How Ordinary Devotions are Good Enough
A review, thoughts & more on Maggie Nelson's "The Argonauts."
As promised, whether to you or to myself, here’s a review of Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts. Apologies in advance, as it’ll be pointed and very much a subjective reflection of my experience, which, in the end, is what good art is meant to do: affect.
The last couple years of my life, they’ve been dedicated to “ordinary devotions.” I keep a list in my mind of all which provides self care. And for me that consists of soothing acts. A check list of sorts that I can perfect when life is amazing, and look to when it’s not, because life will be both. A warm shower to wash away the worries, a walk, a moment in the sun, reading, writing, breathing, humming. It’s what I refer to my toolbox. A simplification of emotional regulation. And it works, mostly. A devotion to myself in a way, understanding that it’s in these little acts of devotion that I’m brought back to myself.
My liking of the word devotion probably began before I know, some part of myself keen on being devoted to and in turn, being its recipient, a sense that the reciprocity would always keep me feeling safe. Cynicism was grown in me quite young, and despite the way it branched out in uncontrollable ways, I continued to believe in ordinary devotions. That despite feeling like I might not belong, or the slipperiness of who to call family or friends, experiencing reciprocal devotion was always possible. And now I go the distance to the best of my ability to express that devotion. In relationships mostly, like who I choose to spend my thoughts and actions on, checking in, saying hi, visiting, meeting, knowing, day after day.
A devotion to someone is very different than a devotion to something. To love and be loved in return. For some reason, it’s always resonated as the same thing. Perhaps I’ll learn one day that’s not always the truth, but so far it has been, and we all have our ways of showing it or running from it.
Then the word expanded, or perhaps the idea slithered itself into a word, when I first read poems from Mary Oliver’s Devotions where the world is intended to express one’s devotions, a noun rather than a verb. It’s a collection Oliver put together herself before her passing, from a young twenty-eight-year-old to an even wiser eight-two, her devotions to the natural world. It made me realize that our relationship with nature is reciprocal, we devote ourselves to its well-being and it devotes itself to our well-being in return, mostly, and mostly fleetingly.
In a world that’s moving so fast and so focused, so far away from nature at times, it can be easy, if not acceptable, to forget that it is the mundane acts that are just as worthy as the noble ones. It’s only during that ordinary act can you easily answer the question. These ordinary devotions bring me back to my self. Oliver’s devotion to the natural world, small, fleeting moments, reveals a simplicity in devotion, one that encourages us closer to the grounding force of nature. That pure tasks, you and a pail and a full blueberry bush is what really matters.
And then, most recently, at the beginning of this year, I started The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, a memoir threaded with literary criticism, exploring the impact of identity, language, and motherhood, and my understanding of the word grew a little more.
“Whatever I am, or have since become, I know now that slipperiness isn’t all of it. I know now that a studied evasiveness has its own limitations, its own ways of inhibiting certain forms of happiness and pleasure. The pleasure of abiding. The pleasure of insistence, of persistence. The pleasure of obligation, the pleasure of dependency. The pleasures of ordinary devotion. The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margin, return to the same themes in one’s work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again—not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life.”
Other than the use of the word slipperiness, which I love probably because I grew up saying slippy and the way, when said aloud correctly rolls of with such reverberation, Nelson’s reflection on the slipperiness of identity echoes a truth: that devotion is not just about fleeting newness but about persistence despite mundanity, about trudging onward despite ordinariness. Her argument that revisiting sameness is a pleasure and should celebrated as one resonates deeply with me—because, in a sense, it’s this ongoing commitment to the small things that make us whole.
Nelson does much to set this up, going through the beginning stages of her relationship with Harry who “spent a lifetime equally devoted to the conviction that words are not good enough” while she had “spent a lifetime devoted to Wittgenstein’s idea that the inexpressible is contained—inexpressibly!—in the expressed” and acted as the foundation of why she writes and continues being able to write. As a writer, words must be good enough, where Harry, an artist has other mediums to express the inexpressible. It’s part of the reason she wrote The Argonauts, to write about Harry, who was curious why Nelson never wrote about him, and that meant writing their love story.
The origin of the title is addressed at this point, a few days after Nelson confesses her love, she sends Harry a passage by Roland Barthes that expresses that to love someone is like an “Argonaut renewing his ship during its voyage without changing its name.” The phrase I love you demands a constant renewal.
It’s still early in their relationship when Nelson admits, “I feel I can give you everything without giving myself away, I whispered in your basement bed. If one does one’s solitude right, this is the prize.” And it made me pause. Devotion or love or whatever word is good enough has boundaries. There must be a balance, that is constantly in flux or steady, in order to allow the involved parties to give into it without ending up empty.
“By ordinary devotion, Winnicott means ordinary devotion. “It is a trite remark when I say that by devoted I simply mean devoted.” Winnicott is a writer for whom ordinary words are good enough.”
It’s in getting to know Harry’s toddler that Nelson must resume the role of stepparent, and I fluttered at the idea of words, and as a result, devotions, being good enough. She sets it up by exploring the idea of having a baby who is reliant, dependent, solely on another, the mother, and it’s her ordinary devotion to her child that allows it to live and thrive. She must feed him, clean him, watch him, care for him, all unprofound acts yet necessary acts. It’s the good enough that Nelson clings to. And it’s a devotion unlike one to someone or to something, these are both fine on their own, but allotment of the self without thought to much more, without recognition or anything in return, again and again.
In the end, and over two months of reading, The Argonauts helped me redefine devotion once more, as something sustained, something that can be quiet in its persistence. Which can be the hardest part. It’s not just about the moments when I feel full and loved, but the ordinary acts that tether me to myself, to others, and to the world. Nelson’s exploration of love, identity, and the “pleasure of ordinary devotion” brought attention back to these small, seemingly insignificant actions (feeding, caring, being present) that shape our lives. Devotion is not about perfection or transcendence, but about the willingness to return to the same acts, the same people, the same self, day after day.