The Plan for after You Get Punched in the Face (Part 9)
The one where we get sent to Siberia
When I was growing up, I thought it was pretty funny to say that doing this or that might get you “sent to Siberia.”
I remember organizing a National Organization for Women petition for the expansion of abortion rights as a high school student This is in, like, 1990 or so. Weirdly enough I was campaigning for FDA approval of (the now famous) mifepristone, known back then as “RU-486.” I remember strong-arming classmates into signing my little petition. I was a real Joan of Arc type so I said things like, don’t worry if you don’t know what it is, just sign it, trust me, it’s important for women’s rights!
And my close friend S. called me on my Joan of Arc BS and said, “No, I’m not going to sign it, I do not believe in abortion, and by the way I don’t think you should be doing political campaigning here at school during the school day.”
I just laughed it off and said something like “oh okay, S., don’t worry, if it’s a problem they can just send me to Siberia!”
Now, many years later, through the research of my own amazing mom, our family has discovered that we really do have a branch of our family that was sent to Siberia. I’ll save the whole story for another time but for today let me summarize it like this.
My mom’s side of the family is from Lithuania. In 1941, one part of our family tree was exiled to Siberia as so-called enemies of the Soviet state. This was part of the USSR’s campaign to isolate and exile tens of thousands of Lithuanian teachers, farmers, and politicians to penal servitude in remote areas of Siberia.
My exiled relatives included a family of four with an 18-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son. The father of that family was charged as an enemy of the state and sent to the gulag, where he died of pneumonia before he could be executed. In the 1950s, the official exile ended and the exiled relatives tried to reconnect with the parts of the family who had remained in Lithuania and moved to Chicago. But they learned that they could not safely correspond with their newly American relatives since the KGB actively persecuted people for connections to the West. The links between the different parts of the family were lost until several rounds of detective work by my family and heroic service by employees of the Russian postal service in the 2010s.
You’ll recall that this is our series about what to do after you get punched in the face. The most recent punches to my personal (metaphorical) face have included discussions about the best places to live/survive in the face of global political decline, rising persecution of particular groups, environmental disasters exacerbated by climate change, water & food insecurity, and more. Particularly heartbreaking was a friend’s comment that she wasn’t 100% sure that she should have had a baby since the world we are heading into feels so dark.
So today I’m talking about Siberia because (A) things that I used to laugh off as a high schooler actually affected real humans and (B) things that seemed unthinkable two weeks ago are rapidly moving into the thinkable. Who knows where some of us are going to “get sent?” It is terrifying.
And yet there is also (C): people who get sent to Siberia, literally or metaphorically, actually have an existence and it must remain possible, if difficult, to keep and/or find links back to us/them in the face of opposing forces. An insistence on (C) is a critical part of the plan that we must have after we get punched in the face.
Siberia: The Ultimate Road Trip
As my family history in Siberia started to come into focus, I (coincidentally or perhaps not) started reading more about Siberia.
I had already read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as part of a high school class, a fact which didn’t prevent me from making casual jokes about being sent to the gulag. But only recently did I make the connection that this book, based on Solzhenitsyn’s own experience in a labor camp, is actually set in Siberia.
My favorite writer, Ian Frazier, perhaps best known as a humorist, wrote incredible articles about visiting Siberia in the New Yorker in 2009. The later book is also excellent. He includes descriptions of his visits to now-empty labor camps and other ghostly reminders of Siberia’s recent past, which is somehow present and forgotten at the same time.
“Travels in Siberia—I” (July 27, 2009)
I have never forgotten the opening paragraph. “Officially, there is no such place as Siberia. No political or territorial entity has Siberia as its name. In atlases, the word ‘Siberia’ hovers across the northern third of Asia unconnected to any place in particular, as if designating a zone or a condition; it seems to show through like a watermark on the page. During Soviet times, revised maps erased the name entirely, in order to discourage Siberian regionalism. Despite this invisibility, one can assume that Siberia’s traditional status as a threat did not improve.”
“Travels in Siberia—II” (August 3, 2009)
Travels in Siberia, 2010.
Right around the time I was reading Ian Frazier’s book, I also came across the writer and songwriter Alina Simone.
Alina Simone was born in Kharkov in Ukraine (often described propagandistically at the time as “Soviet Ukraine,” considered part of the USSR) and grew up in Massachusetts from which her fascinating life story unspooled.
Allow me to quote from Terry on GoodReads: “In this book, the reader is taken through the journey of what it’s like to be the child of Ukrainian immigrants, a musician on the indie scene, and how many things can really go wrong when you visit places like Siberia.” I really want you to read this book so I won’t say more right now, but let me tease it by saying that the action in Siberia includes a battle with male strippers.
I share these works about Siberia because I want us to de-abstractify what it means to be “sent to Siberia.” I want us to honor the experiences of people whose exile should never have been boiled down to an offhand joke. Who knows which lessons of resilience we might learn by looking closely at the lives of those exiled and the development of those places into the present day.
A Suitcase Full of Candy
I have been unable to stop thinking about Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich’s interview in the Paris Review since I first read it in 2017.
Alexievich discusses her conversations with women about war in Soviet times for her book, The Unwomanly Face of War. Her work was first censored because of its portrayal of the brutality and misery of war, but later allowed under glasnost and perestroika.
She says of her interview method, “I just went around asking what I wanted to know. I came to them as a young woman to older women. We talked about life and about death.”
She and her interviewer then share four remarkable details:
(ALEXIEVICH) “A woman went to war, and I asked, What did you take with you to the war? Oh, I got my last paycheck and bought a suitcase full of candy. Do you remember?”
(ALEXIEVICH) “[A]nother one packed her best shoes, high heels, and then the foreman took them away. They weren’t given women’s clothes, not even panties. Everything was made for men, everything was too big.”
(INTERVIEWER) “I read a detail about World War II, about an accidental shipment of lipstick delivered to people who were just released from camps and hospitals. Even though they desperately needed medical supplies, it was a stroke of genius. The lipstick gave them their humanity back.”
(ALEXIEVICH) “Yes, like the Soviet women.. who went into German houses because everything was abandoned and put on a pretty dress, even if they could only wear it for a night. They slept in them. And in the morning, they put back on their pants, coats. The war was long.”
These details have stuck with me ever since. And they bring us to today’s
Ways to Avoid Despair (9/10)
9. Pack a suitcase full of candy
Everyone is different, so everyone is going to have their own way to hang on to their humanity. Like the women in the war in Soviet times, you may want to prioritize candy, your best shoes (high heels or not), lipstick, or a pretty dress (even if only worn for one night). But I could also imagine other options:
Read articles & books about the past and the ways the past informs the present, like the ones I just shared about Siberia.
Look into your own family history to see if you can uncover stories of resilience and build connections that will help you ride the rapids of the current moment.
Start keeping a journal. If you are already keeping a journal, try writing in it every day rather than sporadically.
Or start any other type of writing practice. I highly recommend Sarah Kendzior’s original 2016 article, “We’re heading into dark times. This is how to be your own light in the Age of Trump” for both strategic and tactical advice.
Listen to music and if at all possible sing and/or dance along. Don’t forget the Find Your Fight Song playlist from the last edition of this newsletter. I also recommend the NSFW Work Songs playlist for those of you who thrive with a profanity-laden soundtrack when you need to concentrate.
Coming soon: My post about how to write your own Fight Song if you haven’t yet found one that fits you.
Go outside! And take a lot of steps. Research now suggests that 6,000 steps if you are over 60 and 8,000 steps otherwise offer all the benefits of the storied 10,000 steps in less time.
Think back to activities you enjoyed as a kid. Adults can climb trees, shoot hoops at the playground, make those funny woven pot holders, construct a reading nook out of blankets and hide in it all day, do Lite Brite. What floated your boat back then, and can it still float your boat in these rougher waters?
Treat yourself to your favorite snack or drink. I don’t care if Olipop is $2.49 a can, I am buying that Cherry Cola whenever I want.
Call or text a friend, especially a beloved person you haven’t caught up with since Covid.
Being in an uncluttered environment can be very important for mental focus, but on the other hand, I will still love you if you let the housework slide to make room for more candy and lipstick. Draw the line at vermin and threats to food safety but otherwise see how messy a house you can tolerate for a while.
Spend more time with kids and/or pets, creatures who are naturally better at staying in the moment than you are.
Indulge in “joy stacking”: do two or more things you love at the same time. When you sit down for your morning coffee, don’t mindlessly scroll the news, pick a second activity that you love as much as you love drinking coffee. My day is made if I can sit down for a cup of coffee with a paper book to read. I am gorging myself on Agatha Christie. And maybe I do this outside on my front stoop, unless it’s raining cats and dogs like it is right now? Bonus points if you do 2 minutes of meditation as part of your joy stack.
Did Norman Cousins cure himself from a fatal disease by watching Candid Camera? Maybe, maybe not. But you can definitely seek joy in comedy, on paper or on film. I always laugh when I read Samantha Irby. And I draw comfort from Jack Black’s enthusiasm in Nacho Libre and School of Rock, for example.
Let me see you go rollerskating.
What else? Message me or leave a comment with your answer to this question: “What are you packing in your suitcase to help you hang onto humanity and hold tight to joy in the weeks ahead?”
Today’s Way to Cultivate Joy
Whatever your personal candy or lipstick may be, spend some time with it today.
Take a walk at lunchtime and make eye contact with everyone you pass.
Do something nice for someone else, maybe even just let someone go in front of you in traffic. Make eye contact with the other driver and nod with that little steering wheel wave if at all possible.
Put on wild earrings for all your Zoom meetings:
Greet someone you love with a generous fist bump or hug and real eye contact.
Find a pet or kid to hang out with. Put your phone away while you play with them.
Go to the store and buy the snack you are craving:
Go to the movies and “joy stack” by eating your favorite food during the movie and bringing a throw blanket to snuggle in.
What else? Let me know.
Let’s assemble as many resources for joy as possible before we get sent to Siberia.
Don’t go it alone,
Genevieve