grace

discernment without judgment

Howard Hodgekin, After Whistler, 2010

The first line of Wayne Koestenbaum’s essay on James Schuyler: “Why write art criticism at all? For love. Also, sometimes, for money.” A couple paragraphs later: “In a review of Fairfield Porter’s paintings, Schuyler states what might be taken as his own credo: “Look now. It will never be more fascinating.” I’m looking now, and I’ve never been more fascinated, though I’ve never been more scared. In times of uncertainty, I turn towards language seeking pleasure and relief; I text you about nothing, because the something is already happening; I rearrange my dog’s limbs as he relaxes on his bed, marveling at the whites of his eyes, the shearling texture of his fur, the way he watches me at my lowest moments, understanding without comprehending.

Discernment without judgment is the phrase on my mind. Another way of saying this might be grace. The idea of love as unretractable and more than that—unchangeable—is not unfamiliar to me, but lately I’ve been exploring what it means to live it rather than merely theorize. That exploration comes with a certain terror, since if I can’t judge you I can never escape you. J.D. McClatchy: Love is the quality of attention we pay to things.

I’ve spent my whole life trying to perform for others, and now I’m throwing all of that out not because I’ve fixed myself but because you love me. I’m not anxious anymore about any of the things I used to worry about. I don’t care what people think of my writing or my face or whether I was fun at the party or too terse in my email or whether I’m going to achieve everything I set out to do or if the world is getting better or worse. Frankly, I don’t care if I get struck by a Waymo tomorrow. Another line from the essay on Schuyler: “Negations that express presence. This effect he borrowed, perhaps, from Marianne Moore, with her predilection for words like “unegoistic,” “gossipless,” “unexaggeratedly denominated,” and “unpanoplied.” Such negatives provide the pleasure of an atmosphere half-there, half-gone.” In describing all of the things I no longer care about, am I also explaining what still grips me?

Iris Murdoch: “Art and morals are, with certain provisos which I shall mention in a moment, one. Their essence is the same. The essence of both of them is love. Love is the perception of individuals [“free persons”, in Kantian terms]. Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real [and free]. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality. What stuns us into a realisation of our supersensible destiny is not, as Kant imagined, the formlessness of nature, but rather its unutterable particularity; and most particular and individual of all natural things is the mind of man.”

You are alien to me; my friends and family are alien to me; we are not the same. Sometimes we have the same perceptions and even the same conclusions, but our thoughts, reactions, emotions will never completely overlap. There is no such thing as a perfect union. And yet love makes it possible to discern without judgment. I can see what is wrong without loving you any less. Your freedom, a perpetual source of friction, is also a perpetual source of relief. You are different from me: that is what makes it possible for me to love you.

From Possession: “It can be understood why Ash wrote to this man at this time that he “saw the inner meaning of Plato’s teaching that the world was one huge animal.” That’s how I felt when I took psilocybin: that every living thing in the world is part of one being, and though it’s impossible, we must strive treat everyone as a part of ourselves. It sounds like some kind of absurd koan, and then also like the truest thing in the world: our separateness is part of our connectedness. The insurmountable distance between us and others is both wall and bridge. It’s because you are separate from me that I can examine you, turn you over, memorize your moles, witness what the passage of time does to you, make a joke, fight with you, despair when you’re not available, relax when I’m in your arms.

J used to always say that though he was no longer Christian he always resonated with the idea that we are born sinners and it is only through God’s love that we can be redeemed. Which was so different from how I saw it, which is that we are born perfect and strive through our lives to get back to that initial purity. I’m no longer so sure that the distinction matters to me. Commitment, devotion, forgiveness, mercy are the fruits of attention—of looking, and not looking away. That’s grace.