By Ammi Midstokke
I have loved a great many asses in my lifetime, but never a donkey. This is what I’m thinking one evening, curled up beneath layers of a comforter, obscenely bright light reflecting off a wall in an attempt to cast a softer glow on the pages of my book.
I’m reading the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez because I once read a line of his describing how his donkey, Platero, with his cotton-soft lips disturbs the reflection of the full moon in a puddle as he drinks, his thick eyelashes lowering to watch the watery moon ripple away. My hesitation in reading this particular collection of prose, “Platero y yo” (Platero and I), came merely from this reality: It would solidify the conviction in my belief that I need a donkey. Also, some of those fainting goats seem like a good idea.
I cannot put Jiménez down at night, and each evening I look forward to reading and re-reading his lines. It is not his love of Platero that brings me back or has me sighing wistfully and returning to the beginning of the sentence. It is in how he brings loss to life, the ache of love to one’s chest. It is in how he sees the natural world, then pulls from it the colors of a painting, the smells of a pine copse on a wet night, the insect clamor of late summer, and sets them upon paper to be deliciously supped by one’s hungering mind.
And trust me, my mind is hungry right now. It needs the literary reminders of a world in which every sunset is magical and marvelously different. There are dozens of descriptions of sunsets by Jiménez, each one more remarkably visceral or amber or purple or glowing copper than the next and they never, ever get redundant.
This is the reminder I need right now: Sunsets will continue happening. People are trying to live their lives to the best of their ability. We should observe with respect and awe. We are surrounded by beauty and wonders and loves that are temporal and fleeting. We should pay attention.
This is not my impulse right now. Indeed, I want to bury my head in the sand for the next four years like half the nation buried theirs in their asses for the last four (speaking of donkeys). While a fair amount of ignorance may be necessary to support our mental health as humanity navigates some big-picture problems, I am determined to distract myself with connection rather than dissociation, to remain curious and open-hearted. To explore a world larger than mine and breathe deeply the minutia of my tiny, self-absorbed one.
It will take poetry and art and hiking. And conversations and questions and listening. And reading. More reading.
I do not mean headlines, newsfeeds, or social media. Pick up a copy of Hofstadter’s “Anti-intellectualism in American Life.” Read Thoreau and Whitman. Read Du Bois and Chesnutt. Read Edward Abbey, try to tolerate the misogyny for the other gifts, then read him again. Don’t forget Amanda Gorman and Thich Nhat Hanh.
When the throbbing of your head matches the pulse of your heart, take a break with Ocean Vuong. Read, my friends. Read about other lives and other perspectives. Read about ideas you disagree with. Read enough to contemplate the possibility of changing your mind. Read about sunsets that make you weep and sunrises that give you hope.
Then go outside and find both.
Ammi Midstokke is currently reading her HOA rules about owning livestock. She will spend her winter buried in books as she prepares for the great, misled hope of gardening season.
