Rat Utopia!
Hello girls,
In a historic turn of events - I don’t hate February this year! Perhaps it’s due to our particularly mild winter or some exciting upcoming travel plans, but February has flown by and with that we’re nearly 2 for 12 on 2024.
One of my resolutions this year is to be more conscious in my fashion spending and to limit myself to one new clothing acquisition per month. In January, I bought a black puffer jacket from Free People and this month I’m on the hunt for a pair of secondhand Adidas wide leg track pants (navy preferred). I’ve already begun manifesting a perfect pair of vintage denim for March. Planning my purchases in this way has helped me to avoid impulse emotional thrifting and online shopping - but I do wish I had unlimited money and an endless closet.
In stark contrast to my material girl musings, I almost got radicalized this weekend. I sat down to do some knitting and watch “Working: What We Do All Day” on Netflix. Produced by Michelle and Barack Obama, the documentary explores what working life is like at 3 levels - service jobs, ‘the middle’, and management/leadership. I believe the intended takeaway is that the idea of a ‘dream job’ or going to work because you feel purposeful and empowered was a foreign idea even one generation ago and that the reality of work for the vast majority of Americans is something that must be done to get by, What actually stuck with me though was a feeling of helplessness at the state of work in America, with so many so called ‘unskilled’ workers struggling to make a simple life for themselves and their families. I was heartbroken at the story of a young mother in Mississippi beginning a job in homecare. Her work, which I would describe as challenging, compassionate, and necessary is extremely undervalued. She worked difficult hours away from her young daughter for just $9 an hour (a poignant clip later in the documentary showed a box of cereal cost $6).
After watching the service jobs episode, I checked out Matthew Desmond’s new book “Poverty, by America” from the library. It raises poverty in America as a morally urgent problem and explores how ‘affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor.’
So basically I’m spiraling in a mix of guilt for how lovely of a childhood I was figuratively and literally afforded, feelings of hopelessness at the state of our country, and deep sadness for the millions of Americans who are manifesting fresh vegetables on their table rather than a perfect fitting pair of vintage levis this March. Sorry to be such a downer - maybe February is hitting me after all. #GregorGirls
Love you all very much!
Sydney
Dear Sydney,
The helplessness you described at the state of work in America struck me as the best way to describe it. It’s overwhelmingly how I feel when I zoom out of my current life in trying to think of the future and what I might be doing, but also when I consider myself as part of a system that is so self serving, that I feel as though I am constantly one step away from taking a wrong turn and getting pulled into an every day reality that is grueling and meager. Currently, I feel as though I am on a teetering edge that will determine whether I ascend or plunge, whether I will be damned to work to live forever, counting the hours down methodically on the clock each day. I am lucky that I even get to be on this edge, though.
Luck is an interesting factor in this conversation too. I know that you are worried about how your letter comes across, talking about online shopping and poverty on the same page. I understand what might be going through your head as you imagine people on the internet reading it and wrinkling their noses and perhaps tapping about how tone-deaf they think you are on the sleek screens of their iphones. It might just be because I know you and understand how deeply you care about people and the world–I mean look at your job, for God’s sake–but your letter did not come across as tone deaf or clueless to me. Our singular lives and the systems they belong to are complicated to address as a whole. Many different, seemingly contradictory things can be true at once, such as your affinity for purchasing clothes and your concern for those less fortunate than you. If we try to ignore the reality of our lives in light of the harshness of the world due to guilt or shame, I think the conversation becomes both one-dimensional and self righteous, like the hypothetical people tapping on their hypothetical iphones.
To be honest, I don’t feel guilty about my luck, and I wouldn’t trade places with anyone in a worse position than me, but I also feel for others in situations that lack my privilege. My lack of guilt often made me wonder if I was bad, especially when looking around me and witnessing many people feeling guilt for their more pleasurable existence in comparison to others, or even mine! In the exchange of histories that occurs when getting to know people, I would often be facing the wide eyes and downturned mouths and “I’m sorry”ies of people suddenly struck by guilt in the shadow of my own suffering, and it always just feels like something getting in the way of connection. I don’t want anyone to apologize for their singular life, especially due to my own. It’s just not the reaction I want. I’d rather have none at all.
This week though, has been quite lovely. I’ve finally taken a hold of the ample in-between moments I have in my day, and have been reading many essays, books, articles and poems (in tandem with viewing the series One Day on Netflix (horrible end), Shiva Baby (a great, horrifying film), Love Island & The Bachelor). Unintentionally and perhaps relevant to our conversation, a lot of what I have been reading has been posing the idea of morality as a mis-used, obstructive product of human tradition that is layered upon natural life haphazardly. I don’t mean this in the crude “I just discovered Nietzsche! God is dead! Do whatever the hell you want!” way (though Nietzsche’s Dawn of Day is one of the books…an adobe pdf perpetually haunting the background of my work desktop), instead, I love how these works seem to urge people to peel back the customs, habits and laws of good/bad that we adhere to as though they are transcribed on the inside of our bodies. Perhaps you will discover something integral, specific and primordial about yourself if you do so.
I must mention that the other book I am tearing through is called “The Passion According to G.H.” by Clarice Lispector, and in true #GregorGirls fashion, a cockroach factors heavily in the shattering of the narrator’s identity and world. I will leave you with a quote from the book:
“The fear I always had of the silence with which life makes itself. Fear of the neutral. The neutral was my deepest and most living root–I looked at the roach and knew. Until the moment of seeing the roach I’d always had some name for what I was living, otherwise I wouldn’t get away. To escape the neutral, I had long since forsaken the being for the persona, for the human mask. When I humanized myself, I’d freed myself from the desert.”
Her words are very wonderful to me. I’ve annotated half of this book already!
Love you too,
Mackenzie
Dear everyone,
These are the moments that I am happy to know you, and I treasure you each the way that I do. You are all brilliant and wonderful, and I feel so lucky we have cast the same lot. I am not sure I have had one significant thought in the past month, but that’s okay, as you all have had enough to keep me afloat.
Sydney, I am now very excited to watch this show! I have been thinking about the turmoil and joy of labor and its connection to capitalism for a while now, and it is an issue that permeates every area of my life. Perhaps it was how we were constantly taught how good capitalism is or our childhood, but it’s been tough for me to enjoy and feel fulfilled by things I love because of the pressure to go out there and WORK!
I have created this pressure in my head that I need to work and be compensated handsomely to feel successful. But, as you all know, I have been working as an artist for the past year. One of my constant struggles has been the lifestyle of an artist. It is very hard work, mentally and physically, with very little financial compensation in return. I constantly feel stressed about what I am making, fearing it will not sell, be appealing enough, or not reach specific academic standards. I used to be so excited by the little things I learned in art school, like using Kingfish Blue pigment in a glaze instead of rutile. Now, I panic anytime there is a minor inconvenience, as I am desperately hoping not to be flung off my hamster wheel.
All this to say, I think I can finally pin this anxiety on the need for financial success, while I had previously been attributing it to other things like pretentious artists and curators, theatrical individuals, and my own self-doubt. Maybe it’s a combination of them all, but after accepting this as an issue and coming to terms with my position in life, I feel a weight has been lifted off me. I feel less guilty for wanting to do something I like and enjoy. It has reinvigorated my passion to be in this field.
My feelings may also be coming from a low-grade depression I have been feeling where no career seems to be worth it. I can’t seem to convince myself of any greater purpose for a job in an office whose primary goal is to make money so that I can buy consumer goods. It all seems like a cyclical waste of energy that I can’t participate in for too long before I implode. I’d like humans to use their ingenuity to escape this behaviorial sink in our rat utopia. (I think this is an exciting experiment about the societal collapse of rats.)
Anyways, not sure if this is coherent, I kind of just used this as an opportunity to discuss my feelings towards some of these thoughts. Hopefully, there can be some connection to how you are feeling. I know this issue is very nuanced and has many faucets we could discuss in circles; these are just my current connections to the topic.
Best of luck to you.
VTY,
Grace
