Rankine on Tears
November 19, 2022
We all should cry more. Claudia Rankine on tears: “Apart from their use in expressing emotion, tears have two other functions: they lubricate the eyes so that the lids can move over them smoothly as you blink; they wash away foreign bodies” (43). Crying, in the right and good circumstance, is like (I imagine) a day at the spa: you are cleansed and welcome a softness. Rankine, interested in the collaboration of bodily units, their emotive possibilities, yarns the liver (her deepest fascination, her ballast) to the act of crying. The liver processes and does away with foreign, potentially nefarious entities in much the same way tears do (literally and figuratively). Tears come in loneliness. Crying, even in the presence of others, even with others, is more often than not an alienating activity. There is an obvious necessity for pills of the pain mitigating and mood stabilizing varieties. In the modern white coat paradigm, however, reliance on these products is undeniably outsized. Pills aid and abet the absence of feeling (again, sometimes necessary, advantageous). But taken in prolonged excess, we damage ourselves. The liver cannot function, protect. Tears never come, we never cleanse. And the loneliness compounds. (Is loneliness an ugly feeling or does it umbrella ugly feelings? A category. Perhaps a head on the Ugly Feelings Mt. Rushmore?) Tears are good.
I realize I may be conflating two issues that on occasion cross-pollinate but are cleanly distinct: 1) crying as taboo and 2) the potential dangers of pharmaceutical dependence. Detail: I do not believe I have cried in ~ one and a half years. 4 July 2021. First day in New York. The homesick, I’ve made a grave error here torrent of thought. East River fireworks. Red, white, and water. I cried and was potently alone and the crying was powerful and helpful, right and good. That I haven’t cried since is a kind of failure. I think. Clarifier: I am not on any medication.
I don’t know what this is. A cry (intentional) for the normalization of tears? An amateur echo of Rankine? Concerns about loneliness, the sedation of the masses? Nothing all that groundbreaking or salient. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely was provoking…
(18 November 2022)
P.S.
The most personal of my entries, I suppose. The anecdotes are few and far between in these pages. It’s a well-crafted aside in an otherwise uneven piece. We’re trying to do way too much here. What am I doing bringing up big pharma? Is crying a taboo anymore? Why choose both? And I know that. And I give up at the end. You can just about pinpoint where I realize I’m in too deep and pull the parachute cord. You’ll see it happen with some regularity going forward. “I don’t know what this is.”