Module 2
The Creative Act and Combining
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Apolline Roger on lawyering grounded in care, curiosity, courage.
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Inspired by the books The Creative Act by Rick Ruben and Combining by Nora Bateson
MAMMA NOW
Your eyes will see the derailing of assumptions,
Your hands will hold the crumble of the old Matrix.
I do not have any authority to lean into.
I have empty pockets where parents used to advise their children.
I do not have any maps, myths, or mother wisdom for you.
I can fix your breakfast, but not the culture.
And when you ask about how to be a good person,
I cannot lie to you.
Everything you touch in a day is in some way bloodied.
You have been born into an edgeless violence.
But I will not judge or measure you
Against a bygone metric.
I’m here too, ready to learn with you,
Unsure how to be or who to be.
I can only read fragments of your worry
As the future is a horizon of confusion.
I cannot protect you,
And yet it is my only job,
Aching as I witness from this side of the hourglass.
Other generations of parents knew the outlines:
School, career, family, and retirement.
But your life will be another shape entirely,
Forming in the fractures.
When you say you need a goal,
I offer you an expired ticket.
Superficial memes roll off the tongue
Right into your detector.
Success in the existing system is not going to do you much good.
Your integrity is your rage,
And I will nourish it.
Your dignity is your curiosity,
And I am tiny beside it.
Your courage is your pain,
And I will sing to it with you.
We will riot together.
We will notice the nuance of small graces in the day.
We will wash the grit of loss for each other.
I am your mama,
And your future is the story of a storm.
I am your cabin,
Your boots,
Your rucksack.
—Nora Bateson. Combining. Triarchy Press.
Reflections from Apolline:
The environmental polycrisis has been what I think about and work on for more than 20 years now. I was committed before I became a parent, but the commitment changed texture when my daughter came. My heart felt elated and understood when I read Nora Bateson’s poem, it shone a light on all the breaks I forgot to notice. And I love its invitation, to ground oneself in care, in curiosity, in courage, in presencing – and to better meet the others from this grounding. The title is “Mama Now” but the invitation goes far beyond parenting – or maybe it just reaches to all parenting, that goes so far beyond a relationship with one’s children. It is about a way to show up in the world.
And this is where Rich Rubin’s text comes in, with what I see as the same call. Being an artist, whatever it is that you do, because you are driven by your intention to make something better so much that it shapes what you do and who you are.
Maybe the reason why those texts call me so much is because they oppose legal culture so much. The idea that law (and lawyering) is neutral, out the realm of emotion, a-political. Myths that can be useful, but disappear when you pay attention. And in their place, one can recover agency, imagination and justice. But only if grounded in care, curiosity, courage, presencing and the desire to make something continuously better.
There is a final call in Nora Bateson’s book which I love – Combining. The realisation that we all have a unique chemical mix of ingredients gathered by our being and our interactions with the world. This is the strength we can bring, multiplied when we combine it with the specific combination held by others. I am a lawyer working for a legal activist organisation. But my legal practice is informed by so much more than my legal education, and enriched anytime a non-lawyer joins. I am curious to see what will come out of our combination.
Questions to the students:
- What do you combine and what do you want to add to the mix?
- When you hear “law” what images and emotions come to you? What is your understanding of law and the legal system?
- What do you care about?
- What special thing do you see that you will always stay curious about because you care?
- What will you try to make better?
- What comes up to you if I am asking you – what if you contributed to unlocking legal power for what you care about?