Refuse to Be Vanquished
— Allegro con brio. To play at a fast tempo with spirit.
— Where I live, the sun sets at 4:30 pm at this time of year. By mid December it will be setting at 4:15 before the days begin to slowly lengthen. Couple this with Canadian Winter and it can be a long run. The Danish embrace hygge. The black dog has of course been making its appearance for me of late, so I’m going to try and be more mindfully cozy. More books and candles, right? Can’t hurt.
— I know when I can feel the black dog’s presence coming up behind me, I need to not listen to The Smiths, lol, but the lyrics from How Soon is Now are deeply embedded in my soul and rise up at these times. “I am human and I need to be loved / Just like everybody else does.” I suppose we’re all going about things the wrong way these days, trying to find if not love, but self worth, or just some soupçon of validation on social media. That was never gonna happen right?
— I’ve always liked the question, how can we make things better? I’ve wondered what the things are in my 3 meters of influence that I could make better, the smallest things even. But lately that seems futile. Perhaps I’ll feel different later. Perhaps just finding personal happiness isn’t the worst way to make things a little better.
— So I return to my favourite book, The Stream of Life by Clarice Lispector, translated by Lowe and Fitz in the U Minneapolis Press edition.
“I refuse to be vanquished: therefore I love.”
— From CL: “I refuse to be sad. Let’s be happy. If you’re not afraid of being happy, of just once trying this mad, profound happiness you’ll have the best of our truth.” And, “I’m happy this very instant because I refuse to be vanquished: therefore I love.” She ends:
“To live is this: the happiness of the it. And I’ll yield not as someone vanquished but in an allegro con brio.”
— Why might we now be sad? CL says it’s when we have a “malaise that comes from ecstasy’s not fitting into daily life.” It was ever thus.
— Above is a detail from Lorenzo Lotto’s Madonna and Child with St. Peter Martyr (aka Peter of Verona) at the Museo di Capodimonte, Napoli. I took the photo this past October, 2025. It is said to be an Ex Voto painting often depicting a dangerous incident where the offeror survived according to Wikepedia. Maybe this is most of us now. Many of us. You?
— Well, we will go on surviving. ( I can’t go on. I’ll go on).
— Where to find solace? In books, as usual. In Beauty. Rilke:
“Beauty will become paltry and insignificant when one looks for it only in what is pleasing; there it might be found occasionally but it resides and lies awake in each thing where it encloses itself, and it emerges only for the individual who believes that it is present everywhere and who will not move on until he has stubbornly coaxed it forth.”
— I’m reminding myself of my mantra, “go where the love is.”
— I’m reminding myself that in the words of Mavis Staples, “Hard times ain't gonna rule my mind no more.”
— I’m reminding myself that uttering a hallelujah isn’t so far off from a howl.
— There are frequencies and vibrations that humans adopting the poetic stance will feel and maybe that’s what we’re here for.
— Do not be soul-dampened; do not be vanquished; do not squander your gifts, your talents, your joy.
(notes on the photos: all besides St. Peter Martyr were taken by me at the Museo Archaelogico, Napoli, October 2025).
