Halfway

 

On Tuesday night, when I saw 65 million people had voted for the man we call President in Terrible America, and after I'd felt disappointed then depressed then terrified then enraged then numb I threw the IChing, drew Hexagram 37 by tracing my hand writing writing writing into fingers and thumbs over palm, hunched over the tile table in my dining room. Hexagram 37 is Family (What will become of us? I'd asked). Be certain, however, that you are not involved in carrying out a role for which you are unsuited, or a role that has been cast upon you. This will rob your life of meaning. Every line of the hexagram changed, an occurrence that in the nearly forty years I've been using it, I've never seen. Skip straight to the transformed hexagram when all lines change. Look it up look it up look it up and then read Hexagram 40 (Liberation) which is sometime in the future so I eventually stood up minutes hours later peanut butter ghost redolent and walked down my dark hallway to the bedroom. It's a short walk but about when I'd gotten halfway my children smiling down from the wall of years the slant of moonlight disguised by the blue blinking LED light from the box over the door that waves in this constant stream of information to my room my sanctuary my sleep, I felt  suddenly enlightened (halfway) not by ghosts or peanut butter or Jesus or hands or Chinese oracles but by my persistent unconscious which was screaming exceptionalism is a lie. It was as if a hand were placed on the top of my head palm down the fingers draped over forehead (halfway) my eyes closed breathing there in the hallway (halfway) soothed.

Now it's Thursday and it's all a lot.

Forced to be an optimist

 

I can’t be a pessimist because I’m alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter, so I’m forced to be an optimist. I’m forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive. 

James Baldwin

 

 

Let's go.

We Interrupt this Nightmare Programming

How to stay WOKE and how to stay sane.

This year, I've officially read THE LEAST number of books ever in my lifetime. How's that for a poorly written sentence? If you look over to your right at my sidebar, you'll see my Bookworm 2016 list, and it's much sparer than those for the previous eight years that I've been listing them. I've also seen the least number of movies of my lifetime this year. I'm making no apologies here -- to you or to myself. I haven't been reading as much, and I haven't been going to the movies as much. I've been preoccupied by cataclysmic changes in my personal life and the world. I know I'm prone to hyperbole, but that is one true good sentence. These changes have been both profoundly awful (the election and the dystopian nightmare that has ensued) and, literally, life-altering in the best way (what causes the most distraction in life? she asks, coyly).

Now I'm going to tell you what my favorite book and my favorite movie of 2016 has been.

Oh, this book. Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter. It's small and it's beautiful and it's about grief and loss and death and children and love and a crow. You know how I feel about crows. I both despise and am seduced by them, regularly, in real life and on the page. Oh, this book. It's so wildly inventive that I am hard put to describe it. I aspire to write like this, to express myself with such economy and wit and truth. It's very short, but I read it slowly in order to savor every word and every bit of blank space. I love the yellow and gray of the cover, the way it feels in my hand. It's a poem and a novel and a visual feast. I read it a few times. You should, too.

Oh, this movie. Moonlight. I don't want to sully its beauty with my words, any words really. I saw it twice with someone I love, and we talked for hours and hours about it, both times. I'll see it again. It's about everything beautiful and sad you can think of, and it's about what it means to be alive and human. It's intensely specific and universal. There's a scene in it of a boy learning to swim in the ocean, his head resting in a man's hand, the water is all around them and the sky above and it's all around you and so is the sky and it's as if all of your life is cradled there, safe. And then there's the moon and the light and so many eyes and deep gazes both inward and out. I'm still trying to figure out how the director did what he did, how the actors portrayed these people so brilliantly and how a piece of art can quite literally make everything all right. I've seen it twice and will again. You should, too.










Reader, tell me your favorite book and movie of the year.




P.S. I have read the recently published books of dear friends, and I choose not to "review" them or pick as favorites. That's a given. Stay tuned, though, for my words about them both.

Being Woke

another way to see: it's sort of like the dollar bill has been turned inside out, and now people who couldn't see it before can see it plainly: America is built on the slaughter of Native Americans, the theft of land, the bodies of African Americans as well as the modern slave labor of brown people, and the reproductive use-value of women as objects. it always has been, but we developed sly cover stories. our present tense isn't "new," but it is very stark and loud and the cover story is gone. capitalism is as bare as it's ever going to be. take a good look. decide.

Lidia Yuknavitch

I slept for so long.

A long time ago I went on a trip to Mississippi, a few trips to Mississippi, where my grandmother was raised in the Delta. I won't tell you where, but I think there were dark things happening there, always. I think a sign of privilege, of how I slept. My eyelids fluttered once on a trip there when some children whipped a dog in the grass, under the trees and away from the house. They weren't my first cousins but they were related in some way. A girl with scabby knees and straw-colored hair, pale blue eyes, a switch in her hand. The dog cowered. I held my little sister's hand. My eyelids fluttered when someone there called me a little nigger, my summer body nut brown.  Other. There were guns and awards for livestock, a family reunion, a distant cousin sitting in a low lawn chair, plastic-striped, watching a talent show. Someone told a joke about him being in the clan with a K and everyone laughed and my eyes flew open. Is he in the Klan? I think I asked my mother, but I think a sign of privilege. Her lips drawn straight. My back straighter.

Squirm.

How sticky it was to mow the lawn as a young girl in Georgia without a bag, the sharp points of cut grass on sweaty skin. The heat. The stain. I grew to hate the south. You should never hate anyone, a boy told me once, except the Devil. I think it was his grandmother who said that. I think a sign of privilege. In church the priest droned and I conjured saints, tiny black dots dancing in front of my fluttering eyes, right before I closed them and fainted.

I was always uninterested in American history. Unpatriotic. 

I took two years of Chinese language in college so that I might learn to read the ancient poetry in the original. Bless my heart. I studied Buddhism right about then. And all the Russians. Being a consumer of books is still a consumer. You aren't a Buddhist, are you? I think my mother asked. I think a sign of privilege.  So many books. The Grand Inquisitor. We thought you were a communist. 

The privilege of eyes fluttering open and then closed.

Ten years later.

Sophie woke me up. After the shot, her mouth an O, a cry, a breath we breathed together. Her vulnerability. We define ourselves by words, and she had none, would never have any. Such hard work to shape them, words,  for her for others, to make a person. Dignity. Her, cloistered.  Disability. The disabled. Dis Abled.

Where I rambled and what was imposed. Equanimity.

Being awake. Being constantly woke.

An Anti-Apocalypse Mixtape

Play these songs while you're OUT THERE shaking things up and resisting.

Happy NaFaCaGiMo, folks! Day 16 with a Brilliant Guest Post

Nichole Montanez incredible photo project: The Face of Cannabis

So, I haven't been posting about NaFaCaGiMo since the sh**tstorm we called an election happened last week. After peeling myself off the floor, though, I'm galvanized like never before to RESIST. My friend and fellow caregiver, Jeneva Burroughs Stone, posted a lengthy thing on Facebook today that is particularly relevant to not just the sh**storm, but also to caregiving and disability rights. I hope that you'll read it and share it far and wide. 

If there are any Trump lurkers around these parts, please read it because it's about people like SOPHIE whom you profess to love and about the millions of people like her. 

Many of us have been working in the so-called trenches for decades on issues of social justice. Last night I attended the Realm of Caring benefit that honored some of those people -- people who have been and continue to fight for our children with epilepsy and other significant health disorders so that they have access to cannabis medicine. The event raised money to help children and families who can't afford the medicine get it. We have and continue to fight against very entrenched ignorant beliefs and a medical/industrial complex that is tyrannical. We are motivated because our children's lives are on the line. What happens when you start advocating for your own child in any system at all, you realize quite quickly that there are LEGIONS of people that need help and that it is your responsibility to do what you can to help them. That's what I'm doing. It's really hard work, and you have to be prepared to argue and fight and make enemies. As the great MLK said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Jeneva's incredible new memoir, Monster is available for pre-order. Go do that and then come back and read her powerful words: Now here's Jeneva's powerful post:

I haven't said much about the election recently, nor whatever it is I will do to resist an incoming administration I feel to be wrong, insofar as the attitudes it has projected and the personnel it has appointed thus far.

I've been standing up to injustice in a very individual, almost lonely way for over 18 years: fighting the education system, the medical establishment, the state. I haven't been shy about saying that I have to fight Democratic politics as often as Republican politics--that's the nature of disability bias. It comes from both sides, and it's extremely difficult for able-bodied people to break out of the disability = tragedy mindset and move toward thinking that disability = another way of living. And equally difficult to resist placing persons with disabilities within capitalist values (what are they worth, anyway, to society?) when that question is not asked with such disconcerting openness in major news outlets as compared to other disenfranchised groups.

I've determined that my own energy will be sucked into my continuing struggles for Robert's equality and independence, and I hope that I am able to frame these broadly enough that my efforts will benefit more persons than just him. This fight will sometimes put me at odds with many of you, but that is to be expected. Insofar as your objectives propose true and not symbolic inclusion of persons with disabilities, I will do whatever I can to help, but my own energies have to be primarily with PWDs, as we/they are the first to be cast overboard in a storm.

I do have advice for whoever wants it about confronting and resisting authority, although many of you have been activists for some time and probably don't need it.

First of all, remember that demonstrations and open statements of resistance are certainly steps in the right direction; however, these serve the purposes of mobilization. They accomplish little in and of themselves by themselves. You have to put in the work to organize: getting permits, creating lists of supporters, setting agendas that involve more than making calls to congress. As many of you have discovered, each office has multiple phone lines and the opposition will find ways to avoid you.

Second, and following upon the first, you must listen, both to the opposition and to the variety of opinions within your own group. You don't need to listen to the opposition out of empathy (although bridge-building can be important): you need to listen to grasp their positions and potential strategies. If you don't know what these are, you cannot outflank and out-maneuver them. You also need to understand the personalities and motivations of the opposition leaders in order to locate what you can use to your advantage. These are the strategies I use the most in approaching the wall of opposition I face on behalf of Robert.

The Democratic Party has, to my mind, erred in refusing to listen to its internal critics, and, thereby, passed on forming a broader coalition. Avoid the mansplaining, overbearing tactics common to many organizers--the "I know best, I've done this longer than you," kind of thinking, be they men or women.

Third, you must be willing to perform acts of civil disobedience. That's where I am now with Robert's needs: trying to figure out what I am willing to do, what consequences I am willing to accept and what consequences are too dangerous for my son. No is a powerful word, but it must be used with care. Consequences are real and you must accept they will be real.

Fourth, you must take the energy you are generating now and move even beyond organization toward the massive project of selecting and running individuals with goals akin to your own for public office. This is a great deal of work, and two years to the mid-term isn't long. And both President Obama and Senator Sanders have made good points that getting your points of view into the political decision making process is essential. Voting is good; getting more candidates in the race is better.

Fifth, and I say this to both liberals and conservatives (and progressives): vandalism, threats and violence will do little for your cause in the long run, other than to give others evidence to repudiate you. For example, the threats issued toward my family by Maryland's Department of Nursing Services has done nothing more than stiffen my resolve.

Sixth, always be nice to the army of administrative persons who help provide access to key persons. Be nice always to those who help you consistently because it's the right thing to do. But "being nice" to authority doesn't work much. As a woman, I had a hard time with this, letting go of it, but I recognized early on that this would just be taken as a sign of acquiescence by, for example, the school system. They won't like you, but you will get your message across. Switch up your messengers when you need to--good cop/bad cop. That's what Roger and I do when we realize the same thing said by a male voice will trigger a different response.

Seventh, learn the law, learn the loopholes, and don't rely on rhetoric to get you to your objectives. That rallies support for your side, but is easy for the opposition to ignore or downplay. As I have discovered, I can shout about injustice all day long, but until I develop reasons for why these are injustices and put those pieces into play, I get nowhere.

Eighth, you will have conflict with some of your friends. I have, too. Some have told me I am too emotional, too prone to rant. I see what I do as exemplifying injustice and pointing out what's wrong. This metaphor isn't quite what I would like, but my earth science teacher once told me, "stick to your guns," when I, in uncertainty, changed my answer on an oral exam to the wrong one because I was looking for some sign from him that my original instinct was the correct one.

I hope this hasn't been patronizing, as I have not meant it that way, and I'm sure it duplicates what some of you already know. See you out there.

Staying Awake

What is the meaning of life? That was all -- a simple question: one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other.

Virginia Woolf, in To the Lighthouse

published May, 1927

Taking a Bullet

That's Sophie sitting in her wheelchair, gazing at trees. She's finally stopped moaning and humming. I'm not sure why she's been moaning and humming. Is it the impending full moon? Is she constipated? Is something hurting? Has she absorbed the extreme tension in the universe post-election? Has she absorbed the extreme tension in my family due to the election, via me? Is it moaning? Is it discomfort?

She is not having seizures, praise cannabis, and that would include THC. So, yeah, you obdurate fools who don't think THC is medicinal.

She is otherwise dramatically improved from a month ago. It seems hard to believe, yet I am determined to feel gratitude for this respite. That's why despair must not be indulged when things go wrong. Things never stay still. Still, the moaning and vocalizations are constant enough that they put my already extremely edgy self just at the tip of -- well -- falling off. I told the boys as I folded my laundry that when we lived in a tiny New York City apartment and she was a baby and screamed 3/4s of the day due to discomfort from the drugs that she was on, I would have to resort to putting her into her crib or in the middle of the bed, after which I would go into the shower, turn it on full blast and crouch there on the floor, my head in my hands, the tears swirling with the water down the drain. Oliver asked, If that was your life, why in the world did you have us? I told him that never, at any time, did I regret having a baby and that Sophie was a rock star even then and that he and Henry were the reason why I had them. The boys smiled as they ate the pizza that I'd ordered -- things are so hairy around here that I'm not even making lunch these days, much less dinner.

That paints a rosy portrait of two boys, their moaning sister and tense mother folding laundry while eating pizza. It was hardly that as our lunch discussion became a heated and argumentative one as we shared stories of racist incidents that we know about, that affect those we know and love, already, not even at the end of the first week of post-America. We live in one of the largest and most multi-cultural cities in the world. I've got teenaged sons whose best friends include bi-racial kids, black kids, Hispanic, Muslim and Asian kids. Their sister is disabled. They know what discrimination is (the people who use the word retard and then argue that it's just a word, the fact that disabled people were institutionalized in the past, that they face discrimination both subtle and overt everywhere in this country, etc. etc. etc.), but I don't think they have ever seen the kind of overt shit that's going on now, and it enrages and scares them. One of their cousins wept openly about an incident on a high school bus where white kids shouted at black kids to go to the back of the bus. A young black student at UCLA whom we know stopped her car to help a white bicyclist that had fallen off his bike, but he called her a nigger, told her that we don't need your help anymore. We have family members that we literally can't talk to right now, and that's so disturbing and stressful that I can't even write about it.

The boys' first impulse is to fight back, to use violence, and while I know this is talk that comes from teenage bravado and testosterone and feelings of helplessness (and the reason why, I'm sure, young males have been historically exploited to fight wars), I am doing here what I call parenting on the fly. We talk about being alert to increased violence and racism in our community and to being prepared should something arise. We talked about our white privilege. We talked about the importance of non-violence (O.K. I talked about it and they rolled their eyes), and I told them that if it comes down to it --- and they asked me this question -- I would take a bullet but not shoot one.

Yeah, lunch on a Sunday afternoon.

Never have I felt as galvanized or depressed.

I claim to be a master of equanimity, of the ability to hold two opposing or contradictory thoughts or feelings at once, but that's not happening right now. Or maybe it is as I balance fierceness, righteousness, anger and at least a desire to be compassionate.

For every the America we know is dead (usually said, written about or cried by a white person), there is a much more relevant there was never an America.

I'm not sure the rift in families can be repaired.

Saturday Poetry

Since the election, I wake up every morning in dread.




Poem

I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less
insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their
careless stories,
The news would pour out of various
devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products
to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for
similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and
unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those
men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast
distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of
almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of
night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find
each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to
reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each
other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by
any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach
beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.


I lived in the first century of these wars.

Muriel Rukeyser
from The Speed of Darkness, 1968
posted on Poetry Foundation

It's NaCaGiMo, Folks! Day 10

I've been veering all over the place -- despair to anxiety to "power to the people" enthusiasm and resolve and then back. In keeping with NaCaGiMo, though, I'm going to tell you that I feel the most panic when I think about what might (and probably will) happen to those of us dependent on disability-related federal subsidies. I'm talking the Affordable Care Act and it's dismantling, what it means to Sophie and her "pre-existing condition." The amount of stress -- both emotional and financial -- that our family and millions of others had before the ACA was PTSD-inducing, and it looks like we're in for another round of it. I'm talking SSI and IHSS, and the various services that many families of children with special healthcare needs and disabilities depend upon for not just their quality of life but also their existence. We had actually made progress the last eight years, and now it looks like it'll be ripped away, systematically. I got a grim reminder of how it happens yesterday as a job I had -- acting as a peer reviewer for a federal grant -- was suspended late in the afternoon. I needed that job, and I'm certain that those who wrote the grant proposals needed that money. It's started already, and if the past is any indication (the 8 years under Bush), anything related to caregiving and the disabled is the first to go on the chopping block. One of the first things that Obama did when he took office was to lift the ban on federal funds for embryonic stem cell research. At the time I was working on a national collaborative team trying to improve the quality of healthcare for children with special healthcare needs (with special effort toward closing the equality gap for the disadvantaged), and the relief was palpable, not just for the medical professionals but also for families who have children with genetic conditions and serious life-threatening illnesses. I'm thinking of the prospect of a Chris Christie in a cabinet position, a man whose draconian stance on medical marijuana could actually kill children and adults who need it. During his short presidential campaign, he vowed to go after those states that had legalized marijuana and turn the clock back. 

I'm going to be honest and admit to my fear, even as I don't despair. It's a matter of principle, I think -- the fact that the Republican party, a majority of white people, INCLUDING WOMEN, put this creep of a man into office and acquiesced to the assholes that will surround and advise him. We need to all WAKE UP and fight back.

Inexperience and Providing Nourishment

Dark days ahead. I've only slept an hour or so, numb, and am finally, blessedly, woken at 2:30 by someone I love so that we could murmur to one another through the darkness, over the telephone. There's only love.

Early in the day I brought Sophie to the osteopath. A student held Sophie's feet gently and the doctor bowed her head, eyes closed, her hands under Sophie's back, her spine, then her head. Sophie resisted at first. I held her hands down, looked in her eyes. The doctor said All will be well. Sophie's eyelids drooped, she fell asleep under our hands. We are all healers.

All night I have been awake. I lie in the dark on my bed, the constant blip of an alarm breaking the quiet. Not a full-out alarm but a scrape, a shortened whine. I walk around the house and stand in various places, my head cocked. Is it here? Is it here? Is it at my neighbor's whose house is empty, being renovated? It seems somehow important, this half-way alarm, its insistence.

My three children sleep. One is wrapped in a defensive cynicism, the other in despair. Sophie is innocent, holding all.

I cut a person who questions my fear, tells me to trust only in family and place of worship. I think fuck you and recoil from him, myself. I delete his name.

Dark night. There's only love. My beautiful family.

I feel all the feelings that a body can hold, let them sit and swarm, envelop me in the darkness. There is time to feel everything, to know only the body and what it feels. You can't figure this out. The specificity of despair. So many things I haven't figured out, yet I am here. The sun is still rising and setting. There's history behind us to call on, people of strength and resilience.

Except fear. It rolls in. Stealth. Deserves only a cursory greeting, a scrape, a shortened whine. Is it here? Is it here? I will tell my children that I only greet fear as it passes through. I will tell them that they are safe, that they are loved. I will pay attention, my head cocked, my mind calm, relaxed, prepared to work.  My children are old enough to know, too, these other things. We will be prepared to work when we have allowed the feelings to flow through. We will be calm, relaxed, prepared to work.

We are inexperienced here and unprepared. Why should we be otherwise? I will be calm and relaxed. I will provide nourishment to myself and to my children and to those who need it. I will not waste my energies on those who would argue against the body that feels, against love.

The person in this position has indeed developed in himself a true appreciation of humanity in all of its folly and beauty. Such a person can lead others with wisdom, compassion, and inspiration, and attain all the success attributed to the great and wise historical leaders.

When your endeavors involve the nourishing of others, it is important that they are worthy of such support. If you consistently nourish superior persons, who will in turn provide nourishment for others, you can achieve great effects. Through nurturing and support, social and political aims can meet with success. 

 -- from The Book of Changes or I Ching, Hexagram Four (Inexperience) and Hexagram 27 (Providing Nourishment), when asked: What to do? What to think? What do I do? What to do? What do I think? What do I do?

It's NaFaCaGiMo, Folks! Day Eight

Photograph by #BadAssBrotherFaCa Oliver B.

#BadAssMotherFaCa and #BadAssBrotherFaCa
voted today for her, Sophelia Bodelia, because we know her rights as a human being and ours as her caregivers will be served best by a President of the United States who believes in the humanity of every living person.

#Imwithher
#PantsuitNation

First time voter, my son Henry:

It's NaCaGiMo, Folks! Day Six

This morning, I'm lifting one of my dearest CaGiMo's Facebook status updates for your amusement and education. Here you go:

NaFaCaMo Day 6, election edition.Vote.Yesterday while strolling through one of our neighborhood parks with my son and his nurse we overheard two men talking rather crassly about "ending women's rights." I turned to look at them and saw that one was wearing a sticker for the republican party's presidential candidate. He saw me see his sticker and then yelled, "yeah, that means you babe!" I looked back at him again and he yelled even louder, "next week you'll be done!"Vote.For those who have seen both the video I posted yesterday and HRC's last campaign ad, we did ours before seeing hers so I told my son that she liked ours so much she made her own. Roar.Vote.Sending fierce love and deep gratitude to those who are able to do more than we are to get out the vote.Oh, and VOTE!

***I'm a Bad-Ass Mother FaCa and I approved this message.

It's NaFaCaMo, Folks! Day Five

It's getting closer, and I know I'm preaching to a pretty big choir here with the occasional errant outlier, but this election is whupping our asses. I bought a choker the other day, a black ribbon with a beautiful blue Buddha on it. I don't ordinarily like anything that high on my neck. I hate turtlenecks and claim my decollete as one of my last remaining assets, so I tend to wear necklaces that hang right there, drawing the eyes down from the chin and the crepe -- whatever. I bought a choker the other day because I loved it, and because I felt the visceral need to be literally choked. I don't mean that to sound kinky or perverse -- I just feel choked up and tired, exhausted really, from the whole shebang. I'm tired of reading about it, hearing about it, listening to it and, most of all, talking about it. I needed a symbolic choker, so I bought it and put it on right in the store, vowing to not talk about the election or listen to anything more about the election and to keep it on until Tuesday.

#Imwithher

What does this have to do with NaFaCaMo, you might ask? Well, everything, actually. We've got to vote Hillary Clinton in to office as President because we have the best chance of having our needs as caregivers met. I believe we have the best chance of having our children with disabilities' needs met. Hell, I'm a lefty liberal, so I believe we have the best chance of having our needs as human beings met.

And that's all I'm saying about that.

When We'll All Go Together

Channel Islands

And I will build my love a tower
At the foot of yonder mountain
And visit by the hour
From a lonely wooden tower

Van Morrison, from Purple Heather

That summer when I was still a girl, more offering than sacrifice, the boy I loved lived in an apartment in a suburb called Druid Hills. Putty colored buildings, mosquito-thick air, Georgia green, no Celtic magicians but a couch in a room where I lay while he took a shower, the sound of water behind the summertime has gone and the leaves are gently turning. I've always loved that song, will you go and we'll all go together. Solitude, the intense loneliness of new love, the piano chords singing of ends and gos.

This weekend I had carnival dreams. I kicked up my legs, hung upside down and swirled breath in my throat then out and over the tops of bars into sky. I slept. He said, You need this sleep. You are safe to sleep and I have, I had no memory of anyone ever saying that to me. You need this sleep. You are safe to sleep. Everything.






What does Drumpf mean when he asks to make America great again? What do any of them mean -- the man in the silly hat with the big bill, the couple in the Cadillac in the parking lot of the Harris Teeter in South Carolina with the semper fi and the sign:

M A K E  A M E R I C A  G R E A T  A G A I N.

Again is the operative word, I think, or maybe it's Make, yet neither seems right and much less left.


Back from a weekend away, I was shoving my small suitcase behind a chair in my room this morning, and a little book, a pamphlet, really, fell out of the bookshelf by the chair, fell out and lay at my feet. Let America Be America Again and Other Poems by Langston Hughes with a preface by Senator John Kerry.  I think I bought it when Kerry ran for President, when he called for inclusivity. That election, twelve years ago, seems almost quaint now. The book has a navy paper cover with silver type. Round water stains spot many of the pages, one dripping, bleeding onto the titular poem. Hughes wrote the poem in 1938.

Here's a bit of it with a link to read the rest:



Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!


Read the rest here

Carpet Stores, Nightmares, Wallets and Cranes

My Facebook friends know that my voting place on Tuesday was a local Middle Eastern carpet store. I got a lot of funny comments when I posted the photo below. If you look below that grand carpet hanging from the ceiling on the left, you'll see some fellow citizens at the voting booths. It cracked me up that I was voting in a Middle Eastern carpet store, but I refrained from expressing the irony.

When I walked back to my car after voting, nervous and hyped up, I saw this on a wall in an alley:

I had just gotten off the phone with my dear friend whose sister is dying of cancer, and  I had mentioned in one way or another how weird it is to live one's life when such things are happening, to make coffee, to chat about one's day, to vote in a Middle Eastern carpet shop in Los Angeles, CA. Then, I looked up at the sun in the brilliant blue sky behind these fantastic cranes on the corner of Wilshire and La Brea. I actually love construction sites and cranes, in particular. There's something magical about them, like ballet, maybe, or an angular spider's web.

I had another nightmare the night before I voted about losing my wallet, although this time I was in college, trying to register for my classes. I woke up suddenly, sweating with my heart pounding, and felt near elation as the realization dawned that it was only a dream.  I'm always struck by how trivial the content of dreams can be and how weighted their interpretation. When I snapped this photo, I was sitting in my car, waiting for one of the boys to finish their football practice. I think I look Middle Eastern, which I am, a bit, having a grandfather from Syria, which leads me back to the carpet store where I voted and the end of this post.

The Final Bit on Ann Coulter

Vintage Americana Poster: Progress

Oh, God, no, you're saying. 

Please, no more. Let it rest! 

Well, you know me. I'm never one to let it rest. A friend of mine, who writes regularly of her remarkable nonagenarian, progressive mother sent me an email saying, You're going to love this with a link to an article titled Who is Most Pissed Off After This Election?

You know what? I do love it, and I know that many of you will, too. Here's a sample, and then click HERE for the whole glorious shebang.

After lambasting Barack Obama for four years as a Socialist, Nazi, Muslim, terrorist Kenyan; calling him "retarded," "lazy" and "stupid;" using racist innuendos to surreptitiously demean him, and making defeating him the Number One priority for four years, the Republican Party still couldn't defeat Barack Obama. After all this, after all they've been doing for four years to enrage the American public... the American public wasn't enraged. In fact, for all that, the mere fact that Barack Obama actually got re-elected President of the United States is one of the more remarkable victories and testaments of support (and renunciation of conservative agendas) as we've seen in America.

A New Start

I forgot to tell you that I started a new job today. I'm working with a non-profit foundation that provides services to children in foster care. I'll be helping them to build a core of medical and mental health providers to do assessments to support their advocacy. It's a part time job, but I'll be busy, and I'm thankful to have it. There'll be no more bonbon eating or lounging around -- I'm thankful to have a head tightly screwed to my neck; otherwise, it might have flown off by now.

It seems like a fresh start, doesn't it today?

The Yes Button

Oliver and Sophie, 2001

Heck FIRE!

Hot DOG!

Hallelujah!

Thank Goodness!

And from Oliver?

If Sophie were eighteen, she could vote, right? She would have hit the YES button on her iPad for Obama, right, Mom?

We are not two, we are one --

A Facebook friend posted this video last night, and when I clicked on it, I practically fell over. I had no idea this song was a Kinks' one and have looked for it everywhere. A very long time ago, a dear boy I loved made me a cassette tape with a bunch of love songs. This was one of my favorites, and I've periodically hummed it over the years, never realizing that it's a Dave Davies special. I think it's a good election day song, actually, strangers on this road we are on, we are on, we are not two, we are one. For many men there is so much grief. And my mind is proud but it aches with rage. And if I live too long I'm afraid I'll die.

Thank you Lisa K.. Thank you, Dave Davies. Thank you, old friend, dear love.

Where are you going I don't mind
I've killed my world and I've killed my time
So where do I go what do I see
I see many people coming after me
So where are you going to I don't mind
If I live too long I'm afraid I'll die
So I will follow you wherever you go
If your offered hand is still open to me
Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one
So you've been where I've just come
From the land that brings losers on
So we will share this road we walk
And mind our mouths and beware our talk
'Till peace we find tell you what I'll do
All the things I own I will share with you
If I feel tomorrow like I feel today
We'll take what we want and give the rest away
Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one
Holy man and holy priest
This love of life makes me weak at my knees
And when we get there make your play
'Cos soon I feel you're gonna carry us away
In a promised lie you made us believe
For many men there is so much grief
And my mind is proud but it aches with rage
And if I live too long I'm afraid I'll die
Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one
Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one