it's getting kind of crowded in here

at the mercy

i’m struck that we talk about mercy as if it is a place. and maybe it is. where are you? i’m at the store. i’m at the park. i’m at the mercy. and you? where are you?

in this interview, brontë velez asks, “where can humor be a part of reconciling the distance between us? …the phenomena of laughter is a reconciliation between us knowing that we have an infinite self, but we're in a finite body and humor trying to collapse that distance, and laughter collapsing that distance.”¹

i think about this all the time, the kindness and relief of that interplay, of being returned to awareness of that simultaneity. you see, too much infinite is abysmal (in the literal sense, like abyss) and too much finite we feel trapped. when that distance is collapsed, living feels much more bearable.

Hélène Cixous, describing the resonance of artist Giacometti’s miniature figurines, echoed this idea: “And that is what we are. We are tiny-little-bodies-in-a-big-cube-of-light. Now it happens that the junction between this minuscule side and this infinite side produces comic effects almost all the time. Which thrills me. I think that laughter is set off when we are not afraid. When we see that the immense is not overwhelming; and also, perhaps, when the maternal in us can manifest itself: as the imaginary possibility of taking a mountain in one’s arms. That is to say, knowing that one can always give life, protection, care, even to the biggest. And that biggest also needs care.”²

we are at the mercy of life, so much is giant, impossible, way beyond our influence or control. and yet, laughter/humor is one of the main ways that i remember that life is at my mercy too. laughter uncrowds — can hold it all, can make more room: room for mountains, for strain, for what’s in us that can never be vanquished.

1. the interview is with Dr. Tiffany Lethabo King, about her book The Black Shoals which explores the confluence of Black studies and Indigenous studies. velez asks what the role of humor and laughter in relation and collaboration between Black and Native people.

2. Hélène Cixous, Rootprints Memory and Life Writing