14. My Private Property | Mary Ruefle
This book came via a recommendation from one of my favourite writers and friends Malinda 💛💛
I was cheeky enough to ask her to write a newsletter post for us and here she is, more beautifully penned than I could ever have imagined.
Thank you Malinda!
Armed with a new painting set, my niece (7) and nephew (10) have recently become enamored with the concept of portraits.
Ever the practical one, my nephew painted a portrait of me wearing all grey. A bit drab, sure, but he nailed my propensity for the color, soothing like the melancholy of an overcast day.
My niece went another route. She painted me with rainbow-colored hair, which I do not have, a rainbow-striped dress, which I do not own, and she finished it with 6 innocuous words that sent me on a mental tailspin: I am Malinda, I am happy.
Alarmed, I started racking my brain.
Who does she think I am?
Does she think I’m happy?
(Am I happy?)
What does this mean?
By now, dear reader, you’re probably wondering who this Malinda person is and, more importantly, what this has to do with anything.
I’m Malinda — the person having an identity crisis and also Nicole’s friend. She asked me to write about the book she has chosen for this week’s newsletter, one of my favorites: My Property by Mary Ruefle.
To answer the second question as to why any of this matters, it’s this:
If you have ever struggled to distinguish the feeling of sadness from happiness — or any cocktail of feelings, for that matter — then you’ll find the best sort of company in Mary Ruefle.
Sprinkled throughout My Property is a collection of passages on the sadness of certain colors. “Purple Sadness” is one, “Grey Sadness” is another, and there’s blue and black and yellow too. Read them all. Nay, my new friends, devour them.
Then read them again. But this time, replace every mention of the word sadness with happiness, and the magic of these poems will unfold. The writer knows these emotions are inextricably connected; that having one without the other would be no different than having a sun without a moon.
The sadness poems aren’t the only ones that are brilliant (see: “Little Golf Pencils,” “Observations On The Ground,” “Among The Clouds”), but these in particular feel like a timely meditation on the past two years. A meditation on the complexity of human existence, of all the stories and confusion and lives and emotions that gather together on the windowsill like snow.
My suggestion: pour yourself a cup of tea and simply allow these poems to tangle rather than untangle.
And if you ever find yourself uncertain of who you are or what you feel, I invite you to return to this wonderful book. It may, dear reader, save you from spending three days pondering over the innocent artwork of children — because you’ll already know the cheerfulness of rainbow-colored hair goes perfectly well with the melancholy of mismatched greys.
Please buy this beautiful book here and follow Malinda over here as she shares her wonderful adventures of her new life in Ireland.