The Mother’s Strategy

I feel increasingly drawn to a form of resistance that consists of curling up into a ball and letting the waves wash over me in a world in free fall. My mother, who had a peculiar relationship with time, always returned to a kind of wisdom she had borrowed more from peasants than from philosophers. In reality, there is no philosophy that does not have its origins in peasant wisdom. Her strategy consisted of going to bed in the middle of the day to keep creditors away, since they were always afraid of contagious diseases. She also broke time into tiny pieces, meaning that she kept herself busy with so many things at once that she never noticed it passing. I inherited this philosophy, which is practiced with a knowing smile. You know an era has become unbearable when irony is no longer appropriate.

Today, we have eyes only for great tragedies, which we try to drive away with grand gestures, lengthy speeches, endless shouting, and pious wishes sent heavenward—in short, everything we believe is commensurate with a genuine tragedy. Meanwhile, that discreet little treasure, irony, which signals our attempt to take a step sideways and distance ourselves from our times, disappears without warning. My mother did not use irony to mock people, which she would have considered an act of cowardice. She used it to undermine power, every form of power. Sometimes she would whisper a retort (she involved herself in everything, but always in a low voice) that only she could hear, while remaining certain that it would eventually reach the person for whom it was intended.