It’s fascinating how catch-ups come about these days. You post a photo on Instagram, someone reacts, you ask how they’re doing, they tell you, they ask how you’re doing, you tell them, a year passes, the cycle repeats. Happened to me this way a few weeks ago. It was a friend who lives in the other hemisphere, 10 hours in the future. I don’t see him often, though I wish I did. He asked whether I’m keeping well. My answer suggested not really—adrift was the word I used; I’m keeping adrift. Wasn’t able to see the good, that’s all. “It’s OK to feel that way,” he said, simple and soothing.
After some time, he asked if I’d like a book recommendation. I liked that he asked instead of just dropping a link to the Tao Te Ching or 12 Rules for Life. I liked even more that the book he recommended was nothing in the way of self-help but a biography, by Katherine Rundell, of the 17th-century poet John Donne. As I read the opening chapters, of the wretchedness pervading Donne’s early life, I endeavoured to extract lessons. Poverty, plague, executions—what’s in here for me? That life could always be worse? It doesn’t work that way. “Suffering doesn’t concern itself with the scale of other sufferings,” as Martin Amis wrote. I wish people understand that. No, the lesson was this: “[Donne] was often hopeless, often despairing, and yet still he insisted at the very end: it is an astonishment to be alive, and it behooves you to be astonished.” It’s one of those lines that never leave your head once you’ve heard it.
There’s a friend I used to spend a lot of evenings with who would always make the same announcement at golden hour. “This lighting fucks,” she’d say. Another one of those lines. Her words now come with every low sun that spreads its soft, buttery light, imploring me to notice this nice thing. And I do. I suspect a similar effect’s been at play since reading the Donne book because I’ve been feeling way more astonished lately. The rush brought on by seeing a sign for Ice Cold Drinks, the trance I enter around 2:18 of ‘I Put a Spell on You’, watching someone pull lit weed through a Taki—it’s all astonishing. Always has been, I guess, but now it behooves me to be astonished. Gratitude’s often eluded me and now here it is, trapped in this perfect articulation, turning around in my head, over and over.
Thanks, Luke. I’m keeping well.
You put the dots on the letters through your writing! Really enjoying this!
Sooo lovely. I remember reading about 'Awe' therapy were people had 'intentional awe experiences' (lol) to help with depression. I think a sense of wonder is truly a tonic :)