that runs through the music. On this album, some of that despair relates to technology and how it affects us. The song “Can I Go On” is pretty self-explanatory on how technology can be toxic: “Everyone I know is tired / Everyone I know is wired / To machines, it’s obscene / I’ll just scream till it don’t hurt no more.” But you also have a song called “Hurry On Home,” where the video takes the form of a series of text messages.

Maybe this just exemplifies all of us — how you can, on the one hand, understand what’s bad about the technology in our lives, and at the same time clearly derive creativity and inspiration from it.

Tucker: I really think we’re just on the verge of understanding the consequences of our relationship with technology, with social media, with those little screens that occupy so much of our time. I think there are some really negative aspects of it: It shortens our conversations with each other, and brings out a real antagonistic element. So maybe the album is asking for us to reevaluate our relationship to technology and say, “Is there a better way to do this?”

Brownstein: I think where I feel empty is in the space between hitting send, or posting, and then realizing that I have now set myself up on this very tiny stage and I’m waiting for all of this applause. I just think, “How have we all gotten to this point in our lives where every aspect of it is a performance?” That, to me, feels very dark. And I think there is a loneliness that comes from standing on a stage every day, waiting for applause. How could we not feel empty there? >>>

And that’s all for now. Goodbye from my very tiny stage*!

*Very Tiny Stage is the name of my all-hamster Andrew Lloyd Webber cover band.

Rejections Update: The year in review

Jeanne Obbard

Here, a little bit late, are my final numbers for 2017:

  • Rejections: 62
  • Acceptances: 9 poems (in 8 journals)
  • Total submissions: 95
  • Submissions still open: 14? something like that?

I didn’t quite get to my goal of 100 submissions, oooooops. But, so what? Overall feeling:

I’m especially happy that the first of my “fey/strange girls” poems found a home at Gingerbread House. (See the “Writing” tab for all recent publications.)

And it’s become pretty obvious that I’m working on two separate book manuscripts. Nooooo problem.

I’m currently working 50 hours a week, so I’m confident that will end well.

But I learned something valuable from all the submitting this past year, and that’s that I need about 8 revisions to really get a poem to where I want it to be. It’s hard to define how much gets changed in 8 “versions”; since doing all my editing in Word, I’m much faster, more likely to trash whole sections, quicker to rearrange things. But regardless, I think it’s key that I go back to the poem with an exacting eye about 8 times. Less than that, and it’s not as polished; more than that, and I start to de-edit, mistrust myself, and lose all the weird parts. The poetry cleanse exercise has been huge in helping me learn how to jump over the weak early drafts faster.

My general feeling about the months of January and February are:

So… I haven’t submitted anything yet this year. But I did get one acceptance from a 2017 submission! And I need to take a look at my Spreadsheet O’ Doom and see if it’s time to update the format.

Happy writing and any other hobbies you might have!!

xoxo j

Rejections Update: Abandon expectations, all ye who enter here

Jeanne Obbard
  • Rejections so far: 57
  • Acceptances: 4
  • Total submissions: 87
  • Total submissions last year at this time: 5

I was pretty confident, in the depths of my Eeyore-esque soul, that I was going to finish out 2017 with no other acceptances, but then I got 3 in one week and now I have to do the other kind of reality testing. I.e., rejections are a part of life, but so are acceptances. (So are three thousand dollar plumbing fixes that have to be re-done, at great damage to one’s dining room ceiling and one’s sanity, but that’s another topic.)

I will not achieve that goal of 100 rejections in 2017. Whereas submitting a packet is something I have control over, whether I get a rejection in any particular time-frame is something I have no control over. Once I hit “send,” it’s in the hands of editors, readers, and slush piles; some of these processes are speedy, others are ponderous, and it’s not up to me how that works; I have to let it progress in its own time. So in thinking about this, I’m now recalibrating my goals. I don’t care so much if I get the rejections, but I’d like to get to 100 submissions this year. It’s doable, and I’ll be really happy to achieve that milestone. And as for 2018? I’m thinking 150 submissions.

The thing that holds me back the most from submitting is a lack of confidence. I have windows of positivity where I feel strongly “I’ve got five good poems,” and I put the packet together, and the only thing that keeps me from sending it out is a time constraint. But what’s much more likely to stop me in my tracks is feeling that I need to revise some more, and not trusting myself to know how to do it, or not able to concentrate, or not possessing a belief in the work and an excitement about it. And that’s a different challenge from just not being able to make the revision work or not being happy with the result. Looking back on my writing career, an insufficient ego has probably been my biggest stumbling block. I think in the project of pushing to get rejections, I’ve been able to confront this to some degree.

Sending out a lot of submissions has also forced me to finish poems faster, to let go of them sooner. I think overall this has been really good for me. But in some ways, I’m also kind of pushing back against it. Sometimes a poem really does need to sit for months or years before you can look at it with clear eyes and see where its structure needs to be rebuilt. A writer friend of mine said recently “I’m a slow writer and I need to understand that and be okay with my process.” I don’t ever want to publish something that I feel is not whole or ready. So my 2018 tactic needs to take that into account. After all, my end goal isn’t just to publish anything; it’s to create a small and lasting structure of meaning.

And that’s all the news from my Spreadsheet of Doom.

Just kidding, I love my Spreadsheet of Doom. 😀

The very, very, very long view.

Rejections Update or: The Speadsheet That Ate My Life

Jeanne Obbard

Where I’m at:

  • Rejections: 22
  • Acceptances: 0
  • Total submissions: 48
  • That breaks out to 23 poems being read by editors (or undergrads in charge of slush piles) a total of 207 times.
  • Total submissions last year at this time: 0

Meanwhile I am still doing a one-week-per-month “poetry cleanse,” and that’s the main way I’m generating new work and working through revisions.

Reader, may I be perfectly frank about this experience?

It’s fucking exhausting.

…

Some organizational issues that have come up:

  • It’s getting harder to keep track of versions. There have been a couple poems I sent out where I find I’m relieved when it gets rejected, because I’ve since revised it. I suppose this is a known hazard of Poet Life.
  • The spreadsheet has become a bit unwieldy. In the process of putting together packets that are appropriate to each journal, I’ve gradually lost my neat “Group A / Group B / Group C” logic. At this point I’m just keeping one poem at no more than 10 places, though, in looking at Duotrope’s data on acceptance rates, I am highly unlikely to have to pull a poem. Here’s a bird’s eye view of the spreadsheet now:

“Hope: A Conceptual Artwork”

But you know, I can deal with all that. The real issue is that I feel I’ve lost any sense of joy in this process. I feel beaten down. I’ve often approached burn-out in my day job, but to come up against it in my writing practice is a fun new experience.

…

I was watching a documentary on the making of Sense8, and the cast and crew were talking about the way the Wachowskis work:

“It’s really incredible to watch how they work. When they show up on a set, they use everything.”

“They are constantly open to inspiration, and taking inspiration from wherever in the atmosphere, the soil, the people, whatever that’s there at the moment, and take what they have on the page… as a blueprint. They allow it to come to life and be alive in that moment.”

“They enjoy putting things together; they enjoy trying things. We, often times, we’ll cut things one way, it’ll work, but let’s try this way. Let’s try something like this. Let’s try it like that.”

“Let’s just try things, because that’s what we do.”

“We try things. Yeah. Let’s try this.”

As I listened to this (and rewound it like three times) I thought, yes, this is what the work looks like. And what I’m doing now feels like the exact opposite of this. And I realized that I don’t need to keep up with some arbitrary goal. And I felt a weight lift off of me, a weight I didn’t even acknowledge I was carrying.

…

What is creativity? It’s labor, for sure, sometimes difficult labor. But it leaves you with more satisfaction and ambition, not less. In the past months, I’ve really lost that lightness in the midst of my dark, stressed “submit all the time” mood. “Let’s just try things” implies a sense of deep confidence in your process. It says that possibility is as important as the numbers. That progress is not always linear or planned.

Being rejected repeatedly is also a kind of labor. It’s good to approach it as a game, for sure. But it’s also demoralizing, and I have to acknowledge that.

…

Am I just not cut out for this?

…

I could do with less torture, and more trust.

Film editors discussing Wachowski sisters’ process

Rejections Update or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Spreadsheet

Jeanne Obbard

While I’m not yet on track to hit 100 rejections in 2017, I do have exponentially more submissions out than I did last year at this time.

What my submissions spreadsheet looks like:

 

  • Rejections so far: 3
  • Acceptances: 0
  • Total submissions: 21
  • Total submissions last year at this time: 0

I currently have three separate groups of poems out to journals/contests; each packet has between three and five poems. I guess you could call this cheating as far as the 100 rejections project goes, but I figured it’s more important to get things circulating than to have each packet be the maximum possible size.

As I send poems out, I’ve been putting them on a master list called “finished.” (Let’s accept on faith for the moment that anything is ever finished.) I added a column for category or theme… which is cool.. now I can see, for example, that I have more Greek myth poems than I thought I did. I have no idea if this means I’ll ever have a themed manuscript. I generally feel that I write too catholically to ever produce such a thing, despite how popular they are right now. But as far as the next iteration of the/a book, well, it’s not exactly “in progress”… but I’ll call it “closer to existing” than it was a few months ago.

What my “finished poems” tab looks like:

What I look at when I start to lose energy:

In other news, a poet friend made this book cover art out of my recent hand x-ray. In honor of International Women’s Day:

Progress

Jeanne Obbard

Text: The Art of the Deal; Erasure: Me

Friends, 2017 is here. Is it ever. And each day brings some new offense against democracy, good sense, and human kindness. The kleptocrats insist they will make everyone rich; the body police say they will free us from government intrusion; the grandchildren of immigrants are deporting other immigrants; and the biggest fake of all keeps calling real journalism “fake news.” And as if that weren’t enough, there is growing evidence that our executive branch has been compromised by a foreign dictatorship. We’re living in The Upside Down, complete with Cold War flashbacks. Maybe a few of us will find out we are super-powered like Eleven, but in the meantime, we have to get on our bikes and fight the monsters with little more than unearned confidence, friendship, and breakfast foods.

Eleven, with the Waffles Of Victory.

 

I will admit that I got to the point of exhaustion way too quickly. Having a day job and a job-for-love is already a juggling act; now I’m also integrating my responsibilities as a citizen. One way is to put my money where my mouth is, by supporting institutions like The Washington Post and the ACLU. Another way is to raise my voice. Although I’m sure my regular letters to my weaselly Republican senator go ignored, it does help me to be a high-information voter, aware of legislation as it unfolds. It also feels urgent to put this historical moment into words, and I’m honored that my work has found a home in Thank You For Swallowing and Cleaver’s Life As Activism series.

My recent writing has become much more “political.” But something I think we often forget is that every poem – every piece of artmaking – is a political act. We live in a culture that does not value art except as a commercial endeavor, but creativity has a profound value outside the marketplace, in the lived experience of Americans. Poetry says “what I do matters” and “how I feel matters” and it says “I am paying attention to the world.” Through poetry we have the power to see each other, to practice empathy, to recognize injustice and call it out. The poet and the reader of poetry is not a consumer; she is a citizen; this is our honored role going back to Whitman and Dickinson both.

Many days, I wake up saturated with a feeling of vague horror. But what I try to ask myself is: “how do you want the next four years to look for you?” As writers, we are called to record this moment in time; if all you are doing is writing it down in a journal, you are part of the resistance. Among my writing goals for 2017: be a witness; read more poetry, even just one poem a day; continue with monthly poetry accountability exercise; and collect 100 rejections in 2017.

In solidarity,

Jeanne

50,000 people at the Women’s March in Philadelphia

 

Resistance flair. Because jewelry is never not relevant.

What’s next?

Jeanne Obbard

I’m still in a state of desolation and shock. And, if we’re being honest, I’m also afraid. The number of anxiety attacks I’ve had in the last day alone… sheesh.

But I like order and I like lists. So here are my plans as they’ve evolved in the past week.

“What you can do, or dream you can, begin it” – Goethe

Take action.

And this is important: take action in a way that you can sustain. Not everybody is cut out for the kinds of action extroverts feel comfortable with. I’m all for stretching my abilities, but choosing a method that goes against your essential personality will make you miserable, and miserable people give up. I truly believe that introverts and high sensitivity folks have something unique and necessary to contribute. Stay open to the ways you can leverage your particular strengths. (I’m so sorry I used “leverage” as a verb. We’re in dire times, okay?)

Choose some things you can do and keep doing. Set up recurring donations – some good organizations are mentioned at the end of John Oliver’s show (and he has other bracing things to say as well). Volunteer, in any capacity at all. Get engaged in local politics. Put your representatives on speed dial, because emails and social media might feel good, but don’t seem to impact much.

“Garbage in, garbage out.” – Apocryphal

Stop reading, and sharing, crap news sources.  Keep your critical thinking skills honed. Try not to get sucked in to either too-optimistic or too-pessimistic predictions.

“The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to bare the secrets of government and inform the people.”  – Hugo Black

Support the free press.

Donald Trump has shown a consistent hostility towards journalists and the free press – his campaign revoking press passes willy-nilly right up to the moment I’m writing this. He has stoked actual physical violence against journalists. That’s in keeping with his intentional policy of obfuscation (eg, the non-existent tax returns, his ridiculous cribbed doctor’s letter). So fight back by supporting transparency and good reporting. Buy a subscription to a newspaper – national, local, or both.

“Put on your own oxygen mask first.”

Get enough sleep. Get enough to eat. I know there are approximately four thousand articles to read and ten thousand comments to make and eleven bazillion mansplainers out there on social media, doing their mansplainy thing. In the long run, though, 85% of that will fall by the wayside. Better to read a book or watch TV and gather your strength for the next action.

And by the same token…

Resist predictions. I know there’s an entire industry built on breathlessly predicting what will happen next. NPR and everybody else is spending a ton of time talking about the kind of president Donald Trump might be. I understand journalists have to have this discussion, but I don’t. I want to stay informed, but there’s a fine line between informed and wasting my energy freaking out about things that haven’t happened. We don’t know exactly what will happen. And for sure some of it will be very bad. But the best way to be prepared for very bad is to stop anticipating it, and instead build up our reserves of energy and determination.

“What you focus on expands” – Oprah Winfrey

Here’s an unpleasant truth: We’ve given Donald Trump way too much attention. I’d even argue that that attention is what got him where he is. The sheer spectacle of rightwing batshittery; those stupid, sixth-grade-reading-level tweets. He’s had practice being a character in a reality TV show; it’s his favorite role.

I have given Donald Trump all the focus I intend to give him. I don’t want to spend any more time thinking about him; I don’t want to spend time looking at him or listening to him. There is nothing he’s going to say that will be outside his norm, which I’ve become an unwitting student of. Have you heard this man speak or read his tweets? His communication skills are, how best to say this… streamlined. He seems to use about a hundred words tops, and unlike a poet, he hasn’t even gotten the good out of those hundred. On any given day, you can get the news about what he and his professional hatemonger buddies are planning in about five minutes. Is there nuance? Sure. But not nearly as much as we’ve been conditioned to believe by the 24-hour news cycle.

Here is who I am paying attention to instead: our Democratic leaders. The ones who have been fighting this a lot longer than I have. The ones who have read the briefing books, written their own books, taught law school, community-organized, put in the intellectual and emotional labor necessary to have some thoughts worth listening to: Barack and Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton; Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Tammy Duckworth. And all the other leaders I don’t know about yet, who are going to emerge from this crucible.

“some chick says thank you for saying all the things I never do / I say you know the thanks I get is to take all the shit for you
it’s nice that you listen / it’d be nicer if you joined in / as long as you play their game girl / you’re never going to win” – Ani DiFranco

So you’re a member of the “majority” and you want to be an ally. Put on a safety pin, don’t put on a safety pin. I think there are legitimate reasons to do both. But white people: The point here is not to imagine yourself as Social Justice James Bond, swooping in to save the day so you can feel great about yourself. Of course you should research de-escalation and peaceful intervention techniques. (And this wise cartoon on how to defuse harassment.)

But what’s equally important is to be the white person who speaks up to other white people. Be the white person who disrupts the dominant narrative of whiteness. There are times when I’ve heard things that are just not okay. And I was so surprised by it, each time, that I didn’t say anything. Because I wasn’t prepared. I can get prepared. I can figure out some standard phrases to address sexist / racist / xenophobic comments. I can wear a safety pin, but also a Black Lives Matter pin. Because the place where I might have the most impact is in conversation with other white people, with other white women.

Standing up for the underdog and being a hero is such an appealing notion. Engaging your own people in difficult conversations is a lot less appealing. And here’s where I’m gonna go against my previous point and say: focus on the hard thing and not just the easy thing.

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” – Toni Morrison

Writers: keep writing. Write how it makes you feel. Write what you see. If you’re white, write how whiteness informs you and break it down. Write how misogyny informs your life and disassemble it. Re-read all of Angela Carter’s short stories and remember how to be subversive. I know this comes naturally to you. And know this: Poets and outsiders have always been essential to the health of the body politic. Writing is self-examination and is action. As Nigella Lawson put it in an interview recently, “I prefer to be paid to think, not to worry.” Don’t worry; think. Don’t worry; make art. (Don’t boo; vote.)

A man with fascist tendencies just got handed the most important job in the world, after a campaign in which sexism, racism and xenophobia were a feature, not a bug. A man who felt fine stoking racist and anti-Muslim hate and has made no apology for it to date. A man who explicitly said he feels entitled to sit down  next to a woman and put his hand up her skirt. That guy. All of our worst nightmares. The Pussy Grabber in Chief. He’s probably going to go down in history as the worst president of all time (sorry, W, to knock you off your pedestal). I’ve known people like him and they don’t change, because they simply don’t value change. We’ve seen the real him. So here’s my last piece of advice:

Don’t ever, ever, let this become normal. Maybe you were always in this fight or maybe you just started or maybe, like me, you’ve always felt useless. But if you were useless, then why were he and his merry band of misogynists so eager to knock you down?

When you’re lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, thinking,”Oh my god, what are the next four years going to bring?” ask yourself instead “What do I want the next four years to look like?” Because like Hillary Clinton said,

our constitutional democracy demands our participation, not just every four years but all the time. So let’s do all we can to keep advancing the causes and values we all hold dear; making our economy work for everyone not just those at the top, protecting our country and protecting our planet and breaking down all the barriers that hold any American back from achieving their dreams.

… This loss hurts, but please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it.
 
… I believe we are stronger together and we will go forward together. And you should never, ever regret fighting for that. You know, scripture tells us, “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season, we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”

From a heartbroken poet

Jeanne Obbard

I feel physically ill. I feel like my soul has been punched. I feel the worst cultural disappointment I have ever experienced.

I am not alone in these feelings.

Hillary is me; I identify with her. The hardest working, most earnest, passionate and compassionate girl. Trying to make something good. Driven by an inner light. Seen truly half the time; reviled and abused the other half.

I do the only thing I can do. I grieve.

I reaffirm who matters: women, children, people of color, people working for minimum wage, people with disabilities, LGBTQIA people, migrants, refugees. People who occupy those spaces and more. This is the body of my country.

I do the only thing I can do. I hold them precious.

I do the only thing I can do in this moment. I take care of my house. I wash the dishes kindly; I thank them for being serviceable and beautiful. I husband my space and the things in it.

This is how I make meaning.

I take pictures of small things I find beautiful. Flowers, berries, a crescent moon. I am open-hearted to beauty and I create beauty in many small ways, over and over.

Beauty is not frivolous. Remember: bread, but also roses.

I do not engage with angry and hateful people. Not even if they’re related to me. That’s not my job right now.

I understand the deep heart of this error for what is: a cancerous, self-hating id. He doesn’t love himself. He doesn’t love anything. He seeks power and attention because it’s all he has. And it’s less than nothing.

You have more than him. You are more than him in even your smallest moments. Because you are real to yourself.

I cherish my family and friends. I give kindness and compassion and I see it reflected back to me.

I do the only thing I can do. I take care of myself.

I look for the ones like me. Artists, sensitives, radicals, thinkers.

I remember we are spirits in bodies. The spirit is invisible but it is not fragile. We’re not done. We will get up again.

I do the only thing I can do. I write.

The one thing you can do, do it.

In each humble and particular moment, do it.