As the psychiatrist Dr. Melfi says to Tony in the pilot episode of “The Sopranos,” “Hope comes in many forms.” I was reminded of this the other day when I found my finger glued to the hand of another woman.
I had set out that morning to celebrate all the indications that the political plates of the Earth had shifted — millions of people at the No Kings marches, all the court cases that the White House keeps losing and Trump’s Epstein nightmare.
I wanted to immerse myself in the headway. Something’s happening here. Those in charge want us to give up until the next election, but of course we are not going to, because we have children and nieces and nephews. The dark forces must be childless. They are not concerned about squeezing the life out of the Constitution, the rising oceans and the re-emergence of diseases long eradicated, because they are so bottomlessly stupid and greedy. And they are unaware of what happens when the autocracy overreaches. Every time. Think pitchforks. Tick-tock. This gives me a little hope.
Hope comes in many forms: When I hear the songs of the civil rights movement at our marches, a soft gong sounds. The poet Jack Gilbert wrote, “We must admit that there will be music despite everything.” Ever since I heard the author Caroline Myss say that when darkness and evil go nuclear, love and hope must go nuclear too, I started getting occasional manicures with glittery polish, to remind me.
There was a nail salon in the first strip mall I passed. I went in. It seemed crowded, and I turned to leave. But the nearest manicurist said, “Pick a color.” I said, “No, no, you seem busy.” “Pick a color!” she demanded, so I leapt to the polish station and picked a sparkly pale pink. An old woman came lumbering out from the back room toward me with a bowl of water. I dutifully fished out $25 from my purse, five of it tip, and put the fingers of one hand into the bowl of warm water.
When one hand free, I scrolled through the links on my phone — the usual stuff, the government taking away health insurance from the poor and protecting American jobs by causing mass starvation around the world.
The salon had grown incredibly hot. What hasn’t? I smiled remembering Sen. Jim Inhofe tossing that snowball around on the Senate floor as proof that there is no global warming. God, the absurdity.
Absurdity! A light bulb went on over my head in that salon. That’s what we’re missing. I realized that this was one solution to the cruel mess and the endless, depressing analysis. Yes, we will take to the streets at every opportunity, care for the poor and pick up litter. But we also, desperately, need to begin laughing again. And who does absurdity better than Monty Python?
Monty Python says what we already know, that yes, it is all hopelessly stupid, cruel and unfair, but their making it silly delivers joy and buoyancy. We can grip our heads, fight back and laugh at it and them. And nothing agitates narcissists more than people laughing. Think of how confused our most prominent bullies get when people laugh at them.
Bullies rule by fear. Humor is fearless, a bubbly form of hope. Remember the “Upper Class Twit of the Year” award? And “Self-Defense Against Fruit”? Aren’t people in flag-draped lines voting to lose their health insurance and their basic rights reminiscent of folks queuing for crucifixion in “Life of Brian”? The cheery, “Line up on the left, one cross each”?
Laughter and those jaunty songs break up the armor that we think protects us. When we’re softened and jiggled, we’re open to a shift from tight and clenched to the recognition of shared humanity, and underneath that a glimmer of shared possibility. When we don’t see anything on the menu that we like, we can at least remember — as Monty Python taught us — that the Spam, egg, sausage and Spam sandwich has not got nearly as much Spam in it.
I smiled, hearing the Spam song, right before my manicurist cut the skin at the base of the nail. I yelped. We both looked down at a drop of blood that was growing. She wrapped my finger in a Kleenex and pulled out a tiny tube I assumed was a styptic, and rubbed it over the cut. Then she pinched my finger between hers to stem the bleeding. After a minute, she tried to let go, which was the point at which I realized that this tube was super glue and that my finger was glued to her hand.
She couldn’t pry her fingers off. She started swabbing us with nail polish remover — not ideal for an open cut. I mewed like a kitten. It took a painful, burning minute to get us unglued. The bleeding was slowing down, and she stroked my hand while looking into my eyes kindly. Kindness is the antivenom.
So we proceeded. I assumed that, the way things are going, I would die one day later this week of a fungal infection that went septic, but at least I would have beautiful nails, and Monty Python.
I left her a second $5 tip. Hope comes in many forms: If you want to have hopeful feelings, do hopeful things. She touched her heart when she saw.
Maybe I don’t always remember my doctor’s name, or how to spell the fuchsias that my husband grows, but I remember every word of “The Lumberjack Song,” and of “Every Sperm Is Sacred.”
I hope we don’t go crazy with the craziness around us. I can’t remember a more terrifying time. I hope that we can keep centered, keep sharing what we have, help each other keep our spirits up, sing, register voters and rally, and maybe these are all we’ve got these days, but deep in my heart, I do believe that led with infinite dignity by the Ministry of Silly Walks, they will see us through.
Anne Lamott, an author of fiction and nonfiction, lives in Marin County, Calif. Her latest book is “Somehow: Thoughts on Love.” X: @annelamott
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