{"id":133615,"date":"2019-02-14T09:00:58","date_gmt":"2019-02-14T14:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=133615"},"modified":"2019-02-13T17:42:41","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T22:42:41","slug":"sharing-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/14\/sharing-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharing Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_133618\" style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/jackandjill.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-133618\" class=\"wp-image-133618 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/jackandjill.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/jackandjill.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/jackandjill-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/jackandjill-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/jackandjill-768x768.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-133618\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Walter Crane, <em>Jack and Jill<\/em>, 1877. Illustration from Walter Crane\u2019s <em>The Baby\u2019s Opera<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I adore it when I see two people\u2014today it was, from the looks of it, a mother and child here on Canal Street in Chinatown\u2014sharing the burden of a shopping bag or sack of laundry by each gripping one of the handles. It at first seems to encourage a kind of staggering, as the uninitiated, or the impatient, will try to walk at his own pace, the bag twisting this way and that, whacking shins or skidding along the ground. But as we mostly do, feeling the sack, which has become a kind of tether between us, we modulate our pace, even our sway and saunter\u2014the good and sole rhythms we might swear we live by\u2014to the one on the other side of the sack.\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I suppose part of why I so adore the sack-sharing is because most often this is a burden one or the other could manage just fine solo\u2014which makes it different from dragging Granny\u2019s armoire up two flights of steps, say, or wrestling free a truck stuck hip-deep in a snow bank. Yes, it\u2019s the lack of necessity of this act that\u2019s perhaps precisely why it delights me so. Everything that needs doing\u2014getting the groceries or laundry home\u2014would get done just fine without this meager collaboration. But the only thing that needs doing, without this meager collaboration, would not.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Ross Gay is the author of three books of poetry, including\u00a0<\/em>Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude<em>, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award;\u00a0<\/em>Against Which<em>;<\/em><em>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Bringing the Shovel Down<em>. He is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a nonprofit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. He teaches at Indiana University.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>From\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.workman.com\/products\/the-book-of-delights\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Book of Delights<\/a><em>,<\/em><em>\u00a0by Ross Gay \u00a9 2019 by Ross Gay. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For Valentine\u2019s Day, Ross Gay shares one of his favorite expressions of love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1690,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[7719,49341,9652,9651,49117,2111,30306,49340,6382],"class_list":["post-133615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-bag","tag-bucket","tag-canal-street","tag-chinatown","tag-delight","tag-love","tag-ross-gay","tag-sharing","tag-valentines-day"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Sharing Love by Ross Gay<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For Valentine\u2019s Day, Ross Gay shares one of his favorite expressions of love.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/14\/sharing-love\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sharing Love by Ross Gay\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"February 14, 2019 \u2013 For Valentine\u2019s Day, Ross Gay shares one of his favorite expressions of love.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/14\/sharing-love\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-02-14T14:00:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/jackandjill.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ross Gay\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ross Gay\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/14\/sharing-love\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/14\/sharing-love\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Ross Gay\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/b0a24ff5e39ee74b97caa2bea54dbb9e\"},\"headline\":\"Sharing Love\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-02-14T14:00:58+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/14\/sharing-love\/\"},\"wordCount\":340,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/14\/sharing-love\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/jackandjill.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"bag\",\"bucket\",\"Canal Street\",\"Chinatown\",\"delight\",\"love\",\"Ross Gay\",\"sharing\",\"Valentine's Day\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Arts &amp; 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