In the darkness you move by feel

New Moon

Today is a new moon. Recently – as in the past couple of years – all the new and full moons have felt the same. No, that’s wrong. They have all been intense. Maybe the full moons felt unstoppable, as though you were being pushed towards events, out of control, like a cat chasing mice in the wall, driven to break boundaries. Today feels like a tide being sucked out, the way all the air leaves your lungs when you fall off your bicycle onto your chest. You can’t breathe. And when you breathe again, there is an explosion of pain. Maybe that explains the mood. Like the ocean receding, inviting you to explore a vast expanse of mud, while a weighty subterranean mountain of water is offshore, waiting to submerge whatever is revealed. There are bigger forces at work.

I didn’t protest yesterday. I could blame the weather – rainy – or fatigue – general. Perhaps the feeling of pointlessness, or of having hit a wall, is more to blame. Arresting a judge. And yet people are not shocked. Falling asleep at a funeral before the world’s leaders. While that might be the ideal permanent state for this person, there are others still doing evil while he naps at the taxpayer’s and culture’s expense. We – no – I can’t say we anymore. I hope that the adults in the room are working hard to save us all. I hope I still believe in adults.

Maybe the sense of – call it “deep listlessness” – comes from some of the articles I see. The NYT, that bastion of conformity in the face of imagination, sends out daily summaries. Today’s is designed to keep armies of therapists employed. Title:

The Morning: How the art world really works.

First two paragraphs:

Good morning. A man in Vancouver drove a car into a crowd celebrating Filipino heritage, killing at least nine people. Trump said Vladimir Putin might not want to end the war in Ukraine. And we have a closer look at who attended Pope Francis’ funeral.
More news is below. But first, our colleague Zachary Small explains how a few big players wield enormous influence in the art world.

Could there be a better example of how any alarm is calmed? Yes, things are really bad, aren’t they? A man – no identifiers – murders people. The current president offers another sound bite. Social interest – who was at the funeral, like a small town gossip. But – don’t worry, there is other news. But first! Are you going for brunch? Or just having coffee in your apartment? This item could help conversation. Let’s talk about influence and power, but in the art world. See what they’ve done there? We’re still examining power – we aren’t completely without morals. All are related – passed by the censor, A+ for effort, and what a civilization we are fortunate to be a part of. Cultural capital pieces for the gameplayers.

And it won’t spoil your digestion. No need to go searching the internet at this moment where one can see very recent pictures of Ukrainians under rubble, grey and white like the concrete dust covering them amidst the damaged belongings of a life, now still, still holding hands. Children begging for food in Gaza. Children wrapped up, as though for sleep, in Gaza. A long sleep.

But let’s talk about power. Power, of the sort that promotes conformity. Power, of the sort, that when you face it, you are immediately brought to a sense of your own helplessness. Don’t look at suffering. Look at power! The winners and losers of the current administration’s mindset – this is the power that the current government and its backers want you to pay attention to and pick a side. Because, eventually, they say, you will see we are right. Because now we have arrested a judge. Now we are ignoring laws we think are wrong. Now we remove sick children from their doctors, fathers, home and country of birth. Now – what next. I see the Democratic leader has sent a very strongly worded letter with questions. That should fix it.

But that’s news, out there, you may say. What about here, in the smaller worlds we inhabit? The day to day. True. The challenge of getting up, out of bed, and saying – I’m going to re-pot a plant, or feed a bird. Small victories. I have coffee beans. While the ups and downs of the stock market over the past month have removed six months’ worth of income from my savings, so far, I still have a job.

Is it wrong then to notice the lapses, small or otherwise, in the moral content of what is around me? Maybe this is a step, surely it must be, towards realizing underlying feelings or weighing what is authentic against what is not. I don’t like the word authentic. To me, it implies that you still are lying. And then the idea is that we are all liars, playing some game, which ends, after enough people around you have totted up their winnings, apartments, holidays, cars, clothes, and tottered off into the night.

I work at a place where compliance in advance is the norm. My boss said that nothing was changing about discrimination laws – just now they included everyone, and that was the right thing to do. They smiled at the group. I took notes. First, no names of initiatives or groups would be changed. Then, maybe some would –but for the sake of clarity. I see things, and I read things, and I carry out tasks, and they help the machine keep running. I recently saw a message of complaint or frustration which basically outlined some of the very real things that have occurred and their objections to them. This person was not wrong, although the general response seemed to be that they inhabited an alternate reality. They also said that these policies etc. were kept in place by, I paraphrase, well-paid staffers. Well-paid is relative. I work for people that make 3 times what I do, at least, and watch them take credit for things that I do. That is frustrating. But reading this shocked me. Those words about the staffers echoed something in my heart that I’ve felt for a while. Compliance, complacency born of being trapped. I’ve often wondered if people thought I agreed with the bosses. After all, I’m sitting next to them, aren’t I?

What does one do with those feelings? Go for a walk? I used to feel that one could rant, could dream, could imagine something else, share a possibility with someone who might agree. During a recent rant, someone said to me more or less flat out – so – your boss doesn’t like you. So what can you do? Live on Social Security?

A reality check of sorts. What can one do? And maybe aside from being a drain on the precious time of others, perhaps ranting is like letting the steam out of a kettle. It prevents explosion. Because what happens if it boils over?

What happens when you realize that people don’t care? Is that “adulting”? Acknowledging human frailty, acceptance of boundaries. Not asking for anything, and accepting that some have landed more softly than others? That for some, the NYT view of the world is fine. Gosh, all these bad things. Like one of my congressmen, they place their trust in the next election and business as usual.

I read another article about how real leaders do not want to be surrounded by sycophants. One rebuttal to that said that it was a useful skill to know how to flatter those above you. I see this type of flattery every day where I work. A boss who fills every minute of every day, then tells everyone they have no time to eat lunch, while people flutter around them. I am a poor maid. I am not excited by these self-serving demonstrations. I am not driven to instant organization when I receive a text at 7pm asking why they have a meeting tomorrow with someone. I am walking on the beach. I do not want to text back and say – you asked for those meetings to be scheduled. I don’t want to respond the next morning when another text arrives just after 730am saying, it’s fine, never mind, we are going to meet. I do not want to perform subservience. I want to do my job, and help them to do theirs. In private, people tell me that the place is a culture of failing upwards. One in particular is very skilled at flattery. But perhaps not as much as the two men who have just been promoted above her. Valuing flattery as a skill is about the same as judging someone’s worth by what they wear or how much money they have. Oh! Well, as I said – I’m a poor maid. And you and the person I was ranting to, would probably be correct in their judgment that if I don’t play the game better, soon I will be a poor maid. It’s just a little lie, right? 7pm, not like it’s midnight. Just text back. Be on call. Don’t make faces when you type the notes that ask everyone to spread the correct version of the truth.

Or is it a time to acknowledge that one doesn’t have to do the work of those who are against us. There’s that us again. Me. I can speak for myself. What does one do when one’s allies become one’s enemies? When you find yourself in a culture so toxic that you see it corroding people in real time. When you feel the corrosive effects of cruelty and ego burning away at your own strength?

In the world, you find new allies. Watching Macron shake Zelenskyy’s hand while avoiding the touch of the current leader of this benighted country, I can feel that there is some sense in the world. The weight that Zelenskyy is under is unthinkable. And he is applauded and cheered by the crowd at the funeral. I hope these gestures give him the strength to go on and keep saving the world. He is the front line.

The Ukrainians are making new alliances and building their own weapons.

Here, back in the poor present, maybe it is a failure of my strength that I didn’t go protesting. Maybe it is a failure of my imagination that I couldn’t get out of bed, or that I feel trapped in a job, or that I listen to people who I realize do not really care about how I see the world. I see more people here become like the NYT. They focus on the irrelevant, and fail up. They feel no pressure on a moral compass, or not anything they can’t accept. The boss where I am – has advisors, therapists, coaches, conferences. I can only imagine that they say that you must surround yourself with dedicated people. An army of sycophants. I watch as the best flatterers are promoted. Survival, but maybe not of the fittest. Of the flattest?

On the smaller level, what can I do? Part of this is a journey towards recognizing the childhood trauma I experienced. I have spent much of my life either unaware or managing the damage. For every wise move, I chose friends and partners who were broken mirrors, like my mother. Cold, narcissistic people who took what I offered. One of them said he was sorry at one point. I think, at the time, he meant it. My mother will never say that she is sorry. Those who build their careers on using other people, will not say that they are sorry. People who are certain they are right, as the world is thrown into greater turmoil, will never say that they are sorry. They will not change.

Can I change though? I read a quote from Nick Cohen about the current president today, saying “the European contempt for T, which I share, is just another sign of our dependency: our rage is the reverse side of the sycophancy.” Maybe my rage is just the flip side of sycophancy. In that case, what to do next?