Emotions vs. feelings
I'm officially in the doldrums of late winter. My life consists of school, home, a little work, school again, home (to my messy room), maybe a walk outside, school, home, driving an hour each way, school, home, and repeat.
Monday, I found myself looking out the window, an hour into my poetics class and thirty minutes into a classroom debate about what exactly T.S. Eliot meant in his essay, Tradition and the Individual Talent, when distinguished between emotions and feelings, writing, and I quote, "the expereince, you will notice, the elements which enter the presence of the transforming catalyst, are two kinds; emotions and feelings" and even better "the buisness of a poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, and working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all".
This was a very riveting debate, but I had been awake for almost 12 hours at this point, with no end in sight, so the window was my friend. The sun is always just beginning to set during that class period, and I know I'll be driving through the sunset, homebound. A good 30 minutes of that drive is cowfields, the sky is entirely open to the eye, often the colors are bright, and the skeleton trees make perfect silhouettes.
I get so distracted sometimes, I worry I'm going to crash. But then the sun fully sets, and there's always a giant truck behind me with the luminosity of a thousand nuclear bombs in its LED headlights. Now that I think about it, I bet it's been ruining my circadian rhythm.
Later in the week, I found myself at a town hall meeting with my sister Becca. I had three pages typed up, a bulletproof appeal to my local government about not preemptively yielding to ICE, since the feds decided to build a detention center basically in my backyard, which is convenient considering we have a massive Hispanic population in my city (my kindergarten yearbook was written in both English and Spanish). Becca thought the room was going to be packed, and so we left early, only to arrive and find we were the only constituents there (there was actually one other couple there, but I didn't know that till the end when they came up to talk to us).
It's a good thing my appeal was bulletproof because I was sweating bullets. I skimmed the itinerary, looking to see how much of a time buffer I had between me and the podium, only to find that I was only allotted 2 minutes to speak.
2 MINUTES. 3 PAGES.
God bless.
I thought I was going to pass out.
I got up there, blacked out, and delivered a whopping one page of prepared information. I didn't even get to what was arguably the most important section, the Bible verses, which, considering this is the Bible belt, holds the most sway over even a governing body. I had a few heavy hitters ready to go, such as:
When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
Leviticus 19:33-34
and
Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.
Hebrews 13:1-3
And let's not forget "the greatest commandment."
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.
Matthew 22:36-40
Becca told me it was a good presentation, and so did the couple, and I'm just going to trust them because I have no idea what I said in those 2 minutes. I plan to stop by the next meeting and see if I can get through a second page. Whatever it takes, I guess.
I know I'm being fairly flippant with the way I'm writing about an ICE detention center being built in my city, and I want you to know that I do not take it lightly. There is an exhaustion I believe we're all feeling, with the constant barrage of bad news and all, making us feel helpless, hopeless even.
But here's the thing: we are all capable of doing the things that scare us, and the more we work those muscles of bravery, even in the smallest ways, like public speaking, the more the weight of hopelessness begins to lift. As my father always told me growing up, "face your fears, live your dreams".
You'll think this is funny, but the older I get, the more I try to embody Sam Gamgee. When Trump won the 2024 election, I crashed out, skipped class, and went to the tattoo parlor to get the quote "there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for" tattooed on my upper thigh. Now whenever I sit on the toilet to take a piss, I look at it and nod in agreement. There is, indeed, good in this world, and I, a simple gardening enthusiast, am capable of fighting for it. You are too, friend. Don't forget that.
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