In her expansive and incisive book, How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell recounts Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener”. As she explains, “Bartleby, the clerk famous for repeating the phrase, ‘I would prefer not to,’ uses a linguistic strategy to invalidate the requests of his boss. Not only does he not comply; he refuses the terms of the question itself.” This is how I feel about New Year’s, about 2022, about resolutions, about my worth as it’s tied to my productivity, and about imagining worlds beyond the one we live in. I refuse the terms of capitalism and white supremacy and grind culture and diet culture.
The world would have you think you have to start the New Year with big, transformative energy but I also think we are all feeling really far away from resolutions and “this is your year” kinds of thinking. I know I am. I am as exhausted and as worn down as I’ve been at any point throughout this pandemic and I just don’t have a lot of gumption in me. I feel full of thoughts and ideas I want to share out and I also feel totally flattened. I feel disjointed and am having a hard time synthesizing my thoughts. I have creative projects in mind that I can’t seem to activate on. It seems like my Long Covid- which really is ME/CFS at this point- is getting worse again. (The improvements after the booster did not last.) So this is what I can offer today: quotes from a few of the thinkers and writers that really ground me and have been swirling in me this week.
On refusal:
“To resist in place is to make oneself into a shape that cannot so easily be appropriated by a capitalist value system. To do this means refusing the frame of reference: in this case, frame of reference in which value is deterred by productivity, the strength of one’s career, and individual entrepreneurship. It means embracing and trying to inhabit somewhat fuzzier or blobbier ideas: of maintenance as productivity, of the importance of non-verbal communication, and of the mere experience of life as the highest goals. It means recognizing and celebrating a form of the self that changes over time, exceeds algorithmic description, and whose identity doesn’t always stop at the boundary of the individual.”
Jenny odell, how to do nothing
On the body I have in the world we live in:
“what if this body
is the ideal body
for this apocalypse
what if?
what if the future
is simply all the fat girls
outlasting the fools?”
adrienne maree brown, adriennemareebrown.net
On possibilities:
“At my best, I am not a cynic. I am full of wonder, depth, care, empathy, and connection. I feel, in my best moments which sometimes feel so rare, called to reflect goodness and joy and deep knowing. … In my best, rarest moments, I am expansive and my imagination cannot be limited. I can see, reaching with my heart, the farthest stars at the edge of the universe and that’s how I know abolition is possible. Care and safety are possible…”
Rachel bean, journal entry 11/28/2021
On my attitude toward 2022:
“Sometimes the best thing good people can do is hunker down, care for one another, and survive.”
Devon price, laziness does not exist
Sometimes, we only need a few simple lanterns to find our way forward in the dark. These quotes are my lanterns this week.