[Fuusmchat] FW: Odes for Thanksgiving 2020

[Martha McGovern]

These accessible odes are thought-provoking.  Check out “The Coronavirus Prayer” in particular.

Martha

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: The Atlantic
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2020 6:40 PM
Subject: Odes for Thanksgiving 2020

Thaw that turkey, and your soul. We hope these odes to the small pleasures in life will at least bring you back to room temperature. 



NOVEMBER 25, 2020


Caroline Mimbs Nyce 
Senior associate editor

Odes for Thanksgiving 2020
Flip to the last page of any Atlantic print magazine, and you’ll find a humble ode.
The source of all this goodwill is James Parker, a lyrical writer (and poet) turned monthly gratitude correspondent. In honor of Thanksgiving, I asked James to write an original holiday-themed ode.
Below, you’ll find his new meditation on returning to consciousness, as well as a collection of odes from yesteryear. Happy thanking.
An ode to regaining consciousness 
This one I never managed to write for the magazine.
A couple of decades ago, at a time when I was a night-shift baker, a freelance journalist, and the father of an infant son—frantic, in other words—I found myself fainting rather a lot. Or rather, I found myself on the bathroom floor rather a lot, wondering what had just happened. It was then that I discovered the pleasures of coming round.
Fainting is a disgusting experience: Everything slips, tips, darkens, crowding toward the zero point, and you barely know what’s going on. Coming round, however, is leisurely and delicious. Plenty of time to appreciate everything—to savor everything. How cool and solid the floor under your cheek. How generous and unequivocal the clear light of the bathroom. How wonderfully, steadily actual the base of the toilet.
This world of things: how it holds us and supports us. Birds in their nest, stars in their socket, humans blinking gently as their faculties are restored. How at home we really are.



(TIM LAHAN) 
The coronavirus prayer
A pandemic that won’t last forever and ever, amen
An ode to flight attendants
They minister, they mollify, they bring us blankets.
An ode to agony aunts
Taking pleasure in others’ pain as a reader of the advice column
An ode to small talk
How about this weather?
An ode to balloons
Gravity is overrated.
An ode to insomnia
How to find solace in sleeplessness

(PETER MARLOW / MAGNUM) 
What to read if … you’re looking for practical holiday tips: 
• How many people have the coronavirus in your state?
• Our guide to cooking in isolation
• Answers to every possible pandemic-Thanksgiving question
• 20 movie families to spend your holidays with
• 25 feel-good films you’ll want to watch again—and again
• Read to find focus
The Atlantic Crossword
1-Across, six letters: Something whispered into a close friend’s ear, perhaps
Try your hand at our daily mini crossword (available on our site here), which gets more challenging through the week.
→ Challenge your friends, or try to beat your own solving time.
About Us
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