groping about in the dark

three things I know

1.        We have each other

It’s 2am and I’m bleary eyed, giving my son his third feed of the night. We both grope about in the dark, trying to find each other and hold each other. He needs me and I need him. If I don’t feed soon the milk will build up and let down all over my sheets, again. He latches on and we both feel relieved. We have each other. On the radio, the first results are being announced; red, red, red. I’m not shocked this time, I’m listening but I’m also focussed on the task at hand. The task I need to complete to keep this child alive. The task my body is made to do. We are made to hold each other in times of need; to be nourished, to be soothed, to be relieved of the weight that we carry. We aren’t alone in the dark.

2.        Despair is not the answer

I open my phone and my friends are texting each other. They are horrified. They feel sick. Someone even sends me poetry. But we knew this could happen, I think—even if we pretended otherwise. Is that pretence a sign of our privilege? Perhaps our noisy despair is an act of indulgence.

The poem my friend has shared with me is called ‘Urgently’ by Eugenio de Andrade,

‘Silence and an impure light fall upon

Our shoulders till they ache

It’s urgent – love, it’s urgent

to endure.’

Today, the poem is a lamentation; an expression of grief and sorrow. Grief feels like a more accurate description of what we might be feeling in this moment. It is not the total absence of hope, but an acknowledgment of things and futures that we have lost. The truth is that we cannot despair because there are people—without homes, jobs, human rights—who need us to endure. To speak of despair is to see your home reduced to rubble by a settler army; it is not for us to despair.

3.        Everything is going to be alright

Above the toilet roll holder in my yellow bathroom is a postcard of Martin Creed’s 1999 work ‘EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT’. In this image, the artwork is installed above the Clapton Portico in Hackney. The Portico was once home to the London Orphan Asylum until a typhoid epidemic forced the orphans to relocate.

The artist Dave Beech said that ‘there has never been a worse time to decorate this place with the phrase … the neon says everything is going to be alright but the art is not so sure.’ 1999 feels like a long time ago. Before 9/11, before Gaza, before Trump. In retrospect, 1999 feels alright.

When Creed was asked what the work meant he said ‘It means everything is going to be alright.’ I agree. It might not be wonderful. In fact it might be horrible. But as we grope about in the dark we will have each other. Everything is going to be alright.