Hallelujah

 It was the best day in a long long long long stream of days, wasn't it? When Kamala came out in her white suit, the tears started falling, and I felt absolutely nothing but happy when she spoke and then Joe spoke and then all those people in their families walked up there and all those silly fireworks went off and for a moment -- yes -- I felt glad to be American and to be a part of it. I remember going to a resistance meeting in another lifetime, shortly after walking with three quarters of a million people in downtown Los Angeles on the day after Dear Leader inaugurated himself and we talked so passionately about grassroots activism and what we'd need to do to change things and we did do those things but damn the years went by and wore us down and everything, literally everything, that we thought might happen did and more and nearly destroyed us and did destroy hundreds of thousands of lives but we kept it up. We kept up the calls and the postcards and the letters and the writing and the marching and the protesting and the talking and the arguing and holding people accountable and calling out bullshit when we heard it. We stopped when we were exhausted and other people stepped in. We laughed a lot but we were fucking sick of it all, too. And then this week happened and it was probably the weirdest three days ever, waiting to see what would happen, hunkered down in our homes, stepping over the homeless, ordering our groceries, teaching our kids, wearing our masks and posting memes and wiping up drool and comforting our seizing daughters and reading Twitter and novels and Louise Gluck poems and not sleeping and all the while trying to wrap our minds around the fact that nearly 70 million people who live on the same land actually wanted Dear Leader again, actually voted for the man and justified their votes with their usual talk of pocketbooks and Jesus and Israel and socialism and godlessness and killing babies. 

So, yeah, I'm very happy tonight. It's as if a weight has been lifted and thrown off, far off and we're all ready to do what's next. We hopefully won't ever have to hear from a leader who not only mocked disabled people but actively worked toward and supported and put into place policies that harmed our children. I don't want to ever talk about him again. Tonight, President-Elect Joe Biden included persons with disabilities in his speech and spoke in complete sentences with vigor and not a trace of malice or threat or law and order. He spoke little of himself and much of those who'd put him there up on that stage in Delaware and how wonderful that bells rang in France and people shouted in Germany and people danced in the streets all over this country, this grand and terrible place.

Migration

 

Migrating Nashville Warbler
photo by Carl Jackson 
Instagram: @mo_better_birds

I'm slowly easing myself out of Facebook and Blogger to Substack -- migrating in a sense. I hope you'll come over there with me. Eventually, I might even get subscribers, but for right now you can get notification that I have a new post via email. Please don't ask me anything else, because I only know the basics, and I've been trying to get off Facebook for years but just don't want to cut ties with certain communities. If you migrate with me to Substack, you can read everything I write, add little hearts and likes and dislikes and even comments! It looks neat and streamlined, and I'm in need of neat and streamlined. Even my blog on Blogger is cluttered, and I'm tired. 

The Substack form is at the end of this post!

And how about that photo of the Nashville Warbler that The Bird Photographer took about a week ago in a park? He was walking through some Sycamore trees. He said that these little birds tend to bounce between branches under the canopy. It's rare to see them in sunlight as they tend to stay in the shadows, blending in with the leaves, hunting for bugs. They migrate from Canada to Mexico and Central America. 

I would love to migrate to Mexico or Central America right about now. Jesus Christ. May I say one thing about Dear Leader's new nominee to the Supreme Court? Or two things. One is that Amy sounds like an intelligent person despite her "orthodox Catholicism," and good for her balancing career and motherhood and raising adopted and disabled kids all while climbing the ladder to the highest office in justice land. That ladder, though, was placed there by the person she's succeeding, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and it seems to me that Amy's going to pull that ladder up from her high perch and slam the door in the face of all the women who follow her. That'd be us and our daughters and grand-daughters.

Secondly, I can't respect anyone who takes a job from Dear Leader. Amy should have waited for an appointment by another Republican President, if there ever is one. Anyone who colludes with that piece of shit isn't a decent human being.

Terrible America

I should probably change that sign to "I bake and I know no things," because lately I'm just feeling mostly that I know very little if nothing at all. For instance, why is the rest of the country (other than New York City and greater Los Angeles county) getting back to what they deem normal? Who were those people in those bars in Wisconsin, for example, that bunch of burly white bearded men getting beer on tap, piled up in booths with blondes? And who are the people driving across the country to their beach houses? Who is my son, actually, getting ready to fly to the east coast to spend the summer in South Carolina where life is back to whatever normal is in South Carolina? We are still wiping down our groceries before bringing them into the house, rotating through the masks that lie, now, everywhere, making sure that we wash them before putting them on again to step into the dystopian world outside. We're looking at a fall with school still virtual, with even colleges and universities heading toward 2021 that way, even as other states are opening up their gyms and planning for football. Black men, women and children are gunned down doing normal things while being black even as men with submachine guns strapped to their bodies (and their adoring women because let's not leave out the women) protest for their freedoms in public places. Their idle white faces.

I'm confused, so confused.

Children are beginning to die in New York and New Jersey from a rare neurological/immunological disease related to Covid-19, but there are legions more protesting against their tyrannical government, peddling conspiracy theories and refusing to wear masks in the name of freedom. We've got Dear Leader spinning spinning spinning his lies and venom, health insurance companies diving back into states that they'd pulled out of one year ago, piling up record profits to reward their shareholders and executives, while the disability community faces the spectre of cuts in services, the usual sacrificial lambs at the altar of mammon.

We are divided, disunited.

We were encouraged to go outside and look up into the skies today as military jets flew through in a show of aerial support for healthcare nurses. Thunderbirds. Blue Angels. Who are the people that thrill to this kind of thing? I do not understand them, but I know nothing. I am confused. I put on my mask and go for a walk, my lips tight underneath, my glasses steaming up. Don't touch your face.

America is exhausting and terrible.

Trump Flanked by Dante, a Vortex

The Map of Hell from Dante's Divine Comedy,
illustrated by Sandro Botticelli,  1485

Non avere paura; il nostro destino non può essere tolto da noi; è un regalo.

Dante

I nove gironi dell'inferno sei
limbo
lussuria
golosità
avidità
ira
eresia
violenza
frode
è
tradimento

Because your question searches for deep meaning, I shall explain in simple words. (Dante)

The Nine Circles of Hell are 
limbo
lust
gluttony
greed
wrath
heresy
violence
fraud
and
treachery.

And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleansing? (Trump)

The Levels of American Stupidity are
the followers
the marketers and admen who must jump in to clarify for the followers (Don't drink bleach - Burger King tweet)
the lawyers who must be consulted
the people in Power who support dear Leader
dear Leader

I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you, just to see what would happen. (Trump)

Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.

Dante

50,000 people have died in the United States, most alone without loved ones.

It's Not Funny

Huntington Beach, CA
Yesterday

In fact, it comes to this: nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one’s thoughts be diverted by anything- by meals, by a fly that settles on one’s cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live.”

Albert Camus, The Plague 

It's a privilege to be able to stay inside, quarantined, with enough food and supplies for weeks, a virtual job, a pretty backyard and neighborhood in which to walk and a pile of masks that an industrious friend has given me. Not once have I thought my rights and freedom have been infringed upon, and this, too, is a privilege. My heart goes out toward those who are truly suffering from the virus, from economic hardship, from uncertainty and fear about the future. Most of all, though, it's a privilege to do something for others, to have the capacity to quell panic and anxiety in myself and in others, to know that what I am doing is actually something. It's a privilege to meditate, to laugh at silly cartoons, to bake a chocolate cake for a beloved friend's birthday and to bring it to her doorstep, to stand outside her house with other beloveds, at a "safe" distance from one another and to sing her birth. It's a privilege to coach my son through a new dinner recipe that he's trying by himself, thousands of miles away, to see his beautiful face. It's a privilege to follow the counsel of those wiser and more knowledgeable and experienced than myself, and it's a privilege to be openly derisive and contemptuous toward the leader of this country and the idiots that support him.

I had to write all those things to quell my anger and make sense of my contempt. I would like to be positive or not too angry or even optimistic, but I am not. I am angry and feel contempt toward the zeitgeist of this country and the insatiable greed of the powerful. The inadequacies and injustices that have always been present laid bare and yet, and yet. Still. Always the transactional. I am not optimistic and don't believe optimism is a virtue which means I am not a good American. I don't know what I am, actually, but it's not about me, and that, too, is a privilege. I wish for a sea change, or as the great Seamus Heaney said... On the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore. Is reachable from here. Believe in miracles. And cures and healing wells.

The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness. 

Albert Camus, The Plague 

I appreciate the sentiments expressed here, written by a New Yorker and posted on Facebook:

Dear protestors, 

Y’all realize that people in NYC have been holed up in tiny ass apartments the size of your car garage for twice as long as you guys have? They don’t have any beaches and most of them don’t know what a “porch” is. Restaurants being shut down means most of them have to cook in kitchens that are built for instant ramen at best. Almost nobody has a car so they can’t hoard toilet paper like you fuckers or escape to a nearby town to take a walk in a park by a lake. 

Yet they’re all making silly videos on FB, shouting thanks to healthcare workers at 7pm every day while you motherfuckers block the paths to hospitals, and they’re coming together like a community to defeat this thing despite going through hell. You know why? 

Cuz you guys are a bunch of fucking pussies. You snowflake ass Motherfucking pieces of shit need to whine about your rights getting trampled on cuz the government is telling you what to do with your bodies?! Seriously. Fucking puke in my mouth. And all those guns and ammo vests n shit? Who the fuck are you gonna shoot? The virus?! Doctors?! Put the fucking guns away, you psychopathic, insecure, ass hats. Go the fuck inside and stay there and stop fucking protesting. 

Bye.

It's really, really not funny.

We Can Do Hard Things, Monday 3/23/20

Fantastic Depiction of the Solar System, 19th century

I'm trying to remember what I wanted to write about today, but I just can't right now. I spent hours today doing virtual teaching, and I am beyond grateful for the precious children I teach and the wonderful folks who run the school and gave me this job. I took a walk through a largely deserted Los Angeles. Every person I passed gave me a wide berth. I love this city.

The POSPOTUS is going to gamble lives for the economy. "The cure is worse than the disease," he says. Meaning money lost is worse than suffering and death.










Everything, I know, is transactional in this culture.





My daughter's life is worth less than yours in the grand scheme of things. If she should get sick and need ventilation, she will be turned away if your "normal" child gets sick and needs ventilation. You know that, don't you? These are transactions that we must accustom ourselves to,



because






please, fill in the rest of that sentence. After the because.









A child injured or killed by a vaccine injury is a necessary sacrifice for the greater good. Children with disabilities shouldn't get funding for education because it takes away from those who are "normal." My taxes shouldn't go to a lazy ass person using food stamps to get by. If a person can't make it on minimum wage, he should get another job or another or another.










WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF, the Master of Ceremonies said in the dumbed-down string of letters we call language now,













On another note, my ex and his lawyer continue to hound me. Now they want me to go through a job evaluation -- something that will assess my earning capacity and what the hell I've been doing with my time for the last five years. I'd cry but why bother? We're in a pandemic, and life as we've known it goes on. For some.



Being quarantined is a bit like hospital time. It's not really time but time passes. Those of you who've spent lots of time in hospitals might understand this weak attempt to describe it.



On my walk I thought about God and god and religion and those who have faith in plans and order. I thought about absurdity and randomness, about houses made of cards, about human fragility and frailty, about beauty and hope and pure, dumb luck.

I choose to be dogged with not so much hope or faith but a belief in things as they are in the moment and the experience that what comes next is utterly and completely unknown.

An Elegy for Elizabeth Warren and Don't Go Off Menu

We interrupt yesterday's tiny mind tidbits, apple licking and POSPOTUS supporting and bashing to bring you this excellent reading:

An Elegy for Elizabeth Warren

I was curled up in a fetal position for much of the day, mournful of Warren's exit and the looming prospect of having to vote for either Biden or Sanders, but I've put the proverbial big-girl panties on and am getting on with it, it being fighting for what's right for those most vulnerable for the country for the earth and all those who live on it.

I also encourage you to read Warren's speech to her staff. It will give you hope.

And there's this article that suggests things you can do if you don't care for either candidate running against Trump -- things you can do with your bodies, your time and your money:

Take whatever money you’d budgeted for beating Trump, and split it in down the middle. Give half of it to local candidates who catch your eye. Give the other half to an organization (or a few) that will exist past Election Day 2020. Focus on groups that work with local candidates — we humbly suggest our own group, Run for Something, of course, but any will do — or groups that engage young people and/or communities of color. Give to organizations that do deep relationship-building in states that a presidential campaign is never going to organize in because the Electoral College doesn’t incentivize it. If you can afford to, make your donation recurring and plan to let it run into 2021.

Also, this from the same article:

Whether you vote is public, but whom you vote for is private. It’s your right to cast your ballot for whomever you prefer. But especially if you’re a person with any kind of privilege, you have a responsibility to think beyond your self-interest. This election is about the most vulnerable among us who need you to be an ally. While it might be tempting to take a principled stand and not vote, the facts are what they are: The general election will be between Trump and the eventual Democratic nominee. You don’t get to go off menu. The people who will be most harmed by your failure to vote against Trump are people who are already seriously hurting — that is a responsibility to take seriously, especially if you live in one of the battleground states where the margin could be dangerously close.

Here's a poem:

The Bird Catcher

When fighting time is on, I go

With clap-net and decoy

A-fowling after goldfinches

And other birds of joy;

I lurk among the thickets of

The Heart where they are bred,

And catch the twittering beauties as

They fly into my Head

Ralph Hodgson, b. 1879, Northumberland

After My Sabbatical: Tiny Tidbits About My Last Job

I have not actually been on a sabbatical, although I wish that I had and I wish that I could return to somewhere, anywhere back to reading and writing and otherwise not taking part being part of this period in the world's general history, the triumph and toppling of materialism and stupidity the emperor with no clothes the professional sports world the cult of celebrity the impossibility of publishing the tyranny of the politically correct and most of all the rise of Bernie. I just do not feel the bern the burn the whatever it is you who do do. My younger sister worked as an intern for Bernie back in the last century or should I say millennium and every time I see the Bern or Bernie I think of what she heard every day for the duration of her internship and that was Jennifah! Get me a tuna on rye!

I was, am a Warren lover, and I don't understand why an energetic intelligent woman with many plans, a woman who's fought successfully against The Man the bankers the corrupt the plutocracy and has a history of sensitivity for the disabled for children for special education is losing has lost to two elderly men one who's nearly doddering who sat and railed against Anita Hill back in the day, his day when he should have done better and the other who screams more than talks who has visions and no realistic plans who had a heart attack quite recently and whose followers are legion but include easily IMHO as the kids say the same sort of dense folks who back the naked emperor in chief just from the other side of the proverbial coin. And if they're not those followers, the bros or whatever they're called, I suspect they're following him because it's cool to like someone so uncool.

I will very much support the Bern the Burn if he is the person who runs against the Piece of Shit.

I've thought about things to write in this space, ways to communicate and what to tell you, dear Reader and I come up short. I bought a green bra and panties the other day, the most lovely color green. I flew to Atlanta to visit my mother and my father, had a wonderful time hanging with them, realizing that I am so incredibly blessed to have parents who are truly parents. We don't see eye to eye on politics (they're best left unsaid) and their views are such that I've felt near despair over the last four years, especially, but somehow it didn't feel that way this visit and I'm not going to wonder why.

Buried deep within this post is a tidbit. A tiny tidbit. On one of my last days at the ultra-Orthodox Jewish girls' school where I worked (see previous post), there was some talk in the teachers' lounge about Trump, and Mitt Romney had just voted "Yes" to impeach the PieceofShitPresidentoftheDisunitedStates and I never, never, never talked about my politics in this place because there's no good in talking politics when Israel is part of the equation but I said I just didn't understand how anyone could support That Man and someone else said, "He loves Israel," and so I stood up and said, "I can't be involved in any conversation that supports That Man," and I walked out and into the office and sat down to do a little grading while I steamed. The thing is, Reader, at this school I was prevented from teaching anything that had anything that was suggestive of romance. I mean things like longing gazes in a Willa Cather's Song of the Lark. I mean suicide in Marilyn Robinson's transcendent Housekeeping. I mean the word hell in an article from The New York Times. I mean Nathaniel Hawthorne's rich allegorical short story Rappaccini's Daughter because it mentions The Garden of Evil. When I referenced the great Spanish architect Gaudi in a poem we were studying by a contemporary deaf poet named Raymond Antrobus and asked the students if they'd ever been to Barcelona and they said yes and I asked whether they'd seen the amazing cathedral and one girl said, What's a cathedral? and because I'd been teaching there for a year and a half, I knew there was a distinct possibility that a seventeen year old girl might not even know what a cathedral was, I told her. Then I was told We are not allowed to go into cathedrals, and I said, Oh. And this was later confirmed by one of the Powers That Be and still I said Oh when what I was thinking was that we are all screwed here in this world. Back to the office where I sat sweating and biting my sharp, sharp tongue that so desperately wanted, was trying with all its half-century honed might to scream:

You protect your daughters from reading Nathaniel Hawthorne and Willa Cather but support the Pussy-Grabber-In-Chief?

Reader, it's a good thing that I am no longer working at this school. I learned a lot there -- about intolerance, to tell you the truth, and about its masks. Given these girls' behavior in general -- which was, frankly, closer developmentally to those who've just entered adolescence than those leaving it for marriage and babies -- I can only surmise that their rituals, their blind belief system and oppressive rules and regulations regarding every single thing they wear, eat and do make them uniquely unable to live in the world, much less listen to their silly, old lefty progressive English teacher, Elizabeth Aquino.

Did I mention how stressful it was dealing with this school and these girls and the idea that there are legions of people out there preventing 17 and 18 year old females from reading Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own because it would just open the floodgates (one of the teachers actually said this to me) yet supporting a serial sexual assaulter and vile racist misogynist because he's been so good to Israel? Did I tell you about the Cup-o-Noodles girl last year? The sad thing is that I was so into my job last year.

Jennifah, get me a tuna on rye!



#VoteBlueNoMatterWho

Warning: Profanity Ahead, Plus Poetry

Pity the Nation (After Khalil Gibran)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
And whose bigots haunt the airwaves
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerors
And acclaim the bully as a hero
And aims to rule the world
By force and by torture
Pity the nation that knows
No other language but its own
And no other culture but its own
Pity the nation whose breath is money
And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed
Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms be washed away
My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
2007


P.S. I listened to a group of teachers in the teachers' lounge at my school today make excuses for that POSPOTUS. I didn't know what to do so I left the room. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to live in love with these people?

P.P.S

kubeiko

n. a state of exhaustion inspired by an act of senseless violence, which forces you to revise your image of what can happen in this world—mending the fences of your expectations, weeding out invasive truths, cultivating the perennial good that’s buried under the surface—before propping yourself up in the middle of it like an old scarecrow, who’s bursting at the seams but powerless to do anything but stand there and watch.

via The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

My Response to Everything Concerning Everything (that strange flower)

Sunset at Allison's
Twin Peaks, CA July 2019

is poetry, and it's not what I write but what I want to read, words floating up or by like fish in my mind. Wallace Stevens comes to mind complacencies of the peignoir.

In the span of let's say five minutes I scanned just scanned words strung together (scan, scroll, read?) Mitch McConnell Mitch Moscow his voice a drone the rap something about something and then a star not of the sky (the stars' wrapping) but of rap his radiance in Sweden who threw a guy across a street which I believe is assault (the Swedes say) but whom POSPOTUS wants out (of Swedish jail) encouraged by the Kardashian paper doll who put on clothes that her husband ordered up designed that covered her famous breasts and ass and fly waist and Cinderella feet so that she could pose with the men in orange, most recently, take a selfie and

S
T
A
N
D

U
P for justice reform and Ikea be boycotted (Ikea being Danish not Swedish but who cares but meatballs and lingonberries and soft-serve cones) and wait, who do we support here? 

remember: five minutes (maybe ten including the footage of the blue-eyed Eilish)

they ended with Meghan Markle editing British Vogue and insisting on freckles and then the photo of the boy standing in grass his thin-lipped sweetness smile shot dead at a garlic festival by another angry white man with a gun.

Precious child.

Another one (or two) added to the piles of dead children.


I've stood in a sunflower field with my sons in Gilroy.

















There's humor in befuddlement or is it wry or rue?





Here's the poem.


Gubbinal

That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.

That tuft of jungle feathers,
That animal eye,
Is just what you say.

That savage of fire,
That seed —
Have it your way.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.

Wallace Stevens



I think we (you) suffer from an intellectual laziness, a lack of imagination.


Like Stevens' also wrote:

People are not going

To dream of baboons and periwinkles. 

On another note, I am learning about pleasure.

(and no, I am not going mad but rather writing and wrestling with words)

They're Getting Kool-Aid™ Jammers and Animated Movies*

Children do not belong in detention centers. "Detention centers" appears to be a more acceptable term than "concentration camps." Families belong together. This is now a popular trending hashtag. So is Close the Camps Now. Last night I attended a vigil downtown at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center, where over 1000 men are being held. We gathered outside the facility with 4000 people, just over the 10 freeway. Some people brought Mylar blankets as a sign of solidarity, fashioning brilliant flags and scarves out of them. The incarcerated children have been given such blankets to cover themselves during detainment.

We held our flashlights, electric candles and phone lights up toward the building, and the men inside flashed their own lights through the tiny slits in the imposing walls. It felt futile to be there and powerful at once, but mostly futile.

One of Sophie's caregivers, a legal resident originally from Guatemala thanked me for going, and I felt ashamed. There is much tension in our city as families gear up for tomorrow's ICE raids.

Meanwhile, Terrible America provides snacks and movies to the thousands of children separated from their families, languishing in private facilities whose boards are stocked with profit-hungry rich men, rich men who've protected one another in the vilest of ways. Perhaps the vilest of them all, the POSPOTUS, plays golf, presides over rallies and is cheered by the most ignorant people in the country. The most powerful people in the country who continue to support him have lost whatever shreds of moral authority they might have had and will, I imagine, go down in history as spineless, lacking even a modicum of integrity.

I'm curious. I had an exchange last year with someone who objected mightily to my outrage over separating children from their parents when they sought asylum at the border. Anonymous, what do you think of the camps now? How about the children separated from their parents? How about the conditions of the camps where thousands of men, women and children are being held?

Is this who we are?

* So reported F*^king Vie President Pence after a recent "visit" to a detention camp in Texas and proceeded to blame Congress for the over-crowded conditions in the men's facilities. The photo of him and his entourage smiling their greasy smiles of paternal solicitude made me sick.

The 4th of July in Terrible America

Children and workers are seen at a tent encampment recently built near the Tornillo Port of Entry on June 19, 2018 in Tornillo, Texas.

 Getty Images

I was sitting at my computer, paying my American Express bill and waiting for a peach pie to finish baking in the oven when what was the biggest earthquake I have felt in several years began. It started as a jolt and then it grew in waves even as I glanced up and saw the chandelier swaying and heard the pots clinking on the pot rack that hangs over the stove. I willed myself not to panic and walked toward Sophie's room, the hallway a galley in a boat swaying back and forth. I nearly put my arms out on either side to keep my balance and when I passed the boys' room, I shouted to Oliver, Earthquake! and sat next to Sophie who was lying in bed, her eyes open, my stomach lurching the pots clinking and windows creaking. It seemed to go on forever and then it stopped. Everyone is fine. We are all fine. Sophie, who had a ridiculous number of huge seizures yesterday out of the blue, as she'd been doing so well, is fine. I know that she had those seizures now because she is exquisitely tuned in to the strange and elemental goings on in the universe. I imagine she feels relief now, her brain settled even as we settle. It seems like relief, now, after the simmering rage and unease I've felt for days, a rage that I attributed to what's going on, the unease to the imperative to celebrate, to wish happy fourth of July when so many are suffering, when tanks are being power-washed to shine at military parades for that POSPOTUS, the empty rapist in chief of Terrible America. Yes, my words are harsh, but isn't it true? And what can we do beyond cutting our pie crusts out with END THE CAMPS letters scattered over caramelized peaches? How can our voices be anything but tiny and inexhaustible (Faulkner)? I just can't wish anyone happy anything this 4th of July. I feel angry and ashamed to be an American, to be so ineffectual, to be able to do nothing but post horrible photos and satirical cartoons about the POS we have leading us and the incredible injustices that he and those who support him, those we know, those, even, we love, are doing in our name. It makes me so sick to my stomach that the very real earthquake that rocked our house was a kind of relief.

Late Afternoon Saturday Conversation Between a Man and a Woman Lying on a Bed*

Woman:

Listen to this. JFK during his presidential campaign wouldn't let Sammy Davis Jr. near him because he had married a white woman and he didn't want the southern segregationists to be offended.  Then later, Sammy Davis Jr. switched parties with Sinatra and embraced Nixon -- can you believe that? Literally hugged him.

Man:

I was never into Sinatra. F*^k Sinatra.

Woman:

I know, but Sammy Davis? 

Man:

F*&k Sammy Davis.

Woman:

Did you hear that in Florida, teachers can be armed inside of elementary schools?

Man:

F*^K Florida.

Woman:

My God. This story about Kelly joining the board of the company that runs those facilities that house unaccompanied minors -- the migrant children thing -- did you hear about that? 

Man:

F*^k John Kelly.

Woman:

I think I'm going to be sick. These might as well be concentration camps! The biggest one is in Florida! They've received and will continue to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts! It's taxpayer money! My god! It's like a concentration camp! 200 beds in a room to house the older teenagers! The workers claim that the kids think of it as a "slumber party!" What is this? What is wrong with these people? What is wrong with Kelly?

Man:

F*^ Kelly. F*^k Florida.

Woman:

What is wrong with this country? Between that evil guy from INSYS found guilty for racketeering in the opioid case  -- the same company that derided me and my colleagues at an epilepsy event when we participated on a panel about cannabis medicine -- the same company that is busy pushing opioids and developing a pharmaceutical grade CBD -- and yesterday's 2-hour unsuccessful battle I had with Blue Shield of CA who's decided to deny coverage of Sophie's IVIG until further"review" -- well, my god. 

Man:

Take notes. Write about it.








* The man quoted in this post is the kind of man who almost never uses curse words. The woman quoted consistently rants and raves, peppering her language frequently in those rants with curses.

Things That Made Me Cry in My Mind, 5/1/19

1. Kamala Harris grilling Barr (so much money and time literally wasted on these hideous people running the country even as we watch it burn, drown and fall)
2. The briefing filed by the Trump administration calling for the complete and total dismantlement of the Affordable Care Act (anxiety, again)
3. The story of the young man in North Carolina who charged the shooter and tackled him and was killed, the photo of him and his impossible life, interrupted by training on how to do such a thing and ended by doing such a thing (disbelief that people think owning guns ensures their safety and freedom)
4. The man in Georgia who lured a teenaged girl off a website for girls with eating disorders to come live with him, engaged her in brutal sex acts and kept her in a cage for some of that time but will not serve any prison time because of the eight months he spent in a detention center prior to sentencing
5. The New York man who was sentenced to probation only for raping a 14 year old girl he met while driving a school bus, who, according to the judge, only raped one girl, rather than multiple
6. People close to me who recently made statements supporting the racist POSPOTUS who is also a sexual predator  and who also would take away the very thing that enables my family to live somewhat more comfortably with Sophie's epilepsy (the tears were real)
7. The article about retail botox centers where you can get injectables as conveniently as hair blow-outs

Reader, I imagine you'd rather see a list of things that make one grateful. 

1. The fluke of a blue whale, seen yesterday from a boat just off the shore of Newport Beach (the tears were real) 

Black Holes and Superblooms

So, ya'll saw this first ever photo of a black hole, right? A grad student, Dr. Katie Bouman, "developed a crucial algorithm that helped devise imaging methods for it,"  according to CNN.

Whoa.

I'm smitten. I like how it's described, too:

"A black hole is a region in space where the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing –– not even light –– can escape it, and it only grows as it consumes more and more stars, planets, and gas." New York Times

"The picture is also visual proof of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which states that dense and compact regions of space would suck everything in." CNN

Black holes have always lent themselves perfectly to obvious metaphors, so I won't pile on. The universe is still so impenetrable, isn't it? Call me weird, but knowing that I'm just a blip in the scheme of things gives me peace. It might be why during huge personal crunches -- those times when I'm fully into the who lives like this?! moments, I'm able to disengage and sometimes even eventually laugh at myself and everything else. Another thing -- why do we get all caught up in the idiot running our country? He's running it much as he runs his mouth. Like shit. 

We should just be concentrating on stuff like black holes and people like Alaa Salah, a young woman in Sudan who stood on top of a car during a mass sit-in against Bashir, the president of Sudan. She's become a symbol of the uprising and of the growing movement of female leadership. 

"The bullet doesn't kill. What kills is the silence of the people," she said, reading from a poem.

I'm smitten. Here's her picture:

photographer: Lana Haroun

I'm taken by everyone holding up their little light boxes to record her -- little light boxes that seemingly connect us, one to another, across miles and time. We've known about black holes, somehow, long before we could even take a photo of them. I don't even remotely understand the grappling of scientists and mathematicians and physicists over such things -- what understanding I have comes from the gut, I guess, the sharp intuitive thing I've got going, the threads of stuff filling up my brain, behind my eyes.

Black holes look like eyes, it seems, at least to our eyes.

Things are going on all over the world that make Americans' problem with our shitty leaders seem insignificant. There's nothing new under the sun, it says in ancient books. Women are rising up, literally everywhere and making change.


I got into an argument the other day with one of my girl students, about gun ownership, of all things. She had asked me whether I'd shoot someone who was trying to kill me. I'd told her, No. She was incredulous and upped the ante by asking whether I'd shoot someone threatening my children. I told her how much I disliked hypothetical questions like that because, really, how would we know how we'd react in such a situation? I told her that I had made a sort of pact with myself to eschew violence (yes, I used the word eschew because -- TEACHER). I told her that I hated guns and thought it was unnecessary to carry one for personal protection. I came short of telling her that the 2nd Amendment was bullshit because -- well -- it wasn't appropriate. I told her that killing anyone was kind of like a black hole to me, the ultimate black hole. This young girl's opinion bummed me out. The whole time I was talking to her, I wanted to stop. I wanted to disappear into a black hole. I had never seen a photo of a black hole because there wasn't one, though. I wanted her to disappear into a black hole. I wanted us both to come out on the other side and into the Antelope Valley where the rains have created what we call a superbloom -- so many flowers and so much color that you can see it all from space.

Riding with Min After Baez Sang Dylan

Joan Baez, Royce Hall, UCLA
November 2018

I know that's a bad photo of Joan, but I had to take it quickly, when she first came out or risk the wrath of my fellow concert goers. I like that her head is blurred out in light because that's what listening to her sing did to my soul. Blurred it out into light. I went into the concert so heavy-hearted, the fires, the air, the animals, the earth, the dead and charred land, the piles of dead children, again. It's not too much, it's just so, so awful. Joan sang and sang, though, in what was supposed to be her last Los Angeles appearance. She sang her own stuff and Bob Dylan and Tom Waits and John Prine and Woody Guthrie and Stephen Foster and Pete Seeger, and when she sang Zoe Mulford's The President Sang Amazing Grace, I cried. Because, really, it seems like another life these days, doesn't it? I'd never heard Baez in real life, had sort of fallen in love with my first real love to her music and was amazed that while her voice had deepened, it was still strong if not capable of hitting the super high notes of old. To tell you the truth, I don't know if I ever really appreciated those super high notes, anyway. When she sang Diamonds and Rust, I was twenty years old again and all moony over anyone who had a love affair with Bob Dylan and wove that love and anguish and romance into such words. Oh, boy.

I took a Lyft home, and when I got into the car, my driver, Min, acted super flustered as he'd had a time getting through the after-concert crowds in the street. I reassured him that it was no big deal and then he asked me how to get out of the campus and then he asked me what kind of concert I'd been to. It was Joan Baez, I said. And he asked, Who's she? And I said, She's been around for a long time, was famous in the sixties and seventies as a protest singer. Min asked me to find a song of hers to play for him in the car, and while I tried to pull one up, he asked, So what kind of things did she protest? And I said, She protested against the war and for immigrants and everything when she was young and now she's pretty much doing the same thing because of Trump. Min said, Why does she protest Trump? I know it's not good to talk about politics, but I love Trump! I think he's doing a good job! And I stopped looking for a YouTube video for Min to hear and said I can't stand Trump. Min asked why? and I said because he's a piece of shit. Bless Min's heart. We talked a bit more. Min is Korean and lives in Koreatown. I learned that he loves Trump because he's sticking it to the Chinese. Min conceded that the POSPOTUS does say controversial things but insisted his attitude toward China made him a great president. I said anyone who is so deeply racist and misogynistic, as well as ill-tempered could never get my respect. Min asked What sort of racist things has he said? I told him a few things and then said Honestly, Min, do you think he cares that you're Korean? He probably despises you for being Korean. Min clung to the anti-Chinese stuff and I sat pissed in the back seat because that light emanating from Joan Baez was leaking out of the car. I thought about jumping out at a light and then thought better of it. Min had on a large checked button-down shirt, just the kind I dislike, and I didn't know what to make of him, to tell you the truth. When I got home, I told Oliver and Carl about him. Carl rolled his eyes and Oliver said, Min sounds like a dumbass.








Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner's face is always well-hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my song well before I start singin'
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Weed the People and Wednesday Afternoon Thoughts

I'm cranky today.

Does the sun ask itself, "Am I good? Am I worthwhile? Is there enough of me?" No, it burns and it shines. Does the sun ask itself, "What does the moon think of me? How does Mars feel about me today?" No, it burns, it shines. Does the sun ask itself, "Am I as big as suns in other galaxies?" No, it burns, it shines.

Andrea Dworkin


What's really bugging me of late are the people who claim that moderation is the ticket out of the clusterfuck that we find ourselves. Other words and expressions and phrases are coming to the middle, reaching across the aisle, being respectful, both sides are guilty. Etc. I cry bullshit. I agree that heinous people are everywhere, but people aren't building Maxine Waters' inspired bombs and sending them to Republican leaders. Yes, a Republican congressman was shot at a baseball game, but I and the many "liberals" I know deplore gun violence whether it's directed toward people on the left or people on the right. People on the right, though, cling to their "right" to "bear arms," to "protect their families."  I have zero interest in tolerating this mindset or even respecting it. I maintain that anti-Semitic and racist violence, while always present, is increasing due to right-wing/Republican/Trumpian rhetoric. I see idiots from my high school class arguing with some of the smartest people in my high school class about how fantastic Trump is doing, how the economy is booming. I have no interest in understanding their views anymore. I can barely talk to members of my own family who support the POSPOTUS or who still call themselves Republicans, much less any person not in my family who espouses these views or who supports the Republican party and their president.

I told you I was cranky.

It's not about me, though, is it? It's about all of us or the rest of us. We've got to vote the Republicans out.

Other thoughts: I'm reading Rebecca Traister's new book on women's anger. It's called Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger. Here's a bit that I just read:

Now, I was worried and consumed with anxiety about what’s happening nationally, but in terms of my own general health, having had the opportunity to write, think, and take seriously not just my own anger, but other women’s anger, was the most salutary experience I’ve ever had in my life. I slept better, I ate better, I wanted to exercise. I was clear-headed. So I am very much in favor of the expression of rage, and getting to a world in which the expression of rage can just be a regular part of the full human range of emotions and thoughts that women have.

However, I am also aware of the fact that that experience was very much the product of a very particular circumstance. I was being paid to do that. That’s not possible for a lot of women who do get punished, right? They get called hysterical, they get taken less seriously. They pay tolls in their personal relationships. So I don’t want to exhort anybody, like, “Go and be your mad self.” If you’re in a position where you can, please do, because we do need to hear from more women who are angry and able to be angry without fear that being angry is going to result in a materially damaging repercussion for them. However, the thing you can do, if you are not in a position to express your anger yourself, is to take the anger of other women seriously, because that’s the part we have to change, not just individual behavior—what we have to change is the way that the world receives women’s anger. That’s about the broader reality that it’s not taken seriously, it’s not considered valid, it’s considered often disqualifying. And the way we can contribute to that individually is by asking women, “Why are you angry, what makes you angry?” and then listening to their responses. This goes especially, I think, for white women and women of privilege. We need to all practice taking women’s anger and women’s rage more seriously, being curious about it, being interested in it. And considering what it’s telling us about the world, about ourselves, about inequality. 

I'm holding one of my literary food salons on Friday night to discuss this book. I've got a wonderful group of women coming, and I plan to make a feast for them and facilitate a great discussion about women and anger. No men signed up this time. I changed the name of the salon from Books & Bakes to Eat Your Words. What do you think?

And, finally, last night I attended the Los Angeles premiere of a new documentary produced by Ricki Lake and featuring the stories of families with children who've used cannabis medicine to treat vicious cancers. My beloved Dr. Bonni Goldstein plays a prominent part of the documentary, as well as some other significant doctors and researchers in the world. It's called Weed the People, and I highly recommend it. Reader, being on the frontline of this revolution is just -- wild.

Keep on burning. Keep on shining.

A Poem for the Times

Ai Wei Wei, "Spouts"
from Life Cycle*

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

 

Maggie Smith

*

"Spouts piles together thousands of antique teapot spouts dating as far back as the Song dynasty (960-1279). Following Ai's practice of repetition and multiplication, Spouts can be seen as a mass of mouths, a metaphor for the widespread yearning for freedom of speech despite its continuing restriction throughout many societies."