Et in Arcadia Ego

And in hell, too

Et in Arcadia Ego: The novelist Evelyn Waugh uses this as an epigraph for his novel, Brideshead Revisited. Made into a miniseries ca. 1981, Brideshead was devoured by me and several of my teachers in my senior year of high school, though trying to watch it again a few years back gave me hives, so slow and ponderous was it. This current response speaks to the ways we have all become impatient with time and feeling and characters’ internal lives, as well as with living itself. Today I was thinking about this quote, and Masterpiece Theater host Alistair Cooke when he talked about the interpretation of the epigraph. For a long time, Et in Arcadia Ego was interpreted as, “And in paradise, I,” as if to mean, how lucky I am to be in paradise; but that more recently, it could be said to mean, “Even in paradise, I,” meaning, even in paradise, you can’t get away from yourself, so to speak. Paradise won’t make you feel better if you aren’t already at peace with yourself.

And then of course there is Hell. Lots of people have had views (of it and on it). I’ve been a quote collector all my life, and one of the first quotes I wrote down in a high school notebook, which I gave away and wish I hadn’t, was by John Milton, from Paradise Lost: “The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” My mom, Lynne, quoted that to me, and I had to write it down. Do you do that? It’s a certain kind of eccentricity, I’ve read, that need to ink the words of others, and then hold their words in our hearts.

My mom also gave me this quote from William Makepeace Thackery, from his novel Vanity Fair: “The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.” I do think this is true. The other day a friend came over and relayed his mantra in these times, part of which is, “I am light,” and he’s noticed it’s working, that his light is manifesting, and that people are responding in kind. I’ve been carrying Milton and Thackery as my mantras since I was fourteen; I know their truth.

Last night Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) ended a filibuster of 25 hours and 5 minutes, not reading mindlessly from an encyclopedia like the racist Strom Thurmond, whose record he defeated—ol’ Strom, who I remember being wheeled in post-stroke, incoherent, to “vote” for something that would hurt people (a rolling advert for term limits), filibustered in 1957 was trying to stop a vote on the Voting Rights Act, and he succeeded—but instead letters from actual people who are going to lose their very lives if Social Security ends. And that elected Black man beat that white man at his own game, and with righteousness.

This evening, I heard the Dow has already plunged to the point of total crash in anticipation of Trump global tariffs taking effect—the same type of tariffs that set off the Great Depression in 1930. (The tariffs on Russian goods? 0%. Trump is deliberately bringing America to its knees, to its end, at the demand, it seems, of Vladmir Putin. Why? It’s a shame we don’t have a free press to find out.)

This morning, I couldn’t stop crying. The whole morning, trying to work, I was wracked with sobs, for everyone—for all the migrants and college students and innocent humans whose editorials or simple tattoos are disappearing them into an El Salvador torture prison (and we have them, too, make no mistake) and soon it will be more and more and more and more and more of us. Never to return? Even after acknowledging, “mistakes were made,” ICE and Tom Homan and Trump couldn’t give the dogshit on your shoes. It’s all out of their hands, they say, as they reserve their special places in a hell in which I do not personally believe.

I’m sobbing over the gutting of the CDC, NIH, and branches of state health facilities, all of it, without a single national headline to cover it, the whole CDC facility in Atlanta shuttered today, hundreds, thousands of health professionals out of jobs, even as measles, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases threaten epidemics due to vaccine ignorance.

How do you stop crying when you watch living hell unfold? My power walks are manic. My words here useless.

Talking of faces, of feelings, I think of Oscar Wilde, “A mask tells us more than a face.” What masks do you see in all this? Wilde also said, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” I think of Trump’s press secretary, who stands up straight and shouts louder to demonstrate she knows nothing of the rule of law, the mask that is the all-powerful Trump mouth. I think of all the Trump mouth masks, including Trump’s, that say not one true thing, while ironically telling you how it’s all truly going down.

No one—literally no one, including Senator Booker—has any idea how we stop this. No one has a clue how to make this stop. I have no magic quote to give you, even the great John Lewis’s “good trouble” feels weak. “Be the change you wish to see in the world”? Will Gandhi light that fire?

We, the People, have to do it. We have to throw our words at it, but mostly throw our bodies at it. When we can, how we can. There’s a voice out there, a voice we haven’t heard yet, that is going to rise above all this madness and help guide us. Senator Booker set the tone. But we can’t wait for the next voice.

This April 5, on the day of national protests, I will be on a train headed home to see my aged parents, and it’s long planned and needed, but I feel I’m letting down my country yet again. So I’m writing you this note to tell you I’ll be offline and quiet this next week, but not disconnected.

Be the light, be the love, be the change, be yourself, tell the truth, throw the words, and I’ll do it, too.

Love and light,

Miss O’