Glimpses of light; or, one for the Dog People

Rather madly, I decide to sit up all night and watch the election. I have worked out secretly in my mind that it will be an Obama landslide, and I must see if my psephological chops are still sharp.

Actually, this is mostly sheer wish thinking. And partly predicated on my inability to understand how anyone would vote for a man who once strapped his dog on the roof of his car and drove it to Canada.
I slept badly the night before, and am in the blank exhaustion stage of grief, so at first I do not enjoy it as much as I normally would. I start to get a little testy with Chuck Todd and his implements. Brian Williams cheers me up a bit; there is something about his wry intelligence which makes me feel better about almost everything.

Then, something lovely happens. Obama begins to win. He wins because the Americans, whom doughty Britons occasionally think of as rather antic and flighty where we are prosaic, who do not have our obsession with the Blitz spirit or the insane Dunkirk pride, are queuing round the block. Egregious partisans in some states are performing blatant voter suppression, but the voters will not be suppressed.

All the pundits except for Rachel Maddow have been muttering knowingly about the enthusiasm gap. Obama’s base, apparently, has no taste for the fight any more. The feckless young people will not pitch up; the African Americans are demoralised. It is the tea partiers and small staters and the pro-lifers who have the bit between their teeth. Peggy Noonan even writes a hilariously wrong column about how the President seems joyless, how his campaign is ‘small and sad and lost’.

In the end, the African American voters come out in greater numbers than ever before. Somebody says it is because they are so furious at the attempts to deny them. (Voter suppression gets targeted at non-white neighbourhoods, apparently, although my mind has to stretch and twang to comprehend that someone would do something so wicked.) The Latinos come out, and the Asians. The college-educated women, which is another vital demographic, marches out in droves, dreaming of Nellie Bly and the Pankhursts.

Suddenly, there are pictures of happy, smiling crowds. People are still queuing in some states, even though the result is now certain. Some of them waited for eight hours. I love them. Someone on the BBC jokes: if we had to wait ten minutes to vote, we would turn round and go home and have a nice cup of tea.

My Twitterstream explodes with joy. I send incoherent messages to people I have never met, congratulating them on the sweep of the battleground states. Mitt Romney ran an ugly campaign, and I am really pleased ugliness did not have its day. I imagine Paul Ryan consoling himself with a nice comforting copy of Atlas Shrugged.

At half past four, light-headed with tiredness, I go to bed. I cast a glance at the Pigeon’s bed, beside my desk. In 2008, she and her sister sat up with me all night. I say, out loud, to the empty space: ‘You would have been quite bored’. She liked the racing; not so keen on the politics. No barking and cartoon jumping for Cuyahoga County.

This morning, the air is light and mild, and the sun shines, and I spend two hours with the equines. I work the mare; I have a long conversation with the Horse Talker, which soothes me. I think about the election again; I realise that I am really, really delighted.

The World Traveller comes out and I tell her the result. She had missed the news. She smiles all over her face. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I am so glad.’ I too am glad. The very fact that there can be gladness feels like a bit of a sign. It is the first thing I have been properly glad about since Friday. I tried to watch the racing, but even the sight of the imperious Silviniaco Conti putting down his marker for a glittering future could not lift my heavy heart. Now, for the first time, there is a glimmer of lightness.

That’s the thing I have to look out for, the first gleam of light. I find that I have to concentrate very hard on learning loss, all over again. What do I do? Is it chicken soup or small acts of self-kindness or hot baths? Is it writing it down, giving sorrow words so the burdened heart will not break?

It is, I think most of all, looking for the light. I stare, stare, stare until the first watery ray is glimpsed. Then, I know I shall be able to bash on. It’s quite odd that the election of a man in a faraway country should prove to be that first glimmer. But it felt like a triumph of the better angels.

It’s not that everything shall now magically change, and Congress shall do good work, and perfect policies shall fall into place, and everyone shall have jobs. The political situation is much as it was. But there was something profoundly moving about those hopeful queues of voters; I am glad most of all that their stalwart endurance was rewarded.

My friend the Expatriate calls, from Santa Monica. ‘I think that Barack Obama is a proper person,’ she says. ‘I’ve been watching him and his wife, and I think they actually are really good people.’ I think so too. Good people don’t always make perfect politicians, but it is oddly reassuring sometimes to see that virtue is given its due. Obama could have taken his glittering Harvard degree and made millions in the corporate sector. Instead, he went to work with deprived communities on the south side of Chicago. That is a mark of character.

Plus, he is really nice to his dog.

As my sleep-deprived brain grows more whimsical, and I search hopelessly for my final sentence, I think perhaps that is why I am quite so pleased. It was a triumph for the Dog People. It was one for The Pigeon.
 
Today’s pictures:

Morning light:

















The happy herd:







They really were amazingly contented today. They have settled so well, and relaxed into themselves, and that too is a ray of light:



I imagine if the old girl were still here she would be saying – you didn’t really think they would elect a man called Mittens?:



No, no, not they. They remember Seamus the Dog:



The very thought makes me do my Lady Bracknell face:



Forgive me. No sleep really does make for inexcusable whimsy.

The hill, very blue today:

The ship sails on

A friend sends me a text. Her father died, suddenly, last Thursday. She is not only someone I like very much, but someone I admire. She is doing good things in the world. I think of the battening down of the hatches she will have to do as the storm of sorrow hits, and grieve for her.

At least, I think, this is in my wheelhouse. I can write to her. This is something I know something about. I have words for this. I know that nothing can comfort at such a time; when people use that word, I think they fall into a category error. They are, hopefully, humanly, putting loss into the same box as the things in life which can be fixed. It cannot be fixed. It is a vast, rough thing, that goes right down into the very depths of the spirit, and can only be ridden out. (The question, I suddenly thought this morning, is not how do I make myself feel better; the question is – can I take it?) The kind words of condolence do not comfort, but they do touch the broken heart, and that is important in itself.

I sat down to write, and there was nothing. Stilted, paltry sentences fell lifeless onto the page. I stared in astonishment. But I know this, I thought; this is my damn special subject. I could win Mastermind on this.

Still nothing.

I thought: I know what this good woman is going through, I must have the precise right thing to say. Then I realised I don’t know what she is going through at all. I have an inkling, because I lost my own father, but each bereavement is unique; there is nothing else like it. There are some coloured areas on the Venn diagram of sorrow, but each person must feel it in a different way. And the thing is so vast that however much I think I know it, my words are still tiny things in a howling gale.

In the end, I wrote what practically everyone writes. I am sending you love, you are in my thoughts, your father must have been so proud of you, my heart aches for you. It turns out that all my expertise is not quite as shiny and comprehensive as I had thought.

The comfort thing is interesting. Matthew Parris was on the Today programme this morning, talking of grief. He was quite indignant and grumpy, in a rather wonderful way, about the idea that one should get over it, that there should be healing, that loss is treated like some kind of mental sickness which may be cured.

‘You don’t get over it,’ he almost shouted at Justin Webb.

He is right. I remember being quite shocked, months after losing my father, when I thought I was rocking back to some kind of normality, to find that the Railway Children tears could still hurl me to the ground. What was that about? Was time not supposed to heal?

I worked out that it is not healing so much, as room for other things. At the beginning, the whole world shrinks to the size of the loss. Words on the radio are meaningless, food has no savour, ordinary people going about their ordinary business seem alien, even callous. (How can you be laughing when MY FATHER IS DEAD?)

Usual daily things like tidying the kitchen or washing the hair seem insurmountable. I am currently in the mad hair phase. Luckily, I discovered that vanity flees, in the face of sorrow, so at least I do not have to mind about my piggy little eyes and my whey face and my crazy-woman barnet.

What happens, or rather, what happened to me, is that I had to learn where to put the sadness, to fold it into a safe place in my heart, where it could still be felt, but would not overwhelm. That is the slow process that time allows. The problem with the instinct to comfort is that it can cramp this; it can put pressure on you to get on with it. The people who love and care for one do not like to see one in pain; of course they want to wave magic wands and make it all go away. But what I really need is the space, the permission to feel like hell for a while, until I can get things back in their proper order.

Parris says you damn well should feel the hole; that it is meet and right so to do. I remember thinking something very much the same last year. I remember suddenly thinking: how horrible it would be if there were no tears.

I miss my old girl so much that there are moments I can hardly breathe. I see little flashes of her everywhere. I remember all her sweetnesses, her kindnesses, her generosities. I remember the feel of her and the sound of her and the scent of her. She was a glorious creature, a rare spirit, and she leaves a gap behind that shall never be filled.

So, I asked myself this morning the serious question: can I take it? The answer, of course, is yes. I have to work out the balance. I have to allow the pain, which is immense, but I am aware that I must not fall into the pit of self-pity, and self-indulgence.

I think: go back to the small things. Each day, find something which is good, as well as feeling what is bad. So I made chicken soup, and rearranged the white roses sent to me by the dear old friend in California. I thought of The Playwright, who called yesterday from Manhattan and showed me his hotel room on the Skype, and made me laugh five whole times. I thought of the family. I thought of the astonishing kindness of the Dear Readers, which daily makes me smile. I thought of my mare and my funny little pony. I thought of all the lovely horses I shall watch this winter, as the National Hunt season swings into action.

These are not comforts; that is the wrong word. But they are goods which still exist, to put beside the bad. They are the small, hopeful winds which shall keep this ship sailing.

 

Today’s pictures:

It was a gloomy, murky day, but the hills and trees still carried a mournful beauty:

The white roses:

There is a lovely simplicity to equine breakfast time. They are all so happy and contented:

Pigeon, from the archive:

 

It’s funny. After the Duchess died, I put some pictures of her up and then stopped. Could not bear it. Now, I can’t conceive this blog without the Pigeon on it. I think perhaps she shall stay here forever.

The Hill:

America goes to vote today. Normally, this would be full festival political geekery day for me. As it is, I just hope that President Obama is re-elected. I think he is a good man doing his best in a difficult season.

I never did do my promised post on Mitt Romney. My central question was this. Everyone who knows him personally says he is a good family man, who brought up fine sons, who is faithful and true to his wife, and kind and thoughtful to his friends. But on the campaign trail, he has lied and lied and lied. These are not just the usual political evasions, the small economies with the truth that almost all operatives indulge. They are proper lies.

His campaign even seemed to acknowledge this when they said they would not allow their agenda to be dictated by fact-checkers, as if people who check facts are dark and dangerous.

And then there was his searing disdain for the 47%.

I know complexity is at the heart of the human condition, but I found it hard to reconcile these two Mitt Romneys. I also found it impossible to understand how someone who could say so many provably untrue things could be taken seriously as a candidate by such a great nation.

President Obama may not be perfect, and has failed in some areas, but crucially, I think the private and the public man are the same. Unlike his opponent, he really does believe in Americans. I think it would be rather a lovely thing if they repaid the compliment.

 

PS. As I re-read this, looking for howlers, I realise that my brain has gone into the kind of fugue state which means I have no editing capacity. I have no idea if this makes any sense at all, or if the grammar is correct, or if the thing is littered with errors. Thank you for bearing with me. Oh, and I am aware it is all a little dark at the moment. Do not fear. The light shall come again. There shall, in the not too distant future, once again be jokes. I am British, after all. We are not allowed to be serious for too long. It is written in our DNA.

Leave the introverts alone

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Warning for length, and ranting.

 

This morning, the Today programme had on the American journalist who has just written a mildly controversial book about the Obamas. To the shock and horror of the commenting classes, it turns out that Mrs Obama may not be a doormat person stuck in a 1950s time-warp. She has, apparently, ideas of her own, and sometimes expresses them. This, it appears, makes her both frightening and angry. And again I find myself hurling another socking great double standard across the room.

But the point was not so much about the brilliant Mrs O. Right at the end, the journalist, whose name I stupidly forget, was asked about President Obama’s first term. Justin Webb, who knows something about American politics, said: ‘Why do you think he has been a bit of, well, a disappointment?’

First of all, the journalist did not pause to challenge the premise. I am quite keen on challenging the premise and think people should do it more often, especially on flagship news programmes. (This is not the same as not accepting the premise, which is a politician’s weaselly way of not answering the question, cf Andrew Lansley this morning on the National Health Service.) In fact, she seemed quite delighted to be asked, as if this were the crux of the matter. She had obviously given the thing some thought, because she did not pause or ponder; she came right out with it. ‘Of course,’ she said, conclusively, ‘he’s the most introverted president we’ve ever had.’

At which point, I literally shook my head, like a baffled horse. I practically snorted and pawed the ground. What? You take the myriad, convoluted, labyrinthine complications of running a country as eclectic and mysterious as America, and boil it down to the fact the president is an introvert? And, and, you blatantly imply that this is a bad thing, a terrible drawback, a defining weakness. I do not understand.

Justin Webb, whom I admire, moved on without a beat, as if this were a perfectly explicable answer. I was left opening and closing my mouth like a grumpy carp. It’s not actually the politics of this that interests me, for once. I could argue for hours that Obama has not been a disappointment. I think it is a miracle that he can govern the country at all, since America seems more profoundly divided now than I have ever seen it. It’s not just left and right, there are furious fissures within the ideological camps. Have you been watching the Republican primaries? There is a massive fight going on between the religious right and the fiscal conservatives, the almost extinct Rockefeller Republicans and the neophyte Tea Partiers, the biblical literalists and the radical libertarians, and all points in between.

Within the same party you have Ron Paul, who wants the government to run a small army and not much else, and Rick Santorum, who would like government to be so enormous it can go into your bedroom and your womb. (There’s fun for the ladies.)

The Dems are slightly less fractious, but the coloured bit of the Venn diagram where centrists once met seems to be smaller and smaller, so there are terrible, pointless, childish rows and stand-offs in both House and Senate, where bills are thrown out because of tribalism, Republicans vote against things they once supported, and filibusters grow like mushrooms after rain. Sometimes, when I watch the implacable dislike and mistrust that seems to obtain between the two sides, I wonder that America can be governed at all.

Yet, Obama stopped the economy sailing off the cliff, got the jobs graph to start crawling up instead of plunging down as it had under George W, put through a healthcare bill which at least contained the idea of universal coverage, pulled out of Iraq, tracked down Osama Bin Laden with his supersecret powers, and repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, all against the howls and tantrums of an obstructionist Congress. He has not been perfect, but, in an awful situation, he has not been bad. And he can sing Al Green songs.

But that is not the point. (Turns out I had to say it, because it makes me so cross when people suck their teeth and say he has done nothing.) The point is that his perceived disappointment is being blamed on being an introvert.

There is an element in American politics which is hard for me to understand fully, and that is the glad-handing aspect. British politicians don’t have to do this. Ministers introduce their bills; the party system guarantees most of the time there will be an easy majority; occasionally the whips are called in and glare with menaces; very rarely the government backbenches rebel. As far as I can see, in America the President can rely on almost no one, even his own party.

For each bill, he has to get the votes, and this seems to involve personal relationships. When asked why his promised bipartisan dream did not come to pass, the Republicans say, over and over, that he never came up to the Hill. He never asked them to things, apparently. He did not have them in for cocktails. It’s so strange. It sounds like they are teenage girls who did not get invited to a fashionable party, and now they are throwing a strop about it.

I that this is partly what that journalist meant when she blamed Obama's introversion for his perceived failure. The only inference I can draw from this odd statement is that if he had been a good ol’ boy, yacking it up, and slapping backs, and twinkling and winkling, then somehow everything would have been fine.

I admit, I am entirely biased. I am an introvert. I get so sick and tired of introversion being seen as entirely negative trait. Introvert is used to mean taciturn and shy and anti-social; that is not its meaning at all. It simply means that the inner world of thoughts and ideas is more real than the external world of events. For the extrovert, it is the exact opposite. The extrovert’s greatest terror is being left entirely alone; the introvert fears the collapse of her internal world. Regular readers will know that my biggest fear is that I shall go mad in the night and wake up thinking I am Queen Marie of Roumania. It is a classic introvert terror, almost a cliché of introversion.

Introversion is a bit like handedness. One can go out and dance and sing and talk and laugh; one can be social and make conversation perfectly well. It’s just it’s a bit like writing with your left hand when you are naturally right-handed. It requires a bit of effort.

The difference is that extroverts thrive on people; big groups, social occasions are like fuel in the tank for them. Introverts, on the other hand, are exhausted by going out, however much it might be a pleasure. That is why, after this lovely weekend away, I had to sit in a silent room for the whole of Monday, staring out of the window. My easiest and gladdest default mode is to be alone.

I always used to think that introversion and extroversion were evenly mixed. Apparently not. Someone worked out it’s more like 30-70. This now starts to explain to me why people react with disdain; it’s the old minority thing. It’s other.

Also, on a very human level, people take it personally. Sometimes, I do not answer the telephone. This is because I have been thinking all day and my brain is not fit for human contact. Often, I refuse invitations, because I am not robust enough for many people in a room; I need to be still and quiet. Because extroverts, the majority, the normal ones, cannot imagine feeling like this, they take it as an insult. The conclusion is: the introvert does not like people, rejects company, is somehow superior or disdainful, is horridly chilly and distant.

It’s not that. It’s just that doing more than one human at a time is a stretch for me, so I need to be feeling strong for it. I need a good night’s sleep and all my iron tonic.

Introverts might not always have the easy ability to beam their charm and magnetism at a group, as Bill Clinton or Sarah Palin may; the concentration on the inner world may well be a drawback in strict political terms. What they do have is the capacity to sit in a room and think. I would like my leaders to be sitting and thinking as much as they can damn well bear.

The world is swerving into water where there are no charts. It is the contemplation of introversion rather than the instant action of extroversion that is needed now. I bet you anything all those bloody Joe Cassanos and the other credit default cowboys were extroverted up to their eyebrows. And look how well that turned out.

One of the complaints about Obama is that he is too cool. He does not connect, apparently. I think you can ask the wrong things of a politician. I’m not sure I want hail fellow well met; I want brain the size of Poland. I’m pleased that the President is a thoughtful man; I admire his dignity and grace. I don’t want to have a beer with him, I want him to make good decisions, because what happens to America affects us all.

But most of all, can people stop drawing intellectually lazy, psychologically inaccurate conclusions; could they stop conflating two different things and making baseless accusations? Could they just leave us introverts alone? We are not freaks. We do not hate or fear people, just because we are not doing karaoke every night. We just come at the world from a slightly different angle. Surely that is allowed?

 

Pictures of the day. I am slightly obsessed with the colours of the bare trees, so there are rather a lot of snaps of those:

This photograph is not well composed. It is not even in focus, which you might think would be the minimum requirement. But it is of Pigeon doing the blinky eyes. I'm sorry, but no blinky eye can remain unseen. So here she is:

Back to focussed gazing face:

Hill:

In which I do not talk about Rick Santorum

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I was going to do a whole thing about Rick Santorum. I was going to write about Biblical literalism, with specific reference to the bit about the entire town stoning the adulterous daughters to death. Oh, I was on a roll, in my mind, at that point. I was going to do moral relativism, moral absolutism, Leviticus, separation of Church and State, the finer points of Catholicism.

Since Santorum’s views on abortion are so strict, and he has stated categorically that he would have doctors arrested and imprisoned for performing the procedure, I was going to go into a whole existential exploration of personhood.

The definition of personhood (horrible word, but the one that is used in this context, I’m afraid) is absolutely fascinating, once you get to thinking about it for more than five minutes. It can’t be thought or language or even self-consciousness, since babies have none of those things; nor do some very mentally disabled people, or those who suffer traumatic brain injury or are in the end states of Alzheimer’s disease.

Ah, I thought, as I walked down to give the pig a treat of carrots and tomatoes (she adores tomatoes), this is properly interesting. I shall be like the majestic Lord Bragg on In Our Time: I shall unpack it. Melvyn Bragg is always unpacking things. He is the shining light of unpacking. I think he must think a day wasted if he does not unpack something really recondite.

I got back from the pig. She was in ferociously fine fettle today, skipping across the walled garden with her little twisty tail high in the air. She actually wags her tail when she sees me, like a happy dog. I made some yellow split pea soup. I had forgotten quite how good the split pea soup is.

Sustained, I sat down at my desk, fingers itching to get to the bottom of the Santorum madness. I watched a couple of his interviews, I found some very, very strange quotes. I began to write. Two sentences in, the will to live drained from me. I could not do it. It was too depressing.

I know I am supposed to be a fearless examiner of the human condition. Oh, look at me, shining a light into the darkest corners, without favour or fear. I don’t believe in pablum or whitewash or glossing over the nasty parts. There must be the truth, or nothing. I have always been faintly disturbed by those people who refuse to read the news, because it is too demoralising, although occasionally I have a faint envy for them. My own idiot construction is that one must face the news, in order to be a concerned citizen. How earnest and po-faced I sometimes am. But today, faced with the full strangeness and sadness of a Rick Santorum, I could not do it.

Oh, said the tired part of my brain, please can we think about puppies or penguins instead? Tell them about the pig with her wiggly, piggly tail, eating the carrots and grinning all over her sweet porcine face. Come on, said the post-Christmas exhaustion, you really don’t have to go into battle against every piece of egregious reasoning that you encounter. And, said the low realist, are you really going to change anyone’s mind? Is that even your job? You are, I tell myself firmly, not Lord Bragg, King of the Reithian imperative.

This last thought is rather a relief. Although of course, it then sets up a new dilemma: where is the fine line between practical reality, and copping out? One should fight for something, after all. Yet it is fabulously dull to be lecturing people all the time. There is something very tiring about that finger-wagging conviction of one’s own rightness. On the other hand, without conviction one is just a straw in the wind. So that is the new conundrum that I shall be pondering for the rest of the day.

 

Now for the pictures.

It was another dull, dirty day. The sleet and gales have subsided, and there is just a flat, brown nothing. I cannot complain. Looking back over the pictures of the last weeks, I see day after day of dazzling sunshine. And in some ways, the bad weather is quite good, because it makes me look at the small things of beauty. The only loveliness one can find outside on a day like this is in the minute elements: the texture of the stone walls, the bark on the trees, the moss and lichen. I always feel there is something rather symbolic in that.

 

The Pigeon did her every-good-girl-deserves-a-treat pose:

And her I'm really bored of this now, can I please move pose:

And her little blinky eyes face, which is almost too much to take:

Funnily enough, even on this drab day, with its flat grey sky, the hill looked rather vivid and glorious:

Oh, and in case you think I am being a bit melodramatic about the strangeness of Rick Santorum, here is just one quote from him from the campaign trail. He told a crowd in Sioux City: 'I do not want to make black people's lives better by giving them other people's money'.

I'm not being funny: I genuinely, genuinely do not understand what that means. I mean: why black people? It's like a nonsense poem. Those are recognisably English words, strung together in a phrase, but making no sense at all. I do, however, think that anyone who could come up with such a bizarre sentiment should not be taken seriously as a potential president of the local Rotary Club, let alone the United States of America.

If you have the heart for it, you can see the whole thing here.