Dear Elul Writers,

I run about five years behind in my fiction reading. I read The Corrections in 2006. I read Americanah in 2018. I like to wait for all the hubbub to die down before picking up an acclaimed novel. So, it wasn’t until this year that I cracked open Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. The book skirts the line between poetry and prose, exploring family dynamics, the immigrant experience, sexuality and sensuality, and the power of writing. Vuong writes:

You asked me what it’s like to be a writer and I’m giving you a mess, I know. But, it’s a mess, Ma — I’m not making this up. I made it down. That’s what writing is, after all the nonsense, getting down so low the world offers a merciful new angle, a larger vision made of small things, the lint suddenly a huge sheet of fog exactly the size of your eyeball. 

That’s what writing is, after all the nonsense, getting down so low the world offers a merciful new angle. In Pirkei Avot, R’ Levitas instructs us that a person should be meod, meod shefal ruach, of a very lowly spirit. It is a teaching that, in the past, I have struggled to assimilate into my life, but somehow in conversation with this passage, I am appreciating it anew. What if we lower ourselves, not as a punishment or an act of self-effacement, but instead, in order to gain a new perspective on the world.

DAY 27 PROMPT

Today I encourage you to get low. Maybe that will mean writing something down that is a mess, but offers you a larger vision made up of small things. Maybe you want to physically lower yourself, to see what it feels like to prostrate yourself before our set time for prostrations. Is there a merciful new angle that emerges and helps you appreciate the world? What might it look like to follow the teaching of R’ Levitas and to embrace a posture of lowliness and humility? How might such a bearing shift your perspective on the world?

Take care,

Jordan