How to keep calm in chaos?

The best you can.

Calm, like joy or love, obeys no command. It comes when it comes, often startling us. I remember once – I must have been about five – raging at one of my older sisters, possessed of implacable fury. My thoughts were murderous, my threats dire. “I’m going to, to …!” And I fainted – I remember the exact spot in the house which no longer stands – swept into sweet narcosis, as Aeneas was whisked from deadly battle by his mother Venus:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAt Venus obscuro gradientes aere saepsit,et multo nebulae circum dea fudit amictu,cernere ne quis eos neu quis contingere posset,molirive moram aut veniendi poscere causas.

But Venus enclosed them as they moved in darkened air,and the goddess poured around them a thick mantle of mist,lest anyone might see them or touch them,or cause delay or demand the reason for their coming.

(I offer the Latin not to fake erudition, but for its narcotic effect. Read it aloud. Whether or not you know Latin, don’t Virgil’s sounds cradle you?) Waking from my moment of unconsciousness my whole boyish body smiled. Seventy years later, I can still recall.

Our historical moment is dire. Ghoulish bombs pelt foreigners like hail. Our nation of high ideals has embraced assassination as a tactic – when we weren’t at war – or asked to approve one! Who’s to say those weapons will not be turned on dissenters within our borders? How many – Americans – have already died – without indictment, much less trial – at our Leader’s whim? My dreams tense for a knock at the door, for I am of the tribe our Leader would mute. Ashamed, fearful, I writhe – but what good is that?

To each their balm. Mine is words – others’ and my own. A text extracts me from the fray, as Venus did Aeneas. Humanity has been here before. “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer,” Camus is said to have said, another text to burrow beneath like a blanket.

Words don’t always salve. But when they do, it’s because what they’re saying and how abstracts the mind to a starry altitude from which we look down. Imagination protects us from perception. In the glow of what might be, we’re less spooked by what is. Beauty – or any dream of heaven – functions similarly. Radiance rescues us.

I write less to record reality than to defang it. Emily Dickinson did too. Listen how her seemingly simple singing sinks, sinks her from disastrous death to serene oblivion. Oh, to “finish knowing”! Ahhh…

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedI felt a Funeral, in my Brain,And Mourners to and froKept treading – treading – till it seemedThat Sense was breaking through –

And when they all were seated,A Service, like a Drum –Kept beating – beating – till I thoughtMy Mind was going numb –

And then I heard them lift a BoxAnd creak across my SoulWith those same Boots of Lead, again,Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,And Being, but an Ear,And I, and Silence, some strange Race,Wrecked, solitary, here –

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,And I dropped down, and down –And hit a World, at every plunge,And Finished knowing – then –

This national moment is the worst I’ve known. I rage, gasp, grieve, rigid with hatred of those trampling our American ideal. But we must go on. The Nameless One wants to drub us into the imbecility of despair. Find your calm where you can.

And return to the front.