For You, This Rag
“What was it that suddenly made him so appealing to you? Perhaps it’s because he can buy you all those furbelows, perhaps that’s why! But why furbelows? Why do you need furbelows for? It’s rubbish dearest! What concerns us is a human life, dearest, but this furbelow is just a piece of rag.”
―Fyodor Dostoevsky, “Poor Folk”, 1846
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“Whether in the United States or in China, we need to cultivate a group of critics... Who will be next to dare to speak the truth? You must have enough courage to speak the truth.”
―Professor Zhang Yongzhen, a virologist who resisted Chinese authorities & released the full genetic identity of COVID-19 for the world on Jan 11, 2020
Dear Alex,
What if the dearest thing housed in our hearts is rubbish like a furbelow, “a piece of rag“?
The Oxford dictionary describes a furbelow:
1. A strip of gathered or pleated material attached to a skirt or petticoat; or
2. Showy ornaments or trimmings.
My teen daughter has recently commissioned an artist from e-commerce to paint Totoro, a mispronunciation for “troll” in Japanese and a beloved presence from her favorite film creator, Studio Ghibli. For $ 40, she got what she wanted on minimum wage: Totoro permanently embalmed on a thin wooden plaque hung next to her headboard, a few feet closer to her dreamy dreary head, love refurbished on bark, her furbelow.
Now who am I to mark a value on what is dearest or darkest in her dream or yours? Real or relative, my measuring tape itself would need to measure up to a standard source to be reliably fool-proof. That rag, for example, is just a piece readily chucked, ripped, wrung, rotting. Or it could be part of a whole, the final letter of a genome redundant but necessary, a makeshift knot or patch on surgical table, the same stitches and sorrows embroidered in the lives of the poor and posh.
What is dearest to your heart is going to get dearer or darker in mine and theirs and ours. What you say on coach or roof, fester in silence truth or critique, can thread mini movements to mass traction at the marketplace, home office, kitchen table, salons and saloons, the courthouse. The question is not whether we are together for a common cause. We should first ask if there is a cause for us to gather.
Last night a small group joined me on Zoom for a 50 min reading of 10 verses in Ephesians translated from a single sentence in Greek. In our revolving weekend, we spared a fragment of time and space to let the text question our questions. We bore holes in our assumptions, make our roofs leakier to let the rain and rays in our living room.
What does this or there - things common as mold in our shared tiny tremors, ideals and triumphs molding into bite-sized vocation - earnestly mean for us at this moment and the next for me, your families neighbors coworkers, our Totoros and storyboards imagined watched repurposed for history and vision?
There is a series of mass vaccination events this weekend in my region. We have been warned of a snowstorm coming close this week. The timing of crises could not have been budged for this first vanishing month of the New Year.
Truth is far from comfort. If it were not so, we would be too lax in keeping up with our messy rags.
Yours, Kate
―Professor Zhang Yongzhen, a virologist who resisted Chinese authorities & released the full genetic identity of COVID-19 for the world on Jan 11, 2020
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Dear Alex,
What if the dearest thing housed in our hearts is rubbish like a furbelow, “a piece of rag“?
The Oxford dictionary describes a furbelow:
1. A strip of gathered or pleated material attached to a skirt or petticoat; or
2. Showy ornaments or trimmings.
My teen daughter has recently commissioned an artist from e-commerce to paint Totoro, a mispronunciation for “troll” in Japanese and a beloved presence from her favorite film creator, Studio Ghibli. For $ 40, she got what she wanted on minimum wage: Totoro permanently embalmed on a thin wooden plaque hung next to her headboard, a few feet closer to her dreamy dreary head, love refurbished on bark, her furbelow.
Now who am I to mark a value on what is dearest or darkest in her dream or yours? Real or relative, my measuring tape itself would need to measure up to a standard source to be reliably fool-proof. That rag, for example, is just a piece readily chucked, ripped, wrung, rotting. Or it could be part of a whole, the final letter of a genome redundant but necessary, a makeshift knot or patch on surgical table, the same stitches and sorrows embroidered in the lives of the poor and posh.
What is dearest to your heart is going to get dearer or darker in mine and theirs and ours. What you say on coach or roof, fester in silence truth or critique, can thread mini movements to mass traction at the marketplace, home office, kitchen table, salons and saloons, the courthouse. The question is not whether we are together for a common cause. We should first ask if there is a cause for us to gather.
Last night a small group joined me on Zoom for a 50 min reading of 10 verses in Ephesians translated from a single sentence in Greek. In our revolving weekend, we spared a fragment of time and space to let the text question our questions. We bore holes in our assumptions, make our roofs leakier to let the rain and rays in our living room.
What does this or there - things common as mold in our shared tiny tremors, ideals and triumphs molding into bite-sized vocation - earnestly mean for us at this moment and the next for me, your families neighbors coworkers, our Totoros and storyboards imagined watched repurposed for history and vision?
There is a series of mass vaccination events this weekend in my region. We have been warned of a snowstorm coming close this week. The timing of crises could not have been budged for this first vanishing month of the New Year.
Truth is far from comfort. If it were not so, we would be too lax in keeping up with our messy rags.
Yours, Kate
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