Reasons to be cheerful
A few happy thoughts for Easter weekend
Happy Friday! 🥳
It’s the school holidays this week, and I’ve been out of my usual, solitary routine. Instead, I’ve been doing fun stuff with my kid, like driving down to Dublin for a day of window shopping, eating sushi and cake (and hopefully breeding our little sausage dog Max — keep your fingers crossed he manages to do the deed with the female sausage dog belonging to the lovely Dublin family we left him with); going to the water park; and sleeping a little bit later than my normal very early mornings.
I really needed this break from the serious, the disturbing, the corrupt: the usual fodder for my newsletter. This week, my heart just hasn’t been in it. Instead, I want to think about the things that make me laugh and reaffirm my belief in humanity.
Max (my little dog) is in love
Last year on a visit to Dublin with my dogs, I met a lady with a female Dachshund who was looking for a stud with whom to breed her dog. We exchanged numbers and this weekend, the text arrived: her dog was in heat! The woman and I proceeded to have a hilarious series of messages back and forth about our dogs’ prospective sexual compatibility. And then my son and I drove down to Dublin, about two and half hours away, to make the fateful meeting.
This is not Max’s first time at the rodeo, but he’s spent more time with this little lady than he has with the other bitches he impregnated in the past. And from the reports I’m getting, they are absolutely besotted with each other. He’s protecting her, cleaning her, and is always by her side. The vet said she isn’t quite ready, so his stay has been prolonged, which has given him all the more time to get to know her. Hopefully in a few months time I’ll be reporting on the birth of their puppies. Until then, I hope he doesn’t miss her too much when he comes home from his little tryst. He’s a tenderhearted little beast.
Instagram Reels
I know social media gets a bad rap. And it’s hugely deserved. But there is one little corner of the Internet where humour, inventiveness and positivity reign supreme. It’s Instagram reels, where totally average people (ie not the plastic, smug, ‘influencer’ types who make me want to join the Taliban) do seconds-long dance or comedy routines that make me belly laugh. There, I watch monkeys eating strawberries, suburban white normies rapping into Dashcams, black dads playing with their babies, teens doing amazing tricks on skateboards, ducks paddling and quacking their way through someone’s kitchen — just moment after moment of human ingenuity, affection and connection. So the opposite of TikTok and Twitter — which are cesspits of narcissism and depravity.
Poet Joseph Massey being interviewed by Megyn Kelly
I only know Joseph Massey on social media, but from his Facebook posts and Tweets and seems the quiet, introspective and modest sort. A poet of the everyday. So when I saw that he was going to be on the Megyn Kelly I was happy to see someone with no flash, none of that prestige polish that establishment culture producers have, be recognised by a media celebrity like Kelly.
The interview has added charm from the fact that Kelly, post laser eye surgery, is wearing sunglasses throughout, evoking a ’70’s starlet, to Massey’s Average Joe look.
A lot of the interview revolves around heavy stuff, including the 2018 cancellation which destroyed his successful career as poet — a career he had bootstrapped from a difficult childhood and poor education. The anonymous allegations that brought about his cancellation are the usual, awful, stuff: professional and personal jealousy attempting to disguise itself in victimhood, so not very cheerful at all. But in the interview with Kelly, he said one passing comment that made my heart sing.
Describing his dysfunctional, working-class family, where the adults were “just trying to survive,” discovering the language of poetry spoke directly to him and elevated him out of his surroundings.
“Language was usually pretty coarse, and reading these poets felt like real rebellion to me. it felt like reclaiming this language that, as far as I had known it, up to that point was only being used to curse at the Eagles game, or yell at the dog or something.”
This, to me, is more evidence that beauty in art speaks to all people, it reaches out through time and space and class. It transcends pain, hate and disassociation. It connects, it heals, it brings together. You certainly don’t need a university degree to know when something profound speaks to you from another century. It is universally recognisable.
Old Enough! On Netflix
New to Netflix here in the west, this show is a long-running series in Japan. Little children, as young as two, put on their big-kid pants and run errands on their own. A two year old walks several kilometres to the supermarket, clutching a yellow flag (for traffic safety) and a tiny backpack. A four year old is sent home to make fresh squeezed tangerine juice for his parents and grandparents who are picking citrus in the family orchard. It’s a small yet immense triumph every time.
I’ve written quite a bit on the unmitigated disaster that is US style parenting. I do not exaggerate when I say I think it’s a societal calamity how the liberal-left has raised these last two, maybe three, generations of humans in the English-speaking world.
Maybe this show will help the foolishly spoiled West. Maybe it will teach us that tiny children can be competent and responsible for small, achievable things, like helping out their families. As opposed to making children responsible for, say, nineteenth century slavery.
Every human is a miracle. Old Enough! Is a delightful little showcase of that simple, but profound, fact.
I will taking next week off from my Substack to work on some future projects. Expect me back in your inbox in two weeks time.
Happy Easter everyone!
Blessings on this Easter weekend. "God so loved the world" (John 3:16) led to Good Friday, but the tomb could not contain him and he rose on Easter and he will come again.
Your father's was vastly superior. Each told a coherent story, conveyed deep feeling, & were expressed in subtle rhyme schemes in which verse didn't draw attention to itself.