Becoming Duchess Goldblatt

by Duchess Goldblatt

People often come to me seeking the true meaning of life, but I find they’re usually satisfied with half a sandwich.

I left a window open overnight and the moonlight slipped away and now the sun’s getting in and touching all my stuff.

the Gertrude Stein Opera Is Opera Is Opera House;

Minor floods in Crooked Path tonight. Volunteers are redirecting storm flows with burlap bags weighted with unfulfilled expectations.

“You love people because they’re people, because they’re human beings. Not necessarily because you enjoy their company, which is one kind of love, but because you recognize they’re inherently worthy. Every person is inherently worthy. I’d argue it’s your obligation, regardless of whether you think it’s your job to decide if they’ve earned it.”

“But you can’t love your enemies,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense. If you loved them, they wouldn’t be your enemies.” “That’s the point, honey.”

And we all construct identities for ourselves anyway, right? Online and in real life, we decide how to present ourselves, we teach each other how to behave, and we reinforce for one another which ideas we’re keeping and which ones we’re throwing away. Good manners are a social construct, weekends are a social construct, values and beliefs and democracy, all social constructs, all ideas that we have come to agree to in our various interactions with other humans over time.

I know in my bones I don’t have anything to fear from stranger danger. I can see it in my mind’s eye. Nothing bad coming to me is going to come from strangers. All my mortal wounds have always been inflicted by the people closest to me.”

I will die as I lived: laughing at my own jokes and, if I had to guess, choking on a swizzle stick.

“Sweetness,” he said, his voice thin. His eyes welled up. “I know better than you do how sick he is. I know he’s never going to get better.” He sounded insulted, as if I shouldn’t have forced him through the indignity of saying it out loud. “Then why do you persist in this?” I asked. “Why can’t you save yourself a little bit, for me? Save your strength, Dad. Just let him go. I need you here. I need you to get well.” He looked at me so sadly, and I knew he was disappointed in me for failing to understand. All the years I’d been his kid, he’d poured his heart into me and he still hadn’t been able to make me understand what it means to love somebody without any hope of reward. Even now, today, I’m still trying to learn the lessons my dad tried to teach me. He lifted his shoulders almost imperceptibly. “He’s my son,” he said.

The trick is to be superhuman, but only when you have to. The rest of the time I recommend looking out the window. Maybe have a sandwich.

When someone you love dies, you lose them in pieces over time, but you also get them back in pieces: little fragments of memory come rushing back through what they cared about, what brought them joy. If you’re lucky, you get little pieces back for the rest of your life.

Some of you have been coddled too long. I’m not cutting the crusts off these sentences for you anymore.

I try to keep my abiding love for all humanity in one place, but somehow it always ends up in piles on the dining room table.

I knew exactly what he was asking. He wanted me to do what he had always done: love the people we had been given, and not just my brother, but the rest of the family of origin. Love them with no hope of reward, recognize that they are inherently worthy of love, accept that they’re ours whether we like it or not; love them for whatever they are, forgive them for whatever they are not. Keep them alive. Keep them going.

Duchess Goldblatt’s Writing Advice: Use all the letters, not just vowels. Spread them around the page until you get the look you want.

“If I’m doing my job as your mom, then your heart will grow so big that you’ll be able to find at least a tiny bit of space in it for every person in the world,” I’d say. “You don’t have to love everybody. But if you can start to feel your heart turning hard against someone, I hope you will try to find three good things you can say about that person.”

the voice is the mingling of the soul, the mind, and the body together, expressed through breath, which is life itself; how could any human voice not be sacred?

I kept my eyes down, but I heard every word she said, and I knew she was dead wrong. I knew in my bones, had always known, that my brother would eventually commit suicide, I knew he was a child of God just as much as anybody else, and I knew that when he died he would be welcomed into heaven. If she’d ever seen despair up close, she would know what I knew, that God understands the nature of a broken heart. The saddest people will always be allowed to go home first.

I keep a silver bowl full of emails by the front door. Anyone who tries to pop in for a visit has to take a bag of them for the ride home.

Save on entertaining expenses by keeping up with only one friend, ideally a fictional person who prefers not to leave the house.

If you have the education, wits, and leisure time to pursue your own interests, you have it better than 99% of the people who ever lived.

What’s your favorite food to prepare for yourself when you’re alone?—JRL Coffee. I look forward to it hours in advance, and I sing it a little love song when we’re together.

The world is broken, but you are not broken. Things may not be okay, but you’re okay, and you will be. I promise.

It’s the beauty of the work that interests me, even if, like Duchess Goldblatt, like a Tibetan monk’s sand painting, it’s ephemeral. I will make it as perfect as I can while I work on it, and it will not hurt my heart when the wind sweeps it all away.

When we rely on self-deprecating humor, we’re trying to neutralize criticism preemptively, and there are echoes of ancient superstitions. I will deny my own gifts so that the gods don’t punish me and take them away.

When I was the boss at my old job, people would approach me with bullshit problems and I would stare at them hard and say, “How would you solve this problem if I didn’t exist?”—PJ

It’s best if you decide to be true to the relationship rather than being true to the person. Because when the person lets you down (and he/she will!), you’ll say to yourself, “All bets are off!” And you’ll feel free to break a trust or breach privacy or be disloyal in big or small ways. It’s a justification. If you commit to the relationship, you’re being faithful to that.

If you’ve ever wondered what the right thing is to say to someone who’s grieving a death, I think this is it: Tell me all about your dear one.

Close your eyes and visualize the best possible outcome. When it’s not looking, grasp it by the neck and fling it into reality.

Good morning, sentient chunks of goodness. We meet again for another spin on the old axis. Let’s see what we can do with this