Please forgive this listacle – at least it’s not another top 10 of this or that. As I try to sum up 2019 in a way that doesn’t sound as bleak as the way it ended, I offer these thoughts of some of the year’s more enlightened moments.
- Are Alain de Botton and Slavoj Zizek really philosophers of our time? I’ve learned more this past year from Kenan Malik of the Guardian/Observer and Hasan Minhaj on Netflix.
- I’ve learned a great expression in French – la poudre de perlimpinpin. Great, largely because of the way it sounds, ending /pɛʁ lɛ̃ pɛ̃ pɛ̃/. I’m told it’s onomatopoeic and meant to sound like abracadabra. It’s the French equivalent of snake oil. I was talking to a French person about Trump and Johnson at the time.
- Unconscious bias – it’s become a buzzword. Like many, I’ve had awareness training through my employer. It’s made me more aware of myself, especially the myopia of my younger self, and gives me a handy phrase that sounds less caustic when describing the ways of others. Yet, I’m still left flummoxed at the receiving end. That is, I can’t stop it from happening to me. But this year I’ve learned to expect it and acknowledge that I can’t change it.
- With the help of YouTube, I’ve learned how to remove a car battery without getting electrocuted, how to take in trouser legs and the difference between Italian R’s and Spanish RRRR’s.
- Before this year, when it came to politics, I would have said that some people are ignorant and latch on to any populist that comes along. As 2019 appears in the corner of my screen for the last time, I now believe that those people aren’t ignorant, but they are politically lazy, wanting someone else to think for them and not bothering to fact check. Unfortunately, for the rest of us, these people have just as much a right to vote as we do.
- Selling a collection of short stories is more difficult than I had imagined. It might even be harder than the research, soul-searching and writing and rewriting that went into the stories in the first place. I’m reminded of Salman Rushdie’s words of advice to Milan Kundera when he said that 50% of writing is strategy. Saving Spike and other stories is available at Amazon.
During 2019, there were loads of other things that I learned – surely, I must have –given my daily consumption of newspapers, magazine articles and books and other things I’ve probably gleaned from television, radio and conversation. And then there’s writing – I’ve learned, as I always have from writing. Apart from my obsessive journaling, I couldn’t write without an audience in mind. Thank you, readers, for being that audience during 2019. Best wishes to you for 2020.
Paola Trimarco 