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Beth Alvarado |
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On Abundance
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On Abundance This is what I would say about abundance and scarcity: it has always seemed mysterious to me that in life there is at once an abundance of the terrible and an abundance of the beautiful. Although every life includes both, some lives seem to have more terror than beauty, which does not feel fair to me and I value fairness. The terrible does not erase the beautiful, but the beautiful does not comfort me in the face of the terrible. They both exist at once, just as both my love and my terror at losing those I love exist at once and intensify one another. My grief comes from this: I cannot change the world and, in a fundamental way, I am helpless before it. Still, I believe it is my duty to face reality as it exists. James Baldwin, in “The Uses of the Blues,” says we—and by ‘we’ he means Americans and, even more specifically, white Americans—cannot bear very much reality. But I think he would also say that creating art and experiencing art keep our hearts and our eyes open. We have the blues and we must listen to the blues. We must name the terrors, break the silences, make the invisible visible, do whatever we can to make life more bearable for others. In these acts, then, there is beauty. May we, as the Diné say, walk in beauty. |
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