When did she, I wondered, become aware of the link between the cover of a book and its contents, I asked Gretchen Van Der Byl earlier this week.
I was interviewing her about book cover design. She is an artist and a lecturer, but I know her mostly through her book covers, which I admire.
She put up a finger, jumped out of her chair in the kitchen and disappeared into the house. She came back with a large children’s book her mother had won in primary school.
Beauty and The Beast, it was. The fairytale in this version was written by Marie Leprince de Beaumont (what a name!) and the illustrations were done by Hilary Knight.
We paged gingerly through the falling-to-pieces-from-love picture book and stopped longest at this illustration:
Have you ever seen the beast pictured like this before?
In all the versions I know (from even before the Disney version), the Beast is ugly. He is hairy and warthog-y, horned and furred and bent, but something about him always made me pity him. I never feared him. I tended to think Beauty was a snob and that she was a bit silly.
Here though, the Beast is cloven-hoofed, red-eyed and fanged. The Beast is unequivocally evil. One has no desire to stop and ponder ‘Who hurt you, Mr Beast?’ You are, instead, enthralled and disabled, like the kneeled mortal from whose clutch the delusion of innocence and trust falls in the squawking, squalling presence of black fowl.
‘Evil’ has always been too simple an explanation for me of vicious, damaging behaviour, but increasingly I think perhaps evil does exist. Perhaps it doesn’t need analysis and explanation. Maybe it just is.
These past two or three weeks – watching an out-of-control wrecking ball bashing down structures of governance on home ground, while grasping outwards to lay verbal claim to other territories, and flattening so much of the good that money actually can do in the world – I have felt convinced that evil has been unleashed.
Yes, it’s always there, and yes, maybe it is better for it to be out in the open for us to see. Frankly though, I’d rather have it in its constitutional box tied up in laws made to protect all humans and the institutions set up to serve and defend the interests of all the planet’s inhabitants, sentient or otherwise.
When I say that I meditate, I’m lying. I put my earplugs in when I lie down to sleep at night and listen to one of the soothing speakers to be found on Dharma Seed, who sometimes also offer meditation as part of their talks.
This is part of my half-in, half-out Buddhist ‘practise’, if it can be called that, which is not practise so much as vigorous nodding. The teachings have always soothed me: life is hard (dukkha), suck it up (acceptance of what is).
When I was young and hopeful and afraid of all the things any sane, open-eyed person should be afraid of, I still clung to the idea that life was meant to be easy and nice.
When I realised it wasn’t, not for anyone – and is especially non-easy and horrible for certain classes of people no matter how they try to fit into the tiny spaces left by the people who have things easy and nice – I felt a burden of worry sough away.
Having no control over the amount of ease I’d like to have streaming towards people who need it (so many categories of people who need it!), I have control only over my own heart rate. When it is rapid, and my voice squeaks out high somewhere between my throat and nose, I cannot properly execute the little things I can do to not be state-captured by the evil.
One of the tricks I use for that is this half-arsed meditation situation before I fall asleep every night. This week, I chose a metta meditation by the teacher whose voice I’m in love with (his name is Matthew Hepburn, you’ll find him on Dharma Seed).
Metta is ‘loving-kindness’ meditation. It’s like a formal, fancy way of sending good vibes*. It’s the ‘hopes and prayers’ thing, but exercised in a stringent, formal way, not uttered as a faux expression of care or as a hopeless platitude.
There are levels of metta meditation. You start by wishing good things for yourself, then for people you love, then to neutral beings, then (urgh) to those with whom you are in conflict, and finally towards all sentient beings.
I didn’t do much self-kindness or other-kindness, because I was hugely distracted by this thought: are there people right now in the world who are really and truly wishing their enemies – The Enemy, the broligarchs and their leader – peace and freedom from suffering? There must be.
Next time I do metta, I’m going to send my good vibes their way, because they are doing work I am utterly incapable of at the moment.
*I am banking on Buddhists reading my terrible simplifications not being offended because most Buddhists I know have humour and lightness and their first reaction to things is seldom offence.
What I am capable of…
…is looking up at the sky.
Watch this
I have something beautiful for you: Laurie Anderson reading the poet CP Cavafy in a church, with a choir and an orchestra. You won’t be sorry. It’s twenty minutes long, so don’t treat it like a Tik-Tok tidbit.
Little things I have to say
We’re entering the third year of Love Letter. Your readership, friendship and the reciprocity of this endeavour remains an absolute marvel to me. I hope that in the year ahead, I can find more ways to thank you and to make you glad to be here with me. I’ll outline my plans in next week’s anniversary letter on Friday, 14 February.
January Reset 2025 was the best one yet. Thank you, founding subscribers, for all our thoughtful and humorous interactions and for your enthusiasm and ‘thereness’. I was so glad to be part of all your new insights and moments of wonder and laughing at yourselves. It’s not at all hard to send metta vibes your way!
To the people who wanted to know why I wash teaspoons on Friday mornings, watch this space. I’m planning to write about it.
The interview with Gretchen Van Der Byl is part of a series of interviews I’ll be doing for Love Letter this year.
Lots of love,
as always,
K.
We watched Laurie Anderson a couple of nights ago reading Cavafy. It was wonderful. X
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