THE THREAD | The tailor sweeps the glistening salt
Something odd. Something off. Something particular, peculiar about the way the tailor sweeps the steps in front of his shop this morning. A sunny morning, a Monday morning, a late winter or early spring morning, depending on how much you might be tilting toward some semblance hope in this particular moment. This particular moment of invading forces on the other side of the world. This particular moment of more death from war, more death from disease, death from disaster, from despair. Much death. Such mourning of it all. Such a morning for something odd about the way he sweeps.
You are driving past. You are driving fast to get your daughter to school on time, last minute. A minute passes, you turn the corner, turn your head, and there he is. Sweeping. Sunshine swinging its way around the corner of the building, causing light to catch and make glisten the dusty remains of the rock salt on the pavement, rock salt remaining after last week’s heavy snow. Make glisten, to catch light and cause to sparkle. He sweeps the dust. He sweeps the scraps of leaves. He sweeps the glistening salt.
He wears — truly — a well-tailored suit. He looks fine. It suits him right, right here in the sunshine. Above his head, a shop sign: TAILOR – ALTERATIONS FOR MEN AND WOMEN. Most of his time spent taking measurements: Inseam, torso, bust. Most of his time spent threading a needle, stitching, aligning. Most of his time spent altering. But on this sunny morning, this particular moment, he is measuring strokes of a broom, he is threading a clean line through the dust, he is altering a small corner where the sidewalk meets the steps and door of his shop. He sweeps in a particular way, a peculiar way that strikes, catches, captivates you.
Strike. Captivate. Language of war and disease. Airstrikes over Kyiv. Someone’s mother catches a virus. Dissidents held captive. And yet, still here: the broom against the pavement, the tailor in his suit, the sunshine. As if for this moment, this is what he can do. As if in this moment he is one man, head heavy of thoughts and hung down, gazing at the ground, hands clutched around a broom handle, doing what he can to clean one small corner of his world, this particular place where it seems heaven and hell keep company on earth. This place, this peculiar latitude and longitude, this particular seam.
Something odd. Something off. Then it occurs to you: He could be anywhere. A shopkeeper, a tailor, a human being wielding a broom. He could be anywhere else in the world, and he most certainly is, in a sense: Shopkeepers in a thousand places upon this planet’s thin layer of pavement, sweeping their own corners. New York, New Madrid, New Delhi. Kabul, Kyoto, Kyiv. Borders between them becoming blurred, boundaries blasted apart, dust everywhere. Dust layering up. Dust returning to dust.
Yet here he is. This specific tailor, wearing clothes fit only to him, his body, his own bold self that is no one else. No one else, not anyone else’s exact shape and size, not anyone else’s precise bends and bows, creases and cracks. Not anyone else’s particular form that is somehow impossibly inconveniently frustratingly wonderfully unlike anyone but him. And perhaps that is what catches your eye: He seems to know this, seems to be possessed by the knowledge. He seems to wear it upon his sleeve. He is the only one set down in this place, at this particular moment, who can clean up this particular mess. He sweeps. Defiantly, he sweeps. Against the odds, he measures the seam of this moment. He threads the needle of your attention. He alters.
What I’m currently reading: Wayne Koestenbaum’s Figure It Out, Wislawa Szymborska’s View with a Grain of Sand, Tim Urban’s NYT essay about how we conceive of time, William Bridges’ Transitions
What I’m currently listening to: Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief, Maren Morris’ GIRL, Dua Lipa’s Club Future Nostalgia
I was really struck by this morning’s Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA, so I thought I would share it. The image is of a solar prominence erupting from our sun, and it’s nearly the size of the sun’s own diameter.
Today is Ash Wednesday, which begins the season of Lent and reminds us of our own mortality, our own brokenness, our own eventual fates and finalities. It reminds us that we are dust. And yet, I cannot help but see this image today and be reminded of the incredible promise and hope contained in Rilke’s line from “Buddha in Glory”:
And yet, already in you has begun
something which longer than the suns shall burnPeace,
Andrew