i wonder what it will take. our country – divided beyond belief – is suffering exhaustive blows. and i wonder what it will take. the dividing line – somehow as distinct as the difference between black/white and technicolor – continues to chasm us apart further and further. truth is obscured behind narrative of falsehoods and the bandwagons are lining up with flags and hats and arsenal. and i wonder what it will take.
i heard this recently: “standing up to power may lead to significant loss.” yes. standing up to power-administered-improperly does yield to significant loss. standing up to leadership-without-scruples does yield significant loss. standing up to authority that does not accept accountability does yield significant loss. standing up to holding our democracy intact is yielding significant loss.
as we watch, our country is reeling. in an attempt to protect the capitol and all it stands for, preparations are being made. yet, the nagging feeling in our collective gut signals that it may not be enough. we have been pummeled – each of us. we are exhausted – each of us. we are beyond worried – each of us. what will it take?
we quietly sit and ponder what will happen next. how will this resolve? what prayer do we have?
the excuse of many colors need be removed. the way forward is black and white. unity, as virtuous as that sounds, is the only option. or this country will be destroyed. autocracy will rule with a fascist-fist and accountability will fly in the face of unchecked authority. violence and extremism will prevail as acceptable methods of disagreement. and we will all sit in the ruins of this democratic experiment, in the depths of significant loss, and wonder what it would have taken.
in lieu of conversation, in lieu of any attempt at conflict resolution, in lieu of the vast potential of working together in community, in lieu of responsibility-taking, people are choosing sides and actions and, without heed to any kind of narrative fact-checking, diligent due process or any kind of resolute, unwavering commitment to mutuality, they are acting out of self-serving agenda laden with toxic aggression, sheer destruction and hatred leading the way.
denver riggleman said it best, “what is going on?” the chaos abounding in the political arena is the stuff of wildly hysterical hyena-laughter, the stuff of destruction, the stuff of the danger of propagandizing that-which-is-not-true.
the politicians who have lined up behind the current president, the-one-who-lost-the-election, are merely minions being played, little people doing the dirty work of a man who is so immersed in himself he has ignored a sweeping pandemic killing thousands of americans-on-his-watch every single day. without fact, without conversation crossing the aisle, without second thought or conscience, these politicians are cowering to this president for what? a pat on the head? my dog is less needy than that.
as we move through this time, we see professionals who are doing their job with excellence reamed out and cast to the side. we see people who are speaking out against the management of this leadership who are dismissed. we see individuals spoken about with strategic words of malice, gaslighting insinuations of wrongdoing, meanspiritedness at play.
we are left – deliberately – with confusion. as people watching, we are served up narrative, a silver platter full of nothing, expected to go merrily along with it all, to join the crusade, to not ask questions. we watch Power and Control take over. we are appalled at the gall this leadership and his team have exhibited. we are expected to believe him because, well, he is who he is, they are who they are. you can’t see the pedestal but it’s there. his minions have joined him inside his sickness and we, as populace, have been made the stadium audience as this unnecessary wrestling match moves forward, as people are thrown to the mat, as due process is ignored and the foundation shudders.
when we went to hippy tom’s farm and wandered around, browsing, i was overwhelmed by feeling like we were inside a sickness – a hoarding personality – and i felt trapped and breathless. it was too much for me. we drew in deep lungs full of air when we left, shedding the layers of dusty disorder. we were fortunate; we never had to return there. we wished him, the sale of his inordinately massive barns-full and sheds-full and yards-full of stuff well, and left, returning to some degree of normalcy, some degree of air on the county highway back home.
these past four years have felt that way. we have been trapped inside the narcissistic and delusional sickness of the president of the united states. we have hovered in the dark recesses of his self-indulgence and in the rhetoric of his hate-speech, his divisiveness, his zeal to promote violence. we have lingered in his vitriol.
we are a nation, in its spacious skies, its amber waves, its purple mountain majesty, that needs air.
the words of joe and jill biden on thanksgiving made me weep. words of unity, words of solidarity, words of hope, words of recognition of the need to heal. these words, spoken by people who feel like real people rather than physical manifestations of psychological sickness, are words that inspire. the president-elect and the first-lady, in waiting.
we look to this light. new times. new leadership. new air.
and we are grateful. for normal. simply that. normal.
if you look at the leaves on our front lawn in this photograph, you will see splotches of green. this is the path that some incredibly audacious person took walking from the sidewalk to our front brick wall in order to steal our two biden/harris election signs. yes. STEAL.
that morning – the saturday that joe biden was declared the new president-elect and kamala harris was declared the new vice-president-elect – someone had the gall to walk into our yard and take the sign out of the middle of the yard. then that person continued walking – right up to our old brick wall – and took our other sign.
now, i have never had election signs in my yard before. ever. but this year was different and, in addition to a couple other social justice signs, i was proud to have “biden/harris” gracing our home. i was looking forward to rolling one of them up for our special box, a remembrance of this turbulent time.
opening the miniblinds and letting the sun in the front windows i immediately saw that the signs were gone.
what was this person thinking?
did he/she think that they could prevent the inevitable? did he/she think that taking our signs would mean that the election results would shift? did he/she think that stealing from someone else’s property would be ok, acceptable, appropriate? that stealing candidate signs is not petty and immature? is that what this current president has taught them? that their angry opinion and their inflated sense of ego and importance would give them permission to steal? that their bullying would actually change anything? that their malfeasance would warp voting results that have everything to do with actually saving the soul of this nation, of democracy? that stealing signs would stop any new-day-for-america change of this nation toward equality and hope, a trajectory so needed for so long? that they don’t think crybaby tantrums and an obvious desire for retribution undermine the (supposed) value set they proclaim? did it occur to this person that we might have a security camera on the front yard? did it occur to them it is a misdemeanor? did they think that their whiny, pouting, coddled leader himself, all the way from his time-out corner in the white house, would pay their legal fines?
it is apparent that we were not the only target of this infantile and illegal behavior. many other biden/harris signs were gone from yards we had smiled at while passing and the bigger wooden signs that had been erected were pushed over. yes, now there is a display of puerile behavior. to have followed this/these person(s) around our neighborhood, triumphantly snatching signage out of the ground, would be to witness the asinine.
maybe the next time they steal something from someone they’ll smile and wave. candid cameras can be ruthless these days.
oh. and by the way, stealing our signs did not change the results. your guy lost.
“one thing i can’t comprehend is how hungry people are to consume lies.”
disconcerting?
while i’d love to say that this – “how hungry people are to consume lies” – is merely disconcerting, it wouldn’t begin to express how shocking this is. people in this country are, seemingly, not just hungry to consume lies. they are ravenous to consume lies.
i suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. it is the basis upon which the national enquirer and other such tabloids are sold in vast quantity. it is the in-line-at-the-grocery-store appeal of juicy gossip, falsehoods, lies and machinations of true stories. people soak it up. having no desire to see doctored photos or absurd stories i have never once purchased any of these.
the last four years, especially, have proven, time and again, that this country is full of sponges. in my mind’s eye, devotees to the current president sit at the ready, next to a scummy pond, thirsty. the wind blows a slight breeze across the surface and the green water ripples. the populace alerts to the movement of pond scum and, like chore boys fresh out of the package, suck up the mindless babble, the intentional lies, the aggrandizing rhetoric, the dangerous narrative. never does it occur to them to fact-check, for the pond scum has clearly clogged the arteries to their brains and they are too lazy to question what they are hearing. instead, they jump-jump-jump on the dyin’-to-be-lyin’-also bandwagon and ramp it up, full steam ahead. and the rest of us stand back and are astonished, yet again, over and over, at their hook-line-and-sinker devotion to something so nasty and self-serving.
it comes as no surprise then, most especially since the current president has advertised his malintent for months now, that these people-of-the-populace have gathered onto the fraudulent-election-wagon. they have soaked up the scummy messaging and have made it their own; conscience, nonetheless truth, has not entered the equation. their unmasked fervor is making them each big fish in little ponds; their words are reverberating in minds lacking of questions, devoid of analysis.
what is gained by the re-telling of lies? what is the endgame of this fantasy, this dive into psychosis? what is the point of this mean-spirited, predatory piranha of the truth?
perhaps it is of solace to them that their pond scum, a living organism, is good fertilizer and can be used to add important nutrients into, say, compost.
we literally get to 4:30 in the afternoon, when the light of standard time is waning and the day is catching up, and we are both utterly exhausted.
we sat on the boulder overlooking the river and bowed our heads down, brows furrowed, squeezing our eyes closed as we listed the reasons why we might be tired. we decided it is collective exhaustion. we simply do not know anyone who is not beyond tired right now.
the last week offered many chances to be outside: warm sun, soft breezes, a rare november last-licks-of-second-summer. every walk helped. every minute in the adirondack chairs helped. every task checked off the never-ending chore list helped. but there was still this weariness, pervasive, inevitable.
in the middle of a raging pandemic, with the stress of keeping oneself and others healthy, with the worry of financial strain, with the chaos of the election, with the political climate and matters of social justice, with work challenges, with isolation away from loved ones and friends, with grief over our individual physical issues – where is the restoration, the rejuvenation?
and so, we tuck in. we lay our head in the crook of our arms and we sigh. we know we are not alone. everywhere, necks are bent low in sheer collapse.
collectively, we all slow down our rapidly-beating hearts and our nervous pulses. collectively, we consciously take a deeper breath. collectively, we will rise back up, unfolding our bodies from fatigue. collectively, we will carry on.
the wreckage of this nation is smoldering. ill-intention was unleashed on this country four years ago and it is time to douse the fires of hatred and division and suppression and aggrandized self-serving agenda. it is time to steer away from the fire. it’s time to vote.
the populace of this nation is trembling. adrenaline has pumped, non-stop, for the last four years and it is time to take a breath. it is time to reach with compassion and care across the obvious aisle of race, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, religion. it is time to come down off ladders of audacity, rungs that few ever touch; time to make the united states of america united as-best-we-can, time to stop the divisiveness, now pervasive everywhere. it is time to recognize that there is much work to be done, if we can even attempt to slightly level the playing field for each citizen in a nation that proclaims to be in the always-flux of forming a more perfect union. it’s time for healing. it’s time to vote.
individual voices in this nation are fading. this administration has ceased to listen. it has ceased to give concern to fact, to science, to medical expertise, to any one or any thing that gets in its narcissistic way. it is grounding down to stumps the stalwart voices of reason, the wise words of those with prowess, masters in their fields. and then, this administration grinds the stump into ashen piles of wood-soot, calling names, firing shots from the hip at masters in their careers, and claiming an autonomy on knowledge. it’s time to vote.
the democracy of this nation is at risk. the administration of the last four years has undermined it, assailed it, pummeled it, ripped it from its roots with nary a backward remorseful glance. truth has been shredded. diplomacy shattered. fear-mongering has come out of its dark cavern of danger. virtue is missing in action. it’s time to vote.
diana ross sang, “do you know where you’re going to? do you like the things that life is showing you; where are you going to? do you know?”
dave matthews answers, “vote. you want to be part of what’s steering our future.”
time is about up. it’s time to know. it’s time to steer. it’s time to vote.
i never won when the county fair contest involved guessing the number of gumballs in the jar. it’s just hard to wrap your head around just how many gumballs fit in a jar – so many more than you think possible.
at the beginning it was twisted entertainment to watch the CNN gumball jar fill up. the cnn anchor would add another gumball to the jar each time the president lied. and then, when it was full, he would add another jar. and another. and another. and now? i’m not sure how many jars and gumballs it would take to truly represent the sheer number of times this president has lied to us, the populace aka his employers. it is not entertaining. it is not funny. it is outright pitiful, many gumballs past pathetic.
to realize that this period right now, the final approach to the election, is one of “the president’s most dishonest” spans of time is absolute lunacy. what is this country thinking? why, on this good earth, is it perfectly partisanly ok for the leader of the free world to constantly lie? he is a pathological liar and his egocentric comrades are both passively and actively complicit in their acceptance of his disorder, of forwarding his vast cauldron of mistruths, of his failures, of his vileness, of pushing his self-serving agenda, of aggrandizing his behavior.
this country will never win any contest guessing the number of presidential-lie-gumballs in the jar. instead, it will sink deeper into division, deeper into inequity and prejudice, deeper into an abyssmal lack of compassion, deeper into suppression, deeper into dark despair, deeper into the lies. this country will reside inside the pathological sickness in this president’s head.
in the middle of going down, down, down, i wondered about going up. it was a steep descent down the mountain service road and seemed interminable, winding around and around, but big red was up top and the return back up was inevitable. not only did it seem possibly insurmountable, it was laughable because it became clear to us that siri had directed us improperly to the start of the trail we wanted to hike. so there we were, trekking down a gravel service road with amazing views and a really big uphill back to look for our desired trail. “you have arrived,” siri announced. we stared into the forest looking for a trailhead, a trail, leaves crunched down that resembled a path…and saw nothing. it may have been an easy way down but it would be torturous going back up.
we have descended into the hell of a divided country. nearly 224,000 people have died – in this nation alone – of a pandemic that has swept the world and yet the president of this country continues to drag us down further, encouraging rallies sans masks or social distancing, insisting that this raging pandemic is “rounding the turn”. rounding the turn to where, we ask. it can only be a deeper cave of hades. his rhetoric, his falsehoods, his dismissive behavior of anything that might actually be of value to save-lives-right-now, have dragged us down to a devastating abyss.
it was easy going down. going back up, clawing our way to the surface of sanity and truth and virtue, will be harrowing. the crevasses are deep, the sides of the chasm walls strewn with piercing fallacies that must be sorted out. the rescuers are magnanimous, saving all the populace despite their flailing arms and dangerous tales. how much lower can we go?
and the truly sad part is that the pandemic is just one arm of the waterboarding, the suffocating performed by this administration. with bigotry and systemic and systematic racism, with decimated healthcare and a constant bow to the wealthy, with so much evidence of hatred and lies, inequality and political chaos, the current leadership has undermined the foundation of a country built on a celebration of the melting pot. the easy way down.
it is time to rise up and start walking. it is time to stare audacity in its face and vote it out. it is time to gather all strength and, with panting breath, make our way back up. to a horizon of light and love, to healing for this country and its citizens, every last one of them.
i come from make-it-work stock. my sweet momma and poppo were children of the great depression and were not wasteful sorts. soap socks, squeezing every last vestige of shampoo from the bottle, re-using boxes, rube-goldberg fixes, not a lot of retail therapy. they made do with what they had and never complained. latest trends were mostly lost on them and competing for the best lawn/decor/car/wardrobe/jewels/stuff was not a thing. as the youngest child, with siblings much older than me who both married by the time i was eleven, i had much time to glean and learn to mimic their ways. making-it-work. it’s where i’m from.
and so now, empowered by these two forces of nature – my mom and my dad – with a new brace on my wrist, i am making do. after breaking both wrists the end of january in a snowboarding accident, i finally had healed fractures. the pandemic had interrupted all my occupational therapy and, thus, i’ve been frustrated by a lack of range of motion in my right wrist, so my old brace was often my companion. but i made it work. it’s where i’m from.
and then i fell.
the floor was wet and, unfortunately, unmarked as such. my feet flew out from underneath me and, in natural reflex action, i fell…on my right wrist. i felt right away something was wrong but waited to contact my dr for 48 hours, hoping for quick residing of the new pain. i’m pretty tough and it takes a lot for pain to get to me. d says i have a high tolerance for pain. i blame my mom and dad. they were tough and endured much in their lives. but this isn’t a post about my wrist – soon an MRI and a hand specialist will tell me what is now going on, post-fall. in the meanwhile, i keep on keeping on, just the same as after i simultaneously broke both wrists. making do. it’s where i’m from.
as we hiked along trails in aspen’s woods of color, we mused on how easily we were, well, amused. simply hiking, sitting alongside a creek, smelling the scent of autumn forest – these things were sheer entertainment for us. no restaurants, no bars, no shops, no shows required. (and, in the middle of a pandemic, not even considered.) i thought of all the times i had spent simply being outside, picking apples with my momma and poppo, taking drives, having picnics in parks at wooden tables carved with initials of people we would never know. as we sat around the table out on the balcony or socially-distanced in the condo, i thought of all the times i just spent simply coffee-sitting with my mom and dad, talking long over dinner, late-night conversations on the phone. as my daughter and i talked about my parents, her beaky and pa, i thought of their sacrifices, of their belief in all peoples regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, economic status, religion. i thought of their altruism, their open-mindedness, their embracing of new ideas and their love of learning new things and going new places, and i see their eyes reflected in both my daughter’s and son’s eyes. it’s where i’m from. and it’s where they’re from.
as we approach this very important time of voting, i worry about the narrative others are hearing, but not researching. i worry about the rhetoric coming from this white house, the absolute lies, the warping of truths, the sickening twist of stories, the re-defining of the definition of words, the lack of understanding, the self-serving agenda, the out and out falling prey to gross exaggerations of misinformation. i worry about those people listening to this, believing it, voting with this toxic barrage of falsehoods in their hearts.
and i think about my mom, who always, always, always said, “look it up.” yes. look further. research. find objective, factual resources and immerse in those. look. it. up.
reverse threading 