Saturday, October 31, 2020

The sea is so big




Did I tell you that Oliver surprised me by coming home for a week? He did. It was so wonderful to lay eyes on that face, and I even hugged him. He's gone again -- back to Arizona -- and I'm feeling that strange melancholy that besets us when our loved ones leave or we leave them. 

How is everybody doing? You can be honest because I will, too. I'm not doing so great. I'm actively trying to do all the things that ease the mind and calm the spirit and give perspective and maintain equanimity and count your blessings and do for others and look outward and create in the face of fuck (as my friend Lidia Yuknavitch) says, but I went for a short walk to the CVS to pick up Sophie's poison and passed a dirty guy lying on the sidewalk next to his tent in what appeared to be savasana pose a grin as wide as his face his eyes closed. The CVS, like a lot of stores in my neighborhood is all boarded up in anticipation of the Day After the Election when, I suppose, extremists from any group might be out marauding. Speaking of extremists, yesterday, I passed a small group of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and boys. They were dressed in their usual religious garb but also sported masks with TRUMP emblazoned across them. Strange bedfellows, I thought to myself and my tiny little mother mind™ mused on the concept of modesty which I'd experienced during my days teaching English literature to an ultra-religious Jewish sect earlier in the year. I wore the stockings and the long skirts, covered my clavicle and my elbows and my knees,  even when bent. Men of the faith, apparently, are able to sport the moniker of a grotesque con man who mocks disabled people and grabs women by their pussy, though, and it's like being Gulliver these days traveling through the streets both literally and figuratively of Terrible America, the arrogance and laissez-faire and people getting back to normal lamenting how Halloween is so different this year it's so hard for the children and on and on and yes, I know it's grief and loss and all of it is hard and even relative but really?


 "It is coming into election week in the U.S. I am here, on this side of the Atlantic, looking at the other side of that ocean. So much has happened in the sea between us: ships shipping enslaved people, hungry people, desperate people; ships going to a land they called uninhabited from a Europe that prefers to forget its history. As I think about how reparations and justice can be enacted, I’m reminded of an old Breton prayer: God help me, because the sea is so big and my boat is so small. "


Pádraig Ó Tuama
host of Poetry Unbound



 


6 comments:

  1. Next week is going to be mayhem. The next months too I expect. We have fallen so far as a nation. I hope this is what we can look back on as the lowest and in fact we don't have worse coming. I'm definitely feeling some PTSD-like feelings from 2016 right now.

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  2. I just want this whole thing over so we can move forward in whatever way we will be forced to move forward in. I am hoping for sanity, community, love for fellow man and equality but I am not sure that is what will happen. Anxious is what I feel and probably will for a good few more days.

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  3. I think so many just want something to seem like a semblance of Normal again and not this continuous chaos, confusion, Negativity, division, Death, mayhem... so much has changed so quickly. It is hard to keep up and I think it is hard on Children, Pandemic has changed their World, all over the World, and what lies ahead is so uncertain and this is what they shall inherit. Glad one of the Sons was able to surprise you with a lovely visit during a difficult time. Most people I know, including myself, are not doing 'well' or so great... it would be difficult to be honestly.

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  4. So glad that the big O came for a visit. It does help so. I'm just back from a visit with the daughter and grand son in Nevada City. The drive is long but the days there were happy. If all was right with the world, the orange trumpkin would be washed out into the so big sea by the grand blue wave of voters. x0 N2

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  6. I know about the joy of seeing your son and the melancholy when he leaves again. But how wonderful that he surprised you.

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