Emily Dickinson, "We outgrow love, like other things" (887)

Hi all –

It is blistering hot here in West Texas: day after day is over 100 degrees. I'm happy I have power, the A/C works, and I have plenty of fluids. I'm grateful I am able to get things done despite the heat. Still learning Spanish every day (lots more work to do before I can speak it), reading Heidegger (the "Memorial Address" promotes two interesting imperatives re: technology), working on being a better Dungeon Master, and playing a bit of Geoguessr (having fun watching Spanish-speaking YouTubers play this).

And, of course, I'm reading poetry. A poem of Emily Dickinson's, below, was scrawled in an old journal and I had some thoughts about it. So that's the majority of today's newsletter.

I do want to call your attention to this incredible interview by Marisa Kabas. It has gotten some notice, but not nearly the amount it should. It's about how activists stopped ICE from turning warehouses into detention centers. And it has all the details you want: how laws and policies work, how courts can ask questions, what pressure points on the system look like, what you should be looking for in more complicated situations. There's also a lot here about corrupt contracts which should be viral. I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it. I tend to think this way: if I can't help a situation immediately, I want to know what to do. I want to always educate myself, but doubly so if I'm not sure what to do or can't act at the moment. This is a fantastic resource to that end.

I also think everyone should read "The Next Step in Criminalizing ICE Protests Is Here" at Forever Wars. A functional democracy is not possible without a robust right to assembly. If you can't protest, you effectively have no other rights. I live in Texas, where a lot of people think that protesters are selfish and lazy. The truth is far from that. Every good thing we have is because of protesters. When there aren't pressures that elected officials have to take seriously, they will automatically cater to wealthy, connected interests. The world's first trillionaire is very much a product of government spending.

Emily Dickinson, "We outgrow love, like other things" (887)

Old crushes are embarrassing. You know this, but you still want to go to bat for your 14 year old self. The one that thought the future of music was in a garage down the street, couldn't handle getting a C on a test, and was scared to death of parallel parking. Or the 24 year old self, finding new ways into cringe. Of course they're attractive. You're with them 8 hours a day. The question of how to expand your world recedes into the background. 

OK, you say. Fine. But the object of affection seemed decent. They were nice most of the time and showed basic manners. They were funny!

It's still cringe. I'm not saying this to judge: they're old crushes for a reason. Somehow, we grew. It wasn't perfect growth; maybe they deserve our appreciation for different reasons, ones we'll know later. That we crushed on someone isn't really a problem. But still, gotta sort it out.  

Dickinson, in the little poem below, does not judge. She's interested in the times we'll remember or are forced to remember what we were. Trying to fit into the jeans from 10 years ago, not quite realizing how multiply out of date they are:

We outgrow love, like other things (887)
Emily Dickinson

We outgrow love, like other things 
And put it in the Drawer – 
Till it an Antique fashion shows – 
Like Costumes Grandsires wore. 

Dickinson starts with what sounds like too much bleakness, too much sighing. "We outgrow love, like other things." Wait, what? I know quite a few of us will take offense at that, if considered too literally. We're trying to grow, we're trying to do more for those around us, we want to know we love better than we did. So I interpret this as a comment on cringe crushes. That's not only more palatable, but useful in an age dominated by nostalgia. We are swamped with endless sequels to franchises plodding for decades. And we deal with a POTUS who was a celebrity one way in the 80's, another in the 90's, still another in the 00's, and achieved their horrible final form in the teens.

When I speak of the power nostalgia has, I have to wonder whether we actually do outgrow love. Maybe we do in one sense, but it still haunts us in another. Dickinson says, of outgrown love, that it is "put... in the Drawer." That image works a few different ways, but I can't help but think that it speaks to our feelings hitting us at the worst times. We kinda do know what's in the drawer. And there's something more to consider: are we outgrowing love because we've actually grown, or do bad habits dictate our commitment and lack thereof? When we talk about the death grip nostalgia has on our society–the world burns as entertainment companies overbid on IP–it does seem old loves are a bad habit refusing to go away.

Dickinson concludes her brief poem with a marked difference in vocabulary. Two very plain lines, "We outgrow love, like other things / And put it in the Drawer," are followed by two significantly fancier ones. "Till it an Antique fashion shows – /
Like Costumes Grandsires wore." She's calling the "Antique fashion" of the "Costumes Grandsires wore" into being. It's a cute joke. Still, I hate to be reminded of who I crushed on when I was a teenager and why. I can't wear that costume any more. It isn't just embarrassing; it is non-functional. I guess that's the sense in which love is outgrown. If you put on the old clothes, they don't work. You would need a historian of your own life to figure out what you were up to.

Is nostalgia non-functional? It dominates our world, but what exact value does it provide? Trump might be the best example of nostalgia refusing to go away. This week was dominated with the saga of the reflecting pool in DC. He bragged about the work he was having done; he took his personal motorcade to inspect it; whoever he hired made the problems that pool had worse than ever before. We've got a reflecting pool outside the Lincoln Memorial which is nothing but gross green slime. A few people have tired of this story, understandably so. It can be perceived as a really petty way to snipe at POTUS. Still, people are being accused of vandalism and arrested outside the pool by a vast army of police, a level of surveillance and armament completely incompatible with constitutional democracy. When we don't "outgrow love," when we don't try to grow up, we blind ourselves to what matters. If old crushes aren't embarrassing, the consequences of them surely are.