On Curating Joy

I didn’t so much put this blog on the backburner as I straight-up abandoned it like a Dickensian child on the steps of a church, and I am very sorry about that. The truth is I had no idea what to write. Life in times of Covid-19 is weird, to say the least, and I still don’t quite know how to put words on it. So I guess I’ll just dance around the topic until I find out how to talk about it, and focus on a couple of things that have brought me joy in the past few months.

I’m very much of the opinion that happiness and joy are two very different things, and that it is extremely difficult to find one or the other in the middle of a f*cking pandemic that has caused over three million deaths so far, and that has revealed the worst in so many people. It will take a very long time for the survivors to recover and process our collective trauma, not only regarding the pandemic but also regarding the worldwide political insanity that has risen in the past couple of years. We can and must do better.

But we must also find ways to cope with our day-to-day lives and to keep finding joy in the small things if only to stock up on whatever good is left, and live to fight another day. Like many of you, my personal coping strategy has been to make things, especially, simple things.

I don’t know who are the people who say that the pandemic has made them extra productive, but I’m not one of them, and I lowkey hate them. It’s been the contrary for me. I’ve made progress on my PhD, but it’s been slow, painful, and difficult. It has been easier for me to work on smaller projects, like papers and talks, than to write whole chapters that have to work with one another. So when it came to hobbies (yes, it is ok for PhD students to have hobbies; we’re people too), I needed small projects that could potentially bring me instant gratification in order to counterbalance the feeling that neither the pandemic nor my dissertation would ever come to an end.

Like pretty much everyone in Europe, I’ve made sourdough bread (and finally battled my dislike of baking by making a whole lot of cakes, including a mean Sachertorte). I’ve also made nettle beer, organised our home library, built screen doors, watched a whole lot of Star Trek, convinced Jon to shave off his beard to just leave a moustache, tried new recipes, read a few good books (and a few not-so-good ones), and tried to focus on whatever positivity-inducing activities I could find. And I did find joy in them.

Here are a few things that have made it possible for me to curate joy in fourteen months of social distancing, various degrees of quarantine, Covid-19 tests, storms and rain, and the constant challenges of doing a PhD. None of them is revolutionary; now that I’m reflecting on them, I realise that most of them in fact are quite traditional activities, but that doesn’t affect their value in terms of joy and fulfilment.

➤ Gardening

Things didn’t look too bright in February 2020, even before the pandemic reached our shores. It soon became very clear that we’d be in it for the long run, so I decided to grow a garden for no other reason than I suspected I would need something that would distract me for a couple of months.

Up until then, our yard hadn’t been our priority in any way. We had more or less neglected it, as had the previous owners. Everything was overgrown, including the wooded area, and spading the lot was awful. Each time I’d dig even a little, I’d find rocks and refuse that had been left there by two generations. It was an excruciating process, but since we weren’t allowed to go anywhere at the time, I just figured I didn’t have anything better to do and did it square foot by square foot. By the end of March, Jon and I had cleaned up most of the surface, and we could start planting.

Garden centres were still closed, but I found one that had a delivery option, and I ordered most of what I needed. I also experimented a fair bit. I collected the seeds from one tomato I’d bought at the supermarket and just used those to grow my own tomato plants. My idea was that if it didn’t work, at least I’d have spent zero money on those. I ended up with fifty very healthy tomato plants, lots of which I gave away because no one can eat that many tomatoes. They were delicious, and they were my pride and joy. We also planted squash, peas, courgettes, lettuce, radishes, chard, garlic, celery, potatoes, carrots, beets, onions, bell, habanero, and Espelette peppers, as well as strawberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants and raspberries, on top of an array of flowers.

We were lucky, as the weather was wonderful throughout spring and summer. The harvest was bountiful. I dried a lot of herbs and made gallons of soup. When the first lockdown was finally relaxed, I gave away baskets of fresh vegetables to my family and friends while standing awkwardly six feet from each other with our masks on. It was a beautiful summer, made of fresh strawberries eaten right off the plant and contentedly looking at the garden after watering it in the late evening. Staying home was a necessity; having a garden was a complete luxury.

I also spent an awful lot of time stalking the critters of the garden, to the point that they’re now used to my presence and carry on with their business as if I wasn’t here, which is lovely.

➤ Knitting

I really got into knitting, which is a wonderful hobby if you enjoy repeatedly stabbing your fingers with relatively blunt needles, spending way too much money on yarn, and crying over basic mathematics. That being said, I needed to be able to focus on non-academic projects, and knitting turned out to be just the thing, as I’m not good enough at it not to knit without thinking about what I’m doing. I count stitches and rows, detangle my yarn, pay attention to the instructions, and generally forget about the world, which is just what I need. Plus, you know, in the end, you get a jumper or a shawl, and that’s nice.

So far I’ve knit a jumper, a pair of mittens (with this really cool Drops Design pattern), an infinity scarf, three unassorted socks, a super pretty headband, two beanies, and a shawl with Latvian braids (and boy, is the Latvian braid difficult to get the hang of). I’ve also started long-term projects including but not limited to the (in)famous Hue Shift Afghan, which I only knit when I’m between two smaller projects. And I’m currently planning my next knitting adventure. I’m not quite sure what it’s going to be yet, but I know for sure that it will be made of cotton, as the temperatures are becoming a little too warm for me to knit wool or warmer yarns without getting sweaty palms.

Speaking of hot, I’ve been toying with the idea of replicating Evie (Rachel Weisz)’s jumpers and cardigans in The Mummy franchise (the original, not whatever it is that they’ve put Tom Cruise in), because honestly, that woman is nothing if not a knitwear icon. However, I still need to improve on my technique a little before being able to adapt patterns to that extent.

I find that without being as relaxing as some people might claim (but that might be due to my not being past the apex of the learning curve), knitting is definitely meditative, and for someone who normally has a hard time at (1) not being good at something, and (2) letting go of things and really focusing on the task at hand, it’s absolutely perfect. Also, I get to stash yarn, and that’s definitely a plus in my book.

➤ Playing music

I probably should mention straight away that I’m what one might call tone-deaf, in that I’m relatively oblivious to pitch changes and sing like a wild animal in its death throes. I also really have to concentrate to decide whether a note is higher or lower than another (and still get it wrong half the time), and have no sense of rhythm whatsoever. But I’m getting there.

A couple of years ago, I was talking about just that with a colleague who happened to be an excellent pianist, and she asked me how I had learnt music. I explained that I’d taken lessons when I was 15 and that I had disliked singing the notes in front of the class so much that I’d dropped everything, including the guitar lessons, even though I happened to like those since you couldn’t take practice without theory. She looked at me for a second, and then said something along the lines of “that method could never work with you.” According to her, music, like languages, should be learnt by practising.

Work was insane at the time, and I didn’t get to play any instrument for a while, but her comment stayed at the back of my mind for years. Then when things calmed down for a bit (i.e. when I quit that job, but that’s a story for another day), I picked up the ukulele and decided to give it a shot. And it turned out that my colleague had been right in her assessment. I could actually read a score if I tried to play it. I’m not saying it was easy, and it still isn’t, but discovering that I could do something I believed I would never be able to do was extremely cathartic.

Fast forward roughly two years. On my birthday (my second quarantined birthday in a row, oh joy) last month, Jon gave me a very large present wrapped in at least an entire roll of festive paper. It was huge, and I had no idea what it was. And as I love surprises, I was particularly delighted to discover that my birthday present was an oud.

At first, I was rather doubtful that I would be able to play such a seemingly complex instrument, as it has 11 strings grouped in six courses (more or less, the first string isn’t part of a pair), and above all its neck is fretless, all of which make it a little more complicated than a guitar or a ukulele. But after playing around with it for a couple of hours, I was completely seduced by its sound. Plus, I find that the specific Turkish tuning (C#2 F#2 B2 E3 A3 D4) makes it very intuitive to find the notes.

If you’ve never heard the oud, please give a listen to this rather splendid compilation of vinyl recordings of oud masters by My Analog Journal on YouTube. It’s absolutely beautiful and I am sure you will fall in love with it:

Of all the instruments I’ve tried to play so far, the oud is my favourite. It is so beautiful.

➤ Hyperfocusing on Paris, 1920s/1930s

This one is loosely related to my work, as things have evolved fast in the past year. Without revealing too much of what I’m doing for fear of jinxing it, the university press and the editorial board of a collection at my uni have given me the green light to publish a book on an artist about whom no one really knew anything before I started my research. I genuinely have no words to express how excited I am about that.

Because that artist lived in 1920s/1930s Paris, the archives I explored and the information I gathered colluded with another project of mine on Louis Aragon. With every archive I explored, some of which had never been researched, I started to set aside some bits of information that were entirely irrelevant to my projects, but which I liked anyway. And then there is the rather fantastic digitised collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, which offers all sorts of windows into the past.

I was soon able to talk about little else than the 1920s/1930s Paris. I’d just say stuff like “Hey, did you know the Surrealists opposed the Colonial Exhibition of 1931?” à propos of nothing. Jon would ask me about my day, and I’d reply, “Oh man! You have no idea what I’ve just read about a lesbian banker who totally played the stock exchange in the 1920s”. It was clear I had to do something about it, lest everybody around me soon be bored of my new interest. So I did what any geriatric Millennial in possession of an Internet connexion would do, and I set up a section of my blog dedicated to it.

Now I can get all the tidbits I learn about the 1920s/1930s period out of my system without boring my loved ones to death, so that’s pretty cool, and I also get to exercise my translation muscle by tackling some material that has never been translated before.

All in all, I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to be able to explore new hobbies or revisit others, even when things weren’t great; those small things have made me happy. I think that in the end, we all need to find simple sources of joy when we can, if only to make up for the days we don’t find any, or to stock up for the future. I also believe that a moment spent creating something, as little as it might be, is never a lost moment.

How have you curated your joy these past few months? What has kept you going? Let me know in the comments!

♥ 3 silly items that have brought me joy

♥ 3 stories I’ve loved

♥ 3 shows and films I’ve (re)watched