In a year, I have lived what feels like two separate lifetimes, or time-lines. Let me explain.
By January the 7th, the festivities had ended, Christmas was over two weeks ago and the New Year had lost its sultry shine. The year stretched before me like an unknown, unformed terrain. Something untamed lurked within it, or perhaps, as I suspected even then, I was comparing the previous year to how this one would be. Using the former to create a map for the new.
The pandemic last year is not something people talk about just enough on this side of the world. I say enough, because we did talk about it, but not to the point of considering the gravity of that time spent in uncertainty, in limbo. We were suddenly in a world that even those decades older had never seen before.
I remember speaking with my father during the lockdowns. He said that even his parents had not seen the world shutdown this tightly before; borders were closed, people told to stay indoors. Economies shut down. And in the microcosm of my own life, I watched time pass, almost aimlessly and I felt just as many people around the world felt; that I did not know what to do about all this. About any of it.
Perhaps I still do not know what to do about it, given the time that has passed.
But time only moves forward, the first pandemic year ended, and I was a week into a new year with the question of; what is going to happen this time?
There is something about human nature I might fully have realized this year, that while we have a tendency to remember negative occurrences more strongly, we also have an unwavering capacity to hope beyond them. And that is what I did, I started this year with a shy, tender hope.
I had the luxury to do this because the last few months of 2020 had been kinder, not only compared to the earlier parts of the year, but compared to the past few years. Somehow, the lockdowns I resented had given me room to take a look at thoughts and patterns of behavior that held me back from the simple pleasure of just being happy, for its own sake. I thought and I planned, so when the lockdowns were lifted, I might not have known the big what-to-do, but I did know what I could change, the small increments I could make to live a simpler, more fulfilling life. I stepped back into the world with that confidence.
It worked. A tiny miracle in the madness. I had built a bridgehead into being more comfortable in who I was as a person, how I think and see the world. In what to do about my future. It was this that gave me that tender hope, a hope I was deeply afraid of losing. Because without it, the world reverses, lapses back into the build-up of confusion and angst that I had known before things started to change slowly.
Another thing I learnt is that hope is a delicate thing, it feels so. But it is also a deeply resilient thing. Even a tiny amount of hope is hard to kill. That small hope is what changed me.
I began to see colour in old things, in the ordinary things in my life. Like a person in love, I began to regard each day with the beauty it could hold in its palm. But I did all of this cautiously. As though waiting for the show to end, the curtains to be drawn away and reveal the impassive, brick wall of nothing that was under everything.
But days passed, and they continued to be good.
In living, we hope
I am not sure the exact moment when things began to smoothen out, but in all truth, this year was a year of recovery. One where I rediscovered calmness and ease. It was also a very productive year, despite the fact that I decided to chill out on most things, the paradox!
It is very interesting that I found out that the answer to many of the things I had been worked up about [for years] had been simple. And knowing them now, I cannot believe they were ever hard to see.
I think about this [paraphrased] quote that summarizes it; some years ask questions, others answer them.
Maybe this was one of the years that answered.
For My writing,
I think about how change, especially change for the better, is a slow but intentional process. I mentioned it a recently somewhere that to do better, one needs to master showing up every time they need to.
Once you have mastered showing up when you don’t feel like doing something, you have mastered how to grow at the thing.
This year a thing I wanted to do was expand my range as a writer. And to develop not a writing style, or a clearer writing voice [which I oddly did ha-ha] but an actual routine of writing. I wanted to write consistently, to have pieces I could show as landmarks of my progress- and I decided to do it in the writing form I was the shakiest in – prose.
Writing here for The Republic might have been the game changer for this. That layered, research-heavy piece is oddly where I learnt to present my ideas the clearest in. The editors are absolutely to be thanked. They know how to nudge without pushing. It was from this that I solidified my confidence in writing essays, in plotting them and thinking through them. I completely recommend you pitch to them; it was mostly a lovely writing experience.
But of course, if that was the starter, this blog was what kept the dice rolling. I have enjoyed all of the pieces I have written but some of my favourite {and readers’ favourites too!] are;
- The place of poetry [about what poetry means in art, and in our lives]
- The politics of freedom [featuring lovely portraiture by contemporary Nigerian/African artists]
- This short story Friendly Ghosts
- About writing 001 [ a consideration of the writing process of a short story of mine; what the trees said]
Have a look!
Seeing them really makes me realize how far I have come, even in this moment that I write this I am a bit stunned by the progress. It was in the middle of the year my writing process really began to take form [and when I started this blog]. I worked on many stories and poems this year, some of which I shared. But the growth in terms of consistency and quality is what I am most proud of. More than anything else.
In loving
Well, what is love?
I explored that question in this earlier post, On Beauty. And if you substitute love for beauty in that piece, I think the same principle applies. But that is more along the lines of what love means in art, love in a more transcendent form.
What is love in the hum-drum of our daily lives? How does it comfort, how does it inspire, how does it counter our fears.
Countering our fears I think, is love’s biggest gift. If hope helps us work beyond fear, then well, love exorcises fear from a thing. It gives us certainty, and clarity. Perfect love casts out fear. It takes us back home.
It is inside love that we are swept past our defences and can willingly trust.
In the earlier part of this year, when I was still coming to terms with the fact that things had calmed down, I did not want to fully believe it. But I think it was love from the people closest to me, love from God, love that I had talked myself into having for my own self, these nurtured me past the fears.
There is a lot of hatred, envy and angst in this world, but I think there is love enough to cover them too. To meet us on the other side, take our hand and lead us back home, or even further than where we left off.
In the art-ing
This blog is primarily, about art.
So what has art looked like for me this year? Quite simply, art has just been my regular, daily life. This magical, ordinary thing that I get to live and experience.
I consumed quite a bit of art that was primarily focused on more ‘domestic’, straight forwards ways of living. It is something of a departure from all of the transcendent stuff I am usually drawn to. I remember earlier in the year I was trying to understand how that works; how is life still meaningful and cosmic while being ordinary.
I remember I thought up this line
the divine subsists in the ordinary.
What I meant by saying it was that the divine, other-worldly things sort of visit the ordinary. The ordinary is touched by them. Now, I am not so sure.
I think the ordinary holds its own beauty in that it is a basal aspect of the transcendent things art reminds us of. It doesn’t need to be elevated, thinking so robs it of its own loveliness, and importance. And just, its own reality. It is a different, but equally valid type of real.
This year, I considered seeing the world this way, through this lens, as a sort of education. I feel like I came into a common house where every other travellers drop their luggage, and just enjoy the hospitality of our magnanimous host. Where we can eat, think, be filled up, love, enjoy art, and all of it.
Maybe I will set up residence here permanently, maybe I will get a gentle nudge in my heart one day that it is time to move on from this place. But it is good either way. Something transcendent art has taught me is that there is a certain joy in not knowing.
Time will continue, after I write this, after you read this. There will still be a future that looms ahead. And we will still wonder what to do about it.
But I have been shown this lesson over and over again, prepare for the good also. And be willing to trust it. Good things, good years, genuinely happen.