Frederick Seidel, "Snow"

Hi all --

I know you have heard this, but it's been on my mind recently. The 19 year old U.S. citizen arrested by border patrol, held for 10 days, only let go when his girlfriend's family showed them his birth certificate and social security card.

I guess it's been on my mind because I don't think our current idea about citizenship works. I'm not entirely sure what that idea is. It seems to involve a bundle of assumptions that 1) are racist 2) overvalue productivity 3) are incredibly hypocritical. Something like: citizenship should be given to those who work hard and always do more just like the people who built the country ("no, not those people. not those either. you know who I'm talking about!"). Also I, as an actual citizen, have the right to say who wastes my money and thus I don't have to pay for any public services whatsoever. I desire to do nothing but my job and expect praise and rewards for that alone.

This completely debased view of citizenship, along with a debased view of freedom, has become standard. It doesn't just target non-citizens. It absolutely targets citizens, holding them to shifting goalposts. If someone poor works hard, escapes their situation, and does more for themselves and others, they're still not productive enough. We have billionaires who are so-called job creators, after all. People who are the economy because of the vast sums of capital they sit on. Citizenship is the power to abuse others by calling them non-citizens, and this favors those already advantaged.

We need a more expansive idea of citizenship, one that uses as a basis the 14th amendment's imperative that all persons are entitled to due process and equal protection of the laws. We need to go back to "We the People" and emphasize the democratic process it implies. The states are laboratories of democracy; the federal government strives to protect as many as possible. If you're here, we don't just welcome you. We want you to share in our values centered on collective deliberation and action. We want to be like the states that once allowed non-citizens to vote, with the understanding that people make a place, and all will be fully recognized as belonging in time.

However, here's where we are now. Consider this complete lie on the part of the authorities in The Guardian article. A lie about a citizen so brazen I can't believe I read it:

“The narrative being pushed about Jose Hermosillo is false,” the official said via email. “On April 8, Hermosillo approached Border Patrol in Tucson and stated he had entered the U.S. illegally through Nogales. He said he wanted to turn himself in and completed a sworn statement identifying as a Mexican citizen who had entered unlawfully.

“He was processed and appeared in court on April 10. Afterward, he was held by the U.S. Marshals in Florence, AZ. A few days later, his family presented documents showing U.S. citizenship. The charges were dismissed, and he was released to his family.

“This arrest was the direct result of Hermosillo’s own actions and statements.”

Note that the official puts the following in writing:

• the 19 year old U.S. citizen "wanted to turn himself in?" He called himself "a Mexican citizen?" Who does this?
• he "completed a sworn statement." Hmm, how was this gentleman (AGAIN A U.S. CITIZEN) encouraged to sign a sworn statement which completely undermines his own safety?
• oh by the way they released him because he was a citizen

The audacity to try to explain an outrage like this is something else. It is very telling of how little pushback some officials have gotten over their careers. They believe they can say anything and they expect no consequences. In the face of this, there's no option but to have an expansive notion of citizenship. The burden of proof has to be on the government. Otherwise, all of us have to carry our papers everywhere and be ready for inspection at any moment.

Frederick Seidel, "Snow"

The being of snow is its activity. "Snow is what it does." An ontological claim is advanced for a perishable object. Two sets of themes immediately suggest themselves: 1) What kind of being is snow? It "is what it does." What sort of activity is this? What other things are like snow? 2) Snow is water. Creation, the seasons, the flooding of the earth. What do we make of this object so much larger than ourselves?

Seidel's narrator speaks in a clipped, cantankerous way. The memories we might associate with snow are missing. No mention of Christmas or its magic. No sense of a gentle covering which makes the evergreen stand out so much more. Sleds and snowmen and the gruesome snow art of Calvin and Hobbes are all absent. We are instead given a morbid meditation on temporal existence: "It falls and it stays and it goes. / It melts and it is here somewhere. / We all will get there."

Snow (from Poetry)
Frederick Seidel

Snow is what it does.
It falls and it stays and it goes.
It melts and it is here somewhere.
We all will get there.

"It falls and it stays and it goes" recalls a logic like the noble truths of Buddhism. Snow falls; everything is contingent. Snow stays, as if it desires to be, as if it marks its own presence. Snow goes; all things perish. What kind of being is snow? One strangely more like us than we care to admit, if we dismiss the significance of all our activities.

If we dismiss the significance of all our activities. Seidel, you can charitably say, is not in the best mood. I guess one reason I am philosophically inclined is because I have known so many people who dismiss the worth of anything anyone else does. Plenty use a crude sort of reasoning that way. "Philosophers" I have known say anything that doesn't make money is worthless. Or that some efforts are useful and necessary and others (e.g. the arts) are drains on society. Still, one philosopher could cut more deeply. The Earth could end at any time and everything we do will be forgotten. What did anything mean in that case?

Seidel alludes to that last thought when saying snow "melts and it is here somewhere." He puts eternality and an inability to account for where something is together. This is truly a nihilist poem! Usually we put eternality and meaning together. But Seidel locates the meaninglessness of what is lost in how it can never be recovered. A parallel move exists in political philosophy. Aristotle suggested the eternality of the world lent itself to a discoverable nature. That things have purpose makes more sense if the world itself is not contingent. Machiavelli, in speaking of the eternality of the world, emphasizes chaos. Some things are lost forever. What is eternal is nothingness. Nothingness can be a felt absence. It does not matter if the snow is around or not, so it might as well be around.

Seidel ends the poem with a blunt "We will all get there." We will find snow when we, too, are lost like it. As an expression of a grounded cynicism, this is an incredible lyric. It not only rejects hope of an afterlife, but attacks attempts to reconcile oneself to the truth of suffering. Snow's falling, staying, and going shows what could be a problem with the noble truths: you may find yourself devaluing all your actions, thoughts, and words in order to curb your pain. But when I think of snow as water, I feel that there are other stories to be told. You don't have to be religious to delight in a rainbow. We do more in the hope that it is not for naught. We know we will all get there, but persevere anyway.